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 AIDS TO FAITH; 
 
 ' A SEEIES OF THEOLOGICAL ESSAYS. 
 
 BY SEVERAL WRITERS. 
 
 By WILLIAM THOMSON, D.D., 
 LORD BISHOP OF GLOUCESTEE AND BEISTOL. 
 
 LONDON: 
 JOHN MUERAY, ALBEMAELE STEEET. 
 
 1861. 
 
 The right of Translation is ystervcd. 
 
LONDON : rillKIED UY W. ('LOWES AKD SOKS, STAMFORD STBEET, 
 AKD CHARIKG CROSS. 
 
PEEFACE. 
 
 The Essays in this volume are intended to offer aid 
 to tliose whose faith may have been shaken by recent 
 assaults. The writers do not pretend to have exhausted 
 subjects so vast and so important, within the compass 
 of a few pages ; but they desire to set forth their 
 reasons for believing the Bible, out of which they teach, 
 to be the inspired Word of God, and for exhorting 
 others still to cherish it as the only message of salva- 
 tion from God to man. They hope that these Essays 
 may be, to those whose attention they can secure, 
 incentives to further thought and reading. They have 
 avoided rather than sought direct controversy. They 
 have excluded personality ; they have not spoken wath 
 undue harshness of the views they have been forced to 
 oppose. 
 
 For the choice of contributors and the arrangement 
 of subjects the Editor is responsible. Most of the 
 writers gave their names without knowing those 
 of their coadjutors ; and not one of them, but the 
 Editor, has seen all the Essays up to the day of publica- 
 tion. Each has written independently, without any 
 editorial interference, beyond a few hints to prevent 
 omissions and repetitions, such as must arise when 
 several writers work without concert. 
 
 a 2 
 
IV PREFACE. 
 
 On the withdrawal of one of the contributors, Dr. 
 McCaul most kindly undertook a second paper, at a 
 short notice. No one has a better claim to be heard 
 on the important subjects that have been confided to 
 him. 
 
 Professor Mansel lent much valuable aid to the 
 Editor in an unexpected increase of labour. 
 
 This volume is humbly offered to the Great Head of 
 the Church, as one attempt among many to keep men 
 true to Him in a time of much doubt and trial. Under 
 His protection. His people need not be afraid. The 
 old difficulties and objections are revived ; but they will 
 meet in one way or another the old defeat. AYhile 
 the world lasts sceptical books will be written and 
 answered, and the books, perhaps, and the answers alike 
 forgotten. But the Eock of Ages shall stand unchange- 
 able ; and men, worn with a sense of sin, shall still find 
 rest " under the shadow of a great rock in a weary 
 land." 
 
 W. G. & B. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I.— ON MIKACLES AS EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY .. 1 
 
 H. L. Mansel, B.D., Waynflete Professor of Moral and 
 Metaphysical Philosophy, Oxford ; Tutor and 
 late Fellow of St. John's College. 
 
 II.~ON THE STUDY OF THE EVIDENCES OF CHRIS- 
 TIANITY 43 
 
 William Fitzgerald, D.D., Lord Bishop of Cork, 
 Cloyne and Ross. 
 
 III.— PROPHECY 81 
 
 A. McCaul, D.D., Professor of Hebrew and Old Testa- 
 ment Exegesis, King's College, London, and 
 Prebendary of St. Paul's. 
 
 ^ IV.— IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCRIPTION 133 
 
 F. C. Cook, M.A., Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen, 
 one of H. M.'s Inspectors of Schools, Prebendary 
 of St. Paul's, and Examining Chaplain to the 
 Bishop of Lincoln. 
 
 v.— THE MOSAIC RECORD OF CREATION 189 
 
 A. McCaul, D.D., Professor of Hebrew and Old Tes- 
 tament Exegesis, King's College, London, and 
 Prebendary of St. Paul's. 
 
 VI.— ON THE GENUINENESS AND AUTHENTICITY OF THE 
 
 PENTATEUCH 237 
 
 Geoege Rawlinson, M.A., Camden Professor of Ancient 
 History, Oxford, and late Fellow and Tutor of 
 Exeter College. 
 
 Vn.— INSPIRATION 287 
 
 Edwaed Haeold Beowne, B.D., Norrisian Professor of 
 Divinity, Cambridge, and Canon Residentiary of 
 Exeter Cathedral. 
 
 VIII.— THE DEATH OF CHRIST 325 
 
 William Thomson, D.D., Lord Bishop of Gloucester 
 and Bristol. 
 
 IX.— SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION 371 
 
 Charles John Ellicott, B.D., Dean of Exeter, and 
 Professor of Divinity, King's College, London. 
 
 h 
 
ESSAY L 
 
 ON MIRACLES AS EVIDENCES OF 
 CHRISTIANITY. 
 
CONTENTS OF ESSAY I. 
 
 1. IxTRODUCTiox — A bc'licf in the re- 
 
 ality of miracles is indispensable 
 to Cbrislianity. 
 
 2. INIiracles belong to the moral as 
 
 well as to the sensible evidences 
 of Clnistianitj-, and are part of its 
 essential doctrines, not merely of 
 its external accessories. 
 
 3. Fallacy of the argiuuent from the 
 
 disbelief in reported miracles of 
 the present day : this argument 
 not applicable to the :niracles 
 of Christ. 
 
 4. Testim.ony how far able to prove a 
 
 miracle as such : the proof of 
 one miracle removes the antece- 
 dent presumption against others 
 of the same series. 
 
 5. Connection between the miracles 
 
 of the Old Testament and those 
 of the New. 
 
 6. Amount of testimony in support of 
 
 tlie Christian miracles. 
 
 7. Fitness of the miracles as accom- 
 
 paniments of man's redemption. 
 
 8. Statement of the question as re- 
 
 lated to modern science. 
 
 9. Position of miracles with reference 
 
 to the empirical laws of matter. 
 
 10. Supposed objection against mira- 
 
 cles from the uniformity' of nature 
 — Hume's argument not strength- 
 ened by the subsequent progress 
 of science 
 
 11. Advance of physical science tends 
 
 to increase our conviction of the 
 supernatural character of the 
 Christian miracles. 
 
 12. Dift'crence, as regards science, be- 
 
 tween physical phenomena and 
 works done by human agency. 
 
 13. Final alternative necessitated by 
 
 scientific progress. 
 
 14. Eefutation of Hume's argument : 
 
 a miracle is not properly a vio- 
 lation of the laws of nature, 
 but the introduction of a special 
 cause. 
 
 15. Introduction of special causes is 
 
 not incredible — Objection from 
 the supposed necessary relations 
 of natural forces to each other. 
 
 16. Exception to tliis necessity in the 
 
 case of the human will — Exten- 
 sion of the argument from the 
 human will to the Divine. 
 
 17. True conception of a miracle as the 
 
 interposition of a superhuman 
 will — Relation of this superhuman 
 will to tlie conception of nature, 
 active and passive, and to that of 
 law. 
 
 18. Position of miracles with reference 
 
 to our conceptions of God's nature 
 and attributes — Limits within 
 which this question must be dis- 
 cussed — Form which it assumes 
 in relation to miracles. 
 
 19. Man's conception of God is derived 
 
 from mind, not from matter. 
 
 20. Conceptions of law, and order, and 
 
 causation, are borrowed by mate- 
 rial from mental science. 
 
 21. God is necessarily conceived as a 
 
 Person, and as related to the 
 personal soul of man. 
 
 22. Nature conceals God: man reveals 
 
 God. 
 
 23. Consequences of the above prin- 
 
 ciples : miracles must be judged, 
 not merely from i^hj'sical, but 
 also from moral and religious 
 grounds, and their probability 
 estimated by that of a revelation 
 being given at all. 
 
 24. The possibility of miracles follows 
 
 from the belief in a personal God. 
 
 25. Evidential value of miracles — Er- 
 
 roneous views on tiiis point — 
 Miracles how far objects, how far 
 evidences of faith. 
 
 26. Miracles and doctrines, their rela- 
 
 tion to each other — Negative 
 character of the doctrinal crite- 
 rion : its relation to the question 
 whether miracles have been 
 wrought at all. 
 
 27. Agency of evil spirits is practically 
 
 excluded from the question : 
 practical question is between a 
 Divine and a human origin of 
 Christianity, as regards the au- 
 thority duo to each. 
 
 28. Theoretical authority of miracles 
 
 as evidences of doctrines, 
 
 29. Practical extension of this autho- 
 
 rity — Doctrines of natural reli- 
 gion may practically bo proved 
 by miracles, and have actually 
 been so. 
 
 30. Principle on which the evidential 
 
 value of miracles depends. 
 
 31. Conclusion. 
 
ON MIRACLES 
 
 AS EVIDENCES OF CHKISTIANITY. 
 
 1. What is the exact position of Miracles among tlie Evidences 
 of Christianity, is a question which may be differently answered 
 by different believers, without prejudice to their common belief. 
 It has pleased the Divine Author of the Christian religion to 
 fortify His revelation with evidences of various kinds, appealing 
 with different degrees of force to different minds, and even to the 
 same mind at different times. The grounds of belief consisting, 
 not in a single demonstration, but in an accumulation of many 
 probabilities, there is room, in the evidences as in the doctrines 
 of Christianity, for special adaptations of different portions to dif- 
 'ferent minds ; nor can such adaj)tation be regarded as matter of 
 regret or censure, so long as the personal preference of certain 
 portions does not involve the rejection of the remainder. 
 
 The question, however, assumes a very different character 
 when it relates, not to the comparative importance of miracles 
 as evidences, but to their reality as facts, and as facts of a super- 
 natural kind. For if this is denied, the denial does not merely 
 remove one of the supports of a faith which may yet rest securely 
 on other grounds. On the contrary, the whole system of Chris- 
 tian belief with its evidences, the moral no less than the intel- 
 lectual influences, the precept and example for the futm-e no less 
 than the history of the past, — all Christianity in short, so far as 
 it has any title to that name, so far as it has any special relation 
 to the person or the teaching of Christ, is overthrown at the same 
 time. 
 
 2. For this question must be considered, not merely, as is too 
 often done, in relation to a purely hypothetical case, to a sup- 
 position of possible means by which the Christian religion might, 
 had it so pleased God, have been introduced into the world 
 otherwise than it was ; but in relation to the actual means by 
 which it was introduced, to the teaching and practice of Christ 
 and His Apostles, as they are portrayed in the only records 
 
 B 2 
 
4 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay I. 
 
 from which we can learn anything about them. "Whether the 
 doctrinal truths of Christianity coukl or couki not have been 
 propagated among men by moral evidence alone, without any 
 miraculous accomj^animents, it is at least certain that such was 
 not the manner in which they actually were propagated, accord- 
 ing to the narrative of 8cri2:»ture. If our Lord not only cUd 
 works apparently surpassing human power, but likewise ex- 
 pressly declared that He did those works by the power of God, 
 and in witness that the Father had sent Him ; — if the Apostles 
 not only wrought Avorks of a similar kind to those of their 
 Master, but also expressly declared that they did so in His name, 
 the miracles, as thus interpreted by those who WTought them, 
 become part of the moral as well as the sensible evidences of 
 the religion which they taught, and cannot be denied without 
 destroying both kinds of evidence alike. " That ye may know 
 that the Son of Man hath power upon earth to forgjive sins, I 
 say unto thee. Arise, and take up thy couch, and go unto thine 
 house : " " If I with the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt 
 the kingdom of God is come upon you :" " By the name of Jesus 
 Christ of Nazareth, whom ye crucified, whom God raised from the 
 dead, even by Him doth this man stand here before you whole : " — 
 let us imagine for an instant such words as these to have been 
 uttered by one Avho was merely employing a superior know- 
 ledge of natui-al laws to produce a false appearance of superna- 
 tural power ; by an astronomer, for instance, who had predicted 
 an eclipse to a crowd of savages, or by a chemist, aA'ailiug him- 
 self of his science to exhibit relative miracles to an ignorant 
 people, — and we shall feel at once how even the most plausible 
 of the natural explanations of miraculous phenomena deals the 
 deathblow to the moral character of the teacher, no less than to 
 the sensible evidence of his mission. 
 
 But there is a yet higher witness to this intimate association 
 of the Chi-istian Evidences one with another, in that great fact 
 which forms at once the central point of apostolical preaching 
 and the earnest of the future hope of all Christian men. If there 
 is one fact recorded in Scripture which is entitled, in the fullest 
 sense of the word, to the name of a Miracle, the Eesurrection 
 OF Christ is that fact. Here, at least, is an instance in which 
 the entire Clu'istian faith must stand or fall with our belief in the 
 supernatm'al. '•' If Chi'ist be not risen, then is our preaching 
 
Essay L] ON MIRACLES. 5 
 
 vain, and your faith is also vain." Here, at least, is a test by 
 which all the evidences of Christianity alike, internal as well as 
 external, moral as well as intellectual, may be tried. If Christ 
 did not truly die and truly rise from the dead, preaching is vain 
 and faith is vain ; the Apostles are false witnesses of God ; nay, 
 Christ Himself, if we may dare to say so, has \vitnessed falsely 
 of Himself. 
 
 It is necessaiy to state the case in this manner, in order to 
 point out the real importance of the interests at stake. Nothing 
 can be more erroneous than the view sometimes taken, which 
 represents the question of the possibility of miracles as one 
 which merely affects the external accessories of Christianity, 
 leaving the essential doctrines untouched.* Such might possibly 
 be the case, were the argument merely confined to an inquiry 
 into the evidence in behalf of some one miracle as an isolated 
 fact, without impeaching the possibility of miracles in general. 
 But such is not the question which has been raised, or can be 
 raised, as regards the relation of miracles to the alleged dis- 
 coveries of modern science. If the possibility of miracles be 
 granted, the question, whether any particular miracle did or did 
 not take place, is a question, not of science, but of testimony. 
 The scientific question relates to the possibility of supernatural 
 occurrences at all ; and if this be once decided in the negative, 
 Christianity as a religion must necessarily be denied along with 
 it. Some moral precepts may indeed remain, which may or may 
 not have been first enunciated by Christ, but which in them- 
 selves have no essential connection with one person more than 
 with another ; but all belief in Christ as the great Example, as 
 the Teacher sent from God, as the crucified and risen Saviom-, is 
 gone, never to return. The perfect sinlessness of His life and 
 conduct can no longer be held before us as our type and pattern, 
 if the works which He professed to perform by Divine power 
 were either not performed at all or were performed by human 
 science and skill. No mystery impenetrable by human reason, 
 no doctrine incapable of natural proof, can be believed on His 
 
 * See ' Essays and Reviews,' p. 94 tiken,' 1858, p. 23) that " Miracles and 
 
 (third edition. A similar view is taken Propliecies are not adjuncts appended 
 
 by Schleiermacher, ' Der Christliehe i from without to a revelation iu itself 
 
 Glaube,' § 14, j^p. 100, sqq. With far | independent of them, but constitutive 
 
 greater truth it is maintained on the elements of the revelation itself." 
 
 other hand by Eothe (' Studien und Kri- , 
 
6 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay I. 
 
 authority ; for if He professed to Mork miracles, and -wrouglit them 
 not, what warrant have we for the trustworthiness of other parts of 
 His teaching? The benefits obtained by His Cross and Passion, the 
 promises conveyed by His Eesurrection, are no longer the objects 
 of Christian faith and hope ; for if mii-acles are impossible, He 
 died as other men die, and was laid unto his fathers, and saw 
 corruption. The prayers which we offer to Him who ascended 
 into Heaven, and there liveth to make intercession for us, are a 
 delusion and a mockery, if miracles are impossible ; for then is 
 Christ not ascended into Heaven. 
 
 3. In point of fact, even single miracles cannot be treated as 
 isolated occurrences, and judged as we should judge of any simi- 
 lar fact narrated at another time. There is a latent fallacy in the 
 appeal which is sometimes made to the manner in which well- 
 informed men deal with alleged marvels at the present day.* 
 The Christian miracles can only be judged in connection with the 
 scheme of which they form a part, and by the light of all the 
 collateral evidence which that scheme is able to furnish. The 
 true question is, not what should we think of, or how should we 
 endeavour to explain, a single marvellous occurrence, or even a 
 series of such occurrences, reported as taking place at the present 
 time ? but, Avhat should Ave think of one who should come now, 
 as Christ came, supported by all the evidences which combined 
 to bear witness to Him ? If the world, with all its advance in 
 physical science, were morally and religiously in the same state 
 as at the time of Christ's coming ; if we, like the Jews of old, 
 had been taught by a long series of prophecies to expect a Ee- 
 deemer in Avhom all the families of the earth should be blessed ; 
 if the events of our national history tended to shew that the 
 time was come to which those prophecies pointed as the epoch 
 of their fulfilment ; if we were in possession of a religion, itself 
 claimmg a divine origin, yet in all its institutions bearing- 
 witness to something yet to come, — a religion of type, and cere- 
 mony, and sacrifice, pointing to a further purpose and a spiritual 
 significance beyond themselves ; if one were to appear, pro- 
 claiming himself to be the promised Kedeemer, appealing to our 
 
 * See 'Essays and Reviews,' p. 107. ; nunft,' p. 100, cd. Eoseiikranz ; though 
 
 A similar appeal to tlie practical denial Kant does not go so far as to deny 
 
 of miracles is made by Kant, ' lleligion j tlic theoretical possibility of miracles, 
 
 innerhalb der Grenzcn der blosseu Ver- i 
 
Essay I.] ON MIRACLES. 7 
 
 sacred writings as testifying of himself, doing works, not only 
 full of power but of goodness, full of wonder, but also full of 
 love, and confirmed by Scriptures expressly declaring that such 
 works should be done by him that was to come ; doing them, 
 not in secret, nor in an appointed place, nor with instruments 
 prepared for the purpose, but openly and without effort, and 
 upon occasions as they naturally presented themselves, in the 
 street and in the market-place, in the wilderness and on the sea,. 
 by the sick man's bed and the dead man's bier ; and expressly 
 declaring that he did them by the power of God and in proof 
 that God had sent him ; — with all these circumstances com- 
 bined, let any unprejudiced man among ourselves say which 
 would be the more reasonable view to be taken of such works 
 performed by such a person ; whether to admit his ov.n account 
 of them, guaranteed by all the weight of his character, or to 
 refer them to some natural cause, which will at some future time 
 receive its explanation by the advance of discovery. Surely 
 those who, even in this enlightened age, chose to adopt the latter 
 hypothesis, rather than admit the teacher's own testimony con- 
 cerning himself, would be the legitimate successors of those 
 who, under hke circumstances, declared, " He casteth out devils 
 through Beelzebub the chief of the devils." * 
 
 4. But it is said that testimony is unable to prove a miracle as 
 such. " No testimony," we are told on high scientific authority, 
 '•' can reach to the supernatm-al ; testimony can apply only to 
 apparent sensible facts ; testimony can only prove an extraor- 
 dinary and perhaps inexplicable occurrence or phenomenon : 
 that it is due to supernatural causes is entirely dependent on 
 the previous belief and assumptions of the parties." f Whatever 
 may be the value of this objection as applied to a hypothetical 
 case, in which the objector may select such occmTcnces and such 
 testimonies as suit his purpose, it is singularly inapplicable to the 
 works actually recorded as having been done by Christ and His 
 Apostles, and to the testimony by which they are actually sup- 
 ported. It may, viith certain exceptions, be applicable to a case 
 in which the assertion of a supernatural cause rests solely on the 
 
 * For this argument I am partly in- I objection is partly borrowed from Dean 
 
 debted to Dean Lyall, ' Preparation of Lyall, p. 23, who however uses it for a 
 
 Prophecy,' p. 151, ed. 1854._ very diiierent purpose. 
 
 t ' Essays and Keviews,' p. 107. This | 
 
8 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay I. 
 
 testimony of the spectator of tlie fact ; but it is not applicable to 
 those in which the cause is declared by the performer. Let us 
 accept, if we please, merely as a narrative of " apparent sensible 
 facts," the history of the cure of the blind and dumb demoniac, 
 or of the lame man at the Beautiful Gate ; but we cannot place 
 the same restriction upon the words of our Lord and of St. Peter, 
 which expressly assign the supernatural cause: "If I cast out 
 devils by the Spirit of God, then the kingdom of God is come unto 
 you :" " By the name of Jesus Christ of Nazareth doth this man 
 stand here before you whole." * We have here, at least, a testi- 
 mony reaching to the supernatural ; and if that testimony be 
 admitted in these cases, it may be extended to the whole series 
 of wonderful works performed by the same persons. For if a 
 given cause can be assigned as the true explanation of any single 
 occurrence of the series, it becomes at once the most reasonable 
 and probable explanation of the remainder. The antecedent 
 presumption against a narrative of miraculous occurrences, what- 
 ever may be its weight, is only applicable to the narrative taken 
 as a Avhole, and to the entire series of miracles which it contains. 
 But if a single true miracle be admitted as established by suffi- 
 cient evidence, the entire history to ^Yhich it belongs is at once 
 removed from the ordinary calculations of more or less proba- 
 bility. One miracle is enough to shew that the series of events 
 with which it is connected is one which the Almighty has seen fit 
 to mark by exceptions to the ordinary course of His Providence ; 
 and, if this be once granted, we have no a priori grounds on 
 which we can determine how many of such exceptions are to be 
 expected. If a single miracle recorded in the Gospels be once 
 admitted, the remainder cease to have any special antecedent 
 improbability, and may be established by the same evidence 
 which is sufficient for ordinary events. For the improbability, 
 whatever it may be, reaches no further than to shew that it is 
 unlikely that God should work miracles at all ; not that it is 
 imlikely that He should work more than a certain number. 
 
 5. Hitherto we have spoken only of the miracles of Christ 
 and His Apostles. But the miracles of the Old Testament also 
 can only be rightly estimated through their connection with 
 those of the New. The promise of man's redemption was coeval 
 
 St. Matt. xii. 28 ; Acts iv. 10. 
 
Essay I.j ON MIRACLES. 9 
 
 with his fall ; and the whole intervening histoiy, as it is told in 
 Scripture, is a narrative of the steps by which the world was 
 prepared for the fulfilment of that promise. The miracles of the 
 Old Testament, as has been observed, are chiefly grouped round 
 two great epochs in the history of the theocratic kingdom — that 
 of its foundation under Moses and Joshua, and that of its resto- 
 ration by Elijah and Elisha.* They thus have a direct relation 
 to the establishment and preservation of the Mosaic covenant, 
 itself a supernatural system, provided with ^supernatural institu- 
 tions, and preparing the way for the final consummation of 
 God's supernatural providence in the advent of His Son.f Not 
 merely the occasional miracles of Jewish' history, but some of 
 the established and prominent features of their religion down to 
 the time of the Captivity — the gift of Prophecy, the Shechinah, 
 the Urim and Thummim, the Sabbatical year, and others — mani- 
 fest themselves as the supernatural parts of a supernatural sys- 
 tem, and that system one having a definite purpose and pointing 
 to a definite end.| They were the adjuncts of the Law ; and 
 "the law Avas our schoolmaster to bring us unto Christ." 
 
 6. The real question at issue between the believer and the 
 unbeliever in the Scripture miracles is not whether they are 
 established by sufficient testimony, but whether they can be 
 established by any testimony at all. If it be once granted that 
 testimony is admissible in the case, it is scarcely possible to con- 
 ceive a stronger testimony than that which the Christian 
 miracles can claim. It is the testimony, if ever such testimony 
 was, not of man merely, but of God. Even as regards one who 
 does not believe in the distinctive doctrines of Christianity, 
 there are two witnesses to Christ which no other man, Avhatever 
 may be his worth, can claim — the history of the Jewish nation 
 before His coming, and the history both of the Jewdsh and of 
 the Christian world afterwards. Whether it was by natural or 
 by supernatural means, it cannot be denied that He to whom the 
 natural and the supernatural are alike subject has permitted the 
 course of events in the world to bear a witness to Christ, such 
 
 * See Trench, 'Notes on the Mi- p. 178 ; Van Mildert, 'Boyle Lectures,' 
 
 racles,' p. 45 (sixth edition). j Sermon xxi. 
 
 t Compare Neamler, 'Life of Christ,' X Compare Bp. Atterbury, ' Sermons ' 
 
 p. 138, English translation ; Twe^ten, ■ (1730;, vol. i., p. 153. 
 ' Vorlesungen ueber die Dogmatik," ii.. 
 
10 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay I. 
 
 as lias never been borne to any other person -svho has appeared 
 upon earth in the likeness of a man. It cannot be denied that 
 the prophetic ^Yritings contain descriptions which, account for 
 the correspondence as we may, do, as a fact, agi'ce with the per- 
 son and history of Jesus of Nazareth, as they agree with no 
 other man, or body of men ; that the rites and ceremonies of the 
 Jewish religion have a meaning as typical of Him, which no 
 other interpretation can give to them ; that the temple and its 
 services were brought to an end after His appearance on earth, 
 as if expressly to exclude the claims of any future Messiah ; 
 that His dominion has been spread over the civilised world to 
 such an extent, and by such means, as no other ruler, temporal 
 or spiritual, can claim ; that superstitions have given way before 
 His name which no other adversary had been able to shake ; 
 that doctrines have been established by His teaching Avhich in 
 the hands of other teachers were but plausible and transitory 
 conjectures. However these things may be accounted for, they 
 are sufficient at least to mark Him as the central figure of the 
 world's history, looked forward to by all preceding generations, 
 looked backward to by all following ; they are sufficient to 
 secure for His sayings and His acts an authority whicli cannot 
 be claimed by those of any other person. 
 
 7. It is scarcely necessary to state how much this argument 
 is strengthened when it is addressed to one who believes, no 
 matter on Avhat grounds, in any of the fundamental articles of 
 the Christian Faith. I do not speak of one who believes in the 
 narrative of the Gospels ; for to such an one the miracles are 
 not matters of cpiestion ; but of one who in any sense believes in 
 Christ as the Redeemer of mankind, though doubting some of 
 the records of His earthly life. If God has seen fit to redeem 
 the world by Christ and by Chi-ist alone, what marvel if the his- 
 tory of Christ and of the dispensation preparatory to Christ 
 exliibits signs and wonders such as no other history can claim ? 
 The antecedent probability, in this case, is for the miracles, not 
 against them. It is to be expected that an event unique in the 
 world's history should be marked by accompaniments partaking 
 of its own character. The miracles are not every-day events, 
 because the redemption of mankind is not an every-day event ; 
 they belong to no cycle in the recm-rmg phenomena of nature, 
 because Christ has not often sufiered since the foundation of the 
 
Essay I.] ON MIEACLES. 11 
 
 world. Koimd this great fact of man's redemption tlie accessory 
 featm-es of that wondrous narrative are grouped and clustered as 
 around their proper centre ; no longer the uncouth prodigies of 
 the kingdom of Nature, but the fitting splendours of the king- 
 dom of Grace. It was meet that He wlio came as the conqueror 
 of sin and death, who had power to lay down His life, and power 
 to take it again, should come also as the Lord of Body and the 
 Lord of Spirit, having power over the elements of matter and 
 over the thoughts of men's minds ; foretold by predictions which 
 no human wisdom could have suggested, testified to by works 
 which no human power could have accomplished. Viewed as 
 part of the scheme of Kedemption, the marvels of the Scripture 
 narrative are no longer isolated and unmeaning anomalies, but 
 a foreordained and orderly system of powers, working above the 
 ordinary course of nature because their end is above the ordinary 
 course of nature. The incongruity, the anomaly, would be if 
 tbey were not tliere — if the salvation of the souls of men Avere to 
 be brought about by no higher means than those which minister 
 to their bodily appetites and material comforts. The daily wants 
 of the individual, or the progressive culture of the race, may be 
 provided for or advanced by laws which Avork unceasingly from 
 day to day, and from generation to generation ; but we seek no 
 recurring law of the Scripture miracles, because we expect no 
 recurrence of that fact to whicb all Scripture bears witness. 
 
 8. The above remarks, tliough only preliminary to the main 
 question, are necessary in order to skew what is the real point 
 to be established, if the belief in the supernatural is to be over- 
 thrown. It is not the rarity of miracles — no one asserts them 
 to be common : it is not their general improbability — no one 
 asserts them to be generally probable : it is not that they need 
 an extraordinary testimony as compared with other events — 
 such a testimony we assert that they have. It is neither more 
 nor less than their impossibility — an impossibility to be esta- 
 blished on scientific grounds, suck as no reasonable man would 
 reject in any other case ; grounds suck as those on which we 
 believe that the earth goes round the sun, or that chemical 
 elements combine in definite proportions. In this point of view 
 the argument is altogether of a general character, and is un- 
 affected by any peculiarities of probability or testimony which 
 may distinguish one miraculous narrative from another. If the 
 
12 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay I. 
 
 progress of physical or metaphysical science has shewn beyond 
 the possibility of reasonable doubt that miracles are impossible — 
 if, as seems to be the tendency of a recent argument, the asser- 
 tion of a miracle is now kno^vn to be as absurd as the assertion 
 that two and two make five* — it is idle to attempt a comparison 
 between greater or less degi'ees of probability or testimony. 
 The preceding observations will in that case only serve to shew 
 what it is that we have to surrender, and to rescue the inquiry 
 from the particular fallacy which seeks to unden-ate its import- 
 ance by representing it as only affecting the accidents and 
 excrescences of Christianity. Let us, at the outset, be clearly 
 convinced of the vital importance of the question, in order that 
 we may enter on its examination prepared, if necessary, to sacri- 
 fice our most valued convictions at the demand of truth, but, at 
 the same time, so convinced of their value as to be jealous of 
 sacrificing them to anything but truth. 
 
 9. The inquiry concerning the possibility of miracles in general 
 (as distinguished from that which concerns the credibility of the 
 Scripture miracles in particular) involves two distinct questions, 
 which must be considered separately from each other. The first 
 of these questions relates to the position occupied by miracles 
 with reference to experience and to the empirical laws of matter ; 
 the second relates to their position with reference to philoso- 
 phical concejjtions of God's nature and attributes. It is indis- 
 pensable to a clear understanding of the subject that these two 
 questions should be kejDt apart from each other ; though it will 
 be necessary, in discussing the first, to take for granted some 
 conclusions which will afterwards have to be established in con- 
 nection with the second. Let us then assume, for the present, 
 that we are justified in conceiving God as a Person, and in 
 speaking of His nature and operations in the language which we 
 should employ in describing the analogous qualities aud actions 
 of men. We shall speak, as theists in general are accustomed 
 
 * See ' Essays and Reviews,' p. 141. 
 It is astonishing that this acute author 
 should not have seen the absurdity of 
 introducing tliis statement in connec- 
 tion with testimony. No witness could 
 l^ossibly see two and two make five, or 
 four, or any number, in the abstract ; he 
 must see it in connection with certain 
 
 li'siUe objects. Put the case in its only 
 possible form : — let a man say tliat he 
 had seen two balls, and then two more, 
 put together, and five balls iiroduced 
 from them ; and, instead of an impossi- 
 bility, we have but the commonest of 
 jugglers' ti-ieks. 
 
Essay L] OX MIKACLES. 13 
 
 to speak, of the will, and the purpose, and the design of God ; of 
 the contrast between His general and special providence ; of His 
 government of the world and control over its laws ; reserving 
 for a subsequent inquiry the vindication of these and similar ex- 
 pressions from a jDhilosoi^hical point of view. 
 
 10. The argument which denies the possibility of miracles, 
 on the ground of the uniformity of nature, may be considered 
 under two heads : first, as regards the general conception of a 
 system of natural laws ; and, secondly, as regards the special 
 experience of the mode in which those laws are manifested. The 
 former may be fairly stated in the words of Hume, whose reason- 
 ing has received no substantial addition from the labours of 
 subsequent "^Titers on the same side : " A miracle is a violation 
 of the laws of nature ; and as a firm and unalterable experience 
 has estabhshed these laws, the proof against a miracle, from the 
 very nature of the fact, is as entire as any argument from expe- 
 rience can possibly be imagined."* The argument, as thus 
 stated, was just as strong or just as weak at the day when it was 
 written as at the present time : it has received no additional 
 strength from the progTess of science during the interval, — 
 indeed it is hard to see how the evidence of " a firm and unalter- 
 able experience," if such existed at any time, is capable of 
 being made stronger. No scientific man in the last century had 
 any doubt that the sensible phenomena which came under his 
 own experience and that of his contemporaries were owing to 
 some natural cause acting by some natm-al law, whether the 
 actual cause and law were known or unknown. The nature of 
 this conviction is not altered by any subsequent increase in the 
 number of known as compared with unknown causes : the 
 general conception of "a firm and unalterable experience" is 
 wide enough to contain all discoveries anticipated in the future, 
 as well as those already made. 
 
 11. In one respect, indeed, the advance of j)hysical science 
 tends to strengthen rather than to weaken our conviction of the 
 supernatural character of the Christian miracles. In whatever 
 proportion our knowledge of physical causation is limited, and the 
 number of unkno>Mi natural agents comparatively large, in the 
 same proportion is the probability that some of these unknown 
 
 * ' Philosophical Works,' vol. iv., p. 133. 
 
14 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay I. 
 
 causes, acting in some unkno^^^^ mauner, may liave given rise 
 to tlie alleged marvels. But tliis probability diminislies when 
 each newly-discovered agent, as its properties become known, 
 is shewn to be inadequate to the production of the supposed 
 effects, and as the residue of unknown causes, which might 
 produce them, becomes smaller and smaller. We are told, 
 indeed, that "the inevitable progress of research must, within 
 a longer or shorter period, um^avel all that seems most mar- 
 vellous ;"* but we may be permitted to doubt the relevancy of 
 this remark to the present case, until it has been shewn that the 
 advance of science has in some degree enabled men to perform 
 the miracles performed by Christ. When the inevitable pro- 
 gress of research shall have enabled men of modern times 
 to give sight to the blind with a touch, to still tempests with 
 a word, to raise the dead to life, to die themselves, and to rise 
 agaiu, we may allow that the same causes might possibly have 
 been called into operation, two thousand years earlier, by some 
 great man in advance of his age. But until this is done, the 
 unravelling of the marvellous in other phenomena only serves 
 to leave these mighty works in their solitary grandeur, as 
 wrought by the finger of God, unapproached and unapproach- 
 able by all the knowledge and all the power of man. 
 
 12. We have already observed that there is one kind of testi- 
 mony which can reach to the supernatm-al ; namely, the tes- 
 timony of the person who himself performs the work ; and we 
 may now add that the fact of a work being done by human 
 agency places it, as regards the future progress of science, in a 
 totally different class from mere physical phenomena. The 
 appearance of a comet, or the fall of an aerolite, may be 
 reduced by the advance of science from a supposed supernatural 
 to a natural occurrence ; and this reduction furnishes a reason- 
 able presumption that other phenomena oj a like character will 
 in time meet with a like explanation. But the reverse is the 
 case with respect to those phenomena which are narrated as 
 having been produced by persmial agency. In proportion as the 
 science of to-day surpasses that of former generations, so is the 
 improbability that any man could have done in past times, by 
 natural means, Avorks which no skill of the present age is able 
 
 * ' Essays and Reviews,' p. 109. 
 
Essay I.] ON MIEACLES. 15 
 
 to imitate. The two classes of plienomena rest iu fact on 
 exactly opposite foundations. In order that natural occurrences, 
 taking place without human agency, may wear the aj^pearance 
 of prodigies, it is necessary that the cause and manner of their 
 production should be unhioivn ; and every advance of science 
 from the unknoA^ni to the known tends to lessen the number of 
 such prodigies by referring them to natural causes, and increases 
 the probability of a similar explanation of the remainder. But 
 on the other hand, in order that a man may perform mar- 
 vellous acts by natural means, it is necessary that the cause and 
 manner of their production should be hioivn by the performer ; 
 and in this case every fresh advance of science from the un- 
 known to the known diminishes the probability that what is 
 unknown now could have been known in a former age. 
 
 13, The effect therefore of scientific progress, as regards the 
 Scriptural miracles, is gradually to eliminate the hypothesis 
 which refers them to unknown natural causes, and to reduce the 
 question to the following alternative : Either the recorded acts 
 Avere not performed at all (in which case it is idle to talk of the 
 probable " honesty or veracity " of the Avitnesses *), or they were 
 performed, as their authors themselves declare, by virtue of a 
 supernatural power, consciously exercised for that very purpose. 
 The intermediate theory, which attempts to explain them as 
 distorted statements of events reducible to known natural causes, 
 has been tried already, in the scheme of Paulus, and has failed 
 so utterly as to preclude all expectation of its revival, even 
 in the land of its birth. There remains only the choice between 
 a deeper faith and a bolder unbelief; between accepting the 
 sacred narrative as a true account of miracles actually per- 
 formed, and rejecting it as Avholly fictitious and incredible ; 
 whether the fiction be attributed to the gradual accretion of 
 mythical elements, or (for a later criticism has come back again 
 to the older and more intelligible theory f) to the conscious 
 fabrication of a wilful impostor. 
 
 14. The argument of Hume, which may be taken as the repre- 
 
 * See ' Essays and Eeviews,' p. 106. J of Bruno Bauer, who rejects the hypo- 
 
 t In this way the mythical theory of j tliesis of a traditional origin of the 
 
 Strauss, after having overthrown the i Gospels, in favour of that which as- 
 
 natiu-alistic theory of Paulus, has itself cribes them to deliberate fabrication, 
 
 in turn been subjected to the criticism | 
 
16 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay I. 
 
 sentative of all tliose wiiich rest merely on tlie general concep- 
 tion of laws of nature, was refuteil long ago by one who wrote 
 as the advocate of his teaching in some other respects.* A 
 miracle is not "si. violation of the laws of nature," in any sense 
 in which such a violation is impossible or inconceivable. It is 
 simplv the introduction of a new agent, possessing new powers, 
 and therefore not included under the rules generalized from 
 a previous experience. Its miraculous character, distinguishing 
 it from mere new discoveries in nature, consists in the fact that 
 the powers in question are supposed to be introduced for a 
 special pm-pose, and to be withdrawn again when that purpose is 
 accomplished, and thus to be excluded from the field of future 
 observation and investigation. But the supposition of such 
 powers need not imply any violation of the present laws observed 
 by present natural agents. The laws of nature, in the only 
 sense of the phrase which is relevant to the present argument, 
 are simply general statements concerning the powers and pro- 
 perties of certain classes of objects which have come under our 
 observation. They say nothing about the powers and properties 
 of other objects or classes of objects which have not been 
 observed, or which have been observed with a different result. 
 There are laws, for instance, of one class of material agents 
 which do not apply to another ; and there are laws of matter in 
 general which are not applicable to mind ; and so there may be 
 other orders of beings of which we have no knowledge, the laws 
 of whose action may be different from all that we know of mind 
 or body. A violation of the laws of nature, in this sense of the 
 expression, would take place if, in two cases in which the cause 
 or antecedent fact were exactly the same, the effect or con- 
 sequent fact were diSerent. But no such irregularity is asserted 
 by the believer in miracles. He does not assert that miracles 
 are produced by the abnormal action of natural and known 
 causes — on the contrary, he expressly maintains that they are 
 produced by a special interposition of Divine Power ; aud that 
 such an interposition, constituting in itself a different cause, 
 may reasonably be expected to be followed by a different effect. 
 15. So far then as a miracle Ls regarded as the operation of a 
 
 * See Brown on Cause and Effect, i senting from some of liis details, and 
 Note E. I have borrowed the leading i therefore xmable to adopt Lis exact 
 idea of Browns argmnent, though dia- | language. 
 
Essay I] ON MIRACLES. 17 
 
 special cause, producing a special eifect, it oifers no antagonism 
 to that general uniformity of nature, according to whicli the 
 same effects Avill always follow from the same causes. The 
 opposition between science and miracle, if any exist, must be 
 sought in another quarter ; namely, in the assumption (provided 
 that such an assumption is warranted by science) that the intro- 
 duction of a special cause is itself incredible. The ground of 
 such an assumption appears to lie in the hypothesis that the 
 existing forces of nature are so mutually related to each other 
 that no new power can be introduced without either disturbing 
 the whole equilibrium of the universe, or involving a series of 
 miracles, coextensive with the universe, to counteract such 
 disturbance. Tliis seems to be the meaning of the following 
 observation by a recent writer : — " In an age of physical research 
 like the present, all highly cultivated minds and duly advanced 
 intellects have imbibed, more or less, the lessons of the inductive 
 philosophy, and have at least in some measure learned to appre- 
 ciate the grand foundation conception of universal law — to 
 recognise the impossibility even of any two material atoms sub- 
 sisting together without a determinate relation — of any action 
 of the one or the other, whether of equilibrium or of motion, 
 without reference to a physical cause — of any modification what- 
 soever in the existing conditions of material agents, unless 
 through the invariable operation of a series of eternally impressed 
 consequences, following in some necessary chain of orderly con- 
 nexion — however imperfectly known to us." * 
 
 This operation of a series of eternally impressed consequences 
 could hardly be described more graphically or forcibly than in 
 the following words of a great German philosopher : — " Let us 
 imagine, for instance, this grain of sand lying some few feet 
 further inland than it actually does. Then must the storm- 
 Avind that di'ove it in from the sea-shore have been stronger than 
 it actually was. Then must the preceding state of the atmo- 
 sphere, by which this wind was occasioned and its degree of 
 strength determined, have been different from what it actually 
 was ; and the previous changes which gave rise to this particular 
 weather ; and so on. We must suppose a different temperature 
 from that which really existed, and a different constitution of 
 
 ' Essays and Reviews,' p. 133. 
 
18 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay T. 
 
 the bodies Avliicli iufluenccd this temperature. The fertility or 
 barrenness of countries, the duration of the life of man, depend, 
 unquestionably, in a great degree, on temperature. How can 
 yon Imow — since it is not given us to penetrate the arcana of 
 nature, and it is therefore allowable to speak of possibilities — 
 how can you know that in such a state of the weather as we 
 have been supposing, in order to carry this grain of saud a few 
 yards further, some ancestor of yours might not have perished 
 from hunger, or cold, or heat, long before the birth of that son 
 from whom you are descended ; that thus you might never have 
 been at all ; and all that you have ever done, and all that you 
 ever hope to do in this world, must have been hindered, in order 
 that a grain of sand might lie in a different place?"* 
 
 IG. Without attempting to criticise the argument as thus elo- 
 quently stated, let ns make one alteration in the circiunstances 
 supposed — an alteration necessary to make it relevant to the 
 present question. Let us suppose that the grain of sand, instead 
 of being carried to its present position by the wind, has been 
 placed there by a man. Is the student of physical science 
 prepared to enumerate a similar, chain of material antecedents, 
 which must have been other than they were, before the man 
 could have chosen to deposit the grain of sand on any other spot 
 
 * Ficlite, 'Die Bestimmuiif^ des 
 Mcnsclien,' Werke, ii., p. 178. For the 
 translation I am indebted to an excel- 
 lent American work, which deserves to 
 be better known in this country, and to 
 which I take this opportunity of ex- 
 pressing my own obligations — ' The 
 Principles of iMetaphysieal and Ethical 
 Science,' by my friend Trofessor Bowen, 
 of Harvard College. 
 
 Schleiermaeher (' Der Christlicho 
 Glaiibc,' § 47, p. 260) expresses in ge- 
 neral terms, and with express reference 
 to miracles, the same view which Fichte 
 has exhibited by an instance in relation 
 to necessity in general. "A miracle," 
 lie says, "has a positive relation, by 
 which it extends to all that is future, 
 and a negative relation, which in a cer- 
 tain sense affects all that is past. In 
 so far as tliat docs not follow which 
 would have followed according to the 
 natural connection of the aggregate of 
 finite causes, in so far an ctiect is hin- 
 dered, not by the influence of other 
 natural counteracting causes belonging 
 
 to the same series, but notwithstanding 
 the concurrence of all effective causes 
 to the production of the effect. Eveiy- 
 thing, therefore, which from all past 
 time contributed to tins effect is in a cer- 
 tain measure annihilated; and instead 
 of tlie interpolation of a single super- 
 natural agent into the course of nature, 
 the wliole conception of nature is de- 
 stroyed. On the positive side, some- 
 thing takes place wliich is conceived as 
 incapable of following from tlie aggi-e- 
 gatc of finite causes. But, inasmuch 
 as tills event itself now becomes an 
 actual link in the chain of nature, every 
 future event must be other tliaii it would 
 have been had this one miracle not 
 fciken place. Every miracle thus not 
 only destroys the original order of na- 
 ture for ever after ; but each later mi- 
 racle destro)-s the earlier ones, so far as 
 tlicso have become parts of the series 
 of eflectivc causes." The whole ar- 
 gument, ns Ilothc has observed, rests 
 on the assumption of absolute deter- 
 minism. 
 
Essay I.] 
 
 ON MIEACLES. 
 
 19 
 
 tlian that on wliicli it is now lying? Such a conclusion has 
 indeed been maintained in general terms, without any specifica- 
 tion of antecedents, by the advocates of Fatalism ; and it is main- 
 tained in the continuation of the passage from which the above 
 extract is taken.* But the question is, not whether such a con- 
 clusion has been asserted, as many other absurdities have been 
 asserted, by the advocates of a theory ; j but whether it has been 
 established on such scientific grounds as to be entitled to the 
 assent of all duly cultivated minds, whatever their own consci- 
 ousness may say to the contrary. J The most rigid prevalence 
 of law and necessary sequence among purely material pheno- 
 mena may be admitted without apprehension by the firmest 
 believer in miracles, so long as that sequence is so interpreted 
 as to leave room for a power iu dispensable to all moral obliga- 
 tion and to all religious belief— the power of Free Will in man. 
 Deny the existence of a free will in man ; and neither the 
 possibility of miracles, nor any other question of religion or 
 morality, is worth contending about. Admit the existence of a 
 free will in man ; and we have the experience of a power, ana- 
 logous, however inferior, to that which is supposed to operate in 
 the production of a miracle, and forming the basis of a legitimate 
 argument from the less to the greater. § In the Will of man we 
 have the solitary instance of an Efiicient Cause in the highest 
 sense of the term, acting among and along with the physical 
 causes of the material world, and producing results which would 
 not have been brought about by any invariable sequence of 
 physical causes left to their own action. We have evidence, also, 
 of an elasticity, so to speak, in the constitution of nature, which 
 
 * Kot however as the author's own 
 conclusion ; but as one of two conflict- 
 ing doubts, to be afterwards resolved. 
 
 t "Nihil tam absurde diei potest, 
 quod non dicatur ab aliquo philosopho- 
 rura." — Cicero, Be Divinatlone, ii., 58. 
 
 X An attempt has recently been made 
 to prove the non-existence of free Avill, 
 by means of statistical calculations, 
 shewhig an average uniformity in the 
 recurrence of certain actions in certain 
 periods of time. The resemblance, how- 
 ever, between statistical averages and 
 natural laws fails at the very point on 
 which the whole weight of the argu- 
 ment rests. A natural law is valid for 
 a class of objects, only because and in 
 
 so far as it is valid for each individual 
 of that class : the law of gravitation, 
 for instance, is exhibited in a single 
 apple as much as in an orchard ; and 
 is concluded of the latter from being 
 observed in the former. But the 
 uniformity represented by statistical 
 averages is one which is observed in 
 masses only, and not in individuals ; 
 and hence the law, if law it be, which 
 such averages indicate, is one which 
 otters no bar to the existence of in- 
 dividi:al freedom, exercised, as all 
 human power must be exercised, withiu 
 certain limits. 
 
 § Compare Twesten, ' Vorlesungeu 
 ueber die Dogmatik,' ii., p. 171. 
 
 c 2 
 
20 AIDS TO FAITPI. [Essay I. 
 
 permits tlie influence of human poAver on the phenomena of the 
 workl to be exercised or suspended at will, without affecting the 
 stability of the whole. We have thus a precedent for allowing 
 the possibility of a similar interference of a higher will on a 
 grander scale, provided for by a similar elasticity of the matter 
 subjected to its influence. Such interferences, whether produced 
 by human or by superhuman will, are not contrary to the laws 
 of matter ; but neither are they the result of those laws. They 
 are the work of an agent who is independent of the laws, and 
 who, therefore, neither obeys them nor disobeys them.* If a 
 man, of his oami free will, throws a stone into the air, the mo- 
 tion of the stone, as soon as it has left his hand, is determined 
 by a combination of purely material laws ; partly by the attrac- 
 tion of the earth ; partly by the resistance of the air ; partly by 
 the magnitude and direction of the force by which it was thrown. 
 But by Avhat latv came it to be thrown at all? What law 
 brought about the circumstance through which the aforesaid 
 combination of material laws came into operation on this par- 
 ticular occasion and in tliis particular manner? The law of 
 gravitation, no doubt, remains constant and unbroken, whether 
 the stone is lying on the ground or moving through the air ; but 
 neither the law of gravitation, nor all the laws of matter put 
 together, could have brought about this particular result, without 
 the interposition of the free will of the man who throws the 
 stone. Substitute the will of God for the will of man ; and the 
 argument, which in the above instance is limited to the narrow 
 sphere within which man's power can be exercised, becomes 
 applicable to the whole extent of creation, and to all the pheno- 
 mena ^^'hich it embraces. 
 
 17. The fundamental conception, which is indispensable to a 
 true apprehension of the nature of a miracle, is that of the distinc- 
 tion of Mind from Matter, and of the power of the former, as a 
 personal, conscious, and free agent, to influence the plienomena 
 of the latter. We are conscious of this power in ourselves ; we 
 experience it in our everyday life ; but we experience also its 
 restriction within certain narrow limits, the principal one being 
 that man's influence upon foreign bodies is only possible through 
 the instrumentality of his own body.f Beyond these limits is 
 
 * Sec Rotlie, in ' Stuilien iiud Kriti- I f Twesten, ' Vorlesungen ueber die 
 ken,' 1858, p. 33. | Dogmatik,' i. p. 3G8. 
 
Essay L] OX MIRACLES. 21 
 
 the region of the miraculous. In at least the great majority of 
 the miracles recorded in Scripture, the supernatural element 
 appears, not in the relation of matter to matter, but in that of 
 matter to mind ; in the exercise of a personal power transcend- 
 ing the limits of man's "will. They are not so much snjx'r mate rial 
 as superhuman. Miracles, as evidences of religion, are connected 
 with a teacher of that religion ; and their evidential character 
 consists in the witness which they bear to him as "a man 
 approved of God by mu-acles and wonders and signs, which God 
 did by him." He may make use of natural agents, acting by 
 their own laws, or he may not : on this question various con- 
 jectures may be hazarded, more or less plausible. The miracle 
 consists in his making use of them, so far^as he does so, under 
 circumstances which no human skill could bring about. When a 
 sick man is healed, or a tempest stilled, by a Avord, the mere 
 action of matter uj)on matter may possibly be similar to that 
 which takes place when the same effects occur in a natural 
 way : the miracle consists in the means by Avhich that action is 
 brought about. And those means, we are assured by the word 
 of the Teacher himself, are nothing less than the power of 
 God, vouchsafed for the express purpose of bearing witness 
 that God has sent him. Is it more reasonable, taking the 
 whole evidence into account, to believe his word ; or to sup- 
 pose, either that the works were not done at all, or that they 
 were done by a scientific deception ? This is the real question 
 to be decided. 
 
 If, indeed, we include, under the term nature, all that is po- 
 tential, as well as all that is actual, in the constitution of the 
 world — all that can be brought about in it by divine power, as 
 well as all that is brought about in it by physical causes, — in 
 such an extended sense of the term, a miracle, like any other 
 occurrence, may be included within the province of nature. We 
 may, doubtless, believe that God, from the beginning, so ordered 
 the constitution of the Avorld as to leave room for the exercise of 
 those miraculous powers which He foresaw would at a certain 
 time be exercised ; just as He has left similar room for the ex- 
 ercise, within narrower limits, of the human Avill. In this sense, 
 some of the scholastic divines maintained, with reason, that a 
 miracle is contraiy to nature only in so far as nature is regarded 
 as an active manifestation, not in so far as it is regarded as a 
 
22 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay I. 
 
 passive recipient of power.* If this distinction is once clearly 
 understood, the question, whether miracles may be represented as 
 the result of laiv, or not, is a mere verbal question, which is only 
 important from its Kability to be mistaken for a real one. 
 Properly speaking, a natm-al effect is not produced by a law, but 
 by an agent acting according to a law. Every natural phe- 
 nomenon has its j)hysical cause in some antecedent natural 
 phenomenon which it regularly follows ; and the laivs of nature 
 are merely classifications of some of these sequences with others 
 of a similar character ;t or, as they have been aptly called, "the 
 imiformities which exist among natural phenomena, when re- 
 duced to then* simplest expression,"! In this sense, miracles 
 cannot be referred to a natural law, kno^^^l or unknown ; for 
 they do not resemble any sequence of one sensible phenomenon 
 from another; nor can any sensible phenomenon or gTOup of 
 phenomena be pointed out, or even supposed to exist, the occur- 
 rence of which would be invariably followed by such results. 
 But if the term law be used in a different sense, to denote a 
 method or plan conceived in the mind of an intelligent Being ; 
 and if, by referring miracles to a law, no more is meant than 
 that they, like other events, formed part of God's purpose from 
 the beginning, and were the result, not of sudden caprice, but of 
 a preordained plan, by which provision Avas made for them, that 
 they should be wrought at their jDroper time and place without 
 disturbing the economy of the universe, — such an expression, 
 allowing for the necessary imperfection of all human tenns 
 when applied to divine things, is perhaps the most true and 
 reverent conception of these events which we are capable of 
 
 * This is clearly expressed in the Ian- ; ' Summa,' p. ii., tract viii., qu. xxxi. ; and 
 gnage of Alexander ab Ales, ' Summa,' : bj' Aquinas, in 1 Sent., dist. xlii., qu. ii., 
 p. ii., qu. xlii., numb, v., art. 5 : — "Est ' art. 2. See also Neandcr,'Churcli His- 
 enim jwtentia activa, et est potentia sus- ; tor)%' vol. viii. p. ICl, Eng. tr., ed. Bohn. 
 ccptiva, ct est potentia aptata et ])Q- \ f "No further insight into why the 
 tentia non aptata. Et est potentia ac- apple falls is acquired by saving it is 
 tiva tarn nature inferioris quam supe- j forced to fall, or it falls by the force 
 rioris; susceptiva autcm natuvic info- i of gravitation : by the latter expression 
 rioris. Et vcrum est quod quicquid i we are enabled to relate it most usefully 
 est Deo possibilc secundum potentiam ' to other phenomena ; but we still know 
 activam, est naturae possibile, non sim- j no more of the particular phenomena 
 plicitcr, sed secundum potentiam sus- ' tlian that under certain circumstances 
 ceptivam ; et hoc est dicta possibilitas ; i the apple does fall." — Grove on the Cor- 
 .scd non secundum activam potentiam, i relation of P/tijsical Forces, p. 18, 3rd 
 nee secundum apkitam." A similar I edition, 
 view is held by Albcrtus Magnus, j % Mill's ' Logic,' vol. i. p. 3S5. 
 
Essay L] ON MIRACLES. 23 
 
 forming duriug this present life ; tliougb, like otlier analogies 
 transferred from the human mind to the Divine, it is the object 
 I'iither of religious belief than of philosophical speculation. 
 
 18. Our argument has hitherto proceeded on the assumption 
 that we are justified in regarding the visible world as under the 
 government of a personal God, and in speaking of His acts and 
 purposes in language which implies an analogy between the 
 Divine mind and the human. It now becomes necessary to make 
 some remarks in vindication of the assumption itself, which has 
 been included by recent criticism in the same condemnation with 
 the consequences v.iiich we have endeavoiu-ed to deduce from it. 
 Of the argument from design, " as popularly pursued," we are 
 told that it " proceeds on the analogy of a personal agent, whose 
 contrivances are limited by the conditions of the case and the 
 nature of his materials, and pursued by steps corresponding to 
 those of human plans and operations : — an arg-ument leading- 
 only to the most unworthy and anthropomorphic conceptions."* 
 We are told, again, that '" to attempt to reason from law to voli- 
 tion, from order to active power, from universal reason to distinct 
 personality, from design to self-existence, from intelligence to 
 infinite perfection, is in reality to adopt grounds of argument 
 and speculation entirely beyond those of strict philosopliical in- 
 ference."t We are told, again, that " the simple argument from 
 the invariable order of nature is wholly incompetent to give us 
 any conception whatever of the Divine Omnipotence, except as 
 maintaining, or acting through, that invariable universal system 
 of physical order and law ;" and that " a theism of Omnipotence in 
 any sense deviating from the order of nature must be entirely de- 
 rived from other teaching."^ In order to test the value of these 
 
 * Powell, ' Order of Nature,' p. 237. ; witli the exercise of intellect, and the 
 
 It is uatm-al to turn to this more elabo- ' volition, or power of moral causation, of 
 
 rate work, published but a short time which we are conscious within our- 
 
 before the ' Essays and Keviews,' as the selves, that we speak of the Supreme 
 
 most probable source from which to iJ/«ic7, and JJoraZ C«!/se of the universe, 
 
 complete or explain anything which j of whose operation, order, arrangement, 
 
 seems defective or obscure in the au- and adaptation are the external maui- 
 
 thor's contribution to the latter volume. ! festatious. Order implies what by ana- 
 
 xVt the same time it is but just to call logy we call intelligence : subserviency 
 
 attention to some indications of a very ' to an observed end implies intelligence 
 
 diiferent and a far truer view, in an ' foreseeing, which, bj- analogy, we call 
 
 earlier work by the same writer ; as in the design:' — On the Spirit of the Inductive 
 
 following passage, which I venture to Philosophy, p. 16G. 
 
 cite, though unable to reconcile it with i t Powell, ' Order of Nature,' p. 244. 
 
 his later language : — " It is by analogy % Ibid., p. 247. 
 
24 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay I. 
 
 and similar arguments, it will be necessary that we should clearly 
 understand what this other teaching is, and what it teaches us ; 
 as well as the relation in which it stands to the generalizations 
 and inductions of physical science. 
 
 In examining this question, we are not du-ectly concerned 
 with the higher inquiry regarding the degree and character of 
 man's knowledge of God, as a whole and from whatever source 
 derived, in its relation to the absolute essence of its Divine 
 Object, and to the necessary limits of man's faculties. The diffi- 
 culties connected with metaphysical theories of the Absolute and 
 Infinite, which have driven so many speculative minds into the 
 extravagances of Pantheism, do not affect our present argument. 
 How any relation between the infinite and the finite can be con- 
 ceived as existing ; — how God can be contemplated as acting in 
 time at all, whether in connection with the phenomena of the 
 material world, or with the thoughts and feehngs of men: — 
 questions of tliis kind are equally applicable to every positive 
 conception of Divine Providence which we are capable of forming, 
 and have no direct bearing on the peculiar claims of one class 
 of such conceptions as compared with another. The general 
 answer to such difficulties is to be found in the confession of our 
 ignorance as regards the mystery from which they spring and on 
 which their solution dej)ends ; but this ignorance, arising as it 
 does from the universal limits of human thought, has no special 
 relation to one age or state of man's knowledge, more than to 
 another, and is not removed by any advance in those dejiart- 
 ments which fall within his legitimate field. Pantheistic 
 speculation has flourished with much the same result, or want of 
 result, in the earliest and in the latest days of philosophy, in 
 ancient India and in modern Germany ; and if any advance is 
 to be expected in relation to the questions with wliich such 
 speculation deals, it is probably to be looked for, not in the fuller 
 solution of the questions themselves, but in the clearer appre- 
 hension of the reasons why they are insoluble. 
 
 The question now before us is of another character. It relates 
 to that knowledge of God which, be it more or less philosophic- 
 ally perfect, is that which practically determines the thoughts 
 and feelings and actions of the majority of mankind ; being 
 connected with facts of their daily experience, and with ideas 
 intimately associated with those facts. And the form in which 
 
Essay I.] ON MIEACLES. 25 
 
 it meets us at present may be expressed as follows: — Is the 
 truest and highest conception of God to which man can practi- 
 cally attain with his present faculties that which is suggested by 
 the observation of Law and Order, as existing in the material 
 world ? or is there a higher conception, derived from a different 
 class of objects, by which the errors of an exclusively physical 
 theology may be discovered and corrected ? 
 
 19. Eeduced to its simplest terms, the question really stands 
 thus : — Is Matter or Mind the truer image of God ? We are 
 told, indeed, " that the study of physical causes is the sole real 
 clue to the conception of a moral cause ; and that physical 
 order, so far from being opposed to the idea of supreme in- 
 telligence, is the very exponent of it."* We are referred to 
 " the grand contemplation of cosmical order and unity " as 
 furnishing "proofs of the ever-present mind and reason in 
 nature;"! but we have yet to learn what is the exact jh-ocoss 
 by which the desired conclusion is elicited from the premises. 
 
 20. In opposition to these statements I do not hesitate to 
 repeat, with a very slight modification, the words of Sir William 
 Hamilton, " that the class of phenomena which requires that kind 
 of cause we denominate a Deity is exclusively given in the phe- 
 nomena of mind ; that the phenomena of matter, taken by them- 
 selves (you will observe the qualification, — taken by themselves), 
 do not warrant any inference to the existence of a God." J The 
 argument which would deduce the conception of God solely 
 from physical causation bears witness, in the very words in 
 which it is announced, to its own imperfection. The very names 
 of law, and order, and cause, had a literal before they had a 
 figm-ative meaning, and are borrowed, in common with the 
 whole phraseology of causation, by the sciences of invariable 
 succession, from those of moral action and obligation. We dis- 
 cern Law as Law, solely by means of the personal consciousness 
 of duty ; we gain the conception, not by the external observa- 
 tion of wliat is, but by the internal apprehension of ivhat ougJit 
 to be. We discern Causation, as Causation, solely in and by 
 the productive energy of the personal will, — the one solitary 
 fact of human experience in which is presented the consciousness 
 of effort, — of power in action, exerting itself to the production 
 
 * Powell, ' Order of Natiue,' p. 235. I % ' Lectures on Metapliysic?,' vol. 
 t Ibid., p. 238. I p. 2G. 
 
26 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay I. 
 
 of tiu effect. We discern Order, as Order, only in so far as we 
 conceive the many as constituting the One, — the varied pheno- 
 mena of sense as combined into a single leJiole; and the ideas 
 of unity and totality are given only in the personal consciousness, 
 — in the immediate perception of the one indivisible Self, and 
 its several modes of conscious existence.* What do we mean 
 when we speak of the Order of Nature as implying a presiding 
 Mind ? The language is unintelligible, save as interpreted by 
 what the personal consciousness tells us of oiu' own mind and 
 its control over the objects that are under its dominion. In the 
 little world of man's thought and its objects, that Order, that 
 System from which the Cosmos derives its name, — that Unity 
 which binds together the diverse elements into a consistent 
 whole, — is the factor contributed by the mind to its objects, — 
 the product of Intelligence, comprehending, arranging, -general- 
 izing, classifying. "Without this action of mind upon its objects, 
 the little world of each man's knowledge would be, not a 
 Cosmos, but a Chaos, — not a system of parts in mutual relation 
 to each other, but an endless succession of isolated phantoms, 
 coming and going one by one. It is from this little world of 
 our ovfo. consciousness, vrith its many objects, marshalled in their 
 array under the rule of the one conscious Mind, that we are led 
 to the thought of the great universe beyond, — that we conceive 
 this also as a world of Order, and as being such by virtue of its 
 relation to an ordering and presiding Mind. Design, Purpose, 
 Eolation, of parts to a whole, of means to an end, — these con- 
 ceptions, borrowed from the Avorld of mind, can alone give 
 order and unity to the world of matter, by representmg it as 
 moulded and governed by a ruling and purposing Mind, the 
 centre and the source of that relation which mind does not take 
 from matter, but confers upon it. Through tliis alone can Chaos 
 be conceived as Cosmos ; through this alone can the Many point 
 to the One. 
 
 21. But this is not all. The very conception of a Design in 
 creation implies the existence of a Free Will in the Designer. 
 
 " Lo moi est la seule unib} qui uous lui, la met bors dc lui par induction, et 
 
 soit donne'e imtacdiatemeut par la na- 
 ture; nous ne la rencontrons dans aucuno 
 dcs choses que nos facultes obsei-vent. 
 Mais Icntendement, qui la trouve en 
 
 d'uu certain nonibro des choses cocx- 
 istantes il cree des unites artiticielles.' 
 — Roijer-CoUard, in Jouffroij's transla- 
 tion of Reiil, vol. iv., p. 350. 
 
Essay I.] ON MIRACLES. 27 
 
 If man were not conscious of a free will in liimself, ho could 
 frame "no designs, — he could conceive no purposes of his own ; 
 and, without the assiunption of an analogous Divine Will, there 
 is no meaning in his language when he speaks of the Design or 
 Piu'pose of God. But in conceiving God as a free agent, we 
 necessarily conceive Him as a Person; and this conception 
 places Him in a totally different light from that of a mere soul 
 of the Avorld, or intelligence manifested in a system of material 
 phenomena. In conceiving God as a Person, we conceive Him 
 as standing in a direct relation to that one object in the world 
 which is most nearly akin to Himself, — the personal soul of 
 man, by whom He is so conceived. The personality, and, as 
 implied in the personality, the moral nature of God, is not, as 
 it has sometimes been represented, an isolated conception, 
 derived from a distinct class of facts, and superadded to another 
 conception of a Deity derived from the order of nature :* it is 
 the primary and fundamental idea of a God in any distinctive 
 sense of the word, — an idea without which no religion and no 
 theology, no feeling of a spiritual relation between God and 
 man, and no conception of a mind superior to natiu'e, can have 
 any existence. To speak, in the language of modern pantheistic 
 philosophy, of a Eeason or Thought in the universe, which first 
 becomes conscious in man, is simply to use terms -without a 
 meaning; for we have no conception of reason or thought at 
 all, except as a consciousness. And to speak, on the side of 
 physical philosophy, of a Supreme Mind, evinced in the laws of 
 matter, is, in like manner, to use terms which have no meaning 
 until we have acquired a conception of what mind is from the 
 consciousness of the mind within ourselves. Our primary 
 religious consciousness is that of man's relation to God as a 
 person to a person ; and, unless we begin with this and retain 
 
 * "At the utmost," sa3's Professor 
 Powell, " a physico-theology can only 
 teach a siipreine mind evinced in the 
 laws of the world of matter, and tlie 
 relations of a Deity to physical things 
 essentially as derived from physical 
 law. A moral or metaphysical theo- 
 logy (so far as it may he substantiated) 
 can only lead us to a Deity related to 
 mind, or to the moral order of the 
 world.' — Order of Nature, p. 2-15. 
 
 I consider this separation between 
 
 two sources of theology as fundamen- 
 tally erroneous. I believe that man's 
 conception of God as mind is primarily 
 derived from the personal consciousness 
 alone ; and that, liowever much it may 
 be enlarged by the contemplation of 
 material objects, it does not originate 
 from them, and can only be legitimately 
 applied to them in and by its jmrnary 
 cliaracteristics of personality and a 
 moral nature. 
 
28 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay I. 
 
 it in our knowledge, the very name of God is iinmeauiug. If 
 tliis be Anthropomorphism, it is, as Jacobi has said, an Anthro- 
 pomorphism identical Avith Theism, and without which there 
 remains nothing but Atheism or Fetichism.* 
 
 22. The following quotation from the same eloquent and jjro- 
 found jjliilosopher is probably already fiimiliar to many readers, 
 but is too excellent in itself and too ajipropriate to the present 
 argument to be omitted. 
 
 "Nature conceals God; for, through her whole domain, 
 Nature reveals only fate, only an indissoluble chain of mere 
 efficient causes,t without beginning and without end, excluding, 
 with equal necessity, both providence and chance. An inde- 
 pendent agency, a free original commencement, within her 
 sphere and proceeding from her powers, is absolutely impossible. 
 Working without will, she takes counsel neither of the good nor 
 of the beautiful ; creating nothing, she casts up from her dark 
 abyss only eternal transformations of herself, unconsciously and 
 without an end ; furthering, with the same ceaseless industry, 
 decline and increase, death and life, — never producing what 
 alone is of God and what supposes liberty, — the virtuous, the 
 immortal. 
 
 " 3Ian reveals God ; for Man, by his intelligence, rises above 
 Nature, and, in virtue of this intelligence, is conscious of himself 
 as a power not only independent of, but opposed to, Nature, and 
 capable of resisting, conquering, and controlling her. As man 
 has a living faith in this powder, superior to nature, which dwells 
 in him, so has he a belief in God, a feeling, an experience of 
 His existence. As he does not believe in this power, so does he 
 not believe in God ; he sees, he experiences nought in existence 
 but nature, — necessity, — fate."| 
 
 23. From tlie above principles it follows (to use the words of 
 
 * " Wir bekcnncn ims dcranach zu 
 einem von der Ueb.iZ(ii,t;ini,ij:, dass der 
 Menscli GottesEbenliild in sich trage — 
 unzeitrcimliehenAiilhici].iiin(Jiiihismus, 
 und bchuiipteu, aiis^ir (Ikstia Anthro- 
 iwiaorjihisiuus, der von Jclnr Thtisruus 
 gonauut wurde, ist nur (Jotti'sliiugnung 
 oder — Fetirhismus." — Vuii den Gotl- 
 lichen Dingen, Wurke, iii., p. 422. 
 
 t Tlie j)lirase efficient causes (wir- 
 kendo Ursachon), here and in a subse- 
 quent quotation from the translator. 
 
 must be understood in a diflorcnt sense 
 from that in wliieh it is used by some 
 modern writers, to denote metaplti/s/'cal 
 as distinguished from physiral eau.ses — 
 a sense adopted above, p. 19. Fur the 
 two senses of the plirase, see especially 
 a note in Stewart's ' Philosophy of the 
 Active and Moral Powers,' book iii., 
 ch. ii., Collected Works, vii., p. 27. 
 
 X Werke, iii., p. 425. Translated by 
 Sir W. Hamilton, ' Lectures on Meta- 
 physics,' vol. i., p. 40. 
 
Essay I.] ON MIRACLES. 29 
 
 Sir W. Hamilton) " that the universe is governed not only by- 
 physical but by moral laws ;" and " that intelligence stands first 
 in the absolute order of existence — in other words, that final 
 preceded efficient causes."* But this involves, as a consequence, 
 that the question concerning the possibility or probability of a 
 miracle is to be judged, not merely from physical, but also, and 
 principally, from moral grounds ; not merely from the evidence 
 furnished by the phenomena of the material Avorld, but also 
 from that furnished by the religious nature of man, and by his 
 relation to a God to whom that nature bears mtness. It is 
 altogether an erroneous view to represent the question between 
 general law and special interposition as if it rested on me- 
 chanical considerations only, — as if it could be judged by the 
 difference between constructing a machine which, when once 
 made, can go on continuously by its own power, and one which, 
 at successive periods, requires new adjustments.! The mii-acle 
 is not wrought for the sake of the physical universe, but for the 
 sake of the moral beings within it ; and the question to be 
 considered is not whether a divine interposition is needed to 
 regulate the machinery of nature, but whether it is needed or 
 adapted to promote the religious welfare of men. If the 
 spiritual restoration of mankind has in any degree been 
 promoted by means of a religion professing to have been 
 introduced by the aid of miracles, and whose whole truth is 
 involved in the truth of that profession, we have a sufficient 
 reason for the miraculous interposition, superior to any that can 
 be urged for or against it from considerations derived from the 
 material world. The very conception of a revealed as dis- 
 tinguished from a natural religion implies a manifestation of 
 God different in kind from that which is exhibited by the 
 ordinary course of nature ; and the question of the probability 
 of a mu-aculous interposition is simply that of the probability of 
 a revelation being given at all. In the words of Bishop Butler, 
 " Eevelation itself is miraculous, and miracles are the proof of 
 it."t 
 
 24. As regards the general question oi the possibility/ of miracles 
 
 * ' Lectures on Metaphysics,' vol. i., j sophique,' v. 'Miracles,' and is answered 
 
 p. 28. by Bishop Van Mildert, 'Boyle Leo- 
 
 t This objection against miracles is i tures,' Sermon xxi. 
 
 urged by Voltaire, ' Dictionnaire Philo- | J ' Analogy,' part ii., ch. ii. 
 
30 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay I. 
 
 (that of their reaUtij must of coui-sc be determined by its own 
 special evidence), Paley's criticism is, after all, the true one : — 
 " Once believe that there is a God, and miracles are not 
 incredible." For an impersonal God is no God at all ; and the 
 conception of a personal God in relation to man necessarily 
 involves that of a divine pm-pose, and of the manifestation of 
 that pui-pose in time. Grant this, and there is no a jyriori 
 reason why such a manifestation may not take place at one 
 time as well as at another ; why the beginning of a spiritual 
 system at one period may not be as credible as the beginning of 
 a material system at another period. It would indeed be a 
 precarious argument to attempt to reason positively from an 
 a priori notion of the divine attributes to the necessity of creation 
 or of revelation ; but the very conditions which render such an 
 argument doubtful only increase the force of the negative 
 caution, w4iich, refusing to dogmatize on either side concerning 
 what must he or must not he, is content to seek for such evidence 
 as is within its reach concerning tvhat is. 
 
 25. With the question of the possihility of miracles is inti- 
 mately connected that of their value as evidences. Both questions, 
 indeed, must ultimately be decided on the same principle ; and 
 the influence of that principle is probably at work, though 
 unconsciously, in the minds of some who endeavour to regard 
 the two inquiries as wholly distinct. Sometimes, indeed, we 
 find both united, and apparently treated as parts of the same 
 argument on the side of denial ; though it is obvious that, if the 
 impossibility of miracles can once be shewn, there is no need of 
 any inquiry into their comparative value. Nevertheless, as if 
 the conclusiveness of the former argument were, after aU, 
 somewhat doubtful in the eyes of its advocates, we find it 
 coupled with an attempt to disparage the value of the miracles 
 as evidences, even suj^posing their reality. It is intimated that 
 they are not so much evidences as ohjects of faith, invested with 
 sanctity and exempted from criticism by virtue of the religious 
 mysteries with which they are connected :* and approved 
 divines are referred to as practically making the doctrine the 
 real test of the admissibility of the miracles, and as acknow- 
 ledging the right of an appeal, superior to that of all miracles, 
 
 See 'Essays andEcvicws,' p. 143. 
 
Essay I.] ON MIRACLES. ' 31 
 
 to our own moral tribunal.* The feeling wliicli dictates this 
 judgment is intelligible at least, if not excusable, as the result 
 of a reaction against the opposite error of a former generation ; 
 but, when the judgment is advanced, as it often is, not merely 
 as an expression of the personal feelings of an individual, but as 
 a general statement of the right grounds of belief, it is at best 
 nothing more than an attempt to cure one evil by another, 
 introducing a remedy, on the whole, worse than the disease. 
 
 Some of the questions introduced in this connection pro- 
 perly belong to an earlier stage of our argument ; for though 
 they have been treated by some writers as bearing on the evi- 
 dential value of miracles, supposing their reality to be admitted, 
 they more strictly relate to the previous inquiry concerning the 
 grounds on which we believe miracles to have been wrought 
 at all. Thus the assertion that the Gospel miracles are objects 
 of faith is undoubtedly true ; but it is true in a sense which is 
 by no means incompatible with their being also evidences.'\ To 
 us, in these latter days, as regards the grounds on which we 
 believe the miracles to have taken place at all, they are " objects 
 of faith " in that proper sense of the term faith in which it 
 is opposed, not to reason, but to sight.X We were not eye- 
 witnesses of the mhacles : we know all that we know about 
 them from the testimony of others ; and testimony of all kinds 
 is an appeal to faith, as distinguished fi-om sight, — prcesentia i 
 videntur, creduntur absentia.^ But to say that miracles are in li 
 tliis sense objects of faith, is a very different thing from 
 making them exempt from criticism by virtue of the religious 
 mysteries with which they are connected. The faith which 
 is called into exercise is only that which is required in all 
 admission of testimony, whether connected mth religious 
 mysteries or not ; which exists in all cases in which we accept, 
 on the authority of others, statements which we are unable to 
 verify by our own experience. 
 
 26. The often-disputed question, whether the miracles prove the 
 doctrine, or the doctrine the mhacles, is also one which properly 
 
 * 'Essays and Keviews,' pp. ]21, ■ objects, it means an act of belief; in 
 
 122. relation to evidences, it means a doctrine 
 
 t "When it is asserted that the mira- to be believed, 
 
 cles are objects, not evidences, of faith, % 2 Cor. v. 7, " We walk by faith, 
 
 it is obvious that the word/aj7/i is used I not by sight." 
 
 in two different senses. In relation to § St. Augustine, Epist. cxlvii., c. 2. 
 
32 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay I. 
 
 belongs to the earlier inquiry concerning the credibility of the 
 miracles as facts, and \Yhich, like that of objects and evidences, 
 derives a seeming plausibility from an epigi'ammatic antithesis 
 of language covering a confusion of thought. There are cer- 
 tain doctrines which must be taken into account in determining 
 the question whether a true miracle — i.e. an interposition of 
 Divine fower — has taken place at cdl. If a teacher claiming to 
 work miracles proclaims doctrines contradictory to previously 
 established truths, whether to the conclusions of natural religion 
 or to the teaching of a former revelation, such a contradiction is 
 allowed, even by the most zealous defenders of the evidential 
 value of miracles, to invalidate the authority of the teacher.* But 
 the right conclusion from this admission is not that true miracles 
 are invalid as evidences, but that the supposed miracles in this case 
 are not true miracles at all ; i.e. are not the effects of Divine 
 power, but of human deception or of some other agency. And 
 the criterion, as has been often observed, is only of a negative 
 character ; contradiction to known truth is sufficient to disprove 
 a Divine mission ; but conformity to known truth is not sufficient 
 to establish one.f And even the negative criterion, however 
 valid as a general rule, is liable to error in its special applications. 
 The certainty of the truths of natural religion does not guarantee 
 the certainty of all the conclusions Avhich this or that man 
 believes to be truths of natural religion, any more than the 
 infallibihty of Scripture guarantees the infallibility of every man's 
 interpretation of Scriptm^e. God camiot contradict Himself, 
 
 * Thus Clarke (' Evidence of Natural 
 and Revealed Religion,' Prop.xiv.) saj-s, 
 "K the doctrine attested by miracles 
 be in itself impious, or manifestly tend- 
 ing to promote vice, then without all 
 question the miracles, how great soever 
 they may appear to us, are neither 
 worked by God Himself nor by His 
 commission, because our natural know- 
 ledge of the attributes of God, and of 
 the necessary difference between good 
 and evil, is greatly of more force to 
 prove any such doctrine to be false 
 than any miracles in the world can be 
 to prove it true." But Clarke also 
 shews that this admission is a very 
 different thing from making the doc- 
 trine the proof of the miracles ; that, on 
 the contrary, the miracles arc the proof 
 of the doctrine, jjrovided ihat the doc- 
 
 trine he such as is capahle of being 
 proved hy miracles. See also, on the 
 same question. Bishop Sherlock, Dis- 
 course X. ; Penrose, ' On the Evidence 
 of the Scripture Miracles,' p. 212. 
 
 t Tlius Bishop Atterbury, in his Ser- 
 mon on ' Miracles the most proper way 
 of proving the Divine Authority of any 
 Religion,' says, " Tiiough the badness 
 of any doctrine, and its disagreeable- 
 ncss to the eternal rules of right reason, 
 be a certain sign that it did not come 
 from- God, yet the goodness of it can 
 be no infallible proof that it did." The 
 same argimient is handled in Rogers's 
 ' Sermons on the Necessity of Divine 
 Revelation,' pp. GO, 109, ed. 1757. See 
 also Warburton, ' Divine Legation,' b. 
 ix., c. 5 ; Clarke, ' Evidence,' rroj). ix. 
 
Essay I.] OX MIRACLES. 33 
 
 whether He teaches through nature or through revelation ; but 
 man may misintei-pret God's teachmg through the one as well as 
 through the other. 
 
 27. In regardmg the doctrinal criterion as properly relating 
 to the question whether a true miracle has been wrought at all, 
 we set aside, as unworthy of serious consideration, the supposition 
 which has sometimes been advanced in favour of an opposite 
 view ; namely, that real miracles may possibly be performed by 
 evil spu-its in behalf of a false doctrine. This supposition, whatever 
 may be its value as a theme for argumentative ingenuity, is not 
 one wliich we are practically called upon to consider by any of 
 the actual circumstances with which we are concerned. The 
 objections which may justly be urged against Farmer's argu- 
 ment, when carried to the extent of denying the credibility of 
 demoniacal miracles of any kind, do not apply to it when limited 
 to such miracles as are Avrought in evidence of a religion, and to 
 the question, not of their theoretical possibility, but of their 
 actual occurrence. It may be unsafe to reason a pj^iori, from 
 our concej)tion of the Divine attributes, that the permission of 
 such agency is inconceivable ; but we may fairly refuse to attach 
 any practical importance to the supposition, until some e\'idence 
 is brought forward to shew that it has actually been realized. 
 It remains yet to be shewn that in all human experience any 
 instance can be produced of a real miracle wTought by evil 
 spirits for purposes of deception ; * and until some probable 
 grounds can be alleged in behalf of the fact, we have not sufiS- 
 cient means of judging concerning the theory. Doubtless, if it 
 is consistent with God's Pro"\adence to permit such a temptation. 
 He will also, with the temptation, make a way for us to escape ; 
 but what that way wdll be, or how far the temptation is con- 
 sistent with God's Providence, we cannot decide beforehand : we 
 must wait till some actual occurrence, with all its accompanying 
 circumstances, comes before us. The only real question at issue 
 is not whether Christianity is a revelation from God or a delusion 
 of Satan ; — a question which no sane man at the present time 
 would think worthy of a serious discussion ; but whether it is of 
 God or of man ; and, consequently, on what grounds and to 
 what extent it is entitled to the acceptance of mankind. "What 
 
 See Penrose, ' Oii the Evidence of the Scripture Miracles,' p. 23. 
 
 D 
 
PA AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay I. 
 
 man lias taiiglit, man may revise and improve. If the doctriues 
 of Christianity are no otherwise of di\-ine origin than as all 
 human wisdom is the gift of God, they liavc, like other products 
 of human wisdom, no further claim to be accepted than as they 
 may be verified by the wisdom of later generations. In that 
 case, w^e may listen to the teaching of Clnist and His apostles, as 
 we listen to the teaching of human philosophers, with respect 
 <and gratitude, but not necessarily with submission : we claim a 
 right to judge and sift, and it may be to reject, as our own 
 reason shall determine us, acknowledging no other authority 
 than that which is due to the wise and good of every generation 
 of mankind. But if, on the other hand, the doctrines are given 
 to us by Divine revelation such as no human wisdom can claim, 
 they have a right to be received by virtue of the authority on 
 which they rest, distinct from any which they may possess 
 through their own intrinsic reasonableness or capability of veri- 
 fication. Of such a Divine authority miracles are the natural 
 and proper proof; — a proof which all men are disposed naturally 
 and instinctively to admit in practice, Avhatever cavils may be 
 raised against it on the ground of imaginary difficulties in 
 theory. In the words of one of the ablest of the writers who 
 have discussed this point, "All natural scepticism on the subject 
 of miracles attaches to the question whether they were really 
 performed, not, if performed, to the authority which they pos- 
 sess." * For all real purposes of controversy, the question may 
 be stated now, as it was stated by Gamaliel of old, whether the 
 counsel and the work be of men or of God ; and the only serious 
 inquiry that can be raised concerning the miracles of Scripture 
 is whether they were wrought by the direct interposition of God, 
 or were the result of human skill or other natural causes, — in 
 other words, whether they were or were not really miracles at 
 all. 
 
 28. The question, then, only requires to be disentangled of 
 its confusion, to be veiy Ijriefly answered. If it is considered 
 theoretically and in the abstract, with reference merely to 
 the logical character of certain doctrines in themselves, and not 
 to the circumstances and needs of men, we may divide, as is 
 usually done, the doctrines of religion into those which arc and 
 
 * Penrose, p, 24. 
 
Essay I.] ON MIEACLES. " 35 
 
 those which are not discoverable by human reason ; regarding 
 the former as prior to revelation, and furnishing a negative 
 criterion which no true revelation can contradict; while the 
 latter are posterior to revelation, and rest immediately on the 
 authority of a divinely commissioned Teacher, and mediately on 
 the proofs of his divine mission, whatever these may be.* And 
 it is at this stage of the inquuy that the question concerning the 
 evidential value of miracles properly comes in. A teacher who 
 proclaims himself to be specially sent by God, and whose 
 teaching is to be received on the authority of that mission, 
 must, from the nature of the case, establish his claim by proofs 
 of another kind than those which merely evince his human 
 Avisdom or goodness. A superhuman authority needs to be 
 substantiated by superhuman evidence ; and what is superhuman 
 is miracidous. It is not the truth of the doctrines, but the 
 authority of the teacher, that miracles are employed to prove ; 
 and the authority being established, the truth of the doctrine 
 follows from it. In this manner our Lord appeals to His 
 miracles as evidences of His mission : " The works which the 
 Father hath given me to finish, the same works that I do, bear 
 witness of me that the Father hath sent me."t It is easy to 
 say that we might have known Jesus Christ to be the Son of 
 God, had He manifested Himself merely as a moral teacher, 
 without the witness of miracles. It is easy to say this, because 
 it is impossible to ijrove it. We cannot reverse the facts of history : 
 we cannot make the eartlily life of Christ other than it was. 
 As a matter of fact. He did unite miraculous powers with pure 
 and holy doctrine ; and, as a matter of fact. He did appeal to 
 His miracles in proof of His divine authority. The miracles are 
 a ]3art of the portrait of Christ : they are a part of that influence 
 which has made the history of the Christian Church what it is.. 
 It is idle to speculate on what that history might have been, had 
 that influence been different. We have to do with revelation 
 as we have to do with nature, — as God has been pleased to 
 make it, not as He might have made it, had His wisdom been 
 as om-s. 
 
 Such, even at its very lowest estimate, is the evidential 
 character of miracles from the abstract and theoretical point of 
 
 Compare Warburton, ' Divine Legation,' b. ix., c. 5. f St. Jolm v. 36. 
 
 D 2 
 
36 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay I. 
 
 view. " The truths," says Bishop Atterbury, " Avhich are neces- 
 sary in this manner to be attested are' those which are of 
 positive institution ; those which, if God had not pleased to 
 reveal them, human reason could not have discovered ; and 
 those which, even now they are revealed, human reason cannot 
 fully account for and perfectly comprehend. Such, for example, 
 are the doctrines of Baptism and the Supper of the Lord, of the 
 Kesm-rection of the same Body, of the Distinction of Persons in 
 the Unity of the Divine Essence, and of the Salvation of 
 Mankind by the Blood and Intercession of Jesus. It is this 
 kind of truths that God is proj^erly said to reveal ; truths of 
 which, unless revealed, we should have always continued 
 ignorant ; and 'tis in order only to prove those truths to have 
 been really revealed, that we affirm miracles to be necessary." * 
 29. But practically, in reference to the actual condition and 
 needs of men, the evidence of miracles has a far wider range, and 
 includes all those doctrines, whether natural or revealed, Avhich 
 have at any time been taught or revived among men by the 
 preaching of the Christian Faith. This has been pointed out, 
 with his usual practical wisdom, by Bishop Butler. "It -is 
 imj^ossible," he says, " to say who would have been able to have 
 reasoned out that whole system which we call natm-al religion, 
 in its genuine simplicity, clear of superstition ; but there is 
 certainly no ground to affirm that the generality could. If they 
 could, there is no sort of probability that they would. Admitting 
 there were, they would highly want a standing admonition to 
 remind them of it, and inculcate it upon them." To the same 
 effect he continues : " It may possibly be disputed Iioav far 
 miracles can prove natural religion ; and notable objections 
 may be urged against this proof of it, considered as a matter of 
 speculation ; but, considered as a practical thing, there can be 
 none. For suppose a person to teach natural religion to a 
 nation who had lived in total ignorance or forgetfuluess of it ; 
 and to declare he was commissioned by God to do so ; sujjpose 
 him, in proof of his commission, to foretell things future, which 
 no human foresight could have guessed at; to divide the sea 
 with a word ; feed great multitudes with bread from heaven ; 
 
 * 'Miracles the proper way of proving I Sermons (1734), vol. i. p. 215. See 
 the Divine Authority of any Keligion,' | also Bishop Sherlock, Discourse x. 
 
Essay I.] ON MIRACLES. 37 
 
 cure all manner of diseases ; and raise the dead, even himself, 
 to Kfe : would not this give additional credibility to his teaching 
 — a credibility beyond what that of a common man would have ; 
 and be an authoritative publication of the law of nature, i.e. a 
 new proof of it ? It would be a practical one, of the strongest 
 kind, j)erhaps, which human creatures are capable of having 
 given them." * 
 
 In this passage, the good sense of Butler has solved the 
 question in its practical aspect, leaving the theoretical difiSculty 
 in its proper insignificance. No doubt, if we are at liberty to 
 suppose a totally different state of things from the actual one, 
 we may deduce a gi-eat number of hypothetical consequences 
 concerning what might have been the case, but is not. If all 
 men possessed a perfect system of natural religion, no authori- 
 tative publication of natural truths would be needed ; and no 
 teaching which contradicted men's natural belief would have 
 any claim to be received. And so, if all men were possessed of 
 perfect bodily health, no medicine would be needed to give it 
 them ; and any medicine which tended to alter their state of 
 health would be injurious. Unhappily, both suppositions are 
 untrue ; and the conclusions practically fall to the ground with 
 them. It may be granted that the authority of which miracles 
 are a proof is but an accidental and relative evidence of truths 
 of this character. Still, the accident is one which has extended 
 over the greater part of mankind ; and the relation is coexten- 
 sive with it. And this consideration must serve to modify in 
 practice the negative criterion which is allowed to be valid in 
 theory. In whatever degree any man does not possess a perfect 
 natural religion, in the same degree he is liable to error in 
 judging of the truth of a revelation solely from internal 
 evidence. And even the man who, in the present day, claims 
 the right to exercise such a judgment, may be reminded that 
 the knowledge on which his claim is based is in no small degree 
 owing to that very authoritative teaching on which his judgment 
 is to be passed : — airekaKTicre KaOairepel to, irajXapia jevvrjdevra 
 rrjv fMTjTepa. " The fact," says Mr. Davison, " is not to be 
 denied; the religion of Nature has had the opportunity of 
 rekindling her faded taper by the Gospel light, whether 
 
 Analogy,' part ii., cli. i. 
 
38 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay I. 
 
 fm-tively or unconsciously taken. Let lier not dissemble the 
 obligation and the conveyance, and make a boast of the- 
 splendour, as though it were originally her own, or had always 
 in her hands been sufficient for the illumination of the world." * 
 
 30. The whole question of the value of miracles as evidences 
 of Christianity must, in fact, be answered by means of the same 
 distinction on which depends the question of their credibility ; — 
 the distinction, namely, between God's general manifestation 
 of Himself in the ordinary course of nature, and His special 
 manifestation of Himself by supernatural signs. Those who 
 deny the existence of any special revelation of religious truths, 
 distinct from that general sense in which man's reason itself and 
 all that it can discover are the gifts of Him from whom every 
 good tiling comes ; — those who deny that any teaching has been 
 made to man by special inspiration of particular teachers, in a 
 sense different from that in which all holy desires, all good 
 counsels, and all just works proceed from the inspiration of the 
 Holy Spirit ; — such persons are only consistent when they deny 
 that miracles have any value as evidences of religious truth, and 
 are still more consistent if they deny that such works have ever 
 been wrought. If religion teaches nothing but what every man, 
 by God's grace, may discover, or at least verify, for himself, the 
 distinction between natural and revealed religion ceases to exists 
 and with it the distinction between natural and supernatural 
 evidences of the truth. If the ordinary witness of man's reason 
 or conscience is sufficient for all purposes of religion, the 
 extraordinary witness becomes superfluous if it agrees with tliis, 
 and pernicious if it differs from it. But this absolute sufficiency 
 of the natural reason is the very point which history and 
 philosophy concur to call in question. 
 
 31. The following words of a learned and thoughtful prelate 
 of the English Cliurch may be cited and ado2)ted as ex- 
 pressing the conclusions which I have endeavoured, however 
 imperfectly, to establish in common with him : " It appears, then, 
 on a revieAV of the preceding arguments, that the Scrij^ture 
 miracles stand on a solid basis, which no reasoning can over- 
 throw. Their possibility cannot be denied without denying the 
 very nature of God as an all-powerful Being : their prohaUlitif 
 
 Discourses on Prophecy," p. G (4tli edition). 
 
Essay I.] ON MIRACLES. 89 
 
 cannot bo questioned without questioning His moral perfections : 
 and their certainty, as matters of fact, can only be invalidated 
 by destroying the very foundations of all human testimony. 
 
 "Upon these grounds we may safely leave the subject in the 
 hands of any wise and considerate man : and we may venture 
 to affirm that no person of such a character will, after an 
 attentive examination of tliese points, ever suffer his ftiith in 
 the miracles, by which the Divine authority of the Christian 
 revelation is supported, to be shaken. Convinced that, by a 
 fair chain of reasoning, every one who denies them must be 
 driven to the necessity of maintaining atheistical principles, by 
 questioning either the power, or wisdom, or goodness of the 
 Creator, the true philosopher will yield to the force of this 
 consideration, as well as to the overpowering evidences of the 
 facts themselves ; and will thankfully accept the dispensation 
 which God hath thus gi-aciously vouchsafed to reveal. He will 
 suffer neither wit, nor ridicule, nor sophistry, to rob him of this 
 anchor of his faith; but will turn to his Saviour with the 
 confidence so emphatically expressed by Nicodemus : ' Eabbi, 
 we KNOW that thou art a Teacher come from God ; fok no man 
 can do these miracles that Thou doest, except God be with 
 him.' " * 
 
 To these remarks, which are applicable to every age and race 
 of men to whom the Christian evidences may come, it may per- 
 haps not be inappropriate to add a further observation having a 
 more especial reference to ourselves. The very attacks which 
 have been made, in the supposed interests of science, upon the 
 mu-aculous element of the Gospel narrative, may themselves 
 serve, if rightly considered, to give to that very element a new 
 significance, and to point to a moral purpose more discernible 
 now than of old. An age of advanced physical knowledge has 
 its especial temptations, no less than its especial privileges. Few 
 indeed, it is trusted, will be found to repeat what one great sci- 
 entific teacher of the present century has been found to assert, 
 that the heavens declare, not the glory of God, but only the 
 glory of the astronomer. Yet this bold and profane langTiage is 
 only the extreme expression of a tendency against which an age 
 like the present has especial need to watch and pray. Against 
 
 Van Mildert, ' Boyle Lectflres,' Sermon xxi. 
 
40 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay I. 
 
 such a tendency it is no small safeguard that men of science 
 should be trained from their earliest childhood in records wliicli 
 at every page tell of the personal presence of Him Ijy whom all 
 things were made, manifested in dhect control over the delegated 
 workings of His Adsible creation. It is hut one fonn of His per- 
 petual presence with His Church, that in founding a Faith destined 
 to ally itself with the intellectual cultivation of all succeeding 
 generations, He should have founded it in such a manner as to 
 furnish, in the record of its origin, a lesson of the spirit in which 
 that cultivation should be pm'sued, and a safeguard against the 
 perils to which it is especially exposed. If there are times when 
 the very vastness of the material system which science discloses 
 seems to thrust the Author of all to an almost infinite distance 
 from us ; — if there are times when we feel almost tempted to 
 echo the wish of the poet, to be " a Pagan suckled in a creedV 
 outworn," so that we might but have a clearer sight of the pre- 
 sence of Deity among the phenomena of nature ; — if there are 
 times wdien the heaven that is over our heads seems to be brass, 
 and the earth that is under us to be iron, and we feel our hearts 
 sink within us under the calm pressure of unyielding and un- 
 s}Tnpathizing Law, as those of the disciples of old sank witliin 
 them under the stormy violence of wind and wave ; — at such 
 times we may learn our lesson and feel our consolation, as we 
 turn to those vivid pictures which our Sacred Story portrays of 
 the personal power of the Incarnate God visibly ruling His 
 creation ; and may hear through them the present voice of Him 
 Avho spake on the Maters, " Be of good cheer ; it is I ; be not 
 afraid." 
 
ESSAY 11. 
 
 ON THE STUDY OF THE EVIDENCES OF 
 CHRISTIANITY. 
 
CONTENTS OF ESSAY II. 
 
 1. IXTRODUCTION. 
 
 2. Eeaction against the study of Evi- 
 
 dences. 
 
 3. Cii-cumstances of the Infidel cou- 
 
 troversy in the 17th and 18th cen- 
 turies. 
 
 4. Change of j^osition of Christian 
 
 apologists occasioned by change 
 of tactics of Infidels, 
 
 5. Internal condition of the Church. 
 
 6. Eise of the Methodist and Evan- 
 
 geHcal movement— its excesses. 
 
 7. Want of Church activity. 
 
 8. The " New Birth " preached by 
 
 Whitefield and the Wesleys. 
 Decay of theological learning 
 among the Evangelical leaders. 
 
 Ultimate development of false prin- 
 ciples when left unchecked. 
 
 Influences loosing men's hold upon 
 the Historical element iu Cliris- 
 tianitj- — German Neologj'. 
 
 Charms of the foreign literature — 
 Influence of the new opinions 
 on the current literature of the 
 country — Religion regarded as an 
 afi'au- of sentiment. 
 
 Inadequacy of the system to meet 
 the mere moral wants of man- 
 protest against the foundation of 
 the whole theory. 
 
 14. A religion disentangled from all 
 
 liistorical inquiries, and commend- 
 ing itself to the mind by its in- 
 trinsic beauty and suitability to 
 man's wants and wislies, is' not 
 Christiauit}-. 
 
 15. The essential connexion of Chris- 
 
 tianity ^-ith the history of past 
 ages advances civilization wher- 
 ever Christianity- prevails. 
 
 16. Disadvantages of the mean and il- 
 
 literate in judging of the historical 
 evidences of Christianity. 
 
 17. Direct evidence within the reach of 
 
 the humbler classes. 
 IS. Development of critical inquiiy 
 abroad has duninishcd the difli- 
 cidties of comparatively unleained 
 readers. 
 
 19. Origin of the Christian religion not 
 
 a very remote event — Absurdity of 
 the mythical theory as applied to it. 
 
 20. Strauss's ' Life of Jesus ' merely the 
 
 working out of a foregone conclu- 
 sion — Insufficiency of the theories 
 of Strauss's successors — Causes 
 and remedies of the present panic 
 — Danger of concentrating a 
 whole system of belief upon a 
 single point — Romanist creed. 
 
 21. Order in wliich sceptical objections 
 
 are to be dealt with. 
 
 22. Very little new matter to be pro- 
 
 duced by Infidelity — Conclusion. 
 
ON THE STUDY OF THE EVIDENCES OF 
 CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 1. "Evidences of Christianity!" exclaims the late Mr. Cole- 
 ridge in one of the most popular of his prose- works ; " I am 
 
 weary of the word. Make a man feel the want of it and 
 
 you may safely trust it to its o\iTL evidence." 
 
 There can be little doubt, I think, that these words express 
 the prevailing sentiments of a very considerable number of 
 Christians at the present day ; and it cannot be denied that, for 
 many years back, there has been a general distaste for that 
 apologetic religious literature which was popular in the last 
 century. 
 
 2. This has doubtless been greatly owing to a Reaction from the 
 disproportionate attention paid to such literature by the Divines 
 of a former age, and has taken place in virtue of that general 
 rule which seems to ordain that an over value of any hranch of 
 hiowledge in one generation shall he attended hy an unjust dejjreci- 
 ation of it in the next. The argumentative value of things even 
 so important as the evidences of religion may, unquestionably, 
 engross the j)ublic mind too much ; and he who is continually 
 occupied in contemplating and stating the proofs of its truth will 
 fail of reaching the just standard of a Chi'istian teacher, or a Chi-is- 
 tian man. Such a person will be like a prince who employs all 
 his time, and strength, and resources in raising fortresses about 
 a territory which he does not carefully govern ; or hke a land- 
 lord who Kves but to accumulate muniments of an estate which 
 he neglects to till. But the folly of such conduct would be no 
 excuse for suffering our frontiers to lie open, or our title-deeds 
 to be lost. Yet somethuig very like such advice is sometimes 
 offered to us. Our forefathers, perhaps, were too apt to include 
 all strong energy of emotion and play of fancy in their general 
 and unsparing censures of enthusiasm ; and some of us are dis- 
 posed to redress the balance by appealing exclusively to the 
 imagination and the feelings. We see that it will not do to 
 
44 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay II. 
 
 address the head alone, and therefore we will not address it at 
 all, but speak only to the heart. 
 
 Now it is important to observe that this reaction was so far 
 from springing from any failure of the apologists in their proper 
 work, that it would hardly have been possible if that work had 
 not been thoroughly done. Their proper work was to drive the 
 infidel writers of their own age out of the field ; and never was 
 task more completely accomijlished. No literature, of any 
 recent date, has perished more oomjoletely than the infidel 
 literature of the early and middle parts of the last century. 
 Ipsaj periere ruina;. 
 
 It is only some curious antiquary, loving to parade forgotten 
 lore, who now searches the pages of such writers as Toland 
 or Tindal, and Clmbb, and Morgan, and Coward, and Collins — 
 though some of them were really men of parts, and all con- 
 spicuous in their day. Their very names, indeed, would have 
 passed wholly from remembrance, but that some of them were 
 answered in works which " posterity will not easily let die ;" and 
 almost all are found by the young student of theology enume- 
 rated by Leland in his ' View of the Deistical Writers.' * They 
 survive, Hke the heroes of the 'Newgate Calendar,' in the 
 annals of that public justice which chastised their faults. 
 
 3. The long controversy with the infidels assumed, in the 
 course of it, many forms. But these changes of position, on 
 the part of the defenders of Christianity, were caused by the 
 changing tactics of their assailants, who, when driven from one 
 point of attack, immediately occupied a new one. 
 
 The necessity for an English apologetic f literatiu-e began to 
 
 * " The best book," says Burke, " that 
 ever has been written against these 
 people, is that in which the author has 
 collected in a body the wliole of the 
 infidel code, and lias brought their 
 writings into one body, to cut them all 
 off together." — Speech on Belief of Pro- 
 testant Dissenters, 1773. 
 
 t It has been supposed that our early 
 Reformers, conscious of tlie weakness 
 of external proofs, rested the authority 
 of Scripture wholly upon its self-evi- 
 dencing light. But the doctrine of the 
 self-evidencing light liad quite a dif- 
 ferent origin. The schoolmen had 
 erected theology into a science, pro- 
 
 perly so called, which required prin- 
 ciples as certain as those of natural 
 science. Tliey could not find such a 
 certainty in moral evidence, and there- 
 fore had recom-se to supernatural light. 
 The Reformers partook in their mis- 
 take of requiring an assent out of pro- 
 portion to the evidence ; but substi- 
 tuted tiie infallible Scripture as its 
 object for the infalli])le Church. The 
 true distinction between assent and 
 adhesion was drawn by Hooker in his 
 great sermon on the 'Faith of the 
 Elect,' and, after him, by Jackson, 
 Works, vol. iii., Oxford, IS-11. 
 
Essay IL] 
 
 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 45 
 
 be felt even before the Eestoration, and is attested by such 
 works as Jeremy Taylor's ' Moral Demoustratiou,' and Ham- 
 mond's remarkable little tract on the ' Evidences of Eeligion.' 
 After it, still more. The press, indeed, was not yet free to the 
 infidels (though Hobbes, by masking his attack on all religion 
 and morality under the form of a defence of despotism, con- 
 trived to evade its restrictions) ; but it is plain, from incidental 
 notices, that sceptical objections were largely circulated in MS. 
 and in conversation. Men read, in secret, authors whose names 
 sound strange to this generation — Averroes, Jordanes Brunus, 
 Cardan, Pomponatius, Vanini ; and their doubts, denied a free 
 expression, festered into grotesque and monstrous forms of 
 atheism, of which Smith, and More, and Cudworth occasionally 
 reveal to us portentous specimens. Learning, too, was beginning 
 to suggest literary difficulties, of which we have indications in 
 Isaac Yossius and Sii' John Marsham. 
 
 It was in this state of things that those two great works, Cud- 
 worth's ' Intellectual System,' and Stillingfleet's ' Origines 
 Sacrse,' * were published. They were certainly very far from 
 being popular and easy defences of religion, but they were not 
 intended as replies to popular attacks. They were the weapons 
 in a war of giants. 
 
 " Non jaculo, neque enim jaculo vitam ille dedisset, 
 Sed magnum stridens coutorta Falarica veuit." 
 
 Those who despise them have probably never read, and cer- 
 tainly never understood, them. 
 
 4. The point of attack was now gradually changed. Science 
 was every day bringing fresh aids to religion. Before the 
 arguments of More, and Cudworth, and Green, and Bay, and 
 Boyle, and Clarke, the position of Atheism was generally 
 abandoned as untenable. The divines had proved to their op- 
 ponents that there was such a thing as natural religion ; and 
 those opponents now adopted that system of natural religion, 
 
 * Let any competent person read the 
 chapters on Ancient History in the first 
 book of the ' Origines,' and the account 
 of tlie laws against the Christians in 
 b. ii. c. 9, and he will see that those 
 who sneer at tliat great work are them- 
 selves the proper objects of pity or 
 contempt. Stillingfleet, in his old age, 
 
 and when his temi^er had been spoiled 
 by flattery, and his faculties decayed 
 by years, engaged foolishly in a con- 
 troversy with Locke, in wliich he did 
 not appear to advantage. Yet he singled 
 out most of those points which later 
 metaphysicians have deemed the weak 
 points in Locke's harness. 
 
46 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay II. 
 
 Avliicli had been reasoned out for tliem, as their own ; declared 
 its proofs to have been always so clear and convincing that 
 nothing bnt the artifices of priestcraft could have obscured 
 them ; and contended that revelation should at once be set aside 
 as a superfluous incumbrance of its perfection.* The war-cry 
 now was, " The sufficiency of natural religion !" The points in 
 Christianity now selected for attack were those peculiar to it 
 as distinguished from natural religion. It was contended that 
 miracles were incredible, or utterly insignificant ; that God 
 could not give a particular revelation ; that He could not have 
 selected a chosen people ; that He could not accept a vicarious 
 atonement ; that the Gospel doctrine of eternal rewards and 
 punishments subverted morality by making it mercenary, &c. 
 It was such objections as these that drew forth the masterpieces 
 of Clarke, and Butler,t and Warburton. In their hands the 
 cause of religion Avas safe ; but, in its management by less 
 sagacious writers, one disastrous mistake was committed, the 
 influence of which was long felt to the injury of the Church. 
 
 In the early stage of the controversy it Avas the infidels who 
 maintained (with Hobbes and Spinoza) the selfish system of 
 morals, and the defenders of religion who asserted the nobler 
 doctrine that virtue was an end in itself. So much, indeed, was 
 this the case that hardly anything excited more the general 
 outcry against Locke's ' Essay ' than the supposition that his 
 denial of innate ideas destroyed the proper foundation of ethics. 
 But, in time, Locke was discovered to have been a Christian ; 
 and the Platonic theory of virtue was turned by Shaftesbury 
 (his somewhat ungenerous pupU) into a support of naturalism, 
 and an engine for assailing Christianity. This circumstance 
 
 * See some admirable remarks upon 
 the latest foi-m of the same prejudice 
 in Dr. Salmon's ' Sermons preaciicd in 
 Trinity College, Dublin,' (Macmillan, 
 1861), pp. 160-165. 
 
 t I have seen a curious criticism upon 
 Butler's style, in wliich his disuse of 
 technical terms is accounted for by 
 saying tliat lie was essentially a Stoic, 
 and may be compared with " Epictetus, 
 Antoninus, and Plutarch," wlio moral- 
 ized iu the language of common life. 
 The Stoics, I had always thought, were 
 rather remarkable for tiie use of tecli- 
 nical terms. "Ex omnibus Philoso- 
 
 phis," says Cicero, " Stoici plurima 
 novaverunt. Zeno quoque, eonnn priu- 
 ceps, non tam rcrum inventor fuit qukm 
 novorum verborum." — Dc F/nibu^, lib. 
 iii. c. 2. And most persons who have 
 looked into Antonimis will agree with 
 his editor that, so far from taking liis 
 diction from common life, " utitur voci- 
 bus plane suis, quas raro apud alios 
 autorcs invenias." As for Plutarch, one 
 is surprised to hear tliat he was a Stoic. 
 He is commonly supposed to have writ- 
 ten some rather smart treatises against 
 the Stoics. 
 
Essay II.] 
 
 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 47 
 
 imliappily prejudiced some of tlie leading divines against even 
 what was soundest in Shaftesbury's writings. They saw an acci- 
 dental gain, in proving the necessity of revelation to assure man 
 that the practice of vu'tue was, under all circumstances, his 
 dearest interest, and they caught at it too eagerly. Thus 
 " Hamlet and Laertes changed rapiers," and some of the cham- 
 pions of Truth disgraced themselves by using the poisoned 
 Aveapon which they had wrested from the maintainors of error. 
 
 But, though some oversights were committed in the conduct 
 of the war, the issue of the conflict was not, on the whole, doubt- 
 ful. And now again the position had to be altered to meet 
 a new assault. Lord Bolingbroke gave the signal by complain- 
 ing that " divines had taken much silly pains to estabhsh mys- 
 tery on metaphysics, revelation on philosophy, and matters of 
 fact on abstract reasoning. Religion," he said truly — " such as 
 the Christian, which appeals to facts — must be proved as all 
 other facts that pass for authentic are proved. If they are thus 
 proved, the religion will prevail without the assistance of so much 
 profound reasoning." * 
 
 To the proof of religion, then, as a matter of fact, the Chris- 
 tian divines addressed themselves : and as the points to be con- 
 sidered in this view were the credibility of the prime witnesses 
 to the miraculous facts of Christianity, and the trustworthiness of 
 the tradition by which their testimony has been delivered dovm 
 to us, it was these which were the chief subjects of the apologetic 
 literature which may be said to terminate in the works of 
 Lardner j and Paley. 
 
 But though the defenders of Christianity had been expressly 
 challenged to this field of argument, it was one into which their 
 antagonists showed little serious disposition to follow them. Cer- 
 tainly Lord Bolingbroke's own performances, in his ' Remarks 
 on the Canon of Scripture,' and the historical speculations which 
 are scattered in his ' Fragments,' were not very formidable to 
 the faith. Gradually the attack upon revealed religion fell into 
 
 * See Warbiirton's ' Doctrine of 
 Grace.' 
 
 t " I should be ungrateful," says Mr. 
 Westcott, " not to bear witness to the 
 accuracy and fulness of Lardner's ' Cre- 
 dibility ;' for, however imperfect it may 
 be in the view which it gives of the 
 
 earliest period of Christian literatm-e, 
 it is, unless I am mistaken, more com- 
 plete and trustworthy than any work 
 which has been written since on the 
 same subject." — History of the Canon, 
 p. 9. 
 
48 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay II. 
 
 the hands of persons too ignorant and too manifestly unscru- 
 pulous to produce much effect upon the educated part of the 
 public. Such writers as Burgh and Paine might do mischief 
 among the lower classes ; but they can hardly fill a place in any 
 literary history. 
 
 Two really illustrious names do indeed close the catalogue of 
 the infidels of the last centmy — Hume and Gibbon.* But neither 
 appeared as an open assailant of Christianity, and neither owes 
 his chief fame to those parts of his writings in which Christianity 
 was assailed. After them infidelity in England appeared to 
 have sheathed its sword, furled its banner, and retired fi'om the 
 field. 
 
 5. But what meamvhile was the internal condition of the 
 Church ? It was (to recur to a former comparison) too much 
 like an estate after the decision of a long suit in Chancery 
 to settle a litigated title. The controversy with the infidels had 
 not been the only one of that busy century. It was an age 
 of a thousand controversies. There was the great Nonjuring 
 Controversy, in which pohtical rancour was still more embittered 
 by the gall of the odium tJieologicum. There was the great 
 Bangorian Controversy, growing out of the former, and di-aining 
 into it all the poisonous dregs of its predecessor. There was 
 the gi-eat Convocation Controversy, which changed country 
 parsons into clerical Hampdens, and ranged High Church 
 divines in strange antagonism against the royal supremacy. 
 There was the great Trinitarian Controversy, begun by Clarke 
 and Waterland, and continued by a host of inferior A^Titers, till 
 the public grew weary of the very thought of Patristic litera- 
 ture.f These and countless minor ones distracted the attention 
 of churchmen from observing the spmtual destitution that was 
 spreading widely around them amidst all this polemical activity. 
 
 * In reference to the supposed diffi- 
 culties and discouragements under 
 ■which infidels labour, it is worth ob- 
 serving tliat both Hume and Gibbon 
 held lucrative situations under Govern- 
 ment. At an ejirlier period it was 
 Walpolc's policy to patronize some of 
 the most rabid and indecent assailants 
 of religion ; and, until the infidels had 
 been tlioroughly refuted by the wea- 
 pons both of wit and argument, the 
 most open avowal of their opinions was 
 
 rather a recommendation to what was 
 called " polite society." A strong re- 
 action in the tone of popular literature 
 began with Steele and Addison. 
 
 t Warburton made an efibrt, in the 
 preface to his 'Julian,' to restore the 
 Fathers to some credit, and to put their 
 character in a favourable light : and, 
 in return, he has been charged with 
 "disdain, and ignorance of Catholic 
 theology." 
 
Essay II.] EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 49 
 
 The brilliant services of the tongue and pen in defending 
 Christianity, or orthodoxy, or even faction, eclipsed the less 
 showy, but not less real, and far more generally requisite, 
 usefidness of the pastoral care, in its ordinary forms of teach- 
 ing and admonition. Prelates forsook their dioceses for the 
 nobler work of writing controversy, or asserting the political 
 interests of their order. Discipline became relaxed ; pai'ishes 
 were neglected ; and at the end of the centmy the Church found 
 itself surrounded with a swarming population, and no adequate 
 machinery provided for dealing with this mass of ignorance. 
 
 It is not true, I think, that the bulk of the lower orders had 
 been leavened with infidelity.* Their heathenism was negative, 
 not positive ; they had been suffered to grow up in gross igno- 
 rance of religion : and it was during the prevalence of such evils 
 that the evangelical reaction — commencing with the Methodist 
 movement — began. 
 
 6. But it would be an error, I apprehend, to suppose that it was 
 WMtfield and the Wesleys who originated a Eeformation. Long 
 before them it appears manifest that a healthy reaction had set 
 in. As the old panic dread of fanaticism abated on the one 
 hand, and the necessities of continual controversy became less on 
 the other, preachers insisted more and more on the peculiarities 
 of the Christian faith as the springs and motives of Gospel obe- 
 dience. Energetic efforts were made to build new churches and 
 establish schools throughout the country : and (Avhat is always a 
 hopeful sign) some zeal began to be felt for foreign missions, 
 and some sense of responsibility for the religious state of our 
 colonies. A change for the better was going on. The case of 
 Whitfield and the Wesleys was that of other energetic men 
 whose names figure in history as the originators of mighty 
 changes. They fling themselves into a great movement before 
 it has become conspicuous to the vulgar eye : they put them- 
 selves at its head ; they carry it on to extravagance, and thus 
 accelerate and extend an impulse which they partially misdirect, 
 and may ultimately spoil for ever. 
 
 * Even that of the upper was greatly- 
 overrated : " The truth of the case,"" 
 says Hurd, a cool observer, "is no more 
 than this. A few fashionable men make 
 a noise in the world ; and this clamour 
 l^eing echoed on all sides from the shal- 
 
 low circles of their admirers, misleads 
 the unwary into an opinion that the 
 irreligious spirit is universal and un- 
 controllable." — See the whole passage, 
 ' Sermons on Prophecy,' sermon xii., con- 
 clusion. 
 
 E 
 
50 AIDS TO Fx\TTH. [Essay IT. 
 
 The Methodists, tlien, had not to couyert the English popula- 
 tion to a belief in Christianity ; but they had to awaken a sense of 
 the Christian religion in men who had been so long thinking of 
 it as a thing to be proved that they had forgotten that it was also 
 a thing to be felt and acted on ; and they had to teach even the 
 elements of that religion to vast numbers of an outlying mass 
 beyond the range of ordinary iiistruction. This was the appro- 
 priate work to which the circumstances of the times really called 
 them. But, besides the pressure of these real wants, there were 
 other cravings of the popular mind demanding satisfaction. 
 There was (what is to be found in every generation) the great 
 herd of superficial minds who always require the stimulus of 
 something new ; who throw the blame of their own shallowness 
 upon their teachers, and are always asking for something more 
 "deep and earnest and thoroughgoing," or "more rational and 
 suited to the age," than the current theology, whatever it may 
 be. This is the common sequacious mob of " novarum rerum 
 avidi," who are drawn, like insects, by the loudest noise and 
 the greatest glare. This moveable, and indeed restless multi- 
 tude, swells the decuman wave of every great movement, and 
 retires with its ebb, only to return again on the crest of its suc- 
 cessor. Nor can it be reasonably doubted that many of those 
 amiable but weak persons who have latterly been roving over 
 England in the garb of Passionists and Oratoriaus would have 
 been, in the days of Whitfield's popularity, i3reaching rank Me- 
 thodism on Kennington Common, amidst a shower of mud and 
 turnip-tops. 
 
 There was, then, in the first place, the call for something new. 
 But there was also the call for something fanatical. The 
 terrible experience of the seventeenth century had left a deep 
 impression on the beginning of tlie eighteenth, of dread and 
 bitter scorn of fanaticism. In the wild tumult of the Commou- 
 wealth the nation had been, as it w^re, drunk with religious en- 
 thusiasm ; and, in shame and grief at the remembrance of that 
 horrible debauch and all its crimes, they had hastily vowed a total 
 abstinence from those feelings which Hartley describes under 
 the odd but convenient term Theopathy. But a wild career of 
 another kind of drunkenness had done much to efface that im- 
 pression before the close of that centmy ; and the hypocrisy of 
 the Puritans had been thrown into the shade by the brazea 
 
Essay II.] EVIDENCES OF CHEISTIANITY. 51 
 
 profligacy of the race wlio succeeded tliem. Enthusiasm was 
 again eagerly demanding its turn for gratification. 
 
 7. Furthermore, there was a want that has been less often 
 remarked as one of the causes of Methodism — the want of what 
 may be called a freer Church-activity. The busy, bustling demo- 
 cratic spirit of ultra-Protestantism had made itself so hateful in 
 the previous generation, that, within the Church, laymen shrank 
 from meddling. The synodical assemblies of the clergy had only 
 sjjasmodic fits of action, in which they either tore themselves, or 
 made violent assaults on others. Their time and energies were 
 wasted in disputes between the two Houses, disputes with the 
 Crown, disputes with obnoxious brethren ; — till, at last, their 
 action became so manifestly scandalous that the Minister was 
 able to silence them entirely, to the general satisfaction of a 
 public who had ceased to be entertained by their quarrels.* 
 Thus they no longer broke the dull monotony of quiet which 
 it was the policy of Walpole to maintain ^j>er fas aut nefas. 
 " The Convocation gaped, but could not speak." 
 Outside the Church, dissent had been crushed by the rigorous 
 laws of Charles II., and the general disgust and contempt of the 
 nation, so effectually, that it could not recover when the Tolera- 
 tion came. The Dissenting teachers were generally either hard, 
 dry, and narrow Calvinistical divines ; or men of enlarged and 
 liberal sentiments, disgusted with their o\ni commimion, and no 
 longer retaining the old prejudices against surplices and 
 rochettes, but kept from conformity, partly by hereditary pride, 
 and partly by dislike to the doctrinal fetters of subscription to 
 the Articles and Liturgy.f How far an ultra-liberalism had 
 leavened the Dissenting teachers became manifest when the 
 Arian movement carried, at one sweep, the whole body of the 
 English Presbyterians, and a great part of the Irish, into a 
 heresy most remote from the traditions of their forefathers. 
 
 Thus, within the Church and without, there was a demand 
 beginning to be felt for some free and stirring ecclesiastical 
 
 * Like tlie old comedy — 
 " Tmpiter obticuit, sublato jure nocendi." 
 
 t See the notices of negotiations for 
 a comprehension in Doddridge's Cor- 
 respondence, and compare the language 
 of Harewood : " Our separation is not 
 
 founded in vestments and surplices, in 
 liturgies, crosses, and genuflexions, in 
 godfathers, godmothers, and rotatory 
 motions, — it is Athanasius who di-ives 
 us from your altars." — Five Disserta- 
 tions (1772), p. Go. 
 
 E 2 
 
52 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay II. 
 
 activity ; the thought of which men had ceased to associate with 
 any of the old organisations. 
 
 8. In such a state of predisposition, Whitfield and the 
 Wesleys began their work by preaching the New Birth. The 
 term had doubtless a sound and valuable meaning. But, in that 
 sense it meant, not the production of a new belief, but of a new 
 sense of the reality and importance of momentous truths involved 
 in what had been already assented to. 
 
 These two things are frequently confounded by careless 
 thinkers ; but, in reality, they are quite different : and the dif- 
 ference is observable, not only in religious, but in ethical 
 matters, and in the affairs of common life. In all practical 
 matters, mere belief, or acquiescence, is one thing ; and that 
 belief, c^uickened into a sense of reality, and touching all the 
 springs of action, is another : and, in all practical matters, the 
 most mischievous consequences may result from confounding 
 together such different things. It would be a great mistake to 
 fancy that Faith had been produced as soon as ever the mind 
 had been brought to recognise the connection of a conclusion 
 with unimpeachable premisses : and it would be a great mistake, 
 on the other hand, to suppose that all processes of reasoning 
 might be discarded, and notliing consulted or addi'essed but the 
 fancy and the emotions. " Going over the theory of vii-tue " 
 may indeed, as Butler has pointed out, not only fail to make a 
 man practically moral, but tend to deaden the sense of moral 
 truths, by weakening their practical, as it shows their rational, 
 associations. But we should not, therefore, listen to a hotheaded 
 reformer like Eousseau, who would urge us to cast aside all 
 theory and reasoning in morals, and attend to nothing but the 
 immediate dictates of the heart. 
 
 Into such confusions and mistakes, however, the leaders of the 
 Evangelical movement were rapidly beguiled by their own 
 sudden and widely-spread success. They taught (and taught 
 rightly) that we must not only believe, but feel, before we can 
 act, as Christians. In recalling attention to the truth that the 
 Gospel is a revelation of God's love to sinners, designed to pro- 
 duce corresponding affections in our hearts — that the faith of 
 Christ is a faith that works through love, they did valuable 
 service, which should never be dissembled or forgotten. But 
 unhappily they went on to teach that the belief and the action 
 
Essay II.] EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIAXITY. 53 
 
 were to be grounded upon the feeliiigSj_,_considered as the imme- i/lo 
 diate and sensible operation of the Holy Spirit upon the human 
 mind. 
 
 Now such a preposterous mistake as this could hardly have 
 been possible but for the general acquiescence of the national 
 mind in the truth of the Christian religion. For 1 am per- 
 suaded that none except the very wildest fanatics (and the leaders 
 of whom I speak were certainly not mere wild fanatics) do really 
 thus wholly ground their faith upon an imaginary inspiration. 
 There is, in almost all cases, a secret tacit reference in the 
 bottom of the heart to some fixed external standard by which 
 the extravagances of fancy and feeling are moderated and kept 
 in check. The Methodists could assume the general truth of 
 Christianity as a postulatum. They could assume that there was 
 a Holy Spirit ; they could assume the necessary coincidence of 
 His teaching in the heart with His teaching in the Holy Scrip- 
 tures ; and they could try the former by the latter. In the first 
 fervours of then* preaching they plainly were tempted to appeal 
 to the agitations which it produced in the minds and bodies of 
 their converts as a sort of miraculous attestation of its truth ; 
 but experience soon convinced the shrewder of them that such 
 evidence could not be relied upon, and that the true appeal must 
 be made elsewhere. But the logical vicioiisness of the circle in 
 which the mind moves in such cases can only be hidden from it 
 when the external authority on which it falls back is thought of 
 as something unquestioned and unquestionable. It is only in 
 reference to heretics, who hold in common with himself the 
 inspiration of Scripture, that the Eomanist can be guilty of the 
 absurdity of proving his Church by the Scriptures, and the 
 Scriptures by his Church. When dealing with the infidel^ he 
 must proceed, just as other Christians proceed, by the way of 
 moral evidence; and from the 'Summa contra Gentiles' of 
 Aquinas down to the ' Principia ' of Abbe Hooke, this is the way 
 in Avhich Eoman Catholic as well as Protestant apologists have 
 proceeded in the argument against infidelity. So, also, when 
 one enthusiast meets another of opposite sentiments, but with 
 persuasions as strong, feelings as lively, satisfaction as complete, 
 and inward peace as perfect as his own, each is driven to " try 
 the spirit" of his antagonist by some external test, forgetting 
 that, upon his own principles, that standard itself was only 
 
54 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay II. 
 
 knoAVii by the imvard clLscermiieiit wliicli it is now emplo3'ed to 
 control. Where such a standard is unhesitatingly admitted by 
 both, the fallacy may be long concealed ; but as soon as its 
 authoi'ity comes to be generally and openly cpiestioned, the mis- 
 take becomes patent, and can only be corrected by abandoning 
 the false principle which has produced the mischief. 
 
 One circumstance which contributed to favour the Metlio- 
 distic exaggerations upon this subject was, that the doctrine of 
 the influence of the Holy Spirit had been one comparatively 
 reserved in the preaching of the preceding half-century. I do 
 not mean that it was denied, or even wholly omitted. Such 
 strong and wholesale charges against the teaching of the Church 
 at that period are often made ; but they are wholly without 
 foundation. But when referred to in more than a general way, 
 the reference was usually for the purpose of guarding against 
 fanatical extravagance — for correcting the abuse rather than 
 illustrating the use of that doctrine ; for showing rather what 
 was not, than what was implied in it. 
 
 It was not strange, therefore, if, in their ardour to develop 
 fully, on its positive side, this cardinal Christian doctrine of a free 
 and intimate communion between God in Christ and the human 
 soul, the Evangelical leaders were tempted to overstep the 
 bounds of sobriety ; and to forget that the Holy Spirit is given 
 not to supersede, or supply the place of, any of om* natm-al 
 faculties, but to help their infirmity, and restore them to that 
 just balance and due subordination — that proper and healthful 
 exercise — which have been disturbed by sin. From Him, in- 
 deed, " all holy desires, all good counsels, and all just works do 
 proceed ;" but we must first determine that our desires are holy, 
 our counsels good, and our works just, before we can, without 
 intolerable rashness, attribute them to that sacred influence ; 
 and we cannot determine that by the mere strengtli of our per- 
 suasions, or the vividness of our fancies, or the depth and 
 earnestness of our feelings, without opening a way for every 
 wild extravagance that can support itself on strong persuasion, 
 vivid fixncy, and deep and earnest feeling. 
 
 But, in the flush and fervour of their triumph, and the general 
 silence of the advocates of infidelity, the evangelical leaders 
 went on securely — comparing proudly their oami acliievoments 
 with the performances of their predecessors — and declaring that 
 
Essay IL] EVIDEXCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 55 
 
 tliey needed no otlier evidences than tlie manifest adaptation of 
 their doctrine to the wants of mankind, and its living power, 
 Avhen received, to regenerate a sinful race. 
 
 9. The natural consequence of all this was an extensive decay 
 among them of theological learning. A few leading doctrines 
 were, for them, the essence of the Gospel, and their preaching, 
 in too many cases, became little more than a monotonous repe- 
 tition of those doctrines. For such a ministry neither deep 
 research nor accurate thinking was at all necessary. On the 
 contrary, it was manifest that, in order to make a great part of 
 the Bible available for the direct teaching of the few subjects to 
 Avhich they confined themselves, it was needful to violate all 
 rules of sober criticism, and confound the Old Testament with 
 the New by an arbitrary sinritualising interpretation to which 
 reason could set no limits. The practical residt of such a course 
 was an extensive, though vague, popular impression that the 
 test of a correct exposition of Scriptm-e was the amount of com- 
 fort or edification that the hearer or reader sensibly derived 
 from it. The pious feelings which a text, as he understood it, 
 IDroduced in his mind were unhesitatingly regarded as the con- 
 sequence of the Spirit's teaching through the Word. Human 
 agency, it was indeed acknowledged, was necessary to teach a 
 man to read ; and human agency was needful to sujjply the 
 unlearned -with translations of the Bible ; but, beyond this, very 
 little was allowed to any other help than prayer, for the profit- 
 able study of the Scripture. 
 
 The real tendency, it is evident, of such opinions is not to 
 exalt the authority of the Word of God, but to destroy it. The 
 mind of the reader in such a process of study, instead of re- 
 ceiving instruction from the Scripture, imports a meaning into 
 it. We have, not an Exegesis, but an Isegesis. A certain 
 system of doctrine is first accepted, not upon the autJiority 
 of propoimders accredited by external evidence, but for the 
 sake of the doctrine itself: the Scripture becomes valuable 
 only as the vehicle of this doctrine, and valuable in propor- 
 tion as it can be made the vehicle of this doctrine, and the 
 means of exciting a certain class of pious sentiments : and, as 
 it is soon discovered that what the very elements of criticism 
 would detect as palpable misinterpretations or mistranslations of 
 the sacred text may be the most cherished vehicles of such doc- 
 
56 AIDS TO FAITH, [Essay II. 
 
 trine, and powerful exciters of such feelings, criticism is laid 
 aside, and tlie Bible becomes a kind of cipher, to be read not by 
 reason but by fancy. 
 
 10. I am tracing here the ultimate development of false prin- 
 ciples when left unchecked to their full operation. But, even in 
 cases where no such extravagance was possible, we can perceive 
 thi-ough a great part of the religious writings of the last genera- 
 tion a prevailing tendency to forget the aspect of Fact, and 
 view only the aspect of Doctrine in contemplating the truths of 
 Christianity. Indeed, if we steadily retain in our minds the 
 historical view of Christianity which is presented in the New 
 Testament, and the primitive creeds, as a religion of Facts, it 
 will be hard to grasp Mr. Coleridge's dictum as even a compre- 
 liensible utterance. It will immediately strike us as hardly 
 intelligible to say, that the best way to convince a man that 
 Jesus Christ was " conceived by the Holy Ghost ; born of the 
 Virgin Mary ; suffered under Pontius Pilate ; was crucified, 
 dead, and buried ; and the third day rose again from the dead ;" 
 is to make him sensible of a strong wish that these facts should 
 have taken place. It Avould at once become plain that the 
 religion which was to be proved by such a process must be 
 something widely different from an historical religion. 
 
 11. While such causes as I have endeavoured to indicate were 
 in England loosing men's hold upon the historical element 
 in Christianity, other influences were operating at a greater 
 distance towards the same result. The literature of Ger- 
 many is eminently speculative and metaphysical. There the 
 Governments have been accustomed to forbid, as dangerous to 
 the public peace, the free discussion of those concrete matters 
 relating to Church and State on which the popular mind with 
 us is kept continually interested, and often agitated. The only 
 scope for the activity of the human intellect in dealing with 
 morals, religion, and politics, is in those high generalities where 
 vulgar minds are unable to foUow it. Literary men converse 
 with, and write for, htorary men, and feel no necessity to trans- 
 late their thoughts into the common working-day language of 
 ordinary life. Within the esoteric circle, one dialect is spoken ; 
 without it, another : and thus speculation is unchecked by that 
 constant reference to the common sense of mankind which iu 
 freer countries curbs its extravagance. 
 
Essay II.] EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 57 
 
 These two circumstances — the encouragement of unHmited 
 speculation within bounds remote from vulgar apprehension, and 
 the repression of everything directly tending to agitate the mass 
 of the people, or shake the institutions of the country — gave its 
 peculiar character to German infidelity. The problem to be 
 solved was, the substitution of metaphysical Pantheism for 
 revealed religion, combined with a retaining of the structure 
 and ordinances of the Church, together with the language of the 
 Scripture and the Creeds, accommodated to the requirements 
 of such metaphysics. The result has been truly described as a 
 system which, "concealing scepticism under faith, using much 
 circumlocution to reach its object, dwelling on the imagination, 
 on poetry, on spirituality, transfigured what it threw into the 
 shade, built up what it destroyed, and affirmed in words Avliat in 
 effect it denied." It was intended for a kind of Euthanasia of 
 Christianity. Eevelation was to die out, not amidst the insults 
 of coarse assailants, but the compliments and tender regret of 
 friends, and to leave behind it an honoured name and a con- 
 spicuous monument. God was to be merged in the Soul of the 
 Universe : Christ in the Ideal of Humanity : the Incarnation 
 in the union of the higher and lower principles of human 
 nature; and the Atonement in the reconciliation of those 
 principles through struggle and suffering. For the successful 
 carrying out of such an enterprise, it was necessary to expel the 
 miraculous from the documents of Christianity, without charging 
 the authors of them with fraud or deliberate imposture : and 
 this was attempted in two ways. The earlier project was to 
 resolve the supposed miracles into a series of odd natural events, 
 sometimes mistaken for supernatural by the excited fancies of 
 the spectators. The later method proposed to turn almost the 
 whole narrative, natural and supernatural, into a set of sym- 
 bolical legends embodying the idea of the Jewish Messiah as 
 modified by the necessity of adapting it to Jesus of Nazareth. 
 Each of these — the naturalistic and the mythical theory — 
 promised well at first ; but each was soon found to labour under 
 insuperable difficulties. Common sense revolted at last, even in 
 the studies of German professors, against the clumsily elaborate 
 explanations by which miracles were converted into natural 
 events. A fresh hypothesis had to be made for each occurrence, 
 and it was at last perceived that such a multitude of strange 
 
AIDS TO FxVITH. 
 
 [Essay IJ. 
 
 natural plienomciia, crowded into the narrative of a few years, 
 and gratuitously assumed for the mere purpose of evading the 
 obvious meaning of the story, were really far more improbable 
 than miracles themselves. On the other hand, the external 
 evidence carried back the date of the sacred writings to an" age 
 when the true history of Jesus was so recent as to make it 
 incredible that it slioidd have been wholly smothered then by 
 legends of a mere romantic character ;* while the gravity, con- 
 sistency, and perfect quietness of the style of those writings 
 themselves made the attempt to turn them into mytliical 
 legends a task everyAvhere difficult in detail, and, in some cases, 
 even ludicrously hojDeless. Hence, to account for the historical 
 phenomena of Christianity is still really an unsolved problem 
 among German unbelievers. The plain direct account — that 
 Jesus was the Son of God ; that He died, and rose again ; and 
 sent His Holy Spirit to plant His Church in the world — is set 
 aside by an a 2'>rio7'i presumption against all miracles. But the 
 historical evidence, the Books themselves, still remains a " stone 
 of stumbling, and rock of offence," against w^hich h^i^othesis 
 after hypothesis is dashed to pieces. 
 
 The irreligious principles which thus, for a long time, infected 
 the critical and philosophic and theological literature of the 
 Continent, made it odious in England ; and the policy at first 
 a,cted on was to endeavour to exclude it altogether from the 
 notice of the British public.f But such a policy was attended 
 with greater evils than were likely to have ensued if things had 
 been suffered to take their natural course. A great part, indeed, 
 of the critical literature of Germany was valuable in no sense 
 whatever. Much of it was a mere succession of wild hypotheses, J 
 springing up, like mushrooms, in the morning, and perishing at 
 night, without leaving even a relic of their decay to manure the 
 
 * Strauss, for example, is compelled 
 to acknowledge tliat Luke, the author 
 of the third Gospel and the Acts, was 
 tlie companion, and most probabl}' the 
 disciple, of St. Paul. 
 
 t See some curious details in the Ap- 
 pendix to Goode's 'Life of Geddes.' 
 Tlie scandal occasioned by the transla- 
 tions of Sclileiermacher, and even of 
 Neibuhr, are matters of recent memorj\ 
 
 X " It is well known," says De Wette 
 in the Preface to his ' Lehrbuch der 
 
 liistorisch-kritischeu Einleitung,' " that 
 from the beginning .... the pernicious 
 fondness for vain and aibitraiy combina- 
 tions and hypotheses has been brought 
 
 into this dei)artment The 
 
 burden of liypotheses under which Bib- 
 lical iiitroducliou labours has beeu 
 much increased in recent times." He 
 takes credit for bringing harh the his- 
 tory of the Septuagint version to the 
 place in which HoiJij left it in 1704 ! 
 
Essay II.] 
 
 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 59 
 
 soil on which they had flourished. Much of it was the mere 
 lost labour of a perverse diligence, and sinister ingenuity, like 
 the fairy toil of the Gnomes and Kobolds in the fables of its o^^■u 
 mines and forests. But so vast an amount of intense mental 
 activity and unlimited research into all the recesses of learning, 
 sacred and profane, — so free a questioning of everything; so 
 various a combination of new ideas upon such a multitude of 
 subjects, — could not but contain in it seeds of thought that might 
 have usefully stimulated the natural indolence of our intellect 
 at home. The mere love of Truth for its own sake is, in general, 
 not sufficient to set men on work, and keep them at work. It 
 is, to a great extent, the collision of thought, the pressure of 
 difficulties, the agitation of doubts, that, by " troubling the 
 waters," makes them yield their virtue. The culture of the 
 mind is like the tillage of the soil — 
 
 " Pater ipse colendi 
 Hand facilem esse viam voluit, primusque per artes. 
 Movit agros, curis acuens mortalia corda, 
 Nee torpere gravi passus sua regna veterno." 
 
 As it was, English scholarship seemed to have settled upon its 
 lees ; and we have scarcely ever had an age so barren of any 
 gTeat efforts as that of which we are now speaking. * 
 
 12. But meanwhile men of leism-e and curiosity, in the uni- 
 versities and elsewhere, disgusted with the tame and superficial 
 monotony that prevailed around them, were repamng, as it were 
 in secret, to the fresh stores that had been opened on the conti- 
 nent of Europe. The very circumstance that this foreign litera- 
 ture was secluded from the vulgar gaze, and even a kind of 
 contraband learning, gave it an additional charm. The adepts felt 
 as if they had been initiated in some higher mysteries, and were 
 disposed hugely to over-estimate the value of their attainments. 
 Doubts and strange opinions which, if they had been freely 
 
 * I Lave purposely avoided any de- 
 tails of the reaction towards Church 
 authority called the Tract Movement. 
 It is certain that, so far from doing any- 
 thing to revive the study of Cliristian 
 evidences, some of the foremost leaders 
 of that movement went even beyond 
 the most violent ultra-Protestants in de- 
 nouncing that study as dangerous ; and 
 
 ultimately encouraged men to " throw 
 themselves" into a particular S3'stem, 
 on the ground mainly of its aifording 
 scope to certain religious feelings, and 
 gratifying certain religious tastes. This 
 branch of the subject has been con- 
 sidered in tlie ' Cautions for the Times' 
 (Parker and Son, London.) 
 
60 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay II. 
 
 expressed and ventilated in the fresh aii* and Lroeid sunshine of 
 pubhc discussion, would have soon shrunk to their proper small 
 dimensions, grew into giants in the shade, and over-mastered the 
 minds that had been nursing them in secret. Then, gradually, 
 the influence of the new opinions began to pervade the current 
 literatm-e of the country — not in plain and definite statements 
 — that Avould have too rudely shocked the multitude ; but some- 
 times in hints " vocal to the intelligent," sometimes in ambiguous 
 language adapting to other prn'^DOses the religious plnases of the 
 day, sometimes under a cloud of metaphysical jargon that 
 l)ewildered the admiring reader. Thus it has come to jjass that, 
 without any open controversy, but silently, as it were, and 
 " while men slept," the old matter-of-fact faith has died out in 
 many minds, and religion has come to be regarded as an affair 
 of sentiment, that should be disentangled, as soon as possible, 
 from its historical elements. 
 
 13. It would not, I think, be very difficult to meet the patrons 
 of such views, even on their own high philosophical ground. I 
 think it would not be hard to prove that, even if we took the 
 moral wants of man as the sole measure of religious truth, the 
 Gospel which these persons preach is inadequate to meet the 
 moral wants of man. We require not merely an ideal of human 
 excellence, but to see that ideal realized ; and to see further that 
 the issue of that realization has been a triumph over all the ills 
 of life, and over all the menaces of death. We require to be 
 shown in fact that man can truly serve God, and that the end of 
 that service is everlasting life. We need a basis of fact, an his- 
 torical basis, for our religious faith ; and without such a basis 
 that faith is a mere castle in the air — a splendid vision, as prac- 
 tically inoperative to resist real temptation as every other ideal 
 picture has ever proved. 
 
 But, after all, this would be only " answering a fool according 
 to his folly ;" and it is better to begin by protesting at once 
 against the foundation of the whole theory. It is a mere delusion 
 to fancy that man's supposed wants or his ^^^[shes are to be taken 
 as either the major or the mmor limits, or indeed as any measure 
 at all, of religious truth. We caiuiot be justified in assuming 
 that things exist because we seem to ourselves to want, or because 
 we feel that we earnestly desire their existence : nor can we even 
 be justified in disbelieving or disregarding the existence of things 
 
Essay II.] EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 61 
 
 which seem to us superfluous, or impleasant, or eveu noxious, if 
 assured on good authority that they exist, and that it is important 
 for us to take notice of their existence. 
 
 That man must, indeed, be a backward scholar in the school of 
 nature who has not learned, even from his own experience, how 
 little human wants and wishes are an evidence that the things 
 wanted and wished for really exist. It is the common delusion of 
 over-sanguine youth to fancy that we shall find in life exactly what 
 we seem to require, and that chcumstances will infallibly open for 
 us those opportimities which are most suitable for the display of 
 our talents, and the advancement of our fortunes. But how little 
 does stern reality tally with these golden dreams of the inexpe- 
 rienced imagination ! And shall we go on to the grave, trusting 
 these promises of our own fancy, which every day is, vnih con- 
 tinually accumulated evidence, proving to be false ? 
 
 It is not, if we are vnse, to our wants and wishes that we trust, 
 in the affairs of this world, as evidence that the means of remedy- 
 ing those wants, or gratifying those wishes, are in store for us ; 
 but to the proper evidence of matters of fact. And if we would 
 find a solid basis for our religious faith, we must obtain for it also 
 a similar foundation. 
 
 The truth is that we may see beforehand that the w\ants and 
 wishes of a creature like man are bomidless, and, in their very 
 nature, incapable of being all gratified. All creatures are necessa- 
 rily imperfect ; and every imperfection is the want of some con- 
 ceivable good ; and every conceivable good is in itself desirable ; 
 and may, if we give the reins to our desire, become an object of 
 our zvishes. 
 
 " Men would be augels, angels would be gods." 
 
 Nothing short of absolute, of infinite perfection can possibly 
 supply aU wants, and gratify all the wishes of an imperfect 
 being, who fancies' that he has only to wish strongly in order to 
 obtain his object. 
 
 And equally vain is the notion that we may safely disregard 
 everything that seems not suitable to our moral nature. Here, 
 again, let us have recourse to that analogy which the great 
 master of that argument has justly described as " the very guide 
 of hfe." How ill would a child reason who should obstinately 
 neglect every study, the use of which he could not liimself 
 
G2 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay II. 
 
 discern ! And, as to tlie tilings of anotlier life, are we not all 
 children? Shall we, who know not what an hour may bring 
 forth — we, whose wisest calculations and most sagacious foresight 
 are perpetually baffled and brought to nothing in a moment by 
 the changes and chances of even this short mortal life — shall Me 
 presume to take our omti case for eternity into our own hands, 
 and determine for om-selves what is sufficient for us to believe ? 
 The Almighty has taken us under His own care. He has 
 promised us an inheritance of which we know little more than 
 that it is a state of eternal holiness and happiness. He has 
 engaged to prepare us for it here ; and, for that purpose, has re- 
 vealed to us those truths which He saw fitting for our discipline. 
 Can we know so certainly how the character which He requires 
 is to be formed, as to be able to correct the method which He 
 has been pleased to employ ? Do we know our spiritual diseases 
 so well that we can safely reject the remedies which the Great 
 Physician has prescribed for them ? Are we, in this our state 
 of infancy, so perfectly acquainted with all that is needful for 
 our manhood that we can manage our own education, and deter- 
 mine the training by which we are to be reared for Heaven ? — 
 If, indeed, the present life were the whole of each man's exist- 
 ence, if our only immortality were the immortality of the human 
 race, there might be some specious ground for saying that we 
 had now made such a survey of all our narrow domain, and 
 gained such a knowledge of om- capacities and implements, that 
 Ave were at last entitled to be our own masters, and might trust 
 to our own little skill and prudence in the management of our 
 own little territory. But if a boundless and untried existence, 
 beyond the limits of all our experience, really does lie before each 
 individual hereafter, it is surely mere madness to neglect, in 
 matters which concern that existence, the teachings of Him who 
 alone knows the nature of that hidden world into which we are 
 so blindly passing. 
 
 A prudent man, then, will not only inquire what it is that 
 his heart seems to want, but also how^ far those wants are in 
 point of fact supplied. He will not only consider what he 
 wishes to be true, but what he has reasonable evidence for 
 believing to be true. He will treat the truths of Eeligion as 
 matters of fact, and seek for the appropriate e-s-idence of mat- 
 ters of fact — that is, in other words, for historical evidence. 
 
Essay II.] EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. G3 
 
 14. A religion diseutangled entirely from rJl historical in- 
 quiries, and commending itself immediately to the mind by its 
 mere intrinsic beauty and suitability to man's wants and ^Yislles, 
 may be a very captivating vision, and seems liiglily desirable on 
 many accounts ; but it is a gross abuse of words to call such, a 
 religion Christianity. Christianity is the religion which was 
 taught by Cln-ist and his Apostles ; and it was certainly an 
 historical religion — a religion made up of matters of fact> 
 and proiDounded on the evidence of matters of fact — which they 
 promulgated. " That which we have heard and seen with our 
 eyes, and our hands have handled of the Word of Life, declare 
 Ave unto you," is the language of the first preachers of the 
 Gospel ; and the modern attempt to separate the ideal Christ, 
 the type of the godlilve in man, from the historical person, is 
 not a whit less opposed to the genius of the Apostolic religion 
 than was that teaching of the Gnostics against which the last of 
 the Apostles raised his warning voice as the very spirit of 
 Anticlu-ist. The Christ of the Gnostics was an impalpable 
 ^-Eon ; the Christ of their successors is something less substan- 
 tial — an abstract idea. 
 
 Indeed, Avhatever may be the case Avith other religions, the 
 Gospel certainly never made its Avay by first recommending 
 itself to the conscious wants and Avishes of mankind. It seemed, 
 on the contrary, to contradict all man's expectations, and to 
 outrage all their cherished feelings, and to cross all their 
 desires. It was "to the Jews a stumblingblock, and to the 
 Greeks foolishness." It is not until believed and acted upon 
 that it gradually changes the temper and frame of mind into 
 accordance with itself; it is like some of those tonic medicines 
 which, at first, seem bitter and disagreeable, until the palate is 
 accustomed to their taste, and the stomach braced and strength- 
 ened by their Avholesome harshness. 
 
 It may indeed, on the surface, seem strange that the Chris- 
 tian religion should be thus encumbered, as it were, by an 
 apparatus of history ; and that men should be required to 
 investigate the evidence of past transactioES in order to find a 
 basis for their Faith, instead of merely consulting their hearts, 
 and finding an echo there, to attest the divinity of its voice. 
 But in this, as in other cases, we shall find, upon reflection, that 
 what seems the foolishness of God, is Aviser than men. The 
 
G4 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay II. 
 
 careful and candid investigation of the evidences on which 
 Christianity rests — not for the satisfying a mere inquisitive 
 curiosity, but to find truth for the regulation of our lives — is an 
 eminently practical exercise of the understanding, and brings 
 home the great facts of our religion as facts to the mind, with a 
 feeling of their reality which the most highly raised efforts of 
 the imagination cannot give them ; and thus makes rational 
 deliberate faith a counterpoise to the engrossing influence of 
 sense. In the affairs of the world, we know that realities 
 address themselves, in some shape or other, to the judgment ; 
 and that those that exclusively and immediately address the 
 feelings and the imagination are unreal. If then the objects of 
 religion entered only through this ivory gate of fancy into tlie 
 mind, a steady practical faith in their reality could be hardly 
 maintained. I say a steady practical faith ; for, undoubtedly, if 
 religion were a mere affair of feeling divorced from practice, or 
 of practice divorced from motive and reduced to the mere 
 mechanism of custom, there might be something intelligible in 
 discarding all investigation of evidence. Every one, even super- 
 ficially acquainted with the structure of the human mind, is 
 aware that the feelings may, as in the case of a novel or a play, 
 be deeply interested and strongly excited, without anything but, 
 at best, a sort of dim and transient belief in the reality of the 
 objects which thus interest and excite them ; and that, for such 
 a purpose, scarcely anything more is necessary than that the 
 mind should not, for the time, attend to their unreality. This 
 suffices for mere feeling : but for action, a perfectly sane man 
 requires more. He requires evidence as a ground of belief: 
 and, even in an insane man, — where the fancy has become 
 paramount, and established its throne upon the ruins of the 
 understanding, close observers can generally detect a lurking 
 suspicion of the deceitfulness of the mind's own visions, — an 
 unsteady wavering flicker in the predominating persuasion, 
 which betrays a difference of no small importance between 
 rational and irrational behef ; a secret sense of insecurity and 
 weakness, which makes the mind of the madman, except 
 in some high paroxysm of frenzy, succumb and quail before 
 the calmer presence of a well-regulated intellect. 
 
 15. There is another use also served by this complication of 
 religion with historical inquiry, which it is not unsuitable to 
 
Essay II,] EVIDENCES OF CHEISTIANITY. 65 
 
 notice. The essential connection of Christianity with the history 
 of past ages makes a provision for the maintenance and advance- 
 ment of civilization in every country in which Christianity 
 prevails. It was this which made the preservation of learning 
 possible when the great flood of barbarism swept over Europe, 
 and the Church alone contained the sacred deposit of an earlier 
 civilization — the memory of the past, and the hopes of the 
 future. And it is this which is still a bulwark against bar- 
 barism. Barbarism is essentially that state of mind which is 
 produced by placing it exclusively under the influences of a 
 contracted i^resent sphere of circumstances. It is, as Dr. 
 Johnson justly said, " by making the past, the distant, and the 
 future predominate over the present," that we are " advanced 
 in the dignity of thinking beings." All history, more or less, 
 renders this valuable service to the human mind ; but it cannot 
 be reasonably doubted that the history of the Church, in that 
 view of it which the Bible presents, as one continuous body 
 from the beginning of the world, is, of all others, the best fitted 
 to render such a service. The idea of history, it has been truly 
 said,* is that of the biography of a society. There must be, to 
 constitute the narrative properly historical, an unity of action, 
 interest, and purpose among the persons who are the subjects 
 of it. Now, whether we consider the length of its duration, or 
 the breadth of its extent, — the variety of its fortunes, or the 
 unity of its purpose, — the diversity of its members in age, and 
 character, and language, and manners, and habits of thought, 
 and stages of cultivation, or the closeness of mutual relation 
 into which all these seemingly scattered persons have been 
 brought, — what other society can anywhere be pointed out 
 which can form so noble and so useful a subject for the historian ? 
 It is the conception of the Church which enables the mind not 
 only to combine, but to blend together, the pastoral simplicity of 
 the primitive times of mankind and the elaborate civilization 
 of later ages ; — to bring into one collection all the character- 
 istics of all the climes and regions of the world ; — to bring all 
 specimens of the human family, " from the north and from the 
 south, and from the east and from the west," and make them 
 " sit down " before us " in the kingdom of God." Nor can I 
 
 * Arnold's Lectures on History. 
 
Cfi AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay II. 
 
 doubt that the peculiar strengtli, and freedom, and versatility of 
 the modern European intellect are, to a gi-eat extent, due to the 
 historical character of Christianity. No one can read, in- 
 telligently, so much as the prime documents of our faith, even 
 in a vernacular translation, without feeling himself transported 
 into a region where the modes of conception and of expression, 
 the events and the institutions to be met with, are strikingly 
 different from those wliich surround him with the associations 
 of everyday life ; without, in short, finding himself, for the 
 time, emancipated from the mere influence of the present, and 
 brought under that of the distant and the past. Nor could 
 anything have secured such a potent and salutary influence 
 to history over the human mind as the indissoluble tie by Mhich 
 it is connected Avith religion ; the feeling that, in our nearest 
 and most intimate relations, we are personally connected, as 
 members of one body, with the remotest past and the illimitable 
 future, — linked in one unbroken living chain, with patriarchs 
 and prophets, and apostles and martyrs, — heirs with them of the 
 same promise, and waiting with them for the same completion 
 of the great mystery of God. And it is worth observing that 
 Providence has so arranged matters, that the Eastern world, — 
 to which the language and habits of thought contained in 
 Scripture were most familiar, — seems destined to receive back 
 its lessons, modified by the peculiarities of Western civilization 
 and European teaching. In those nations where the language 
 of Christianity was, as it were, a native voice, it produced least 
 influence at first as a source of permanent civilization. It was 
 the leaven of foreign associations which caused a fermentation 
 in the Western mind ; and, from the blended mass wliich was 
 the product of that fermentation, it seems destined to pass back 
 to the realms from wliich it came, in a form fitted to produce 
 there a similar effect. 
 
 In the same degTee, then, as any system has a tendency to 
 break the connexion between history and religion, in that 
 same degree it tends to deprive civilization itself of one of its 
 chief safeguards, — to withdraw from effective operation one of 
 the most powerful causes which now stimulate research and 
 bring the minds of the present generation into contact with 
 those of the past. If the mind be referred immediately, for 
 religious guidance, not to an historical document, but to a 
 
Essay II.] EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. • G7 
 
 supposed infallible autlioritj of tlie present Church, or to the sup- 
 posed infallible autliority of each man's fancy and feelings, the 
 influences favourable to barbarism are so far restored: and 
 I think the visible results of both experiments, so far as either 
 has been consistently worked out, arc such as to show that a 
 retrogi'ession towards barbarism would be their most probable 
 consequence. To look only at the present — to live in the pre- 
 sent — shape our habits by the present — adopt, at every change, 
 the vogue of the day — and cast aside whatever we cannot 
 accommodate to the taste of our own generation — this is to do 
 our utmost to restore barbarity, and sink us below the level on 
 which God and nature intended us to be placed. And hence 
 we may find fresh reason for admiring the wisdom of the Divine 
 economy which, in the case of the Jewish and of the Christian 
 Church alike, withdi-ew, after a while, the living voice of inspired 
 guides, and substituted for them, as the ultimate basis of faith, 
 a written historical record of their teaching ; thus building tlie 
 Church, as a continuous body through all ages, on that founda- 
 tion of the apostles and prophets, of which Jesus Christ Himself 
 is the chief corner-stone. 
 
 16. But then it will be said, — "Is not Christianity a Gospel 
 to be preached to the poor? and how are the mean and 
 illiterate to judge of the historical evidences of Christianity ?" 
 
 Kow, undoubtedly, not in religious matters alone, but in 
 respect of almost eveiy useful truth alike — moral, scientific, 
 economical, j)oHtical — the uneducated and ill-educated classes 
 labour under pecidiar disadvantages : and this, so far as it is a 
 difficulty, is a ditficulty upon every hypothesis which admits a 
 benevolent Providence and recognises a difference between 
 truth and falsehood.* The true lesson to be derived from the 
 circumstance is, that we are bound, as far as we can, to raise 
 the condition of our meaner brethren, and make them more 
 and more capable of judging for themselves. Still, however, 
 no doubt, great difference will continue to subsist: nor will 
 it ever be possible to equalize all understandings, or make 
 the opportunities and capacities of improvement the same 
 for every mind. But each class must be contented, in this 
 
 * The difficulties attending the re- j structure of nature and the course of 
 jectiou of these being all the marks of } liistory. 
 
 design and benevolent inteutiou in the 
 
 F 2 
 
68 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay II. 
 
 as ill other cases, with such an amount of evidence as its 
 circumstances will allow : and, if the upper classes would faith- 
 fully do their duty, this amount of evidence would not be small 
 in any case. 
 
 Let it be observed that the form of this objection allows us to 
 assume that Christianity is true ; that it is capable of being 
 proved true by rational e'sddence to well-informed persons ; 
 that, among men of literary attainments, it can hold its ground 
 w^ith the weapons of argument; that it needs not to fear any 
 amount of light, or shrink from any examination however 
 searcliing ; and, assuming this, let us consider what the condition 
 of the lower classes would have been, if the Church had faith- 
 fully done its duty. The Christian religion would then come 
 before them as a religion manifestly subserving no interested 
 temporal ends — encumbered with no artifices of priestcraft — 
 notoriously based, from the first, upon the ground of rational 
 evidence, and maintaining itself through all generations upon 
 that gTOund alone, — open to all challengers, and ready at all 
 times to give a reason of its hope to every one demanding it ; — 
 and can it be said that this would not be good evidence to them 
 of its truth ; and evidence of the same kind as that upon whicli 
 they must rely, from their cu'cumstances, for the truth of almost 
 everything of importance at all removed beyond the sphere of 
 their own immediate experience ?* It is the putting of Christi- 
 anity upon other grounds ; it is the claim of authority to silence 
 doubt; it is the discouragement of inquiry, the contempt of 
 reason, the depreciation of intellect in religious matters ; it is 
 the shrinking from light and correction, the suffering pure 
 truth to be encrusted with prejuchces and mistakes for fear of 
 unsettling men's minds ; it is the borrowing of the arts and 
 language that are the common signs of impostm-e by the friends 
 of truth, and leaving its own bold speech and open ways to its 
 enemies ; it is these unworthy methods that deprive the lower 
 classes of the safeguards which, with such a religion, they 
 might and ought to have for the security of their foith. The 
 Providence of God has linked all classes together in mutual 
 
 * Sec an interesting statement of 1 bishop Wliatcly's ' Easy Lessons ' on 
 the nature of the evidence within the the Evidences, pp. 23-27. 
 reach of tlie lower orders, in Arcli- | 
 
Essay II.] EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 69 
 
 dependence, so that, "if one member suffer, all the members 
 suffer Avith it ; " and the Gospel cannot be preached to the poor, 
 if the well-instructed scribes do not take the only measures by 
 which it can possibly be preached with effect. 
 
 17. But, even of direct evidence, the amount is not slight that 
 is Avithin the reach of the humbler classes. There is much of 
 most persuasive evidence of the truth of Cln-istianity Avhich not 
 only requires no dialectical skill to make it felt, but Avhicli cannot 
 be draAvn out and stated in its full force by any amount of 
 dialectical skill. Let any one consider with himself what the 
 nature of the evidence is upon which he has formed his judg- 
 ment of the characters of the persons with whom he converses 
 in daily life. What a medley of slight traits, looks, gestures, 
 chance expressions, little circumstances, each, perhaps, ambi- 
 guous in itself, but all conspiring in one definite impression, 
 will it appear! And all these he has gathered in and com- 
 bined, not by a consciously logical process, watching for and 
 sifting each scruple of evidence as it arose, and then de- 
 liberately putting them together, like a clever advocate to 
 make a case; but unconsciously, and by a kind of instinct, 
 tlie mind has drawn its inference from these little circum- 
 stances which he can remember, and from a thousand other 
 evanescent phenomena which he cannot now recall. And yet 
 all this evidence Avas good evidence, upon which he unhesi- 
 tatingly relies. 
 
 NoAV such is the reasonable CA^dence Avhich the Scriptures 
 themselves yield to the candid and attentive reader, who is 
 neither searching for proof nor Avatching for objections. It 
 deposits, as it Avere, the practical persuasion of its oaati truth- 
 fulness and honesty by a thousand artless traits AA-hile we 
 converse Avith its pages. "If Ave may judge," says Jackson, 
 " of the truth of men's Avritings by their outAvard form or 
 character, as we do of men's honesty by their looks, speech, or 
 behaviour, what history in the Avorld bears so perfect a 
 resemblance to things done and acted, or yields (AAithout further 
 testimony than its own) so full assurance of a true narration ?" 
 [Works, vol. i. p. 27.] Men who never consciously framed a 
 syllogism haA^e felt, and are daily feeling, the force of such 
 evidence. They are continually perusing the accounts of 
 miracles so numerous and so strikino- that the witnesses of them 
 
70 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay II. 
 
 could not be mistaken, and yet embedded iudissolubly* in a 
 narrative so artless, so grave, so honest, so intelligent, as 
 palpably to be no product of fraud or fancy ; and, without 
 any elaborate criticism or detailed process of deduction, their 
 mind takes the impression -which a book so circumstanced is 
 naturally and reasonably fitted to impart. Thus many a mind 
 that has scarcely ever felt a doubt, or heard of an infidel in 
 Christian lands, has, in reahty, based its faith upon rational 
 evidence. Its belief has not been built amidst the noise of 
 hammers and the ring of axes, but has grown up, "a noise- 
 less structure," from the ground of an honest and true 
 heart. 
 
 18. In some respects, indeed, the result of the unlimited de- 
 velopment of critical inquiry abroad has been to diminish, rather 
 than increase the difficulties of comparatively unlearned readers. 
 Almost the only infidel theory ^Yhich is quite intelligible to the 
 lower orders, is that coarse one which treats the New Testament 
 as a mere forgery throughout, or ascribes the origin of our re- 
 Hgion to gross fraud and imposture. Now, if there be any certain 
 result of German criticism at all, it lias been to sliow that any 
 such theory is utterly untenable. The Wolfenbiittel Fragments 
 were almost the last shameful effort in that direction, and their 
 track is a road which no one, with the smallest pretensions to 
 literary character, would now venture to pursue. Countless 
 other evasions of the plain force of evidence, each contradictory 
 of the other, and each rejected with contempt by almost every 
 one but its author, have been invented ; but there is, except at 
 Tubingen, no disposition to retm-u to what may be called the old 
 orthodox system of infidehty. To men of plain common sense, if 
 they fully understood the whole state of the case, it would ap- 
 pear that all the premisses are granted which render inevitable 
 an admission of the substantial truth of Christianity. Put, for 
 example, Paul's undoubted Epistles, with Luke's Gospel and 
 Acts, into the hands of a plain ordinary Englishman, and tell 
 him, " It is no longer questioned that these letters are the 
 
 * " The miracles in the Bible," saj-s tlic whole history is founded on them ; 
 
 Bolingbroke, " are not, like those in it consists of little else ; and if it were 
 
 Livy, detached pieces that do not dis- not a history of tliem, it would be a 
 
 turb the civil history, which goes on ; history of nothing." 
 
 very well without them . . . But ; 
 
Essay II.] 
 
 EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 
 
 1 
 
 genuine work of Paul; it is no longer questioned that the 
 writer of the other Books was his companion, who compiled 
 them while the men were still alive, who had conversed Avith 
 Jesus, and seen Him crucified ; it is no longer douhted that 
 Paul and Luke Avere sincere and honest men who had no 
 design to impose upon their hearers ; and the alternatives 
 before you are either to admit that Christianity was really 
 grounded upon miracles, or to explain these documents by the 
 methods of Paulus, or Strauss, or Weisse, or some other 
 Natm-alistic or Mythic Doctor ;" — let this, I say, be the issue 
 placed before an Englishman of ordinary common sense and 
 information, and there can be Httle doubt that he Avould regard 
 the first alternative as far less prodigiously incredible than the 
 second. The case stands thus : 
 
 19. The origin of the Christian religion is not one of those 
 events so distant as to be lost in a fabulous antiquity. 
 Whatever gave rise to it occurred at a period of which Ave knoAV 
 a great deal, in a civilized world, and Avithin historic times ; 
 and AA'as something Avhich enabled the first preachers to make 
 more converts among enemies in five years, than our most active 
 missionaries have made in five centuries. AA ithin no long- 
 time after the death of Jesus Ave find Christian Churches 
 diffused in the most distant places over this ciAdlized Avorld, 
 continually groAving m numbers and importance, under the 
 eyes and in spite of the hostility of their powerful neigh- 
 bours. The consentient tradition of all these Churches ascribes 
 their foundation to the first Disciples of Jesus Christ, and 
 ascribes to those Disciples the Gospel that He had been raised 
 from the dead, and that this Kesm-rection, with its preceding 
 and accompanying mii'acles, was the ground of their faith. 
 Their creeds, their sacraments, their universal obserA^ance of 
 Easter and the Aveekly Lord's day, all embody this tradition. 
 These Churches are not Avithout Avritten historical records.* 
 They put forward, Avith one consent, a body of documents, 
 giving a detailed account of Christ's life, and death, and resur- 
 
 * " It is allowed," says Mr. Westcott, 
 "by those who have reduced the 
 genuine Apostolic works to the nar- 
 rowest limits, that from the time of 
 IrensBus [i.e. the latter part of the 
 second century] the New Testament 
 
 was composed essentially of the same 
 books as we receive at present, and 
 that they were regarded with the same 
 reverence as is now shown to them." — 
 Historij of the Canon, p. S. 
 
72 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay II. 
 
 rection, and of the first preacliing and fortunes of his Apostles, 
 and embracing a collection of letters from some of those Apostles 
 themselves. With respect to many of tliese writings, no literary 
 man of any character, at present, doubts their genuineness. 
 With respect to most of the rest, it is at any rate agreed that 
 they are not mere forgeries of a late age, but books written in 
 good faith, at a date when the true history of the times they 
 refer to was easily to be obtained. The testimony of these 
 documents is the same as the tradition of the Churches. They 
 put the Christian religion upon the evidence of miraculous 
 facts, and specially of Christ's Eesurrection, as attested by the 
 alleged witnesses of it, in the very place where He had been 
 executed as a malefactor, and in the face of the very persons by 
 whom He had been condemned and slain. 
 
 What we are called upon to believe is — that all the Churches 
 were mistaken as to the grounds of their own faith ; that all the 
 documents, and the Apostles themselves, have given a wrong 
 account of it ; that the belief in the religion was not grounded 
 on the belief in the miracles, but that the belief in the miracles 
 was grounded on the belief in the religion ; that Jesus, Avho (if 
 He wrought no miracles and was the subject of no miracles) 
 contradicted, in every cu-cumstance of his birth, and education, 
 and teaching, and life, and death, the best established and most 
 cherished notions of all around Him concernmg the promised 
 Messiah, was believed, in spite of all, to be that Messiah ; that 
 miracles were ascribed to Him because the Messiah ought to 
 have wrought miracles ; that He was believed to have risen 
 again because it suddenly occurred to somebody that He ought 
 to have risen again ; and that, by such an easy and intelligible 
 process as this, a creed of fables was transmuted into a creed of 
 facts, and stamped indelibly, and with one impression, upon 
 the faith and institutions of the great Christian communities 
 throughout the world. 
 
 This is, in plain Avords, the theory of the origin of Christianity 
 corrected to the latest results of Continental criticism ; and 
 it seems to amount to this — that Christianity had no 
 ORIGIN AT ALL. It IS, indeed, not criticism that has spon- 
 taneously yielded these results ; but it is the a priori prejuchce 
 against miracles which has forced criticism upon this strange 
 enterprise. 
 
Essay II.] EVIDENCES OF CHEISTIAXITY. 73 
 
 20. Let any one take up (it is almost forgotten now in Ger- 
 many, but may be still met with in England) Dr. Strauss's ' Life 
 of Jesus,' and he will see at once that the author is all through 
 merely working out a foregone conclusion. Not one of his 
 orthodox predecessors in the seventeenth century ever set 
 himself with more dogged resolution to fight his way tlu-ough 
 all difficulties in defence of the verbal inspiration, scientific 
 accuracy, and textual integrity of every jot and tittle in the 
 Hebrew Scriptures, and find a way, or make one, to the goal 
 which he had determined to reach than Strauss does to destroy 
 it. And so with his successors ; the very multitude and dis- 
 cordance of their theories is a witness to their insufficiency. 
 They are the struggles of a strong animal in toils which 
 he cannot break. The favourable posture for an infidel is 
 that of an objector ; when he is forced to recognise the necessity 
 of having something positive on his own side, he finds his 
 own difficulties greater than those over which he has been 
 exulting in the case of his antagonists ; and the end has been 
 that, in Germany, thinking men are either returning to the faith 
 of their fathers, or laying the detailed examination of the 
 phenomena of Christianity aside as an insoluble problem. And 
 in reality, the greater part of the panic which has lately spread 
 among us, from the reappearance of the infidel controversy 
 in England, has arisen from the security, the unhesitating 
 acquiescence, of the previous generation. In the general silence 
 of objectors, in the general recognition, which pervaded our 
 whole literature, of the unquestionable truth of Christianity, 
 men had ceased to reflect particularly upon the rational 
 grounds of their faith. The authority of the Bible became a 
 kind of axiom, and everything that was supposed to be involved 
 in that authority was grasped with the same firmness of belief. 
 In such a state of mind, the whole of its creed is no firmer than 
 the weakest part ; and hence, when open attacks began again to 
 be made upon M'hat men had regarded from their childhood as 
 essential portions of Christianity — when attention was called to 
 the real difficulties which beset many passages, the undoubtedly 
 strong objections which may be urged against many articles — 
 when writers of learning and ability were quoted as autliorities, 
 not for, but against, the traditions of their youth — an alarm arose 
 as if the whole of religion was giving wav. This danger alwavs 
 
74 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay H. 
 
 attends the concentration of a whole S3^stem of belief upon a 
 single point. It is like embarking a whole army at once, for a 
 long and perilous voyage, in one gigantic transport. If the 
 ship hold together, much is gained in speed and convenience ; 
 but if the vessel sink, all goes Avith her to the bottom. 
 
 It is thus with the Eomanist, who builds all on the authority 
 of the j^resent Church. If one portion, however small or slight, 
 of the complicated structure of his creed be shaken, the basis of 
 it is shaken, and the entire edifice falls to ruin in a moment. 
 And so, when the feelings of the reader have been made the 
 test of the inspiration of Scripture ; — when men have been 
 accustomed to say, " We feel, from the echo in our bosoms, 
 from the warm sentiments of devotion which it excites, from the 
 sensible comfort that it gives, that this is and must be no less 
 than the voice of God speaking with us ;" — in such a case the 
 decision of criticism against the genuineness or authenticity of a 
 single book, or even a single passage, becomes a thing formid- 
 able to the whole of faith. If the religious sense, on Mhich the 
 reader relies for distinguishing the divine from the human, have 
 erred in any case, its assumed infallibility is gone ; the test 
 itself of inspiration is shown to be fallacious ; and he is left 
 doubtful whether the whole of his belief may not be founded on 
 a mere delusion. 
 
 But a faith founded upon rational evidence is not liable to be 
 thus shaken. If it be shown, for example, that a particular 
 verse in the 1st Epistle of John, or even a long passage in his 
 Gospel, is an interpolation, this does not subvert the proof of 
 the genuineness of the rest of those pieces ; since the evidence 
 for the disputed parts, and the evidence for the rest of the 
 documents, is not the same ; and such a faith is grounded upon 
 and proportioned to the evidence. And if the evidences of 
 Christianity, — theii' nature and degrees, — and even the first 
 elements of the criticism of our sacred books, were made an 
 ordinary part of the instruction of eveiy tolerably educated 
 man, we should be free from those periodical panics which are 
 a disgrace to the intelligence of a Christian nation. 
 
 As it is, when suddenly put upon searching the reasons 
 of the faith that is in them, men hardly know at what point 
 to begin, and in theii' confusion often seize first upon the 
 weakest. 
 
Essay II.] EVIDEKCES OF CHRISTIAXITY. 75 
 
 21. In dealiijg, either for the satisfaction of ourselves or of 
 others, with sceptical objections, it is of vast importance to 
 consider in what order they are to be dealt with. If we suffer 
 -ourselves to fall into the error of regarding each part of our 
 position as equally strong in itself, the consequences may prove 
 calamitous. 
 
 There are, for example, narratives of miraculous occurrences 
 in the Bible, wliieh, if we met with them separate from the rest, 
 or connected with documents of a different character — if wo 
 found them in a life of Pythagoras or Apollonius — we should 
 reasonably set aside as mere legendary stories, or exaggerations 
 of pm-ely natural events. It would be a gi'ievous oversight to 
 stake the truth of Clu-istianity at once upon the separate 
 defence of such passages as these. The reasonable course is to 
 waive them at the outset ; — to let them stand over for consider- 
 ation in their due place ; — and to consider, first of all, the most 
 important and best circumstanced facts upon Avhich the claims 
 of Eevelation rest. If these can be established, tlie others will 
 either be not worth fighting about, or will follow as a matter of 
 com-se. " Supposing it acknowledged," says Bishop Butler, 
 ■" that our Saviour spent some years in a course of working 
 mu-acles ; there is no more presumption worth mentioning 
 against His having exerted this miracidous power in a certain 
 degree greater than in a certain degree less ; in one or two 
 more instances, than in one or two fewer; in this, than in 
 another manner." [Analogy, part ii. c. 2.) 
 
 It is quite true — and should always be distinctly allowed — 
 that nervous excitement, the strong tonic of a powerful faith 
 and a lively imagination — perhaps also some subtle influence, 
 such as animal magnetism — are capable of producing wonderful 
 cures of some disorders ; and that, if some of the narratives of 
 miraculous cures in the Gospel and the Acts were all the mi- 
 raculous narratives relating to the first planting of Christianity 
 that we had, it might be reasonable to suppose the cures effqpted 
 by some such agencies as these. But if other miracles remain 
 which are incapable of any such solution, and sufficient to prove 
 the claims of Christianity to a divine origin, then the natural 
 explanations, even of the former, cease to be the more probable ; 
 because such natural effects as they assume, though possible, are 
 more or less unlikely ; whereas there is no improbability in sup- 
 
76 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay II. 
 
 posing- that a person endowed with the power of miracles exerted 
 it upon a particular occasion. It is improbable that any man 
 ever lived in Greece of such strength as is attributed to Hercules ; 
 but if it were once established that such a person lived at a 
 given time, there would be nothing improbable in any story of a 
 particular exertion of that strength, merely on account of its 
 surpassing the vigour of ordinar}^ mortals. 
 
 Upon similar principles, we should carefully avoid entangling 
 the question of the general truth of Christianity with that of the 
 nature or extent of the inspmition of the sacred writers. There 
 are, indeed, some arguments for Christianity which tend to prove 
 directly the insjjiratiou, in some form or other, of those writers ; 
 as, for instance, that derived from the omission in their works of 
 topics which men in their cii-cumstances would naturally have 
 introduced, an argument which has been pressed with great force 
 by the Archbishop of Dublin in his first series of Essays.* But, 
 in general, it is evident that our first concern with the sacred 
 writers is in their character of witnesses ; and we should care- 
 fully distinguish in our minds the objections against their 
 character as inspired persons, and objections against their cha- 
 racter as trustworthy relators of facts. The question of the nature 
 and extent of theii* inspiration legitimately comes in after the 
 main facts have been established, Avhich prove our Saviour's 
 divine mission, and the promise of supernatural assistance which 
 He made to His Apostles. 
 
 Some parts, indeed, of Scripture, such as the prophecies, claim 
 inspiration directly, and on the face of them ; and in the case of 
 these, to disprove their inspiration is to disprove their trust- 
 worthiness. 
 
 But, meanwhile, in the interpretation of such Avritings, it 
 cannot be reasonable to put out of sight the character which 
 they claim, and insist upon expounding them as if they were not 
 inspired at all.f This is a principle of criticism which is never 
 forgotten, except in the case of Scripture. If the Christian 
 revelation be really the completion of the Jewish — if Christ and 
 His Church be really the development of the mystery of God, 
 ^^•hich was gradually wrought and prepared for in all the pre- 
 
 * Sec also Bishop Hind's very valu- I t 'Stc ' Charge of the Archbishop of 
 able work on Inspiration. ' j Dublin," ISUl. Parker and Son, London. 
 
Essay II.] EVIDENCES OF CHRISTIANITY. 77 
 
 vious dispensations — and if the prophets of those dispensations 
 really " spoke as they were moved by the Holy Ghost," it is no 
 more unreasonable to give their lofty expressions a secondary 
 reference to the coming glory than to find allusions to Augustus 
 in the ' Jj]neid/ or to Elizabeth and Mary in the ' Faery Queen,' 
 or to the Koman Kepublic in an ode to Horace's ship.* And, 
 indeed, the very possibility of such an interpretation — the 
 continuity of thought, character, and plan, in a literature spread 
 over so many ages, which makes it feasible — has ever struck 
 thoughtful men, from Justin Martyr to Pascal, as strong 
 evidence for the inspiration of that literature. 
 
 22. But to piu'sue these topics further would be only to repeat 
 what has been a thousand times said abeady ; and when infi- 
 delity comes to drop its reserve, and tell us plainly what the 
 deep objections are that are now only hinted at in more or less 
 doubtful forms of insinuation, it will most probably be seen that 
 there is very little new matter to be produced in this great con- 
 troversy, and that the Church is assailed in the nineteenth 
 century with no stronger artillery than her walls have borne for 
 eighteen centuries already. My earnest wish is, that those who 
 think they can speak would speak out and let us know the worst. 
 
 ev Se (f)d€t Kol okecraov. 
 
 And if the literal truth of Christianity fall, it will certainly be 
 a final and total subversion of the whole religion. Let no one 
 suppose that its spirit can remain living and acting among us 
 after its body has been decomposed. Its spirit will return to 
 God who gave it. " That man," says one who was no narrow 
 
 * See Hurd on the 'Prophecies,' 
 and Warburton's ' Divine Legation,' b. 
 vi. " In the case of prophecies with a 
 double sense," I have observed else- 
 where, "we may be often sure of the 
 secondary application of some parts of 
 them, even though we may see clearly 
 that other parts have no such a^Dplica- 
 
 tion Thus, for example, no one 
 
 doubts that, in Spenser's Chronicle of 
 
 He, dying, left tbe fairest Tanaquill 
 Him to succeed therciu, liy liis last will. 
 Fairer .and nobler livetli none this bowTe, 
 Ne liije in grace, ne lilje in learned skill, &c. — 
 
 No one, I say, doubts that these lines 
 refer to Henry VIII. and Queen Eliza- 
 beth, though there is no consistent 
 parallel between the succession of Faery 
 kings and British monarchs." — Note to 
 Butler's Analogy, p. 203. 
 
 To arg-ue from the extravagant abuse 
 
 raeryKings(b.ii.c.x.).thetbllowiug '^^^^^^^i'^^^:;^^:^^ 
 ^^ existence, is like arguing that if we ad- 
 He left two sonnes, of which fair Eiferon, I i^it fio-ures of speech hi any writing, 
 [itJitS^et 5"fo^-^ ! ye caSnot be sure that anything in it 
 DouJjly supplied in spoiisall and dominion, dc— ' is literal. < 
 
78 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay II. 
 
 bigot, "who does not hold Christ's earthly life, ^vith all it.s 
 miracles, to be as properly and really historical as any event in 
 history, and who does not receive all points of the Aj^ostolic 
 creed with the fullest conviction, I do not conceive to be a 
 Protestant Christian. And as for that Christianity which is 
 such according to the fashion of the modern philosophers and pan- 
 theists, without a personal God, Avithout immortality, without 
 an individuality of man, without historical faith, it may be a 
 very ingenious and subtle philosophy, but it is no Christianity 
 at all."* 
 
 * Niebubr, quoted by Neander iu the Preface to the oi\\ edition of his ' Life of 
 Christ.' 
 
ESSAY III. 
 PROPHECY. 
 
CONTENTS OF ESSAY III. 
 
 1. Intkoduction, 
 
 2. The Divine Mission of the Pro- 
 
 phets — Definition of the term 
 " Prophet." 
 
 3. Definition of the title " Seer." 
 
 4. Definition of the designation " Man 
 
 of God." 
 
 5. Definition of the phrase "Man of 
 
 tlie Spirit." 
 
 6. Scripture contrast of the false pro- 
 
 phet. 
 
 7. The Power to predict the Fu- 
 
 TtiEE — Popular belief of the He- 
 brews. 
 
 8. Claims of the Prophets themselves. 
 
 9. Justification of their claims by the 
 
 fulfilment of their predictions : 
 Examples from Nahum — Hosea 
 — Amos — Micah — Isaiah. 
 
 10. Groimdlessness of recent insinua- 
 
 tions shown by the fulfilment of 
 a remarkable prediction — Uu- 
 trustworthiuess of Rationalist 
 criticism. 
 
 11. Predictions of Moses concerning 
 
 the destmies of Israel not disputed 
 or explained by Kationalists or 
 Essayists. 
 
 12. Messianic Prophecy — The real 
 
 question at issue : "UTiether the 
 New Testament or Genuau critics 
 are to be oiu- guides in interpret- 
 ing prophecy ? 
 
 13. Variety and diversity of opinions in 
 
 the German Eationalist School 
 unbounded. 
 
 14. Doctrine of om- Lord and the Apos- 
 
 tles. 
 
 15. In citing or applying passages of 
 
 the prophecies, attention must be 
 paid to tlie mind and intention of 
 the si>eaker or writer. 
 
 16. Our Lord, and, after Him, the Apos- 
 
 tles, lay down the principle that 
 past history may represent that 
 which is to happen hereafter. 
 
 17. Prophecies which our Lord and the 
 
 Ajjostles interpret as specially 
 spoken in reference to Christ and 
 Christianity — Belief of ortiiodox 
 writers and Eationalist divines 
 that Christ claimed to be tlie 
 Messiah foretold l)y the Prophets. 
 
 18. Genuineness of the Book of Daniel. 
 
 19. Genuineness of Isaiah xl.-xlvi. 
 
 20. Interpretation of Isaiah liii. 
 
 21. Conclusion. 
 
PROPHECY. 
 
 1. Hebrew prophecy, like tlie Hebrew people, stands without 
 parallel in the history of the world. Other nations have had 
 their oracles, diviners, angnrs, sootlisayers, necromancers. The 
 Hebrews alone have possessed prophets, and a prophetic litera- 
 ture. It is useless, therefore, to go to the manticism of the 
 heathen to get light as to the nature of Hebrew prophecy.* 
 To follow the Eabbis of the twelfth and thirteenth centuries 
 is just as vain. The only reliable sources of information on the 
 subject are the Scriptures of the Old and New Testament. 
 They contain documents written when the voice of prophecy 
 still was heard, and it would be strange indeed to interpret 
 coeval testimonies by theories devised by heathenized Kabbis,t 
 nearly two thousand years after Hebrew prophecy had ceased. 
 Even a novice in the study of the Bible perceives the falsehood 
 of the Eabbinic assertions, that the prophetic gift dwells only in 
 a man who is learned, powerful, and rich ; and that no man can 
 attain to it except by study, combined with a certain requisite 
 mental conformation.^ The attempt to explain prophetic inspi- 
 ration by the phenomena of animal magnetism, seems to be still 
 farther removed from sobriety of judgment, and Christian reve- 
 rence.§ From the Old Testament alone, illustrated by the New, 
 
 * Vitiinga, Typiis doctr. prophet., in 
 ' Observationes Sacrse,' lib. vii. p. 4 ; 
 Carpzov, 'Introd. ad Libr. Bibl.V. T.,' 
 Part iii., p. 7; Knobel, ' Pioplietis- 
 mus der Hebriler,' i. 21 ; C. I. Nitscli, 
 • System der Christlichcn Lehre,' p. 
 88 ; Tholuck, ' Die Propheten uud ihre 
 Weissagungen,' p. 1, 73. 
 
 t Maimonides and bis scbool, ■whom 
 Smith and others follow, departed from 
 the ancient tradition, and endeavoured 
 to remodel Judaism according to the 
 Greek philosophy, with which they 
 became acquainted through Arab trans- 
 lations. Maimonides himself is remark- 
 able for his determined effort to elimi- 
 nate the supernatui'al from the Old 
 
 Testament, and may in truth be re- 
 garded as the father of Kationalist 
 Theology. 
 
 J 'Doctor Perplexorum,' p. ii. c. 3. 
 Buxtorfs Translation, p. 284 ; ' Hil- 
 choth Yesode Hattorah,' c. vii. ; Sal- 
 vador, ' Institutions de Muise,' i. p. 
 192-197. 
 
 § " The word which we, after the 
 LXX., translate Prophets, means in the 
 Hebrew, Inspired. Their original de- 
 signation was Seers, men who saw. 
 Clairvoyance (the so-called magnetic 
 sight) and prophesying in the ecstatic 
 state were of remote antiquity amongst 
 the Jews and their neigiibonrs ; and 
 Joseph, a man of a waking spirit, \\ho, 
 G 
 
82 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay III. 
 
 is it possible to learn the nature of prophecy and the prophetic 
 office. To interpret the prophetic writings with accui-acy, a 
 familiar acquaintance ^vitli the original language is necessary. 
 But a correct idea of the prophet's Avork and ofBce, and of the 
 nature of prophecy in general, may be obtained from any ordinary 
 translation of the Old Testament by any intelligent reader. 
 Tiie student of the English Bible may not be able to explain 
 the meaning of a rare Hebrew word, or an obscure and doubtful 
 passage, nor to perceive beauties and peculiarities, observable 
 only in the original. He must also occasionally miss the force 
 of particular expressions, and sometimes put up with an incor- 
 rect rendering. But he can, -without any Hebrew, understand 
 the character and history of Moses or Elijah, and know that 
 Elijah foretold a drought, or Elisha sudden plenty : that IMieaiah 
 was a true prophet, and the son of Chenaanah an impostor, just 
 as easily and correctly as Gesenius, or Ewald, or Bunsen. 
 
 For this no modern criticism is necessary, and in such matters 
 no reader of the Authorized Version ought to allow himself to be 
 mystified or silenced by an appeal to foreign critics, much less 
 to be disturbed in his faith, as if he could not apprehend the 
 general teaching of the Bible without profound knowledge of 
 the Semitic dialects, and the latest results of German criticism. 
 All these things are good in their place, but the great and 
 essential outlines of Divine truth, v/hether in reference to Deity, 
 or piety, or morality, or prophecy, are perceptible without them ; 
 and it would be just as reasonable to assert that without these 
 things we cannot understand the Ten Commandments, as to tell 
 the reader of the Bible in the vernacular, that he cannot grasp 
 the scope of prophecy, or know whether it has been fulfilled, 
 imtil he has spent years in the study of Hebrew^ and of modern 
 commentators. The essential featin-es of prophetic truth are 
 too boldly drawn to be hidden by the veil of translation, and 
 have been as plain and visible in all ages to the Greek, the 
 Syrian, and the Arab, as to the polyglot critic of the nineteenth 
 century. A knowledge of the Hebrew text, indeed, enables its 
 possessor at once to reject such cavils as those lately revived,* 
 
 as a growing youtli, possessed a natural I bowl." — Baron Bunseu, Gott in der 
 gift of second sight, was able as man Geschichte, p. 141. 
 to see visions in his cup, just as the * ' Essays and Kcvicws,' p. G8, 69. 
 
 Arab boy in Cairo still sees them in his I 
 
Essay III.] 
 
 PROPHECY. 
 
 83 
 
 tliat tlie Hebrew words in Ps. ii. 12. for "Kiss the Son," ougiit 
 to be translated " Worsliip purely," or that the Hebrew word 
 for "pierce," in Ps. xxii. 17. oughf to be rendered "Like a 
 lion," or that in Isaiah is. 6. (Heb. 5.), the words " Mighty God " 
 ought to be "A strong and mighty one." But the English 
 reader still sees from the context, in spite of these alterations, 
 that the 2nd Psalm speaks of an universal King, greater than 
 David, that the 22nd Psalm portrays one persecuted to death 
 by man, delivered by God, after whose deliverance "All the 
 ends of the earth remember themselves and turn unto the Lord," 
 and that in Isaiah ix., the prophet speaks of a marvellous child, 
 who is also " The Everlasting Father, of the increase of whose 
 government there shall be no end, to order and establish his 
 kingdom for ever ;" words amply suflScient to teach the reader 
 that Isaiah spake of no mere man.* The Hebrew student is 
 astonished, in the present state of Biblical learning, to see such 
 objections resuscitated. He knows that the translation " Wor- 
 ship purely " was invented by Eabbinic controversialists ; that 
 the version " Kiss the Son " is defended even by such an oppo- 
 nent of Christianity as Abeu Ezra amongst the Rabbis, and by 
 De Wette amongst the Rationalists ; and adopted by Moses Men- 
 delssohn, Fiirst, and his fellow translators, who have " Huldigt 
 dem Sohne :" and that the ancient Jews interpreted tliis Psalm 
 of the Messiaht — that the rendering " Mighty God " is adopted 
 and defended by Hitzig and KnobeLJ But, without depreciating 
 the value of Hebrew learning and criticism, it may be safely 
 asserted, that the nature and teaching of prophecy may be 
 collected from any tolerable version : and, therefore, the Apostles, 
 guided from above, did not perplex the Gentiles by discussing 
 the differences between the LXX and the Hebrew Text, but 
 wisely used, and sanctioned the use of that Greek Version, which 
 
 * Lutlier, who translates " Ej-aft, 
 Held," had no doubts as to the right 
 interpretation of the passage. 
 
 t This is confessed even by Eashi, 
 in the 11th centmy, who says, " Our 
 Eabbis interpreted this Psalm of the 
 Messiah ;" to which was added in the 
 older copies of his commentary, " But 
 in order to answer the heretics, it is 
 better to interpret it of David,"' words 
 still found in the commentary on the 
 xxist Psalm. 
 
 X Knobel's reasons for rejecting the 
 translation " strong and mighty one," 
 are thus expressed: — " Because ?ii never 
 occurs as an adjective, and if adjective, 
 ought to be after ni3|l. The phrase 
 1135 7X 'mighty God' occurs x. 21. 
 Elsewhere also ")i3il is adjective to ?X, 
 as e.g. Deut. x. 17 ; Jer. xxxii. 18." — 
 ' Commentary on Isaiah,' p. 73. 
 
 G 2 
 
84 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay III, 
 
 they found provideutially prepared, abeady partially known 
 amongst the heathen, and at that time regarded with reverence 
 by the Jews. They understood how Divine Truth may be 
 apprehended by the unlearned in a translation, and hidden 
 from the wise and prudent with all their knowledge of the 
 original.* With regard to Hebrew prophecy, there are three 
 things equally perceptible in the original and in the versions, 
 and at present specially requiring attention. These are : — the 
 supernatural mission of the Prophets, their power to predict 
 future events, and their announcements of a coming Saviour. 
 
 2. A prophet is a man specially called and sent by God to 
 communicate a Divine revelation.f This is apparent in the first 
 place from the names given to those Divine messengers. They 
 are called Prophets, seers, men of God, men of the Spirit. The 
 Hebrew word for prophet (Nabi) is, according to its etymology, 
 supposed by some to signify " an inspired person ;" by others, 
 with more probability, " An utterer or announcer." j Its mean- 
 ing, and that of the English word prophet, as used in the Old 
 Testament, are fully explained by a comparison of two passages 
 in the book of Exodus : the first vii. 1, " See I have made thee 
 a God to Pharaoh, and Aaron thy brother shall be thy prophet." 
 The second, iv. 16, " And he shall speak for thee (A. V. be thy 
 spokesman), and thou, thou shalt be to him for a God." What 
 is prophet in the first is mouth in the second. Moses was to be 
 as God to Aaron, Aaron as prophet or mouth or spokesman to 
 Moses ; Moses to communicate to Aaron, and Aaron to declare the 
 message to Pharaoh and the people. According to this, prophet 
 means the declarer or interpreter of the Divine will. He is 
 one who does not speak of himself {d(f) eavrov), the workings of 
 his own mind, but declares the mind and will of God, and 
 speaks what he receives from without. § 
 
 * Matt. xi. 25. 
 
 I Et hue forte respoxenint Patrcs 
 ccclesise cum Prophetas QeoK6yovs, re- 
 rum divinarum consultos dixerc. Ita 
 P.siudo-Dionysius, cap. 8, deCccl. Hie- 
 rare'lii;!, p. 95. twj/ @fo\6ywy els, d 
 
 Zaxapias, &c in quem locum 
 
 ita commentatur Pachymercs, p. 104. 
 Tovs Upovs irpo<priTas &eo\6yovs (/)7j(TiC, 
 d)S xSyovs Qeov ri/MV d^ayyeWovras. 
 Carpzov, ' lutrod. ad T.ib. I?ibl. V. T.,' 
 Part iii. p. 4. 
 
 t Carpzov, ' Introd. ad Lib. Bibl. 
 v. T.,' Part iii., p. 3. Sec Gcsciiius, 
 ' Thesaurus ;' Winer's edition of ' Simo- 
 nis Lexicon ;' Knobel's ' Prophetismus,' 
 i. 103 ; Bleek, ' Einlcitung in das alte 
 Testament,' p. 412; Thwluck, 'Die 
 Prophcten und ihre Weissaguugcn,' p. 
 24. 
 
 § Heidegger says, " N^33 proprie est 
 omnis verborum alieuorum, ex alieno, 
 non proprio nutu et voluntate pronun- 
 ciator, orator, qui, ut E. D. Kimchi lo- 
 
SAY III.] 
 
 PEOPHECY. 
 
 85 
 
 3. The title " Seer " * refers rather to the mode of receiving 
 the Divine communication than to its utterance to others. It 
 is derived from Numb. xii. 6, "If there be a prophet among 
 you, I the Lord will make myself known to him in a vision 
 (sight, ni<"1!!D)." The Seer is therefore one who receives a Divine 
 communication in a vision. His vision is not the offspring of 
 his own mind, but the Lord makes himself known (i?nnn) to 
 the prophet. It is something received from without. " Her 
 prophets also find no vision from the Lord (mrT'D)" (Lam. ii. 9). 
 But the w^ord " vision " does not necessarily imj^ly ecstasy or 
 symbolic representation. It is often equivalent to " The word 
 of the Lord," as, in 1 Sam. iii. 1, " The word of the Lord was 
 precious in those days ; there was no open vision (]lTn)." Samuel 
 was a Seer, but " the Lord revealed himself to Samuel by the 
 word of the Lord" (1 Sam. iii. 21). So the first chapter of 
 Isaiah, which is destitute of all symbolic imagery, is called 
 " The vision (IITn) of Isaiah ;" whilst the second chapter has as 
 its title, "■ The word that Isaiah, the son of Amos, smv (nin)."-}- 
 
 4. The designation, "man of God," also implies intimacy, 
 communion with God, or commission from Him, as the similar 
 phrases, " men of David," " men of Hezekiah," meant those who 
 were in attendance on those monarchs, whom they employed ; 
 and, in this sense, the prophets are called " the servants of 
 Jehovah," and " the messengers of God " (2 Chron. xxxvi. 16). 
 
 5. The phrase " man of the Spirit, PIT)," (Hos. ix. 7) explains the 
 agency by which the communication came, namely, by the Spirit 
 of God ; as St. Peter says, " Prophecy came not at any time by 
 the will of man, but holy men of God spake, being borne away 
 {(^epofjuevoi) by the Holy Ghost " (2 Pet. i. 21). The Old Tes- 
 tament also makes this impetus of the Spirit the essence 
 of prophecy. In Numb. xi. is related the appointment of the 
 seventy elders to assist Moses. The Lord says, " I will take of 
 the Spirit which is upon thee, and will put it upon them ;" and, 
 
 quitur, Echo ad instar, nihil profert 
 aut profatur, nisi quod prius accepit." 
 ' Exerc. Bibl.' viii. § 27. Augustine, 
 " Nihil aliud esse Prophetam Dei, nisi 
 enunciatorem verborum Dei homini- 
 bus." Oarpzov, ibid., p. 8. Comp. Spi- 
 noza, ' Tractat. Theolog. Polit.' c. 1, who 
 is, with regard to prophecy, more candid 
 than the " 
 
 * For this there are two Hebrew 
 words used, but which are equivalent 
 in sense. They are both found in Isai. 
 XXX. 10, " which say to the Seers (D''N1"I) 
 see not, and to the prophets (lit. Seers, 
 D^nri) prophesy not (see not) unto us." 
 
 t Comp. Ps. Ixxxix. 20 ; Amos i. 1 ; 
 Obad. i, 1 ; Hab. ii. 2, 3 ; Nahum, i. 1. 
 
8G AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay III. 
 
 accordingly, in the 25th verse, it is said, " The Lord came down 
 in a cloud, and spake unto him, and took of the Spirit that was 
 upon him, and gave it to the seventy elders ; and it came to 
 pass that when the Spirit rested upon them, they prophesied 
 and did not cease." In hke manner, with regard to Eldad and 
 Medad, '• The Spirit (min) rested upon them . . . and they pro- 
 phesied in the camp." That which caused these two men, as 
 well as the .seventy elders, to prophesy, was the resting of the 
 Spirit ujjon them, and, therefore, Moses makes this resting of 
 the Spirit equivalent to the gift of prophecy. " Would God 
 that all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord 
 would put his Spirit upon them." * From this passage alone we 
 learn, 1st, That it is the resting of the Spirit of the Lord upon 
 a man that makes that man a prophet. It was not the spirit 
 of Moses, but the Spirit that was upon Moses, that was given to 
 the seventy elders, that which Moses himself calls " the Spirit 
 of the Lord." We learn, in the next place, that it is the 
 Lord who gives the Spirit. Moses was not able to confer it, 
 and it was given altogether independently of Moses to the 
 two men, not present at the tabernacle. The persons upon 
 whom it was conferred, did not choose themselves, and did 
 not take the gift by theu' own wUl. Similar instruction is 
 derived from the liistory of Saul. Samuel (1 Sam. x. 6) said 
 to him, " The Spirit of the Lord will come upon thee, and 
 
 thou shalt prophesy with them and when they came thither 
 
 to the hill, behold a company of prophets met him, and tlie 
 Spirit of God came upon him, and he prophesied among them." 
 It does not appear that he had any previous qualifications, or 
 preparations, or training, as required by Maimonides ; nor yet 
 his servants (1 Sam. xix. 20), of whom it is said, " The Spirit 
 of God was upon the messengers of Saul, and they also pro- 
 phesied." And so, when he came himself on that occasion, 
 certainly in no pious frame of mind, the Spirit came on him also, 
 and he, hke his messengers, prophesied involuntarily. They were 
 (j)ep6/j,evoi, borne away by the Holy Ghost, just as the Avicked 
 Balaam prophesied when " the Spirit of God came upon him," 
 and Caiaphas unwittingly uttered a Divine oracle concerning the 
 vicarious death of the Lord. " And this spake he not of 
 
 Compare Joel ii. 2S. In the Hob. Text, iii. 1. 
 
Essay III.] PEOPHECY. 87 
 
 himself, dcj) eavrov, but being Higli Priest that year, he pro- 
 phesied " (John xi. 51).* 
 
 6. This view is confirmed by the Scripture contrast of the 
 false prophet. He is described as one who is not sent by 
 the Lord, and who has not the Spirit of God, but speaks out 
 of his own heart his own imaginations. " They speak a 
 vision of their own heart, and not out of the mouth of the 
 Lord — I sent them not, nor commanded them." f " They pro- 
 phesy out of their own hearts — they follow their own spirit, 
 and have seen nothing. They have seen vanity (t^W) and 
 lying divination, saying, The Lord saith ; and the Lord hath 
 not sent them : and they have made others to hope that they 
 would confirm (fulfil, D'lf^^) the word." J And therefore, even 
 the Great Prophet of the Chm-ch dwells frequently upon the 
 fact that He is sent, and that His doctrine is not His own. 
 " My doctrine is not mine, but His that sent me. If any mau 
 will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, whether it be 
 from God, e/c rou ©eou, or whether I speak of myself, aTr e/xavrov. 
 He that speaketh of himself, dcf) eavrov, seeketh his own glory," § 
 As, therefore, a true prophet is one who is sent by God, who 
 runs not of himself, upon whom the Spirit of God rests, who 
 speaks the word of God and not his own; and as there 
 were pretenders, whom God did not send, whose v/ords were not 
 inspired by His Spirit, a test, whereby one could be distinguished 
 from the other, was necessary both for the satisfaction of the 
 prophet himself, and for the protection of the people from 
 imposture. To have been trained in the schools of the prophets 
 (for a time there were such schools ||) was not enough to con- 
 stitute a man a prophet. The prophetic commission could not 
 be given by the schoolmaster, nor could the doctrines of men, 
 or their instruction, communicate a Divine message, so as to 
 
 * Comp. 2 Sam. xxiii. 2 ; 1 Kings, I circumstantial information is found in 
 xxii. 24 ; 2 Clirou. xxiv. 20 ; Isai. Ixi. 1 ; the Old Testament. Schools of the 
 Jer. i. 9 ; Ezek. xi. 5 ; Joel ii. 29 ; I prophets are mentioned only in the 
 
 (Heb. iii. 2) ; Mic. iii. 8, &c. &c 
 t Jer. xxiii. 16, 21, 32, and xiv, 14, 
 
 &c. 
 X Ezek. xiii. 2-9. 
 
 § John vii. lG-18 ; comp. Isai. Ixi. 
 'Concerning the origin, arrange 
 
 histories of the projihets Samuel, Eli- 
 jah, and Elisha, that is from 1100-900, 
 which period must tlierefore be re- 
 garded as the time of their existence." 
 Knobel, Prophetismus, ii. 30, 50. What 
 imaginative historians have written 
 
 ments, and dm-ation of the so-called I on this subject is, therefore, of little 
 schools of the prophets, no detailed or ! value. 
 
88 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay III. 
 
 make the speaker's word the word of the Lord. Neither 
 Deborah nor Huldah had thus received the prophetic call. 
 Indeed it does not appear that any of the great prophets had 
 been trained in those schools. Nothing less than an outward, 
 clear, unmistakable call of God could satisfy the mind and 
 conscience of the prophet himself. Neither inward persuasion, 
 nor dream, nor ecstasy, was in itself sufficient. Moses was 
 awake and in full possession of all his faculties when he saw 
 a bush burning but not consumed, and heard the voice of the 
 God of Abraham and Isaac and Jacob. Samuel thought that 
 Eli called, and went twice to the aged priest, before he knew 
 that it was the Lord's voice ; and was, therefore, fully roused 
 from slumber before he received the Divine message. Isaiah's 
 eyes were opened to see the Lord on his throne, and his ears 
 to hear the words " Whom shall I send, and who will go for us ?" 
 Jeremiah objected his youth, and did not accept the commission 
 until the Lord put forth his hand and touched his moutli. 
 Ezekiel felt that " the hand of the Lord was upon him." Amos 
 was a herdsman, and a gatherer of sycomore fruit, and the Lord 
 took him " as he followed the flock," and said, " Go, prophesy 
 unto my people Israel." There was a supernatm-al call. A spe- 
 cific message also was delivered, and therefore the prophet was 
 able to say, " Hear ye the word of the Lord," " Thus saith the 
 Lord." Even after this external and supernatural call, every time 
 the prophet uttered a new oracle, it was the result of a new com- 
 munication, and a special command. He was still unable to 
 prophesy at will. He might inquire of the Lord and ask counsel, 
 as Moses did in tlie case of the Sabbath-breaker, or of Zelophehad's 
 daughters, but had no permanent habilitation to declare the will 
 of God. Without this supernatural call, and without this specific 
 message, no one can, according to Scripture idiom, without great 
 confusion of mind, or wilful and dishonest abuse of language, be 
 said.to possess anything like prophetic inspiration. The Apostles 
 of the New Testament, called directly by the Lord Jesus Christ, 
 moved by His Holy Spirit, and entrusted with a specific message, 
 were and may be called prophets in the true sense of the word, 
 for they were able to affirm that the Gospel proclaimed of them 
 was " not of man, but by revelation of Jesus Christ ;" and they 
 communicated it " not in words, whicli man's wisdom teacheth, 
 but which the Holy Ghost teacheth." But to speak of Poets 
 
Essay III.] 
 
 PEOPHECY. 
 
 89 
 
 ancient or modern, or Philosoj)liers, or Lawgivers, as being in- 
 spired, like Moses or Isaiah, is simply to confound tilings Divine 
 and human, and to manifest great mistiness of apprehension, or 
 daring profanity of spirit. It is just as contrary to Scriptural 
 statement,* and as revolting to Christian reverence, as to identify 
 the prophetic character and calling with that of the demagogues of 
 Greece.t Poets and Philosophers exercise the high natural gifts 
 bestowed by God, according to the movings of their will or the im- 
 pulse of theu- genius ; apply, and sometimes abuse them, according 
 to the state of their hearts ; but do not pretend to any external call 
 from God, nor claim for their words the reverence due to the word 
 of the Almighty. The Hebrew prophets announced themselves 
 as God's messengers, claimed obedience and reverence for their 
 message as the word of God, and therefore carried with them 
 credentials for the satisfaction of the people. These credentials 
 were, according to the Hebrew Scriptures, miracle and prediction.X 
 To accredit Moses as His messenger to the children of Israel, He 
 empowered him to make three superhuman manifestations of 
 power, saying " If they will not believe thee, neither hearken to 
 the voice of the first sign, that they will believe the voice of the 
 latter sign." And therefore the prophet like unto Moses, also 
 appealed to His works as greater testimony than that of John the 
 Baptist,§ and says, " If I had not done among them the works 
 which none other man did, they had not had sin, but now have 
 they both seen and hated both me and my Father." The Law 
 of Moses also provided another criterion of a true or false projihet, 
 in the fulfilment or non-fulfilment of his word, "When a prophet 
 speaketh in the name of the Lord, if the thing follow not, nor 
 
 * " At quamvis scientia naturalis di- 
 vina sit, ejus tnrnen propagatores nou 
 possunt vocari prophets." — Spinoza, 
 Tractat. Theolog. Folit. Opera, torn. iii. 
 p. 16. 
 
 t Leo 'Vorlesungen,' J59, 168; Ber- 
 lin, 1828 ; Salvador, as above, p. 197. 
 
 % This is admitted even by D. F. 
 Strauss : " To accredit his Divine mis- 
 sion to the people, God enabled Moses 
 to perform certain acts beyond ordi- 
 nary human power ; and Moses refers 
 to this to prove that he did not come 
 
 of himself, but was sent by God 
 
 Hand in hand with miracle, 'prediction 
 appears in Biblical history as a creden- 
 tial of Kevelation. Thus in the Old 
 
 Testament God gives Moses a predic- 
 tion, the fulfilment of which should 
 certify his Divine mission (Exod. iii. 
 12). ... In the case of the prophets the 
 occurrence of wonderful events which 
 they had predicted is the proof of their 
 Divine commission (1 Kings xvii. 1, 
 xviii. 41, &c.). The prophets also, not 
 rarely, foretel the occurrence of some 
 event, soon to happen, that its occur- 
 rence may be a sign, that what they 
 have predicted concerning the distant 
 future is from God (1 Sam. ii. 34, x. 
 7, and 1 Kings xiii. 3, 2 Kings xix. 29 ; 
 Isai. vii. 2 ; Jer. xliv. 'Id)." —Glauhens- 
 lehre, vol. i. p. 86-89. / 
 
 § John XV. 24 ; comp. Matt. xi. 1-5./ 
 
90 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay III. 
 
 come to pass, that is the thing- which the Lord hath not spoken." 
 (Deut. xviii. 22.) To this Jeremiah alludes when he says, " The 
 prophet which projihesieth of peace, when the word of the pro- 
 phet shall come to pass, then shall the prophet be known, that 
 the Lord hath truly sent him " (Jer. xxviii. 9). 
 
 7. To declare the will of God, and deliver His message, 
 whether it regarded the past, the present, or the futm-e, was the 
 prophet's great duty. And therefore, when the Jewish lawgiver 
 was communicating moral or ceremonial precepts, received from 
 God, and when the Messiah, in his Sermon on the Mount, was 
 explaining the spirituality of the Law, they were, in the strict 
 sense of the word, pi-ophesyirig just as much as when Moses 
 predicted the destinies of Israel, and the Lord foretold the 
 destruction and treading down of Jerusalem. To have received 
 a call and message direct from God, and to deliver it, constituted 
 the essence of prophetism. But if we are to form our idea 
 from the Scriptures, we must admit that the Hebrew people 
 believed thaib the prophets were endowed with, or could attain 
 to, superhuman knowledge, for the benefit and advantage of His 
 people. This belief was rooted in their conception of the 
 Divine character. Whether we take the Hebrew Scrijitures as 
 inspired or not, it is an incontrovertible fact that the funda- 
 mental idea of the Hebrew religion is that Jehovah is a God 
 who reveals Himself to His creatures; that He has not left 
 the human race to grope their Avay to the regions of religion or 
 morality as they best can, but that from the beginning He has 
 taken His children by the hand, cared for their welfare, made 
 known to them His will, and marked out for them the way to 
 happiness. This idea runs through all the books of the Old 
 Testament, — Law, History, Psalms, Prophecy, — and is taken up 
 in the New Testament, where is the fullest revelation of the love 
 of our Heavenly Father to man. But the Hebrew believed not 
 only in God as one who reveals Himself for the benefit of the 
 race, but as the loving and watchful Father, who superintended 
 all the everyday concerns of each individual, and who, though 
 He dwelt in the high and holy place, yet had regard to the 
 lowly, and considered nothing too small or insignificant for His 
 care. This is evident in the prayer of Abraham's servant to be 
 guided to Eebekah, in the increase of Jacob's cattle, in Leah's 
 fruitfulness, in the answer to Hannah's prayer, not to mention 
 
Essay III.] PROPHECY. 91 
 
 many similar and well-known traits in tlie lives of God's ancient 
 saints. As, therefore, the Hebrew people, high and low, re- 
 garded the prophet as a messenger from God, enlightened and 
 instructed by the Holy Spirit, they ascribed to him a super- 
 natural knowledge and the power to give information not 
 attainable by human reasoning or sagacity — in fact the same 
 power possessed by the High Priest of procuring from God a 
 mhaculous response by means of the Urim and Thummim : and 
 as they believed in God as their Father, they trusted that He 
 was interested in all their troubles and anxieties, and would 
 not consider their temporal concerns too insignificant for His 
 gracious consideration. Hence it is recorded that Eebekah 
 went to inquire of the Lord respecting the subject of her 
 anxiety. David inquired of the Lord, by means of the ephod, 
 whether he should smite the Philistines and save Keilah ; and 
 again, whether the men of Keilah would deliver him into the 
 hands of Saul ; and received answers from the Lord. So Saul's 
 servants thought they might go to Samuel and inquire concern- 
 ing the lost asses. In like manner King Jehoshaj)hat wished 
 to inquire of the Lord, by means of a prophet, before he 
 ventm-ed into the battle against the Assyrians. And again, 
 when he and Jehoram were in difficulties from want of water, he 
 asked, " Is there not a prophet of the Lord here that we may 
 inquhe of the Lord by him ?" Even ungodly men like Zede- 
 kiah (Jer. xxi. 2, and xxxvii. 17), and the elders of Israel 
 (Ezek. siv. 1 — 7), or heathens like King Benhadad (2 Kings, 
 viii. 7, 8, &c.), believed in this power, and were glad, when 
 occasion requhed, to avail themselves of it. And there is not 
 only no intimation that they erred in making such inquiries, 
 but Joshua and the men of Israel are represented as having 
 done wrong because they made peace with the Gibeonites, and 
 " asked not counsel at the mouth of the Lord " (Josh. ix. 11). 
 And when Ahaziah sent to Ekron to inquire of Baal-zebub, 
 '•' the angel of the Lord said to Elijah the Tishbite, Arise, go up 
 to meet the messengers of the King of Samaria, and say unto 
 them, Is it not because there is not a God in Israel that ye go 
 to inquire of Baal-zebub, the god of Eki-on?" Indeed, some 
 Christian commentators of great name, as well as some of the 
 Eabbis, think that in the Law God has made special provision 
 for this sort of inquiry when He forbids them to be diviners or 
 
92 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay III. 
 
 eonsulters with familiar spirits, and promises them a prophet 
 like ]\Ioses to reveal His will (Deut. xviii. 10 — 19). It is certain 
 that Isaiah insists on the duty of inquiring of the Lord when 
 he says, " And when they shall say unto you, Inquire of the 
 familiar spirits, and of wizards who peep and mutter : Should 
 not a people inquire of their God ? For the living, should they 
 inquire of the dead?" (viii. 19.)* 
 
 In some of the cases just mentioned inquiry is made respecting 
 the future, and it is evident that David and Jehoshaphat, as 
 well as Zedekiah, believed that through the priest or the prophet 
 they could receive from God, respecting contingencies, answers 
 which the Divine prescience could alone supply ; that is, that 
 through the Divine help the priest or the prophet could predict 
 future events. This faith rested upon the doctrine of God as 
 taught in the Law, and exemplified in the whole of their previous 
 history. Before there were prophets God Himself predicted the 
 future. The announcement of the tlood to Noah and the limita- 
 tion of the day of grace to 120 years f are predictions. Noah 
 knew the future of the human race, and by the Divine instruction 
 was enabled to provide against the coming calamity. The 
 declaration, at a time when Abraham was childless, that his 
 posterity should be afflicted in a strange land for 400 years, but 
 that their enemies should be punished and they come forth with 
 great wealth, was clearly a prediction. Jacob is represented 
 as having on his death-bed predicted what should befal his 
 posterity " in futurity of days " {WDT^ r\''')ni^y). Joseph's inter- 
 pretation of Pharaoh's dreams was a prediction of the seven 
 years of plenty and of famine, and came from God as well as 
 the dreams. "What God is about to do he showeth unto 
 Pharaoh " (Gen. xl. 28). It is recorded of most of the prophets 
 mentioned in the historic books that they uttered predictions. 
 Deborah foretold the fate of Sisera. The man of God an- 
 
 * Lowth, and after him, Knobel, 
 translate the last clause, " Instead of 
 the living [God] sliould tliey inquire 
 of the dead [idols ?]," but contrary to 
 the parallelism. Tiie prophet is re- 
 monstrating against tlie practice of 
 inquiring of the spirits of de[)arted men. 
 31N is the spirit of a dead man, and 
 therefore D^DD must refer to some- 
 thing similar. 
 
 t The words " Yet his days shall be 
 120 years " do not refer to a diminution 
 of the long life of the antediluvians, 
 nor to the subsequent measure of 
 human life, but to the length of the 
 day of grace given them to repent. 
 Such is the interpretation of tlie Tar- 
 gums, Lutiier, Calvin, and many of tlie 
 best modern commeJitators. See De- 
 litsch on Genesis, p. 237, 8. 
 
Essay III.] PROPHECY. 93 
 
 nounced to Eli the judgments coming upon liis family, and the 
 death of his sons in one day. Samuel confirmed this prediction 
 and declared its certain fulfilment, and it is remarked " that the 
 Lord let none of his words fall to the ground. And all Israel, 
 from Dan to Beersheba, knew that Samuel was accredited (or 
 verified ]^^<J) for a prophet to the Lord." Micaiah foretells the 
 defeat of the allied armies of Judah and Israel, and rests his 
 prophetic pretensions upon the fulfilment of what he had 
 announced. " If thou return at all in peace, the Lord hath 
 not spoken by me. And he said. Hearken, O people, every one 
 of you." Elijah predicted that there should be no rain but 
 according to his word, the death of Jezebel, the extermination of 
 Ahab's posterity. Elislia foretold the overtlu-ow of the Moabites, 
 the three defeats of the Syrians. All these things, as well as the 
 birth of Josiah, and the continuance of Jehu's posterity on the 
 throne of Israel to the fourth generation, are related as predic- 
 tions, in the ordinary sense of the word, — as supernatural com- 
 munications from the Lord, and the fulfilment specially noticed. 
 It may indeed be said, and has been said, that these predictions 
 and the narratives connected with them are mythical narrations, 
 written after the events when the historic substrata had had 
 time to be transmuted into the supernatural. But that, if true, 
 would not alter the fact that the Hebrews believed in the power 
 of the prophets to predict events by supernatural aid from on 
 high ; that this belief is inseparably connected with their ideas of 
 the Divine Being, and everywhere visible in tlie historical books 
 from Genesis to Nehemiah ; in fact that the power of predicting 
 future events is one of the essential features in the character of 
 a prophet. And as it is incontrovertibly a part of the popular 
 belief, so it is the doctrine of the prophets themselves, as re- 
 corded in their writings. It is hardly possible to open a page of 
 any book of the prophets on which there is not a prediction. 
 " By far the greatest portion of the prophetic discourses consists 
 in delineations of the future, or predictions referring partly to 
 the Jehovah people, and therefore to the kingdoms of Israel and 
 Judah, partly to foreign nations who came in contact with the 
 Hebrews, .... partly to individuals of the former, seldom of the 
 latter."* Amos lays it down as an axiom that the Lord reveals 
 
 Kiiobel's ' Proplietisuius,' i. 293. 
 
94 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay HI. 
 
 to the prophets his purposes before they are realized. " Surely 
 the Lord God will do nothing, but he revealeth his secret O^^D) 
 to his servants the prophets." (Amos iii. 7.) Upon which, 
 Hitzig says : " The prophet predicts the coming evil, which is 
 always an ordinance of Jehovah ; for Jehovah makes him ac- 
 quainted beforehand with that which He has decreed." Isaiah 
 makes the prediction of future events a distinguishing charac- 
 teristic and prerogative of Deity, and therefore a proof that the 
 God of Israel is the true and living God. " Remember the former 
 things of old : for I am God and there is none else ; I am God, 
 and there is none like me. Declaring futurity (n^inhi) from 
 former time, and from ancient times the things that are not yet 
 done " (xlvi. 9, 10) ; upon wliich words Knobel thus comments : — 
 " The better view consists in the knowledge that Jehovah, and 
 none besides, is God, that He is God and nothing like Him. To 
 this view they can easily come by remembering the former 
 things, that is, the prophecies formerly given, which are now 
 being fulfilled (xlii. 9). These j)rove Jehovah's foreknowledge, 
 and thereby His Godhead." In like manner Isaiah makes the 
 want of predictions amongst idolaters a proof that their gods are 
 no gods. " Produce your cause, bring forth your strong reasons, 
 saitli the King of Jacob. Let them bring them forth, and show 
 us what shall happen : Let them show the former things what 
 they be, that we may consider them and know the latter end of 
 them ; or declare for us things for to come. Show the things 
 that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods " 
 (xli. 21 — 23) ; where Gesenius says, " A new challenge to the idols 
 as in verse 1, &c., again with a reference to Cyrus, but also 
 with a reference to former predictions of the proj^hets, such as 
 the heathen had none to show." Knobel's words are still 
 stronger : — " Let them bring forth their proofs, especially that 
 one which rests upon correct prediction of the future ; for the 
 foreknowledge of the future is the peculiar attribute of God, and 
 proves Deity, on which account it was also the credential of the 
 true prophet. Deut. xviii. 21. Jer. xxviii. 9. And, on the 
 contrary, the idols never were able, nor are they now, to announce 
 the future. They should declare the things to come hereafter, 
 that is, what should afterward happen, and Jehovah will see and 
 recognise that they are gods, namely, when their prediction is 
 accomplished." In these places, and many more, it is taught 
 
Essay III.] 
 
 PROPHECY. 
 
 95 
 
 that Jeliovali gives predictions to His servants tlie prophets, and 
 also that He fulfils them. "He confirmeth the word of His 
 servants, and performeth the counsel of His messengers " (Isai. 
 xliv. 26) ; that by so doing He proves not only that the prophets 
 are true prophets, but that He Himself is the true God. We 
 have in fact the same proof of the truth of Divine Revelation 
 that has been urged in modern times from fulfilled prophecy, 
 and which has the highest possible sanction in the words of om- 
 Lord, " And now I have told you before it come to pass, that 
 when it is come to pass ye might believe." (John xiv. 29 : comp. 
 xiii. 9. and xvi. 4.) 
 
 ■ 8. It is evident that the Hebrew people believed that their 
 prophets could predict the future. The prophets themselves 
 affirm that they have the power and utter predictions. Were 
 they impostors, or did they deceive themselves ? That they 
 were iinpostors, is not believed by those Eationalists who have 
 given most attention to this subject, as Gesenius, Ewald, and 
 Knobel, and is disproved by their doctrine and then- life. 
 Concerning God they teach that He is One, the Lord, Creator 
 of the heavens and the earth. Everlasting, Almighty, Omniscient, 
 Free, All wise, Holy, a righteous Judge, a merciful Savioiu", the 
 Governor of the world, forgiving iniquity and sin.* Their 
 notion of the religion acceptable to Him is also equally free 
 from fanaticism and formality. They denounce those who 
 " draw near to God with their lips, but remove their heart far 
 from Him." They teach that to reform the life is better than 
 external demonstrations. "To what purpose is the multitude 
 of your sacrifices ? . . 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" (Isaiah i. 11 — 17). "I 
 will have mercy, not sacrifice." They proclaim that honesty, 
 mercy, and humiHty are the weightiest matters of the Law. 
 " What doth the Lord requhe of thee, but to do justly, and to 
 love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God?" (]Mic. vi. 8). To 
 preach such doctrine was their business ; and boldly to reprove 
 
 * See Isai. xl. 28, xliv. 6 ; Jer. x. 10, 
 xxiii. 23, 24 ; Isai. xiv. 24, 27 ; Jer. 
 xxxii. 19, xvii. 10 ; Hab. i. 13 ; Mai. 
 ii. 10 ; Isai. Ixiv. 8 ; Jer. xi. 20 ; Joel 
 
 ii. 13 ; Mic. vii. 18 ; Dan. ii. 28 ; Ezek. 
 xxxi. 9 ; Amos iii. 6 ; Ezek. xviii. 4 ; 
 Hos. xiii. 14, &c. &c. 
 
96 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay III. 
 
 all who lived in opposition to it, wlietlier kings, or priests, or 
 people, was their practice, and this without fee or reward, for 
 they received nothing for theii" prophesying, but often exposed 
 themselves to persecution and death. They sought not wealth, 
 or honour, or favour, or ease. They were temperate, self- 
 denying, patient, valiant for the truth, leaning upon God as 
 their stay, and looking to God alone for their reward. They 
 were neither morose ascetics, nor unlettered fanatics. Married 
 and living amongst the peoj^le, in cottages and in courts, they 
 discharged the ordinary duties of citizens. They cidtivated 
 letters, and have left a literature unique in the history of the 
 world ; if judged according to a human standard, unsurpassed 
 in genius, sublimity, grandeiu-; but in pm-ity and morality 
 unequalled by any nation in any age. This prophetic order 
 beginning, if reckoned from Samuel, nearly 400 years before 
 the birth of Rome, and closing when the bloom of Grecian 
 genius was only appearing, is, when compared with the state of 
 the world around them, a phenomenon as wonderful as the 
 power of prediction wliich they claimed. The best days of 
 Greece and Rome can furnish no heroes, patriots, or moral 
 teachers to compare with this long and Avonderful succession of 
 holy, disinterested, bold reprovers of vice and preachers of 
 virtue, unambitious examples of genuine patriotism, living for 
 the glory of God, and the good of man ; whose writings are so 
 imbued with imperishable and universal truth, that for nearly 
 twenty-four centuries after the death of the last of the goodly 
 fellowship, they have continued and still continue to touch the 
 hearts, and influence the faith, the thoughts and lives of the 
 wisest, greatest, and most excellent of the human race. That 
 such men could be deceivers, or that impostm-e could have 
 exercised a power so enduring, is impossible. That tliey could 
 have been self-deceiving enthusiasts is equally incredible. 
 Neither then- doctrine, nor their lives, nor their writings savour 
 of enthusiasm, nor can they be accounted for as mere ebullitions 
 of genius. Why did not the poetic inspu-ation and colossal 
 intellect of Greece produce similar results? Why did not 
 Euripides prophesy? Why did Plato never rise to moral 
 purity? * " It is because of the theocracy," say modern diviners. 
 
 * Of all the great writers of anti- I to the corruption of follin human na- 
 quity Plato is the most striking witness | ture, and the propensity of the grandest 
 
Essay III.] PROPHECY. 97 
 
 Moses founded a theocracy, and proplietism was tlie necessary 
 result. But this is only to remove the difficulty one step 
 farther back. Why did not the Spartan, or Athenian, or 
 Locrian lawgivers, or the royal disciple of Egeria found a 
 theocracy like that of Moses ? Whj did not their legislations 
 bring forth prophets? In a certain sense prophecy did arise 
 out of the original relation established between God and Israel. 
 The same Divine Being, who commanded the theocracy, gave 
 also the prophets, inspired them with their doctrines, revealed 
 to them the future, and enabled them to utter predictions, far 
 beyond the powers of human foreboding, sagacity or conjecture, 
 which by their fulfilment, of old and in the present times, 
 demonstrate that they were not self-deceiving enthusiasts, but 
 spake as they were moved by Him who knows the end from 
 the beginning. 
 
 9. It has indeed been said by foreign waiters, and lately 
 repeated in this coimtry, that the predictions arose out of the cir- 
 cumstances of the days in which the prophets lived, and do not 
 extend beyond the horizon of their times. The interpreter " can- 
 not quote Nahum denouncing ruin against Nineveh, or Jere- 
 miah against Tyre, without remembering that already the 
 Babylonian power threw its shadow across Asia, and Nebuchad- 
 nezzar was mustering his armies." * Some foreign critics, 
 though in the same spirit, take a different view of the occasion 
 of Nahum's prophecy, ascribing it to an attempt by the Medes 
 and their eastern allies. " This is the remarkable expedition," 
 says Ewald, speaking of the Medes and their oriental con- 
 federates under Phraortes, " which Nalium saw with his own 
 eyes, when, predicting the approaching end of Nineveh, he wrote 
 his still extant oracle ; he lived in Alqush, somewhat farther 
 east of the Tigris, and was therefore able, in that place, to see 
 the whole host as it advanced against Nineveh."t The latter 
 supposition, that Nahum lived near Nineveh, is for good reasons 
 rejected by Knobel, who affirms that he lived at Elkosh in 
 
 intellect, when left to itself, to exten- 
 uate the foulest and most odious vice. 
 In notliini:; does the superiority of He- 
 brew ethics shine out more brightly. 
 See Wuttkc, ' Haudbuch der Christli- 
 chen Sittenlehre,' pp. 55-67. At tlie 
 same time the mercy inculcated in the 
 
 prophets may be favourably contrasted 
 with tlie Greek doctrine concerning 
 slaves, incurables, cripples, exposure of 
 children, abortion, suicide, &c. 
 
 * ' Essays and Reviews,' p. 68. 
 
 t ' Geschichte Israel's,' iii. 389. See 
 also Knobel's ' Prophetismus,' ii. 212. 
 H 
 
98 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay HI. 
 
 Galilee, and, therefore, did not see the Median power advancing 
 against the Assyrian capital. With regard to the relative 
 strength of the Babylonian and Median powers in comparison 
 with that of the Assyrian empire at that time, there was nothing 
 to lead the prophet to anticipate that either the one or the other 
 was able to take Nineveh, or overthrow the Assyrian monarchy, 
 but the contrary. According to Knobel, who, in the eyes of 
 Kationalists, is an unexceptionable witness, Nahum wrote this 
 prophecy between the years 713 and 711 B.C. Nineveh was not 
 overthrown until about 612.* Just about the time when Nahum 
 wrote, or, according to others, three or fom- years later,t the 
 Medes under Deioces revolted from the Assp-ians, and set up an 
 independent monarchy. Their power at that time could not 
 have been very formidable, for iifty years later, when the Median 
 empire had been consolidated by the long and wise government 
 of Deioces, it was still unable to cope with the xVssyrians, by 
 whom their army was utterly defeated, their king slain, and 
 their capital taken. The effort of Phi-aortes was equally unsuc- 
 cessful, and therefore Hitzig says, " The attack of Phraortes is 
 not a sufficient ground [for the confident tone of the prophecy]. 
 The Assyrians destroyed him and. his whole host. The capital, 
 which Ewald supposes to have been vigorously besieged, does 
 not appear to have been approached by any danger of the ldnd."| 
 The Babylonians Avere just as little a match for the Assyrians, 
 for, some fifty years before, Esarhaddon had seized Babylon, 
 and reunited it to the Assyrian monarchy. § When, then, Nahum 
 wrote, the shadow of the Babylonian or Median power was not 
 such as to cause much alarm for the existence of Nineveh. 
 Notwithstanding the loss of an army of 185,000 men, the Assy- 
 rian power was still the greatest in the world ; and whilst it was 
 still the greatest, whilst the kingdom of Babylon was still so 
 inferior as to be unable to undertake anything against it by 
 itself, and was therefore glad to seek the alliance of Hezekiah, 
 one hundi-ed years before the event, Nahum predicted the siege 
 
 * According to Piideaiix ; but accord- 
 ing to Usher, 626. Weber ('Weltge- 
 schichte,' i. 47) places the total destruc- 
 tion of Nineveh in 606. 
 
 t According to Knobel, the Medes 
 revolted in the years immediately pre- 
 ceding 710, and made Deioces king, 
 and he reigned from 710 on. Comp. 
 
 M. von Niebuhr, ' Goschichte Assiir'a 
 und Bubefs,' pp. 177, 178. 
 
 X Hitzig's ' Minor Prophets,' p. 225. 
 Comp. von Niebuhr, pp. ISS, 189. 
 
 § According to Niebuhr, Sennache- 
 rib seized Babylon, and made Esar- 
 haddon viceroy, p. 177,8. 
 
Essay III.] PROPHECY. 99 
 
 and utter destruction of Nineveli. " And it sliall come to pass, 
 that all tliey that look upon thee shall flee from thee, and say, 
 Nineveh is laid waste . . . The gates of thy land shall be set 
 wide open unto thine enemies ; the fire shall devour thy bars. 
 Draw the waters for the siege, fortify thy strong holds ; go into 
 clay, and tread the morter, mate strong the brickkiln. There 
 shall the fire devom- thee : the sword shall cut thee off, it shall 
 eat thee up like the cankerworm !" * Can any of those men who 
 now assert that this prophecy was a mere conjecture, tell us 
 what will be the fate of Paris or London one hundred years 
 hence ? They deny the miracle of supernatm-al foreknowledge, 
 and believe what is more incredible far ; that unassisted human 
 knowledge can lift the veil from futurity, and presage the des- 
 tinies of empires. Nahum is, however, not the only prophet 
 who uttered predictions concerning the Assyrians. " Assur had 
 not yet passed the Euphrates as a conqueror, and the victorious 
 Jeroboam still reigned in the kingdom of Israel, when the pro- 
 phetic voice of Hosea and Amos already threatened their 
 countrymen with the scourge of Assyria. Amos vi. 14, vii. 17 ; 
 Hos. X. 7, 8, xiv. 1. Some years before the fall of Samaria, 
 Micah uttered these words : — ' What is the guilt of Jacob, is it 
 not Samaria ? And what are the idol-liigh places of Judah, are 
 they not Jerusalem ? Therefore I will make Samaria as an 
 heap of the field, and as plantings of a vineyard : and I will 
 pour down the stones thereof into the valley, and I will discover 
 the foundations thereof.' But for three years the Assyi'ian was 
 obliged to lie before the well-fortified city before it fell. Con- 
 cerning Judah also Micah uttered the oracle : — 'Evil came down 
 from the Lord to the gate of Jerusalem,'! and thereupon begins 
 the announcement of the desolation of particular country towns 
 of Judea. But at that time Shalmaneser passed by the king- 
 dom of Judah in peace, and Hezekiah continued to pay his 
 tribute. It was not until the throne had got a new occupant in 
 Sennacherib that he ceased to do so, and thus brought the Assy- 
 rian host before the gates of Jerusalem, and caused the fulfil- 
 ment of the prophecy. But long before this, when the 
 
 * Nalium iii. 7, 14, 15. 
 
 t He might have added " O thou 
 inhabitant of Lachish, bind the chariot 
 <to the swift beast ; she is the beginning 
 
 of the sin to tlie daughter of Zion : for 
 the transgressions of Israel were found 
 in thee." 
 
100 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay III. 
 
 unbelieving Ahaz called upon Tiglath Pileser for help against 
 Syria and Israel, Isaiali, wdth prophetic eye, looking far beyond 
 the then present, announced to him that through the King of 
 Assyi-ia danger should come upon him, and his father's house, 
 and his people, such as had not been since the division of the 
 kingdoms. (Isai. vii. 17, 18.) Ahaz himself sank into a state of 
 disgi-aceful Assyrian vassalage, and, perhaps, even experienced 
 the horrors of war in his own land. (2 Cliron. xxviii. 20.) But 
 in the days of Hezekiah the word of the prophet was fulfilled in 
 full measure by Sennacherib." * 
 
 But the accuracy of Micah's language and of Isaiah's pro- 
 phetic foreknowledge are worthy of attention. Micah foretels 
 utter destruction to Samaria ; to Judah only chastisement, 
 which should reach to the gate of Jerusalem, but no farther. 
 " For it is incurable, every one of her blows — it (the blow) 
 is come to Judah. He hath reached (3^3^ touched, or smitten) 
 
 as far as the gate of my people, to Jerusalem For 
 
 the inhabitant of Maroth Avaited carefully for good ; but evil 
 came down from the Lord to the gate of Jerusalem. 
 thou inhabitant of Lachish, bind the chariot to the swift 
 beast." From the history it aj>pears that the word of Micah 
 was exactly fulfilled. " In the fourteenth year of King Heze- 
 kiah, Sennacherib King of Assyria came up against all the 
 defenced cities and took them [Lachish among the number]. 
 And the King of Assyria sent Eabshakeh from Lachish to Jeru- 
 salem with a great army." (Isaiah xxxvi. 1, &c.) The land of 
 Judah was overrun ; the evil reached even to the gate of Jeru- 
 salem, for the city was invested ; but, in conformity with 
 Micah's words, it never entered the city — the Assyrian 
 power was broken, and the king returned by the way he 
 came, as Isaiah had foretold. There is no doubt about the 
 predictions, or the fact that they were uttered before the 
 event, nor yet about the fulfilment. In the time of Ahaz, 
 Isaiah, who had also foretold the chastisement to be inflicted on 
 Judah by the Assyrians, expressly announced a mnaculous 
 destruction of the Assyrian host. " Therefore shall the Lord, 
 the Lord of Hosts, send among his fat ones leanness ; and under 
 his glory He shall kindle a burning like the burning of a fire. 
 
 Tlioluck, ' Die Propbetcu uud ihre Woissaguugcii,' p. 83, S-i. 
 
Essay IN.] PROPHECY. 101 
 
 And the light of Israel shall be for a fire, and his Holy One for 
 a flame : and it shall biu-n and devour his briers in one day ; 
 and shall consume the glory of his forest and of his fruitful field 
 both soul and body, and they shall be like the pining away of a 
 sick man," &c. (Isai. x. 16-19.) And, again, xxx. 27-32, Isaiah 
 also predicts that the Assyrian shall be broken in his land at 
 least thirty years before the event. That the Assyrian power 
 should be broken was then improbable ; that it should be broken 
 on the mountains of Judah more improbable still, beyond human 
 conjectm-e, and yet it was accomplished. The prediction is 
 found Isai. xiv. 24-27. " The Lord of Hosts hath sworn, saying. 
 Surely as I have thought, so shall it come to pass ; and as I 
 have purposed so shall it stand : that I will break the Assyrian 
 in my land, and upon my mountains tread him under foot : then 
 shall his yoke depart from off them, and his burden depart from 
 off their shoulders. This is the purpose that is purposed upon 
 the whole earth ; and this is the hand that is stretched out upon 
 all nations, for the Lord of Hosts hath purposed, and who shall 
 disannul it ? And his hand is stretched out, and who shall turn 
 it back ?" Modern, even sceptical, criticism assigus this fragment 
 to Isaiah, and considers it as a part of the prophecy beginning 
 at X. 5, and going on to the end of chapter xii. The wording is 
 remarkable. It implies miracle, and by miracle the Assyrian 
 host was destroyed : the fulfilment is not only narrated in the 
 history, but recorded in several Psalms, and von Niebuhr shows 
 how, notwithstanding the continuance of Sennacherib's empire, 
 and its prosperity under Esarhaddon, the Assyrian power was 
 then really " broken." 
 
 With regard to Assyria's successor, Babylon, there are pre- 
 dictions equally sure. That one hundred and fifty years 
 before the event, the Babylonian captivity was foretold in 
 the most unequivocal and remarkable language by Isaiah, is 
 as certain as any fact in history. In the xxxixth chapter of 
 tliat prophet we read that on Hezekiah's recovery Merodach 
 Baladan, King of Babylon, sent to congratulate him. Hezekiah 
 vaingloriously exhibited to him all his wealth. Isaiah was soon 
 at hand to rebuke his vanity, and announce the Lord's purpose 
 concerning Hezekiah's posterity. " Hear the word of the Lord 
 of Hosts : Behold the days come, that all that is in thine house, 
 and that which tliy fathers have laid up in store until this day, 
 
102 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay III. 
 
 shall be carried to Babylon : nothing shall be left, saitli the 
 Lord. And of thy sons that shall issue from thee, which thou 
 shalt beget, shall they take away : and they shall be eunuchs in 
 the palace of the King of Babylon." It is certain that Nabo- 
 nassar had shaken off the Assyrian yoke, and made Babylon an 
 independent kingdom, and that some twelve years after his 
 death reigned Merodach Baladan.* The genuineness of the 
 chapter in Isaiah has never been doubted. The circumstances of 
 Babylon were not then such as to raise any conjecture respect- 
 ing its future greatness. It was independent, but not superior to 
 Assyria ; on the contrary, as we have already said, Babylon was 
 soon after reduced again to Assyrian obedience, 
 
 ]\Iicah also predicted the captivity and the deliverance from 
 Babylon. Ch. ii. 10, he says, " Arise ye and dejDart : for this is not 
 your rest : Because it is polluted it shall destroy you even with 
 a sore destruction ;" iii. 12, he announces that Jerusalem shall 
 be ploughed as a field, Jerusalem become heaps, and the temple 
 and its place be desolate ; iv. 10, he says, " Thou shalt go forth 
 out of the city, thou shalt dwell in the field, and thou shalt go 
 even to Babylon : there shalt thou be delivered : there the Lord 
 shall redeem thee from the hand of thine enemies." This pre- 
 diction is the more remarkable, because, as we have seen, he 
 predicts the overrunning of the land of Judah by the Assyrians, 
 declares that the evil should only come to the gate of Jerusalem ; 
 and V. 5, 6, foretels the deliverance in the land of Israel. " This 
 one (It [the Messiah, the Son of God] shall be the peace, when 
 the Assp'ian shall come into our land," and announces the 
 wasting of the land of Assyria.! He could not, therefore, have 
 expected that Assyria was to bring them to Babylon ; and still 
 less that at Babylon they should be delivered. Micah pro- 
 phesied before the destruction of Samaria, i.e. before 724, that is, 
 about a hundred and forty years before the destruction by Ne- 
 buchadnezzar, and consequently about two liundred before the 
 deliverance from Babylon. J 
 
 10. The mention of Babylon reminds us of another remarkable 
 and indubitable prediction as remarkably fulfilled, and the ful- 
 
 * Nic'bulir, pp. 4G, 47, and 169. j writings admitted to be genuine, tlie 
 
 t IMic. i. 9, ii. 4, 5, 10, vii. 13. main objection against the genuineness 
 
 j Tliohick remarks well, that as the j of Isai. xiii. xiv. and xl.-ixvi. is re- 
 
 r>ibylonisli captivity is foretold both | moved. 
 
 by Isaiali and Micah, and yet tlieir ] 
 
Essay III. j PROPHECY. 103 
 
 filment of wliich shows the groimdlessness of recent insinim- 
 tions. One of these was noticed above. " He cannot quote 
 
 Jeremiah [denouncing ruin against Tyre] without 
 
 remembering that already the Babylonian power tln-ew its 
 shade across Asia, and Nebuchadnezzar was mustering his 
 armies." But surely the writer of these words could not have 
 forgotten that the ruin of Tyre by the Chaldeans had been pre- 
 dicted long before the days of Jeremiah. In the twenty -third 
 chapter of Isaiah is found the burden of Tyre. The siege, 
 the interruption of her commerce, the flight of her citizens, and 
 the lamentations of her mariners and her colonies, are all 
 graphically foretold here — and even the authors of the ruin are 
 named. In the thirteenth verse, A.V., we read, " Behold the 
 land of the Chaldeans. This people was not till the Assyrian 
 founded it for them that dwell in the wilderness : they set up 
 the towers thereof, they raised up the palaces thereof ; and he 
 brought it to ruin." There are various translations of this verse,* 
 but that the Chaldeans are predicted as the destroyers of Tyi-e 
 is admitted by some of the highest modern authorities. Knobel 
 says, " Beliold, the land of the Chaldeans. With the word 
 'Behold' the author introduces something new to which he 
 directs special attention. That something is the destroyers of 
 Tp-e whom he is about to name." Gesenius has " The sense 
 of verse 13 is — Behold, this people of the Chaldees, a little 
 while ago inhabitants of the deserts, to whom the Assyrians first 
 assigned settled habitations and made it a people : this liitherto 
 insignificant people, scarcely deserving mention, shall be the 
 instrument of the destruction of the ancient world-wide famous 
 city of Tyre." If this be the sense, as is generally agreed, then 
 we have a prediction far sui'passing the powers of human fore- 
 sight, and not suggested by existing circumstances. The deniers 
 of prediction feel this, and therefore use the most violent means 
 to get rid of it, not scrupling to alter the text and change the 
 meaning of the Hebrew words. Even the great Ewald is not 
 above this violence. AYithout a shadow of critical support he 
 would for " Chaldeans " substitute " Canaanites," and interpret 
 
 * Hitzig has 
 Behold, the land of the Chaldeans, 
 The people there, that was uo people. 
 Assur created it for the inhahitauts of 
 
 the deserts. 
 
 They erect their castles, 
 Destroy her palaces. 
 Make her a heap of ruin. 
 
104 AIDS TO FAITH. [K^say III. 
 
 " Behold, the land of the Cauaanites (the Phrcnicians), this 
 people is no more, Assur has made it a desolation ; they (the 
 Phoenicians) erected their country villas, they built their palaces, 
 he made it a ruin." I. Olshausen is guilty of still greater 
 violence : he would strike out of the verse a number of words at 
 the beginning, including, of course, " Chaldeans." Meier pro- 
 poses to substitute " Kittiim " for " Chaldeans," and to strike out 
 the latter part of the verse : all which criticism Knobel un- 
 ceremoniously calls " bodenlose Willkiihr." Others would 
 get rid of the whole . as ungenuine, not written by Isaiah, 
 but by some one in the time of Jeremiah and Ezekiel.* 
 Knobel and Gesenius get rid of the difficulty by finding the 
 event alluded to in Shalinaneser's attempt on Tyre, when he 
 subdued the whole of continental Phoenicia, but was unable to 
 take New Tyre on the island, and established a blockade for five 
 years. The Chaldeans, they say, served, and were some of the 
 best troops, in the Assyrian army. But this is also to do violence 
 to the text. The prophet does not say that the Assyrians should 
 destroy the city, but explicitly and emphatically points out the 
 Chaldeans as the ruiners of Tyre. " Behold, the land of the 
 Chaldeans. This is the people — it was not [a people], Ashur 
 founded it [the land] for the dwellers in steppes. They erected 
 their watch-towers ; they roused up' her palaces ; they made 
 her a ruin." Knobel and Gesenius, in the passages quoted from 
 their commentaries, plainly admit this. But the only siege of 
 Tyre by the Chaldeans was the thhteen years' siege by Nebu- 
 chadnezzar, and every unprejudiced mind must admit that it 
 alone answers to the prophet's words, and therefore receive the 
 prophecy as a prediction. Sooner than do this, Knobel, who 
 believes and proves the prophecy to be genuine, says we must 
 reject it as ungenuine, and ascribe it to Jeremiah. " To assert 
 the genuineness of this portion, and yet to refer it to the siege 
 of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar the King of the Chaldeans, an 
 event Avhich happened a hundred years later, Ezek. xxvi.-xxviii. 
 (as Jerome, Vitringa, I. D. ]\Iichaelis, Drechsler, Hengstenberg), 
 is impossible, because in the time of Isaiah there could not be a 
 foreboding, much less a certain and definite announcement of 
 anything of the kind." Such is the honesty and trustworthiness 
 
 * Geseniu?, ' Cominentaiy,' ]i. 71G. 
 
Essay III.] 
 
 PKOPHECY. 
 
 105 
 
 of '•' the higher criticism." Better to reject a prophetic passage, 
 which it proves to be genuine, than admit a prediction. Here 
 is a plain proof that the criticism proceeds from previous rejec- 
 tion of prediction, not that the unbelief proceeds from the 
 criticism. The critical De Wette says the same in his Introduc- 
 tion to the 0. T. '•' The prophecy concerning Tyre, c. xxiii., 
 •has been denied to be Isaiah's on account of the mention of the 
 Chaldeans, and because it has been supposed that its fulfilment 
 must be found in history ; also because of the supposed Chal- 
 daising language (verses 3, 11). But these objections can be 
 some of them entirely confuted, and others shown to be weak."* 
 The precechng statement is a remarkable exhibition of the un- 
 trustworthiness of luitionalist criticism on account of the pre- 
 vious dogmatic prejudices of the authors against inspiration and 
 prediction. It is also a specimen, one out of thousands, of how 
 much reliance is to be placed on Professor Jowett's statement, 
 " that the diversity amongst German writers on prophecy is far 
 less than among English ones. That is a new phenomenon 
 which has to be acknowledged."! Any one who would take the 
 trouble could show that the contrary is the fact ; that there is 
 such a love of novelty, and such unrestrained efforts after 
 originality, that the diversities of opinion on any one subject, 
 easy or difficult, are much greater than in England. 
 
 But, to return ; Professor Jowett says that this is one of the 
 passages which have not been fulfilled. " For a like reason the 
 failure of a prophecy is never admitted, in spite of Scripture 
 and of history (Jer. xxxvi. 30 ; Isai. xxiii. ; Amos vii. 10-17)."± 
 ^Miat he considers imfulfilled in this prediction he does not say ; 
 but there are two points to which he probably alludes. The 
 first is, that there is no historic account of Tyre having been 
 taken by assault by Xebuchaduezzar. But no such event is 
 predicted in this chapter. The prophet foretels a siege by the 
 Chaldeans, gi-eat calamities. Tyre reduced to a ruin — this is all 
 matter of history. Tyre was besieged for thirteen years. § In 
 so long a siege the city must have suffered severely. Nebuchad- 
 nezzar overran all Svria and Phoenicia : 11 he must, therefore, 
 
 * This has been done by both Ge- 
 senius and Knobel in their commen- 
 taries. 
 
 t ' Essays and Keviews,' p. 340. 
 
 I ' Essays,' p. 343. 
 
 § Josephus, Autiq. lib. x.. 
 Contra Ap. i. 21. 
 
 II Contra Apion. lib. i. c. 20. 
 
106 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay III, 
 
 Lave taken Old Tyre on the continent ; and modern critics now 
 admit tliat if New Tyre on the island was not taken by assault^ 
 it submitted to the Chaldeans by capitulation, and that the 
 Tyrian royal family was carried to Babylon. So Gesenius says, 
 "The siege j)robably ended with a peaceable agreement and 
 alliance, as we see that subsequently the Tyrians sent to 
 Babylon to fetch Merbal, one of their later kings (Joseph, contrgt 
 Apion. i. § 21)." And Tholuck (p. 133), « That which, after the 
 searching investigations of Hengstenberg and Havernik, should 
 never have been questioned, has now, since the farther 
 researches in Movers (ii. 1, p. 461), found pretty general recep- 
 tion (also in Duncker, i. 172 ; Niebuhr, p. 216) ; that certainly, 
 if not a conquest, yet a capitulation of the Tpians must have 
 taken place, in consequence of which they again became vassals 
 of the Chaldeans, and were obliged to submit to the removal of 
 the royal family to Babylon. The plainest proof of this is seen 
 in the fact, that about a year later they were attacked as Chal- 
 dean vassals and subdued by Hophra, who had been formerly 
 their ally. That this conquest could have been effected by the 
 Egyptian king by a sm*prise, shows in what a low state their 
 fortifications and their power must have been." * It is therefore 
 historically certain that Tyre w^as besieged, and reduced to a 
 state of ruin by the Chaldeans, just as Isaiah had foretold about 
 a hundred and thirty years before, when the Chaldeans were as 
 yet mere mercenary troops in the armies of Assyria. It is 
 equally certain that after the fall of Babylon, Tyre became inde- 
 pendent, rich, and prosperous again, as the prophet foretold. " It 
 shall come to pass in that day, that Tyre shall be forgotten seventy 
 years, according to the days of one Idug : after the end of 
 seventy years shall Tyre sing as a harlot." The discord amongst 
 critics about the meaning of the seventy years and the days of 
 one king is just as great as that already noticed. Tavo opinions 
 meet most favour : one, that of the Rationalists, that seventy is 
 a round number, and that seventy years mean a long time ; the 
 other, that king here means dynasty or kingdom of the Chaldeans, 
 as Dan. vii. 17, viii. 20, which is the view of Aben Ezra, Vi- 
 tringa, Lowth, Doderlein, Eosenmliller, &c. If either be true, 
 
 * That is, to what a state of rain 
 they had been reduced by the previous 
 thirteen years' siege. — Sec also von 
 
 Niobuhr's ' Geschiehte Assur's und Ba- 
 bel's,' p. 21G. 
 
Essay III.] 
 
 PROPHECY. 
 
 107 
 
 the objector cannot fairly say that the prediction has not been 
 fulfilled. 
 
 With regard to the concluding verse, in which the prophet 
 foretels that after Tyre's recovery from Babylonian vassalage, 
 " Her merchandize and her hire should be holiness to the Lord," 
 the most that can be objected is, that we have no record of its 
 fulfilment. But from this it does not follow that this part of 
 the prediction was not accomplished. The fidfilment could only 
 have taken place after the restoration from Babylon, and before 
 the destruction by Alexander. The records of events in Scrip- 
 tm-e from the retm-n of Zerubbabel to the close of the Cauon are 
 too brief to afford us any light as to the relations between Tjre 
 and Jerusalem. In the days of Solomon we know that they 
 were fi-iendly, Hham contributed to the building of the temple, 
 and the friendship must have continued unusually intimate, as 
 Amos denounces punishment upon Tyre for '•' not having remem- 
 bered the brotherly covenant." (Amos i. 9.) There is, there- 
 fore, nothing improbable in the supposition that, after Tyre's 
 recovery from almost ruin, friendly relations were re-estabhshed, 
 and rich offerings made in the temple at Jerusalem. The mar- 
 vellous fulfilment of the former portion respecting the Chaldeans 
 is a guarantee for the Divine origin and accomplishment of the 
 latter. Hitherto objectors have only asserted, not attempted to 
 prove, the non-fulfilment. 
 
 There are other fulfilled predictions to which the reader's 
 attention might satisfactorily have been turned, but the charge 
 of non-fulfilment made in 'Essays and Reviews' constrains us 
 to consider a passage in Jeremiah, and another in Amos there 
 referred to, in support of the allegation. The former, Jer. xxxvi. 
 10, is thus given in the Authorized Version : — " Therefore thus 
 saith the Lord of Jehoiakim, King of Judah, he shall have no7ie 
 to sit [literally, 'none sitting'*] upon the throne of Da%ad ; 
 and his body shall be cast out in the day to the heat, and in the 
 night to the frost."t To this Hitzig in his commentary objects, 
 that Jehoiakim had a son, Jehoiachin, who did sit upon his 
 
 * The present participle 2'J'I'' is used 
 to denote contimiance. See Ewald, 
 Gramm. § 350. 
 
 The verb iti''' signifies to ahide, con- 
 tinue, endure, as well as to sit. Gen. 
 
 xsiv. 55 ; Ps. ix. S ; Jer. sxx. 18. 
 
 t Compare xxii. 19 : " He shall be 
 buried with the burial of an ass, di-awn 
 and cast forth beyond the gates of Je- 
 rusalem." 
 
108 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IIJ. 
 
 throne, and tliat in 2 Kings xxiv. 6 (Heb. 5), Ave read, " So Je- 
 hoiakim slej)! with his fathers, and Jehoiachiu his son reigned in 
 his stead." If Jeremiah had, after uttering the prophecy, com- 
 mitted it to Avriting, and then died before Jehoiakim, tliis objec- 
 tion might have some weight ; but when it is remembered that 
 Jeremiah lived many years after the death of Jehoiakim, and, if 
 his words had been falsified by events, might have altered them, 
 and yet did not, but left them as originally uttered, the objection 
 ceases to have any force at all. The prophet must have been 
 satisfied after the event, that his words expressed what had hap- 
 pened. Jehoiakim had in fact no son " sitting," or continuing 
 on the throne of David, for, three months after Jehoiachin's 
 elevation, he was deposed and carried away. The words, " He 
 slept with liis fathers," signify simply that he died, affirming 
 nothing about his burial. Here Ewald is much more thought- 
 ful and more candid than the English Essayist or his German 
 forerunner. In the ' Geschichte des Volkes Israel,' iii. p. 430, 
 Ewald gives an account of the death of Jehoiakim and of the 
 treatment of his corpse in agreement with Jeremiah's words, 
 and, in a note, adds, " The particular circumstances of the death 
 of Jehoiakim are very obscure. The formula, ' He slept with his 
 fathers,' 2 Kings xxiv. 5, means nothing more than his death ; that 
 he was taken prisoner is mentioned, 2 Chron. xxxvi. 6 ; but 
 what actually occurred may be inferred with tolerable proba- 
 bility from the words selected by Jeremiah xxii. 18, &e., and 
 xxxvi. 30. For, though the prophet had certainly predicted the 
 king's unhappy end long before, he wrote down the words after 
 the event." Ewald, therefore, saw the impossibility of these 
 words containing an unfulfilled prediction. The English objector 
 might have saved his criticism from appearing as the dictate of 
 passion rather than the conclusion of judgment, had he taken 
 time to consider the prophet's Avords im])artially. 
 
 Another example of this mihappy hastiness in taking up ob- 
 jections is found in the reference to Amos vii. 10-17. In our 
 English Bible the passage reads thus : — " Then Amaziah the 
 priest of Bethel sent to Jeroboam King of Israel, saying, Amos 
 liath conspired against thee in the midst of the house of Israel : 
 the land is not able to bear all his AA'ords. For thus Amos saitli, 
 Jeroboam shall die by tlie sword, and Israel shall surely be led 
 aAA^ay captive out of their own land. And Amaziah said unto 
 
Essay III.] PKOPHECY, 109 
 
 Amos, thou seer, go flee tliee away into the land of Juclah, and 
 there eat bread, and prophesy there : But prophesy not again, 
 any more at Bethel ; for it is the king's chapel and the king's 
 court." Amos asserts his Divine call, and utters this prediction 
 against Amaziah : — " Therefore, thus saith the Lord ; thy yvife 
 shall be an harlot in the city, and thy sons and thy daughters 
 shall fall by the sword, and thy land shall be divided by line ; 
 and thou slialt die in a polluted land ; and Israel shall surely 
 go into captivity forth of his land." As the Essayist does not 
 specify the particulars which he supposes unfulfilled, we can 
 only state the objection according to Hitzig. First, then, he 
 may suppose that the prediction is not fulfilled because Jero- 
 boam II. did not die by the sword ; but if the objector will look 
 at verse 9, he will see that Amos did not predict anything of 
 the kind — tlie prophet's threat is not against Jeroboam, but his 
 house. " I will rise against the house of Jeroboam with the 
 sword," which threat was fulfilled when Shallum conspired 
 against Jeroboam's son and successor, and slew him and reigned 
 in his stead. (2 Kings xv. 10.) The words, " Jeroboam shall die by 
 the sword," were a malicious addition of Amaziah's to induce 
 Jeroboam to drive Amos from Bethel. Hitzig's attempt to 
 prove that " house of Jeroboam " included Jeroboam himself 
 by referring to Isai. vii. 13, where " house of David " includes 
 Ahaz and his family, is a miserable failure. To make the cases 
 parallel, Isaiah must have said, "Hear ye now, O house of 
 Aliaz." 
 
 The next portion of the assaulted prediction foretels that 
 Israel should go into captivity. Taking Knobel's dates, Amos 
 uttered his prophecies between 790-784 b. c, i. e. before the 
 death of Jeroboam. The final carrying away of Israel by Shal- 
 maueser occurred about sixty years after : so that here is an un- 
 doubted prediction undoubtedly fidfilled. 
 
 There remains only the denunciation against Amaziah, his 
 wife and children, the fulfilment of which is not recorded. But 
 surely this is not surprising, when the excessive brevity of the 
 accounts of the kings and revolutions that followed, is taken into 
 consideration. There is nothing impossible or improbable in the 
 fate predicted. Witliin thu-ty years from the date of the prophecy, 
 the Assyrians began their incursions into the land of Israel. 
 Although, then, the fulfilment of this particular is not relnted, it 
 
110 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay III. 
 
 is not improbable. The fulfilment of tlie other two particulars 
 is a guarantee that this also was accomplished. This objection, 
 however, like others of the kind, has this value : it shows that 
 the objector believes that the Hebrew prophets did lay claim to 
 the power of predicting future events. 
 
 11. Here our attention has been directed to one of many 
 woncbous predictions concerning the destinies of Israel, which 
 have excited the astonishment of readers in all ages. Moses fore- 
 told the dispersion of the disobedient people, and their preserva- 
 tion in the midst of the nations. The theme has been taken up 
 by all the later prophets. The fulfilment is before our eyes. Israel 
 has been scattered to the fom- winds, but is still preserved. Of the 
 nations by whom and amongst whom they were first dispersed 
 the Lord has made a full end. He has chastened Israel in mea- 
 sure, but has not permitted them to disappear.* The Ass^Tians, the 
 Babylonians, the Eomans have utterly perished. The Ten Tribes 
 are " wanderers among the nations." The people of the Jews, 
 rich, powerful, intelligent, survive all the revolutions of Empires, 
 ancient, medieval, modern, and await the consummation of the 
 Lord's oracles.f But as this is matter of notoriety, is not disputed 
 or explained by EationaHsts or Essayists, it is enough to refer to 
 this proof of revelation, as wonderful as the answer to Ehjah's 
 prayer (1 Kings, xviii.). 
 
 12. But that which gives to Hebrew prophecy its peculiar 
 charm, and its paramount importance, is that it contains predic- 
 tions respecting Eedemption and the Eedeemer. That there are 
 Messianic prophecies has been the belief of Jews and Christians for 
 more than two thousand years, and is fully admitted by the New 
 School of Theology. But, much beyond this, the agreement 
 between the old and new interpreters does not extend. For some 
 of the prophecies applied in the New Testament to the JMessiah, 
 the modern school has new interpretations. Of others, and those 
 most important, it denies the genuineness ; and one of the vital 
 questions now brought before the English mind is, whether we 
 are to follow the New Testament, or the new German critics. 
 The innovators in England do not pretend to offer anything ori- 
 ginal of their own. They repeat in English what they have de- 
 
 * Jer. XXX. 11, xxxi. 35-37 ; Isai. vi. | t Sec Butler's ' Analosrv,' Tm-t ii. 
 11-13 ; Amos ix. 9. | c. 7. 
 
Essay III.] PROPHECY. Ill 
 
 rived from one class of German writers. And, as German 
 learning stands deservedly in high repute, there is a danger of 
 the unwary receiving without question, what appears to come on 
 authority so respectable. Hence the present necessity of such 
 frequent references to the sources from which they draw, and 
 also of recalling attention to the real question at issue, namelv, 
 whether the New Testament or German critics are to be our 
 guides in interpreting prophecy. Now, placing for a moment the 
 New Testament writers on the lowest level, regarding them 
 merely as included amongst the ancient Jews, their opinion must 
 be of some value. Theirs were the prophetic books. For their 
 fathers and for themselves they were written. They were ori- 
 entals. They inherited the traditional interpretation of their 
 people. Their inteiqDretation has been accepted by the intel- 
 ligent of other nations. The Christian Church, composed of a 
 gTeat variety of races, abounding in minds of all possible types, 
 in different stages of culture, approved and adhered to the old 
 Jewish interpretation for many centm-ies. True, that only two 
 or three of the Fathers understood Hebrew, and that the early 
 Church was dependent upon the Greek and SjTiac, and the me- 
 dieval Church on the Yulgate, versions. But, as was said above, 
 and at the present time ought to be kept in remembrance, how- 
 ever many of the beauties and peculiarities of the wi'iter may be 
 lost in a version, the gi-and substance, the purpose and intent of 
 the whole, which is, after all, the real meaning of any book that 
 has a meaning, may be grasped in any tolerable translation by 
 any intelligent reader. And that which suggests itself to the 
 common sense of mankind, as the meaning, whether derived from 
 version or original, is undoubtedly the true meaning. And so it is 
 with prophecy. To readers of ancient or modern versions, or of 
 the original, the general scope and intent has ever appeared the 
 same. And, therefore, at the revival of letters, and at the Re- 
 formation, when the original language of the prophets came to be 
 studied, the general sense, handed down from the New Testa- 
 ment writers by the Fathers and medieval divines, still com- 
 mended itself to students as acute in intellect, and to scholars as 
 familiar with the Hebrew language, as any who have lived in the 
 last hundred years. Indeed it may be doubted whether Hebrew 
 has been so nearly a mother-tongue with any recent critics, as it 
 was with the Buxtorfs, Wagenseil, Edzard, and others of old; 
 
112 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay III. 
 
 and whether any modern commentators have been naturally more 
 competent to grasp the general sense than the Reformers, and 
 those Avho followed them. And yet, from the Reformation down 
 to the last quarter of the eighteenth century, the old interpreta- 
 tion prevailed. Romanists and Protestants Avere still of one 
 mind as to the general outline of prophetic truth. Wonderful 
 if ancient Jews, Fathers and Medievahsts, Protestants and 
 Romanists, were all mistaken, and the true sense hidden until 
 about fifty years ago. 
 
 13. If the New School were all of one mind ; if all modern 
 critics were unanimous in their judgments, and uniform in their 
 interpretations, and their conclusions had been arrived at by un- 
 biassed investigation, such unanimity of opinion, and conclusions 
 so deduced, would naturally have great weight. But the variety 
 and diversity of opinion in the German Rationalist School is un- 
 bounded. They agree only in that negative view, which neces- 
 sarily tirises from the common origin and the common principles 
 of their theology. The origin of their theology is undoubtedly 
 Deistic infidelity ;* its fundamental principles, that there is no 
 supernatural revelation of Deity, and therefore no Divine predic- 
 tion,t consequently that there can be no real predictions concern- 
 ing Jesus of Nazareth, or anybody else. J Criticism derived from 
 such a source, and guided by such principles, must be eminently 
 untrustworthy. The conclusions forerun the investigation. If 
 there can be no prediction at all, then there can be none relating 
 to our Lord ; and therefore from their general principle, before any 
 investigation is made, it follows that neither the xxiind Psalm, 
 nor Isai. vii. 14, nor any other Psalm or prophecy, can be inter- 
 preted of the Saviour, and therefore investigation can only be 
 made in order to show that the foregone conclusion is true. The 
 investigators may be learned, profound, acute, diligent, honest, 
 but their principles hinder them from acknowledging that any 
 
 * See ' Letters on Eationalism," pas- I ciatur, idejB Dei sanctissimi et benig- 
 m. I nissinii rcpugnat, faialisnnim fovet ot 
 
 t At vero quibus miraculorum aucto- I libcrtatein lidinimim morakm tollit. 
 
 ritas implicita est scmpulis, iisdem vel 
 gravioribus ctiam (lecreta de vaticiniis 
 proposita premuntur. Primum enim 
 quisevis prcdictio divinitus patefacta, 
 qua fatuin iiicvitabile bominis aut po- 
 puli ciijusdam, quod ex re quadam ab 
 ipsis perpetranda peudet, diserte iiun- 
 
 -"WcKsclicidiT, Instlluiiintcs, p. 2]*7. 
 X " So muss wohl zugejjjeben werden, 
 dass cin Erweis Christi als Erlosers aus 
 den Weissagungen unmilglich ist." — 
 Soblciei-niaclier, Der Christliche Glauhe, 
 i. 2, a. 105. 
 
Essay III.] PROPHECY. 113 
 
 prediction ever was or can be fulfilled, and compel them to con- 
 clude that it is not ; and therefore their criticism and conclusions 
 in such matters must be regarded not only with suspicion, but as 
 probably untrue, the result of their dogmatic prejudices, and 
 therefore utterly insufficient to outweigh the common judgment 
 of Jews and Gentiles for more than two thousand years. 
 
 14. Such would be the opinion of the student who had never 
 heard of Evangelists, Apostles, or Eationahsts in his life, but 
 considered the subject, apart from all religious interests, merely in 
 a scientific point of view. But in the question between the New 
 Testament and modern criticism the Christian sees something 
 more than an alternative between ancient Judaism and modern 
 heathenism— he sees that it is an alternative between Christ and 
 unbelief. The interpretations of the New Testament are the inter- 
 pretations of Christ and of those to whom, " beginning at Moses, 
 and all the prophets, he expounded in all the Scriptures the things' 
 concerning himself " (Luke xxiv. 27), "whose understandings He 
 opened that they might understand the Scriptures" (Luke xxiv. 
 45); to whom He sent His Holy Spirit to "bring all things to 
 their remembrance whatsoever He had said unto them," and to 
 " guide them into all truth." (John xiv. 26, xvi. 13.) He cannot 
 depart from their interpretations, and adopt the new and 
 contradictory criticism, without admitting either that Christ 
 knowingly accommodated Himself to the errors of the times, or 
 that He was mistaken, or that His discourses have been 
 incorrectly reported ; any one of which .admissions is equivalent 
 to a renunciation of Christianity. The first is the supposition of 
 some of the elder Rationalists, the second of some of the later, 
 and the thu-d apparently of many modern critics. To admit the 
 first is to deny our Lord's integi-ity, to concede the second is to 
 make him a mere fallible man, and to receive the third is to 
 take away the main ground of our faith in Christ. The lowest 
 theory of msi^iration, at all compatible with faith, is that - it 
 protects the doctrine." Our Lord's doctrine is contained in His 
 discom-ses, and part of those discourses is His interpretation of 
 prophecy, and the promise of the Holy Sph-it to guide His 
 disciples. If m those discourses, or those of His disciples, the 
 prophecies are falsely interpreted, the doctrine is not protected 
 the promise of the Spirit cannot have been fulfilled, and we are 
 brought to the horrid and blasphemous conclusion that Christ, 
 
 I 
 
114 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay III. 
 
 " The Way, tlie Truth, and the Life," was fallible, and that His 
 word is not to be depended upon. From these consistent and 
 necessary conclusions the Essayists do not shrink any more 
 than their German masters. They reject the New Testament 
 interpretation of prophecy, and then consistently deny the 
 authority of the New Testament itself. He who would sweep 
 away all predictive prophecy insinuates that the Gospel portrait 
 of our Lord is dimmed "by the haze of mingled imagination 
 and remembrance", with wliich his awful figure could scarcely 
 fail to be at length invested by affection." * Another says that 
 '•'The New Testament wi-itings leave us in uncertainty as to 
 the descent of Jesus Christ according to the flesh, whether by 
 His mother He were of the tribe of Judah, or of the tribe of 
 Lev'i ;"'f- implies that His birth at Bethlehem and the announce- 
 ment of it by the Angels are doubtful ; and that the tlu-ee first 
 Gospels, thougli more trustworthy than the fom-th, contain only 
 '•' more exact traditions of what He actually said." A thu-d, who, 
 following Eeimarus,:|: doubts whether any one passage from the 
 Psalms or Prophets quoted in the Epistles is rightly inter- 
 preted,§ insinuates that our Lord's prediction concerning the 
 day of judgment has failed because it is inseparable from that of 
 the destruction of Jerusalem, and in another work expressly 
 teaches that in this matter our Lord was mistaken. || Thus 
 the example of foreign critics and their followers at home 
 Avarns us that if we give up the prophetic interpretations of 
 Christ and the Apostles, we must prepare also to part with cm- 
 Christianity, and begin a painful and not very profitable search 
 for those crumbs of Divine truth, which these kind critics still 
 suppose to be scattered about in the Prophets and Evangelists, 
 and which can only be recognized by the verifying faculty of the 
 critic. But if we believe in Christ, and those whom He taught 
 by His Spirit, we must take their principle of interpretation as 
 ours, and rest assured that the interpretations wliich they have 
 given exhibit the true mind of that Spiilt who spake by the 
 prophets. The wise men, and the scribes, and the disputers of 
 the day may decry this principle as unscientific, and protest 
 
 * • Essays and Eeviews,' p. 80. , § Page 40G. 
 
 t Ibid., p. ISO, 203. || See Professor Jowett's ' Commen- 
 
 I Wolfenbiittel ' Fragments,' § 34- tary to the First Epistle to the Thessa- 
 
 45. I lonians,' p. 108-111. 
 
Essay III.] PKOPHECY. 115 
 
 that it is better not to read the Bible at all, than to read with 
 such restrictions ; but Christians may be content with the wisdom 
 that came down from above, and with the liberty wherewith 
 Christ has made them free. A^Tiere our Lord or an inspired 
 Apostle has spoken, we abide by the interpretation. 
 
 15. Here, however, it is necessary to guard against mistake. 
 "HMiere passages of the prophecies are cited or applied, attention 
 must be paid to the mind and intention of the speaker or writer, 
 as sometimes Old Testament language is used without any 
 intention of intimating a fulfilment of prophecy either direct or 
 typical. The words were suitable to express the feelings or 
 thoughts of the writer, and they were adopted. Thus when 
 St. Paul says, " I say, have they not heard ? Yes, verily, then- 
 sound went into all the earth, and their words unto the end of 
 the world," there is no reason for supposing that the Apostle 
 looked upon Ps. xix. 4 as a prophecy fulfilled in the preaching 
 of the Gospel. The Psalm speaks of the heavens and the 
 firmament. But the words aptly and beautifully expressed 
 what the disciples of Christ had already done, and Paul was 
 guided to adopt them, the rather because in the Psalm itseK the 
 parallel is drawn between the book of natm-e and the book of 
 revelation, the harmonious testimony of the works and word of 
 God. Another instance occurs 1 Cor. xv. 32 : " If the dead rise 
 not, let us eat and drink, for to-morrow we die." Here is a 
 quotation from Isai. xxii. 13. The words of the prophet forcibly 
 depicted the character of those of whom the Apostle was 
 speaking, and they are adopted accordingly. This principle is 
 demonstrated by 2 Tim. ii. 19 : " The foimdation of God stand- 
 eth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his." 
 The latter words are a quotation from Numb. xvi. 5, referring to 
 the rebellion of Korah and his company, but adopted by the 
 Apostle, just as the later prophets, especially Jeremiah, express 
 their message occasionally in citations from their predecessors 
 or from the Pentateuch. 
 
 In the next place, it is to be observed that Old Testament 
 passages are sometimes cited simply to confirm a doctrine, or to 
 form the foundation of an argument ; as when the Apostle says 
 (Rom. ix. 7) " Neither because they are the seed of Abraham, are 
 they all children : but in Isaac shall thy seed be called." The 
 latter words are cited to prove that mere fleshly descent does not 
 
 I 2 
 
116 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay III. 
 
 constitute a right to the inlieritance or God's favour. Ishmael 
 was according to the flesh the child of Abraham, but it was to 
 Isaac and his posterity that the inheritance of the promises was 
 given. In like manner our Lord (IMatt. xiii. 14) applies Isai. vi. 
 9, 10 to the Jews whom He addressed, and St. Paul applies 
 the same words (Acts xxviii. 26) to the Jews at Rome. They 
 contain a general principle of God's dealings with men, appli- 
 cable at all times. So St. Paul (Eom. x. 12) employs the words 
 of Joel, " Whosoever shall call upon the name of the Lord shall 
 be saved," to prove that there is no difference between the Jew 
 and the Gentile. The stress is upon the words Tra? vap 09 [^ti'K 7D] 
 " every one." Not to the Jews only, but to every one who calls 
 upon the name of the Lord, God promises salvation, therefore 
 there is no difference, &c. The object for wliich the quotation 
 is made must be kept in view, else the conclusiveness of the 
 argument will be missed, and a wrong interpretation given to 
 the prophecy. As for example (Acts xv. 15 — 17), where James 
 proves the right of the Gentiles to be received into the Church 
 without circumcision, he says, " Simeon hath declared how God 
 at tlie first did visit the Gentiles to take out of them a people 
 for His name. And to this agree the words of the prophets ; as 
 it is written, After this I will return, and will build again the 
 tabernacle of David, which is fallen down . . . that the residue 
 of men * might seek after the Lord, and all the Gentiles on 
 whom my name is called, saith the Lord." Some readers and 
 interpreters fix their eye upon the tabernacle of David, and 
 seeing that that Avas not literally fulfilled, take it figuratively of 
 the Clu'istian Church, and thereby do violence to the words of 
 the prophecy, and at the same time miss St. James's argument. 
 The question was, whether the Gentiles, i.e. without circumcision 
 and obedience to the Mosaic Law, could be received into the 
 Christian Church. The majority of Jewish Christians thought 
 that they could not. St. Peter proved that these persons were 
 wrong by an appeal to fact. St. James shows the same by a 
 reference to prophecy. His object was not to quote and shoAV a 
 fulfilment of one prediction, but the general tenour of all 
 respecting the call of the Gentiles as such, and therefore he says 
 in the plural, " To this agi-ee the words of the prophets." At 
 
 Amos, ix. 11, 11 
 
Essay III,] PROPHECY, 117 
 
 the same time lie selects one, iu wliicli the Gentiles [□''1^, eOvT]] 
 are mentioned byname with the addition "all," "all nations," and 
 where it is said that the name of the Lord is called upon them. 
 The stress of the argument rests upon the word " Gentiles," and 
 upon the fact that God's name is called upon them ; as if he 
 would say, " Here in Amos men upon whom the Lord's name is 
 called are still spoken of as Gentiles ; they cannot therefore be 
 persons circumcised and keeping the Law, and therefore the 
 name of the Lord may now also be called upon Gentiles as such, 
 and therefore there is no necessity for circumcising them. To 
 enter the Church of Christ it is not necessary that they should 
 cease to be Gentiles, or become proselytes by circumcision." * 
 
 16. In the next place words are quoted from the prophets, 
 which contain no prediction at all, and are yet spoken of as being- 
 fulfilled, because the event to which they allude was a type of 
 that to which they are applied. Our Lord and, after Him, 
 the xipostles, lay down the principle that past history may 
 represent that which is to happen hereafter. Thus the Saviour 
 refers to the brazen serpent, and to Jonah as prefigm-ing His 
 resurrection, and even the time of it on the third day. St. Paul 
 teaches that Hagar and Sarah are typical of the covenants ; the 
 Paschal lamb of Christ's atoning death ; the passage of the Eed 
 Sea of baptism ; the smitten rock of Christ. The author of the 
 Epistle to the Hebrews, St. Peter in his allusion to the deluge, 
 and St. John in his mystical application of the names Sodom, 
 Egypt, and Babylon, confirm the principle, which helps us to 
 interpret passages of the Old Testament, such as those where 
 the Messiah is called David, and to understand passages of the 
 Kew Testament, where what was spoken of David is applied to 
 our Lord. The principle also solves the apparent difficulty of 
 two passages strongly insisted upon by the enemies of Christi- 
 anity. Concerning our Lord's early sojourn in Egypt, St. 
 Matthew says, that it happened " that it might be fulfilled which 
 was spoken of the Lord by the prophet, saying, Out of Egypt 
 have I called my son," — and respecting the slaughter of the 
 children at Bethlehem, "Then was fulfilled that which was 
 
 * The account of this dispute is a j of the gate, i. e. proselytes without 
 
 strong testimony to the credibility, ' circumcision, could only he received 
 
 knowledge, and good faith of the writer. ' when all the twelve tribes were in the 
 
 The Pharisees believed that proselytes land. 
 
J 18 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay III. 
 
 spoken by Jeremy the prophet, saying, In Eama was a voice 
 heard." In neither case does St. Matthew quote predictions, 
 but Hosea's and Jeremiah's references to past history. WTien 
 Hosea said, "Out of Egypt have I called my son," or when 
 Jeremiah spoke of Rachel weeping for her cliildren, neither was 
 uttering a prediction of the future, but alluding fo facts long 
 past. Hosea was alluding to the Exodus eight centuries before, 
 and Jeremiah to the carrying away of the Ten Tribes one 
 hundred years before he wrote. St. Matthew therefore speaks 
 of them as fulfilled in the only way in which facts can be 
 fulfilled, in events the antitypes of those referred to. 
 
 17. But after making allowance for these and numerous other 
 similar applications of prophecy, there remain many which the 
 Lord and the Apostles interpret as specially spoken in reference 
 to Christ and Christianity. It has ever been the belief of all 
 orthodox writers that Christ claimed to be the jMessiah foretold 
 by the proiDhets. It is also acknowledged by Eationalist divines. 
 Thus Yon Colin says that the sick who had been healed, the 
 common people, his own immediate adherents, acknowledged 
 Him as the Messiah, and adds, " That Jesus approved, and even 
 called forth this view of Himself, is evident from His Avords and 
 His conduct. 1st. From His answer to Peter (Matt. xvi. 17) ; His 
 approval of the acclamations of the people (Luke xix. 34, 40 ; 
 Matt, xxi, 15, 16). 2nd. From His assuming the names belonging 
 to the Messiah, especially the titles Son of God and Son of ]\[an 
 from Dan. vii. 13, 14. 3rd. From His claiming the privileges 
 attributed to the Messiah, as the full unfolding and explanation 
 of the Law (Matt. v. 17) ; the assertion that He was Lord of the 
 Sabbath (Matt. xii. 8) ; His reformation of the temple service 
 (John ii. 13, 20) ; His dispensation of His disciples from the 
 usual fasts (Matt, ix, 14) ; and His claiming the right to forgive 
 sins. 4th. From His express declaration that He was the Messiah 
 (John iv. 25, 26, xvii. 3 ; Matt. xxvi. 63, 64, &c.)— This his asser- 
 tion that He Avas sent from God, as the founder of a new theocracy, 
 Jesus proved to be true — 1, From the Holy Scriptures of His 
 people, which bare witness of His person and His works. According 
 to the general convictions, the LaAV and the Prophots spake of an 
 ideal theocracy. There was an unanimity of opinion as to tlie pas- 
 sages which treated of the ideal King, and also as to tlie particular 
 features of his character as drawn [by the prophets]. AVhosoever, 
 
Essay III.] 
 
 PROPHECY. 
 
 119 
 
 therefore, gave himself out for the Messiah, was under the neces- 
 sity of proving that these features were found in liim. Jesus, 
 therefore, often employed the declarations of the Law and the 
 Prophets to convince the Jews that He was the Messiah. . . . 
 The application of the prophetic passages to Himself cannot be 
 explained as accommodation, as Jesus in the circle of His confi- 
 dential disciples, and after Him the Apostles in their discom-ses 
 and Epistles, adhere to this application." * The same author 
 teaches elsewhere (p. 89) that our Lord received the Law and 
 the Prophets as the inspired word of God, and " employed the 
 prophetic oracles in these writings as testimonies to His own 
 appearance and works (John v. 39, 46 ; Luke iv. 21). He 
 pointed out especially and often that His sufferings must happen 
 4iccording to the announcements of these Holy Books, and were 
 therefore inevitable ordinances of God : Matt. xxvi. 24 ; Mark ix. 
 12, xiv. 49 ; Luke xviii. 31—33, xxii. 37, xxiv. 26, 27." 
 
 18. Now the two prophets to whose writings our Lord and the 
 Apostles most emphatically refer are Daniel and Isaiah ; and by 
 their references they not only interpret particular passages, but 
 establish the genuineness of the books. Our Lord not only cites 
 the prophet Daniel by name, when speaking of " the abomina- 
 tion of desolation" (Matt. xxiv. 15), but has been pleased to 
 adopt from that book the designation of His kingdom, and the 
 title which He appropriates to Himself. The expressions " King- 
 dom of Heaven," and " Son of Man," are confessedly taken from 
 the second and seventh chapters of Daniel. The latter expres- 
 sion is particularly important. Meyer says — " Its simple meaning- 
 is, The Messiah. It is derived from the awful and striking 
 representation in the prophetic vision (Dan, vii. 13) so well 
 known to the Jews, and occurring also in the pre-Christian book 
 of Enoch, in which the Messiah appears in the clouds of heaven, 
 as ' The Son of Man ' (c«? uto? avOpayirov), surrounded by the 
 angels of the Divine throne of judgment (see Ewald, 'Gesch. 
 Chi-.,' p. 79), that is, in a form nothing different from that of an 
 ordinary man. Jesus, inasmuch as in Him the Messiah was 
 come, was, in the realisation, that Son of Man whose form was 
 seen in Daniel's vision. As often, therefore, as Jesus in His dis- 
 
 * Von C(311n, ' Biblische Theologie,' 
 ii. p. 116-18, and 89 ; comp. Wegschei- 
 <ler, ' lustitutiones,' § 119, especially 
 
 Note C. ; Knobel, ' Prophetism.' i. 338 ; 
 De Wette, ' Biblische Dogmatik,' § 189. 
 
120 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay III. 
 
 courses says ' The Son of Man,' he means ' The Son of Man of 
 that vision of Daniel,' that is. The Messiah." * It is needless to 
 say how often this expression occurs in all the Gospels in our 
 Lord's discourses, especially on the most solemn occasions, as 
 when He describes His second advent (Matt. xiii. 41, xxiv. 27, 
 30, 4-1, XXV. 31) ; when He speaks of His passion (John iii. 13, 
 14) on the very eve of its accomplishment (Matt. xxvi. 24) ; and 
 when, after formal adjuration. He declares Himself the Christ, 
 the Son of God, " Hereafter shall ye see the Son of Man sitting 
 on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven ;" 
 so that it is impossible to separate the essential elements of 
 Christ's teaching from the book of Daniel, and equally impos- 
 sible to suppose that He who came into the world to bear witness 
 to the truth would ground His claims and His most solemn doc- 
 trine on a forgery. The question of the genuineness and au- 
 thenticity of Daniel cannot, therefore, be separated from that 
 respecting the fallibility or infallibility of the Savioiu-. By 
 asserting that the book of Daniel is ungenuine — a forged and 
 false prophecy — men charge our Lord with the uncritical igno- 
 rance of His times, or a deliberate application of a document 
 which He knew to be fidse. But the student need not be 
 alarmed at the greatness of the issue. He must remember that 
 the original assault on Daniel was made by the heathen Por- 
 phyry, an able but bitter enemy of Christianity in the third cen- 
 tury, and is continued, j)artly in the original form of objection, 
 by those who deny all supernatural revelation, make our Lord 
 himself a mere man, and are as opposed to the doctrine of 
 Christ's proper Deity as Porphyry himself. It must never be 
 forgotten by those who read Eationalist books, that even when, 
 like Schleiermacher and his school, they use the expression " Son 
 of God," they use it in a non-natural sense, rejecting the accounts 
 of His supernatural birth, and regarding Him as the Son of 
 Joseph and Mary.f Tliey are interested, therefore, not only in 
 
 * H. A. W, Meyer's ' Comm. on Matt, 
 viii. 20.' Fleck also says : " Denotatur 
 enim is, quern omnes norunt, qui omni- 
 um orefertur (sensu eximio ita vocatus) 
 
 Stahl, Kuinocl, Lueke, Tholuck. See 
 also the references given above to Von 
 Ciilln, Wegscheider, De Wettc, Kuobel. 
 t Compare ' Essays and Reviews,' pp. 
 
 jilius hominis J)anieliticuis==Mcssiaa:' • 82, 88, 89, 202, 203, 351, 352, 354, oOD ; 
 
 * De Regno Divino,' p. 121. The italics and Schleiermacher's * Glaubenslehre,' 
 
 are Fleck's. He also refers to tlio I 3rd etlit., p. G4-G9. 
 
 Rabbis, Wetstein, Grotius, Lampe, i 
 
Essay III.] PROPHECY. 121 
 
 getting rid of the predictions in Daniel, especially siicli an one 
 as the seventy weeks, but also in setting aside a remarkable tes- 
 timony to the Old Testament doctrine of the Deity of Mes- 
 siah. The two main Rationalist arguments against the book of 
 Daniel are — first, that in their opinion it contains accurate pre- 
 dictions concerning Antiochus Epiphanes, which they borrow 
 from Porphyry ; and secondly, that it relates mu-acles, and 
 therefore according to their own system cannot be true. This is 
 strongly urged by Knobel. " The history of Daniel," he says, 
 " has a legendary, almost a fairy-tale complexion, and represents 
 the events in a manner in which they could not possibly have 
 happened. They could have assumed this form only after a long 
 oral transmission. For in Hebrew history, where numerous 
 myths and legends occur, as, for example, in that of the 
 patriarchs, of Moses, Balaam, Samson, Elijah, Elisha, the narra- 
 tives were committed to writing a considerable time after the 
 events : when, on the contrary, events have a natural appearance, 
 as in the books of Ezra, Nehemiah, the first of Maccabees, there 
 they were generally committed to writing at the time, or very 
 soon after the events. This is an historic canon, of the validity 
 of which there can be no doubt." * 
 
 To men holding such axioms of criticism, the book of Daniel 
 must, as a matter of course, be as ungenuine as the narrative of 
 our Lord's miracles. Criticisms, therefore, founded on such 
 principles must always appear questionable to a thoughtful in- 
 quirer, even if he is not able to show then- weakness or falsehood. 
 The believer in the Gospels will feel assured that they are not 
 unanswerable, and a little inquiry will satisfy him that they 
 have been answered again and again, by scholars trained in the 
 schools of modern German philology and criticism, and every 
 Avay equal to the task. Within the last thirty years, Hengsten- 
 berg. Sack, Havernik, Reichel, Schulze, Herbst, Vaihinger, 
 Delitsch, Oeler, Auberlen, Ziindel, have stood forward as suc- 
 cessful vmdicators of the genuineness of Daniel's prophecies, 
 Kurz, Keil, v. Hoffmann, Drechsel, Baumgarten have also con- 
 fessed their adhesion to the ancient faith. t A defender of the 
 accuracy of Daniel's chronological statements has appeared in 
 
 * ' Proplietismus,' ii. 401. 
 
 t Compare Auberlen's ' Der Prophet Daniel," p. 164-177. 
 
122 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay III. 
 
 Marcus von Niebuhr, in his History of Assp-ia and Babylon. 
 These -smters show, one or other of them, that those interpreters 
 who wonld make the seventy weeks end with Antiochus 
 Epiphanes contradict and confute one another ; that that period 
 must begin at the going forth of the decree to rebuikl Jerusalem, 
 and must extend to the times of our Lord ; that from the neces- 
 sary and proved relations between chapters ix. and xi., the latter 
 looks far beyond the days of Antiochus. They have answered 
 the objections from the length of Daniel's life, from supposed 
 contradictions, from history, from dates. They have proved that 
 some of the supposed Graecisms are not Groecisms at all ; that 
 others were naturalised in the time of Daniel, the Greeks having 
 had relations long before with the Assyrians; and, above all, 
 that the Canon of the Old Testament was closed within one 
 hundred years of the restoration of the Jewish State, and the 
 book of Daniel, if not written before, could not have been ad- 
 mitted into it ; that therefore the book of Daniel is both genuine 
 and authentic* 
 
 19. The other prophecy, whose genuineness Eationalist cri- 
 ticism has specially delighted to dispute, is that which is also 
 specially vouched for by the New Testament, namely, that con- 
 tained in the latter part of Isaiah (chapters xl. — Ixvi.) and which 
 seems really the connecting link between Old and Kew Testa- 
 ment revelation. It is a singular coincidence that those portions 
 of the Old Testament which are most essential to New Testament 
 theology— as the Pentateuch, the book of Daniel, and the latter 
 part of Isaiah — are just those parts which Eationalist criticism 
 has selected as the favourite fields on which to display its skill. 
 Those Messianic pi-edictions, Avhich it can explain with plausibility 
 as expressing Jewish hopes of earthly grandeur and prosperity, 
 and incompatible with the teaching of Christ, it pronounces to be 
 genuine. The prophecies which represent the Son of Mon as a 
 heavenly judge, coming in the clouds of heaven (Dan. vii.) ; the 
 Messiah as cut off (Dan. ix.) ; Sion's King as meek and lowly, 
 and riding upon an ass (Zech. ix.) ; the good shepherd, sold for 
 thirty pieces of silver (Zech. xi.) ; pierced by the inhabitants of 
 Jerusalem (Zech. xii. 10, xiii.) ; despised and rejected of men, 
 cut off out of the land of tlie living, one upon whom tlie Lord 
 
 * ComiDarc wliat Liislioi) Butler lias said : ' Analogy,' p. ii. c. vli. 3. 
 
Essay III.] PKOPHECY. 123 
 
 liath laid the iniquities of us all (Isaiah liii.) — are just the pi-e- 
 dictions which it proves to be ungeuuiue. The book of Daniel, 
 the latter half of Zechariah, and the conclusion of Isaiah, which, 
 if genuine, are fatal to Eationalist theology, are by Rationalist 
 criticism condemned as ungenuine, in direct opposition to the 
 teaching of the New Testament. The quotations from Zecha- 
 riali are well known, the determination of our Lord to fulfil the 
 ninth chapter of that prophecy obvious in the Gospels. The 
 condemned portion of Isaiah is also emphatically honoured by 
 the Lord and His Apostles. From the beginning to the end it is 
 quoted as the work of Isaiah, and as fulfilled in our Lord. John 
 the Baptist begins the interpretation with the opening prediction 
 (Isaiah xl.) by declaring, " I am the voice of one crying in the 
 wilderness, make straight the way of the Lord, as said the 
 prophet Esaias " (John i. 23). Matthew xii. 17 — 21 explains 
 Isaiah xlii. 1 — 3 of our Lord, and as the prophecy of Isaiah. 
 The corresponding passage (xlix. 6) respecting the Lord's 
 righteous servant is interpreted by St. Paul of the caU of the 
 Gi-entiles (Acts xiii. 47). The fifty-third chapter is appropriated 
 by our Lord Himself (Luke xxii. 37) ; and, after Him, explained 
 by Philip (Acts viii.) ; by St. Peter (1 Epist. ii. 24, 25) ; and in 
 the Epistle to the Hebrews (ix. 28) of the sacrifice of Christ. 
 Chapter Ixi. 1 is also interpreted by om* Lord of Himself 
 (Luke iv. 17 — 21) ; and the end of the prophecy (Ixv. 1) is in 
 the Epistle to the Romans (x. 20, 21) expounded of the conver- 
 sion of the Gentiles, and the unbelief of the Je\\ash people. Thus 
 the whole of the prophecy, from the beginning to the end, is in 
 the New Testament ascribed to Isaiah as the writer, and cited as 
 being fulfilled in our Lord, His sufferings, and His salvation. 
 Both statements are denied by Rationalist writers, so that we 
 cannot foUow the latter without rejecting the teaching of the 
 Lord and His Apostles, and the common belief of the Chi-istian 
 Church and the Jewish nation for nearly 1800 years. With 
 regard to the authorship of this portion of Isaiah, there, was 
 during that long period only one opinion. One solitary rabbi in 
 the twelfth century suggested a doubt on the subject, but, Avitl: 
 the exception of Spinoza, was not followed by either Jews or 
 Christians. It was not imtil men had ceased to believe in Christ 
 that they began to question the latter prophecy of Isaiah. The 
 Buxtorfs, the Carpzovs, Glassius, Gussetius, Cocceius, Venema, 
 
12-1 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay III. 
 
 A'itringa, Sclmltens, Danz, the Micliaelis, acquiesced in the 
 judgmeut of antiquity. Even Paulus says that the diction is as 
 pure as in the other parts of Isaiali. Eichhorn adduced no in- 
 stances of later language. Bertholdt confesses that there are no 
 traces of later usage. The first, and the great objection still, is 
 that Cyrus is mentioned by name. Wlien men came to teach 
 either that God could not know beforehand the name of one of 
 His creatures, or, if He could, could not or would not communi- 
 cate it before the existence of that creature, they necessarily 
 thought that the prediction concerning the conqueror of Babylon 
 must have been written after his appearance. The denial of the 
 genuineness came first, the criticism came after, similar to that 
 ftimous course of law which first condemned and executed, and 
 afterwards proceeded to trial. Yet the process has led to bene- 
 ficial results. The Eationalist dogmatic criticism has been sub- 
 jected to a thorough examination by Hengstenberg, Havernik, 
 Kleinert, Drechsler, Keil, and others. The objections have been 
 fairly met, and the claims of Isaiah to the latter chapters vindi- 
 cated on various grounds, as, for example, the plain references to 
 those chapters in the books of Nahum, Habakkuk, Zephaniah, 
 Jeremiah ; the circumstances of the times described, so exactly 
 agreeing to the days of Isaiah, not to the close of the exile ; the 
 historical relations ; the similarity of style and maimer — the 
 peculiarities of diction ; the entire tone and colouring, not to 
 mention other evidences external and internal. Indeed, Ewald 
 and Bieek have made a fatal rent in the adverse criticism by 
 confessing that the passage Ivi. 9 — Ivii. 11, was written before 
 the exile. " This passage," they say, " may be received with the 
 higliest probability as a prophetic oracle, uttered before the exile, 
 perhaps by Isaiah himself; more probably not long before the 
 exile, certamly at a time when the Jewish State still existed, as 
 it is only on this supposition that tlie contents and composition 
 can be understood." * 
 
 20. Even that chapter which invests the controversy with its 
 chief interest (liii. 1 — 12) is supposed by Ewald to be the work 
 of a prophet anterior to the author of the other chapteis ; and, refer- 
 ring to the strong traits of personal individuality, not personifica- 
 tion, especially in verse 8, he says — " TJte belief of after times, that 
 
 Bleek, ' Einltituiig,' p. 4oG ; Ewald, ' rropliclcu dcs alien Biuules,' p. 407, 8. 
 
Essay III.] 
 
 PROPHECY. 
 
 125 
 
 the historic Messiah is here to he found, lay certainly very near at 
 hand''' * Indeed the prophetic picture of the sufferings of Jesus 
 of Nazareth is so lifelike, that when it has been for the first time 
 brought before Jews ignorant of the passage, they have affirmed 
 that the chapter has been inserted in the Christian editions of 
 the Hebrew Bible ; whilst others, not a few, have been brought 
 by it to faith in Christ. It is not, therefore, to be wondered at 
 that for more than seventeen centuries the Christian Church re- 
 ceived the prophecy as genuine ; and that tlie Fathers, the me- 
 dieval writers, the Reformers, Protestants and Romanists after 
 the Reformation, with the one exception of Grotius, interpreted 
 it of our Lord, until Deistic infidelity found its way into the 
 hearts and minds of so-called Christian divines, and the necessi- 
 ties of the new theology imperatively demanded a new interpre- 
 tation. First Neology and then Rationalism set to work, and 
 the result is a curious specimen of the alleged agreement of 
 modern German expositors of prophecy. Here is one of the 
 most striking and extended prophecies to be found in the Bible ; 
 not an obsciu-e verse, where agreement is impossible, but an 
 oracle running through twenty-seven chapters ; and yet German 
 commentators have not yet decided as to the fundamental prin- 
 ciple of interpretation, whether the subject is an inchvidual or a 
 personified aggregate. Neither do the two parties formed by 
 this difference agree among themselves. Of the first class, some 
 interpret it of King Uzziah, others of Josiah, others of the 
 prophet Isaiah himself, others of an unknown prophet persecuted 
 and killed in the exile;! Bunsen alone, after Grotius, of the 
 prophet Jeremiah. In the second class, the greatest names of 
 Germany stand arrayed against each other. Eichhorn, Hende- 
 werck, Koster, Hitzig, Ewald, Beck, interpret the prophecy of 
 the Jewish people, actual or ideal. Paulus, Thenius, Maurer, 
 von Colin, Knobel, say that " The servant of the Lord " means 
 the better portion of the exiles. Rosenmiiller, Gesenius, De 
 Wette, assert that he is a personification of the collective pro- 
 phetic order.l For several of these interpretations, these distin- 
 guished writers are indebted to Jewish polemics. The application 
 to Josiah was invented by Abarbanel in the sixteenth century ; 
 
 * Ibid, in the note. 
 
 t See Hengstenberf^:, ' Christologie,' 
 
 •p. 306 ; Geseniiis's ' Commeut;irj% ' iii. 
 
 pp. 164-172. 
 
 J See Knobel, ' Commentary,' p. 382- 
 390. 
 
12G AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay III. 
 
 Hint to Jeremiah by Saadiali Gaon, in tlie iiiutli century ; tliat 
 to the whole Jewish people was known, to the Jews with whom 
 Origen disputed, and is most generally accepted by modern 
 Jews ; that to the pious or better jDortion of the j)eople is found 
 in Easlii, in the eleventh centm-y. The ancient Jewish interpre- 
 tation was that which referred the prophecy to the Messiah. 
 From the LXX. it can be inferred with certainty that they dis- 
 tinguished between the servant of tlie Lord and the people of 
 Israel. This is evident from their translation of xlii. 6 and 
 xlix. 6, where they plainly make the Lord's servant " The raiser 
 up of Jacob," and ■' The restorer of the dispersion of Israel," and 
 " a covenant of the people," which words cause such difficulties 
 to Eationalist interpreters as to make them violate the commonest 
 proprieties of Hebrew idiom. When, therefore, the LXX. in- 
 serted the words " Jacob " and " Israel " in xlii. 1, — " Jacob is my 
 servant, and I will help him : Israel is mine elect, my soul hath 
 accepted him," — they did not mean to apply those words to the 
 people, but to give to the servant of the Lord tliat title which 
 he has in the Hebrew text in xlix. 3. " And He said to me, 
 Thou art my servant : Israel art thou, in whom I will be glori- 
 fied," * where Gesenius, and before him J. D. Michaelis, in order 
 to get rid of the plain meaning, j^ropose to set critical authority 
 at defiance, and oust the word " Israel " from the text. The 
 LXX. have it here all right, where they plainly distinguish be- 
 tween the Lord's servant and the people, and thereby prove that 
 they thought the words " Jacob " and " Israel " titles of tliis ser- 
 vant, and not the name of the people. And, therefore, in xlii. 
 19, "Who is blind but my servant? or deaf as my messenger 
 that I sent ? who is blind as he that is perfect, and blind as the 
 Lord's servant?" which they interpret of the people, and not of 
 the servant ; they turn the singulars into plurals to prevent mis- 
 take — Kol Ti? TV(f)\o<; aX)C i) ol 7ralBe<; fxov, koL Koxpol aX)C y ol 
 KvptevovTe^ avTcov; koI €TV(f)X(o6j]aav ol SovXot tov ©eot. 
 
 The early traditions of the Hebraist Jews are clear and un- 
 equivocal, and are identical with the New Testament interjireta- 
 tion, as is admitted even by the modern Eabbis,t who, for 
 
 * This is the translation given by j when, partly owing to the hostility ex- 
 
 Gescnius of the text as it stands. cited by the Crusaders in the Jewish 
 
 t By modern Rabbis arc meant tliosc | mind, and partly trom their intercom-so 
 
 who lived from the 11th century on, witli the Mahometans, Jewish inter- 
 
Essay III.] PROPHECY. 127 
 
 polemical reasons, interpret differently. Aben Esra, in tlie 
 twelfth century, says, " Many have interpreted this chapter of 
 Messiah, because our ancients of blessed memory have said that 
 Messiah was born the same day that the Temple was destroyed, 
 and that he is bound in chains." Eabbi Alshech, who flourished 
 in Palestine in the middle of the sixteenth century, makes a 
 similar confession — " Behold our Eabbis have with one mouth 
 confirmed, and received by tradition that King Messiah is here 
 spoken of ... He beareth the iniquities of the children of 
 Israel, and behold His reward is with Him." The truth of these 
 confessions may be seen by consulting the ancient books of 
 authority. In Isai. xlii. 1, and lii. 13, Jonathan, about the time 
 of om- Lord, adds Messiah after the word " servant ;" " Behold, 
 my servant, the Messiah." The book of Zohar, regarded with 
 the utmost reverence by all pious Jews, and parts of which are 
 certainly from the first century of Christianity, also says plainly 
 that Messiah bears the sins of the people, and that " If he had 
 not removed them from Israel and taken them upon himself, no 
 man could bear the chastisement of Israel on account of the 
 punishment pronounced in the Law. This is what is written — 
 Surely He hath borne our sicknesses. The Talmud (Sanhedrin, 
 vol. 98, col. 2), the Psikta, and Yalkut Shimoni, all have the 
 same interpretation. " Behold my servant shall deal very pru- 
 dently—this is the King Messiah. He shall be exalted, and 
 extolled, and be very high. He shall be exalted more than 
 Abraham . . . He shaU be extolled more than Moses ... He 
 shall be higher than the ministering angels. 'But He was 
 wounded for our transgi-essions, He was bruised for our iniqui- 
 ties : the chastisement of our peace was upon Him, and with 
 His stripes we are healed.' Eabbi Huna, in the name of Eabbi 
 Acha says, the chastisements were divided into thi-ee parts : — 
 one to David and the fathers ; one to the rebellious generation ; 
 and one to King Messiah." Indeed, such possession had this 
 interpretation of the Jewish mind, that it found its way into the 
 prayers of the Synagogue, and there it remains until this day. 
 In the Liturgy for the Day of Atonement is found the following- 
 remarkable passage, which is given from David Levi's edition of 
 
 pretation and Jewish theology under- I widely from ancient Judaism as well 
 went a great change, and divercred ' as from Christianity. 
 
128 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay III. 
 
 the Synagogue service books, and in his translation. " Before 
 He created anything, He established His dwelling (the temple) 
 and Yinnon* Our righteous anointed is departed from us : 
 horror hath seized us and we have none to justify. He hath 
 borne the yoke of our iniquities, and of our transgression, and is 
 wounded because of our transgression. He beareth oui' sins on 
 His shoulder that He may first pardon for our iniquities. We 
 shall be healed by His wound at the time that the Eternal will 
 create Him (the Messiah) as a new creature. bring Him up 
 from the circle of the earth, raise Him up from Seir, to asseml )le 
 us the second time on Lebanon by the hand of Yhmony-f The 
 Jewish editor, David Levi, endeavours to break the force of this 
 passage by a note, explainuig "om- righteous anointed" of 
 Josiah. But as he confesses that the whole passage refers to the 
 Messiah, with whose name it begins and ends, and as the 
 Hebrew words for "our righteous anointed One," literally, 
 " Messiah our righteousness," are a common Eabbinic designation 
 of the Messiah, taken from Jer. xxiii. 6, this interpretation can 
 only be regarded as a polemic evasion to avert the Jewish mind 
 from the Christian interpretation of Isai. liii. Even in Levi's 
 translation the passage speaks for itself, and as found in the 
 service for the most solemn day in the whole Jewish year, 
 proves that the Messianic interpretation was not only the an- 
 cient, but the national reception of the chapter.^ The Eabbinic 
 tradition of two Messiahs, one to suffer and the other to reign, 
 seems also to be a witness or a homage to the ancient interpre- 
 tation of this chapter, and to the deep national conviction of the 
 need of an atonement. That this national persuasion ought to have 
 some Aveight, even if not supported by the New Testament, will 
 be admitted by candid readers. It acquires double weight 
 from the fact that this interpretation is contrary to the worldly 
 hopes of a conquering Messiah, so ardently entertained in the 
 
 * Yinnon is tlio Hebrew word 
 translated in the A. V. "shall be 
 continued," Ps. Ixxii. 17. But accord- 
 ing to Jewish tradition, it is a name 
 of the Messiah. " Yinnon was His 
 name before the sun," i. e. before the 
 creation of the world. As it comes 
 from the verb p3, to propagate, they 
 seem to have taken it in the same 
 sense as HDV, "lOPI, "1^*3, and to have un- 
 
 derstood by it the Sonship of Messiali. 
 
 t "The name of the Messiah, as 
 alluding to Psalm Ixxii. 17." (Levi's 
 Note.) 
 
 X Compare also the Prayers for the 
 Feast of Passover, p. 72, where is ano- 
 ther quotation of Isaiah liii. 13, 
 which David Levi himself says means 
 the true Messiah. 
 
Essay III.] PEOPHECY. 129 
 
 days of Eoman domination in Palestine, and to wbicli Eabbinic 
 polemics still return in order to prove that Jesus cannot be the 
 Messiah. With such hopes and prejudices, the idea of a suffering 
 and despised Messiah could never have arisen, nor have been 
 entertained, if it had not previously existed, and been received 
 as true and genuine. The idea of pardon and salvation through 
 the sufferings of another was equally contrary to the self- 
 righteous doctrine of the Pharisees. The existence and con- 
 tinuance of such an interpretation is, therefore, strong proof of 
 its antiquity, and of its original source. The national interpre- 
 tation of one of their own records, under such considerations, 
 ought to have at least as much weight as the discordant and 
 controverted opinions of critics living, according to their own 
 showing, 2300 years after the record was written, and filled 
 with antecedent prejudices against a true exegesis. 
 
 He must indeed be a man " that leans to his own understand- 
 ing," who can lightly esteem the judgment of the ancient Jewish 
 Church, and the common consent of all Christian scholars for 
 nearly 1800 years,* and believe that he has found what such a 
 goodly company have failed to perceive. But the Christian 
 bows to still higher authority than the common judgment of this 
 mighty host of the great, the good, the wise, and the learned, in 
 so many ages and nations ; he learns from Him whose Sphit 
 spake in the prophets, and guided His disciples and Apostles into 
 all truth. Christ and His Apostles have interpreted tliis chapter 
 of His sufferings, death, and resurrection-glory ; and the provi- 
 dence of God has verified the interpretation. Not to speak of 
 the past, our eyes still see the fulfilment of this prediction. The 
 most improbable prophecy in the world was this which pre- 
 dicted that a Jew, despised by his people, numbered amongst 
 transgressors, cut off out of the land of the living, should, never- 
 theless, prolong his days, be the light of the Gentiles, and God's 
 salvation to the ends of the earth. And yet this is what has 
 been accomplished, and is accomplishing itself before our eyes. 
 In spite of all the pride, prejudice, and power of Greeks and 
 Komans, the ignorance and fury of barbarian invaders, the self- 
 sufficiency of human knowledge, the vices of civilisation, Jesus 
 of Nazareth has triumphed, and triumphs, and is still the light 
 
 The one exception of Grotius makes the universal agreement the more strikiuc 
 
 E 
 
130 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay III. 
 
 of tlie world. The Christian humbly and thankfully accepts 
 the teaching of the Lord, and the testimony of God's providence. 
 The wondrous outline stands A-ividly marked on the page of 
 prophecy ; the fulfilment as unmistakably inscribed on the 
 prominent pages of the world's history. The one answers to 
 the other, as the mirror to the human face, and he cannot be 
 mistaken. No microscopic investigations of criticism can make 
 the agreement doubtful. He does not despise or disregard the 
 labours of even hostile critics. On the contrary, he carefully 
 considers their every suggestion, thankfully receives the light 
 which they have thrown on words and phrases, acknowledges 
 their diligence, their genius, their learning, and their honesty, 
 so far as their dogmatic prejudices allow them to be impartial. 
 But Christ has spoken, and by Christ's words he abides. He, 
 therefore, believes that the prophets spake as they were moved 
 by the Holy Ghost ; that they uttered predictions ; that many 
 of the most seemingly improbable have been fulfilled, and are 
 pledges that the remainder shall also be accomplished. He 
 cannot join in the unbelieving cry, " Where is the promise of 
 His coming ?" He does not believe that " since the fathers fell 
 asleep all things continue as they were from the beginning of 
 the creation," but that Christ " in His majesty rides prosperously 
 on in the cause of truth, and meekness, and righteousness ;" and 
 " though the vision tarry," he waits for it, assured that it is " for 
 an appointed time," and that " at the end it shall speak and not 
 lie — it will surely come, it will not tarry." 
 
ESSAY IV. 
 
 IDEOLOaY AND SUBSCEIPTION. 
 
 K 2 
 
CONTENTS OF ESSAY IV. 
 
 1. Introductory remarks — practical 
 
 applicatious and bearings of Ideo- 
 logy- 
 
 2. Professed objects of Ideology — 
 
 chief peculiarity of the system. 
 
 3. Tlie contrast between this and older 
 
 forms of scepticism. 
 
 4. The two systems mutually destruc- 
 
 tive. 
 
 5. Proposed inquiry into the origin of 
 
 the system. 
 
 6. The outward world governed by 
 
 universal laws. 
 
 7. Difficulty of applying general prin- 
 
 ciples to the events of secular his- 
 tory. Fiction and history com- 
 pared. 
 
 8. The Ideologist's view of sacred 
 
 history accounted for. 
 
 9. 10. Contrasted with that taken by 
 
 Christians. 
 
 11. The Christian view illustrated and 
 
 confirmed. 
 
 12. Alternative set forth— the system 
 
 of Ideologists repugnant to con- 
 science, and to the Englishman's 
 love of truth. 
 
 13. Historical inquiry into the origin and 
 
 development of Ideology. 
 
 14. The Life of Jesus by Strauss. 
 
 15. Early training of Strauss at Tii- 
 
 bingen. 
 
 16. Strauss at Berlin. Influence and 
 
 character of Sclileiermacher. 
 
 17. Hegel— his position, influence, and 
 
 general principles. 
 
 18. Publication of the ' Life of Jesus ' 
 
 — state of Germany at the time — 
 efi'ects of the publication. 
 
 19. General objects of that work. 
 
 20. First part of the work destructive 
 
 — way prepared by De Wette, 
 Semler, Gabler, and Schleierma- 
 cher. Myths. 
 
 21. Kesult of tho first part — as re- 
 
 gards our Lord's history, and dis- 
 courses. 
 
 22. Strauss's theory as to the ideal 
 
 truths which underlie the history 
 of Christ. 
 
 23. Development of Pantheism in tho 
 
 work on Christian Doctrine. 
 
 24. Struggle of the followers of Schleier- 
 
 macher and Hegel to shake off 
 tlio responsibility. Other develop- 
 ments of Hegelian principles. F. 
 Richter, Bruno Bauer. 
 
 25. Eotlie's work on the Cliristian 
 
 Church — comparison with Dr. Ar- 
 nold's view. 
 
 26. Ultimate results of Hegelian prin- 
 
 ciples. Feuerbach, Communists, 
 Atheists, Eevolution of 1848. 
 
 27. Eeaction. Ideology brought to Eng- 
 
 land. 
 
 28. Identity of principles as regards a 
 
 future state. 
 
 29. Church and State. 
 
 30. Rejection of supernatural agency — 
 
 myths — general scepticism. 
 
 31. Position of Ideologists as ministers 
 
 of the Church. 
 
 32. Doctrinal safeguards. 
 
 33. The practice of the Apostles con- 
 
 sidered generally. 
 
 34. St. Paul's proceedings in the case of 
 
 the fornicator at Corinth, and of 
 heretical teachers. 
 
 35. The practice of the Early Church — 
 
 doctrinal limitation not inaugurat- 
 ed by Constiintine. Council of Nice. 
 The Creed accepted by the State. 
 
 36. The practice of our own Church. 
 
 The Bible or Word of God the 
 foundation of fundamentals — the 
 Creeds fundamental. Objects of the 
 Articles. Subscription not requir- 
 ed of the laity, but of ministers. 
 
 37. Reason of the diff'erence. 
 
 38. Subscription a promise, as regards 
 
 not belief, but ministerial acts. 
 
 39. Obligation moral, not merely legal. 
 
 40. Extent of the obligation. Feelings 
 
 of the laity touching the meaning 
 of subscription. 
 
 41. The alleged alienation of the people 
 
 from t h e C hiu-cl i . T h e fac t dou b t- 
 ful — tlie cause not to be found in 
 doctrinal teaching. Effects of the 
 substitution of an ethical system 
 for Christian doctrines. Position 
 of a rationalistic minister in using 
 the Liturgy. 
 
 42. True object and duty of the (Jhurcb. 
 
 Probable results of changes. 
 
 43. Concluding remarks. 
 
IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCRIPTION. 
 
 1. The term Ideology is strange, and certainly not welcome to 
 English ears ; nor is it, perhaps, much to be feared that the 
 system which bears the name will find many adherents, or 
 exercise any direct iniiuence upon the current of religious 
 thought. A summary rejection may, therefore, at first sight, 
 appear to be an effectual and satisfactory mode of disposing of 
 its claims. Such indeed might be the case if we considered 
 merely the abstract speculations with which Ideology is con- 
 nected : but in its applications and bearings it assumes a very 
 practical form. It touches the most important questions of 
 morality, the most vital truths of religion. It affects the vera- 
 city or trustworthiness of the witnesses of revelation, the 
 genuineness and integrity of its documents, their origin and 
 interpretation, and by a strictly logical, though not perhaps a 
 very obvious consequence, the relations between the Church, 
 her people, and ministers. Such points must be scrutinized ; the 
 true character of the system, the jDi'inciples on which it rests, 
 and its inevitable results ought to be distinctly ascertained. 
 Should it prove, as in all former controversies has been the case, 
 that some great truths, not generally recognized in their fulness, 
 find in the system, false and pernicious as it may be, a partial and 
 inadequate expression ; and that the very objections of ideologists 
 enable us to comprehend, somewhat more clearly than hereto- 
 fore, some essential characteristics of the Christian revelation, that 
 result, at least, will be welcome to those who watch with interest, 
 though n9t without perplexity and apprehension, the progress of 
 a religious speculation in an age remarkable for fearlessness, 
 and, it may be hoped, for sincerity, in the pm-suit of truth. 
 
 2. The object of Ideology, as it is described in the writings of 
 Strauss, who first presented it in a complete and systematic 
 form, was to reconcile belief in the spiritual truths Avhich he 
 recognized as the ideal basis of Clu'istianity, with rejection of 
 all the miraculous events, and by far the largest portion of the 
 
134 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IV. 
 
 narrative, with wliicli those truths are connected. The rejection 
 rests upon an assumption of the utter incredibility of mu-acles, 
 as irreconcileable with philosophical principles, and as contrary 
 to experience ; and it is supported, as we shall see presently, by 
 an unscrupulous use of arguments supplied by various schools 
 of infidelity. But the chief peculiarity of the system is that, sub- 
 ject to this assumption, it professes to account for the existence 
 of a belief in the facts, and for the form in which the facts 
 are represented, and to explain the real significance of nar- 
 ratives involving supernatural elements. The ideologist, or 
 idealist, asserts that such narratives are myths, which it would 
 be absurd to regard as true in the letter, but which may yet 
 be treated with respect, and even with reverence, as symbols 
 and representations of ideas which are of permanent interest 
 and importance to mankind. The facts did not, and could not 
 occur in the manner or under the circumstances described in 
 Scripture, but they may yet be substantially, that is ideally 
 true, as products of human consciousness, as expressing at least 
 the aspirations or presentiments of a nature akin to the divine. 
 Many writers of this school (and Strauss himself in several 
 passages) adopt at times a far more offensive tone, and do not 
 hesitate to attribute the origin of large portions of the Gospel 
 narrative to the prepossessions of the writers, to their ignorance, 
 credulity, and fanaticism, or to selfish and interested motives. 
 AYe do not propose to discuss those speculations. The only form 
 in which the theory of ideologists is calculated to produce any 
 effect upon generous and elevated minds, is tliat wliich accepts 
 the ideal principles as true, while it denies the historical 
 character of the relations in which they are bodied forth. 
 
 3. One point strikes us prima facie in considering this theory : 
 and that is the very remarkable contrast which it exhibits to 
 the position of those who formerly, either in England or on the 
 Continent, denied the objective facts of revelation. The strongest 
 attacks have proceeded hitherto, not only from a distinct, but a 
 diametrically opposite point of view. Sceptics and infidels used 
 to argue that the doctrinal statements in the Bible are opposed 
 io reason, and more especially to the moral consciousness of 
 man ; and they rejected the historical relations chiefly because 
 they involved miraculous attestations to those statements. That 
 position was at least consistent and intelligible : the issue one- 
 
Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCEIPTION. 135 
 
 about wliicli there could be no mistake. The Christian advocate 
 liad, of course, to prove that the history was sustained by evidence 
 sufficient to satisfy impartial inquirers ; but his great duty was to 
 vindicate the Scriptural representations of the Divine attributes, 
 and the principles on wliich God is described as conducting the 
 moral government of the world. In the new system, on the 
 contrary, the very adaptation of the doctrines of Scripture to 
 our spiritual nature is taken as a proof, or presumption, that the 
 forms in which they are presented must have been invented 
 or remoulded by the plastic imagination of man. It is assumed 
 not merely that the existence of certain feelings, opinions, or 
 aspirations accounts for belief in the facts narrated by the 
 evangelists, but that, taken as a whole, the objective system of 
 revelation sprang out of the belief — was spontaneously evolved 
 from the half-conscious operations of the human mind. Thus 
 the need of a reconcihation with God was repudiated as a super- 
 stition by the old sceptic ; according to the idealist it was the 
 feeling of such a need which invested the death of an innocent 
 man with the attributes of a sacrificial atonement. The longing 
 for communion with God, derided as mysticism by the former, 
 according to the latter originated the idea of the incarnation ; 
 while all that appeared necessary to substantiate the doctrine, 
 in the way of miraculous attestation or divine endowment, was 
 supplied by the credulity or imaguiation of the followers of one 
 who, at a critical period in the world's history, concentrated in 
 himself the reverence and admiration of zealous converts. 
 Clustering around one gracious form, one wise and loving and 
 truly sublime being, human yearnings, human tendernesses 
 sought and found in him a visible representation of the Deity.* 
 In short, according to ideologists, the circumstances of our Lord's 
 nativity and baptism. His conflict with Satan, His manifestations 
 of superhuman powers, and predictions of the immediate or 
 remote future. His resurrection and ascension, — indeed all the 
 cardinal facts of religion, — are so far from being, as older sceptics 
 aftirmed, opposed to our moral consciousness, that they are all 
 but adequate representations of the ideal, which, if it could be 
 
 * Strauss in liis answer to Steudel [ tlie ' Leben Jesu,' he acknowledges the 
 
 makes the whole impulsive force of , peculiar and unique grandeur of our 
 
 Christianity centre in the personality | Lord's person, 
 of Jesus. In the concluding chapter of 
 
136 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay IV. 
 
 realized, would satisfy the very deepest and most universal 
 aspirations of mankind. 
 
 4. Certainly no greater contrast could be imagined between 
 t\yo classes of men who concur in rejecting the facts, and employ 
 nearly the same processes in their attempts to discredit the 
 sacred narrative, so far as it involves what they are pleased to 
 call violations * of universal laws. It may be that the two sys- 
 tems are not merely contrasted to each other, but that each con- 
 tains a principle, Avhich, if disentangled from the errors in which 
 it is enveloped, may suffice for the exposure and overthrow of 
 the opposite fallacy. Destroying each other mutually as systems, 
 each may leave a residuum of truth available for the defence of 
 the position which they both assail. 
 
 On the one side we have the fact, that inquirers, whom none 
 would hold to be influenced by doctrinal prejudices and pre- 
 possessions, recognize the adaptation of Christian principles f 
 to the wants and instincts of humanity. This fact not only 
 contradicts, but it utterly subverts, the position of those who 
 assert that the doctrines are so repugnant to those instincts as 
 to make the transactions incredible by which they are attested. 
 The old dry scepticism cannot stand when confronted with 
 such a recognition of the intrinsic excellence and spirituality 
 of Christian truth, as is at present actually professed by the 
 majority, or at any rate by the most intellectual and influential, 
 among those whom freethinkers regard as the leaders and 
 representatives of modern thought. $ That form of disbelief has 
 the ground cut away from under its feet. It must be regarded 
 as a mere subjective impression, or an indication of disorder in 
 a man's moral nature. The minds Avhich reject such truths 
 cannot be in what mere philosophers, looking ou the whole 
 matter from without, would admit to be a healthy and normal 
 state. 
 
 * See Butler's remarks on the ob- 
 jections to miracles, 'Analogy,' part ii. 
 c. iv. His theory, that miracles may 
 1)e referred to some universal, tliough 
 unknown, law has been strangely mis- 
 represented. 
 
 t That was the opinion of all the 
 followers of Hegel until they were 
 broken into opposite parties by tlie 
 publication of Strauss's book. Of late 
 
 years the denial of such adaptation 
 marked a man's place on the extreme 
 left, or destructive side. 
 
 J In fact the overtlirow of tlie older 
 Kationalism in Germany, which ex- 
 actly corresponded with English 
 Deism, is claimed as the great work of 
 the system in wliicli Ideologv origi- 
 nated. See Schwartz, Zur Ges'chiehto 
 rler neuesten Theologie, p. 05. 
 
Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCRIPTION. 137 
 
 Still the old sceiDtic lias some stubborn facts on his side ^Yhich 
 are wholly inexplicable on the opposite system. There is the 
 fact that, since the first promulgation of Christianity, multitudes 
 have rejected, myriads misunderstand, or are utterly unable to 
 realize its distinctive doctrines, — those, for instance, which the 
 most thoughtful idealists regard with admiration. This is surely 
 incompatible with the theory that the human mind could of 
 itself have originated or developed the doctrines, or that it 
 should, consciously or unconsciously, have distorted historical 
 events so as to represent them in a concrete form. Those 
 doctrines jar too harshly with the mind in its natural state, 
 excite man's fears too painfully, to admit the supposition that 
 they could be the spontaneous product of human consciousness. 
 Under certain conditions, it is true that they tind an echo in the 
 conscience, and give an intelligible solution to many dark 
 problems of the universe : but the very first of those conditions 
 is a subjective change of which neither sceptic nor ideologist 
 can give any probable account. The religion which involves 
 those doctrines, which speaks of a futurity of retribution, which 
 contradicts the most widely spread prejudices, and sets up an 
 exemplar utterly unlike the heroes and deities of all nations, is 
 one which certainly could not have been devised or anticipated 
 by man. Thus scepticism by the very fact of its prevalence 
 overthrows the position of the ideologist : while the objections 
 and contradictions of both find at once their explanation and 
 their refutation in that position which we hold, not only as a 
 matter of faith, but of experience. Christian truth, and the 
 facts of revelation by which it is represented, are in accordance 
 with the fimdamental principles of human reason and conscience ; 
 yet they are only accepted by man when those principles are 
 themselves distinctly recognized, — that is, when both reason and 
 conscience are raised out of the state of corruption and degrada- 
 tion into which they had unquestionably sunk when Christianity 
 was first promulgated. The accordance removes all a priori moral 
 objections to the consideration of the evidence by which those 
 truths and facts are attested, while the actual repugnance of so 
 large a portion of mankind to admit the doctrine is absolutely 
 fatal to the theory of its origination in human consciousness, 
 apart from an external supernatural impulse. 
 
 5. This argument is not to be set aside as a mere logomachv, an 
 
138 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essat IY. 
 
 attempt to neutralize conflicting opinions. It is but one instance 
 among many, of the Avay in wliicli truth is elicited by the 
 collision of opposite errors. Our object, however, is not so 
 much to confute as to convince, certainly not to exasperate, 
 conscientious opponents; and this object may perhaps be 
 better attained by an inquiry how the contemplation of 
 Christianity, being a perfect reahzation of a perfect ideal, could 
 have suggested to any one such a theory as that which is 
 presented to us by ideologists. 
 
 6. In some sense all philosophers admit that the outward world 
 is the result and representation of the invisible. According to 
 materialists all phoenomena are the products and exhibition 
 of self-sustaining and self-evolving powers which pervade all 
 natiu"e — that is, of invisible forces known only by their effects. 
 According to Theists the whole universe is the product and 
 manifestation of a creating, preserving, and ruling will. The 
 events of history are in a special sense manifestations of the law 
 which that will impedes upon the development of the human 
 race. The law itself is discoverable to a certain extent by reflec- 
 tion upon those events ; Christians believe that it is revealed 
 fully in the sacred writings. All facts indeed are in some sense 
 the concrete results and expression of some absolute principle, 
 some unseen power, some general law.* There is in reality 
 no such thing as a dead matter of fact, no chance, no casual 
 occurrence, in the history of the world. Joined one to the other in 
 an unbroken series of cause and effect, every fact, every event finds 
 its necessary place in the universal order ; each is a link in that 
 chain, which according to materialists had no begiuning and 
 will have no end, which according to Theists is fastened by each 
 extremity to the throne of God. Christians accept the state- 
 ment that all existences are the result of universal law, but 
 they hold that law to be the expression of a supreme intellect 
 and infinite love : deriving its force solely from the will of 
 God. 
 
 7. Here we stand on a platform on which, whether agreed or 
 
 * This tnith is recognized quite as [ be any sucli tiling as chance ; and con- 
 distinctly by Butler and all other great i elude that the things which liave this 
 chami)ions of Revelation as by its ajipearanee are the results of general 
 strongest opponents. " All reasonable t laws, and may be reduced into them." 
 men know certainly that there cannot ! Analogy, ii. c. iv. § 3. 
 
Essay IY.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCEirTIOX. 139 
 
 not, we can at least imderstand our relative positions. "We may 
 advance a stage further, and that brings us to the real issue. It 
 may be true, that in a general survey of history, principles of 
 law and order are discernible ; but it is certain that the diffi- 
 culty is great, if not insuperable, when we seek to ascertain the 
 operations of those principles in individual cases,* when we would 
 apply them to account for events recorded by secular historians. 
 When thought sweeps over a wide expanse, it is confused by the 
 multiplicity of apparently abnormal and contradictory phae- 
 nomena — 
 
 " It is most hard, with an untroubled ear, 
 Those dark inwoven harmonies to hear." 
 
 Certain personages stand forth from time to time, in grand 
 critical epochs of the world's development, as representative 
 men, but seldom, if ever, are they adequate representatives of 
 high, never of the highest principles.t Striking indications are 
 given of an unseen presence by which all processes are guided, 
 and of ends which all subordinate occurrences subserve. But 
 over the whole there is a mist, sometimes broken, sometimes 
 seeming to transmit light from a higher sphere, but for the most 
 part dense and impenetrable. Aberrations and inconsistencies, 
 contradictions and divergencies, confound the philosophic reader 
 of history, in the attempt to arrive at a distinct perception of 
 the general princij^les, the universal laws, which underlie and 
 govern the complicated series of external events. 
 
 One unquestionable result of this fact requires special atten- 
 tion. The discrepancy between events as they occur in secular 
 liistory, and the absolute ideas or principles which all events 
 rightly understood exemplify and represent, is in point of fact 
 so far recognized by the human mind, that whenever we read a 
 narrative, in which the ideal and real are presented in perfect 
 
 * Thus Butler, 1. c. : "It is but an 
 
 exceeding little way, and in but few 
 respects, that we can trace up the na- 
 tiual course of things before us to 
 general laws." Mr. Jowett has said, in 
 an essay of most melancholy tendency, 
 " In the study of ethnology, or geology, 
 in the records of our own or past times 
 
 vol. ii., p. 433, 2nd edition. 
 
 t This position and its bearings upon 
 Ideologists were cUscussed with great 
 ability and persuasiveness by Ullmann 
 in tho ' Studien und Kritiken,' 183(3, 
 No. 3. This treatise, which was after- 
 wards reprinted with the title 'His- 
 torisch oder Mythisch,' induced Strauss 
 
 a curtain chops over the Divine pre- | himself to mochfy the conclusion of his 
 sence."— On the Epistles of St. Paul, | ' Leben Jesu.' 
 
140 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IV. 
 
 accordtmce, we are all but in-esistibly impressed ■with the con- 
 viction that it must be fictitious. Fiction, as Aristotle long 
 since taught, is more catholic than reality ; that is, it is a more 
 obvious and perfect exemplification of general principles. A 
 perfectly good, an entirely consistent man, a life in which all 
 events should be so ordered as to harmonize with oui' ideas of 
 fitness and justice, a series of events in which the moral 
 government of the Supreme Being should be outwardly and de- 
 monstrably exemplified, would seem to us from a purely secular 
 point of view a sheer impossibility. The Hegelian is right, so 
 far as ordinary men and ordinary events are concerned, in his 
 theory that the ideal is ever striving for realization, but that it 
 never is realized. That is an old trutli which our own Hooker 
 has stated in terms at once more simple and accurate — " All 
 things besides, God excepted, are somewhat in possibility which 
 as yet they are not in act," * The map of a country drawn in 
 outlines of geometrical symmetry, a narrative in which all 
 events are the development of some great principle and conduce 
 to some one intelligible result, ahke produce the impression of 
 um-eality. We do not see such tilings. They are contrary to 
 experience. Scarcely any amount of external evidence would 
 satisfy us of their truth. 
 
 It is just at this point that the controversy between the 
 Cliristian and the Ideologist arises. The question is simply 
 this : are the same principles applicable to secular history and 
 to the records of a scheme which is professedly one of divine 
 interpositions ? f We see perfectly weU that if they were ap- 
 plicable, the conclusions of the ideologist could scarcely be 
 controverted. To one who does not view the sacred narrative as 
 a thing apart, not merely in certain details, but in its entire 
 construction, resting altogether upon different principles from 
 those which he is accustomed to apply in historical investiga- 
 tions, its facts, whether or not what is commonly called 
 miraculous, have prima facie this characteristic of fiction. The 
 long series of events recorded in the Bible, connected for ages 
 with one family, but involving in its consequences all the 
 destinies of mankind, unquestionably exemplifies certain ideal 
 principles, and that throughout and completely, in its organic 
 
 E, P. i. 5. t Sec, for instance, Strauss's ' Leben Jesu,' Einleitung, § 8. 
 
Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCRIPTION. 141 
 
 structure and in its several j^arts. In the opinion of one 
 who dismisses, without argument, all notions of supernatural 
 intervention, such a fact is unaccountable, excepting upon 
 the supposition that the history has been invented or essen- 
 tially changed in character by the writers who have trans- 
 mitted the traditional records in their actual state. Whether 
 he attribute this to design, to the influence of high or low 
 feelings, to superstition, ignorance, prejudice, or, on the other 
 hand, to noble and generous aspu-ations, may be admitted to 
 be a matter of considerable import so far as regards his own 
 spiritual state ; * but the result is alike destructive so far as 
 regards the bearings of the argument upon the substantial 
 verity of the Scriptures. The more solemn and majestic the 
 events, the more completely in the ideologist's mind do they 
 bear the essential character of a myth. In no portion of Holy 
 Writ is such criticism more destructive than in that which 
 presents to us the life of our Lord — that perfect embodiment of 
 an ideal, in itself without a parallel, in its reahzation transcend- 
 ing all conceptions of the human mind.f 
 
 9. We thus account for the position of the ideologist, and in 
 accounting for it we seem to gain a singularly distinct perception 
 of what is surely the most positive and j)eculiar characteristic of 
 Christianity. The attributes, the very nature of God, are 
 manifested in the government of the world, viewed by the light 
 of Scripture, but most specially and completely in the Person 
 and works of the Son. Just in this point consists the real 
 contrast between sacred and profane history. Profane history 
 may not, and indeed it cannot contradict, but it certainly does 
 not distinctly teach, some of the most momentous and necessary 
 truths — such as the unity of God, the unity of the human race, 
 the unity of human history, the universal principles of morality, 
 or the systematic development of the pm*poses of an almighty 
 and loving will. Historians, excepting so far as they have 
 drawn light from other sources, do not in point of fact distinctly 
 
 * All these influences are adopted 
 by Strauss, as acting in co-ordination 
 with the philosophical mythus, that 
 ■which clothes in the garb of his- 
 torical narrative a simple thought, a 
 precept or idea of the time. L. J., 
 
 t Thus even Grotz, quoted in the 
 'Westminster Review,' July 1861. 
 Strauss speaks scarcely less strongly of 
 the marvellous and uarivalled beauty 
 of the conception. See his answer to 
 UUmann, ' Vergangliches und Bleiben.' 
 
 Einleitung, § 8. ; 1839. 
 
142 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 TESSAY IV. 
 
 set forth all or any of these truths. Sacred history teaches 
 them all, and teaches them not by mere abstractions, but by the 
 representation of events in which our conceptions of what is 
 right, reasonable, and desirable, find a perfect satisfaction. 
 Our only postulate is one which cannot be denied on rational 
 grounds by any but atheists* — that God has the will and the 
 power of making Himself known to His creatures. That granted, 
 the reasonableness and therefore the probabihty of such a 
 manifestation of Himself can scarcely be denied. The intellect 
 freed from the shackles of sin and knowledge falsely so called, 
 fastens with joy upon the one clue to the labyrinthine mazes of 
 speculation. Holding it a priori to be possible that the Divine 
 love may choose thus to deliver us from dark and dreary be- 
 wilderment, we gladly accept the proofs that such has been His 
 gracious will. We beheve that in another state the ideal will 
 be thoroughly and universally realized, that each act and eacli 
 existence, in its place and its degree, w^ill be then a perfect 
 exemplification of some eternal reality ; and of this we are equally 
 convinced, that a foretaste and anticipation of that future har- 
 mony has been vouchsafed in the Scriptural narrative, most 
 especially in the life and person of Jesus Christ. 
 
 10. It is a strange and instructive contrast which is thus pre- 
 sented between the effects of the Scriptural narrative upon the 
 ideologist and upon the simple-hearted Clmstian. The traces of 
 harmonious accordance impress the former with the conviction 
 that he is listening to the record of a dream — beautiful it may 
 be, and significant, — the dream of a poet or a saint, of a spirit 
 full of divine yearnings and sympathies, but still a dream — 
 an empty, unsubstantial di-eam. The Christian sees in that 
 accordance the evidence of a divine power ; of all effects upon 
 his mind the very last Avould be a doubt as to the reality of the 
 objective facts which show how that power has been exerted 
 for the regeneration of man. 
 
 11. This is a strong position to occupy, a secm-e resting-place 
 
 * Including all schools of Pantheism 
 ■wliich deny the consciousness of God, 
 and moreover those Deists wlio main- 
 tain the absolute necessity of all mani- 
 festations of the Divine nature in tiie 
 world— who make tiie world, so to 
 speak, the complete manifestation and 
 
 body of the Deity. Such are J. H. 
 Fichto, and C. H. Weisse, Schwartz, 
 &c., in Germany; F. Newman (if, in- 
 deed, he recognizes at present any per- 
 sonal conscit)Usness in God>, and many 
 others, in England. 
 
Essay IV.] 
 
 IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCRIPTION. 
 
 143 
 
 for the spirit. We may profitably dwell somewliat in detail upon 
 the thoughts which it suggests. Every fact in the life of our 
 Master is in accordance with a spiritual principle which it actually 
 and completely represents. Man, conscious of inherent weakness, 
 longs for union with God. In the incarnation, God and man be- 
 come one. Man feels himself exposed to a strange fascination which 
 attracts him towards evil and draws him away from God. In 
 Christ he meets, baffles, and overcomes, the personal agent of all 
 temptation. Man feels that he is a slave to nature, over which 
 a sure instinct tells him that he was destined to rule. In Christ 
 he exercises that dominion, making all physical forces subser- 
 vient to his wiU. Man fears disease, affliction, and bereavement. 
 In Christ all sorrows become medicinal, and conduce to the per- 
 fection of our renewed nature. Man has two great foes — sin, and 
 death the penalty of sin. Christ crushes sin, and expels it 
 from His dominions ; death He converts into the last best friend, 
 the opener of the portals of eternal life. Moved by the Spirit 
 of God, the mind of man from age to age has uttered aspirations, 
 more or less imperfectly comprehended, for a Saviour, a righteous 
 Lord, a manifestation of God in a living human Person. One 
 by one the characteristics of such a Person were traced by the 
 spirit of prophecy : all the conditions of that manifestation, the 
 object of His coming, the time, the circumstances, the various 
 signs by which He might be recognized, were clearly predicted ; 
 those predictions were graven upon the hearts of the Israelites, 
 and were even partially known to the Gentiles.* In Jesus, by 
 n combination of circumstances which seemed fortuitous, and, so 
 far as human agents were concerned, beyond all question were 
 undesigned, those predictions were fulfilled, apparent contradic- 
 tions were reconciled ; and, in a higher sense than the most gifted 
 seers had imagined, those characteristics were exemplified. We 
 see in Jesus perfect man, the one normal, ideal man, the 
 one representative of the type which was in the thought 
 of God when He moulded the frame of Adam, and breathed 
 into his nostrils the breath of life.f In personal union 
 
 * Strauss adopts the view that the 
 whole life of Jesus, all that He should 
 or would do, had an ideal existence in 
 the Jewish mind long before His birth. 
 Einleitunfr, S 11, 
 
 t Tins thought, as might be ex- 
 pected, is worked out very thoroughly 
 by the best divines of modern Ger- 
 many ; but it belongs to the old schools 
 of Hebrew exegesis, or, to speak more 
 
144 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay 1Y 
 
 with that perfect man we are taught to discern the living 
 Word, the Son of God. If the whole structure of our religion 
 be not a baseless vision, if all our hopes be not a miserable 
 delusion, it is true, simply and absolutely true, that in that 
 Person the perfect ideal is perfectly real. We expect, there- 
 fore, to find — in fact we should be confounded if we did not 
 find — in the history of the God-man* just that harmony, unity, 
 and complete interpenetration of all that is good and beautiful in 
 abstract principles, that perfect representation of inward spiritual 
 truths, of which genius has dreamed, but wliich it has vainly 
 striven to realize. We feel that such a history must be sacra- 
 mental. And thus, in the very facts which create distrust in the 
 ideologist, we find the strongest confii-mation of our faith. We are 
 entitled to say to him — You cannot surely be so unreasonable 
 as to call upon us to give up any part of what you must admit 
 to be a consistent and complete realization of that which you 
 profess to recognise as good and beautiful, simply on the gi'ound 
 that it is too good, too beautiful, to be true.f We have, as you 
 must confess, full access to the ideal sphere in which the soul 
 may expatiate with delight. You cannot wish us to pass over to 
 you, with nothing to gain, with so much to lose, even in your 
 opinion, in our own not less than all. You offer us, in fact, nothing 
 but the substitution of moral and intellectual speculations of 
 the most bewildering character, in place of difiSculties Avhich a 
 simple faith enables a sound reason practically to overcome. We, 
 on the contrary, have every motive to call on you to pass over 
 to our side : what you have to sacrifice is a mere notion, a novel 
 one even in the schools of philosophy, as to the incredibility of 
 an external and perfect manifestation of the divine. What you 
 have to gain is the realization of the dearest and deepest hopes 
 
 correctly, underlies all the Biblical in- 
 timations of the future Messiah's per- 
 son and work. (See the account of the 
 Adam Cadmon in Dorncr's ' Einleitung 
 to his Christology.') It is not sur- 
 prising, when we consider the immense 
 importance of the principle, that the 
 followers of opposite and conflicting 
 systems of philosopliy sliould have 
 claimed it for their own leaders. The 
 Hegelians -were especially anxious to 
 
 prove that in its pliilosophic form the 
 truth was recognized and taught by 
 Hegel. See G(")schel, Von Gott, dem 
 Menschen und dim Gottmenschen. 
 
 * 6fd.v6punros, a most pregnant term, 
 used very frequently by the Greek 
 Fathers. 
 
 t Strauss, speaking of the theory in 
 the very imperfect form which was 
 given to it by Schleiermaehcr, calls it a 
 beautiful efibit of thought. 
 
Essay IV.] 
 
 IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCrJPTION. 
 
 145 
 
 of liiimauity — hopes which nothing short of such a realization 
 can satisfy and fulfil. 
 
 12. It would be a good thing if our countrymen, and especially 
 our younger countrymen, would distinctly contemplate the alter- 
 native which they must in consistency adoj^t when the claims of 
 the Scriptural narrative are confronted with ideologists. We 
 may owe something even to the fearless speculators who, obscure 
 and perplexing as their writings are in other respects, have at 
 least brought this question to a definite issue. For young men 
 of active and liberal spirits (indeed, for all who venture into the 
 region of speculative inquiry, for those more especially who hang 
 about its outskirts) the chief danger is that they may adopt 
 opinions which are intrinsically antagonistic to truth, without 
 any suspicion of their tendencies and necessary results. It is 
 well that such tendencies are at any rate brought out distinctly. 
 Some few may possibly accept the conclusions to which the 
 speculations lead : but even for them it may be better that they 
 should arrive rapidly at the end, and find by experience its bar- 
 renness and emptiness. The recoil from the dreary void of scep- 
 tical negation has been to some, and those no ignoble spirits, the 
 first movement towards the recovery of truth. But the great 
 majority of Englishmen are extremely unlikely, even for a 
 season, to find any resting-place in a system which makes the 
 deepest and most practical convictions dependent upon meta- 
 physical abstractions, depriving them of the foundation of positive 
 objective facts.* Once assured that ideology simply means 
 denial of the veracity of the wi'iters who bear witness to mi- 
 raculous facts — of the truth of the whole, or of any considerable 
 
 * Such, too, was the state of feel- 
 ing ia Germany. A writer, whose 
 bias is utterly opposed to orthodoxy, 
 declares truly that the orthodox reac- 
 tion originated among men connected 
 with public Ufe— leaders of the pa- 
 triotic outburst— that the religious sys- 
 tems of the Berlin schools were too 
 spiritualistic, too thin and fine drawn, 
 too sentimental and indefinite to pro- 
 duce practical results. What men 
 wanted was a right massive, sturdy, 
 popular Christianity, such' as Luther 
 preached. " In trutli there was a deep 
 chasm between the new intellectual 
 character (Geistesbilduug) presented by 
 
 the leaders in philosophy and poetry, 
 and the wants of the people." See 
 Schwartz, ' Zur Gcschichte der neuesten 
 Theologie,' p. 67. The whole chapter 
 is instructive, as showing tlie utter un- 
 fitness of Eationalism in any of its 
 forms. Idealism included, to act on the 
 moral and spiritual life of the people — 
 that is, to do the special and peculiar 
 work of Christianity. A form of religion 
 which admits that incapacity stands 
 self- condemned. The arguments of 
 Origen against Celsus are particularly 
 worthy of consideration in their bear- 
 ings upon this question. See lib. vi. 2, 
 and vii. 59, GO. 
 
146 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IY. 
 
 portion of the book, in wliicli it nevertlieless recognizes utterances 
 of a divine sjiirit, tliey will turn aside in contempt from what 
 must seem to them a suicidal inconsistency. One great charac- 
 teristic of Englishmen — the characteristic, in fact, on which they 
 may justly rest their claims to a foremost (indeed, the foremost) 
 position among the representative races of humanity — is the 
 belief in, and the love of, positive objective truth. Once con- 
 vinced of the untruthfulness of a writer, no ingenuity of reason- 
 ing, no fascination of style, no adaptation of his statements to 
 their feelings or prejudices, will induce them to listen to his 
 words. They may be slow to discern the symptoms of untruth- 
 fulness, may be deceived and misled, but they will have but 
 one short word to designate what they are once convinced has 
 no foundation in fact. The very last position which they Avill 
 admit as possible, or tolerate as defensible, is, that truths of in- 
 finite import should have been transmitted from the divine to 
 the human intelligence by unveracious witnesses, or through the 
 medium of events distorted by enthusiasts. The Englishman 
 may be narrow-minded or prejudiced, unapt to deal with abstract 
 speculations ; but he has at least had this training, — he has been 
 accustomed to weigh evidence, to seek for matter of fact truth 
 in the first place, and to satisfy himself as to the good faith and 
 correct information of those from whom he expects to receive 
 knowledge or instruction. One thing witli him is fixed and certain ; 
 whatever else may be doubtful, this at least is sure — a narrative 
 purporting to be one of positive facts, which is wholly or in any 
 essential or considerable portion untrue, can have no connection 
 with the Divine, and cannot have any beneficial influence upon 
 mankind. As for the doctrines which are based upon it, or in- 
 separably bound up with it, they must have their origin in an- 
 other region than that of light. He will not allow himself to 
 be entangled in the mazes of speculation. Without troubling 
 liimseK as to the direction in which they may lead him, he will 
 stop at the threshold : he will say — Before I go one step 
 further, let me know what you say to our Lord's miracles — 
 to the miracle of miracles, the Eesurrection. Is it a fact or 
 not ? As for the doctrine which, as you say, it may represent, 
 we may inquire about that hereafter ; but let us first know on 
 what we stand — on tlie shifting quicksands of opinion, or on the 
 solid ground of positive objective fact. 
 
Essay 1Y.] IDEOLOGY AXD SUBSCEIPTIOX. 147 
 
 13. It may be said that it is unfair to press a man, and by urging 
 the consequences of his opinions, to drive him from a position 
 in which even for a time he may find refuge from utter unbelief. 
 This consideration would undoubtedly have great weight if the 
 question regarded only the speculative inquirer. Charity cannot 
 be carried too far in judging any man's motives, in bearing "snth his 
 perplexities, and putting the most favourable construction upon 
 his words : but when a man propounds his opinions publicly, works 
 them up into an elaborate system, and commends them by all 
 the graces and artifices of rhetoric, his object is evidently not so 
 much to satisfy his own mind, as to influence the minds of 
 others ; and for their sake it is necessary to ascertain his 
 meaning, and to show clearly the principles upon which his 
 system rests, and the consequences which it involves. Above aU, 
 is this our duty when those principles are introduced rather by 
 insinuation than by direct assertion, and are directly connected 
 with the recommendation of disingenuous acts, by which the 
 safeguards of religion are undermined. "\Ye consider it a fortu- 
 nate circumstance that, on the first appearance of ideology, so 
 much of its true character has been disclosed. In order, how- 
 ever, thoroughly to comprehend its bearings, and to prove its 
 internal and necessary connection with the ultimate principles 
 of unbeKef, it will be expedient to give some account of its ori- 
 gination and development in Germany. Some of the facts which 
 follow are imknown to the generality of English readers ; they 
 certainly ought to be known by all who feel interested in the 
 progress and tendencies of EationaHsm in its most ingenious and 
 subtle form. 
 
 14. It has been already stated that ideology was first presented 
 as a distinct and complete system in the writings of Strauss. His 
 Life of Jesus is universally recognized as the beg-inning of a 
 new epoch in theological speculations. The writer himself has 
 lately asserted, with characteristic arrogance, that no work of 
 any importance has since been written upon any portion of the 
 evangehcal narrative without reference to his book. TJi*^ vaunt, 
 as we shall see, is not an empty one. That work did concentrate 
 and systematize all that infidehty had previously advanced or 
 suggested against the credibility of the Gospels and the whole 
 system of Christianity as an objective revelation. The destruc- 
 tive criticism of rationalists, and the mvsticism of Hegel, were 
 
 L 2 
 
148 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IV. 
 
 brought together ; that to discredit the facts of revelation, this to 
 supply a new foundation for the speculations which Strauss pro- 
 poses as the substitute for historical Christianity. 
 
 15. By education and circumstances, and also, it must be ad- 
 mitted, by some rare and eminent gifts, Strauss was qualified for 
 the position he assumed. He was brought up at Tiibingen, an 
 university which, in its retention of ancient forms of discipline, 
 still bears more resemblance to Oxford than to any institution 
 in Germany ; and, when he was a student, it was justly regarded 
 as the stronghold of Lutheran orthodoxy. Among others less 
 widely known, but sound in the faith, — such as Storr, Flatt, and 
 Steudel, — Tiibingen boasts of the great name of Bengel. In 
 that school Strauss learned somewhat of the nature of the jDrin- 
 ciples which he was to attack. Under F. C. Baur, since known 
 as the most subtle and learned of neologians, but whose tenden- 
 cies were then scarcely suspected, he acquired the habit of scep- 
 tical investigation, and imbibed a rooted antipathy to what the 
 Germans call " supernaturalism " — that is, the recognition of a 
 miraculous element in religion. Free from any taint of sensuality, 
 he bore a high character, to which his influence among the 
 students and j^rofessors may in part be attributed. On the other 
 liand, utterly indifferent to the tendencies or results of his in- 
 quii'ies, singularly devoid of geniality or sympathy, he evinced 
 on all occasions a supercilious disregard for feelings Xvliich he 
 might wound, combined with a total absence of reverence for 
 the divine. His intellect Avas keen and clear ; his natural apti- 
 tude for dialectical subtleties was developed by intense applica- 
 tion : he had also a power, not common in any country, and 
 extremely rare in his OAvn, that of jircsenting the results of his 
 labours in an intelligible and interesting form, with the advan- 
 tages of artistic arrangement and a perspicuous style. 
 
 16. In the year 1831, Strauss, until then a Repetent or assistant 
 tutor at Tiibingen, went to Berlin, at that time the centre of all 
 speculative movements in theology and philosophy. Schleier- 
 macher stood at the head. Few men have ever exercised a wider 
 or more powerful influence. His vast learning and vigorous 
 intellect ; his lively and persuasive eloquence ; above all, his 
 peculiar mode of inculcating religious principles, attracted many 
 of the noblest and most jaowerful minds. The characteristic of his 
 system was the prominence which he gave to religious feeling — 
 
Essay IV.] 
 
 IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCRIPTION. 
 
 149 
 
 subjective feeling was to him and the most influential of his fol- 
 lowers the one test both of the importance and reality of spi- 
 ritual truths : and to his teaching may be traced that aversion to 
 what is called dogmatism, which distinguishes many of our o^vn 
 writers who, without adopting all his views, have passed through 
 his school. His influence over Strauss, however, depended upon 
 other qualities. Schleiermacher combined with a peculiarly 
 genial and winning sweetness of character, and with a dreamy 
 but graceful and attractive sentimentalism, a no less remarkable 
 talent for sarcastic and reckless criticism. No man was more 
 acute in detecting flaws, none more unscrupulous in exposing 
 what he deemed to be inconsistencies. None had hitherto gone 
 so far in discrediting large portions of the Scriptural narrative, 
 or in assailing the authenticity of canonical books* When Strauss 
 came to Berlin, Schleiermacher had been giving a course of 
 lectures on the life of Jesus, which are characterized by a friendly 
 critic as full of acute combinations and destructive scepticism. 
 Those lectures were, indeed, the chief attraction whicli drew him 
 tliither.f They gave the strongest impulse to his own work of 
 demolition. 
 
 * This statement may seem too 
 harsh. Schwartz, however, a critic 
 who has the greatest admiration and 
 even reverence for Schleiermacher, 
 observes that the critical processes by 
 which Strauss attempted to overthrow 
 the sacred history were learned in the 
 school of Schleiermacher. " Originating 
 with Semler and Eichhorn, they had 
 been developed in rationalistic -circles, 
 and reached their highest point in the 
 labours of De Wette, Schleiermacher, 
 and Gieseler." Zur Geschichte der 
 neuesten Theologie, p. 33. A most 
 important statement for the young 
 student of German theology. Gieseler 
 himself gives the following account of 
 that great man's principles : — "Schleier- 
 macher went very far in his concessions 
 to modern opinion. He adnutted that 
 the piety of a Pantheist might be iden- 
 tical with that of a Monotheist, and 
 reconcileable even with Christianity. 
 That piety, moreover, could coexist 
 with the theory which, denying the 
 continuance of personal existence, re- 
 gards the common spirit of humanity as 
 the source of individual souls, the true 
 living unity, of which alone eternity 
 and immortality can be predicated ; in- 
 dividual souls being its transitory 
 
 actions, or manifestations. For the 
 Christian as such there is no guarantee 
 for personal duration, save that which 
 is found in the belief of the eternal 
 union of the Divine Essence with the 
 himian nature in Christ. The his- 
 torical connection of Christianity with 
 Judaism is external, precisely the same 
 as with heathenism — hence he assigns 
 to the Old Testament no normal au- 
 thority. Angels are creatm-es of the 
 imagination — in the idea of the devil 
 he finds an internal contradiction — but 
 he coHsents to retain angels and devils 
 for liturgical use. The resurrection of 
 the body and the last judgment are to 
 be understood not as positive truths, 
 but as the outward representations of 
 general truths. Eternal damnation is 
 rejected as inconceivable." — Kircheuge- 
 schichte der neuesten Zeit., p. 240. 
 
 t See Schwartz, 1. c. Strauss himself 
 says that he procured the MS. of the 
 lectures which had been given before 
 his arrival. Ho points out the difler- 
 ence between his own views and those 
 of Schleiermacher, who wished to retain, 
 by help of naturalistic interpretations, 
 tlie substance of the Gospel narration. 
 His statement is quite compatible with 
 that of Schwartz. 
 
150 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IV. 
 
 17. It was not, however, iii the system of Sehleiermacher that 
 Strauss found the true key to his own position. He was abun- 
 dantly supplied with weapons for attack. Rationalists and senti- 
 mentalists had undermined the outworks of revelation : but he 
 saw plainly that something more and something different was 
 needed to account for the origin of Christianity ; and it was per- 
 fectly clear to him that the battered and disfigured fabric of what 
 he regarded as mere superstition could not be demolished and 
 swept away, unless it were displaced by a system better calculated 
 to meet the requirements of the human mind. 
 
 It seems strange that he should have fixed upon Hegelianism 
 for that purpose ; for Hegel, then in the full noontide of his in- 
 fluence, was regarded as the bulwark of orthodox conservatism 
 both in church and state. The fundamental doctrines of reli- 
 gion, the dogmatic forms of the church, even the most abstruse 
 and difficult speculations of theologians and schoolmen, were at 
 that very time maintained by professors of the school of Hegel, 
 who were recognized by him as faithful and intelligent expositors 
 of his views. It was believed that he had effected a real and per- 
 manent reconcihation between philosophy and religion. Faith and 
 knowledge henceforth were to work together in perfect harmony ; 
 all apparent contradictions were to be absorbed ; all perplexing 
 problems to find a solution in the higher sphere of metaphysical 
 abstraction. A new system of optimism was founded, which 
 acknowledged the State not merely as a necessary organization, 
 but as the highest realization of the ideal of society, and rejected 
 all factious and democratic tendencies as pernicious errors ; while, 
 in their ecclesiastical tendencies, Hegel's principles seemed rather 
 to verge towards Romanism than towards the dissolution of all 
 formal authority, which appeared imminent as a development of 
 infidelity under the thin disguise of rational Protestantism. 
 He was, in fact, by taste, habits, and disposition, a conserva- 
 tive, both as regarded the outward framework of church and 
 state, and the dogmatic representation of religious truths. It 
 may seem strange ; but it was a proof of the clear insight and 
 vigorous intellect of Strauss, that in the fundamental prin- 
 ciples of that philosopher's system, he discerned the motive 
 power which he required to overthrow all which it appeared 
 to accept so unreservedly and to defend with unprecedented 
 success. 
 
Essay IV.] 
 
 IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCRIPTION. 
 
 151 
 
 We can scarcely hope, and will not attempt, to state those 
 principles in a clear or even intelligible form ; but some of the 
 results, as Strauss apprehended and applied them, are practical 
 enough. His exposition, moreover, has been justified both by 
 the adhesion of a considerable number of those who were once 
 thestanchest maintainersoftheir master's orthodoxy, and by the 
 ultimate overthrow of the system itself, which is now, in the form, 
 which Hegel gave it, altogether a thing of the past* Under 
 the abstruse and cloudy statements of that philosopher,! Strauss 
 saw clearly involved the positive denial of the personality of the 
 Godhead, the assertion of the phenomenal and evanescent, the 
 incomplete and inadequate character of all existences, the 
 absorption of individuality ; in short, a complete system of pan- 
 theism, more ideahstic than any previous development, and at 
 the same time more capable of explaining the events of history 
 both profane and sacred. 
 
 18. Strauss took some time to prepare a work in which he ap- 
 plied these principles to the overthrow of Christianity. The ' Life 
 of Jesus ' was published in 1835. It appeared at a period of out- 
 ward calm ; there was a singular cessation just then of contro- 
 versy, a general feeling of security. Hegel had been dead 
 four years. He had departed, so to speak, in the odour of 
 
 * M. Scherer says—" H a fait faimte, 
 ■et c'est le positivisme qui a pris la suite 
 de ses affaires." And elsewhere — " Ce 
 bulle de savon a creve depuis long- 
 temps." 
 
 t Hegel taught that the universe is 
 but a continuous evolution of an in- 
 finite potentiality ; that the absolute 
 is not found either in the ideal sub- 
 stratinu, which is not a positive exist- 
 ence, or in matter of fact phenomena, 
 ■which have no permanent reahty, but 
 in a perpetual process of self-develop- 
 ment. Whatever exists has a necessary 
 but a merely transitory existence. 
 The ideal is ever tending to realization, 
 but is never perfectly, and cannot be 
 permanently, realized. It was a ques- 
 tion among his followers whether he 
 regarded Christianity, in the Person of 
 its Founder, as an exception from these 
 sweeping conclusions — whether his sys- 
 tem was compatible with Theism. It 
 seems to me scarcely possible to recon- 
 cile many statements in his first consi- 
 derable work (the ' Phiinomenologie 
 
 des Geistes ') with belief in a personal 
 God. It is certain that no Christian 
 theologians now accept the applications 
 of liis general principles to Cliristian 
 dogmas. Chalybseus athnits the " com- 
 fortless results" of the whole system. 
 On the attempts of Marheineke and 
 Goschel, some valuable remarks may 
 be read in Gieseler's ' Kirchenge- 
 schichte d. n. Z.,' p. 242. Strauss also 
 gives a clear account of the disputes 
 between the scholars of Hegel in his 
 ' Glaubenslehre,' p. 520 ff. It is, how- 
 ever, certain that Hegel wished to 
 maintain religion — that he regarded 
 the establishment of Theism as the 
 highest problem and work of philosophy, 
 and utterly detested all sceptical and 
 destructive criticism, especially that of 
 Schleiermacher — an aversion extending 
 even to purely secular writers, as Nie- 
 bidir. His last work, on tlie Philo- 
 sophy of Religion, is full of beautiful 
 and devout aspirations : whether they 
 are consistent with his philosophy or 
 not, is another question. 
 
152 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay IY. 
 
 orthodoxy. Marheineke, Daub, and Goschel were recognized 
 as true expositors of his system, and as sound defenders of the 
 faith. Schleicrmacher, too, was gone. His followers claimed 
 for him the merit of having destroyed the older forms of 
 rationalism, which had sunk into utter contempt. Neander at 
 Berlin, Tholuck at Halle, Steudel at Tubingen, and a host of 
 theologians of various shades of opinion, ranging from ortho- 
 doxy to neology, but animated for the most part by deep 
 Christian sympathies, occupied the professorial chairs ; while a 
 strong and united band of men, sound in the old Bible ortho- 
 doxy, Avrought more directly upon the popular mind through 
 the pulpit. The effect of the publication of Strauss's book is 
 indescribable. Friends and enemies cannot find words strong 
 enough to express the consternation, the horror and indignation 
 of all who retained a vestige of reverence for religion. An 
 electric shock running through all bosoms, a trumpet sounding 
 the signal for a conflict for life and death, an earthquake shaking 
 the foundations of all human hopes ; such are the terms which 
 historians use in speaking of the shock.* Our own time has 
 lately had an example of the effect which is produced when men 
 known only as able, industrious scholars, of unspotted character, 
 and exemplary in all personal relations, come forward as the oppo- 
 nents of truths which they are bound to uphold. The excite- 
 ment and panic, if panic it can be called which brought hosts 
 of combatants to the front of the battle, had then a further 
 justification in the talents, unity of purpose, straightforward 
 audacity of the author — in his thorough mastery of all the weapons 
 of attack, in the coherence of his philosophical principles — 
 principles, as we have shown already, accepted by multitudes of 
 thoughtful men — above all in the state of the public mind, 
 shaken by rationalism, distrustful of its guides, unable to com- 
 prehend the position of the recognized defenders of religion, and 
 tossed to and fro by conflicting systems of doctrine and inter- 
 pretation. Strauss was at least a brave and open foe, showed 
 his true colours, and nailed them to the mast, and met ever)^ 
 attack manfully, — open as he certainly was to the imputation 
 
 * Compare Schwartz, Zur Gescliichto 
 der neucsten Theologie, and M. E. 
 Scherer, Revue des Deux Mondes, Feb. 
 1861 : and Gieselcr. Strauss liimself 
 
 speaks with great exultntion of the 
 shrieks of believers. See the luti'oduc- 
 tiou to Ids second edition. 
 
Essay IV.] 
 
 IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCRIPTION. 
 
 15^ 
 
 of making a dishonest use of a position entrusted to liim for 
 the defence of Christianity. 
 
 In that work Strauss had two distinct objects. The first was 
 to set aside all supernatural events, to prove that the Divine did 
 not manifest itself in the manner related, and that the actual 
 occurrences were not divine.* The other was to set up a system 
 in which all that Christianity attempts to accomplish should 
 be disentangled from its imperfect form, and developed, by a 
 philosophical process, from universal and permanent truths. 
 
 In the first part of the work Strauss collected all the objections 
 which a remorseless criticism had raised against the historical 
 veracity of the sacred writers : he completed them, gave them a 
 sharper point and keener edge, combined them in a systematic 
 form, and reduced them to a fundamental thought.! De Wette 
 had already laid down the position, that all men of cultivated 
 minds rejected the miraculous narratives of the Bible, and that 
 the only question was how to account for their origin. $ Strauss 
 addressed himself to that question. First laying down far more 
 broadly the general position, that miracles are a priori incredible, 
 on the ground that the workings of the Divine in the world 
 proceed in accordance with fixed, unvarying, and universal laws, 
 which utterly exclude the possibility of miracles, § he refers aU 
 accounts of supernatural interventions to one origin — that of 
 Myths. Here again he adopts what sceptics or infidels had pre- 
 viously suggested. Semler had applied to the account of 
 Samson and Esther the saying of Heyne, that all the history 
 and philosophy of primitive antiquity originated in myths. 
 Vater, and j^still more decidedly De Wette, had advocated the 
 mythical interpretation of a large portion of the Old Testament | 
 history. But, as Strauss complains, that system had been 
 
 * Introduction, § 1. See also his 
 Streitsclirifteu, part iii., p. 59. He gives 
 a full account of the original plan of 
 his work (showing that the second part 
 was that to which he attached most im- 
 portance) in the treatise 'Verhaltniss 
 der Hegel'schen Philosophie zur Kritik.' 
 
 t Schwartz, ' Zur Geschichte der 
 neuesten Theologie,' p. 104. 
 
 X Tliat position was taken in the 
 work which in Germany, some thirty 
 years ago, was put into my hands as an 
 introduction to the study of the Hebrew 
 
 Scriptures. 
 
 § Strauss uses precisely the same 
 language as Baden Powell. See his 
 Introduction, vol. i. p. 71 of the Eng- 
 lish translation. In p. 87, § 16, he 
 gives the marks by which the unhis- 
 torical character of a narrative may be 
 a priori demonstrated — the principal is 
 the impossibility of any arbitrary act of 
 interposition by the absolute cause. 
 
 II Kritik der Mosaisclien Geschichte, 
 quoted by Strauss. Introduction, § 8. 
 
154 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay IA^ 
 
 applied inconsistently and timidly even to tlie Old Testament, 
 and had stood side by side with naturalistic interpretations, while 
 few had ventured to bring it to bear upon any portion of the 
 Gospel narrative. Yet even here the way had been prepared. 
 Schleiermacher had not hesitated to call the history of the 
 Temptation a myth. Gabler, and others of his school, held that 
 all portions of the narrative which involve angelic appearances 
 had the essential characteristics of myth. Some theologians 
 had gone so far as to bring the details, first of the Nativity, and 
 then of the Resurrection, under the same category. The barriers 
 had been thrown down, and all that remained for Strauss to do 
 was to carry out the principle consistently into the whole 
 structure of the New Testament. To use his own words : 
 " Others had driven through the grand portal of myths into the 
 evangelical history, and had passed out again by the same; 
 but as for all the intermediate portions, they were contented to 
 pursue the crooked and laborious paths of natm-al interpretation." 
 He left himself no portion of our Lord's life untouched. He 
 saw too clearly the internal coherence of all its parts ; he dis- 
 cerned the unity of the princijjles which underlie all its pheno- 
 mena : all or nothing must be admitted. Rejecting \Yith disdain 
 the subterfuges of rationalist and semi-rationalist, he would not, 
 as he says, set up the authority of one Evangelist against 
 another. The testimony of one is worth as much, or to speak 
 more correctly, is worth as little as the others.* A helium om- 
 nium contra omnes is waged; from beginning to end he finds 
 no single spot of firm historical ground, scarcely any mixture of 
 ascertainable fact, amid the legendary and mythical representa- 
 tions.t 
 
 Strauss enters, of course, fully into the investigation of myths, t 
 which had already been classified under three heads ; the 
 
 * Schwartz, Zur Geschichtc, p. 110. 
 
 t To allow time for such a transmu- 
 tation of history, which, as all historians 
 agree, is only possible in times when 
 letters are unknown or unused, when 
 events are transmitted by ignorance and 
 superstition, Strauss was driven to the 
 theory, that all the Gospel narratives 
 were the product of the second century, 
 a theory which is admitted universally, 
 even by uucliristian critics, to be irre- 
 
 concilcable with facts : with the failure 
 of that theory the whole mytliieal system 
 collapses. Dr. Arnold, who liad not read 
 the book, judging of it merely from a 
 review, saw, of course, tliis point. " The 
 idea of men writing mythic histories 
 between the time of Livy and Tacitus, 
 and St. Paul mistaking such for reali- 
 ties !" life, ii. p. 58. 
 
 J L. J., Introduetion, p. 2G. 
 
Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCEIPTIOX. 155 
 
 liistorical, whicli confound the natural and supernatural ; the 
 philosophical, which clothe in the garb of historical narrative 
 some thought or idea of the time ; and the poetical, in which the 
 original idea is almost obscured by the veil which the fancy of 
 the poet has woven around it. All these he holds to be blended 
 in various proportions in the Gospel narrative — the great source 
 of all the mythical embellishments being the prepossessions 
 of the countrymen and followers of our Lord touching the 
 person and works of the expected Messiah : the next source 
 being that peculiar impression which was left by the personal 
 character, actions, and fate of Jesus, and which served to 
 modify the Messianic idea in the minds of the people. 
 
 21. The residuum from this system is thus stated by one* who 
 is far from an unfriendly critic. The myth has eaten into the 
 very heart of the narrative. There remains but a scanty frame- 
 work of the life of Jesus. That He was brought up in Nazareth, 
 was baptized by John ; that He formed disciples, and taught in 
 various districts of Palestine ; that He opposed everywhere the 
 outwardness of pharisaism, and proclaimed the Messianic king- 
 dom ; that at last He succumbed to the hatred and envy of the 
 pharisaic factionf and died upon the Cross — such, according to 
 Strauss, is the sum total of facts, which the ideas and aspirations 
 of early Christendom enveloped in a tissue of significant legends 
 and devout imaginings. Of the discourses of our Lord, a 
 small solid kernel, as he thinks, can be discerned with cer- 
 tainty. Such, for instance, is the Sermon on the Mount. 
 The sayings of Jesus, according to him, were so pregnant and 
 forcible, had so strong a hold upon men's minds in their con- 
 densed gnomic form, that they were preserved in great part 
 even in the flood of oral tradition. Even this seems, upon 
 second thoughts, too much for him to admit. Wrenched from 
 their natural connection, dislodged from their original site, they 
 remain like boulders, objects of vague wonder or superstitious 
 legends, until their true origin and meaning are ascertained by 
 philosophic ingenuity and research. 
 
 22. And yet Strauss professes, and may be assumed actually to 
 
 * Schwartz. See also Scherer, Kevue 
 des Deux Mondes. 
 
 + Even this is a distortion of history. 
 €aiaphas and his party were Sad- 
 
 ducees ; a fact -which later writers of 
 the Tubingen school have found im- 
 possible to reconcile with their theory 
 of the origin of the Gospels. 
 
156 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay IY 
 
 believe, that be retains the essential trutbs of Cliristianity. Tbe 
 last portion of bis book, wbicb be certainly regarded as tbe most 
 important, is intended to draw out tbe eternal ideas wbicb 
 underlie tbis strange tissue of legend and mytb. The super- 
 natural nativity of Cbrist, His miracles. His resuri'ection and 
 ascension, remain ideal trutbs — utterly separated as tbey are 
 from objective facts. Cbrist, indeed, in His concrete personality, 
 disappears from tbe system of tbe great teacber of Ideology. 
 No individual does or can adequately represent, mucb less em- 
 body, absolute realities. But tbe Cburcb was guided by a true 
 instinct wben, in tbe Person of Jesus, slie found an expression of 
 those realities. In Him was manifested more perfectly than in 
 any individual that which is the ultimate and substantial prin- 
 ciple of all religion, the unity of God and man. It is actually 
 starthug to find bow tbe versatile and imaginative intellect of 
 Strauss* can discern the blessedness and sublimity, the en- 
 couragement and consolation of the thoughts which the early 
 Church derived from the orthodox view of Christ. Standing 
 from without, be sees far more clearly than many who profess 
 to believe the Gospel, the internal coherence of its highest 
 doctrines. Only, as Strauss teaches, tbe true meaning of those 
 doctrines remained to be discovered in the light of the philoso- 
 phy of the Absolute.! That alone supplies tbe key to tbe whole 
 system of Christology. Instead of an individual we have an 
 idea. In an individual the properties and functions which the 
 Church attributes to Christ contradict themselves : in the idea 
 of the race tbey perfectly agree. Humanity is the union of the 
 two natures — God become man ; it is the worker of miracles, 
 tbe sinless existence ; for sin belongs to the individual, not to the 
 race. It is Humanity that dies, rises, ascends into Heaven. By 
 faith in this Cbrist, that is, in his own human nature, man is 
 justified before God. 
 
 23. Is this the last word of the system ? It seems to go far 
 enough. Yet Strauss bad more to say. In a later work,f 
 he boldly clears away aU remaining prejudices. The world 
 is not merely one with God — an ever changing, ever pro- 
 
 * See the conclmling Dissertation, 
 § 145. 
 
 t Concluding; Dissertation, § 151, p. 
 437, vol. iii. English translation. 
 
 I The ' Dogmatik," or ' Dio Christ- 
 lii'ho Glaubenslehro,' published 1S40, 
 
Essay IV.] 
 
 IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCRIPTION. 
 
 157 
 
 gressing manifestation of tlie Divine, but God lias Himself uo 
 personality, no conscious Being. Man had taken the throne of 
 Christ. He seats himself ultimately in the throne of the Abso- 
 lute, which first attains to consciousness, to personal existence, 
 in humanity.* The individual is nothing — a mere phenomenal 
 and transitional evolution; the absolute is nothing — a mere 
 potentiality never realized or realizable. Empty abstraction 
 swallows up all idea and fact, the Divine and human, in one 
 universal void. 
 
 Such is Ideology in the mind of its ablest, its most honest 
 and consistent exponent. The storm produced by such a work 
 may be conceived. All the leaders of German thought were in 
 a tumult of excitement ; the first object of those, between whose 
 systems and that of Strauss there appeared to be a logical con- 
 nection, was to shake off the responsibility. Schleiermacher's 
 friends first rushed to the rescue, and pointed out the absolute 
 antagonism between the genial and loving spirit of their chief, 
 and the reckless audacity, the irreverence, and bitterness of the 
 intruder. Hegelians were, of course, vehement in disavowing the 
 principles and the consequences. Yet, as we have seen, Strauss 
 did but use the weapons which had been forged for him. He 
 scarcely went further thanDe Wette, on the one hand, in historical 
 scepticism, or differed from him only in the consistency and 
 completeness of his application of the same critical principles. 
 Strauss might even claim Schleiermacher's own authority for the 
 denial of the possibility of miracles, although, by a glorious in- 
 consistency, that great man accepted as a Christian truth M'hat 
 he could find no place for in his philosophical system. On the 
 other hand, so far as his application of the Hegelian theory was 
 concerned, daringly blasphemous as he may seem, he was soon 
 outstripped by even more reckless infidels. In fact, other 
 symptoms soon removed all doubt as to tlie tendency of Hegelian 
 forms of thought. Frederic Eichter, a bookseller of Breslau, 
 had already published in 1833 — two years before the appearance 
 of Strauss's ' Life of Jesus ' — a work in which he proclaimed a 
 new Gospel, as he styled it, that of eternal death.f His argu- 
 
 * " Gott is nicht Person, Er wird es 
 in der unendlichen Eeilie der men- 
 schlichen Subjecte." See Schwartz, 
 p. 218 ; and Strauss, Glaubenslelire, p. 
 
 502-524. 
 
 t Die Lehre von den letzten Dingen. 
 Gieseler says that many Hegelians 
 blamed Richter not for the doctrine, 
 
158 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IV. 
 
 mcnt, in the opinion of very competent judges, was a legitimate 
 deduction from Hegel's theory of individuality, though the book 
 and the author were overwhelmed in a general outburst of 
 indignation. Later and more consistent professors of that 
 school did not liesitate to call the condemnation of Eichter, 
 coming as it did from Hegelians, a literary assassiuation. 
 Again, one of the most thoroughgoing adherents of Hegel, 
 Bruno Bauer, a "\mter who had made himself conspicuous 
 by his heady arrogance in the cause of orthodoxy, now turning 
 round with a sudden revulsion, poured forth a stream of 
 writings, in which the facts and doctrines of Christianity were 
 treated with a blasphemous insolence scarcely paralleled in 
 modern days. The writings of Bauer and Eichter, however, 
 were easily disavowed ; even the opponents of Hegel hesitated 
 to make the calm conservative philosopher responsible for 
 such results. 
 
 25. Two years after the appearance of Strauss's work another 
 application of Hegel's principles was developed, which, though 
 far less startling and urged ia a far different spirit, produced a 
 deeper and more durable sensation on the Continent. E. Eothe, 
 sub-director of the theological college at Wittenberg, published, 
 in 1837, his treatise on the origin and constitution of the 
 Christian Church. Eothe is in all respects a most remarkable 
 man ; in originality and independence of thought he stands 
 almost alone among German theologians ; his personal piety and 
 hearty acceptance of the living truths of religion are undoubted.! 
 Few of our own later wTiters have gone so far — none have gone 
 farther, in defending, both by a priori arguments and historical 
 evidence, the apostolical origin of Episcopacy, tlie unity and 
 authority of the primitive Church. It seemed as though the 
 conservatism of Hegel had found a perfect exponent. Yet, 
 strange as it may appear, the conclusion at which he arrives, 
 
 but for its publication, "for discovering a 
 secret of the school." 'Kirchongcschichto 
 tier n. Z.,' p. 245. 
 
 * Now Professor at Heidelberg. His 
 lx)ok is entitled ' Die Anftinge dcr 
 Christliclicn Kircbc, und ilirer Verfas- 
 sung.' 
 
 t A very strong testimony is borne 
 to bis piety by Eudolf Stier ia the in- 
 
 troduction to his new edition of the 
 
 • Reden der Apostel,' 1861, p. viii. He 
 says of him — " Dessen iunerstes Glau- 
 bensleben ich wohl kenue." In some 
 points Rotho shows a strong tendency 
 to Romanism, and speaks of Mohler's 
 
 * Symbolik ' in terms of almost unqua- 
 lified culojn'. 
 
Essay IV.] 
 
 IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCRIPTION. 
 
 15f> 
 
 following out, as tlie keenest critics * admit, the principles of 
 his master, is that the Christian Church is but a temporary 
 institution destined to be 'absorbed by the State ;t in which, 
 like all true Hegelians, | he sees no mere system of mutual 
 defence, or institution in which the energies of individuals may 
 be freely developed, but the highest product of reason, the 
 supreme development of humanity, — in a word, the moral world 
 realized and organized. The views of Eothe are altogether too 
 subtle, and indeed too elevated, to reach the general mind in 
 the form which he gave them : his State is an ideal one ; his 
 hope of the realization of his theory depends upon his belief in 
 a future personal manifestation of the Saviour ; but the necessary 
 results of his reasoning were clearly discerned by thinking men, 
 and practical inferences were readily drawn. He recognizes 
 himself with calm satisfaction what he believes to be early and 
 progressive symptoms of decline and disintegration in the Church, 
 the steady progress of encroachments on the part of the 
 State ; and, in connection with outward changes, an internal 
 modification of opinions, feelings, and principles, tending to- 
 wards a final identification of the secular and religious, the 
 natural and the Divine. He does not hesitate to assert that 
 the religious life itself must find its true and satisfactory 
 realization, not in the Church but in the State. § Though 
 resting on far other grounds, there is a remarkable resemblance 
 between his theory as well as the arguments by which it is 
 maintained, and that of our^ own Arnold. |1 The supremacy 
 
 * For instance, E. Scherer in the 
 * Revue des Deux Mondes,' p. 849, Feb. 
 18G1 ; and Schwartz, ' Zur Geschichte 
 der neuesten Theologie.' 
 
 t " Der vollendete Staat schliesst die 
 Kirche schlechthin aus." — 'Anlange,' 
 p. 47. 
 
 X See his note, p. 13, where he col- 
 lects Hegel's definitions of the State, 
 
 ^ P. 51. 
 
 II Dr. Arnold, of course, did not de- 
 rive his opinions directly from Rothe, 
 whose work he read in 1838. In a 
 letter written that year to Chevalier 
 Bunsen, he expresses his entire agree- 
 ment with Rotlie in his theory as to 
 the identity of Church and State, but, 
 as might be expected, rejects as entirely 
 his conclusions touching the aposto- 
 lical origui of episcopacy. See ' Life,' 
 
 &c., ii. p. 105. It will be remembered 
 that the Chevalier Bunsen, with whom 
 Arnold says distinctly that he agrees 
 more thoroughly than with any of his 
 friends, was deeply imbued with Hegel's 
 principles, and more especially with 
 their application to the relations be- 
 tween the Church and the State. There 
 can be little doubt that he gave the 
 first impulse to Arnold's mind upon 
 this subject, or at least confirmed it in 
 the direction which it took after the 
 reaction from what he somewhere calls 
 his Oxford Toryism. The numerous 
 and peculiar coincidences between 
 Arnold and his Gorman prototypes can 
 otherwise scarcely be accounted for. 
 He learned German somewhat late in 
 life. 
 
160 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay IV. 
 
 of the State in all matters, both of discipline and doctrine, 
 is the rightful and legitimate development of Christianity; 
 it decides what^ shall be taught, and how it shall be taught ; 
 and in the mean time it treats, and has a right to treat, the 
 national Church as no less properly an organ of the national 
 life than a magistracy or a legislative estate. 
 
 27. The philosophy of ideology, thus consistently carried out 
 by writers of very different feelings and principles, leaves man 
 without a church, without a Saviour, without a living soul. 
 There remained, however, still a sort of profession of religion, a 
 religion of vague, dreary abstractions, but still, such as it was, 
 an element in which philosophers might find some materials for 
 the religious sentiment, while the common herd might be 
 guided by the retention of the old doctrinal forms. That 
 delusion was soon dissipated. Feuerbach took up the argument 
 where Strauss left it, and drew from it the inevitable conclusion, 
 that man himself is the only proper object for the reverence 
 and the worship which had hitherto been directed to the idea 
 of a God. Theology was thus converted to anthropology. 
 Instead of loving God, men are to love one another. Sacra- 
 ments will disappear, but then the true eucharist will be found 
 in wholesome meals ; baptism, in the healthy use of cold baths ! 
 Natural science will take the place of religious, moral, and 
 metaphysical speculation. Atheism thus stood out in its bare- 
 ness and barrenness — yet not even then in its utter hatefulness. 
 It remained for a numerous school of philosophical radicals to 
 get rid of the last vestiges of superstition. Feuerbach recognized 
 the virtues of unselfishness, courage, truth ;* he was an admirer 
 of the higher developments of genius, in science, literature, 
 and art. He speaks of humanity as a real being. A whole 
 host of writers soon sprang up who rejected all such delusions 
 with utter contempt ; they saw clearly that they had no meaning 
 disjoined from the religious element, and heaped upon him- 
 self the contumelious epithets which he had unsparingly applied 
 to his predecessors. The dogmas of socialism and communism 
 were preached with the wildest fanaticism ;t poets, pohticians, 
 
 * This is too favourable a view. In 
 liis poems, which, like the ' Thalia ' of 
 Alius, are intended to popularize his 
 tenets, liis cynicism is revolting. In his 
 
 axioms he lays dowTi the principle — 
 
 Tliy first duty is to do good to thyself. 
 
 t See Schwartz, ' Zur Geschichte der 
 
 neuesten Thoologie,' p. 227, 240, 242. It 
 
Essay IY.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCRirTION. 161 
 
 socialists, and natural philosophers came forward to demand 
 the extirpation of aU faith, to denounce the belief in the 
 invisible as the root of all human weakness and misery, to 
 proclaim the sacred law of egotism — the religion of the flesh ; 
 and for a time they seemed to have succeeded. They appealed 
 to man's strongest passions ; they appealed also to some deep 
 principles. It was felt that the religion preached by the pro- 
 fessors of all schools tainted by rationalism or by ideology 
 was a farce, a delusion, a fraud ; the materialists carried the 
 day, took the lead in the revolutionary movement of 1848, 
 and suddenly, to theii* own amazement, found themselves 
 triumjDhant amidst the ruins of Church and State. 
 
 27. A long and powerful reaction followed. Utterly worn out, 
 unmasked, and confounded, ideology, together with the meta- 
 physical speculations with which it was connected, sank into ob- 
 scurity and contempt. The very last thing to be expected was 
 that it should have been transplanted into a soil of all apparently 
 the most uncongenial — that it should be offered to Englishmen 
 as a useful help in the interpretation of the Scriptures. A very 
 brief summary of points distinctly advanced, or undeniably sug- 
 gested, by some of the latest advocates of the system in England 
 will show the fundamental identity of principles between them and 
 the German ideologists ; although we gladly admit that, whether 
 withheld by reverence, or by fear of offending men of all shades 
 of religious opinion, not to speak of legal penalties and disquali- 
 fications, few among us have ventured to present the most offen- 
 sive insinuations ; none have dared to apply the principles to 
 the M'hole substance of the Scriptural narrative. 
 
 28. The doctrine of personal annihilation, of the absorption of 
 the individual consciousness in the infinite Spu-it — a doctrine, be 
 it noted, which is distinctly proclaimed among ourselves by Free- 
 thinkers, and directly based upon Pantheism, or a spurious Theism 
 — is not of course preached, nor is it likely to be preached, by any 
 one who cares to obtain or retain a hold upon the attention of 
 English Christians ; but it finds an echo, a partial expression, 
 
 must be noted that Scliwartz and I sade. Gaspard Schmidt, better known 
 
 Sclierer (who takes precisely the same j by the assumed name of Stirner, was, 
 
 view — see ' Kevue des Deux Mondes,' j perhaps, the most influential writer. 
 
 Feb. 1S61, p. 851) are ultra liberals. Gieseler, 1. c, pp. 30 and 275, maybe 
 
 Schwartz names Herwegh, Kuge, Marr, | consulted. 
 Voght, &;c., as leaders in this new cru- 1 
 
162 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IV. 
 
 what sounds like a preparation. Divested of \vliat is most repul- 
 sive in form, the principle is insinuated, the way paved for its 
 reception. Every attempt to get rid of the idea of individual 
 responsibility, to exempt any considerable portion of mankind 
 from tlie universal law of retribution, is a step, and a very de- 
 cided step, towards the denial of the continuity of personal con- 
 sciousness. A nearer approximation to the scepticism of the 
 Ideologists could perhaps hardly be made than that which we 
 find in the suggestion, that, after some possible state of new pro- 
 bation for rudimentary spirits, for germinal souls — after the 
 completion of the sublunary office of the Christian Church — all, 
 both small and great, may find a refuge in the bosom of the 
 universal Parent TO kepose, or to be quickened into higher 
 
 me* 
 
 29. We have seen how nearly the theories of the Church coin- 
 cide. As a function of the State, destined to be absorbed (and if 
 such its destiny, surely the sooner the better) in that institution, 
 it ought, of course, to concern itself exclusively with the ethical 
 development of its members.f Eothe, indeed, looked for such 
 absorption only when the State should be thoroughly penetrated 
 with Christian doctrine, transformed and glorified by Christian 
 principles — when its ideal should be realized under the govern- 
 ment of its head. Taking lower, more matter of fact and prac- 
 tical grounds — free, as it would almost seem, from the religious 
 prepossessions which biassed the German thinker, English writers 
 are found to advocate the immediate completion of the process. 
 "Speculative doctrines" — that is, all dogmatic teaching — , 
 " should be left to philosophical schools." " The ministry of the 
 Church is to be regarded simply as a function of the national 
 life." Divested of its special doctrines, its creeds, and articles, 
 and all peculiar manifestations of a divine life, the Church could 
 of com-se be little or nothing^ more than an instrument for de- 
 
 * See E. and K., p. 20G ; aiul com- 
 pare Jowett on Eomans, vol. ii. p. 489. 
 
 t Tliere is a radical difference be- 
 tween this theory and that of our Re- 
 formers, as stated by Hooker. The 
 latter proceeded on the assimaptiou 
 that the State accepts tlie doctrines 
 
 wlicn the whole Conmionweal dotli 
 believe?" "The truth is that the 
 Church and the Conunonweal are 
 names which import things really dif- 
 ferent ; but those tilings arc accidents, 
 anti such accidents as may, and always 
 should, lovingly dwell together in one 
 
 taught by the Churcii. " How should subject." — ' Ecclesiastical Polity,' Book 
 the Church remain by jiersonal subsist- viii. 
 ence divided from the Commonweal, 
 
Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCKIPTION. 163 
 
 veloping the moral character of the nation.* We are distinctly told 
 concerning " the doctrines of an isolated salvation, the reward, the 
 grace bestowed on one's own labours, the undisturbed repose, the 
 crown of glory, in which so many have no share, the finality of 
 the sentence on both sides — that reflections on such expectations 
 as these may make stubborn martyrs, or sour professors, but not 
 good citizens" t If so, these doctrines, which, invidiously as they ' 
 are here stated, are, rightly understood, the very life of Christ- 
 ianity, must be discountenanced ; even if for a time tolerated 
 of the State, tliey must be discarded altogether, when it is 
 once fully awakened to the consciousness of its true relations 
 to the Church. 
 
 30. Still clearer, less capable of being explained away or 
 denied, is the agreement of the English ideologists with the fun- 
 damental principles of their German teachers. Ideology proceeds 
 from the a priori assumption that all miraculous interventions are 
 impossible, since the Divine, whether conscious or unconscious, 
 personal or impersonal, does not and cannot, without seK-con- 
 tracliction, violate its own laws. All the school in England more 
 or less distinctly concur in the ehmination of the supernatural 
 element from Scripture. The least advanced represent it as a 
 serious hindrance to the reception of Christian truth by men of 
 cultivated intelligence. The German master adopted and gave 
 a new and keener point to all detailed objections to narratives in- 
 volving that element ; the same course is pursued in numerous 
 passages of the ' Essays and Eeviews.' % 
 
 With regard to myths, the special characteristic of ideology, 
 one writer at least cannot be open to Strauss's charge of incon- 
 sistency. He has not merely entered into the fields of Scriptural 
 history through the portal of the myth and passed out again 
 leaving the main facts untouched. § The incarnation of our Lord, 
 His descent from David, the cu'cumstances of His nativity. His 
 temptation, transfiguration, His most remarkable miracles, in- 
 cluding those attested by all the Evangelists, — nearly all, if not 
 all, the grounds for an " historical faith " are referred substantially 
 to '' an ideal origin." As for the Old Testament, we are told that 
 
 * E. and R., p. 196. 
 t Here we seem to hear Eothe, p. 
 54. 
 
 + E. and E., pp. 179, 180. See Arch- 
 deacon Sinclau-'s Charge, 1861. 
 § E. and R., p. 202. 
 
 M 2 
 
164 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay 1Y. 
 
 " previous to the time of the divided kingdom, Jewish history 
 contains little that is thoroughly reliable." Its miraculous events 
 may be taken as parable, poetry, legend, or allegory — that is, 
 simply as myths. The German saw plainly enough that in 
 order to find time and place for the development of myths, the 
 authenticity and genuineness of the historical records must be 
 denied. He scarcely went farther than a writer who speaks 
 coolly of " links deficient in the traditional record of events " 
 which are related by St. Matthew and all the Evangelists. 
 
 A crucial test of a man's feelings towards the Person of 
 Christ Himself is undoubtedly supplied by his reception or denial 
 of the Gospel of St. John. The early rationalists rejected it on 
 the ground that it is inconsistent ^^'itll the simpler, more accurate 
 representations of Christ in the other Gospels. The modern 
 neologians hold that it is the product of the higher development 
 of the Christian consciousness in the post- Apostolic age. Accord- 
 ing to the school of pantheistic rationalism, aptly and truly 
 designated the modern gnosticism, the representation of the 
 Saviour in that Gospel is too true, that is, too perfect an embo- 
 diment of the ideal, to be historical. But of all hypotheses, the 
 most offensive, the least supported by any shadow^ of evidence, 
 is that which connects the origin of the Gospel with the gnostic 
 heresy,* and brings down its date to the year 140. That hy- 
 pothesis is noticed without an expression of indignation by one 
 ^vriter, who in his own name expressly asserts that there is no 
 proof that St. John gives his voucher as an eye and ear witness 
 of all that is related in his Gospel. Strauss demanded no more 
 than this. Here is a ttov (tto) for the subversion of all positive evi- 
 dence of historical Christianity. The mythical process has free 
 play ; and it is only a question of time, of discretion in meddling 
 with stubborn prejudices, how soon and how far the objective 
 facts of an external positive revelation may be rejected, how 
 the doctrines themselves may be remoulded, under the supreme 
 and ultimate authority of the natural conscience, into accordance 
 with the requirements of an enlightened age. 
 
 31. The question of course arises — how is it possible that men 
 
 * Thus Hilgenfeld. Seo a brief 
 summary of opinions in Lange's Bibel- 
 wcrk, iv. p. 20, an excellent work, 
 
 which will meet the requirements of 
 many students. 
 
Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCRIPTION. 165 
 
 of honour liolcling such opinions can retain, or endure, their 
 position as ministers and teachers of a Church, which, liberal 
 as it undoubtedly is in dealing with all questions about 
 which believers in a positive revelation may conscientiously 
 diifer, has no less certainly pronounced a clear and decisive 
 sentence upon each and all the points controverted or denied 
 by Ideologists ? That the difficulty is felt is sufficiently ob- 
 vious. The principal object of the only treatise in which the 
 leading principles of this form of neology have been distinctly 
 commended by a minister of the Church of England, is to justify 
 the conduct of himself and those who maintain the same views. 
 In this part of his undertaking he has been supplied with 
 weapons from the same foreign armomy. In the writings of all 
 schools of rationalism and neology, a prominent place is assigned 
 to the vindication of absolute liberty of sceptical speculation, not 
 merely for students, but for professors of theology. We need not, 
 however, trace the connection.* That is of little moment. The 
 arguments in this case have at least the merit of being intelli- 
 gible and practical. Whether the Church has at present, and 
 has had from the beginning, safeguards to preserve her doctrines 
 from corruption — whether she has a right, and has exercised the 
 right, to exact from all her ministers a pledge that so long as 
 they retain her commission they will deliver those doctrines in 
 their integrity to the people — whether the act of subscription by 
 which the ministers give such pledge involves a moral, or a mere 
 legal obligation — such questions stand upon independent grounds, 
 and may be discussed without any reference to the sources from 
 which the arguments we have to consider may, or may not, be 
 derived. 
 
 32. In this controversy the first point must needs be to ascertain 
 the practice of the Apostles as recorded or intimated in the 
 New Testament, and in the next place the practice of the Church 
 in various periods of its development ; the most important, in a 
 general point of view, being that critical epoch which terminated 
 the first struggle with heathenism. Scarcely secondary is the 
 
 * The history of the struggle of 
 Kationalists, more especially the Licht- 
 freunde, partisans or followers of 
 Strauss, to get rid of all doctrinal 
 
 tests, the Creeds included, is given by [ 25U and 2G3. 
 
 Gieseler, ■who, though diifering from 
 them in important points, sympathizes 
 with them to some extent in that deshe. 
 See ' Kirchengescliichte d. n. Z.,' p. 
 
166 ^ AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IY. 
 
 position taken by our own Churcli, wlien it tlioroiiglily investi- 
 gated all points of principle and organization at the time of the 
 Eeformation — a position retained without any substantial modi- 
 fication at the present day. 
 
 33. With regard to the first point, the ingenuity and disingenu- 
 ousness of those who deny the propriety of doctrinal limitations 
 are equally conspicuous. The subject is introduced, so to speak, 
 casually, and disposed of with little intimation of its surpassing 
 importance. If the Apostles* enforced a rule of faith, and made 
 the teaching of sound doctrine an absolute and universal condi- 
 tion of holding office in the Church, the principle is of com-se 
 decided, whatever difficulty may be felt at any time about its 
 practical apj^lication. Now, the first impression made upon every 
 thoughtful reader of the New Testament is undoubtedly, that 
 the whole system of Christian morals, most especially as concerns 
 those characteristic peculiarities which distinguish the Christian 
 from the heathen moralist, is not merely interwoven with the ex- 
 ternal facts and positive doctrines of Christianity, but is altogether 
 based upon them, and derives from them its sanctions, its 
 power, its life. The manifestation of the Divine life in man is a 
 reflexion and efflux from the manifestation of God in Christ. 
 The understanding and heart, the spu-itual and the moral nature 
 of man, are equally under the dominion and control of truths, 
 which man has indeed a natural and inherent capacity for appre- 
 hending when set before him, but which, in the actual state of 
 his faculties, he is certainly unable to discover. Those truths 
 are given in revelation in the two-fold form of facts and doctrines, 
 equally positive, equally indispensable to the development of 
 the spu-itual man. The denial or perversion of either excludes 
 a man from the benefits of the revelation — a result which follows 
 of necessity from the very notion of a revelation, for why should 
 truth be revealed but to be accepted ? We are not at present 
 concerned with the question how far such result is reconcileable 
 Avith the Divine attributes, or we might observe that tlie denial 
 of what God has revealed must needs involve some penalty in 
 .beings responsible for the use of their faculties ; nor do we touch 
 the case of those to whom the revelation has not been given ; 
 Charity feels no need of speculations concerning those whom she 
 
 2 Timotliyi, ]3, H ; ii. 2 ; iii. 10, li. 
 
Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCRIPTIOK 167 
 
 leaves in faitli and hope to the mercy of their Maker. We are 
 not confining the effects of the atonement, which may, and 
 doubtless do, extend far beyond the sphere of om- contemplation ; 
 but simply indicate the limits within which its full effects 
 are experienced — limits undoubtedly coextensive with its recep- 
 tion by the intellect and heart. Christ made confession of faith 
 in Himself, and in the truths which He proclaimed, the condition 
 of salvation. The Apostles, guided by His Spirit, exacted a de- 
 claration of belief in those truths as a preliminary condition of 
 admission to the Church, full in every case in proportion to the 
 capacities of their hearers and their opportunities of knowing 
 the truth, fullest and most explicit in the case of those whom 
 they appointed to the Avork of the ministry. If so, the con- 
 clusion is obvious, that the Church w^ould cease to be a Church 
 if she commissioned any to teach in her own and in her Master's 
 name, when they are at direct issue with herself upon points 
 which from the beginning have been held by those who denied, 
 as well as by those who accepted them, to pertain to the very 
 foundations of the faith. 
 
 34. That position, however, clear as are the principles on which 
 it rests, is now for the first time assailed ; not indeed directly, 
 but by implication. We are told generally, that whereas the 
 Apostles enjoin the infliction of the last penalty, that of ex- 
 communication, for moral turpitude, they deal with speculative 
 questions, even those which touch fundamental doctrines, simply 
 by the way of controversy. The case selected is that of the for- 
 nicator at Corinth, which is contrasted with that of heretics who 
 denied a corporeal resurrection. With regard to the former 
 there is no question. The proceeding of St. Paul in that case is, 
 of course, of the highest importance as a proof of the existence 
 and enforcement of disciplinarian powers in the Apostles, and in 
 the Church, whose rulers were reproved for not having exercised 
 tlieoi Avithout St. Paul's intervention. It might be pointed out 
 that the offence then punished consisted most probably in the 
 infringement of a positive precept, which, though recognized by 
 the moral instincts of heathendom, was first distinctly promul- 
 gated by the Apostolic council at Jerusalem ;* and with reference 
 
 * It is Hooker's opiuion, in which I critics, as Ritschl, 'Die Eutstehuugder 
 the latest and some of the acutest | altkatliolisehen Kirche,' p. 129, and 
 
168 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IV. 
 
 to other controverted matters, that the circumstances under 
 which the sentence was pronounced would lead to the conclusion 
 that the powers deposited in the Church, and more especially 
 in the Apostles as representatives of the Head of the Church, 
 are in their essence independent of the State. With regard 
 to the other point, which concerns the Apostle's mode of 
 dealing with heretical opinions in fundamental matters, we 
 wholly repudiate the inference drawn from a partial state- 
 ment of his proceeding. It is said that St. Paul does not call 
 for the expulsion of those among the Chi'istian converts who had 
 no belief in a corporeal resurrection. That may be : weakness 
 of faith, errors in points of faith on the part of converts, hearers, 
 and learners, were dealt ydih. tenderly, by the way of controversy. 
 The very objects of the Christian Chui-ch would otherwise be 
 defeated. But the question is, whether St. Paul held that the 
 opinions ought to be tolerated ? Whether they could be professed 
 or retained without forfeitm-e of the distinctive privileges of 
 Christians ? What does he say of those who held them ? What 
 but that, if those opinions were maintained, theii- faith was vain, 
 they were yet in their sins ; Christ had died in vain ? If such 
 a declaration be not tantamount to excommunication, to cutting 
 off those who obstinately persisted in such errors from Christian 
 privileges, words have no meaning. Self condemned, they 
 became aliens, relapsed into the state of imconversion, by the 
 very fact of their denying, not indeed a speculative opinion, but 
 what (as even ideologists admit, strangely inconsistent as such 
 admission is with the system they* advocate) St. Paul always 
 represents as the corner stone of the Christian belief. Of course 
 the Apostle proceeds in the first instance by the way of contro- 
 versy, or, to sjieak more correctly, of demonstration. Of course 
 his one great desire is to persuade, to convince, to win to the 
 truth, those who were weak or unsound in the faith ; to clear up 
 obscurities, and to remove difficulties from their way. Nor does 
 he fail to show the inward harmony between the ordinary course 
 of nature and the miraculous intervention of that Power by 
 
 Wieseler, concur, tlmt -nopvela, in Acts 
 XV. 20, means illicit marriages. Ritschl 
 proves that St. Paul enforced the de- 
 cree — a point of considerable importance 
 in the controversy with the Tiibingon 
 schocil. 
 
 * There is no point on wliich Ideo- 
 logists, even those who partially adopt 
 tlie system, are more generallyagrecd 
 than the necessity of explaining uway 
 the fact of the Ivesurrectioii. 
 
Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCRIPTION. 169 
 
 which the laws that regulate the course of nature were 
 ordained. That, however, is no more than he does in the case 
 of offenders against the moral law. He exhausts all the re- 
 sources of persuasion, expostulation, and warning ; he appeals to 
 the reason, the conscience, the heart, before he hints at any 
 measure of a judicial character, even in the case of those who 
 " defile the temple of the Holy Ghost." But, as in this latter case, 
 when all such preliminary endeavours proved to be ineffectual, 
 he resorted ultimately to the exercise of the awful powers en- 
 trusted to the Apostles as governors of Christ's Church, as 
 assessors with Him on the throne of judgment ; so also, beyond 
 all doubt, he was j^repared to act, even as he had acted in the 
 case of Elymas at the very beginning of his ministry, in the 
 case of all stubborn impugners of fundamental truths. 
 
 In fact, the expressions which he uses in reference to those 
 who attacked tenets which would undoubtedly be regarded by 
 many as purely speculative and dogmatic, sound even harsh, 
 and would be indefensible as they are painful, did they not pro- 
 ceed from a principle of infinite importance to the integrity of 
 the Christian faith. " I would that they were cut off that 
 trouble you ;" " Let him be accursed who preaches to you 
 another Gospel ;" these and similar * expressions had no refer- 
 ence to evil livers, as such, but to teachers and maintainers of 
 evil doctrines, with which all corruptions of our moral nature are 
 connected, but which have their origin in that higher element 
 of our spiritual and intellectual being, for the regulation and 
 conscientious use of Avhich our responsibility is grave, even in 
 proportion to its excellence and the incomparable majesty of 
 the objects with which it is concerned. 
 
 We must further remark, that in order to bring the argument, 
 such as it is, to bear upon the question of subscription as a con- 
 dition of exercising the functions of the Cluistiau ministry, it 
 should have been shown that St. Paul admitted any man to 
 preach publicly, in the capacity of an appointed teacher, against 
 the Eesurrection, or any other doctrine which had been plainly 
 declared, or that he and his fellow Apostles failed to exercise 
 the right of deposition, when admonition and Marning were 
 
 * Galatians v. 12 ; 1 Timothy iv. 1, I 10. Compare 2 John 10, 11 ; 2 Peter 
 2 ; 2 Timothy iii. 8, 9; Titus i. 11, iii. | iii. 17 ; Acts xx. 28-30. 
 
170 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IV. 
 
 found ineffectual to secui-e tlie cause of truth. Such is not 
 the conclusion which we draw from the case of H}Tuenaeus 
 and Alexander, whom the Apostle "delivered to Satan (the 
 same sentence as tliat pronounced in the case of the Corinthian 
 fornicator — one which, whatever might be its effect, undoubtedly 
 amounts to excommunication), that they might learn not to blas- 
 pheme ;" nor from that of Hymenaeus and Philetus, which is 
 even more immediately to the point, " who erred concerning the 
 truth, saying that the resiu-rection is already past " — unless, in- 
 deed, we presume that St. Paul allowed their word to " eat as doth 
 a canker," and to " overthrow the faith " of his converts, without 
 using the power " given to him by the Lord " for the protec- 
 tion of the weak brethren, "for Avhom Christ died." 
 
 35. The practice of the early Church is too clearly established 
 by a multitude of public acts to be open to a similar course of 
 argument. The determmation of the general body and the 
 recognized representatives of the Christian community to ex- 
 clude all teacliiug contrary to its fundamental principles, to 
 guard its doctrinal deposit by strict, definite, and unmistakeable 
 declarations, is the most prominent fact which meets every 
 student of ecclesiastical history, which, indeed, is recognized 
 most distinctly by those who feel a rooted antipathy to every 
 shade of what they are pleased to call dogmatic intolerance. A 
 different, and not unplausible line of argument, is therefore 
 adopted. The statement is hazarded that the State, rather than 
 the Church, is responsible for this exclusiveness.* We are told t 
 that, together with the inauguration of multitudinism, Constan- 
 tine inaugurated a principle essentially at variance with it — 
 that of doctrinal limitation ; and we are informed that his- 
 torians, who are certainly all but unanimous upon the point, are 
 wrong in supposing that the increasing strictness of definitions 
 in the Cliristian creed must be attributed to the rise of succes- 
 
 It is a singular instance of the in- I " Their imposition in its first origin 
 
 fluenee which has been exercised, di- was much more a political tlian an ec- 
 
 rcctly or indirectly, by the WTitiugs of i clesiastical act ; it was a provision of 
 
 one of the most subtle and ingenious | the State rather than of the Church, 
 
 of modern controversialists, that even j though the Church co-operated— the 
 
 this argument is derived, though used ! outward form into which our religion 
 
 for very different purposes, from New- i was cast has depended in no slight 
 
 man's theory about tlie Tliirty-nine , measure on the personal opinions and 
 
 Articles. See ' Romanism and Popular wishes of laymen and foreigners." 
 
 Trotestantism,' Lecture ix. p. 278. I t E. aud E., p. IGO. 
 
Essay IV.] 
 
 IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCRIPTIOX. 
 
 171 
 
 sive heresies. Such assertions can, of coui'se, only be refuted 
 completely by a searching inquuy into the records of Christian 
 antiquity ; but they may be met by some decisive facts ; and 
 we have no hesitation in asserting that the part thus assigned 
 to the first Christian emperor is diametrically in opposition to 
 historical facts. So far from inaugm-ating the principle of 
 doctrinal limitation, Constantino from first to last had one 
 paramount object, and that was to get rid of doctriual discus- 
 sions, and to bring about a compromise between conflicting 
 parties — in fact, to do exactly what we are told Avould have 
 been so desirable, viz., to enforce forbearance between the great 
 antagonistic parties, and to insist on the maxim that neither had 
 a right to limit the common Christianity to the exclusion of the 
 other. Constantino looked upon the controversy between Catho- 
 lics and Arians, as the representatives of the secular authority 
 are generally disposed to do, altogether from without ; and the 
 special points under discussion were to him matters of utter in- 
 difference.* The course which he pm-sued in the first instance 
 was the very wisest that could be devised ; nor, considering the 
 unjDaralleled importance of the crisis and the results of his 
 decision, do we see how Christians can doubt that it was brought 
 about by the great Head of the Church. He called together from 
 all quarters of his empire the governors of the whole Christian 
 community, and referred the questions under discussion to then- 
 arbitration. The result was absolutely decisive. The Nicene 
 Creed was drawn up as a declaration of what was included in 
 that common Chiistianity. It defined the true limits beyond 
 which no teacher | could go without infringing the fundamental 
 principles of the faith. With the exception of one word, that 
 Creed contained no single statement in which, both as regarded 
 substance and form, all Churches had not previously coincided. 
 That word represented not "the hardening of fluid and un- 
 settled notions," but the existence of one fixed universal con- 
 viction, that the centre and life of Chi-istianity is found in the 
 recognition of the absolute and perfect Godhead of its Founder 
 and Head. The word was chosen, not by Constantino, but by 
 
 * See liis epistle to Alexander and 
 Arius. Euseb. V. C, ii. 69, 70. 
 
 t It must be remembered that sub- 
 scription was exacted at once of the 
 
 clergy, as being teachers, but not of 
 the laity. Anathemas, however, were 
 pronounced against all who openlj- 
 denied the doctrines of the Creed. 
 
172 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 TESSAY IV. 
 
 those divines who clearly perceived the vital character of the 
 questions at issue. They chose it because nothing short of an 
 exact definition would deliver Christendom from the corrup- 
 tion with which it was menaced. The word was open to cavil, 
 and, if left unexplained, to fair objection;* but with such expla- 
 nation as was at once given and accepted, it expressed the mind 
 of the universal Church. It must not be supposed that the 
 object was to express the personal opinions of the Bishops pre- 
 sent ; even the arguments by which they might defend those 
 opinions were matters, comparatively speaking, of indifference. 
 In selecting that word they were actuated but by one wish — that 
 of expressing clearly and unmistakeably the conviction of the 
 entire body in whose name they spoke. The most unlearned, 
 the least conversant Avith technical terms or philosophical dis- 
 cussions among them, were rejoiced to have that word, feeling 
 that they coidd not show their faces to their own congregations 
 if they returned without having recorded such a decision as 
 might exclude for ever the incongruous and hostile element from 
 the sphere of Christian communion. Constantino did but give 
 effect to the universal will. They inaugurated the doctrinal 
 limitation ; he gave it for the time legal validity. Nor must it 
 be lost sight of, that all the special pleading, all the philosophical 
 specidations and technical innovations began, as indeed has 
 always been the case, not with the maintainors, but with the 
 opponents of the old Catholic doctrine. " That there was a time 
 when God the Word was not ; that He was alien in essential sub- 
 stance from the absolute God ;" these and similar forms of what 
 the Church then rejected — and so long as she exists will ever 
 reject as blasphemy — had their origin in the catechetical schools 
 tainted most deeply by neoplatonism. The necessity of a new, 
 a more searching and comprehensive, and at the same time a 
 more exclusive term, was entirely owing to those metaphysical 
 speculations. The Church acknowledged the truth of the con- 
 
 * Sec Atlianasius, 'De Syn. Nic.,' 
 § 20-24, and Basil, Ep. 52, with Gar- 
 nicr's note. It is well kno-wn that all 
 the great divines of that age were quite 
 satisfied with an honest acceptance of 
 the doctrine exj)ressed Ly 'Oixoovaioi, 
 
 even in the case of those who for a 
 time were unwilling to receive tliat 
 word. Few writers of late have dealt 
 with the question so fairly as the Bene- 
 dictine editors, or as Tillemont, ,' Me- 
 moircs H. E..' torn. iv. p. 125. 
 
Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCEIPTIOX. 173 
 
 elusion drawn by its most clearsighted champions, that the intro- 
 duction of an intermediate Being, neither truly God nor truly 
 man, was a subtle but unquestionable form of polytheism,* sub- 
 versive of all the principles on which the redemption of 
 humanity depends. The decision was, undoubtedly, exclusive. 
 It excluded — it ejected as a poison, a gangrene, a treasonable 
 lie — the doctrine which is too often regarded as a mere verbal 
 error, or one depending upon the inherent imperfection of a 
 finite intellect ; but for that exclusiveness the Church, and the 
 Church alone, is responsible. So far indeed was the State from 
 taking upon itself the responsibility of this " doctrinal limita- 
 tion," that within a very short time its whole power was brought 
 to bear upon the Church, in order to compel it to reverse 
 its decision and to eliminate that one word from its creed- 
 During the reigns of two most able and powerful sovereigns 
 no means of fraud, intimidation, or violence were spared 
 to produce the result which is now represented to be so 
 desirable — that of sweeping away the limitary definition which 
 shut out the only influential dissentients from oflSce and com- 
 munion in the Chm'ch. It was assuredly a providential dis- 
 pensation to test the sincerity of the Church's faith, and to 
 demonstrate its independence of the State. An age of terrible 
 struggles intervened before the final triumph ; but during that 
 time the principle took such root that no storms have since 
 shaken it. One point requires especial notice ; it is often 
 overlooked : neither Constantino nor his successors attempted 
 to introduce the terms of the Arian heresy in the formularies 
 which they recommended,! freely as they allowed the doctrines 
 of Arianism to be preached; they merely wished tQ exclude 
 from the Creed the one word of doctrinal limitation ; and in 
 that attempt they failed. The early Church knew that it 
 was a matter of life or death ; and in the position where that 
 Church left us we stand, with a Creed definitely stating, not 
 
 * This is the great, the palmary ar- 
 gument of Athanasius, adopted by 
 Basil, Gregory, and all the great di- 
 vines who have written against Arian- 
 ism. 
 
 t Hence not only Constautine, but 
 
 even Constantius is spoken of in teims 
 of respect by stanch but candid up- 
 holders of the orthodox doctrine, as 
 Hilary, Ambrose, Theodoret, and 
 Gregory Nazianzen. See the preface 
 to G. N. Or. iv. p. 76, ed. Ben. 
 
174 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay IV. 
 
 explaining or discussing, but simply declaring, those doctrinal 
 facts* without which our common Christianity would be a 
 mere name. 
 
 36. That the actual position of our own Church is definite and 
 unmistakeable is recognized both by those who maintain, 
 and not less distinctly by those who assail it, as is shown 
 by the direction of their attacks. It is in principle precisely 
 that of the Apostolic Church, in fact of all portions of the 
 Church, in the best and purest ages. The first object of our 
 Church is to determine the grounds on which all its doctrine is . 
 based. That she does by enumerating the canonical books of 
 Holy Writ, to which alone she appeals for authoritative con- 
 firmation of her teaching. Belief in the Scriptiu-es, in their 
 genuineness, authenticity, and divine origin — belief in them not 
 merely as fundamental, but as the foundatmi of all funda- 
 mentals,^ the sole and sufficient warrant for the Creeds | them- 
 selves, is the first condition of communion, a condition not 
 stated simply because it is assumed as a point about which no 
 question could be raised by Christians. The Bible is to our 
 Church § as it was to the early Church, as it was most distinctly 
 and emphatically to the Churches of the Reformation, the 
 Word of God. The three Creeds are accepted and set forth 
 as the condensed declaration of the articles of faith which 
 she holds, on the ground of their scripturality, to be true, and 
 on that of their importance to be fundamental. In the Thirty- 
 nine Articles of Religion she exhibits the whole body of her 
 theology as contradistinguished from that of churches which 
 had corrupted, mutilated, or added to, the truth. The general 
 objects of those Articles are to repudiate the errors of the 
 
 * I use the expression advisedly — 
 the doctrines of the Church are facts, 
 and the facts are doctrines. 
 
 t The term first used, if I mistake 
 not, by Newman. See ' Komanisra and 
 Popular rrutcstantism,' p. 287. It coin- 
 cides Avilli Cliilliii,2;worth's well-known 
 saying, and witli lltgel's, " Dabei," i. e., 
 with the Creeds, " gait in dcr pro- 
 tcstantischen Kirche die Bcstumnuug, 
 dass die Bibel tlie wesentliche Grund- 
 lage der Lchr-e sey." — ' riiilusophic der 
 Religion,' p. 29. 
 
 X Article viii. 
 
 § See Articles xvii. (the last words), 
 
 XX. xxii. xxxiv. There cannot be any 
 reasonable doubt that the "word of 
 God ■' in tlicse Articles means the Bible. 
 In other passages it might possibly be 
 explained away, but the expressions 
 " Holy Scripture " and " word of God " 
 were most cerfciinly synonymous in the 
 mind of the compilers of the Articles, 
 as they are now in the mind of the im- 
 posers of subscription. The results of 
 denying that the word of God is co- 
 extensive with Holy Scripture are 
 drawn out clearly enougli in E. and R., 
 p. 176, 177. 
 
Essay IV.] 
 
 IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCRIPTION. 
 
 175 
 
 Papal system, and to maintain what is called the Catholic 
 doctrine, — that is, the whole system of doctrines recognized by 
 the Church of Christ as 023posed to early heresies* So far her 
 position is clear. With regard to the acts of adhesion reqiiii-ed 
 of her members, -vve find the same substantial identity of 
 principle with the early Church. As to hearers of the word, to 
 attendants upon her services, we readily admit that no formal 
 act of adherence beyond what is given in baptism, and is after- 
 wards implied by their acceptance of her ministrations, ought to 
 be required. Nor does our Church require it.f As we believe to 
 have been the practice in the Apostolic age, she admits all appli- 
 cants to free participation in any ordinances from which, judging 
 for themselves, they expect to derive benefit ; nor does she retain 
 even so much of the discipline of the post-Apostolic Church as 
 might be held desirable in order to protect the most solemn rites 
 from profanation. Even that risk is incurred in preference to 
 the possible exclusion of timid and scrupulous believers. Our 
 Church, to use a somewhat pedantic but not inexpressive term, is 
 multitudinous, in the sense that it does not inquire minutely and 
 jealously into the qualifications and opinions of its members, 
 but opens wide its gates day and night, and offers freely to all 
 the leaves that were given for the healing of the nations. But 
 that is quite a different question from the terms of admission to 
 the functions of the ministry. | Our Church has learned from 
 St. Paul, from his fellow Apostles, and from his Master, that an 
 
 * See Dr. Arnold's ' Life and Corre- 
 spondence,' ii. p. 136. The passage is 
 quoted further on. Compare Water- 
 land, vol. ii. p. 302. 
 
 t This does not touch the case of 
 the Universities. Of course, any colle- 
 giate or corporate institution has tho 
 right to impose its own conditions for 
 admission to its privileges or benefices. 
 There is great force in the arguments 
 of the pamphlet, written, I believe, 
 by Mr. Maurice, ' Subscription no Bon- 
 dage,' 1835 — "In all schools and uni- 
 versities there is a contract expressed 
 or implied between the teacher and tlie 
 learner, as to the principles on which 
 the one agrees to teach and the other 
 to learn — and to state the terms of this 
 contract is at once the most lionest me- 
 thod, and the most serviceable to edu- 
 cation." 
 
 X Thus Waterland— " Subscription 
 is not a term of lay communion, but of 
 ministerial conformity, on acceptance 
 of trusts and privileges," vol. ii. p. 362. 
 Again, " This writer cannot distinguish 
 between ejecting and not admitting, 
 nor between Church-conununion and 
 Church-trusts. I said not a word about 
 ejecting any man out of communion," 
 ib. p. 392. Bishop Bull takes pre- 
 cisely the same view, ' Vindication of 
 the Church of England,' vol. ii. p. 211, 
 ed. Burton. So also does Bishop Jerem}' 
 Taylor, ' Ductor dubitantium,' iii. c. 4. 
 In accordance with this principle, Atlia- 
 nasius admitted the Semi-Arians to 
 communion, although they would not 
 accept the term Homousion; but he 
 would not allow them to hold office in 
 the Chui-ch. 
 
176 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay IV. 
 
 imperfect knowledge, much more denial of the truth when it 
 extends to fundamental principles, when it touches the " Divine 
 personalities," and the authority of God's word, is an insuperable 
 disqualification for the ministerial office. 
 
 37. It is disingenuous to represent this difference between a lay 
 and clerical member of the Church as implying that one is free 
 to inquire, the other bound to profess what, be it true or be it 
 false, may not be true to liim. The layman is simply treated, 
 so far and so long as he chooses to be so treated, as one whose 
 opinions are in process of formation ; whereas the other, by the 
 mere fact of his assuming the functions of a teacher, declares that 
 upon all essential points his mind is already made up. A 
 school of theology may, within certain limits, be a fair arena for 
 speculative conflicts ; but the chair of the professor, and a fortiori 
 the pulpit of the minister, should be occupied by one who is in 
 possession of the truth. It has been stated, that whenever laymen 
 are put in positions wdiere their influence may affect the religious 
 principles of members of the Church, the same guarantees are 
 exacted as in the case of ministers. Though incorrect in point 
 of fact, that statement bears witness to the reasonableness of the 
 condition, that professed teachers of the Church's doctrines ought, 
 in some form or other, to give an assurance that they know what 
 these doctrines are, and that they receive them and intend to 
 teach them without any essential modification. There are 
 several conceivable ways in which the Church may satisfy her- 
 self upon this point ; but sm-ely the easiest and most natural — 
 the least open to the charge of unfairness — is to state clearly, 
 broadly, and completely, the principles, and doctrines, which 
 she holds to be fundamental, and to require of those who are 
 candidates for the most important of all offices, a declaration 
 deliberately made and attested by the simple act of subscription, 
 that they are one in mind and in convictions with herself. The 
 Church can do no less than demand such a pledge, that at the time 
 when a man accepts that office, he allows,* that is, he honestly 
 and unreservedly approves and assents to her code of faith. 
 
 * It is strange that any scholar should 
 raise a question as to the meaning of 
 this word. It occurs frequently in our 
 early formularies, and always in the 
 sense of approving and accepting. See 
 also Luke xi. 48 ; 1 Thess. ii. 4. As 
 to its meaning in Subscription, Jeremy 
 
 Taylor Avi-ites thus (I. c.) : — " Lubens et 
 ex animo subscripsi, that's our form in 
 the Church of England. Consenticns 
 subscripsi : so it was in the ancient 
 Church, as St. Austin reports. I con- 
 sent to the thing, mv niiud goes with 
 it." 
 
Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCRIPTIOX. 177 
 
 38. This, it is 'said, is equivalent to a promise that a man will 
 believe, and that is a promise which it is not in his jDower to fulfil. 
 But so far as regards belief, subscription is not a promise, but a 
 declaration.* AA^iatever promise is implied concerns not our con- 
 victions, but our acts. We pledge ourselves simply to this, that, 
 so long as we hold an office of trust, we will not contravene the 
 purposes for which it was instituted. The objects of our faith are, 
 indeed, immutable truths ; but, knomug the changeableness of 
 the subjective faculties which apprehend them, and the manifold 
 disturbances to which spiritual development is liable, we make 
 no promise that we will retain those convictions ; although, from 
 the very nature of convictions touching the highest interests of 
 our being, Ave entertain a hope, a trust, a something in all honest 
 men approaching to, and in single-hearted believers identified 
 wdth, a confident assurance that we shall retain them to the end. 
 The promise, however, as to acts is binding, on the plainest 
 grounds of moral obligation, and that without any reference to 
 the possible contingency of legal penalties and disqualifications 
 in case of its violation. 
 
 39. This point is of primary importance. It concerns our con- 
 science more nearly than any considerations bearing upon our 
 ministerial position. It has been lately asserted, as I believe for 
 the first time, that the moral obligation of tlie act of subscription 
 is commensurate and identical with the legal obligation. Now 
 the effect of this doctrine, were it generally adopted, would be 
 the practical annihilation of all obligation, in the great majority 
 of cases Avhere any question could arise. It is but too obvious ' 
 that a man may, if not directly, yet by insinuation and unmis- 
 takable inference, attack even the fundamental doctrines of the 
 Church without incurring the danger of legal conviction. In fact, 
 so far as the mere legal obligation is concerned, there could be 
 no object whatever in requiring subscription. That act does not 
 
 * Thus Jeremy Taylor, 1. c, c. xxiii. 
 " Ecclesiastical subscription only gives 
 witness of our present consent, but ac- 
 cording to its design and purpose for 
 the future it binds us only to the con- 
 servation of peace and unity." His 
 view of the act of subscription is of great 
 importance. " It imphes that he who 
 subscribes does actually approve the 
 
 articles overwiitten— does, at the time, 
 believe them to be such as it is said 
 they are : true, if they only say they 
 are ti-ue ; useful, if they pretend to use- 
 fulness ; necessary, if it is afBrmed they 
 are necessary. For if the siibscriber 
 believe not this, he by hypocrisy serves 
 the ends of public peace, and his own 
 preferment." 
 
 N 
 
178 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay IY. 
 
 render a man liable to legal consequences in a liiglier or different 
 degree than would the acceptance of an office to which certain 
 ■ conditions are attached by the legislature. It is perfectly com- 
 petent to the supreme authority to inflict deprivation for any 
 infringement of those conditions, without reference to the pre- 
 vious concurrence of ministers in the definition of their duties. 
 The act of subscription would be superfluous, if it did not 
 superadd to the legal a perfectly distinct and incomparably 
 higher obligation, — even one which binds the conscience of an 
 honest man.* 
 
 40. The existence of the moral obligation does not, however, de- 
 termine its exact natm-e and extent. The question still remains, 
 how far the act of subscription implies conformity between a 
 man's inmost convictions and the doctrinal formularies of the 
 Chiu-ch.f That the conformity does not necessarily extend to an 
 absolute and entire acceptation of any human formularies, as 
 exhaustive or perfect representations of Divine truth, may readily 
 be conceded. Such a demand would, in fact, be tantamount to 
 an assumption of verbal and plenary inspiration, which the com- 
 pilers of the documents and the imposers of subscrij^tion would be 
 the first to disclaim. The conformity must, however, amount to 
 as much as this. Taking the articles of religion in theii' natm-al 
 and obvious meaning, | as upon the whole witli singular unani- 
 mity, and in the most essential points with absolute unanimity, 
 they have been understood and interpreted by om- great divines, 
 the subscriber recognizes in them a faithful exhibition of 
 Christian doctrine, the rule of his pubhc teacliing, the authori- 
 tative expression of the faith once delivered to the saints. On 
 two points especially, an explicit and unhesitating act of adhe- 
 sion is demanded — the canon of Holy Scripture, and the Creeds 
 
 * See the touching and unanswer- 
 able statement of Mr. Whis^-sn, quoted 
 by Waterland, vol. ii. p. 400. 
 
 t Tliis is the declaration of the four 
 Oxford Tutors in 18il :— " We readily 
 admit tiie necessity of allowing that 
 liberty in interpreting the formularies 
 of our Church which has been advo- 
 cated by many of our most learned 
 bishops and eminent divines ; but this 
 tract puts forth new and startling 
 views as to the extent to which that 
 liberty may be carried. For if we are 
 
 right in our apprehension of the 
 author's meaning, we are at a loss to 
 see what security would remain, were 
 his principles generally recognized, 
 tliat the most plainly erroneous doc- 
 trines and practices of the Church of 
 Rome might not be inculcated in the 
 lecture-rooms of the university and 
 from the pulpits of our churches."' 
 
 J See Dr. Waterland on * Arian Sub- 
 scription,' vol. ii. p. .335. Bishops Bull, 
 vol. ii. p. 211, and J. Taylor, quotcil 
 above. 
 
Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCEIPTIOX. 179 
 
 wliicli present its fundamental doctrines in a concentrated form.* 
 Short of this conformity, it is certain that a minister cannot 
 sympathize with the spirit, or give effect to the purposes, of the 
 Church. Common sense, in this case fully in accord with the 
 highest reason, is a sufficient guide to the most cautious and 
 scrupulous inquirer. Nor can I forbear from quoting the words 
 of one whom no man will suspect of any tendency to dogmatic 
 intolerance, any disregard of even exaggerated sensitiveness. In 
 a letter to one who had felt much perplexity about subscription, 
 after alluding to difficulties formerly experienced by himself. Dr. 
 Arnoldf writes thus : — " The real honesty of subscription appears 
 to me to consist in a sympathy with the system to whicb you 
 subscribe, in a preference of it, not negatively merely as better 
 than others, but positively, as in itself good and true in its most 
 characteristic points. Kow, the most characteristic points of the 
 English Chm^ch are two : that it maintains what is called the 
 Catholic Faith as opposed to the early heresies, and is also de- '- 
 cidedly a Eeformed Church as opposed to the priestly and Papal 
 system." Such must have been the feelings of the Oxford tutor X 
 wbo some twenty years since bore this testimony to our Church, 
 with especial reference to its safeguard of subscription — "I 
 know not where free scope may be found for the feelings of awe, 
 mystery, tenderness, and devotedness, when they struggle for 
 utterance in the breast of the spiritual man, more freely than in 
 our own communion : where our sons are taught, without adding 
 thereto, or diminishing aught from it, the great mystery of godli- 
 ness : God manifest in the ilesh, justified in the Spirit, seen of 
 angels, preached unto the Gentiles, believed on in the world, 
 received up into glory." n^No one holdiug those principles could 
 feel any difficulty in subscription. Such a man is satisfied, not 
 because he is safe from legal consequences, but because he feels 
 himself in harmony with the spirit of his Church, because he 
 knows that he is offering an honest act of fealty, and is willing, 
 Avithout subterfuge or equivocation, to carry out her intentions to 
 
 * To these should be added the doc- 
 trine of the Sacraments. The statute of 
 Elizabeth 13, which requires subscrip- 
 tion to all the Articles, specifies in the 
 first place such only as concern the 
 confession of the Christian faith and 
 the doctrine of the Holy Sacraments. 
 
 See Collier, ' Ecclesiastical History,' vol. 
 vi. pp. 485 and 489. 
 
 t ' Life and Correspondence,' vol. ii. 
 p. 177. 
 
 X 'Letter to Rev. T. T. Chiurton bv 
 Eev. H. B. Wilson,' 1841. 
 
 N 2 
 
180 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IV. 
 
 the best of his ability. Should it, indeed, unhappily be the case, 
 that in after years his mind should be so affected as to reject not 
 merely a word here and there, the meaning or application of 
 expressions about which the most learned and candid writers 
 have differed, or even positive determinations upon questions of 
 subordinate importance, but the great truths, the objective facts, 
 the fundamental doctrines set forth plainly and unmistakably 
 in those formularies, then surely the moral obligation is posi- 
 tive. It leaves but one alternative. He cannot do the work 
 which he has undertaken, cannot preach the doctrines, cannot 
 proclaim the facts which are the very foundation of the Church : 
 how can he retain the trust ? If people did not understand this 
 to be our feeling as ministers, they would speedily seek for 
 •some other guarantee. If it were generally believed that, when 
 called upon to clear himself from " odious imputations," a mi- 
 nister might put a stop to all further inquiry by simply renewing 
 his subscription, with a clear understanding that thereby he 
 means no more than that he recognizes a legal obligation, retain- 
 ing the right of explaining away, or even denying privately and 
 publicly, the very statements to which he puts his hand, the 
 whole body of the laity would scout the very notion of sub- 
 scription, would reject it as illusory, as a mere sham.* The only 
 light in which they look upon subscription is, that it is a means 
 of ascertaining what truths a man holds, and what he holds him- 
 self bound to teach, — not surely upon what terms he may con- 
 sider himself justified in retaining office or emoluments in the 
 Church. They will be prepared to allow time for consideration 
 to any man harassed by perplexing doubts : no man would be 
 regarded with more entire sympathy and tenderness than one 
 wlioso spirit might be overwrought in its struggles with storms 
 u hich haunt the higher regions of intellectual life : but so long 
 
 * These words express with equal her only hope of safety and unity in 
 
 force and accuracy the general feelings ' allowing her sons to profess one creed 
 
 of the laity. " If the Churcli of Eng- j and believe another, lot her prepare 
 
 land really possesses tliat element of ': for that well-merited downfall to wliieli 
 
 vitality whicli licr sons proudly believe I deceit and double dealing never lail to 
 
 to be inherent in lier, she will never i conduct." A tract bearing the title, 
 
 flinch from vindicating the integrity of ' ' Tlie Articles Construed by Theni- 
 
 her Articles and the uniformity of lier selves,' Oxford, 184], attributed, as I 
 
 belief; but if she shoidd be ill-advised believe, to R.Lowe, Esq., formerly of 
 
 enough to allow her tests to be broken Magdalen College, now Vice-President 
 
 down and rendered void by strained of the Committee of Council on Edu- 
 
 aad licentious expositions, if she place cation. 
 
Essay IY.] 
 
 IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCRIPTIOX. 
 
 181 
 
 as he works, prays, j^reaches, administers the sacraments of 
 the Chnrch, or discharges the kindred and no less responsible 
 duty of forming the character of youth under the sanction of 
 the ministerial office, laymen presume, and would be scandalized 
 to hear it doubted, that he holds substantially the convictions 
 which he professed, Avhen formally, publicly, deliberately, at a 
 most critical moment of his life, he signed his name in token 
 of unfeigned assent to the Articles of his Church. 
 
 41. One reason assigned for the removal of all doctrinal tests 
 may require special consideration.* It is stated that there is a 
 wide-spread and increasing aUenation from the Church ; that the 
 minds of thoughtful men reject the views of Christian doctrine 
 commonly advanced in our chm-ches and chapels— that is, in 
 otlier words, by the teachers of nearly all religious denomina- 
 tions ; and it is distinctly implied, that this alienation is to be 
 attributed to the growing sense of incompatibility between the 
 tenets generally regarded as essential to Christianity, and the 
 conclusions of reason from the progress of science, and more 
 especially " from the advance of general knowledge concerning 
 the inhabitancy of the world." We might question the fact of an 
 increasing alienation. We might argue that, compared with the 
 state of the Church in the last century, her existing condition is 
 one of wider and far more efiectual influence ; that every test 
 upon which reliance can be placed indicates a strengthening 
 of rehgious convictions; that the number of communicants is 
 multiplied at least tenfold ; that the very face of the country 
 is changed by the multitude of chm*ches built, enlarged, or 
 restored ; and that, for the first time since the Keformation, 
 our Church has grappled with the real difficulties of her position, 
 sends forth missionaries to all quarters of the earth, and has or- 
 ganized the colonial episcopate. We might point to many of 
 the greatest names in art, science, literature, and politics, which 
 within the same period have recognized in our Chm-ch a true 
 manifestation of the Divine life. Nor, again, can it be denied 
 that the alleged facts of the census of 1851, in themselves most 
 questionable, have been most unfairly apphed. Certainly, of all 
 
 * IMr. "Wilson can hardly hope to dis- 
 prove liis own forcible statement. 
 " Schemes of comprehension of neces- 
 sity defeat their own design : if weak 
 
 brethren are included on the one hand, 
 weak bretlu-en are excluded on the 
 other."— Letter to Kev. T. T. Chiu-ton. 
 
182 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay IV. 
 
 inferences, the least reasonable is, tliat the absence of some 
 45 per cent, of the population from public service was in any- 
 way attributable to conscientious objections to the doctrine 
 tauglit in our churches, or to a conviction that heathenism, after 
 all, is no very lamentable condition of two-thirds of the human 
 race. We should have thought that ignorance, vice, and indif- 
 ference, on the one hand, on the other, the want of sufficient 
 and proper accommodation, were generally recognized as the 
 main causes of what certainly was a most painful result of 
 an inquiry into the actual number of worshippers. Upon 
 these points we need not dilate ; but this we maintain without 
 hesitation, — the alienation, to whatever extent it may really 
 exist, is not owing to the doctrines set forth in the Creeds 
 of our Chm*ch, and embodied in her litm-gical formularies. 
 "The surest way of emptying any church or chapel is to substi- 
 tute [for earnest preaching of those very doctrines which are 
 specially selected for attack or suspicion, a vague, cold, ration- 
 alistic system of so-called Christian ethics.* Let the people 
 suspect that their ethical development is the single object of all 
 the instrumentality of the Church, they would simply throw it 
 off as cumbrous and superfluous ; and they would be right. The 
 experiment has been tried here and abroad. It has had one 
 imvarying result. In Germany, where for a time it had fi'ee 
 play, it alienated the great body of the nation from the commu- 
 nion of the Church. In England sufficient j)roof has been 
 given that a " prudential system of ethics " not only fails " as a 
 restraining force upon society," but that, disjoined from the vital 
 doctrines of Christianity, it leads rapidly to the decay, and ends 
 in the dissolution, of any denomination by Mhich it is adopted. 
 This is the case even in independent communities where the 
 principal parts of the service are adjusted by the minister and 
 his congregation — where prayer and psalmody may be kept 
 in harmony Avith preaching, however rationalistic. But in a 
 church where the doctrines taught in the Creeds find an ex- 
 pression in every prayer, the contradiction between the sermon 
 of a rationalist and the words which he is constrained to 
 
 * Not but that our strictest dogma- 
 tical writers are most careful to assign 
 its riglit plfice to morality. Waterlaud 
 says, with reference to this very ques- 
 
 tion of subscription, " Every heresy in 
 morality is of more pernicious conse- 
 quence than heresies in point of positive 
 religion." 
 
Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AND SUBSCRIPTION. 183 
 
 litter in his ministerial functions, will always be, and ought 
 always to be, fatal to his influence. If the congregation have 
 good reason to suspect that, in reciting the Creeds, the mi- 
 nister looks upon himself as subjected to the hard bondage of 
 uttering -svhat he inwardly disavows, or regards as an " unhappy " 
 form ; that in the petitions of the Litany he uses expressions 
 touching the " Divine personalities " which are to him little more 
 than metaphysical abstractions, or speculative conclusions of the 
 schools ; if they believe that, from the opening prayer to the 
 final blessing, there has been a constant struggle, a series of in- 
 ward protests, Jesuitical reservations or interpretations, going on 
 within the mind of the reader ; whatever else may be the effect 
 upon their hearts, one effect is sure, their moral sense will be 
 shocked, they will recoil in indignation from such hypocrisy. 
 Even supposing he should have communicated to them his own 
 unhappy doubts and repugnances, they wiU feel that it is a bad 
 and evil thing for them to share in acts of such glaring and 
 flagrant inconsistency. They will soon desert the church alto- 
 gether, or testify their contempt for the ordinances or the mi- 
 nister, by their demeanour when he preaches, or by their expres- 
 sive silence in the acts of common worship. One thing must 
 be looked in the face. The abolition of subscription to those 
 doctrines which find expression in om- Liturgy * would be utterly 
 futile unless that Liturgy itself were entirely reconstructed. Na 
 partial reform, not the widest reform Avhicli has ever been sug- 
 gested, or would be tolerated by the most indifferent and scep- 
 tical congregation in this land, would free from intellectual 
 bondage the conscience of those who are now calling for the 
 relaxation of subscription. It is not a mere phrase here and 
 there which would change their position ; it is the very spirit of 
 Christianity, full of the recognition of its most special and cha- 
 racteristic truths, which drives the minister to the alternative 
 of speaking as a believer in each and aU essential doctrines, or 
 of standing self-convicted and self-condemned in the presence of 
 Him whom he mocks by the utterance of prayers which he in- 
 wardly disavows. 
 
 What we desire is this, — to brinir into the fold of Christ's 
 
 * This was distinctly felt by the I last century. See Dr. Wateiiaud's tract 
 Jeaders in the Arian controversy in the | on ' Ariau Subscription,' vol. ii. 
 
184 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay JY. 
 
 Church all wlio are estranged from its communion ; but it must 
 be a complete and an honest work. Our commission is to give 
 and teach the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth. 
 The Christian faith is a perfect and indissoluble whole. "SVe 
 cannot consent to mutilate or disfigure it. We cannot entrust it 
 to the care of any ministers who are not prepared to give full 
 and satisfactory pledges that they accept it as a whole. We 
 have no fear of any consequences, so long as men can rely upon 
 the trustworthiness of the agents through whom the Church acts. 
 The one thing of which all need to be assured is, that their 
 ministers hold fast the form of sound words; the truth once 
 delivered to the saints ; the canon of Holy Scriptures, which 
 are able to make wise unto salvation; the knowledge of the 
 Father and the Son, which is eternal life ; in a word, faith in the 
 Incarnation and the Atonement, without any subtlety of inter- 
 pretation, in the plain sense accepted by all the Churches 
 of Christendom. Upon subordinate, or pm-ely speculative 
 questions, considerable latitude of interpretation is conceded 
 — the wider and freer the better for the cause of truth. But 
 this liberty is conceded because men fdoubt not that they who 
 use it accept those fimdamental truths. Abuse of the conces- 
 sion — attempts to strain the liberty so as to unsettle the doctrines 
 nearest to the hearts of Christians, would speedily bring about 
 results the very opposite to those contemplated by many Avho 
 struggle against existing limitations. It must be borne in mind, 
 that if changes were made, they Avould probably be made in 
 a different direction from that pointed out by latitudinarians. 
 To increase, not to diminish our securities, — to exclude, not to 
 admit incongruous and adverse elements — such would be the 
 great object of all earnest Christian men ; of those who would 
 undoubtedly take the lead should the national ark be unloosed 
 from its moorings, should the storms of angry and unscrupulous 
 controversy once more thoroughly rouse the national spirit. 
 We are far from wishing for any increase of stringency. So 
 far as regards the terms of admission to the ministry, we are 
 satisfied with existing safeguards, provided always that men do 
 not palter with us in a double meaning, that we are safe from 
 special pleading and equivocation, that declarations are made 
 in the sense in which those who hear them are well known to 
 receive them, — that, in a word, we have precisely the same 
 
Essay IV.] IDEOLOGY AXD SUBSCRIPTION. 185 
 
 kind of confidence wliicli is felt by all honourable men who are 
 parties to compacts involving the recognition of weighty duties 
 distinctly set forth and understood. 
 
 We need not fear the issue of the controversy. It may 
 justify watchfulness, but not alarm. It is true that some ques- 
 tions have been raised, which are not likely to be finally settled 
 in this generation. The elements which have thrown the mind of 
 Europe into a state of disturbance, have undoubtedly penetrated 
 very deeply into England. Our young men will have to pass 
 through a fiery trial. It is not an age for rest, for um-easoning 
 acquiescence in past traditions. The progress of religious 
 knowledge will in future be more beset by speculative and 
 intellectual difficulties than has been the case in former years. 
 Candidates for the ministry must not be contented with meagre 
 introductions to Holy Scripture, or a superficial analysis of its 
 contents. It will be their duty — a duty more strongly felt 
 than ever — to ascertain the grounds on which the Canon of 
 Scripture has been received by the Church, and the proofs of 
 the genuineness and authenticity of its contents ; they will test 
 more closely and severely the evidences for all the doctrinal 
 statements, to which after careful examination they will have 
 to declare their assent. But in all this work they have abundant 
 help. The close, microscopic examination of the Book of Life 
 is daily bringing its secret beauties into clearer light. The 
 progress of historical research opens new fields of discovery in 
 which the Scriptural exegetist finds valuable materials. The 
 deep sphitual meaning of many an obscm-e passage or neglected 
 fact is discerned more distinctly by those who, candidly but 
 warily, scrutinize the objections of antagonists to the faith. The 
 current of religious thought flows in broader and deeper 
 channels than heretofore, and the vessels of those who sail under 
 the sure guidance of the Spirit of God will reach the haven 
 freighted with treasures of great price. Antagonisms may 
 indeed become stronger, secessions perhaps be more frequent ; 
 superstition and infidelity may claim each its share in the 
 spoil of troubled and faithless spirits ; but the revelation of 
 Christ wdU not lose its hold upon the heart of the humble, 
 nor upon the intellect of the truthful inquu-er. Our branch 
 of the Church will not be disinherited of its privileges or 
 stripped of its safeguards ; it will eject rationalism in every 
 
186 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IY. 
 
 form, more especially in the most un-English and Jesuitical 
 of all forms, that of Ideology. It will continue to do its own 
 proper work, j)reparing its members not for a dreamy state 
 of repose in the bosom of the universal Parent, but for a 
 full, perfect, and conscious life in the presence of the living 
 God. 
 
ESSAT V. 
 THE MOSAIC RECORD OF CREATION. 
 
CONTENTS OF ESSAY V. 
 
 1. Introduction : The Creator, Elo- | 
 
 HIM — Jehovah. 
 
 2. The Eloliistic and Jehovistic theory, 
 
 as stated by Bleek — Theories of 
 Astrue, Eielihorn, Ilgen, De Wette, 
 Von Bohlen, Gramberg, Ewald, 
 Hiipfeklt, and Knobel. 
 
 3 . W ant of unity — The most celebrated 
 critics convict each other of false 
 criticism — Their conclusions va- 
 
 4. "Elohim" and "Jehovah" not sy- 
 
 nonymous. 
 
 5. The Ckeation— Unity of the first 
 
 two chapters of Genesis : they do 
 not contain two chstinct accounts 
 of the Creation. 
 
 6. Assertion that the Mosaic cosmo- 
 
 ; gony is contradicted by the disco- 
 ' veries and progress of science, and 
 
 that, therefore, Moses could not 
 
 have been inspired. 
 
 7. First supposed difficulty, the age of 
 
 the world. 
 
 8. The words of Moses, though com- 
 
 jirehensive as to time, are precise 
 as to the fact of creation. 
 
 9. Meaning of tlie jjlu-ase " The hea- 
 
 vens and the earth." 
 
 10. Gen. i. 2 : The state of the eai-th 
 
 before the six days' work. 
 
 11. Verse 3 compared with verses 14-19 
 
 — Light and the earth before the 
 sun — Theory of La Place. 
 
 12. Meaning of the word " day." 
 
 13. The six days not the sis Geological 
 
 periods. 
 
 14. Supposed immobility of the earth. 
 
 15. The Mosaic firmament an expanse, 
 
 not a soUd vault. 
 
 16. Creation of one human pair — State- 
 
 ment in 'Essays and RcA-iews' 
 that the original formation of only 
 one pail- of hiunan beings is taught 
 only in the 2ud chapter, and not 
 in the 1st. 
 
 17. Conclusion. 
 
THE MOSAIC RECORD OF CREATION. 
 
 1. Almost all ancient nations have traditions respecting tlie 
 origin of the universe. These traditions differ in detail and 
 representation according to the genius of the people by whom 
 they have been preserved, but they retain a family likeness, 
 and certain points of contact with each other and the Mosaic 
 cosmogony, with which some exhibit a striking resemblance. 
 Thus the Etruscans relate that God created the world in six 
 thousand years. In the first thousand He created the heaven 
 and the earth ; in the second the fii-mament ; in the third the sea 
 and the other waters of the earth ; in the fourth sun, moon, and 
 stars ; in the fifth the animals belonging to air, water, and land ; 
 in the sixth man alone.* The Persian tradition also recognises 
 the six periods of creation, assigning to the first the heavens ; to 
 the second the waters ; to the third the earth ; to the fourth 
 trees and plants ; to the fifth animals ; to the sixth man.t Others 
 mention the darkness, the chaotic mass of waters, the Spu'it 
 of God ; so that even in the judgment of modern critics, there 
 must have been " a primitive, cosmogonical myth, universally 
 pervading antiquity.":}: How and when that universal myth arose, 
 modern criticism does not say ; and yet it is a striking fact that 
 there should be such a tradition, and that amidst the variety of 
 modifications the original identity should still be perceptible. 
 Christian apologists have found in the resemblances a presump- 
 tion of its being derived from the original revelation, and in the 
 consent of the various human families, combined with the ma- 
 nifest superiority and historic character of the account in 
 Genesis, a proof of the Divine origin of the Mosaic Kecord, 
 and of the imity of the human race.§ Modern theology, on the 
 
 * Suidas in voc, Tvp^-nvia. 
 
 f Zend Avesta, Klenker. p. 19 ; 
 Anquetil du Perron, torn. ii. 348 ; Bui'- 
 nouf, Ya9na, torn. i. p. 297. 
 
 X Knobel on Genesis, p. 6. 
 
 § Grotius 'deVeritate,' who has given 
 an ample collection of ancient testimo- 
 nies, lib. i. § xvi. Faber, 'Horse Mo- 
 vol. i. p. 17-40. 
 
190 AIDS TO FAITH. ; [Essay V. 
 
 contrary, teaches tLfit the Mosaic cosmogony is only the Hebrew 
 form of the original myth, bearing the j^alm indeed on accoimt 
 " of its simj^licity, dignity, and sublimity," but still unliistoric 
 in its relation, and inconsistent with the results of modern cri- 
 ticism and science. 
 
 To discuss all the details of criticism would require volumes. 
 But one alleged result, often stated in an off-hand, popular way, 
 asserted with unhesitating confidence, and repeated as absolutely 
 certain, requires notice. It is said that in the Book of Genesis 
 there are some portions in which God is spoken of exclusively 
 as Elohim — in others exclusively as Jehovah [the Lord in the 
 Authorized Version]. This exclusive use of the one Divine 
 name in some portions, and of the other in other portions, it is 
 said, characterizes two different authors, living at different 
 times, and consequently Genesis is composed of two different 
 documents, the one Elohistic, the other Jehovistic, which more- 
 over differ in statement, and consequently that this book was 
 not WTitten by Moses, and is neither inspired nor trustworthy. 
 Now, not to notice the defectiveness of this statement as to the 
 names of God, who in Genesis is also called El, El Elyon, Most 
 High God ; El Shaddai, God Almighty ; Adonai, Lord ; nor the 
 fact that in other books, as Jonah and the Psalms, the same 
 exclusiveness is found ; let us look at tliis statement as a sup- 
 posed result of criticism. It is generally urged as if on this 
 point critics were all of one mind, agi-eed in the portions which 
 are Elohistic or Jehovistic — unanimous as to the characteristic 
 differences of style in the separate portions, in fact as if the 
 theory came with the authority of universal consent. Were 
 this the case, it would necessarily carry with it gi'eat weight. 
 For, though the conclusions of criticism differ from the demon- 
 strations of pure science and the inferences of induction, yet, 
 when unanimously adopted by those competent to judge, they 
 deseiTedly influence the minds of all reasonable persons. But 
 this is not the case in the present theory. The popular statement 
 given above does not represent the true state of the case. The 
 fact is, that there is here the greatest variety of opinion, and 
 the modifications of the above apparently simple theory are so 
 widely divergent, as either to shake the value of the criticism, 
 or throw a dark shade of doubt on the competence of the critics. 
 In the first place, there is a difference as to the extent to which 
 
EssAT v.] THE MOSAIC RECOED OF CREATION. 191 
 
 tlie tlieory is to be apialied. Some confine it to the Book of 
 Genesis ; others include Exodus to chapter vi. ; others, as 
 Knobel, Bleek, and Ewald, assert that the Jehovistic and 
 Elohistic differences can be recognized through the whole 
 Pentateuch to the end of Joshua. Some, as J. D. MichaeKs, 
 Jalin, Vater, Hartmann, regard Genesis as a loose and un- 
 systematic stringing together of disjointed fragments. 2. But 
 passing these by, let us look at the state of the Elohistic and 
 Jehovistic theory, as stated by Bleek in his Introduction. 
 
 i. In the year 1753, Astruc, a French physician, taught that 
 the Book of Genesis is made up of twelve memoir's or documents, 
 of which the two principal are the Elohistic and the Jehovistic. 
 From these Moses composed the book, which he wrote in twelve 
 columns. Copyists mixed these together, and hence the present 
 form of Genesis. 
 
 ii. Eichhorn asserted that the present Book of Genesis is 
 based upon two pre-Mosaic documents, distinguished by Elohim 
 and Jehovah, and that the author, in relating any event, selected 
 that document in which the fullest account was contained. 
 Sometimes the accounts are mixed together. Some other docu- 
 ments were consulted. 
 
 iii. Ilgen supposes seventeen documents, but only three 
 authors, one Jehovist, two Elohists, and is so acute in his scent 
 as sometimes to divide even single verses between the three, 
 and give to each his own. 
 
 iv. De Wette's theory, in the first edition of his Introduction, 
 is, that a continuous Elohistic document pervades and forms the 
 basis of the whole book, and extends to Exod. vi. In this the 
 author inserted what he found in one, or, probably, in several 
 Jehovistic documents. 
 
 V. Yon Bohlen believes in the same Elohistic basis, but 
 denies the existence of Jehovistic documents. The author of 
 the book in its present state is the Jehovist, so that only two 
 persons are concerned. 
 
 vi. Gramberg makes three authors, — the Elohist, the Jehovist, 
 and the compiler, who does not scruple sometimes to substitute 
 one Divine name for the other. 
 
 vii. Ewald exhibits a variety of opinions : first, he began by 
 holding the unity of Genesis, and proving it against both the 
 document and the fragment hypothesis. His arguments have not 
 
192 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay V. 
 
 yet been refuted, either by himself or others. Secondly, about 
 ten years afterwards he taught that the basis of the Book of 
 Genesis is an ancient writing, of which considerable remains are 
 found in the whole Pentateuch, and which is distinguished by 
 peculiarity of language, especially by the use of Elohim up to 
 Exod. vi. 2. This author had incorporated into his book more 
 ancient documents, as the Decalogue and Exod. xxi.-xxiii. 
 At a subsequent period arose another work on the ancient 
 history, wliich ascribed the use of Jehovah to patriarchal times. 
 From this later work portions were inserted into the former by 
 the author of the present Book of Genesis, so that here there 
 are at the least four waiters concerned. Thirdly, Ew^ald extended 
 and modified this theory by supposing more than two treatments 
 of the ancient history forming the contents of the Pentateuch, 
 and the Book of Joshua. He ascribes Genesis in its present 
 form to that Avriter, whom in his first edition he calls the fourth 
 narrator, and in his second edition the fifth narrator of the 
 primitive histories, who lived in the time of Jotham. This work 
 had several predecessors ; according to the first edition, three ; 
 according to the second, six. Three of these are Elohistic. 
 
 viii. Hiipfeldt takes as the basis of our Genesis three inde- 
 pendent historic works ; two Elohistic, one Jehovistic, and makes 
 in addition a compiler. 
 
 ix. Knobel believes in two documents : first, the Elohistic, 
 forming the basis of the Pentateuch and of Joshua ; second, the 
 Jehovistic, which again has two previous sources. There are, 
 besides, free Jehovistic developments, in Avhich the compiler 
 sometimes followed hints in the two documents, sometimes 
 popular tradition, and sometimes his own conceptions. 
 
 3. This enumeration is far from exhausting the varieties, but is 
 sufficient to show the want of miity. The reader will perceive 
 that some assert one Elohistic document — others, two — others, 
 three. In like manner some make one Jehovist ; some more. 
 Some make the Jehovist identical with the compiler ; others 
 make him a different person. Some make two, otliers three, 
 others foiu-, Ewald seven documents by different authors the 
 materials of Genesis. Now every one can understand that 
 there is a great difference whether the Elohistic and Jehovistic 
 portions be assigned to one or be divided amongst two, tliree, or 
 more persons. He who.says that there is only one Elohist must 
 
Essay v.] THE MOSAIC EECOED OF CREATION. 193 
 
 believe that in the whole Elohistic portion there is unity of style, 
 tone, spirit, language. If there be two Elohists, then the former 
 is mistaken as to the unity, and there must be two diversities of 
 style ; but if there be three Elohists, then both first and second 
 critics are mistaken, and there must be three different styles. 
 The portions assigned to each must also be smaller. Let the 
 three Elohists be A, B, C. The first critic says that the whole 
 belongs to A. The second critic says. No ; part belongs to B. 
 The third critic says part belongs to A, part to B, and part to 
 C. And thus the most celebrated critics convict each other of 
 false criticism. Hiipfeldt condemns Knobel ; Ewald condemns 
 Hiipfeldt and Knobel ; Knobel condemns Ewald and Hiipfeldt. If 
 Knobel's criticism is correct, Hiipfeldt's is worthless. If Ewald 
 be right, the others must be deficient in critical acumen. 
 They may all be wrong, but only one of the three can be right. 
 
 But take into account all the other differences enumerated 
 above, one supposing that the documents are pre-Mosaic, another 
 that they were written in the times of Joshua or the Judges, 
 another in the time of David, another some centuries later ; and 
 how uncertain must the principles of their criticism appear, — how 
 valueless their conclusions ! With such facts can any sane 
 person talk of the results of modern criticism as regards the 
 Book of Genesis ? or be willing to give up the belief of centuries 
 for such criticism as this ? 
 
 It is self-evident that criticism leading to such inconsistent 
 conclusions must be in a high degree imaginative : a little 
 examination shows that it is also unreasonably arbitrary. In 
 order to make out the theory that there are two authors, one of 
 whom is known by the exclusive use of Elohim, and the other 
 by the exclusive use of Jehovah, and that the former is more 
 ancient than the latter, it is necessary to point out paragraphs 
 in which those Divine names are exclusively used, and also to 
 prove that the Elohist does not refer to the Jehovistic docu- 
 ment ; for if the Elohist plainly refers to what the Jehovist 
 has related, the latter cannot be posterior to the former, and the 
 theory fails. Now, unhappily for the theory, the word Jehovah 
 does occur in the Elohistic passages, and the Elohist does refer 
 to the Jehovistic narrative. Thus in Genesis ii. 4, the two 
 names "occur together. " These are the generations of the 
 heavens and the earth when they were created, in the day when 
 
 o 
 
194 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay V, 
 
 Jehovah Elohim made the earth and the heavens." Now if 
 this verse belong^ to wliat precedes, then the following narrative, 
 which has also the unusual union of the two names, was written 
 by the Elohist, and the first thi-ee chapters are by one author. 
 If it be written by the Jehovist, how comes it to have Elohim as 
 well, and why does it differ both from Elohist and Jehovist 
 documents by the union of the names ? Here is a diflSculty 
 which has divided all Germany, and arrayed Eationalist against 
 Kationalist, and Orthodox against Orthodox, and for which there 
 seems no hope of solution, unless violence be offered to the text, 
 and men be persuaded, against the evidence of manuscripts and 
 ancient versions, that the words " These are the generations of 
 the heavens and the earth" stood originally as the heading 
 before the fh'st verse of the first chapter, and that the word 
 Elohim in ii. 4 is an interpolation of the Jehovist. Take 
 another example : — Genesis v. is said to be'Elohistic, and it is 
 certain that Mohim, God, occurs five times ; but in verse 29 
 appears the word Jehovah to disturb the theorist ; and not only 
 is this word there, but the verse refers to the Jehovistic chapter 
 iii. 17. What is to be done ? The verse stands in aU the manu- 
 scripts and ancient versions. But, if the Elohistic theory is to 
 stand, it must be got rid of somehow. It is an interpolation, 
 says tlie theorist ; it was put in by the compiler. In like 
 manner the theorists cut off chapter vii. 9 — 24 from its context, 
 and say, It is Elohistic. But lo ! in verse 16 stands "Jehovah." 
 The same canon of the old Socinian criticism is again appHed ; 
 the unwelcome word is an interpolation. One instance more. 
 The xHxth chapter is said to belong to a long Elohistic portion. 
 But in the ISth verse occm* those words of Jacob, "I have 
 waited for thy salvation, Jehovah." Again the same violence 
 is repeated. The disturbing verse is an interpolation. Is this 
 criticism ? Is it a fair and legitimate proceeding to alter the 
 text, and that not once, but frequently, in order to make it suit 
 one's theory ? To discard the consent of manuscripts, ancient 
 versions, all printed editions, and cry out, Interpolation, inter- 
 polation, without any authority at all? There is no more 
 certain sign of helpless prejudice or critical incompetence, than 
 to have frequent recourse to violent and imauthorized alteration 
 of the text ; and yet without this the theory of the Elohi.stic 
 and Jehovistic documents, even if it were unaniinou,slv received 
 
Essay V.] THE MOSAIC RECORD OF CREATION, 195 
 
 by modern critics, could not be made out. Arbitrary separations 
 of what evidently belongs together, and unwarranted assertions 
 of interpolation, prove its unsoundness. The variety of its modi- 
 fications, one neutralizing the other, as has been shown above, 
 demonstrates the uncertainty and imtrustworthiness of the 
 results. 
 
 4. But the theory rests upon an assumption totally false, that 
 the names Elohim and Jehovah are synonymous, and that they 
 can be used indifferently, one for the other. The names are not 
 synonymous, and cannot be so used. There is the same differ- 
 ence between Elohim and Jehovah, as between Deus and Jupiter, 
 or homo and Petrus. The one expresses the genus, the other 
 stands for the individual, and is a proper name. Elohim answers 
 to our own word Giod or Deity, and is, therefore, used of false 
 Gods as well as of the true. Jehovah stands for the personal, 
 living, self-revealing Being, and is explained in those two pas- 
 sages, Exod. iii. 14, "I am that I am ;" and xxxiv. 6, when, the 
 Lord having said, " I will proclaim my name before thee," pro- 
 claimed "Jehovah, Jehovah, God [El] merciful and gracious, 
 long-suffering and abundant in goodness and truth ;" and can 
 therefore be applied to none but the one true and eternal God, 
 as is said, " I am Jehovah ; that is my name, and my glory will 
 I not give to another." This distinction is strongly marked in 
 the words of Elijah, " If Jehovah be Elohim, follow Him ; if 
 Baal, then follow him." Here it would be impossible to inter- 
 change Elohim and Jehovah, or to say, " if Baal be Jehovah." 
 There is an essential difference in signification, and, though 
 Jehovah is the true God, and the true God Jehovah, and there- 
 fore sometimes either might be used, yet, in consequence of the 
 essential difference, there are cases where there is a peculiar 
 propriety in using one rather than the other ; and there are 
 other cases in which one must be used, and the other cannot. As 
 Jehovah is the proper name of God, it does not take a genitive case 
 or a suffix. It is, therefore, impossible to say in Hebrew, " the 
 Jehovah of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob," or, "My, thy, our 
 Jehovah." In such cases, Elohim must be used, as " The 
 Elohim, God of Abraham, &c." " My Elohim, my God, our 
 Elohim, our God, &c." Again, as Jehovah signifies the self- 
 revealing, that word cannot occur in the mouth of those to whom 
 JEe has not revealed himself, nor, ordinarily, in the mouth of 
 
 o 2 
 
196 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [ESSAT Y, 
 
 Hebrews speaking to sucli ; and, therefore, when IMoses and 
 Aaron use it to Pharaoh, they add " the God of Israel " to make 
 it intelligible. But still Pharaoh asks, " "Who is Jehovah ? I 
 know not Jehovah ;" and they explain, " The Elohim, God, of 
 the Hebrews hath met with us." There is no room here to go 
 through and illustrate all the peculiarities of these Divine 
 names. But what has been said is sufficient to show that the 
 exclusive use of Elohim cannot be received as a characteristic 
 mark to distinguisli one author from the other, inasmuch as, in 
 the cases above enumerated and others, the use of Elohim is 
 compulsory ; and neither Moses, nor Samuel, nor Isaiah, could 
 in these cases leave out Elohim, and substitute Jehovah. Thus, 
 in Gen. xl. 8, the word Elohim occurs once, when Joseph says to 
 the Egyptian prisoners, " Do not interpretations belong to God, 
 Elohim ?" Here Jehovah could not be used. Again, in xli., the 
 word Elohim occurs eight times. In six of them the use was 
 compulsory. In xliii. 23 it occurs twice with suffixes or geni- 
 tive, and no other word could be used, and so in other instances.* 
 And, therefore, the use of the word cannot be the characteristic 
 peculiarity of one author. In the first chapter of Genesis, Moses 
 might have used either Elohim or Jehovah, except in the 27th 
 verse, Avhere Elohim was comjjulsory. But in the opening of 
 the Divine teaching, it was necessary to make clear that God is 
 Creator, that the world was not eternal, nor independent ; and 
 also that Jehovah is not one among many — not the national 
 God of the Hebrews — but that Jehovah the Self-revealer, and 
 Eloliim the Almighty Creator, are one. Therefore, in the first 
 chapter, Elohim is used throughout. The Deity is the Creator. 
 But in approaching that part of the narrative where the personal 
 God enters into relations with man, and where Jehovah was 
 necessary, IMoses unites the names, and says, " Jehovah Elohim, 
 the Lord God." Had he suddenly used Jehovah alone, there 
 might have been a doubt as to whether Jehovah was not difierent 
 from Elohim. The union of tlie tAvo names proves identity, and 
 this being proved, from the fourth chapter on, Moses drops this 
 union and sometimes employs Jehovah, sometimes Elohim, as 
 occasion, propriety, and the laws of the Hebrew language require. 
 
 * Ewald in his * Composition der 
 fienesis,' ami Hengsteiiberg in liis 
 ' Authentic dcs Pentateuchs,' vol. i. p. 
 
 306-391, have examined all the in- 
 stances where the names occur, and ex- 
 plained the propriety or tlic necessity. 
 
Essay V.] THE MOSAIC KECORD OF CREATIOX. 197 
 
 The use of these names, therefore, can prove nothing against 
 the unity of the narrative. 
 
 5. But, in truth, independently of all philological criticism, 
 the unity of the first two chapters of Genesis may be proved by 
 comparing one with the other. They do not contain two dis- 
 tinct accounts of " the Creation." 
 
 The second chapter does not narrate the creation of heaven or 
 earth, or light, firmament, sun, moon, or stars, sea, or dry land, 
 fish, or creeping things. The second chapter, therefore, is so far 
 from being a cosmogony, that it is not even a geogony, and, 
 therefore, the foiu-th verse of the second chapter, " These are 
 the generations of the heavens and the earth when they were 
 created, in the day that the Lord God (Jehovah Elohim) made 
 the earth and the heavens," cannot be the title or summary of 
 what follows, but are an exact recapitulation of what is narrated 
 in the first chapter. They mention first the creation of " the 
 heavens and the earth ;" second, the making of " the earth and 
 heavens " in the very order in which the process of creation is 
 related in that chapter, but of which not one word is said in what 
 follows. The second chapter is obviously not an account " of 
 the creation," but of the particulars of the formation of man, 
 and his early history. Ewald said long ago, " The aim of the 
 first connected narrative (ch. i. 1 — ii. 3) is to exhibit God as the 
 Creator of the universe. . . The author then passes over 
 from the perfected picture of the created universe, to that wliicli 
 must have been to him, as to all writers of history, the most 
 worthy of note, to the history of man. Yet he closes the first 
 picture with the words (ii. 4), 'These are the generations of 
 the heavens and of the earth.' " * The second chapter is, there- 
 fore, an integral part of a relation contained in the three first 
 chapters, connected with the chapter by verse four, and pre- 
 paring for the account of the Fall by telling us beforehand of 
 Paradise, of the tree of knowledge, the prohibition to eat of it, 
 and of the formation of the woman. Indeed, most recent writers 
 admit, that whether there be different sources or not, the author 
 has formed them into one narrative ; there cannot, therefore, be 
 contradiction. There are differences to be explained by the 
 
 * ' Composition der Genesis,' p. 192, I in Ms ' Jalu-buch ' for 1S48, p. 77, ami 
 3. To this division Ewald adheres, as | 1849, p. 132. 
 appears from his Essays on the subject 
 
198 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay Y. 
 
 different objects which the author had in view. In the first, his 
 object was to give an outline of the history of the universe ; in 
 the second, to relate the origin and primitive history of man, so 
 far as it was necessary, as a preparation for the history of the 
 Fall. In the former, therefore, all the steps of creation 
 are treated in chronological order. In the latter, only so much 
 is aUuded to as is necessary for the author's purpose, and in the 
 order which that purpose required. 
 
 6. So much for modern criticism. But the new theology also 
 asserts that the Mosaic cosmogony is contradicted by the dis- 
 coveries and progress of science, and that, therefore, Moses 
 could not have been inspired. This is a straightforward objec- 
 tion, deserves a fair and full consideration, and ought not to be 
 met with what objectors can only regard as evasions. Such are 
 the assertions, that the first chapter of Genesis is poetry, or a 
 series of seven prophetic visions,* or the mere clothing of a 
 theological truth. To urge such suppositions is not to defend 
 the ark of God, but to abandon it to the enemy. If the fii'st 
 chapter of Genesis be poetry, or vision, or parable, it is not 
 historic truth, which is just what objectors assert. There are in 
 this chapter none of the peculiarities of Hebrew poetry. The 
 style is full of dignity, but it is that of prose narrative. There 
 is no mention of prophetic vision, no prophetic formula em- 
 ployed. It is not said, " The vision which Moses saw," nor "I 
 lifted up my eyes and behold." The prophet or historian is 
 Ivept entirely out of sight, and the narrative begins at once with- 
 out any preface, " In the beginning God created the heavens 
 and the earth," and then goes to the account of Paradise, the 
 birth of Cain and Abel, &c., ^vithout any break or note of tran- 
 sition from vision to history. The Book of Genesis is history. 
 It is the historical introduction to the four following books of 
 the Pentateuch, or, rather, to all following revelation, and the 
 first chapter, as the inseparable beginning of the whole, must be 
 historical also. When the Lord recapitulates its contents in 
 the Fourth Commandment, and makes it the basis of the 
 ordinance of the Sabbath, He stamps it as real history. To 
 suppose a moral, or even a ceremonial command, based upon a 
 poetic picture, or a vision, or an ideal narrative, would be 
 
 So Kui-z, aiul after liini, IIn,L;li IMillcr. 
 
Essay Y.] THE MOSAIC RECORD OF CREATION. 199 
 
 absurd. The Lord also treats " tlie first chapters of Genesis " as 
 real and authoritative history, when He makes Gen. i. 27, and 
 ii. 23, 24, the foundation of His doctrine concerning marriage 
 and divorce. As history, therefore, they must be received, what- 
 ever difficulties that reception may involve. Some, indeed, 
 hold that in reading the Bible, a distinction is to be made 
 between statements relating to religion, and those relating to 
 physics, that the former are to be received, and the latter dis- 
 regarded, as " The purpose of revelation is to teach man what 
 he cannot find out by his unassisted reason, but not physical 
 truths, for the discovery of which he has faculties." But, what are 
 we to do when a truth is both religious and physical, such as 
 " God created the heavens and the earth?" And how are we to 
 distinguish between what can be and what cannot be discovered 
 by man's natm-al faculties ? On the one hand, the leading in- 
 tellects of Germany are still disputing about the eternity of the 
 miiverse, and the relation of the finite to the absolute ; and on 
 the other, Deists and Theists, and Eationalists, teacTb. that all 
 religious and moral truth can be discovered, and has been dis- 
 covered, by man's natural powers — can be known in no other way, 
 and that, therefore, revelation is unnecessary. Besides, if the 
 first chapter of Genesis be not given to teach us the facts and 
 order of creation, why is it there at all in all its circumstan- 
 tiality? Are we to believe that Divine revelation begins 
 with an unscientific misstatement of physical truth? If the 
 fii-st chapter be the offspring of human error, where does Divine 
 truth begin ? This principle raises many new difficulties, and 
 removes none. We, therefore, adhere to the plain grammatical 
 statement, as a Divine revelation of the origin of the universe, 
 not yet superseded by the theories of the speculative philosophy, 
 nor antiquated by the discoveries of modern science. 
 
 7. The first supposed difficulty in the Mosaic statement is the 
 age of the world. According to the teachings of Geology and 
 Astronomy, the existence of the heavens and the earth is to be 
 reckoned by myriads of thousands of years. According to Moses, 
 it is alleged, they are of yesterday. To know whether this diffi- 
 culty is real, it is first necessary to know what Moses has actually 
 said. And here it is not intended to propose anything new, but to 
 revert to the ancient exposition of the phrase, " In the begin- 
 ning," for upon this the question really turns. The first pro- 
 
200 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay V. 
 
 position is " In the beginning God created the heavens and the 
 earth," and here it is necessary to observe that Beshith, the 
 Hebrew word for " beginning," is in the original without the 
 definite article. ]\Ioses says, " In Reshith [not in the ReshitJi], 
 Elohim created the heavens and the earth." The antiquity and 
 correctness of this reading are proved by the Septuagint, Chaldee, 
 and Syriac versions. 
 
 LXX. 'Ey apxfi, Chaldee V'^"Tp^' Syriac ;t^xj»-<^;_r5 and so 
 it is also found in the Evangelist's allusion, John i. 1. The mii- 
 formity of the reading, and the care with which it had been pre- 
 served for centuries — notwithstanding the natural temptation to 
 supply the article — testify that there was an imiform traditional 
 meaning attached to it, different from that possible, if the word 
 had the article. What this meaning is, is plainly seen in the 
 first verse of St. John's Gospel. Now that Socinian exegesis is 
 a tiling of the past, all divines, English and foreign, agree that 
 St. John here makes a pointed reference to Gen. i. 1, and that in 
 the words iv ap-xjii " Li the beginning," he expresses Duration or 
 Time, previous to Creation. So Dean Alford " 'Ey ap')(^ = irpb 
 rov Tov Koo-fjbov elvai" " In the beginning " is equivalent to 
 " Before the M'orld was." Tholuck says that the phrase expresses 
 " Eternity a parte ante." Meyer also takes it of duration before 
 time, and translates it Vorzeitlichkeit (pre-temporality), and says 
 that it is equivalent to the Septuagint version of Prov. viii. 23, 
 "In the beginning, before he made the earth ;" and to the words 
 of our Lord " Before the world was ;" and of St. Paul " Before the 
 foundation of the world " (Ephes. i. 4). De Wette has nearly 
 the same words and the same references. Liicke also says that 
 the phrase " In the beginning " includes the idea of pre-mumlane 
 existence {des Vorweltlichen), and answers to " Before the world 
 was " (John xvii. 5). All are agreed that " Beginning " refers to 
 duration or time, not to order, and that it is indefinite in its sig- 
 nification, and may mean previous eternity, or previous time, 
 according to the subject spoken of.* They who believe that St. 
 John was inspired will receive his interpretation of tlie first 
 words of Genesis as infallibly correct, and therefore interpret 
 them there as in the Gospel. But even if St. John be regarded 
 
 ♦ Similar is the meaning of the I the beginning, is now, and ever .sluiU 
 wonld in tlie Doxok)jr\' " As it was in 1«." 
 
Essay v.] THE MOSAIC EECORD OF CREATION. 201 
 
 as an ordinary writer asserting an important truth, liis adoption 
 of the interpretation proves that it was known to the Jews of his 
 time, and this is further proved by the nearly contemporary tes- 
 timony of the Targum. 
 
 Its author Onkelos gives the same meaning, and proves that 
 it was then the received interpretation. For the Hebrew 
 BWesldth he gives B'kadmin (^JDlpl) in antiquities, or former 
 times. The word K'dam, equivalent to the Hebrew Kedem, 
 signifies, as Buxtorf says, " ante,antiquitas, 2)rioritas, j^rincipium" 
 In the plural number, as Onkelos here has it, it signifies, not 
 order, but time, " ancient times, former times, eternity" For ex- 
 ample (Gen. xxviii. 19), " Luz was the name of the city V'^lp^TD, 
 from antiquities, or former times'' Again (Ps. Ixviii. 33), " To 
 him that rideth upon the heavens of heavens of antiquity," the 
 Chaldee has ]''D'lp7u5'T, " that were from antiquities, or former 
 times," which our translators followed, and have rendered, " the 
 heavens of heavens which were of old." Again (Deut. xxxiii. 27), 
 " The Eternal God (literally, the God of antiquity or priority) ;" 
 Onkelos has, " The God who is from antiquities, X''cn\y>'cn" 
 Here the word is applied to eternity.* When, therefore, On- 
 kelos translates the first word of Gen. i. 1. by B'kadmin in the 
 plural, and without the article, he meant, in antiquities, in 
 former times or duratio7i, of old. 
 
 The LXX. use iv apxfi in the same way, and thereby prove 
 that this interpretation was far more ancient tlian Onkelos. 
 Thus, in Ezek. xxxvi. 11, they employ dp^fi to render Kadmah 
 {former state), and give as the parallel e/xTrpoaOev for Uishah, 
 nearly related to ResJdth. J^aroiKtM vfid'; co? to ev dp-)(rj v/xiov, 
 Kal ev 7roLi']ao) vfj,d<; wairep ra efiirpocrOev vficov. 
 
 Again, in Prov. viii. 23, they apply it to express duration an- 
 tecedent to creation. Upo tov alcovo'i idefxeXlcoae yu-e* iv «P%^ "^po 
 Tov Tr]v yi]v TTOirjcrai. 
 
 In Deut. xxxiii. 15, it signifies antiquity. For " ancient 
 moimtains," literally "mountains of antiquity," the LXX. have 
 «7ro Kopvc^Yj^ opewv apxV'^' parallel to /Sovvwv devdwv. Accord- 
 ing, then, to the LXX., " in the beginning" means "informer 
 duration, of old." 
 
 This is also the meaning of the Hebrew. The word Reshith 
 
 Compare Jonathan on Micali v. 2. 
 
202 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay V. 
 
 luiving, according to its form, an abstract meaning, and coming 
 from Rosh or Resh, liead, signifies fii'st of all, as Gesenius says, 
 " tlie being head ; " and, therefore, applied to rank or quality, 
 would express " superiority " — to order, " priority" like its 
 synonym Dip, whose first meaning is priority — to time, " an- 
 teriority.'^ To " former time," " state at a former time," it refers 
 in Job xlii. 12, " The Lord blessed the latter end of Job more 
 than his beginning," where the LXX. translate more exactly, 
 6 he Kvpio^; evXoyrjae ra eo-'xara 'Ia)/S t] ra efnrpoaOev, and so 
 Hirzel has " -n''"inj^, die spatere, TT'tl^N"!, die friihere Lebenszeit." 
 So in Jer. xxviii. 1, " in the beginning (ResTiith) of the 
 reign of Zedekiah," beginning does hot mean the first day, 
 nor the first year, but the former part of his reign, as the 
 prophet immediately adds, " in the fourth year." This is also 
 the meaning in Isai. xlvi. 10, " declaring the end from the 
 beginning," properly, " declaring futm-ity from former time," as 
 is explained by the following clause — " and from ancient times 
 the things which are not done." According, then, to the 
 Hebrew, the meaning of the first verse of Genesis is, "In 
 Reshith (anteriority), i e., in former times, of old, God created 
 the heavens and the earth ;" and the article is omitted to ex- 
 clude the application of the word to the order of creation. This 
 is also the sense given in other words by the Psalmist (cii. 26). 
 "Of old (D'^jab* formerly) hast thou laid the fomidation of 
 the earth." 
 
 The sum, then, of all that has been said is, that the words, 
 " In the beginning," refer to " time or duration," not to order — 
 and thus, therefore, the first verse does not mean, " At first God 
 created the heaven and the earth," nor, " In the beginning of 
 creation he created the heavens and the earth," but " Of old, in 
 former duration, God created the heavens and the earth." How 
 long ago is not said. The Hebrew word is indefinite, and 
 can include millions or milliards of years just as easily as 
 thousands. The statement of Moses is, therefore, not contrary 
 to the discoveries of geology, which alleges the earth to have 
 existed for myriads of years before the creation of man. Moses's 
 words are big enough to take in times indefinite, exceeding the 
 powers of human comprehension. They also answer the more 
 
 Compave Isa. xli. 26, where D*3s'??0 i.s parallel to :;\S-1D. 
 
Essay V.] THE MOSAIC RECORD OF CREATI02T. 203 
 
 ancient objectors, who found it absurd that God created nothing 
 in previous eternity, and had remained inactive until a few 
 thousand years ago.* The words of Moses, rightly understood, 
 say just the contrary. They leave " the when " of creation un- 
 defined. 
 
 8. But though thus comprehensive as to the time, they are 
 precise as to the fact of creation. Moses says " God created," and 
 Bara, the word here used, is peculiar. There are three words 
 employed in the Old Testament in reference to the production 
 of tlie world — Bard, he created ; Yatzur, he formed ; Asdh, he 
 made — between which there is this difference, that the two last 
 may be, and are, used of men. The first word Bard is never 
 predicated of any created being, angel or man, but exclusively 
 appropriated to God, and God alone is called Bord K^il Creator. 
 Creation is therefore, according to the Hebrew, a Divine act — 
 something that can be performed by God alone. In the next 
 place, though, according to its etymology, it does not necessa- 
 rily imply a creation out of nothing, it does signify the Divine 
 production of something new, something that did not exist 
 before. See Numb. xvi. 30 ; Jer. xxxi. 22. And therefore 
 Gesenius says, in his ' Thesaurus,' " In that common disputation 
 of interpreters and theologians concerning the creation out of 
 nothing, some appeal to this word [Bara] as if it could be in- 
 ferred from its etymology, or proper signification, that in the 
 first chapter of Genesis, not a creation out of nothing, but a 
 conformation of eternal matter is taught. But, from what has 
 been said, it will be abundantly plain, that the use of this verb 
 in Kal is altogether different from its primary signification, and 
 that it is more used of new production (see Gen. ii. 3) than of 
 the conformation and elaboration of matter. But that in the 
 first verse of Genesis the first creation of the world out of 
 nothing, and in a rude and unformed state, and in the remainder 
 of the first chapter the elaboration and disposition of the recently 
 created mass is set forth, is proved by the connection of things 
 in this whole chapter. Thus, also, the Rabbis (as may be seen 
 in Aben Esra to Gen. i. 1) say ' that creation is a production of 
 something from nothing.' " This is also the explanation given in 
 
 * See Angiistine ' de Civit. Dei,' Lib. 1 also ' Origen de Principiis,' iii. 5, and 
 xi. 4, 5 ; ' Confess.' xi. 10. Compare | Calvin's ' Commentaries on Genesis.' 
 
204' AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay V. 
 
 the Psalms. In Ps. cxlviii. 5 we read, " For He, He commanded, 
 and they were created." The parallel passage (Ps. xxxiii. 9) 
 says, "For He, He said, and it existed (^n''1). He, He com- 
 manded, and it stood." It is true that the Jiow of creation, the 
 link between the Divine will and the realisation, is not made 
 known. Perhaps to finite minds it is incomprehensible. But, 
 notwithstanding, the word creation is more than a name for our 
 ignorance of the mode of production. It teaches that neither 
 the world, nor the matter of which it is composed, is eternal or 
 self-existent — that the universe is not a pantheistic emanation, 
 but a work of the Divine will and power ; and this Mosaic doc- 
 trine, in accordance with all sound reason, has not been shaken 
 by any discoveries or theories of science. Even though the 
 nebulous theory were demonstrably certain ; though all the 
 starry hosts were mere agglomerations of elementary matter, 
 which was once diffused like " an universal fire-mist " throughout 
 all space, and impressed with fixed laws, or endowed with self- 
 evolving powers, yet there must be a maker of that fire-mist and 
 its fifty-five elementary substances — there must be a lawgiver, 
 wlio imposed those laws, or communicated tliose powers, and 
 who produced that change of temperature, without which agglo- 
 meration Avould have been impossible — that is, there must have 
 been a Creator, and therefore the words of JMoses would still be 
 true, " God created the heavens and the earth." " Sic philo- 
 sophi debuerunt, si forte eos primus aspectus mundi conturba- 
 verat, postea cum vidissent motus ejus finitos et asquabiles, om- 
 niaque ratis ordinibus moderata, immutabilique coustantia, 
 intelligere inesse aliquem non solum habitatorem in hac celesti 
 ac divina domo, sed ^etiam Kectorem et Moderatorem, et tan- 
 quam Architectum tanti operis tantique muneris." * 
 
 9. In order to miderstand the Mosaic narrative, the next thing 
 to be considered is the meaning of the phrase " The heavens and 
 the earth," and the purpose of the whole verse. Some take it 
 as a title or summary of the contents of the chapter. But this 
 view is forbidden by the conjunction "and," with which the 
 second verse begins. " In tlie beginning God created the 
 heavens and the earth. 2. And the earth was without form, and 
 void." This "and" makes the second verse a continuation of 
 
 De Nat. Deoniin,' Lib. ii. e. 35. 
 
Essay V.] THE MOSAIC RECOED OF CREATION. 205 
 
 the narrative begun in the first. The jDroposition, " And the 
 earth was Avithout form, and Toid," implies that the earth was in 
 existence, and that something had been said of it with which 
 the " and " is the connecting link. Besides, if the first verse be 
 not a part of the narrative, but only a heading, the creation of 
 the earth is not mentioned at all in the narrative itself. The 
 first verse is, therefore, not a summary, but a part of the history 
 of creation. 
 
 Others suppose that the first verse describes the creation of the 
 materials out of which heaven and earth were afterwards formed. 
 But this is simply to put into the verse what is not there. " Heaven 
 and earth " never mean materials, and if they did, that meaning 
 would not agree with the context. The connecting " and " of 
 the second verse shows that the earth of the second verse is that 
 earth sjDoken of in the first verse, not the materials. Moses is 
 very precise and clear in his statements, and as he names " the 
 heavens and the earth," no expositor cai- legitimately give that 
 phrase a meaning which it has not in any other place in the Old 
 Testament. The first cpiestion then, here, is, what Moses 
 intended by " the heavens," for the word is plural, and has no 
 singular in Hebrew. That something chfferent from the firma- 
 ment is intended is plain from the order of the narrative. It is 
 not said, C4od made the earth and the heavens, but of old, in 
 former duration, C4od made the heavens and the earth. Then it 
 is related that the earth was without form, and void ; darkness 
 was upon the face of the deep ; the Spirit of God moved upon 
 the face of the waters ; God said, Let there be light. Then, on 
 the second day, God made the firmament, and called it heavens. 
 The heavens of the first verse were made in former duration, 
 before the moving of the Spirit, before the appearance of light. 
 The heavens of the seventh and eighth verses were made on 
 the second day, after the earth and after light. The difference 
 of time proves a difference of subjects, just as there is a difference 
 between the earth of the first verse, which means the whole 
 terraqueous globe, and the earth of the tenth verse, which is 
 only the dry land. And this difference between the heavens of 
 the first verse and the firmament is strongly marked in the 
 fourth verse of the second chapter — " These are the generations 
 of the heavens and the earth, when they were created, in the 
 dav tliat the Lord God made the earth and the heavens." In 
 
206 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay V. 
 
 the first half reference is made to the primitive creation, and 
 therefore the order of the first verse is preserved. In the latter 
 half reference is made to the creation of the earth in its empty- 
 state, and the subsequent making of the firmament ; and, there- 
 fore, earth is put first, before heavens, an inversion that must 
 be intentional, as the phrase " heaven and earth " is in Scrip- 
 tui-e a standing formula, but the inversion "earth and heaven" 
 occurs only once more in the Bible (Ps. cxlviii. 13), The first 
 expression, "the heavens and the earth," comprehends all 
 created things, the universe ; the second, " earth and heavens," 
 takes in only the earth and that portion of the universe imme- 
 diately connected with it. The object of the historian is first to 
 assert that God is the Creator of all created things, invisible as 
 well as visible ; then to narrate the manner in which this earth 
 was prepared for the abode of man by the same Almighty 
 Being, so as to leave no room for the eternity of matter, nor yet 
 for two Creators, one of whom made the high and holy spii-itual 
 world, the other this lower and material world. The Jews 
 knew that there were other heavens, as those where angels 
 dwell, mentioned xxviii. 12-17, whither, perhaps, Elijah was 
 carried (2 Kings ii. 1), and the heavens where is the throne of 
 God (Ps. xi. 4 ; ciii. 19), called also the heavens of heavens. That 
 these heavens and the angels were made before the earth and 
 the firmament appears from Job xxxviii. 7, " When the morning 
 stars sang together, and all the sons of God shouted for joy." 
 They are, therefore, included in the statement of the first verse, 
 " Of old God made the heavens and the earth," as they certainly 
 are in the first verse of the second chapter, where Moses, 
 summing up the entire work of creation of the miiverse, the 
 primitive creation and the six days' work, says, " Thus the 
 heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them." 
 The expression " host of heaven" sometimes means the heavenly 
 bodies, sometimes angels : thus, in Dent. xix. 4, it evidently 
 refers to the former ; in 1 Kings xxii. 19, Isa. xxiv. 21, Ps. 
 cxlviii. 2, it as plainly refers to the latter, who are called " Jeho- 
 vah's host" (Josh. V. 14, 15), and "God's host" (Gen. xxxii.), 
 where the corresponding word n^riQ is used. Therefore, in 
 this summing up of creation, " all the host of them " is men- 
 tioned to include angels, often referred to in this Book of 
 Genesis, and to teach that they were not independent beings, 
 
Essay V.] 
 
 THE MOSAIC EECOED OF CREATION. 
 
 207 
 
 but creatiu-es of God. According to the Bible, then, this earth 
 is not the centre of the universe. Long before it was fashioned 
 for man there were heavens, and morning stars, and angels ; 
 regions more glorious than the earth, heavens more ancient 
 than the firmament, heavenly inhabitants who excel in strength, 
 and Avho looked on in wonder and adoration when they beheld 
 the earth fashioned by the Creator. The ken of Moses and tlie 
 Hebrews was not limited to this earth, nor their idea of dura- 
 tion to the time that man has existed. They knew that the 
 earth in its present condition was later than the heavens and 
 their host, and the human race young when compared with the 
 angels of God. 
 
 10. Verse 2. — The next statement made by Moses is so far 
 from being in opposition to the discoveries of science that it is an 
 extraordinary anticipation of what geology teaches. It presents 
 to us the earth before its habitation by man, covered with Avater, 
 and utterly devoid of inhabitants or life. " The earth was [or, 
 as others translate, had becojie*] desolation and emptiness, and 
 darkness upon the face of the raging deep, and the Spirit of 
 God brooding upon the face of the waters." Very similar are 
 tlie statements of geologists, who, though believing that the 
 earth was first in a state of igneous fusion, suppose that before 
 the various formations and deposits began, it was first entirely 
 covered with water. So Pfaff says, " We soon perceive not only 
 that by far the greatest part of our earth was under water, but 
 that to Avater it owes its origin, and that under water the entire 
 gradual formation of these mighty masses took jDlace." And 
 again," The earth was at first a molten fiery sphere, over which 
 existed a thick atmosphere, containing all the water of the 
 earth. In consequence of cooling a firm crust was formed, 
 which was everywhere uniformly covered by water, condensed 
 in like manner by the same cooling process." t The conflicts 
 between the waters and the fiery heat, as the crust of the earth 
 was broken, fell in, or was upheaved, are vividly described by 
 M. d'Orbigny, and his account answers well to the words of 
 Moses, " The earth was desolation and emptiness, and darkness 
 
 * Dathius. Post hsec vero terra 
 facta erat vasta et deserta. 
 
 t PfalFs ' SchopfungsgescMchte,' p. 
 3 and til5. See also D'Orbigny, ' Cours 
 
 ele'mentaire,' torn, ii., Fascic. i. 261 
 Lardiier's ' Pre- Adamite Earth,' § 187 
 ' Essays and Eeviews,' p. 213, 14. 
 
208 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay V. 
 
 upon the face of tlie raging deep." It is not necessary to accept 
 this theory of '•' a molten fiery sj^here," as the Neptunists describe 
 a somewhat similar state, produced by water only, and a sober 
 though able author speaks of it only as a guess. " Geology 
 . . . may guess at conditions of original igneous fluidity or 
 aqueous plasticity in the mass, and may hint at some great law 
 of secular contraction ; but it must be confessed that on these 
 and similar points science is yet unable to ofler anything like 
 the certainty of demonstration."* But the great facts of the 
 submersion of the earth, and its desolation and emptiness, were 
 stated by Moses more than 3000 years ago, and his statements 
 have not only not been disproved, but have been confirmed, by 
 the deductions of modern scientific research. But liow this state 
 of " igneous fluidity or aqueous plasticity," and consequent deso- 
 lation and emptiness, arose; whether God created the earth 
 desolate and empty, or whether it became so in consequence of 
 some mighty catastrophe, neither Neptunists nor Yulcanists can 
 tell us, nor has Moses expressly declared, though the latter 
 appears to some to be implied in his words. There seems to be 
 a contrast between the state of the heavens and that of the 
 earth. " Of old God created the heavens and the earth. And 
 the earth was desolation and emptiness," not so the heavens. 
 If Dathius's translation, " The earth had become desolation and 
 emptiness," t be correct, it would follow this was not the earth's 
 original state. How the change from the chaotic, the desolate 
 and the empty, was effected, science cannot tell. Moses informs 
 us that it was by the action of the Divine Spirit. " The Spirit 
 of God, brooding on the face of the waters," not " the wind of 
 God," as the verb racliaph [to brood] is never used of wind. 
 " The Spirit streamed forth from God upon the chaos, commu- 
 nicated to it life-power, and made it capable of development at 
 God's bidding, and of bringing forth plants and animals. For, 
 according to tlie Old Testament, the Spirit of God is the 
 quickening principle of the world, and all life is an outgoing 
 
 Page's ' Advanced Text-book of I out a following ^, tlio same significa- 
 
 Geology," p. 25. 
 
 t This translation is supported by 
 the fact that the verb n\"l is, in some 
 twenty places, in tliis chapter correctly 
 
 tion, e.g. Isai. Ixiv. 5, 9, where see 
 Ewald, Zunz, and llosenmiiller. That 
 the earth was not originally desolate 
 also seems to be implied in Isai.xlv. 18. 
 
 translatcil by yivofxai nnd Jio, and not " He created not the earth a desolation ' 
 by tl/j-i or sum, and has elsewhere, with- | [Tohu]. 
 
Essay V. 
 
 THE MOSAIC RECORD OF CREATION. 
 
 209 
 
 from God ; according- to Psalm civ. 30, even the life of the vege- 
 table kingdom."* 
 
 11. Verses 3, and 14-19. — The next Mosaic statement is fomid 
 in verses 3-5, "And God said, Let there be light, and there 
 was light. And God saw the light, that it was good, and God 
 separated between the light and between the darkness. And 
 God called the light day, and the darkness He called night. 
 And evening happened, and morning hajjpened, one day,"t and 
 has given occasion to many objections. Celsus found it strange 
 that Moses should speak of days before the existence of the sun.i 
 " How did God create the light before the sun ? " asked Voltaire. 
 "How did He make the day before the sun was made ?"§ 
 "' 3Iodern astronomy," says D. F. Strauss, "found it contrary to 
 order, that the earth should not only have been created before 
 the sun, but should also, besides day and night, have distinction 
 of the elements and vegetation before the sun." |j " Light and 
 the measurement of time are represented as existing before the 
 manifestation of the sun, and this idea, although repugnant to 
 our modern knowledge, has not in former times appeared 
 absurd," is the objection of ' Essays and Keviews ;' ^ and, as is 
 evident, is not the result of modern science, having been 
 broached already by Celsus. As, however, recent writers give 
 modern science the credit of it, it becomes necessary to ask, 
 what does modern science teach with regard to the relative ages 
 of the earth and the sun ? The answer is. Nothing, absolutely 
 nothing as a scientific certainty. Whether sun and earth were 
 created simultaneously, and in their present relations — or, 
 wliether the earth, already created, wandered witliin the range 
 of solar attraction, or whether, after the sun existed, the earth 
 was called forth within that range, science does not know. It 
 has, liowever, without any reference to the Book of Genesis, 
 proposed a theory, which has been accepted by some of the 
 
 * Kiiobul iu loc. Comp. Gesenius, 
 * Thesaiu-us,' iu Ead. C^Ul. " De Spiritu 
 Dei, qui riuli creatiouis moll incubahat 
 foveiis et vivificans.'' 
 
 t The exact force of the Hebrew- 
 words, especially of the verb nTl fio, is 
 jnure appareut iu the LXX. thau iu our 
 Authorized Versiou. Kal elirfv 6 deSs 
 T€vr)OT]TW (pais, Kal eyeVero (pais. Kal 
 elo€v 6 dehs rh (pais on Ka\6v, koI 
 
 Siex'ipto'ey o Oehs ava ^i(Tov rov (pairhs 
 Kal ava /xecrov rov (TKotovs- Kal iKa.\e(Tev 
 6 6ehs TO (pais 7ifx4pav Kal to (Tk6tos e'/ca- 
 Xiae viiKTa, Kal iyeuero kanipa Kal iye- 
 vero irpail, rifi^pa /xla. 
 
 J Origeu 'coutra Celsum,' vi. GO, 
 torn. i. 678. 
 
 § Voltaire's Works, vol. xxxiii. 403. 
 
 jl ' Glaubeuslehre,' vol. i. p. 622. 
 
 ^ P. 219. 
 
210 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay Y, 
 
 most scientific mcu of these days as higlily proLaUe.* Had it 
 been devised for the express purpose of removing the supposed 
 difiiculties of the ]\Iosaic account, it coukl hardly have been 
 more to the j^urpose. It supposes that the whole solar system 
 >vas originally one mass of vapoury or nebulous matter, which, 
 according to the laws of gravitation, assumed the form of an im- 
 mense sphere. This sphere received (from without) an impulse 
 Avhich caused • it to revolve on its axis from west to east. In 
 consequence of this revolving motion, it became flattened at the 
 jjoles and swollen in the equatorial region, and in consequence 
 of the greatness of the centrifugal force at the equator, and the 
 contemporaneous condensation and contraction of the nebulous 
 mass, a free revolving ring, similar to that of Saturn, detached 
 itself in the region of the equator. This ring not being of 
 imiform density, and in consequence of contraction, broke in 
 one or more places, and these fragments, in obedience to the 
 laws of gravitation, became a sphere or sjjheres, that is, a 
 planet, or planets, all necessarily revolving from west to east, 
 round the parent mass. Another ring was formed in hke 
 manner, and another planet came into existence, and so on 
 until the whole solar system was complete. A similar process 
 took place with regard to some of the planets, and thus they 
 got their moons, t 
 
 Now, according to this theory, not only the earth, but all the 
 planets of our system, existed before the sun in its present con- 
 dition. As these planets are now not self-illuminating, it may 
 
 * Of the tlioory in its present form 
 La Place is tlie author. Perhaps the 
 first suggestion came from Sir W. Her- 
 schel. It has heen adopted by the 
 great German astronomer, Mikller, and 
 extended to comets. It has been 
 defended by Pfaft', and its truth lias 
 been taken for granted by Humboldt, 
 ' Cosmos,' i. 85, 90, iv. 1G3. It is also 
 advocated by the aidlior of ' Vestiges of 
 tlic XaturarHi.sfory of Creation.' 
 
 t La Place, ' ICxposition du Systcme 
 du Monde,' G^'"'' edition, note vii. pp. 465 
 andsqq. ; Pfaffs' Schr.pfungsgeschichte,' 
 Kap. xiii. ; Ilumbohlfs 'Cosmos,' as 
 above. Tlii^i theory is also applied by 
 La Place and (itlicr.s to account for the 
 zodiacal light. INI.Plattau has lurnishcd 
 an ingenious experimental verification. 
 He mixed alcohol and water until the 
 
 mixture was of the same specific gravity- 
 as oil. The mixtm'o was then put into 
 a glass box, and a certain quantity of 
 oil introduced, which immechately took 
 the form of a globe. He now ajipUed an 
 axis, which passed through the axis of 
 the oil globe, and caused the box to ro- 
 tate rapidly. In consequence of tlie 
 rotiition the oil globe flattened at the 
 poles and swelled out at the equator, 
 A more rapid motion tlisengaged a ring 
 of oil, revolving in the same direction 
 as tile oil glol)e. This ring broke, and 
 the fragments formeil globes or planets 
 rotating on their axes, and revolving 
 round the parent globe. See Pfafl", p. 
 318: also 'Vestiges of the Natural His- 
 tory of Creation,' reprint of sixth eiU- 
 tion, p. 11-14. 
 
Essay Y.] THE MOSAIC RECORD OF CTEATIOX. 211 
 
 be supposed that the rings, when detached from the original 
 nebulous mass, were dark also, and therefore that the equato- 
 rial matter of the parent nebulous sphere of which they were' 
 composed was also devoid of light — that therefore the sun did 
 not receive its luminous atmosphere until aU the planets had 
 Ijeen detached. But, until this luminous atmosphere existed, 
 they could not derive their light from the sun. If, on the other 
 hand, it be supposed that these detached rings were luminous, 
 and that the planets formed from them wei-e luminous also, then 
 the planets had a light of their o'wn, independent of the sun. 
 But however that be, so much follows from this theory, that the 
 earth existed before the residuary parent globe could be called 
 the sun, or could perform its office of luminary to the system. 
 If the earth therefore had light dm'ing this period, it must have 
 been derived from some other source. That this is possible 
 cannot now be denied. The discoveries with regard to heat, 
 combustion, electricity, galvanism, show that there may be 
 light independent of the sun. It is also now generally received 
 that the sun itself is an opaque body, and that solar light pro- 
 ceeds from a luminous atmosphere by which it is surrounded.* 
 The progress of science has, therefore, neutralized the objection 
 that hght could not exist before the sim. Indeed it has done 
 more — it has proved the accuracy of the Mosaic language. 
 l^Ioses does not call the sun " Or, light," but " Maor, a place or 
 instrument of light," a luminary, or candlestick,! just what 
 modern science has discovered it to be. Thus, so far is the 
 r^losaic doctrine of light from being opposed to recent discoveries, 
 that if Moses had wished to describe the modern doctrine con- 
 cerning light, he could not have expressed himself more 
 happily. " Scripture does not say that God created the light, or 
 made it, but said, ' Let it be, and it was ! ' If, then, light be 
 not a separate and definite body, but only vibrations or undula- 
 
 * Arago's 
 
 Pfaff, p. 621 ; Humboldt's ' Cosmos,' iii. 
 271, etc. ; Walker's ' Physical Constitu- 
 tion of the Sun,' p. 6. The wonderful 
 discoveries of KLirchhoif and others in 
 solar chemistry are supposed by some 
 to confirm La Place's theory, and to 
 prove that the earth was before the 
 sun, and had a light of its own. 
 
 t Knobel, in liis Commentary, has 
 
 " Lichtorte." For the meaning of nouns 
 formed by prefixing 12, see Ewald's 
 ' Grammar,' § 337 and 339 : — " 12 may 
 signify, first, that wherein anything 
 happens, the place of action (the so- 
 called 12 loci) ; . . . . secondh^ the in- 
 strument of action ; thirdly, the what 
 of the action." Compare also Simonis 
 ' Arcanum Formarum,' p. 447-504 ; 
 Gesenius's ' Lehrgeb.' p. 494, § 14. 
 
 p 2 
 
212 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay V. 
 
 tions of ether, somehow set in motion, the sacred writer could 
 not have expressed its appearance in words more beautiful or 
 more agreeable to truth." * 
 
 In ow, this theory of La Place may or may not be true,t but it 
 is an offspring of modern science, and implies, just like the 
 Mosaic account, the pre-existence of the earth before the sun 
 became the luminary of the system. It does, indeed, also imply 
 the pre-existence of the great parent nebulous globe, but this is 
 not contrary to the Mosaic account. Moses does not say that 
 the body of the sun or moon and stars were created on the 
 fourth day, but according to the Hebrew, " God said, Let there 
 1)0 light-holders in the firmament of the heaven, .... and let 
 them be for light-holders in the firmament of the heaven to 
 give light upon the earth, and God made the two great light- 
 holders and God gave ]r\'''), them in the firmament of 
 
 heaven to give light upon the earth, and the stars." The 
 Hebrew word, Asah, make, may signify " make ready, prepare, 
 dress " (see Gesenius's ' Lexicon,' in verb.). The creation of the 
 sun or parent globe may be included in verse 1, and the work 
 of the fourth day consisted in furnishing it with its luminous 
 atmosphere. When this took j^lace, and the sun began to shed 
 its light, then the moon, and the earth's fellow planets, " the 
 stars," of verse 16, became luminaries also. The stars of this 
 sixteenth verse are certainly different from those morning stars 
 ( )f which Job speaks, which were in existence long before, and, 
 as connected with the sun and moon, seem naturally to mean 
 those belonging to the solar system, and which received their 
 light on the fourth day, when the sun became luminous. 
 Having thus seen how modern science proves that the earth 
 and light might exist, and, according to scientific theory, pro- 
 bably did exist before the sun, it is no longer difficult to con- 
 ceive, how there might also be a measure of time, ^^^lat that 
 measure was, the length of that "one day," of which Moses 
 speaks, it is now necessary to inquire. 
 
 * ' Cosmogony of Moses,' by M. Mar- j shine, give light." mnj, hght. Job 
 
 eel de Scrres, Professor of Mineralogy iii. 4. 
 
 and Geology at Montiiellier, German f Compare Whewell's ' Indications of 
 
 edition, p. 45. Compare the language ! the Creator,' p. 54, 1(;2, and his ' Pliilo- 
 
 of St. Paul, 2 Cor. iv. 6. It is a curious sophy of Discovery,' p. 304, 305 ; ' Plu- 
 
 tact that the Hebrew verb "inj, which i rality of Worlds,' p. 199. 
 
 signifies "to flow," also signifies "to ' 
 
Essay Y.] THE MOSAIC EECOED OF CEEATION. 213 
 
 12, The question, then, naturally arises, How are we to under- 
 stand the word " day ? " Is it a period of twenty-four hours, or 
 is it an indefinite portion of time ? It is quite certain that the 
 Almighty could not only arrange the earth in six ordinary days, 
 but that He could create the whole universe by a momentary 
 exertion of His power. The shortness of the time, therefore, is 
 no valid objection. The contrary objection that six ordinary 
 days are too long, and that instantaneous creation is more worthy 
 of Omnipotence, is just as strong. But nature and Scripture 
 both teach us that it has pleased God to work gradually. His 
 purpose was to fill the earth with inhabitants, and yet only a 
 single pair was created. He announced the Redeemer in Para- 
 dise, but 4000 years passed away before the fulness of the time 
 was come. It is His will that the whole earth shall be filled 
 with the knowledge of Himself; but the diffusion of that 
 knowledge has been left to gradual preaching and human instru- 
 mentality. So in nature, trees, animals, and men have small 
 beginnings, and require time to attain to perfection. This twofold 
 course of the Divine procedure, in grace and in nature, guards us 
 against the necessity of supposing that the arrangement of the 
 earth was of necessity sudden, or a series of instantaneous exlii- 
 bitions of Omnipotence. The facts of creation, however, must 
 be gathered from the Mosaic statement. Moses undoubtedly 
 reckons six days. But it is an old and true observation, that 
 in the Bible the word " day " often signifies undefined periods 
 of time, as, " the day of the Lord," " the day of vengeance," 
 '' that day," " the night is far spent, the day is at hand." In 
 this narrative (ii. 4) the word takes in the whole time of the 
 creative work. The first three days were certainly not measured 
 by the interval between sunset and sunset, for as yet the sun 
 was not perfect, and had no light. The first day consisted of an 
 alternation of light and darkness. But how long the light 
 lasted, and how long the darkness until the next dawn, is not 
 said. That there was an alternation of light and darkness, is 
 related in the words, " And God cHvided between the light and 
 between the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the 
 darkness He called Night." First there had been universal 
 darkness. " Darkness was upon the face of the deep." Out of 
 this darkness God caused the light to shine. " God said, liCt 
 there be light, and there was light." It might, then, be sup- 
 
214 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay V. 
 
 posed that this light beiug as universal as the darkness had 
 been, there Avas now only continued, uninterrupted light in tlie 
 world, and no darkness more until the ne^^■ order of things com- 
 menced in the fourth day. The sacred historian guards against 
 this supposition by relating that God divided between the light 
 and the darkness, and that, in consequence of this division, 
 evening happened, and morning happened, so that one stage of 
 creation was divided from the other by an interval of darkness. 
 The time of light in which the Divine work proceeded, He 
 called Day, and the time of darkness He called Night.* It was 
 not a day measured by the presence of the sun's light, nor a 
 night measured by the absence of that light. There was light 
 and there was darkness, and God called the light Day, and the 
 darkness He called Night. The union of these two periods of 
 light and darkness He calls " one day," " a second day," " a 
 third day," to mark the distinctive breaks in the progress of the 
 development of the world. In this fifth verse " day " is taken 
 in two senses, — first, of the duration of the light ; and secondly, 
 of the whole time of light and darkness together. But hovv' 
 long the light continued before it was evening, or how long the 
 darkness continued before it was morning, or what was the 
 duration of the two together, we are not told ; and so far there 
 is nothing to cause us to conclude that the whole was equal to 
 twenty-fom* hom-s. It is true that David Strauss f urges the 
 mention of " evening and morning," and thence concludes that 
 they must be common days ; and there is a general persuasion 
 that Moses here reckons according to the usual custom of the 
 Hebrews, from evening to evening, supposing that the original 
 darkness is the first evening, and that the space of time occupied 
 by it and by the light which succeeded, is described as the first 
 day. But this mistake arises from confining the attention to 
 the English translation, which says " And the evening and the 
 morning were the first day." | But the Hebrew and the ancient 
 versions have " xVnd evening happened, and morning happened, 
 one day." Now if the first day begins with the original dark- 
 
 * Compare the words of our Lonl, 
 " I must work the works of Him that 
 sent mc, while it is day ; the night 
 eometh when no man can work." 
 
 t ' Glaubcnslehre,' p. G24. 
 
 X Tliis is phiinly the source of error 
 
 in ' Ejisays and Reviews,' where it is 
 said, " The space of time occupied l>y 
 the original darkness and the light 
 which succeeded, is described as tlic 
 first day." P. 219. 
 
Essay v.] THE MOSAIC RECORD OF CREATION. 215 
 
 ness, then tlie first day consists of the original darkness, the 
 light, and the evening that followed, ending with the morning, 
 and thus the first day would have an evening at the beginning 
 and an evening at the end. The mention of morning, " evening- 
 happened and morning happened," ought to have guarded 
 against this mistake. Evening and morning do not together 
 make a day, but only a part of a day. The whole day is not 
 complete until the following evening. But that Moses does not 
 here reckon from evening to evening is proved from the account 
 of the first day. The evocation of light is the prominent object 
 of the first day's work, but it is after this evocation of light that 
 it is said " And there was evening, and there was morning, one 
 day." If, therefore, the day began with the evening, light was 
 created before that first day began, and there would be no 
 account at all of what was done the first day. The first day 
 must, therefore, be reckoned as beginning at the apj)earance of 
 light, and continuing through the evening to the dawn. The 
 appearance of light, with the darkness that followed the 
 evening until the next dawn, is the first day. With that dawn 
 the second day begins. This mode of reckoning, unique in the 
 Bible, and peculiar to this first chapter of Genesis, suggests that 
 the days are peculiar too. To know the length of the first day, 
 it would be necessary to know how long the light continued 
 after its first appearance until the evening came, and then how 
 long from evening until the first dawn. But this is not told us. 
 The ordinance concerning the reckoning of time, " Let them be 
 for signs, and for seasons, and for days and for years," was not 
 given until the fourth day, and could have no application until 
 after the creation of Adam. Not by the sun, then, were the 
 days measured, but by the light and darkness, which God called 
 Day and Night, of the length of which we are not informed ; 
 and, consequently, there is nothing in the text to compel us to 
 restrict the days to the time of the earth's diurnal motion. If 
 the length of the days is to be measured by that of the seventh, 
 the day of God's rest, those days must be indefinite periods, for 
 that day of rest still continues. It is said, chap. ii. 2, " And He 
 rested on the seventh day from all the work which He had 
 made," without any mention of evening and morning. The day 
 of rest, therefore, still continues, and this is plainly expressed 
 .and argued in the Epistle to the Hebrews, " Let us therefore 
 
216 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay Y. 
 
 fear, lest a promise being left us of entering into His rest, any 
 of you should seem to come short of it," or, as some moderns 
 translate, " Let us then be careful, lest as a promise to enter 
 into His [God's] rest still remains, any of you appear remaining 
 behind." On which Avords Stuart says, " In chapter iv. 1, he brings 
 forward the assertion that the promise of entering into the rest 
 of God still remains, addressed to the Hebrew Christians as it 
 was to the Israelites of old. . . . But what is the rest in ques- 
 tion ? Is it quiet possession of the land of Canaan ? No, says 
 the Apostle. Believers 7iow enter into the rest (verse 3), i. e. 
 (adds he) the same kind of rest as was anciently proifered. 
 Moreover, God calls it KaraTravaiv fxov, My rest, i. e. (adds he) 
 such rest as God enjoyed, after He completed the creation of 
 the world, consequently spiritual, heavenly rest. This is plain 
 (as he goes on in verse 4) from what the Scriptm-e says, Gen. ii. 
 2, concerning the rest of God." According, then, to this decla- 
 ration that God's rest or Sabbath still continues, the seventh 
 day of creation is an indefinite period and the other days may 
 be also. The six days are days of the Lord, God's days, as the 
 first Sabbath was God's rest, and, therefore, as God rested on 
 His seventh day, man is commanded to rest on his seventh day, 
 and God blessed and sanctified it. 
 
 13. But though the Mosaic language implies that the six days 
 of which he speaks are six periods of time, it does not follow that 
 they are to be identified with the six periods commonly received 
 in geology. Indeed, to those who have no theory to establish, 
 it is apparent that they do not agree, neither is it necessary 
 that they should. That the Mosaic account is not contradicted 
 by modern discovery is quite sufficient. The impossibility of 
 identifying these periods is evident from the fact that of the 
 Avork of two days in the Mosaic account geology knows nothing, 
 and astronomy nothing certain; namely, that of the first on 
 Avliich the light Avas called forth ; and of the fourth day, when 
 tlie sun and the planetary system were perfected. Moses gives 
 an outline of the history of creation, such as Avould be intelli- 
 gible to those for whom he wi'ote, and suitable as an introduc- 
 tion to Divine revelation, and on both accoimts necessarily 
 limited in the matter and brief in the narration. He, therefore, 
 notices only those things necessary to a true religious system, 
 or perceptible by men. After the original creation of heaven 
 
Essay Y.] THE MOSAIC EECOED OF CREATION. 217 
 
 and earth, and the condition of earth, he mentions the evoca- 
 tion of light and the creation of the ether, in which the hea- 
 venly bodies move, as effected in the first two days. Whether 
 anything else was created in those two days, he neither affirms 
 nor denies. So far therefore as the Mosaic record is concerned, 
 these two days may include the whole of the primary, second- 
 ary, and tertiary formations, with all their products, their flora 
 and then- fauna. The products of those periods, buried in the 
 earth, were, so far as we ivuow, utterly unknown to the Israelites 
 and their contemporaries, and to mankind for many ages after. 
 Even to ourselves the knowledge is recent. For Moses to 
 mention them, was not only unnecessary, but would have been 
 altogether out of place. Such details would have encumbered 
 the outline, and turned away the attention from God the 
 Creator to things at that time invisible and unintelligible. The 
 object of the Mosaic narrative is to explain the origin of the 
 miiverse and of its parts, as they were known or visible to men 
 of that day. So soon, therefore, as he has mentioned the light 
 and the ether, he advances at once to the preparation of the 
 earth for man ; and thus the third day presents the diy land in 
 its present state, with its flora differing from the preceding 
 geological stages. Of this state of things, Page says : " At the 
 close of the Pleistocene period the present distribution of sea 
 and land seems to have been established ; the land presenting 
 the same surface of configuration, and the sea the same coast 
 line, with the exception of such modifications as have since 
 been produced by the atmospheric, aqueous, and other causes, 
 described in chap. iii. At the close of that period, the earth 
 also appears to have been peopled by its present flora and 
 famia, with the exception of some local removals of certain 
 animals, and the general extinction of a few species."* Accord- 
 ing to the Mosaic account, the growth of grass, herb and fruit 
 trees, begun on the third day, must have gone on through the 
 fourth. Then on the fifth day the marine, and on the sixth the 
 land animals of the present period were called into existence. 
 The words of Moses, " Let the dry land appear," are in exact 
 accordance with what geology relates. The rise of the ocean 
 
 ' Advauceil Text-book,' p. 300. 
 
218 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay V. 
 
 had buried tlie tertiary world in its waters. " The disruption 
 of the earth's crust, extending W. IC/ S., and E. HJ° N., 
 through which the chain of the great Alps was forced up to its 
 present elevation, wliich, according to M. d'Orbigny, was 
 simultaneous with that which forced up the Chilian Andes, a 
 chain which extends over a length of 3000 miles of the western 
 continent, terminated the tertiary age, and preceded immedi- 
 ately the creation of the human race and its concomitant tribes. 
 The waters of the seas and oceans, lifted up from theii- beds by 
 this immense perturbation, swept over the continents with 
 irresistible force, destroying instantaneously the entire flora and 
 fauna of the last tertiary period, and burying its ruins in the 
 
 sedimentary deposits which ensued When the seas had settled 
 
 into then- new beds, and the outlines of the laud were perma- 
 nently defined, the latest and gi-eatest act of creation was 
 accomplished by clothing the earth with the vegetation which 
 now covers it, peopling the land and the water with the animal 
 tribes which now exist, and calling into being the human race. . . . 
 The most conspicuous condition which distinguishes the present 
 from all past periods is the existence of the himian race among 
 its fauna, the attributes of which are so peculiar as to place it 
 out of all analogy with the other classes of animals. Another 
 striking physical difference between the present and all former 
 periods consists in the different divisions of the earth's surface 
 into climatological zones, each zone having its peculiar fauna 
 and flora. In all former ages and periods, including those 
 which immediately preceded the present, no traces of climatic 
 difference have been found."* In all this there is nothing 
 inconsistent with the Mosaic statement. There is one most 
 striking and extraordinary coincidence: Moses represents the 
 earth as existing for a long period before the sun became its 
 source of light and heat. During that period there could have 
 been no climatic difference, as this depends upon the position of 
 the earth with reference to the sun. Now this exactly agrees 
 with the conclusions of geology, which asserts, as we have seen, 
 that before the liuman period there was no difference of cli- 
 mate, that the earth was not dependent on the sun for its 
 
 * Laidiicr'rf 'Popular CJcology,' § 553, 555, 5G1. 
 
Essay v.] THE MOSAIC RECORD OF CREATION". 210 
 
 temperature, tliat tliere was apparently one uniform high, 
 temperature over the whole earth, and consequently that the 
 flora and fauna of Avarm climates are found, in the prehuman 
 period, in latitudes where they could not now exist. Here 
 then is an instance of the extraordinary scientific accuracy of 
 the Mosaic account. 
 
 14. Another objection to Scriptm-al cosmogony is, that the 
 Bible asserts that the earth is immovable. " The Hebrew records, 
 the basis of religious truth, manifestly countenanced the opinion of 
 the earth's immobility." * The proofs of this proposition are not 
 taken from Moses, who says nothing on the subject, but from 
 such passages as Ps. xciii. 1, — " The world also is established 
 that it cannot be moved;" and Ps. civ. 5, — "Who laid the 
 foundations of the earth, that it should not be moved for ever." 
 See also Ps. cxix. 90, 91. According to this mode of interpre- 
 tation, it can also be proved that the Hebrews also held that a 
 pious man was an immovable fixture ; for it is said, Prov. x. 30, 
 •' The righteous shall never be moved," the same word in Hebrew. 
 But this objection rests on simple ignorance of the Hebrew 
 word translated "moved." This word. Mot (t^i/^S), signifies, 
 <is Gesenius says, " to waver, to shake, to totter," and, there- 
 fore, it is applied to the feet of one in motion in Ps. xvii. 5 — 
 "Hold up my goings in thy paths, that my footsteps slip not;" 
 or, as the margin has it, " be not moved." Can any one be 
 found so silly as to suppose that David prayed that his feet 
 might be immovably fixed ? The whole j)rayer implies motion, 
 w^alking in the Lord's ways ; and the latter part of the petition 
 is that his feet might not " totter," that he might not stumble. 
 So far, therefore, are tbe above passages from declaring that the 
 earth is immovable, that they necessarily imply its motion. 
 " The world is established that it cannot totter," not even in that 
 velocity of motion with Avhich it compasses the sun. A totter, 
 a slip, would be of dreadful consequence to its inhabitants ; but 
 the Lord has so arranged and steadied its motions, that no totter 
 is possible. The wonderfid mode of its suspension in space, as 
 well as that of the heavenly bodies, as necessarily implied in the 
 Scriptural doctrine of an ethereal expanse, is also beautifully 
 
 * ' Easays and Eeviews,' p. 208. See also Hitchcock's ' Eeligiou of Geolog}%' 
 p. 25 aud io. 
 
220 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay Y. 
 
 expressed in Job xxvi. 7. " He stretebetli out tlic north over the 
 empty place ; he haiigeth the earth upon nothing." To infer 
 that Scriptiu'e teaches the immobility of the earth because it 
 speaks of sunrise and sunset, or because Joshua said, " Sim, stand 
 thou still," is just as fair as to attribute the same error to the 
 compilers of almanacks and astronomical tables, or to scientific 
 men in their common parlance. There are certain j^opular 
 phrases which no universality of science will ever banish from 
 general use. The great historian of the Inductive Sciences, 
 like all other people of common sense, uses the popular lan- 
 guage. " The motions of the sun, the succession of the places of 
 his rising and setting at different times of the year, the greatest 
 height which he reaches .... Avould all exhibit several 
 cycles. . . . The turning hack of the sun, when he had 
 reached his greatest distance to the south or the north, as shown 
 either by his rising or his height at noon, would perhaps be the 
 most observable of such circumstances." * If Copernicus himself 
 had been in a similar position with that of Joshua, he would 
 have used just the same language. To the end of time the most 
 scientific of men will continue to speak of sunrise and sunset — 
 the sun passing the meridian, or sinking below the horizon ; and 
 he who would try to substitute a more exact phraseology would 
 be regarded as more of a pedant than a philosopher. 
 
 15. Verses 6-8. — The Mosaic firmament not a solid vault. — 
 In close connection with this objection is that directed against 
 the Mosaic account of " the firmament." It was already urged 
 by Voltaire, and in recent times oft triumphantly repeated, to 
 show the supposed ignorance and gross conceptions of the 
 Hebrew people. Gesenius, Winer, Knobel, &c., have patronised 
 it ; their statements have been transferred wholesale into popular 
 English works, and lately repeated in ' Essays and Reviews ' 
 (pp. 210, 220) : — " The work of the second day of creation is to 
 erect the vault of heaven (Heb., rakia ; Gr. arepecofxa ; 
 Lat, flLi-maraeutum), which is represented as supporting an 
 ocean of water above it. The waters are said to be divided, so 
 that some are below, some above the vault. That the Hebrews 
 understood the sky, firmament, or heaven, to be a permanent, 
 solid vault, as it appears to the ordinary observer, is evident 
 
 Vol. i. p. 127. 
 
Essay V.] THE MOSAIC EECORD OF CREATION. 221 
 
 enough from various expressions made use of concerning it. It 
 is said to have pillars (Job xxvi. 11), foundations (2 Sam. xxii. 
 8), doors (Ps. Ixxviii. 23), and windows (Gen. vii. 11). No 
 quibbling about the derivation of the word rahia, which is 
 literally ' something beaten out,' can affect the explicit descrip- 
 tion of the Blosaic writer, contained in the words, ' The waters 
 that are above the firmament,' or avail to show that he was 
 aware that the sky is but transparent. 
 
 " Note. — The root is generally applied to express the ham- 
 mering or beating out of metal plates ; hence something beaten 
 or spread out. It has been pretended that the word rakia may 
 be translated expanse, so as merely to mean empty space. The 
 context sufficiently rebuts this." 
 
 This objection, "if well founded, Avould be conclusive proof of 
 the opposition between astronomic science and the Mosaic cos- 
 mogony. But, happily, it is the weakest of all the objections, and 
 the most easily refuted by Scripture statement, and by the 
 history of interpretation. '• The Hebrews," says Mr. Goodwin, 
 "understood the sky, firmament, or heaven to be a permanent solid 
 vault." Here are two assertions : First, that the Hebrews under- 
 stood the firmament or heaven to be a vault. Secondly, that 
 they regarded that vault as solid. The first assertion, a repeti- 
 tion of Gesenius's hemisphcerii in star, is totally without founda- 
 tion. The word rakia signifies not vault, but, as all allow, an 
 expanse, something spread out, whether solid or unsolid, and there- 
 fore incompatible with the idea of vault or arch. But the 
 main part of the objection is that the firmament, or heavens, are 
 solid or firm. Now, according to Scripture, the firmament, or 
 heaven, is that space or place where birds fly. They could not 
 fly in a solid vault ; therefore the firmament cannot be a solid 
 vault. This is proved by the following references. In Gen. i. 
 28, birds are called "the fowl of the heavens " (not '•' au-," as 
 the Authorized Version has it) — a description utterly inapplica- 
 ble if the heavens be a permanent solid vault, in which the 
 heavenly bodies were fixed. " Tlie fowl of the solid vault " 
 would be nonsense. If the heavens be the expanse, beginning 
 at the earth, extending to the stars, and including the air, the 
 description is appropriate ; and so convinced were our trans- 
 lators that tJie heavens have this meaning, that they have here 
 and elsewhere translated " fowl of the air," not " fowl of the 
 
222 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay Y. 
 
 lieaveus." The reason wliy Closes calls birds foAvls of the heavens 
 is because they fly in the heavens, as we read, Dent. iv. 17^ 
 '' any winged fowl that flieth in the heavens." And again, Prov. 
 XXX. 19, '* The way of an eagle in the heavens." And again, 
 Jer. viii. 7, " The stork in the heavens knoweth his appointed 
 time." In all these passages, "heavens " means the place where 
 birds fly.* In Psalm Ixxviii. 36, the word means the place 
 where winds blow — " He causeth a wind to blow in the heavens ;" 
 in both cases the region of the atmosphere. The Biblical 
 WTiters must, therefore, have considered the heavens or firma- 
 ment as something analogous to the air, an expanse, or ether, 
 not a hard, solid vault. 
 
 The idea of expanse, independent, or even exclusive of 
 solidity, is also to be inferred, from the mamier in which other 
 verbs t simply signifying to extend or spread out, are applied to 
 the heavens : as, for instance, Isaiah xlviii. 13, " My right hand 
 hath spread out (tippechah) the heavens." Isaiah xl. 22, " That 
 stretcheth out (noteh) the heavens like a curtain (literally, like 
 fineness), and spreadeth them out {vaiyimtacli) as a tent to dwell 
 in." The comparison to a tent does not suggest solidity — the 
 comj)arison with a fine curtain excludes it. The HebrcAV word 
 (Dok) here used for curtain, is cognate with Dale, " fine dust," 
 and signifies, as Gesenius says, " Fineness — hence fine cloth, a 
 garment, a curtain." The same idea of something imsolid, un- 
 permanent, and movable, is conveyed in the similar figure, 
 Ps. civ. 2, "Who stretchest out the heavens like a curtain 
 [Yerihah]." The Hebrew word here used for curtain means 
 " something tremulous," and, as Gesenius gives it, " a curtain, 
 hanging, so called from its tremulous motion " — a simile most 
 unsuitable for a solid vault, most appropriate for an ethereal 
 expanse or fluid. 
 
 But besides Bahia and Shamaim, there is another word, 
 SJiechakim, said to be used sometimes for heavens, which also 
 excludes the idea of solidity. Gesenius thus gives the meaning : 
 " \)W^. 1. Bust, fine dust. Isai. xl. 15 ; 2. A cloud, Arab, thin 
 
 * These passages also give the true rally, " upon the face of tlio fiimaiiient 
 meaning of the words in Genesis i. 30, | of heaven." 
 
 where the Authorized Version has, " In j t The verhs HDINatah, nnOMathach, 
 the open firmament of heaven," lite- ! and ilDD Tai)hacli. 
 
Essay Y.] THE MOSAIC EECOED OF CREATIOX. 22? 
 
 cloud, j^p., as it would seem, cloud of dust, or tlie like. IMostly 
 in plural, clouds. Metonym. for the firmament, the heavens, the 
 sJci/, i. q, n^;p^ and ^1\^1, comp. in English the clouds. Job 
 xxxvii. 18, '• Jlast thou like him sj^read out the sky (D"'|pnt^), 
 which is firm like a molten looldng-glassT" A cloud of dust* is 
 nothing solid, and, therefore, when the word Shachah, signifying 
 cloud of dust, is transferred to the clouds of heaven, it implies 
 that, in the mind of him that transferred it, the clouds of 
 heaven are also devoid of solidity. But here it will be replied, 
 In the passage of Job, just referred to by Gesenius, " the sky " 
 is compared to a molten metallic mirror — it must, therefore, be 
 firm, like a metal plate. Now, granting for a moment that 
 " sky " is here a possible translation, the conclusion drawn does 
 not follow. If the sky be solid and firm, and able to bear up a 
 whole heavenly ocean of water, is it not rather a descent from 
 the poetic, indeed a very considerable bathos, to compare its 
 strength to that of a woman's metal muTor ? The beauty of the 
 simile is lost. Luther's poetic mind and shrewd common sense saw 
 this, and, therefore, when there was no dispute about the matter, 
 showed that here there is a contrast rather than a comparison. 
 The expanse, he says, is rarer and finer than the atmosphere in 
 which we live, and yet, through the power of the Divine word, 
 strong as if it were metal.* 
 
 Take into account the exact meaning of Shechaldm, clouds, or 
 substances unsolid as a cloud of dust, and the beauty and force of 
 the figure come out still more strongly. When, therefore, it is 
 remembered that " the Hebrews " regarded the heavens or fir- 
 mament as including the place where birds fly — that they liken 
 it to fineness or fine cloth, that they regard it as tremulous, like 
 a tremulous curtain, and thought that it was of the nature of the 
 clouds, D''pni:^, and that the clouds were of the nature of a 
 cloud of fine dust, and might be called by the same word, it will 
 be seen that they did not consider the heavens as a solid vault, 
 but as an ether similar to the atmosphere. 
 
 That the word Rakia signifies expanse is also proved by 
 Jewish tradition. It is that sense which appears when the Jews 
 began to write lexicons and grammars, and is preserved to this 
 
 * See the jiassage quoted below, p. 224. 
 
224 AIDS TO FAITII. [Essay V. 
 
 day. David Kimchi, iu his Booh of Roots, explains tlie word 
 Rahah first by Paras, to spread out, and lie is followed by botli 
 Spanish and German Jews, who translate Rakia expanse. 
 
 The Jewish-Spanish version has " Espandidura ;" the Jewish- 
 Gemian " Ausspreitung ;" the Pentateuch by Zunz, Arnheim, 
 and Sachs gives " Ausdehnung." The 'Jewish School and 
 Family Bible,' by Dr. Benisch, has " expanse." At the revival 
 of letters Christians learned Hebrew from the Jews, and received 
 the old Jewish interpretation "expanse." So Yatablus and 
 Peter Martyr have " Sit expansio in medio aquarum." Calvin 
 has both eztensio and expansio — " Sit extensio in medio aquarum 
 
 et fecit Dens expansionem ;" and so Sebastian Munster, 
 
 Mercerus, the Geneva French Bible of 1588, Luke Osiander, 
 1597, and Cypriano de Valera, 1G02, who has "Sea un estendi- 
 miento en medio de las agiias." And Luther, though he retained 
 the word " Veste," answering to " firmament," explains it as a 
 fine and subtile expanse. In his Commentary to verse G, he 
 says, " God takes this thick and shapeless lump of vapour, nebel 
 (nebula), created the first day out of nothing, and commands 
 
 it to spread itself out for the word Rakia signifies among 
 
 the Hebrews something extended and spread out, and comes 
 from Raka, to spread out .... when, therefore. Job says, xxxvii. 
 18, ' The heavens are made firm as with iron,' he has respect not 
 to the material, but to the Word, which can make the softest 
 thing in nature into the strongest and the firmest, .... for we 
 
 know how subtile the air is in which we live But the 
 
 heaven is naturally still more subtile and thin." * Yatablus 
 gives a similar explanation. Having remarked that heaven is 
 by the Hebrews sometimes called Shamaim, sometimes Rakia, 
 he says, "It is distinguished into two parts, the upper part, 
 which is called ether, which is fire, and the lower part, which is 
 called air." Calvin {in he.) gives a similar interpretation. 
 "Moreover, the word Rakia comprehends not only the whole 
 region of the air, but whatever is open above us, as the word 
 heaven is sometimes understood by the Latins." Now, it is to 
 Ije remarked that these interpretations were given when the old 
 system of astronomy was still in fiishion, and received by those 
 
 Luther's ' 'Wcrkc.' Walcli. vol, i. 
 
Essay Y.] 
 
 THE MOSAIC EECORD OF CREATION. 
 
 225 
 
 who give tliese interpretations, as tlie Jewish Eabbis and the 
 Eeformers. They cannot therefore be accused of quibbling, or 
 of advocating a new interpretation to help them out of difficul- 
 ties arising from the discoveries of Copernicus and Galileo. 
 This sense continued to be received by Hebrew scholars until 
 the infection of Deistic infidelity fully influenced the minds of 
 men to make out a case of ignorance against Moses and the 
 Hebrews. It is found in Mariana, 1624; Hettinger, 1659; 
 Seb. Schmidt, 1697; Baumgarten and Eom. Teller, 1749; 
 J. C. F. Schultz, 1783 ; Dathius, 1791 ; Hgen, 1798. Even in 
 the first edition of Gesenius's 'Lexicon,' 1810-13, though he 
 says that the Hebrews looked upon heaven as solid, he explains 
 rakia, not as a solid expanse, but " Etwas ausgebreitetes." In 
 later editions he wavers, sometimes inserting, sometimes omit- 
 ting, the word " solid " or " firm.'" * 
 
 But, it may be asked, if such be the Jewish tradition, how 
 the LXX. and Vulgate came to render Malcia by aTepecojua, 
 firmamentum. The answer is, that by arepecofMa the LXX. also 
 imderstood a fine and subtile ether which held the heavenly 
 bodies in their places. Stereoma was chosen not to express 
 something itself solid, but something that strengthened or made 
 firm the heavenly bodies. They took the word in the transitive 
 sense, like /3e/3aLO)fia, 8}]\o)/xa, TrXrjpwfjLa, &c. ; and this is proved 
 by the Vulgate haYmg firmamentum, which form of word signi- 
 fies something that makes firm, like ornamentum, complementum, 
 alimentum, monumentum, &e. In this sense stereoma is else- 
 where used by the LXX., as Ezek. iv. 16 : "I will break the 
 staff" of bread, arepeoofia aprov ; " and Esther ix. 29 : " And the 
 confirmation of the letter, to re (TTepio)fj,a rrjf; eTTio-roA,?}?." x\nd 
 again Ps. xviii. 3 : "The Lord is my rock, o-repecofia fiov," 
 where the Vulgate has firmamentum meum. Tliat Jerome 
 
 * In the ' German Manual ' of 1823, 
 in the verb yp~l we find — " (1) Stam- 
 pfeu mit den Fiissen ... (2) Stampl'en, 
 breitschlagen, daher . . . {3) Ausbreiten, 
 aber nur von festen Korpern . . . Im 
 SjT. belestigen, griinden." In the Latin 
 edition of 1833 it is not found. In 
 Robinson's ti'anslation, the word " solid" 
 is found in the substantive, but not in 
 the verb. The reference to the Syriac 
 shows that the idea " firm" is not in- 
 
 cluded : Syr-*^ ii9— firniavit, stabilivit, 
 
 Aph. fundavit, pertundondo et consti- 
 pando firmavit, ut facere solent, qui 
 fundamenta petliiun jaciunt." Accord- 
 ing to this, and Gesenius is right, the 
 Syriac word does not moan to beat out 
 or ram something that is solid or firm, 
 but by ramming or beating to make 
 firm tiiat which was not firm before. 
 
226 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay V. 
 
 took iirraamentum in the same sense appears from his Com- 
 mentary on Isa. xxvi. 1, where for 711, buhvarJc, Symmachiis 
 has arepew[xa ; and Jerome remarks : " Pro eo quod nos vertimus 
 antenmrale, Symmachus firmamentum interpretatus est." And 
 again on Ezek. iv. 16, on the words " staff of bread :" "Verbum 
 Hebraiciim 3'IatteJi prima AquilaB editio haculum, secunda et 
 Symmachus Theodotioque arepeco/xa, id est firmamentum inter- 
 jtretati sunt." The Septuagint adopted the word, as Le Clerc 
 has shown in his Commentary, from the Oriental or Chaldaic 
 philosophy : '•' Hinc ccelos ]''i''"p1 RekiJiin, et ut loquuntur 
 Grpeci eorum interjiretes, arepewfjua, quod inferiora comprimerent 
 ac firmarent, deosque prtesides uniuscujusque cocli 'Ai^o^et? et 
 %vvo')(ei<i, sustentatores et coactores appellabaut." He refers in 
 proof to a passage in Thomas Stanley's ' History of Philosophy,' 
 in which, though that writer calls stereoma a solid orb, yet he 
 shows that this stei-eoma was of the nature of an ethereal fluid : * 
 " The first of the corporeal Avorlds is the empyreal (by Empy- 
 r?eimi the Clialda?ans understood not, as the Christian theolo- 
 gists, the seat of God and the blessed spirits, which is rather 
 analogous to the supreme light of the Chaldajans, but the out- 
 ward sphere of the corporeal world). It is round in figm-e, 
 according to the oracle, 'enclosing heaven ia a round figure.' 
 It is also a solid orb, or firmament ; for the same oracles call it 
 (TTepecofia. It consists of fire, Avhence named the Empyreal, or 
 as the oracles, the fiery ivorld, which fire, being immediately 
 next the incorporeal supramundane light, is the rarest and 
 subtilest of bodies, and, by reason of this subtilty, penetrates 
 into the aether, which is the next world below it, and, by medi- 
 ation of the aether, thi-ough all the material world. 
 
 " Chap. xiv. — The aether is a fire (as its name implies) less 
 subtile than the empyraeum ; for the empyra^um penetrates 
 through the a}ther; yet is the a?ther itself so subtile that it 
 2:)onctrates tlu'ough the material world. The second a^thereal 
 world is the spliere of fixed stars. . . . The third aethereal 
 Avorld is that of the planetary orb, which contains the sun, 
 moon, and planets." 
 
 According, then, to this meaning of stereoma the Mord gives 
 
 * ' History of riiilosophy,' by Thomas Stanley. CliaMaick riiilosopby, chap, 
 xiii. 
 
Essay V.] THE MOSAIC EECOED OF CREATION. 227 
 
 no countenance to tlie idea tliat tlie firmament is a solid yault, 
 callable of sustaining an ocean of water above it. On the con- 
 trary, it conveys the idea of a fine, subtle fluid pervading space, 
 and agrees, therefore, with the Biblical usage, which makes it 
 an expanse extending from the earth to the heavenly bodies, in- 
 cluding the airy space in which birds fly. 
 
 Having thus shown, from the usage of the Biblical w^-iters, 
 the uniformity of the Jewish tradition and the LXX., that the 
 meaning of Rahia is an expanse, not a solid vault, the fiction of 
 " an ocean of water above it " falls of itself. That rests upon 
 the supposition of a " permanent solid vault," and is altogether 
 incompatible with the true meaning of an ethereal expanse. 
 But independently of this incompatibility, the theory of " an 
 ocean" above the firmament is a mere fiction. There is not 
 one word about it in the Bible. The sacred text says that the 
 firmament was to separate the waters which Avere under the fir- 
 mament from the waters which were above the firmament. It 
 also relates the gathering together of the waters under the fir- 
 mament and the formation of the ocean, but it says not one 
 word about the gathering together of the waters above the fir- 
 mament into an ocean or reservoir ; that is pure invention of 
 those who wish to burden upon " the Hebrews " what they are 
 entirely mnocent of. Indeed it is admitted by Gesenius and 
 others, though not noticed by the Essayist, that the Hebrews 
 knew^ better, and were acquainted with the true origin of rain. 
 Cxesenius says that the Hebrew poets describe a firmament, 
 " Super quo oceanus coelestis existat, apertis firmamenti cancellis 
 pluviam demittens in terram (Gen. i. 7, vii. 11; Ps. civ. 3; 
 cxlviii. 4) vulgarem nimirum intuitionem secuti, licet vera 
 rerum ratio iis minime incognita sit." (Vide Gen. ii. 6 ; Job 
 xxxvi. 27, 28.) He does not ascribe the fiction of an ocean to 
 the Hebrews generally, but only to the poets following popular 
 notions. It is therefore unfair to charge it upon " a Hebrew 
 Descartes," who must have been up to the science of the day. 
 
 But it is said that the Hebrews believed that heaven had 
 pillars and fomidations, that there were windows and doors in 
 heaven, on the opening of which the rain descended. With 
 equal reason might these wise interpreters say that the He- 
 brews believed that there were bottles in heaven, and that the 
 celestial ocean, or part of it, was first bottled off before the 
 
 Q 2 
 
228 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay Y. 
 
 earth coultl be supplied with raiu, or that " the waters are bound 
 up in a garment " (Prov. xxx. 4), or that the ocean has bars and 
 doors (Job xxxviii. 10, 17), or that the shadow of death and the 
 womb have doors (Job iii. 10), for all these are spoken of. If 
 these are figurative, so are the windoAvs and doors of heaven. As 
 in Job xxxviii. 37, " \V^ho can number the clouds in wisdom ? or 
 who can stay the bottles of heaven ?" bottles are parallel to and 
 explained by " clouds ;" so in Ps. Ixxviii. 23, there is a similar 
 explanatory parallelism — " Though He had commanded the 
 clouds from above, and opened the doors of heaven ;" and few 
 children in a Sunday or National school would take bottles or 
 doors literally. The common people are not so dull as Gese- 
 nius and some other intellectual wonders of the day thinlv. AVho 
 ever met a rustic, accustomed to look at the heavens, who 
 thought it was a solid vault, and that the stars Avere fixed in like 
 nails ? The common people are not so silly : they judge by 
 what they see. They do not see a solid vault, but they see the 
 lark and the eagle soaring aloft in the au-, and they think that 
 all beyond is just alike. They never dream of a solid obstacle 
 in the Avay. That solid vaidt savours much more of the fancy 
 of the poet adding a trait of gTandeur to a description, or of the 
 school of the philosopher inventing a theory to account for the 
 motions of the heavenly bodies, than of the practical common 
 sense of the common people. The most uneducated know very 
 well the connexion betAveen clouds and rain, and in this the 
 HebreAYs Avere not behind other people. The tAvo passages 
 pointed out by Gesenius — Gen. ii. 6, and Job xxxvi. 27, 28 — 
 prove that the Hebrews knew the connexion betAveeu evapora- 
 tion and rain, especially the latter. "For he maketh small 
 the drops of Avater ; they pour doAvn rain accordmg to tlie 
 vapour thereof, Avhich the clouds do drop and distil upon man 
 abundantly." The HebrcAv language has various AAords for 
 " cloud " or '• clouds ;" they are all found in connexion Avith 
 rain. Thus, Gen. ix. : " When I bring a cloud, ]2y, over the 
 earth, my boAV shall be seen in the cloud." The clouds might 
 excite ai^prehension of another deluge ; the bow dispels it. 
 Deborah Avas able to tell hoAv, Avhen the Lord Avent out of Seir, 
 " the eartli trembled, and the heavens ch-oppcd (distilled) ; the 
 clouds, DU^, also dropped Avater." (Judges v. 4.) In 1 Kings 
 xviii. 44, 45, the little cloud, 2y, rising from the sea, Avas re- 
 
Essay V.] THE MOSAIC RECORD OF CREATION. 229 
 
 cognized by Elijali as a sign of coming rain; and when the 
 heavens were black with clouds and wind, " a great rain " fol- 
 lowed. Solomon says (Prov. iii. 20), " By his knowledge the 
 depths are broken up, and the clouds, □"'pn^, drop down dew," 
 which reads very like a commentary upon Gren. vii. 11, "the 
 fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of 
 heaven were opened." These are only a few specimens of the 
 many passages that bear upon the subject ; but sufficient to show 
 that " the Hebrews " knew very well that rain did not come 
 from a celestial ocean, through windows and doors, nor yet from 
 bottles in the heavens, but from the clouds. Indeed, the con- 
 nexion between the two furnished materials for the proverb, 
 " Clouds, S''^i''li'J, and wind, and no rain ; such is the man 
 whose promise of a gift is a lie." (Prov. xxv. 14.) 
 
 But though there be no ocean above the firmament, may 
 there not have been, may there not still be, waters above the 
 firmament ? Such was the opinion of the learned F. Von 
 Meyer, adopted by Kurtz in his first edition of ' Bible and 
 Astronomy,' and lately advocated by Delitsch. That such a 
 supposition is not unscientific, appears from Dr. Whewell's 
 ' Theory of the Solar System- :' — " The planets exterior to Mars, 
 Jupiter, and Saturn especially, as the best known of them, ap- 
 pear, by the best judgment which we can form, to be spheres of 
 water and of aqueous vapour, combined, it may be, with atmo- 
 spheric air . . . Can we see any physical reason for the fact, 
 which appears to us probable, that all the water and vapour of 
 the system is gathered in its outward parts ? It would seem 
 that we can. Water and aqueous vapoiu' are driven off and re- 
 tained at a distance by any other source of heat. ... It was, 
 then, agreeable to the general scheme, that the excess of water 
 and vapour should be packed into rotating masses, such as are 
 Jupiter and Saturn, Uranus and Neptune. . . . And thus the 
 vapour, which would otherwise have wandered loose about the 
 atmosphere, was neatly Avound into balls, which again M-ere kept 
 in their due place by being made to revolve in nearly circular 
 orbits about the sun." Perhaps, when science kno^vs a little 
 more about the ethereal medium which fills space, and in which 
 the heavenly bodies move, it may also learn something more 
 about " this water and aqueous vapour," and be better able to 
 understand the Mosaic statement about the waters above the 
 
230 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay V. 
 
 firmament. But, however that be, Biblical usage, Je^Yish tra- 
 dition, the reason that moved the LXX. to adopt stereoma, and 
 the Vulgate firmamentum, the cm-rent of Protestant interpreta- 
 tion until a recent date, concur in proving that " the Hebrews " 
 did not believe in a solid heaven, like the brass or iron heaven 
 of the heathens, but in an expanse of something like the atmo- 
 spheric air.* This is not contrary, but rather agreeable to the 
 discoveries of uiodern science, wliich attributes the retardation 
 of the heavenly bodies to some resisting medium, and light to 
 the undulations of some subtile fluid. 
 
 16. Veese 27. Creation of one human pair. — This subject has 
 been so fully discussed by Prichard that it is not necessary to 
 enter upon it here.t It may be well, however, to notice a 
 statement in ' Essays and Eeviews ' which says that the original 
 formation of only one pair of human beings is taught only in 
 the second chapter, and not in the first. " Man is said to have 
 been created male and female, and the narrative contains 
 nothing to show that a single pair only is intended." J " It is in 
 the second narrative of creation that the formation of a single 
 man out of the dust of the earth is described, and the omission 
 to create a female at the same time is stated to have been 
 repaired by the subsequent formation of one from the side of the 
 man." — Note in ' Essays and Reviews,' p. 222. But the text in 
 Gen. i., if carefully examined, proves that only one jiair of 
 human beings is intended, and that the formation of the two 
 was not simultaneous. In verse 20 we read, " And God said, 
 Let us make man (Adam without article) in our image, after 
 our likeness, and let them have dominion," etc. Here the 
 language is indefinite. It refers to the whole human race. But 
 
 * The threat, Lcvit. xxvi. 19, " I will 
 make your heaven like the iron, and 
 your earth like the brass," also shows 
 that the Hebrews as little looked upon 
 the heavens as liard and solid, as they 
 believed the eartli to be brass. 
 
 t Prichard sums up his argiunent 
 thus : — " On the whole it appears that 
 the information deduced from tliis 
 foiuth method of inquiry is as satisfac- 
 tory ns we could expect, and is sulB- 
 cient to confirm, and indeed by itself to 
 establish, the inference that the human 
 
 fore, by a second inference, but one 
 race. It will, I appreliend, be allowed 
 by those who have attentively followed 
 tliis investigation of particulars, that 
 the diversities in physical character be- 
 longing to difierent races present no 
 material obstacle to the opinion that 
 all nations sprang from one original, a 
 result which plainly follows from the 
 foregoing consideration." ('Researches 
 into the Piiysical History of 3>Iankind,' 
 bv James Cowles Prichard, M.D., vol. 
 ii'. p. 589.) 
 
 kind contains but one species, and there- \ J Cf. ' Essays and Reviews. 
 
Essay V.] THE MOSAIC RECORD OF CREATION. 231 
 
 then follows, "And God created tlie man (Adam, with the 
 article) in his image, in the image of God created Ho him : male 
 and female created He them." Here the language is definite, 
 " the man," and in the first half of the verse the pronoun is in 
 the singular number, and the masculine gender, " In the image 
 of God created He him." If the author had intended briefly to 
 have stated that at first only one human being, and that one the 
 male, was created, what other language could he have em- 
 ployed ? Then, having spoken in the singular number, and the 
 masculine gender, he as briefly but clearly describes the subse- 
 quent distinction into sexes. "Male and female created He 
 them." The plan of this chapter forbad his entering into the 
 detail of the creation of woman, just as much as it hindered him 
 from describing the varieties of herbs or trees, or fowls or fishes, 
 or of beasts of the earth and cattle. As he merely says that 
 God created them, so here, after the mention of " the man," he 
 just notices the fact that God created them male and female ; 
 but in that very notice ho implies that there is something- 
 peculiar, for with regard to fish or beasts or cattle he does not 
 mention that God created them male and female, or, as it may 
 be rendered, "a male and a female." With regard to man, 
 short as is the notice, he does relate, first, that " in the image 
 of God created He him," that is one male ; and then " male and 
 female created He them." Even according to the opinion of 
 those who make the first and second chapters of Genesis two 
 accounts, written by two authors, the fifth chapter was written 
 by the author who wrote the first chapter (the Elohist, as the}'' 
 say). But in the fifth chapter the creation of one pan* only is 
 plainly implied. " This is the book of the generations of Adam. 
 In the day that God created Adam, in the likeness of God 
 created He him ; male and female created He them ; and blessed 
 them, and called their name Adam, in the day when they were 
 created. And Adam lived an hundred and thirty years," etc. 
 In all this Adam is one person, and yet the first and second 
 verses are a recapitulation of chapter i. 26, 27, in the very words 
 of those verses. Therefore in i. 27, the author took Adam as 
 one individual male human being, as Knobel fairly admits in 
 his commentary on chap. v. 1-5 : — 
 
 "Adam is here a proper name, as iii. 17 The author 
 
 designedly repeats the statements of i. 27, 28, as his pm-pose is 
 
232 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay Y. 
 
 here to narrate liow tlie first human pair propagated the species 
 by generation, and brought forth chikh-en of the same foim 
 Avhieh they themselves had received at the creation from God. 
 The passage teaches that the Elohist, who here attri- 
 butes to his Adam the begetting of a son in his 130th year, 
 also believed in one first human pair, though in i. 26 he had not 
 plainly said so." 
 
 On this point, therefore, there is no .discrepancy between the 
 first and second chapters. Tiie first chapter, as is proved by 
 V. 26, 27, relates, first, the creation of Adam, and then mentions 
 the distinction of male and female. The second chapter gives 
 the particulars, first, of the creation of Adam, then of the crea- 
 tion of Eve. 
 
 17. Thus a comparison of the actual statements of Moses 
 with the discoveries and conclusions of modern science is so 
 far from shaking, that it confirms our faith in the accm'acy 
 of the sacred narrative. We are astonished to see how the 
 Hebrew Prophet, in his brief and rapid outline sketched 3000 
 years ago, has anticipated some of the most wonderful of recent 
 discoveries, and can ascribe the accuracy of his statements and 
 language to nothing but inspiration. Moses relates how God 
 created the heavens and the earth at an indefinitely remote 
 period before the earth was the habitation of man — geology 
 has lately discovered the existence of a long prehuman period. 
 A comparison with other scriptures shows that tlie '" heavens " 
 of Moses include the abode of angels, and the place of the 
 fixed stars, which existed before the earth. Astronomy pomts 
 out remote worlds, whose light began its journey long before 
 the existence of man. Moses declares that the earth was or 
 became covered with water, and Mas desolate and empty. Geo- 
 logy has found by investigation tliat the primitive globe was 
 covered with an uniform ocean, and that there was a ]ong azoic 
 period, during wliich neither plant nor animal could live. 
 Moses states that there w^as a time when the eartli A\as not 
 dependent upon the sun for light or heat, when, therefore, there 
 could be no climatic cUfferences. Geology has lately verified 
 this statement by finding tropical plants and animals scattered 
 over all parts of the earth. ]\[oses aftirms that the sun, as well 
 as the moon, is only a light-holder. Astronomy declares that 
 the sun itself is a non-luminous body, dependent for its light on 
 
Essay V.] THE MOSAIC riECORD OF CREATION. 233 
 
 a luminous atmosphere. Moses asserts that the earth existed 
 before the sun was given as a himinary. Modern science pro- 
 poses a theory which explains how this was possible. Moses 
 asserts that there is an exj^anse extending from earth to distant 
 heiglits, in which the heavenly bodies are placed. Kecent dis- 
 coveries lead to the supposition of some subtile fluid medium 
 in which they move. Moses describes the process of creation 
 as gradual, and mentions the order in which living things 
 appeared, plants, fishes, fowls, land-animals, man. By the 
 study of nature geology has arrived independently at the same 
 conclusion. Where did Moses get all this knowledge? How 
 was it that he Avorded his rapid sketch with such scientific 
 accuracy? If he in his day possessed the knowledge which 
 genius and science have attained only recently, that knowledge 
 is superhuman. If he did not possess the knowledge, then 
 his pen must have been guided by superhuman wisdom. Faith 
 has, therefore, nothing to fear from science. So far the records 
 of nature, fairly studied and rightly interpreted, have proved 
 the most valuable and satisfying of all commentaries upon the 
 statements of Scripture. The ages required for geological deve- 
 lopment, the infinity of worlds and the immensity of space 
 revealed by astronomy, illustrate, as no other note or comment 
 has ever done, the Scripture doctrines of the eternity, the omni- 
 potence, the wisdom of the Creator. Let then Science pursue 
 her boundless course, and multiply her discoveries in the heavens 
 and in the earth. The believer is persuaded that they will 
 only show more clearly that " the Avords of the Lord are pure 
 Avords, as silver tried in a furnace of fire, purified seven times." 
 Let Criticism also continue her profoundly interesting and im- 
 portant Avork. Let her explore, sift, analyse, scrutinize, Avith all 
 her poAvers, the documents, language, and contents of Scripture, 
 and honestly tell us the results. Since the day Avhen Laurentius 
 Valla exposed the fiction of the Imperial donation, she has 
 contributed much to the removal of error, and the advancement 
 of literary, patristic, and historic truth ; and Divine revelation 
 has also been illustrated by her labours. It might be shown that 
 even the hostile and sceptical have involuntarily helped in the 
 confirmation of the Christian verity, and that CA^en their labours 
 cannot be neglected Avithout loss. But the student must carefully 
 distinguish between the speculations of individuals and the ascer- 
 
234 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay Y. 
 
 tained, settled results of criticism. The theory of any one indi- 
 vidual, however learned, laborious, and genial, is only an opinion, 
 perhaps only one of a chaos of conflicting opinions, wliere sound 
 criticism has found no sure footing. Tlie settled results are those 
 which, after severe testing, have been unanimously accepted by 
 the competent, the sober, and the judicious. The former may 
 be popular for a while, and seem to shake the faith ; but they 
 are gradually overthrown by the progress of critical investiga- 
 tion, and take their j)lace in the record of things that were. 
 The history of the last hmidred years, since modern criticism 
 took its rise, is sufficient to quiet the believer's mind as to the 
 ultimate result. It tells of theory after theory, propomided by 
 the critics of the day, first applauded, then controverted, then 
 rejected, just like the philosophic systems of the same joeriod, 
 and yet a gradual advance from anti-Christian hostility to an 
 efifort after scientific impartiality, and a large amount of positive 
 gain for the right interpretation of Scripture and the confirma- 
 tion of the old Christian belief. Faith, therefore, feels no more 
 fear of Criticism than of Science, being assm-ed that neither can 
 " do anything against the truth, but for the truth." 
 
ESSAY YI. 
 
 ON THE GENUINENESS AND AUTHENTICITY 
 OF THE PENTATEUCH. 
 
CONTENTS OF ESSAY YI. 
 
 1. Historic character of Cliristiauity 
 
 — attacks upon it— grounds of the 
 attacks lie in speculation rather 
 than in discovery. 
 
 2. The Pentateuch specially assailed 
 
 — object of the paper, to defend 
 {a) the genuineness of the Pen- 
 tateuch, and ip) its authenticity. 
 
 3. Fu-st argument in favour of the 
 
 genuineness, the fact that the 
 work has come to us under the 
 name of Moses. 
 
 4. Second argument, from the archaic 
 
 character of the narrative and of 
 the language. 
 
 5. Third argmnent, from the intimate 
 
 acquaintance with Egypt shown 
 by the author, 
 
 6. Fourth argument, from the know- 
 
 ledge which he displays of the 
 Sinaitic peninsula and of the old 
 races inhabiting Canaan. 
 
 7. Fifth argument, from the fact that 
 
 the Pentateuch professes to be the 
 work of Moses— the fact admitted 
 by Kationalists. 
 
 8. Sixth argument, from the uniform 
 
 and consistent witness of the ear- 
 liest Jewish writers. 
 
 9. Seventh argument, from the testi- 
 
 mony of the Heathen. 
 
 10. Objection of De Wette, from the 
 
 literary perfection of the work, 
 answered— Perfection not so great 
 as supposed— Actual literary nie- 
 lit not very sur2)rising. 
 
 11. Objection from particulr.v passages, 
 
 said to imply a later date— Fn-st 
 answer. 
 
 12. Second answer. 
 
 13. Objection from the supposed intro- 
 
 ducfiou of tlie Levitical system at 
 a time long sulisccjueiit to Moses 
 — Groiuids of the objection dis- 
 proved. 
 
 14. Mosaic authorsliip not having been 
 
 disproved, no need to examine the 
 other theories of the authorship — 
 number of such theories very 
 great. 
 
 15. Importance of proving the genuine- 
 
 ness. 
 
 IG, Explanation of the exact sense in 
 which it is maintained that Moses 
 was tlie author of the Pentateuch. 
 
 17, Authenticity of the Pentateuch as- 
 sailed on six princijial points. — 
 I. The Chronology, which is re- 
 garded as too narrow — (n) on ac- 
 coimt of the sujiposed early foun- 
 dation of a mouaichy in Egyj^t — • 
 {h) on account of the time requi- 
 site for the fonnation of language. 
 Examination of these two argu- 
 ments.— H. The Flood thought to 
 have ))een partial, from the ab- 
 sence of a universal tradition of it 
 — The tradition proved to be, in 
 one sense, universal. — III. The 
 Ethnolog}' of Gen. x. regarded as 
 incorrect— Proofs of its correctness 
 on the i^oints to which exception 
 has been taken. — IV. The early 
 chapters of Genesis regarded as 
 mythic— (o) on account of the re- 
 semblance of the two genealogies 
 of the Cainites and the Sethites — 
 {h) on account of the significance 
 of the names employed — (c) ou 
 account of the fact that the' early 
 liistoiy of other nations uniformly 
 runs up into mytli— Examination 
 of these arguments. — V. The lon- 
 gevity of the Patriarclis considered 
 to be impossible— Possiliility nut 
 denied by physiology— Fact uf lon- 
 gevity strongly attested by history. 
 —VI. Tlie time assigned to the 
 .sojourn in Egypt supposed to be 
 incorrect— '« as ))eing insutHcient 
 for tlic immense increase in the 
 niniilM.'rs of the Israelites— tj as 
 l>eing exactly doul)le of tlie pre- 
 ceding period — Examination of 
 tliese arguments. 
 
 IS. Sununary, 
 
ON THE GENUINENESS AND AUTHENTICITY 
 OF THE PENTATEUCH. 
 
 ' AoKet ovi' Tiki'iov rj to ^^ktv tov tvuvtos eivai tj dpxr].^ — AriSTOTLE. 
 
 1. Christianity is au historic religion. It claims to be a rea- 
 sonable belief; but it does not base itself iijoon Reason. Its foun- 
 dation is laid on tlie rock of Fact. God's actual dealings with 
 the world from its creation to the full establishment of the 
 Christian Church constitute its subject matter, and form the 
 ground out of which its doctrines sjDring. The mystic spirit, 
 which, despising the grossness and materiality of facts, seeks 
 to form to itself a subhmated and idealized religion in which 
 events and occurrences shall have no place, leaves the fixed and 
 stable land to float off upon an interminable ocean of shifting 
 and changing fancies, substituting in reality for the truth of 
 God the mere thoughts, feelings, and opinions of the individual. 
 If we are to maintain a Faith worthy of the name, we must 
 plant our feet firmly on the solid ground of historic fact, and 
 not allow ourselves to be shaken from that ground by unproved 
 assertions, hoAvever boldly made, or however often repeated. 
 We must give little heed to doubts, which may readily be started 
 in connexion with any narrative, and demand of those who 
 attack our belief, not mere ingenious speculations as to the past, 
 but proof that the authoritative account, which has come down 
 to us as part and parcel of our religion, and which even they 
 profess after a certain sort to venerate, is devoid of literal truth, 
 before we follow them in their endeavours to extract from the 
 record some other sort of truth — not '•' rigidly historic " * — but 
 ideal, poetic, symbolical. We need not, we must not, shut our 
 eyes to any new discoveries, be they scientific or historical ; but 
 we are bound to examine the so-called discoveries narrowly, to 
 see exactly to what they amount, and then to ask ourselves. 
 
 Bunsen, ' Egypt's Place in Universal History,' vol. iv. p. 383. 
 
238 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay YI. 
 
 " Do they positively conflict -uitli the plaia historic sense of 
 Scripture or no?" If they do, it will become a question (when 
 the presumed discovery is historical) of relative credibility. 
 The Avitnesses contradict one another — which of them shall 
 Ave believe? But more often it wall be found that there is 
 no such contradiction — that all which the discoveries have 
 establi^ied, is compatible Avith the Scriptural narrative, and 
 that the contradiction arises only Avhere the conjectm-es and 
 liypotheses of speculative minds have been superadded to the 
 facts Avitli Avhich they profess to deal. Where this is the case, 
 there need be no hesitation. " Yea, let God be true, and every 
 man a liar ! " Human speculations and conjectures, once seen 
 to be such, cannot trouble the faith of a Christian man. Facts 
 are stubborn things, and rightly command our respect ; hypo- 
 theses are airy nothings, and may safely be disregarded and 
 despised. 
 
 2. Among the numerous attempts made to disturb men's faith 
 in the present day, few have seemed more plausible, or have 
 met Avith a greater amount of success, than those Avhich have 
 grouped themselves about the Pentateuch, the foundation stone 
 (m AAdiich the rest of the Bible is built. The genuineness of 
 the work, though it has not lacked defenders,* has been per- 
 tinaciously denied, both in Germany and in America ; while 
 the authenticity of the narrative has been assailed in various 
 respects. It Avill be the aim and object of the present paper 
 to show, first that there is no sufficient reason to doubt the 
 Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, and, secondly, that there 
 are no sufficient historical grounds for questioning the authen- 
 ticity of the narrative. 
 
 3. It is a general rule of literary criticism that, except for 
 special reasons, books are to be assigned to the authors whose 
 names they bear. In profane literature this rule is considered 
 sufficient to determine the authorship of ninety-nine out of 
 every hundred volumes in our libraries. Most men, who 
 write Avorks of any importance, claim them during their life- 
 time ; their claim, if undisputed, is accepted by the Avorld at 
 large ; and nothing is more difficult than to change the belief, 
 
 * See especially the work of Jalin, I -which has been translated for Clarke's 
 •Acchtheit des Pentatenchs,' and Hii- | 'Theological Library.' 
 vcmick's more recent ' Einleitung,' | 
 
Essay VT.] THE PENTATEUCH. 239 
 
 which is thus engendered, subsequently. Every work therefore 
 which comes down to us as the production of a particular 
 author is to be accepted as liis production, unless strong grounds 
 can be produced to the contrary. The 07ius j^rohandi lies with 
 the person who denies the genuineness ; and, unless the argu- 
 ments adduced in proof are very weighty, the fact of reputed 
 authorship ought to overpower them. Sound criticism has 
 generally acquiesced in this canon. It raises an important pre- 
 sumption in favour of the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, 
 anterior to any proof of the fact to be derived from internal 
 evidence, or from the testimony of those who had special oj^por- 
 tunities of knowing. 
 
 4. The internal evidence in favour of the Mosaic authorship 
 is, briefly, the following : — The book is exactly such a one as a 
 writer of the age, character, and circumstances of Moses might 
 be expected to produce. Its style is archaic. The reader, even 
 of the English version, feels that he is here brought into contact 
 with a greater simplicity, a more primitive cast of thought and 
 speech, than he meets with in any of the other sacred writings. 
 The life described, the ideas, the characters, have about them 
 the genuine air of primitive antiquity. The student of the 
 original observes that the very words themselves, the construc- 
 tions, the gi-ammatical forms, bear similar traces of a remote 
 authorship, being often such as had become obsolete even before 
 the composition of the Book of Joshua.* It is impossible to 
 exhibit this argument popularly in the present condition of 
 Hebrew scholarship among us. Its weight, however, is suffi- 
 ciently shown by the pressure which it has exerted upon the 
 controversy in Germany, where the opponents of the Mosaic 
 authorship are constrained to allow that a considerable number 
 of " archaisms " do in fact exist in the Pentateuch, and to account 
 for them by the supposition that genuine Mosaic documents 
 were in the hands of its "compiler," from which he adopted 
 the forms and words in question ! f This is surely about as 
 probable as that a modern French author, who made use of 
 Froissart among his materials, should adopt his spelling, and 
 form his sentences after his type. 
 
 * See .Tahn in Bengel's ' Arcliiv,' i ticity of the Five Books of Moses,' pp. 
 
 vol. ii., pp. 578 et seqq. ; and Fritzsche, | 6 at seqq. 
 
 'Acchthcit (ler Biicher Mosis,' pp. 174 I t I>e Wette, ' Eiuleitimg in d. alt. 
 
 et seqq. Compare also Marsh's 'Autben- ' Test.,' § 163. 
 
2-10 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay VI. 
 
 5. Again, the writer shows a close acquaintauce with Egypt, 
 its general aspect, its history, geography, maimers, customs, pro- 
 ductions, and language, which would be natural to one so cii'- 
 cumstauced as Moses, but which cannot be shown to belong 
 naturally, or even probably, to any later Israelite, down to the 
 time of Jeremiah. No doubt there was extensive commercial 
 and political intercourse between Egypt and Judaea in the age 
 of Solomon, and in the later period of the Jewish kingdom ; but 
 such intercourse, even if direct (of which we have no proof), 
 would fail to give that exact historic knowledge of what would 
 then liave become a remote era, which the writer of the Pen- 
 tateuch displays at every turn in the most easy and natural 
 manner possible. Laborious attempts have been made to 
 invalidate this argument ; and one Avriter* has gone so far as to 
 assert that in many respects the author of the Pentateuch 
 shows a want of acquaintance with the customs of Egypt, such 
 as is sufficient to prove that he ^Yas not Moses. But this 
 audacity has had the happy effect of calling forth a reply, which 
 has established beyond all possibility of refutation the exacti- 
 tude and vast extent of the author's Egyptian knowledge, Avhich 
 is now allowed on all hands. The work of Hengstenberg, 
 "Aegypten und Mose," must be carefully read for the full 
 weight of this reasoning to be appreciated.t Its argument 
 does not admit of compression, since it depends mainly on the 
 multiplicity and minuteness of its detail ; but the impression 
 which it leaves may be stated, briefly, as follows : — That either 
 a person born and bred in Egypt about the time of the Exodus 
 wrote tlie Pentateuch, or that a writer of a later age elaborately 
 studied the history and antiquities of the Egyp)tians_ for the 
 , purpose of imposing a forgery on his countrymen, and that he 
 did this with such skill and success that not even modern 
 criticism, with its lynx-eyed perspicacity, and immense know- 
 ledge of the past, can detect and expose the fraud or point 
 out a single place in which the forger stumbled through 
 ignorance. 
 
 * Von BoLlcn. 
 
 t This work has been translated 
 into English by Mr. E. D. C. Bobbins, 
 of tlie Theological Seminary, Andover, 
 United States ; and a reprint of this 
 
 translation, with additional notes, form- 
 ed tile third volume of Clarke's 'Bibli- 
 cal Cabinet,' New Series (Edinburgh, 
 1845). 
 
Essay VI.] THE PENTATEUCH. 241 
 
 6. To this it must be added, that the writer, who is thus 
 intimately acquainted with the land and people of Egypt, is 
 also fully aware of all the pecuhar features of the Sinaitic 
 peninsula;* and further (and more especially) that he has a 
 knowledge of the ancient condition and primitive races of 
 Canaan, which must have been quite beyond the reach of 
 any one who lived much later than Moses. The Eephaim, 
 Zuzim, Emim, Horim, Avim, and Anakim, who appear as 
 powerful races in the Pentateuch, have either perished or 
 been reduced to insignificance by the time of the Judges. 
 The writer of the Pentateuch, however, knows their several 
 countries, their designations in the mouths of different nations, 
 their cities, and the peoples by whom they were severally 
 conquered.! Similarly, he acquaints us with the ancient 
 names of a number of Canaanitish towns, which had been 
 superseded by fresli titles long before the Exodus.| All this 
 is natural enough, supposing that the work was composed by 
 Moses ; but it would be very forced and artificial in a writer 
 of a later age, even if we could suppose such a 'svriter to have 
 any means of acquiring the information, 
 
 7. Further, the Pentateuch j^rof esses to be the work of Moses. 
 Few books comparatively tell us by whom they are written. 
 Neither Joshua, nor Judges, nor Ruth, nor the Books of Samuel, 
 nor Kings, nor Chronicles, nor Esther, nor the first three Gospels, 
 nor the Acts, nor the 'Commentaries' of Caesar, nor the 
 ' Anuals,' or ' Histories,' of Tacitus, nor the * Hellenics ' of Xeno- 
 phon, nor Plato's ' Dialogues,' nor Aristotle's ' Philosophical 
 Works,' nor Plutarch's ' Lives,' nor at least nine-tenths of the 
 other remains of ancient literature, contain within them any 
 statements showing by whom they were written. Authorship 
 generally is mere matter of notoriety ; and usually the best 
 evidence we have for it, beyond common repute, is the declara- 
 tion of some writer, later by two or three centuries, that the 
 person to whom a given work is assigned, composed a book 
 
 * Stanley, * Sinai and Palestine,' pp. 
 20-24. 
 
 t Gen. xiv. 5, 6; Num. siii. 28; 
 Dent. ii. 10-23. 
 
 X As Mamre, -which became first 
 Kirjath-arba (Josh. xiv. 15;, and then 
 Hebron ; Btla, which became Zoar 
 
 (Gen. xiv. 2) ; Enmishpat, which be- 
 came Kadesli (ib. ver. 7 ) ; Hazezon- 
 Tamar, which became Engedi (ib. ; 
 compare 2 Chron. xx. 2); and Galeed, 
 which became Mizpab (Gen. xxxi. 48, 
 49). 
 
 B 
 
242 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay \l. 
 
 answering in its subject and its general cliaracter to tlie work 
 whicli we find passing under his name. But occasionally we 
 liave evidence of a higher order. Some writers formally name 
 themselves as the authors of their works at the beginning, or 
 at the close, or in the course of their narrative.* Others, 
 without a distinct formal announcement, let us see, by the mode 
 or matter of their narration, wdio the author is, usiiig the 
 first person, or mentioning facts of which they only could be 
 cognisant, or otherwise implying, without directly asserting, 
 their authorship. This last is the case of the Pentateuch. The 
 author does not formally announce himself, but by the manner 
 in which he writes, implies that lie is Moses. This is so clear 
 and palpable, that even the antagonists of the genuineness are 
 forced to allow it.f " The author of the last four books," says 
 one, " wishes to be taken for Moses." " The WTiter of Deutero- 
 nomy," says another, " would have men think that his whole 
 book is composed by Moses." They do not indeed admit the 
 conclusion, that what is thus claimed and professed must be 
 true ; but, on the contrary, maintain that the actual writer lived 
 many centuries after the great Legislator. Apparently they do 
 not see that, if their views are correct, the whole value of the 
 Avork is lost — that it becomes a mere impudent fraud, utterly 
 unworthy of credit, which cannot reasonably be attached to any 
 statements made by one who would seek to palm on the world 
 a gross and elaborate deception. If a work has merely gone 
 accidentally by a wrong name, the discovery of its spuriousness 
 need not seriously affect its authenticity ; but if the >\Titer has 
 set himself to personate another man in order to obtain for his 
 statements a weight and authority to wliich they would not 
 otherwise be entitled, the detection of the fraud carries with 
 it the invalidation of the document, by wholly destroying oui* 
 confidence in the integrity of the author. JVIodern nationalism 
 shrinks from these conclusions. It would degrade the Sacred 
 Books, but it would not deprive them altogether of an historic 
 character. It still speaks of them as sacred, and as entitled 
 to our respect and reverence, Avliile it saps the foundations on 
 
 * As Ilorodotus, Thucydidcs, Isaiah, 
 St. Paul, Jesus the son of Siracli, &c. 
 
 t De Wcttc, ' Einlcitung in d. alt. 
 Test.,' § 162, d. ; Hartmann, ' For- 
 
 .soluuijxf Ti liber d. Pentateuch,' p. r)38 ; 
 Yon Bohlen, ' Die Genesis lii.'st. kriL 
 erltiut. Eiiileituug,' p. xxxviii. 
 
Essay VI.] 
 
 THE PENTATEUCH. 
 
 24J 
 
 wliicli their claim to our reverence rests, making them at 
 best the " pious frauds " of well-intentioned but unyeracious 
 religionists. 
 
 8. The external evidence of the Mosaic authorship of the Penta- 
 teuch is allowed to be extensive ; but it is said to be of little 
 worth, in the first place, because the witnesses are uncritical.*' 
 The Jews and Greeks, who, during eighteen centuries, without 
 a dissentient voice ascribed the " Book of the Law " to Moses, 
 were not acquainted with the modern Critical Analysis, which 
 claims to be an infallible judge of the age, and mode of com- 
 position, of every literary production. It is true the witnesses 
 include Apostles,t prophets,^ confessors,§ our Blessed Lord 
 Himself; || but the distance of these witnesses from the age of 
 Moses is held to iuvalidate their testimony ; 1[ or if the words of 
 One at least are too sacred to be gainsaid. He spoke (it is 
 argued) by way of accommodation, in order not to shock the 
 prejudices of the Jews. We are challenged to produce witnesses 
 near the time, and told that no evidence to the Mosaic author- 
 ship "approaches within seven centuries to the probable age 
 of Moses."** Of course, if the antiquity of the Pentateuch be 
 denied, that of the later books of the Old Testament is not 
 likely to pass unquestioned. But the challenge is really met, 
 and answered fully and fairly by an appeal to those books, 
 whicli are the only writings within the period named in which 
 any reference to Moses was to be expected. The author of 
 Joshua, by many thought to be Joshua himself, and, if not he, 
 at least one of his contemporaries, tt speaks of " the Book of the 
 Law,"j| — "the Book of the Law of Moses," §§ — a book con- 
 taining " all that Moses commanded," || |1 with " blessings and 
 cursings;" II *1[ thus entirely corresponding, so far as the descrip- 
 tion goes, to the work which has always passed under Moses' 
 name. The writer of Judges is less express ; *** but he so com- 
 
 * De Wcttc, § 1G4. 
 
 t John i. 45; 2 Cor. iii. 15. 
 
 X Dan. ix. 11 ; Mai. iv. 4. 
 
 § Acts vii. 38. 
 
 [| Matt. xix. 7, 8 ; Mark x. 3 ; xii. 26 ; 
 Luke xvi. 29 ; xxiv. 27 ; John v. 46, 
 &c. 
 
 *fi • Westminster Review,' No. xxxv., 
 p. 35. 
 
 ** Ibid. 1. s. c. 
 
 tt For proof of this, see the 'Eampton 
 
 Lectures ' for 1859, p. S3, first edition. 
 
 XX Josh. 1. 8; viii. .34. 
 
 §§ lb. viii. 31 ; xxiii. 6. 
 
 III! lb. viii. 35. 
 
 ^% Ej. ver. 34 ; compare Deut. xxvii. 
 and xxviii. Note also the quotations in 
 Josh. viii. 31, from Deut. xxvii. 5, 6 ; 
 and in Josh, xxiii. 7, from Ex. xxiii. 13. 
 
 *** Judg. ii. 15 is probably a reference 
 to Lev. xxvi. 16, 17 ; and Judg. iii. 4, 
 to the law generally. 
 
 K 2 
 
*244 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay VI. 
 
 pletely agrees in Lis account of the Hebrew institutions with 
 the Pentateuch, and so closely follows its diction in many 
 places, that a candid Rationalist* has been driven to allow, 
 that "the arranger of this book was well acquainted with 
 the Pentateuch in its entire extent." In Samuel, though the 
 Pentateuch itself is not mentioned, there are at least two clear 
 citations of it — the passage respecting " the priest's custom with 
 the people," t which follows word for word Deut. xviii. 3, and 
 that concerning the " assembling of women at the door of the 
 Tabernacle of the congregation," J wdiich is an exact repetition 
 of Ex. xxxviii. 8. In Kings and Chronicles — both probably 
 compilations made from papers contemporary with the kings 
 whose history is related — the references to the work are 
 frequent ; § and it is unhesitatingly assigned to Moses, || as 
 indeed is admitted on all hands. 
 
 It thus appears that the Pentateuch is either cited, or men- 
 tioned as the work of Moses, by almost the whole series of 
 Jev, ish historical writers from Moses himseK to Ezra. The first 
 testimony occurs within (probably) half a century of Moses's de- 
 cease, and is by a writer who may have known him personally. 
 It is rarely indeed that we have evidence of this satisfactory and 
 conclusive character with respect to the genuineness of any an- 
 cient work. 
 
 9. With regard to profane testimony, it must be allowed that 
 none of it is very ancient. But this simply results from the fact 
 that none of the earlier authors have occasion to mention the 
 Jews, or to touch the subject of their literature. The first who 
 do so — Manetho and Hecataeus of Abdera, an Egyptian and a 
 Greek — are in accordance with the native authorities, ascribin 
 the law of the Jews, which is represented as existing in a Avritten 
 form, to Moses. And the later classical writers, with but one 
 exception, are of the same opinion. 
 
 10. To this direct testimony the adversaries of the IMosaic 
 authorship are wont to oppose certain difficulties, which militate 
 (they argue) against the notion that the Avork is even of the age 
 of Moses. The most important of these is the objection of De 
 
 * Hiiitmann. 
 t 1 Sam. ii. 13. 
 X lb. ii. 22. 
 § 1 Kings ii. 3 
 
 Kings xxii. 
 
 xxiii. 3 ; 2 Chron. xxiii, IS ; xxv. 4 ; 
 XXXV. 12. 
 
 II 1 Kings ii. 3 ; 2 Kings xxiii. 25 : 
 2 Chron. xxiii. 18, &c. 
 
Essay VI.] THE PENTATEUCH. 245 
 
 Wette, tliat the book is altogether beyond the literary capabi- 
 lities of the age, containing within it every element of Hebrew 
 literature in the highest perfection to which it ever attained, 
 and thns (he thinks) necessarily belonging to the acmS and not 
 to the infancy of the nation.* Were this statement correct, we 
 should indeed have a strange phenomenon to account for, 
 though one which could not be pronounced impossible, if the 
 Divine as well as the human authorship were taken into consi- 
 deration. God might have chosen to assign to the first burst of 
 written Revelation a literary perfection never afterwards to be 
 exceeded or even equalled. He might have given to His first 
 mouthpiece, Moses, such powers of mind and such a mastery 
 over the Hebrew language as " to leave nothing for siicceediug 
 authors but to follow in his footsteps.'' The fact, however, is not 
 really so. De Wette's statement is a gross exaggeration of the 
 reality. Considered as a literary work, the Pentateuch is not 
 the production of an advanced or refined, but of a simple and 
 rude age. Its characteristics are plainness, inartificiality, absence 
 of rhetorical ornament, and occasional defective arrangement. 
 The only style which it can be truly said to bring to perfection, 
 is that simple one of clear and vivid narrative, which is always 
 best attained in the early dawn of a nation's literature, as a 
 Herodotus, a Froissart, and a Stow sufficiently indicate. In 
 other respects it is quite untrue to say that the work goes be- 
 yond all later Hebrew efforts. We look in vain through the 
 Pentateuch for the gnomic wisdom of Solomon, the eloquent de- 
 nunciations of Ezekiel and Jeremiah, or the lofty flights of 
 Isaiah. It is absurd to compare the song of Moses, as a literary 
 production, even with some of the Psalms of David, much more 
 to parallel it with Ezekiel's eloquence and Homeric variety, or 
 Isaiah's awful depth and solemn majesty of repose. In a lite- 
 rary point of view it may be questioned whether Moses did so 
 much for the Hebrews as Homer for the Greeks, or whether his 
 writings had really as great an influence on the after productions 
 of his countrymen. And if his literary greatness still surprises 
 us, if Hebrew literature still seems in his person to reach too 
 suddenly a high excellence, albeit not so high a one as has been 
 argued — let us remember, in the first place, that Moses was not. 
 
 Einleitung,' § 1G3, sub fin. 
 
246 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay VI. 
 
 any more than Homer, the first writer of his nation, but only 
 happens to be the first whose writings have come down to us. 
 ^' Visere fortes ante Agamemnona." Moses seems so great because 
 we do not possess the works of his predecessors, and so are 
 unable to trace the progress of Hebrew literature up to him. 
 Had we the " songs " of Israel,* and the " book of the wars of the 
 Lord," which he quotes,f we might find him no literary pheno- 
 menon at all, but as a writer merely on a level with others of 
 his age and nation. Again, we must not forget to take into 
 consideration the stimulus which contact with the cultivation of 
 Egypt would naturally have given to Hebrew literature during 
 the two centuries j^receding Moses. If we may trust the modern 
 decipherers of Egyjjtian papyri, literature in Egypt had reached 
 a tolerably advanced stage in the time of the eighteenth and 
 nineteenth dynasties, under one or other of which Moses was in 
 all probability born and bred. " The art of writing books was 
 invented ages before the time of Moses ;"| and had been carried 
 further in Egypt than in any other country. History, epistolary 
 correspondence, and novel-writing were known and practised ; so 
 that the composition of an extensive work possessing literary 
 merits even of a high order would be no strange thing in the 
 case of one bred up in the first circles of Egyptian society, and 
 '' learned in all the wisdom " of that ingenious people. 
 
 11. Besides this general objection, there are a certain number of 
 particular passages which, it is said, record facts later than the 
 time of Moses, and thus could not have been written by him. 
 Such are supposed to be the mention of Dan instead of Laish in 
 Gen. siv. 14 ; of Hebron instead of Kirjath-Arba or IMarare in 
 Genesis § and Numbers ;|| and the list of the kings of Edom in 
 Gen. xxxvi. Now in none of these cases is it really impossible 
 that Moses may have written the passages. The Dan intended 
 may be Dan-jaan,1[ and not Laish. Hebron may have been a 
 name of the city called also jMamre and Kirjath-Arba, within 
 the lifetime of Moses. Even the eight kings of Edom may pos- 
 sibly be a dynasty of monarchs intervening between Esau and 
 
 * Num. xxi. 17; compare Ex. xv. 1. ! § Gcu. xiii. IS; xxiii. 2, 10; xxxv. 
 
 t Num. xxi. 14. I 27, &c. 
 
 X Bunscn, ' Ei^ypt,' vol. iv. p. 384. \\ Num. xiii. 22. 
 
 Compare ' Cambridge Essays ' for 1S58, I % 2 Sam. xxiv. (5. 
 pp. 2oO-2GO. 
 
Essay VI.] THE PENTATEUCH. 247 
 
 Moses, the last of the eight being Moses' contemporary, as con- 
 jectured by Havernick.* The remarkable exj^ression, " These 
 are the kings that reigned in the land of Edom, before there 
 reigned any king over the children of Israel," may be understood 
 prophetically. Moses may have intended in the passage to 
 mark his full belief in the promises made by God to Abraham 
 and Jacob ;f that " kings should come out of their loins," a be- 
 lief which he elsewhere expresses very coniidently.| There is 
 no really valid or insuperable objection to any of these explana- 
 tions ; which may not strike us as clever or dexterous, yet which 
 may be true nevertheless ; for " Le vrai u'est j^cis toujour s le 
 vraisemhlaUe." 
 
 12. Or the right explanation may be the more commonly 
 received one — that these words, phrases, and passages, together 
 with a few others similar to them, are later additions to the text, 
 either adopted into it upon an authoritative revision, such as that 
 ascribed to Ezra, or, perhaps, accidentally introduced through 
 the mistakes of copyists, who brought into the text what had 
 been previously added, by way of exegesis, in the margin. 
 Such additions constantly occur in the case of classical writers ; 
 and there is no reason to suppose that a special providence 
 would interfere to prevent their occurrence in the Sacred 
 Volume. We '' have our treasure in earthen vessels." God 
 gives us His Eevelation, but leaves it to us to preserve it by the 
 ordinary methods by which books are handed down to posterity. 
 No doubt its transcendent value has caused the bestowal of espe- 
 cial care and attention on the transmission of the Sacred Volume ; 
 and the result is that no ancient collection has come down to us 
 nearly so perfect, or with so few corruptions and interpolations ; 
 but to declare that there are none, is to make an assertion impro- 
 bable a priori, and at variance with the actual phenomena. The 
 sober-minded in every age have allowed that the written Word, 
 as it has come down to us, has these slight imperfections, which 
 no more interfere Avith its value than the spots upon the sun de- 
 tract from his brightness, or than a few marred and stunted 
 forms destroy the harmony and beauty of Nature. 
 
 13. One other line of objection requires a few words of notice. 
 The whole Levitical system, it is sometimes said, was an after- 
 
 Einkitimg,' § 124. f Gen. xvii. 0, IG ; xxxv. 11. t Dent. xvii. 14-20. 
 
248 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay YL 
 
 growth from the real IMosaic haw, which went but little, if at all, 
 beyond the Decalogue. This is thought to be evidenced by the 
 scantiness of any traces of Leyitical worship throughout the period 
 of the Judges, and the infraction of various precepts of the cere- 
 monial law from the time of Joshua to that of Nehemiah. But it 
 has been showai* that though the Book of Judges exliibits a very 
 disordered political and religious condition of the nation, and 
 from its nature — biographical rather than historical — is likely 
 to contain but little regarding the Mosaical institutions, yet it 
 does, in point of fact, bear witness to the knowledge and prac- 
 tical existence during the period Avhereof it treats, of a very con- 
 siderable number of those usages which are specially termed 
 Levitical. The sacred character of the Levites, their dispersion 
 among the different tribes, the settlement of the High-Priesthood 
 in the family of Aaron, the existence of the Ark of the Cove- 
 nant, the power of inquiring of God and obtaining answers, the 
 irrevocability of a vow, the distinguishing mark of circumcision, 
 the distinction between clean and unclean meats, the law of the 
 Nazarite, the use of bm'ut-offerings andjpeace-offerings, the em- 
 ploAinent of trumpets as a means of obtaining Divine aid in war, 
 the impiety of setting up a king, are severally acknowledged in 
 the Book of Judges, and constitute together very good evidence 
 that the Mosaic ceremonial law was already in force, and, though 
 disregarded in many points by the'mass, was felt as binding by all 
 those who had any real sense of religion. The ritual, as a whole, 
 is clearly not of later introduction than the time of the Judges, 
 since twelve or thirteen of its main points are noted as being at 
 that time in force. Why, then, should Ave suppose, merely be- 
 cause the book is silent on the subject, that tlie other enact- 
 ments which are in the same spirit and are inextricably inter- 
 twined with these, Avere not known at the period ? It is always 
 dangerous to build on silence. Here the silence is only partial ; 
 and the half-utterance Avhich Ave have is sufficient to indicate 
 Avhat the full ansAver Avould have been, had it come witliiu the 
 scope of the Avriter to deliver it. There is thus ample reason to 
 conclude that the Levitical laAv Avas complete in all its parts 
 before the time of the Judges. 
 
 AYhat, then, shall avc say to its infractions ? Avhat to David's 
 " priests of the tribe of Judah ?" what to Solomon himself ofier- 
 ing sacrifice ? Avhat more especially to the suspension of the 
 
 * By Hiiveinick. ' Eiuleitting,' § 136. 
 
Essay VI.] 
 
 THE PENTATEUCH. 
 
 249 
 
 Feast of Tabernacles for eight hundred years from Joshua to 
 Nehemiah ? * Are they compatible -with the existence of the 
 Pentateuch at the time, and with an acknowledgment of its 
 Divine authority on. the part of those who disobeyed its injunc- 
 tions ? Even if we allow them all to be infractions,! we may 
 still answer that undoubtedly they are. An authority may be 
 acknowledged which is not obeyed. Precepts may be heard, 
 read, and known, may be as familiar as household words in the 
 mouths of persons, and yet may not be carried out in act. 
 There would be nothing more strange in David's breaking the 
 Levitical law with respect to priesthood in the case of his sons, 
 than in his infraction of the moral law respecting chastity in the 
 case of Uriah's wife. There would be no greater marvel in 
 Solomon's taking it upon himself to offer sacrrfice than in his 
 marrying wives from the forbidden nations. There would be 
 nothing harder to understand in the discontinuance after a while 
 of one of the great Mosaical feasts, than in the introduction and 
 stubborn maintenance from one generation to another of idola- 
 trous rites. The moral law, admitted to have been given by 
 Moses, was broken constantly in almost every clause ; why then 
 should infractions of the ceremonial law disprove its having 
 come from him? 
 
 14. The Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch is therefore a 
 thing which, to say the least, has not been hitherto disproved ; and 
 the ingenious attempts of the modern reconstructive criticism to 
 
 * ' Westminster Keview,' No. xxxv., 
 p. 36. The writer gives no reference, 
 except to Nehemiah viii. 17, wliich 
 sliows (he tliinks) that "for 800 years 
 from the days of Joshua to those of 
 Ezra, the Feast of Taheruacles was un- 
 known in Israel." Probably he would 
 regard " David's priests of the tribe of 
 Judah " as mentioned in 2 Sam. viii. 18, 
 where the Hebrew has D''3n3, which 
 commonly means "priests;" while for 
 " Solomon's sacriiices " we shoidd be re- 
 ferred to 1 Kings viii. 5, 62-64 ; 2 Chr. 
 v. 6 ; vii. 4, 5 ; and viii. 12. 
 
 t In point of fact, none of the in- 
 fractions need be allowed. David's 
 " priests of the tribe of Judah " are 
 probably not " priests," but " princes," 
 or "chief rulers," as our Authorized 
 Version renders. (See Buxtorf ad voc. 
 jns, andcompare Gesenius ad eaud., who 
 allows that jn3 may mean "a prince;" 
 
 though he prefers in this place to trans- 
 late "jDriests," and to understand "ec- 
 clesiastical counsellors." Note also that 
 the LXX. give avXdpxai, "chamber- 
 lains," and that in the parallel i^assage, 
 l,Clu-on. xvui. 17, the expression used is 
 V.^'} '^y. C^t^'Nin, "chief" or " fii-st 
 about the king.") With regard to So- 
 lomon's sacrifices, it is nowhere either 
 stated or implied that he sacrificed with 
 his o-wn hand. " The priests " are men- 
 tioned as present with him at the time 
 (I Kings viii. 6 ; 2 Chi'on. v. 7 ; vii. 2, 
 6), and it is most probable that he used 
 their services. Evidently he could not 
 liimself have slain the 22,000 oxen and 
 120,000 sheep of one sacrifice (1 Kings 
 viii. 63). And Nehemiah, in viii. 17, 
 probably only means that no such cele- 
 bration of the feast h'ad taken place 
 since the time of Joshua. 
 
250 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay VI. 
 
 resolve tlie work into its various elements, and to give an 
 account of the times when and the persons by whom they were 
 severally composed, even if they had no other fault, must be 
 pronounced premature ; for until it is sho^vn that the book was 
 not composed by its reputed author, the mode and time of its com- 
 position are not fit objects of research. The theological student 
 may congratulate himself that this is so, and that he is not 
 called upon to study and decide between the twenty different 
 \aews — each more complicated than the last — which Continental 
 critics, from Astruc to Bunsen, have put out on this apparently 
 inexhaustible subject. 
 
 15. It is sometimes said that questions of genumeness are 
 matters of mere idle curiosity, and that authenticity is alone of 
 importance. In an historical work especially, what we Avant to 
 know is, not by whom it is WTitten, but M'hether the narrative 
 which it contains is true. This last, no doubt, is our idtimate 
 object ; but it not unfrequently happens that, for the purpose of 
 deciding it, we have to consider the other point ; since the 
 genuineness is often the best guarantee of the authenticity. 
 How entirely would it change our estimate of Xenophon's ' Ana- 
 basis,' were we to find that it was composed under the name of 
 Xenophon by a Greek of the time of the Antonines ! No works 
 are more valuable for history than autobiographies ; and when 
 we come upon a docimient claiming any such character, it is of 
 great importance to see whether ujion examination the character 
 is sustained or no. Given the genuineness of such a work, and 
 the authenticity follows almost as a matter of course, unless it 
 can be shown that the writer is unveracious, and wished to de- 
 ceive. Rationalists have not failed to perceive the force of this 
 reasoning Avith respect to the Pentateuch; and hence their 
 laborious efforts to disprove its genuineness. Strauss remarks 
 naively enough — " The books which describe the departure of 
 the Israelites from Egypt, and their wanderings through the 
 wilderness, bear the name of Moses, who, being their leader, 
 would undoubtedly give a faithful history of these occurrences, 
 unless he designed to deceive ; and who, if his intimate connection 
 ■with Deity described in these books be historically true, was 
 likewise eminently qualified, by virtue of such connection, to 
 produce a credible history of the earlier periods." * This admis- 
 
 Lcben Jcsu,' Einleihing, § 13. 
 
Essay VI.] THE PENTATEUCH. 251 
 
 sion on tlie part of the most extreme of Kationalists is sufficient 
 to show that, at least in the case before us, it is not irrelevant 
 or unimportant to attempt to establish the genuineness of the 
 record. 
 
 16. Before the final close of this portion of the inquiry, it will 
 perhaps be best to state distinctly in what sense it is intended 
 to maintain that Moses was the author of the Pentateuch. In 
 the first place, it is not intended to assert that he was the original 
 composer of all the documents contained in his volume. The 
 Book of Genesis bears marks of being to some extent a compi- 
 lation. Moses probably possessed a number of records, some of 
 greater, some of less antiquity, whereof, under Divine guidance, 
 he made use in writing the history of mankind up to his own 
 time. It is possible that the Book of Genesis may have been, 
 even mainly, composed in this way from ancient narratives, 
 registers, and biographies, in part the property of the Hebrew 
 race, in part a possession common to that race with others. 
 Moses, guided by God's Spirit, would choose among such docu- 
 ments those which were historically true, and which bore on the 
 religious history of the human race. He would not be bound 
 slavishly to follow, much less to transcribe them, but would 
 curtail, expand, adorn, complete them, and so make them 
 thoroughly his own, infusing into them the religious tone of his 
 own mind, and at the same time re-writing • them in his own 
 language. Thus it would seem that Genesis was produced. 
 With regard to the remainder of his history, he would have no 
 occasion to use the labours of others, but would write from his 
 own knowledge. 
 
 In the second place, it is not intended to deny that the Pen- 
 tateuch may have undergone an authoritative revision by Ezra, 
 when the language may have been to some extent modernised, 
 and a certain number of parenthetic insertions may have been 
 made into the text. The Jewish tradition on this head seems to 
 deserve attention from its harmony with what is said of Ezra in 
 tlie book which bears his name.* And this authoritative revision 
 would account at once for the language not being more archaic 
 than it is, and for the occasional insertion of parentheses of the 
 nature of a comment. It would also explain the occurrence of 
 " Chaldaisms " in the text.f 
 
 * See Lord Arthur Hervey's article I Dictionary,' vol. i., p. 606. 
 on ' Ezra,' in Dr. Smith's ' Biblical | f Hirzcl, ' Do Chaklaismi Biblici 
 
252 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 TESSAT YI. 
 
 Thirdly, it is, of course, not iutended to iuelude in the Pen- 
 tateuch the last chapter of Deuteronomy, which was evidently- 
 added after Moses' death, probably by the writer of the Book of 
 Joshua. 
 
 17. Tlie authenticity of the Pentateuch has been recently called 
 in question, principally on the following points: — 1. The chro- 
 nology, which is regarded as very greatly in deficiency ; 2. The 
 account given of the Flood, which is supposed to magnify a 
 great calamity in Upper Asia into a general destniction of the 
 human race ; 3. The ethnological vicAvs, which are said to be 
 sometimes mistaken ; 4. The patriarchal genealogies, which are 
 charged with being purely mythical ; 5. The length of the lives 
 of the Patriarchs, which is thought to be simply impossible ; 
 and 6. The duration of the sojourn in Egypt, which is con- 
 sidered incompatible with the number of the Israelites on 
 entering and quitting the country. It is proposed, in the 
 remainder of tliis paper, to consider briefly these six subjects. 
 
 I. According to Baron Bunsen, the historic records of Egypt 
 reach up to the year B.C. 9085. A sacerdotal monarchy was 
 then established, and Bytis, the Thebau priest of Ammon, w^as 
 the first king. Before tliis Egypt had been republican, and 
 separate governments had existed in the different nomes. 
 Egyptian nationality commenced as early as B.C. 10,000. These 
 conclusions are vaguely said to be drawn " from Egyptian re- 
 cords," '"' or " from the monuments and other records ; "I expres- 
 sions apt to beget a belief that there is really monumental 
 evidence for them. Let us then see, in the first place, what is 
 the true basis on which they rest. 
 
 The Egyptian monuments contain no continuous chronology, 
 and no materials from which a continuous chronological scheme 
 can be framed.:}: The possibility of constructing such a scheme 
 
 origine,' pp. 5 ct scqq. Tlicre is also 
 iinother mode iu which the " Chal- 
 daisms " may be accounted for. As 
 Chaldoc and Hebrew are sister tongues, 
 liaving one common parent, the forms 
 and expressions in question may have 
 been common to both at first, but have 
 died out in the Hebrew wliile they were 
 retained in tlie Chaldee. Movers ob- 
 serves with reason : — " Aramaic forms 
 in a book are either a sign of a very 
 earhj or of a very late composition. " 
 ('Bonner Zeitschrift fiir Philosophic,' 
 
 xvi. 157.) Those in Genesis may be 
 really " Archaisms." 
 
 * ' Essays and Keviews,' p. 54. 
 
 t Bunsen's ' Egypt,' vol. iv., p. 553. 
 
 X "The history of the dynasties pre- 
 ceding the 18th,"' says ]Mr. Stuart Poole, 
 " is not told by any continuous series of 
 monuments. Except those of the 4th 
 and 12th dynasties there are scarcely 
 any records of the ago left to the pre- 
 sent d;iy." (' Biblical Dictionary,' vol. 
 i. p. 50'J.) M. Bunsen also says, in one 
 place, of the Egyptian nionuuients : — 
 
Essay VI.] 
 
 THE PENTATEUCH. 
 
 253 
 
 depends entirely npon the ontline which has been preserved to 
 us of the Sebennytic priest Manetho, who composed a history 
 of Egypt nnder the early Ptolemies. This outline is in a 
 very imperfect condition ; and the two versions of it, which we 
 find in Syncellus and in the Armenian Eusebius, differ consider- 
 ably. Still both agree in representing Egypt as governed by 
 thirty dynasties of kings from Menes to Alexander, and the sum 
 of the years which they assign to these dynasties is a little above 
 (or a little below) 5000. The monuments have proved two 
 things with respect to these lists : they have shown, in the first 
 place, that (speaking generally) they are historical — that the 
 persons mentioned were real men, Avho actually lived and 
 reigned in Egypt ; while, secondly, they have shown that 
 though all reigned in Egypt, all did not reign over the whole of 
 Egypt, but while some Avere kings in one part of the country, 
 others ruled in another. It is allowed on all hands — by M. 
 Bunsen no less than by others — that no chronological scheme of 
 any real value can be formed from Manetho's lists until it be 
 first determined, either which dynasties and monarchs were 
 contemporary, or what deduction from the sum total of the 
 dynastic years is to be made on account of contemporaneousness. 
 M. Bunsen regards this point as one which Manetho himself 
 determined, and assumes that he was sure to determine it aright. 
 He finds a statement in Syncellus,* that " Jlanetho made his 
 dynasties cover a space of 113 generations, or 3555 years ;" 
 and he accepts this statement as completely removing the diffi- 
 culty, and absolutely establishing the historic fact that the 
 accession of Menes to the crown of Egypt took place more than 
 thirty-six centuries before our era.f He then professes to follow 
 Manetho for the preceding period ; but here he distorts and 
 misrepresents him. Manetho gave his Egyptian dynasties alto- 
 gether about 30,000 years. This long space he divided, how- 
 ever, into a natural and a supernatural period. To the super- 
 natural period, during which Egypt was governed by gods, 
 demigods, and spirits, he assigned 24,925 years. To the 
 natural period, which began with Menes, he gave at any rate 
 
 " Such documents cannot indeed com- 
 pensate for the want of written history. 
 Even Chronology, its framework, can- 
 not be elicited from -them" (' Egypt,' 
 vol. i., p. 32.) 
 
 * ' Clu-onograph.' p. 52, D. 
 
 t ' Egypt,' vol. i. pp. 86-89. Lep- 
 sius, on the same grounds, and keeping 
 closer to his authority, places Menea 
 nearly 39 centuries before Christ. 
 
254 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 TESSAT VI. 
 
 not much more than 5000. M. Buusen, not content with this 
 antiquity, but determining to find (or make) a greater, changes 
 the order of Manetho's early dynasties, and by removing to a 
 higher position, Avithout authority and of his own mere fancy, 
 one which is phiinly supernatural, obtains for the natural period 
 four dynasties, covering a space of 5212 years (or, as he makes 
 it, 5462 years), which are capable of being represented as 
 human. This, then, is the mode in which the date B.C. 9085 is 
 reached. It is not obtained from the monuments, which have 
 no chronology, or at any rate none earlier than B.C. 1525. It is 
 not derived from Manetho, for it is in direct contradiction to his 
 views, more than doubling the period during which, according 
 to him, Egypt had had human kings. It is a mere theory of 
 M. Bunsen's, to square with which Manetho's lists have been 
 violently disturbed, and above 5000 years subtracted from his 
 divine to be added to his human period. 
 
 Even with respect to Menes, and the supposed date of b.c;. 
 3892 (according to Lepsius), or B.C. 3623 (according to ]\I. 
 Bunsen), for his accession, on Avhat does it in reahty depend ? 
 Not on any monumental evidence, but simply on the supposi- 
 tion that in a certain passage (greatly disputed *) of Syncellus, 
 he has correctly represented ]\Ianetho's views, and on the further 
 supposition that Manetho's views were absolutely right. But is 
 it reasonable to suppose that Manetho had data for determining 
 with such exactitude an event so remote, even if it be a real 
 event at all,t as the accession of Menes ? It is plain and pal- 
 pable, and moreover universally admitted, that between the an- 
 cient monarchy (or rather monarchies) of Egypt and the later 
 kingdom, there intervened a time of violent disturbance — the 
 period known as the domination of the Hyksos — during which 
 the native Egyptians suffered extreme oppression, and through- 
 out Egypt all was disorder and confusion. The notices of this 
 period are so vague and uncertain, that moderns dispute whether 
 
 * BiJckh in Germany, and Mons. C. 
 Miiller in France, have disputed M. 
 Bunsen's conclusions from tlie passage 
 of Syncellus. The latter thinks that it 
 is a Pseudo-Manetho to whom Syncellus 
 refers. The former regards the passage 
 as corrupt, and suspects that Annianus 
 was quoted, not Manetho. 
 
 t "Whether Menes was an historic per- 
 sonage at all may reasonably be doubted. 
 
 Tt is not protended that ho left any mo- 
 nmnonts. As a name closely resembling 
 his is found in the earliest traihtiuns of 
 various nations, e. g. Menu in India, 
 Minos in Crete, Mam's in Phrygia, 
 Manes in Lydia, and Mannus in Ger- 
 many, there is at least reason to suspect 
 that ho belongs to myth rather than to 
 history. 
 
Essay VI.j THE PENTATEUCH. 2y5 
 
 it lasted 500, GOO, 900, or 2000 years.* Few monuments be- 
 long to it. It is extremely doubtful whether an Egyptian of 
 Manetho's age, honestly investigating the records of the past, 
 could have carried on chronology, with any approach to exactness, 
 beyond the commencement of the eighteenth dynasty, which 
 effected the expulsion of the Hyksos or Shepherd kings. From 
 that time Egypt had been united, and had been a tolerably settled 
 monarchy. Previously, the country had been divided into a mul- 
 titude of states, sometimes more, sometimes fewer in number, 
 each knowing very little of the rest, all inclined to magnify their 
 own duration and antiquity, and none able effectually to check 
 the others. Let it be granted that Manetho honestly endea- 
 voured to collect and arrange the lists of kings in the several 
 states among which Egypt had been parcelled out. What a 
 task was before him! Eoyal monuments, or dynastic lists 
 of better or worse authority, might give him the names of 
 the monarchs and the number of years that each had borne 
 the royal title. But as "association" was widely practised 
 in Egypt — two, three, and even more kings occupying the 
 throne together — it would have been a work of extreme difQ- 
 culty, without full and detailed records, which can scarcely 
 be supposed to have generally survived the Hyksos period, 
 to make out from the length of the reigns the duration of any 
 dynasty. And to determine what dynasties were contemporary 
 and what consecutive would have been a still harder task. 
 It is extremely doubtful whether Manetho really made any 
 effort to overcome these chflficulties. Setting aside the single 
 disputed passage of Syncellus, we have no evidence that he did. 
 His lists, as they have come down to us, both in Syncellus and 
 Eusebius, are a mere enumeration, in a single line, of thirty 
 dynasties of kings, with an estimate of the years of each dynasty, 
 evidently formed by merely adding together the years of the 
 several reigns. There is no trace in either epitome of any 
 allowance being made, either on account of contemporary kings 
 within a dynasty, or on account of contemporary dynasties. 
 Apparently, Manetho either declined the task of arranging and 
 completing the chronology as one for Avhich he had no sufficient 
 data, or preferred to leave the impression on foreigners that 
 the dynasties and kings were all consecutive, and that Egy^jt 
 
 Bunsen, ' Egypt,' vol. iv. p. 508 ; ' Bibl. Diet.,' vol. i. p. 508. 
 
250 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay VI. 
 
 had a history stretching back fifty centuries before xVlexander ! 
 Other Egyptian priests before him had made even greater ex- 
 aggerations.* 
 
 If it be still thonght that the mere opinion of men so well 
 acqnainted with the Egyptian monuments, as Bunsen and 
 Lepsius, ought to have weight, despite the weakness of the 
 argumentative grounds on which they rest their conclusions, let 
 it be remembered that others, as deeply read in hieroglyphic 
 lore, and as capable of forming a judgment, have come to con- 
 clusions wholly different. Sir Gardner Wilkinson inclines to 
 place the accession of Menes about B.C. 2690,t and Mr. Stuart 
 Poole gives as his fu'st year B.C. 2717.| These writers believe 
 that the number of contemporaneous dynasties has been much 
 under-estimated by the German savans, mIio have especially 
 erred in regarding the Theban dynasties as, all of them, subse- 
 quent to the Memphite. They consider that Manetho's first 
 and third Theban dynasties were contemporary with his third, 
 fourth, and fifth Memphite ; that the first and second Shepherd 
 dynasties ruled at the same time in different parts of Lower 
 Egypt ; and that the dynasty of Cho'ites (Manetho's 14th) was 
 contemporary with the two Shepherd dynasties above men- 
 tioned, and with the second Theban. They do not deny that 
 their arrangement of the dynasties is to some extent conjectural ; 
 but they maintain that, while the idea of it w^as derived from a 
 close inspection of Manetho's lists, it is also " strikingly con- 
 firmed by the monuments." § While names of such weight can 
 be quoted on the side of a moderate Egyptian chronology, it 
 cannot be reasonably argued that Egyj^tian records have dis- 
 proved the Biblical narrative. 
 
 Still less can it be argued that the records of other nations, so 
 far as they have any pretension to be considered historical, con- 
 flict with the chronology of the Bible. The Babylonians 
 indeed, the Indians, and the Climese, in their professed liistories 
 of ancient times, carry back the antiquit}' of our race for several 
 hundred thousand years. But it is admitted that in every case 
 these large numbers are purely mythical ; and, in truth, the 
 authentic histories of aU these nations begin even later than the 
 
 * Herod, ii. 100 and 142, 143. 
 
 t Sec the writer's 'Herodotus,' vol. 
 ii. pp. 342, 343. 
 
 J ' Bi1)lical Dictionary, 
 § Ibid. p. 507. 
 
 vol. i. p. 508. 
 
Essay VI.] THE PENTATEUCH. 257 
 
 Egyptian. India has no historical documents earlier than the 
 third,* or China than the sixth centnry B.C. Indian history 
 scarcely goes back beyond the time of Alexander ; Chinese is 
 not thought by those who place most faith in the early literature 
 of the country to ascend any higher than the year B.C. 2637.t 
 The Babylonian historian, Berosus, while he claimed for the 
 human race an antiquity of above 466,000 years, arranged his 
 dynasties in such a way as to make it palpable that the historic 
 period began, at the earliest, in B.C. 2458. This is the conclu- 
 sion of Sir Henry Kawlinson in England, of Gutschmid and 
 Brandis in Germany.^ These critics divide the nine dynasties of 
 Berosus into two mythic ones (reigning the extravagant periods 
 of 432,000 and 34,080 years), and seven historic ones, all reign- 
 ing moderate and possible periods, varying between 87 and 526 
 years. It might have seemed incredible that in the nineteenth 
 century any critic could take a different view. M. Bunsen, 
 however, believing that he has " devised a method " § whereby 
 the historical part of the second dynasty, which he arbitrarily 
 divides, may be reduced to 1550 years, adds that space of time 
 to Berosus's historic chronology, and decides that the regular 
 registration of the oldest Chaldaean kings commenced B.C. 3784. 
 He thus assumes the partially historic character of a dynasty 
 said to have reigned more than 34,000 years, two kings of which 
 — Chomasbelus and Evechius — are made to occupy the throDe 
 for above 5000 years ! It seems needless to examine the 
 " method " whereby, from data thus manifestly unhistoric, an 
 exact conclusion, claiming to be historically certain, is di-awn. j] 
 On the whole it would seem that no profane history of an 
 authentic character mounts up to an earlier date than the 27th 
 or 28th century before Christ. Egyptian history begins about 
 B.C. 2700 ; Chinese, perhaps, in B.C. 2637 ; Babylonian in B.C. 
 
 * See the late Professor Wilson's In- 
 troduction to the 'Kig-Veda Sanhita,' 
 pp. xlvi., xlvii. 
 
 t Kemusat, ' Nouveaux Melanges 
 Asiatiques,' vol. i. p. 6.5; Bunsen, 
 ' Egypt,' vol. iii. pp. 379-407. 
 
 j Gutschmid, 'Itheinisches Museum,' 
 vol. viii. p. 252 et seqq. ; Brandis, ' Ke- 
 rum Assyriariuu Tempora emendata,' pp. 
 16, 17. 
 
 § ' Egypt,' vol. iv. p. 411. 
 
 Bunsen exaggerates his Babylonian 
 clironology seems worthy of notice. It 
 is the method of mistranslation. Philo 
 Byblius having observed in his work 
 about Cities that Babylon was founded 
 1002 years (Ireo-i x'^'O's 5uo) before Se- 
 miramis, M. Bunsen renders the words 
 in brackets by " tico thousand years," 
 thus gaining for his chronology near a 
 thousand years at a sti-oke. (See his 
 Egypt,' vol. iv. p. 414, and again p. 
 
 II One method, however, whereby M. : 491.) 
 
 S 
 
258 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay VI. 
 
 2458 ; Assyrian in B.C. 1273 ; Greek, with the Trojan War, in 
 B.C. 1250, or, pcrliaps, with Hercules, a century earher ; Lydiau 
 in B.C. 1229 ; Phoenician about the same period ;* Carthaginian 
 in B.C. 880 ; Macedonian about B.C. 720 ; Median not before 
 B.C. 708 ; Koman in the middle of the same century ; Persian in 
 B.C. 558 ; Indian, about B.C. 350 ; Mexican and Peruvian not 
 till after our era.j The oldest human constructions remaining 
 upon the earth are the Pyramids, and these date from about 
 B.C. 2400 ; I the brick temples of Babylonia seem, none of them, 
 earlier than B.C. 2300 ; § B.C. 2000 would be a high date for 
 the fii'st Cyclopian walls in Greece or Italy ; the earliest rock- 
 inscnptions belong to nearly the same period. If man has 
 existed upon the earth ten or twenty thousand years, as M. 
 Bunsen supposes, why has he left no vestiges of himself till 
 within the last five thousand ?|| It cannot be said that his earlier 
 works would necessarily have perished ; for there is nothing to 
 hinder the Pyramids or the Birs Nimrud from standing several 
 thousand years longer. It is remarked that in Egypt the most 
 ancient monuments exhibit but slight traces of rudeness, and 
 that the arts within two centuries of Menes are in a very 
 advanced condition, so that civilisation must have made great 
 progress even before the age of Menes. But "the consti- 
 tutional development of Egyptian life" into the condition 
 reached in the time of the early monuments, does not require 
 a term of five or six thousand years, as M. Bunsen argues,1[ 
 but rather one of five or six hundred years, which is what tlie 
 Biblical numbers will allow. There is nothing surprising in a 
 high civilisation, even Avithin a very short time from the Deluge ; 
 
 See the writer's ' Herodotus,' vol. j be said to be such vestiges. But the cx- 
 
 iv. p. 249. The tirst-known Phoenician 
 king is Abibal, the father of Hiram, 
 David's contemporary. He cannot be 
 placed earlier than n.c. 1100. 
 
 t Sec Prescott, ' History of the Con- 
 quest of Mexico,' vol. i. p. 13 ; ' History 
 of the Conquest of Peru,' vol. i. pp. 10- 
 14. 
 
 { Wilkinson in the Avritcr's ' Herodo- 
 tus,' vol. ii. p. 343 ; Stuart Poole in the 
 ' Biblical Dictionary,' vol. i. p. 508. 
 
 § Sir H. Rawlinson iu the writer's 
 ' Herodotus,' vol. i. p. 435. 
 
 11 The "flint weapons in the drift," 
 and Mr. Horner's Egyptian pottery, will 
 
 tremely doubtful age of tlie latter has 
 been well siiown by the ' Quarterly Ke- 
 view' (No. 210, pp. 419-421). The value 
 of the former as evidence of extreme 
 human antiquity must depend on two 
 questions, neither of wliicli lias yet been 
 solved— 1. Are they of the same ago as 
 the formation in whiclx tliey are found ? 
 and 2. Is that formation itself of an 
 antiquity very remote ? It has been 
 clearly shown by a writer in ' Black- 
 wood's Magazine' (No. 540, pp. 422- 
 439), that the high antiquity of the drift 
 is at any rate " not proven." 
 t ' Egypt,' vol. iv. p. 571. 
 
Essay VL] THE PENTATEUCH. 259 
 
 for tlie arts of life, wliich flourished in the ante-diluvian world,* 
 Avould have been preserved by those who survived the catastro- 
 phe, and might rapidly revive among their descendants. Rather, 
 it is surprising that, except in Egypt, there should be so few 
 traces of an early civilisation. Babylonian art, for many cen- 
 turies after the first establishment of the kingdom (b.c. 2458), 
 is exceedingly rude and primitive ; the Greek and Italian 
 buildings, approaching to the same date, are of the roughest 
 construction ; it is not till about the year B.C. 1000 that a really 
 advanced civilisation appears in any part of Asia, nor much 
 before B.C. 600 that it can be traced in Europe. Thus, monu- 
 mental and historical evidence alike indicate that the " Origines " 
 of our race are recent, and the dates established on anything 
 like satisfactory evidence, fall, in every case, Avithin the time 
 allowed to post-diluvian man by Scripture. 
 
 For the date of the Deluge, which we are most justified in 
 drawing from the Sacred documents, is not, as commonly sup- 
 posed, B.C. 2348, but rather b.c. 3099, or even B.C. 3159 — sixty 
 years earlier.! The modern objectors to the Chronology of 
 Scripture seek commonly to tie down their opponents to the 
 present Hebrew text;| but there is no reason why they should 
 submit to this restriction. The Septuagiut Version was regarded 
 as of primary authority during the first ages of the Christian 
 Cliurch : it is the version commonly quoted in the New Testa- 
 ment ; and thus, where it differs from the Hebrew, it is at least 
 entitled to equal attention. The larger chronology of the Sep- 
 tuagiut would, therefore, even if it stood alone, have as good a 
 claim as the shorter one of the Hebrew text, to be considered 
 the Chronology of Scripture. It does not, however, stand alone. 
 For the period between the Flood and Abraham, the Septuagiut 
 has the support of another ancient and independent version — 
 the Samaritan. It is argued that the Septuagiut numbers were 
 enlarged by the Alexandrian Jews in order to bring the HebrcAv 
 chronology into harmony with the Egyptian ;§ but there is no 
 conceivable reason why the Samaritans sliould have altered their 
 
 * Gen. iv. 20-22. I ' Westminster Eeview,' No. 38, p. 569 ; 
 
 t See the 'Biblical Dictionary,' sub 'Essays and Keviews,' pp. 54, 55. 
 
 voc. Chronology, and Mr. W. Palmer's ■ § ' Westminster Keview,' 1. s. c. ; Bun- 
 
 ' Egj'ptian Chronicles,' p. 896. j sen, 'Egypt,' vol. i. p. 185; vol. iv. !>. 
 
 % Bunsen, ' Egypt,' vol. iv. p. 402 ; 396. 
 
 s 2 
 
200 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay VI. 
 
 Pentateuch in this direction, and no very ready mode of ac- 
 counting for the identity * of the numbers in these two versions, 
 but by supposing that they are the real numbers of the original. 
 This identity it has been usual to keep out of sight ; but it is a 
 most important feature in the case, and furnishes a solid ground 
 for preferring, apart from all liistorical considerations, that 
 longer system of Biblical Chronology with which Egyptian and 
 all other profane history is found to be in accordance. 
 
 Besides the purely historic objections to the Biblical Chrono- 
 logy which have been here examined, another semi-historic one 
 has been recently taken, which seems to require some notice. 
 Languages, it is said, bear traces of having all proceeded from a 
 common stock. Time was, when " the whole earth was of one 
 language and of one speech." t But this time must have been 
 immensely remote. Languages grow but slowly. It has taken 
 nearly 2000 years to develop modern French, Italian, and 
 •Spanish out of Latin. Must it not have taken much longer to 
 develop Latin, Greek, German, Celtic, Slavonic, Zend, Sanscrit, 
 out of their mother-speech? And that mother-speech itself 
 which had an affinity, and so a connexion, with the Semitic and 
 Turanian forms of language, yet was far more widely separated 
 from them tlmn its daughter tongues from one another, what a 
 vast period must have been required for its formation and diver- 
 gence from the other linguistic types ! Even the primitive tongue 
 itself did not spring to its full height at once, or reach the era 
 of decay and change till after a long term of years. Twenty- 
 one thousand years — " the period of one great revolution of the 
 globe upon its axis " — is (we are told) " a very probable term 
 for the development of human language in the shortest line ;" 
 and so the conclusion is drawn, that the true era of man's crea- 
 tion is not B.C. 9085, when Egyptian history is said to liave 
 begun, nor B.C. 14,000, when Hamitism and Semitism were first 
 " deposited," but six thousand years before the earlier of these 
 two dates— B.C. 20,000 ! i 
 
 * The identity is comjileie, if wo reject Clinton's ' Fasti Hellenici,* vol. i. p. 287 ; 
 from the Sc'iitnauint the llilse reading of 'Biblical Dictionary,' vol, i. p. 319.) 
 
 «ome copies (179 for Id) in Gen. xi. 24, 
 and omit the interi)olated Cainan, who 
 Mas unknown to Philo, Josephus, Theo- 
 I)hilnb of Antioch, and Eusebius. (See 
 
 t Gen. xi. 1. 
 
 j Bunsen, ' Eg\'2Dt,' vol. iv. pp. 560- 
 5G6, and p. 485. 
 
Essay VI.] THE PENTATEUCH. 2G1 
 
 This argument claims an inductive character. It bases itself 
 on the historical ground, that a certain number of years have 
 been required for the development of French, Italian, Spanish, 
 Wallachian, &c., out of Latin ; and assumes that from this the 
 rate of change or growth in language is determinately, or ap- 
 proximately, known. The rate is viewed as relative to the 
 degree of change or divergence, so that as Celtic, Slavonic, 
 German, Greek, Latin, and Sanscrit are far more unlike one 
 another than French, Italian, and Spanish, a far longer period 
 must be allowed for their formation.* The argument thus 
 gathers strength at each stage ; and as there are at least four 
 stages, the formula becomes something very much like this : — 
 a + 10a 4- 100a + 1000a = s ; so that it may seem a moderate 
 estimate to say, that s = 21,000 years. 
 
 But the following considerations detract from the force of the 
 reasoning. The induction on which it rests is from a single 
 instance — the case of Latin and its daughter tongues. It does 
 not at all follow, that because a particular language under par- 
 ticular circumstances took a certain time to blossom into new 
 tongues ; therefore, every other language of a similar type 
 would, under all conceivable circumstances, do the same. 
 
 The unit which is assumed to be known, and which is made 
 the basis of the whole calculation — the a of the above equation — 
 is in reality unknown. It is impossible to say how long it took 
 for Latin to change into French or Italian. Latin was probably 
 imperfectly learnt by the Italians and the Gauls from the first, 
 and a language far more like Italian than classical Latin was 
 probably spoken in the provinces of Italy at a very early date. 
 AYe know at the utmost what the date is of the first extant 
 French or Italian document. We have no means of deciding 
 when French or Italian first began to be a spoken tongue. 
 
 The argument assumes as certain that equal linguistic changes 
 must have occupied equal periods of time at all portions of the 
 Avorld's history, which is much the same as to assume that con- 
 stitutional changes in states must be equal in equal times ; or 
 that, because B, a youth of eighteen, 5 ft. 10 in, high, grew half 
 an inch between the 1st of January, 18G0, and the 1st of 
 
 * "If the step from Latin to Jtaliau I twenty." (Bunseu's 'Egypt,' vol. iv. 
 be taken as a nnit, the previous step | 5G2, 5(J3.) 
 must be reckoned at least at ten or at \ 
 
 pp. 
 
262 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay VI. 
 
 January, 1801, therefore lie grew at the same rate all his pre- 
 vious lifetime. Such an assumption, were it applied to dis- 
 cover the age of the youth by one who possessed no other data, 
 might lead to the conclusion that he verged upon 140 ! It is 
 quite possible that similar reasoning, applied to the age of 
 language, may have produced a term of years almost equally in 
 excess of the truth. 
 
 Not only the analogy of growth generally, l)ut certain known 
 linguistic facts favour the view, that when language Avas stiU 
 young, it grew with a rapidity quite unknown to its later stages. 
 Nothing so much tends to fix and stereotype a language as a 
 literature. When, therefore, there was as yet no literature to 
 keep the vagaries of speech in check, it would have been in a 
 perpetual flux and change, and may, in a comparatively short 
 space, have undergone the greatest modifications. Again, Avhen 
 literature is wanting, yet men live together in political commu- 
 nities of a large size, the requirements of social intercourse with 
 a wide circle act as a safeguard against rapid dialectical change. 
 But in the simpler and earlier times, before such communities 
 were formed, when men were chiefly or wholly nomades, and 
 lived in small and isolated bodies without much intercourse A^dth 
 one another, this check would not have existed. Linguistic 
 changes may, under such circumstances, have taken place with 
 extraordinary quickness, and a growi:h equal to that, which 
 would in later times, and under other circumstances, have 
 required five hundred or a thousand years, may have been con- 
 tained Avithin an ordinary lifetime. "Tribes," says Professor 
 M. IMiiller, " who have no literature, and no sort of intellectual 
 occupation, seem occasionally to take a delight in working their 
 language to the highest pitch of grammatical expansion. The 
 American dialects are a well-known instance ; and the greater 
 the seclusion of a tribe, the more amazing the rank vegetation 
 of their grammar. We can, at present, hardly form a correct 
 idea with what feeling a savage nation looks upon its language ; 
 whether, it may be, as a plaything, a kind of intellectual amuse- 
 ment — a maze in which the mind likes to lose and to find itself. 
 But the result is the same everywhere. If the work of agglu- 
 tination has once commenced, and there is nothing like litera- • 
 ture or society to keep it within limits, two villages, separated 
 only for a few generations, will become mutually unintelligible. 
 
Essay VI.] THE PENTATEUCH. 263 
 
 This takes place in America, as well as on the borders of 
 China and India; and in the north of Asia, Messerschmidt 
 relates, that the Ostiakes, though really speaking the same lan- 
 guage everywhere, have produced so many words and forms 
 peculiar to each tribe, that even within the limits of twelve or 
 twenty German miles, conversation between them becomes ex- 
 tremely difficult. It must be remembered also, that the Dic- 
 tionary of these languages is small, if compared with a Latin or 
 a Greek Thesaurus. The conversation of nomadic tribes moves 
 within a narrow circle ; and v.-ith the great facility of forming 
 new words at random, and the great inducement that a solitary 
 life holds out to invent for the objects which form the world of 
 a shepherd or huntsman, new appellations— half poetical, per- 
 haps, or satirical — we can understand how, after a few genera- 
 tions, the dictionary of a nomadic tribe may have gone, as it 
 were, through more than one edition."* These observations, 
 which are made in reference to Turanian dialects, have a more 
 extended bearing. They show that while the inhabitants of the 
 earth continued nomadic, and without a literature, language 
 would alter at a rate very much beyond that Avhich is found to 
 prevail since they have gathered into large communities, each 
 with its own treasure of written law, legend, or history. 
 
 Further, it is obvious to remark that the whole argument 
 turns upon a theory of language, which can never be anything 
 more than an hypothesis — a theory, moreover, which ignores 
 altogether the confusion of Babel, ascribing as it does all the 
 changes and diversities of human speech to the operation of 
 natural causes. Those persons who believe the miracle recorded 
 in Gen. xi. 1 — 9, will see that if the Divine fiat produced in a 
 moment of time a number of diversities of speech, which in the 
 natural course of things would only have gradually been de- 
 veloped, language cannot but present the apj)earance of being 
 older than it really is. 
 
 It seems, therefore, that nothing has really been as yet dis- 
 covered, either in the facts of history, or in those of lang-uage, 
 that militates against the chronological scheme of Scripture, if 
 we regard the Septuagint and Samaritan versions as the best 
 exponents of the original text in respect of the genealogy of the 
 
 * ' Philosophy of Uuiversal History,' vol. iii. p. 483. 
 
2G4 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay TI. 
 
 Patriarchs from Sbem to Abraham. Whether the chronology 
 of these versions admits of further expansion ; -^vhether, since the 
 chronologies of the Hebrew Bible, the Samaritan Pentateuch, 
 and the Septuagint diifer, we can depend on any one of them ; 
 or whether we must not consider that this portion of revelation 
 has been lost to us by the mistakes of copyists or the intentional 
 alterations of systematisers, it is not necessary at present to 
 determine. " Our treasui'e," as before observed, " is in earthen 
 vessels." The revealed Word of God has been continued in the 
 world in the same way as other written compositions, by the 
 multiplication of copies. No miraculous aid is vouchsafed to 
 the transcribers, who are liable to make mistakes, and may not 
 always have been free from the design of bending Scripture to 
 their o"\vn views. That we have a wonderfully pure and jierfect 
 text of the Pentateuch, considering its antiquity, is admitted ; but 
 doubts must ever attach to the chronology, not only because in 
 all ancient MSS. numbers are especially liable to accidental 
 corruption, but also, and more esj)ecially, from the fact that 
 there is so wide a difference in this respect between the Hebrew, 
 the Samaritan, and the Greek copies.* Still, at present, we 
 have no need to suppose that the numbers have in every case 
 suffered. All the requirements of profane history are suf- 
 ficiently met by the adoption of the Septuagint and Samaritan 
 date for the Deluge ; and this is the date which is really most 
 authoritative, since it has in its favour two out of the three 
 ancient versions. 
 
 II. An authentic character is denied to the Pentateuch on 
 account of the narrative contained in it of the great Flood. This 
 narrative is viewed as the traditional representation of a real 
 event, but as unhistoric in most of its details, and more esjjecially 
 as untrue in regard to the assertion which is so strongly made, 
 that all mankind, except a single family, were destroyed on the 
 occasion.! The Deluge, it is said, was local, affecting only that 
 portion of Asia in which were located the Arians and the 
 Semites. It did not extend to the Egyptians, or to the Chinese, 
 or to the Turanian races generally. This conclusion is pro- 
 
 * Although in ihe list of pati'iarchs 
 from 8hem to Abniiiani, tlie Samaritan 
 and the Septuagint coincide, tliey difler 
 widely iu the preceding list from Adam 
 
 to Noah. The Samaritan has tiicre a 
 terra of years even shorter than the 
 Helirew. 
 
 t Gen. vii. 21-23. 
 
Essay VI.] 
 
 THE PENTATEUCH. 
 
 265 
 
 fessedly cbiwii from " the infallible linguistic science,"* or, in 
 other words, from those views of the history of language, the 
 changes it has undergone, and the time occupied by them, Avhicli 
 have been just shown to be arbitrary and not very tenable 
 hypotheses. It is further regarded as confirmed by the alleged 
 fact, that while among most of the Semitic and Arian races 
 there was a distinct and clear tradition of the Flood, as among 
 the Babylonians, the Indians, the Armenians, the Phrygians, the 
 Lithuanians, the Goths, the Celts, and the Greeks ; neither in 
 China, nor in Egypt, nor among the " old Turanians " was any 
 such tradition current. Here the argument is strong ; but it 
 attains its strength by a combination of exaggeration on the one 
 side, with imder statement on the other. It is not true that "we 
 find allusions to the Flood everywhere among the Iranians and 
 Semites." t The Flood does not appear in the Zendavesta ; it 
 was not, so far as is known, among the traditions of the Arabs, 
 or the Phoenicians, or the Eomans, or the Slaves. On the other 
 hand, traditions of it were not entirely wanting in China, in 
 Egypt, or among the Turanians. 
 
 The Chinese speak of a " first heaven " — an age of innocence, 
 when " the whole creation enjoyed a state of happiness ; when 
 every thing was beautiful, every thing was good ; all beings 
 were perfect in their kind ;" whereto succeeded a " second 
 heaven," introduced by a great convulsion. " The pillars of 
 heaven were broken — the earth shook to its foundations — the 
 heavens sunk lower towards the north — the sun, the moon, and 
 the stars changed their motions — the earth fell to pieces ; and 
 tlie waters enclosed within its bosom burst forth with violence, and 
 overjiowed it. Man having rebelled against heaven, the system 
 of the universe was totally disordered. The sun was eclipsed, 
 the planets altered their com-ses, and the grand harmony of 
 nature was disturbed." ij: 
 
 In Egypt, according to Plato, the teaching of the priests was, 
 not that there had been no Deluge, but that there had been 
 several. They believed that from time to time, in consequence 
 of the anger of the Gods, the earth was visited by a terrible 
 catastrophe. The agent of destruction was sometimes fire, 
 
 * Bunsen, ' Egypt,' vol. iv. p. 472, and 
 p. 559. 
 
 t Ibid. p. 464. 
 
 X Fabev, ' Horee IMosaicaB,' ch. iv. pp. 
 147, 148. 
 
266 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH, 
 
 [Essay YI, 
 
 sometimes water. In the conflagrations, all countries were 
 burnt up but Egypt, which was protected by the Nile ; and in 
 the deluges, all were submerged except Egypt, where rain never 
 fell. The last catastrophe, they said, had been a deluge ; it 
 took place above 8000 years before Solon, and not only swept 
 away the Greeks, as they were themselves aware, but j)erma- 
 nently submerged a vast island in the Atlantic Ocean, previously 
 the seat of a great conquering monarchy.* It does not destroy 
 the traditional character of these latter statements, that they 
 are coupled with a theory of repeated mundane catastrophes ; 
 neither does it much lessen the value of the evidence, in the 
 case of a people making such absurd pretensions to antiquity as 
 the Eg}^tians, that Egypt is supposed to have been exempt 
 from the general ruin. M. Bunsen admits that the oldest tradi- 
 tions of Egypt " seem here and there to retain the echoes of a 
 knowledge of some violent convulsions in nature," f while he 
 denies that these traditions constitute a reminiscence of the his- 
 torical Flood. It is at least as reasonable to hold that the one 
 convulsion of which they had some real knowledge was that 
 gi-eat catastrophe, and that in regard to the rest they merely 
 represented liistorically the conclusions at which they had 
 arrived by specidation. 
 
 With regard to the belief of the Turanian races, it may be 
 true that those of Europe and Asia have no traditions of a 
 Deluge among them, although this point has hardly been as yet 
 sufficiently established ; but if we hold (as is now commonly 
 done):}: the Malays to be a Turanian offshoot, and the Polynesian 
 islanders to be Malays, then it must be allowed that traces of a 
 belief in the Deluge exist also in this ethnic family. " Tradi- 
 tions of the Deluge," says Mr. Ellis, " have been found to exist 
 among the natives of the South Sea Islands, from the earliest 
 periods of their history. . . The principal facts are the same 
 in the traditions prevailing among the inhabitants of the different 
 groups, although they differ in several minor particulars. In 
 one group the accounts stated, that in ancient times Taarsa, the 
 principal god according to their mythology, being angry with 
 
 * ' Timaous,' p. 21. 
 
 t ' Egypt,' vol. iv. p. 559. 
 
 X M. MuUcr, in the 'Pliilosophy of 
 
 Universal History,' vol. iii. pp. 403429 ; 
 'Languages of tlic Seat of War,' p. 110, 
 1st eilition. 
 
Essay VI.] THE PENTATEUCH. 267 
 
 men on account of their disobedience to liis will, overturned the 
 world into the sea, when the earth sunk in the waters, excepting 
 a few projecting points, wliich, remaining above its sm-face, con- 
 stituted the present cluster of islands. The memorial preserved 
 by the inhabitants of Eimeo states, that after the inundation of 
 the land, when the water subsided, a man landed from a canoe 
 near Tiataepua in their island, and erected an altar in honour of 
 his god. The tradition which prevails in the Leeward Islands 
 is intimately connected with the island of Eaiatea." Here the 
 story is that a fisherman disturbed the sea-god with his hooks, 
 whereupon the god determined to destroy mankind. The 
 fisherman, however, obtained mercy, and was directed to take 
 refuge in a certain small islet, whither he betook himself with his 
 Avife, his child, one friend, and specimens of all the domestic 
 animals. The sea then rose, and submerged the other islands, 
 destroying all the inhabitants. But the fisherman and liis com- 
 panions were unharmed, and afterwards removing from their 
 islet to Kaiatea became the progenitors of the present people.* 
 Thus, if the South Sea Islanders belong to the Turanian family, 
 it would seem that that family, no less than the Arian and 
 Semitic, has reminiscences of the Great Catastrophe which once 
 befel mankind.t 
 
 The result is, that there is no marked difference, in respect of 
 traditions of the Deluge, between the different races of men. 
 No race is without some tradition on the subject, while in none 
 is the tradition spread universally among all the nations into 
 wliich the race subdivides. Various circumstances have caused 
 the event to be vividly or faintly apprehended, to be stored in 
 the memory of a nation, or to be allowed to fade from it. If 
 the Semitic tradition is the clearest and most circumstantial, 
 while the Turanian is the dimmest and slightest, it is probably 
 because the Turanians generally were without a literature, while 
 among the Semites the tradition took a written form early. If 
 in Egypt, while the Deluge is not unknown, it makes little 
 figure, notwithstanding the early use of letters in that country, 
 it is perhaps because the Egyptians did not choose to keep it 
 
 * ' Polynesian Kesearclies,' vol. ii. pp. I had very clear traditions of the Flood, 
 57-59. were also probahly of Turanian origin, 
 
 t The Mexicans and Peruvians, -who \ 
 
268 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay A1. 
 
 in mind, since, in their desire to be considered autoclitlionous 
 and of immense antiquity, they seem to have determinately 
 severed all the links which connected them with their primitive 
 Asiatic abodes.* If, on the contrary, among the Arians, though 
 they had no very early literature, the reminiscence is vivid, it 
 may be ascribed to the liveliness, impressibility, and poetic tone 
 of their minds, which such an event as the Deluge was calcu- 
 lated to affect strongly, and to their comparative honesty, which 
 led them to cherish in most cases the traditions imiting them 
 with primitive times. 
 
 III. The objections taken to the ethnology of Genesis are 
 limited to two. It is allowed that a high antiquity, and a great 
 historical value, belong to the Toldoth Beni Noah, or '•' Book of 
 the generations of the sons of Noah," which forms the tenth 
 chapter of the First Book of Moses. But it is maintained that 
 in its present state this chapter is the work of a " compiler," m ho 
 misunderstood his materials, and that it requires correction from 
 the better knowledge of the moderns.f The two mistakes which 
 are especially charged on the document are — first, that, by making 
 Canaan a son of Ham, it connects the Canaanites ethnically with 
 the Egyptians, whereas they were an entirely distinct people, 
 not Hamites, but Semites ; and secondly, that, by declaring 
 Cush to have begotten Nimrod, it makes that conqueror and 
 his kingdom Ethiopian, whereas they were in reality Coss^ean, 
 and so Turanian or Scythic. In the latter case it is supposed 
 that the " compiler " was misled by a resemblance of words ; in 
 the former, that he misinterpreted a geographical fact ethni- 
 cally. 
 
 But the latest research tends to vindicate the ethnology of 
 Genesis in both the disputed cases. The supposed Semitic cha- 
 racter of the Canaanites rests upon two grounds — first, their 
 presumed identity Avith the rha3nic'ians, and secondly, the 
 
 * " The evidence of the Egyptians," change of seat, and the scttk-nient in 
 
 says Mr. Stuart Poole, " as to the pri- Egypt of a civihzed race, which either 
 
 nieval liistory of their race and country wishing to be beheved autochthonous, 
 
 is extremely indefinite There is a or having lost all ties that could keep 
 
 very short and extremely obscure time up tlie tnuhtions of its first dwelling- 
 
 of tradition, and at no great distance place, filled up tlie connnenccment of its 
 
 from the earliest date at which it can be history with materials drawn from my- 
 
 held to end we come upon tlie clear fhology." ('Biblical Dictionary,' vol.i. 
 
 light of history in the days of tl)e I'yra- p. 507.; 
 mids. The indications are of a sudden f Bunsen, ' Egypt,' vol. iv. p. 417. 
 
Essay VL] THE PENTATEUCH. 269 
 
 Semitic etymology of certain Canaanitisli names — e. g., Melclii- 
 sedek, Abimelech, Adonibezek, ]\Iamre, Eslicol, Kirjath-Arba, 
 &c. This last argument is undoubtedly important, tliougb it is 
 far from decisive. For, firstly, language is not a certain sign of 
 race, since occasionally a nation lias adopted a completely 
 foreign tongue. Secondly, the names, as given in the Hebrew 
 ScriiDtures, are perhaps not Canaanitisli words at all, but only 
 the Semitic equivalents of the native (Hamitic) terms. Thirdly, 
 the true stock of the Canaanites may have been Hamitic, yet 
 even before the time of Abraham they may have received a 
 Semitic infusion from the valley of the Euphrates ; and Semitic 
 names may thus have been introduced among them. As for the 
 other argument, though it has great names in its favom-, there is 
 really very little to be said for it. Phoenicia, as a country, is 
 distinguishable from Canaan, in which it may, perhaps, have 
 been included, but of which it was at any rate only a part ; and 
 the Phoenician people present in many respects a strong and 
 marked contrast to the Canaanites, so that there is great reason 
 to believe that they were an entirely different race.* That their 
 ethnic character was really Hamitic seems to be indicated by the 
 Babylonian tradition in Eupolemus,t that Canaan was the grand- 
 father of Cush and Mestraim (Mizraim). It is further evidenced 
 by the names of various places in their country, as Baalbek, " the 
 house of Baal," where hek is the Egyptian root found in Atar- 
 becliis, " the house of Athor " — Marathus, which seems to be 
 Martu, the Hamitic term for " the West " — Beth-shan, which 
 in Semitic was Beth-shemesh, " the house of the sun," cl'c. 
 Finally, it is thought to be absolutely proved by the Hittite 
 names, which occur abmidantly in the Assyrian inscriptions, and 
 which are found to be unmistakably of a Hamitic type and for- 
 mation. 
 
 The Cushite descent of the Babylonians has still more ample 
 
 * See the writer's ' Herodotus,' vol. 
 iv. pp. 243-245, wliere the point is ar- 
 gued at length. "The Canaanites," it 
 is noted, " are fierce and intractable war- 
 riors, rejoicing in the prancing steeds 
 and chariots of iron, neither given to 
 commerce nor to any of the arts of peace ; 
 the Phoenicians are quiet and peaceable, 
 a nation of traffickers, sldlful in naviga- 
 
 aud wholly devoted to commerce. Again, 
 whereas between the real Canaanites 
 and the Jews there was deadly and 
 perpetual hostility, until the former were 
 utterly rooted out and destroyed, the 
 Jews and Phoenicians were on terms of 
 perpetual amitj% — an amity encouraged 
 by the best princes, who would scarcely 
 have contracted a friendship with the 
 
 tion and in the arts both useful and j accursed race." 
 
 ornamental; unwarlike except at sea, | f 'Fragm. Hist. Gr.' vol. iii. p. 212. 
 
270 
 
 AIDS TO TAITII. 
 
 [Essay VI. 
 
 evidence in its favom\ Linguistic researcli, liarmonising in 
 this instance at once with classical tradition and with the Scrip- 
 tural account, shows the early Babylonians to have been, not 
 only Hamitic, but determinately of Cushite origin.* All the 
 ancient Babylonian documents are in a dialect, the vocabulary 
 of which has a closer connexion with the native languages of 
 Abyssinia than with any other known form of speech. Nor is 
 this a mere coincidence. The evidence of monuments (Him- 
 yaric, Chaldean, and Susian) shows, that a homogeneous race 
 was sjDread in very ancient times from the country upon the 
 Ujjper Nile, along the southern coast of Arabia, to the shores of 
 the Persian Gulf, and thence into Susiana, whence it probably 
 passed, by Avay of Gedrosia, to India. M. Bunsen decides that 
 " an Asiatic Kush (or Ethiopia) exists only in the imagination of 
 Biblical interpreters, and is the child of tlieir despair." t But 
 ancient lore and modern research are equally against this view. 
 Homer knew the Ethiopians to be " divided," and to dwell 
 " towards the rising and the setting sun." % Hesiod made 
 Memnon, the son of the Dawn, and the traditional founder of 
 Susa, an Ethiopian king. § Pindar taught that this same 
 Memnon brought an army of Ethiopians to the relief of Troy. || 
 Herodotus was told of Asiatic Ethiopians as contained within 
 the Persian empire, and assigned them their place in the 
 satrapies of Darius, 1 and in the army of Xerxes.** Ephorus 
 gave all the shores of the Erythraean Sea, or Southern Ocean, to 
 the Ethiopians ;tt and so, according to Strabo, did the ancient 
 Greek writers generally.tt The names Kissia, and Kossaea, 
 Kusan,§§ and Kutch or Kooch, which have clung to jjortions of 
 the south coast of Asia, from the tune of Herodotus to the 
 present day, confirm the classical belief — a belief which is 
 further evidenced by the genealogists, who almost universally 
 connect Belus, the mythic progenitor of the Babylonians, with 
 ^Egyptus and Libya. II II Thus the Asiatic Ethiopia, which is 
 
 * Sir II. liawlinson, in the vnriter's 
 ' Herodotus,' vol. i. p. 442, note : com- 
 pare Kuli.sch, ' Comiueut. on Genesis,' p. 
 174, E. T. 
 
 t ' Philosophy of Universul History,' 
 vol. iii. p. 191. 
 
 X ' Odyssey,' i. 23, 24. 
 
 § ' Theogonia,' 984, 985. 
 
 II ' Nemea,' iii. 62, 63. 
 
 t Herod, iii. 94. 
 
 ** Ibid. vii. 70. 
 
 tt Ap. Strab. i. 2, § 28. 
 
 It Strab. i. 2, § 27. 
 
 §§ Kusan was the name given to the 
 country east of Kerman throughout the 
 whole of the Sassanian period. 
 
 nil Phorecyd. Fr. 40; Charax Perg. 
 ap. Steph. Byz. s. voc. A'(yvvTos ; Apol- 
 
Essay YL] THE PENTATEUCH. 271 
 
 mentioned more than once in Scriptm-e,* is no gness or myth, 
 but an established fact ; and to this Ethiopia it appears that 
 both early Babylon and the neighbouring countries of Susiana 
 and Southern Arabia belonged. 
 
 The " Toldoth Beni Noah," therefore, instead of proving in- 
 correct on the two points where its accuracy has been most 
 recently challenged, is found in regard to them singularly to 
 accord with the latest results of philological and etlmological 
 research.! Indeed that document, which has been well called 
 " the most authentic record that we possess for the affiliation of 
 races,":!: is continually receiving fresh illustration and confirma- 
 tion from the progress of modern discovery, and is probably 
 destined to become, as time goes on, a continually stronger evi- 
 dence of the historic accuracy of Genesis. 
 
 IV. Of aU the attempts made to invalidate the histori- 
 cal character of the Pentateuch, the boldest is that which, 
 starting from an observation of the resemblance of the names 
 given in the two genealogies of the Sethites and the Cainites,§ 
 proceeds to argue that they are really representations of one 
 and the same list, with variations in the order and in the ortho- 
 graphy, which variations destroy the authority of both, and 
 show that nothing has come down to us but a document foimded 
 on "a misunderstanding of the earliest records."! "Not having 
 one tradition, but two," we have, it is argued, in reality, " no 
 historical accoimt." We may, therefore, suppose that neitlier 
 list contains any actual genealogy at all. We may view the 
 names as ideal or mythical, significative of notions, nations, or 
 epochs ; and we may then construct a history of the Old World 
 according to our fancy, with very little check indeed upon om* 
 faculty of invention. 
 
 Now the facts of the case are simj^ly, that in the two genea- 
 logies, which differ both at the beginning and at the end, six 
 consecutive names occur, of which two are identical, while the 
 remaining four have more or less of resemblance. These names 
 
 lodor. ii. 1, § 4 ; Eupolemus ap. Alex. | ' Biblical Dictionary ' are recommeuded 
 
 Polyhist. Fr. 3 ; Johann. Antiochen. 
 Fr. 6, § 15. 
 
 * Gen. ii. 13 ; Ezek. xxxviii. 5. 
 
 t In connexion with this subject 
 Mr. E. S. Poole's articles on ' The Ca- 
 naanites ' and ' Ousli ' in Dr. Smith's j 
 
 to the reader's attention. 
 
 t Sir H. Eawlinson in the ' Journal 
 of the Asiatic Societj',' vol. xv. p. 230. 
 
 § Gen. iv. 17-22 ; Gen. v. 3-32. 
 
 II ' Egj-pt's Place,' vol. iv. p. 395. 
 
272 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay YI. 
 
 are Cain, Enoch, Irad, Mehnjael, Metliusael, and Lamecli in the 
 one list; Cainan, Mahalaleel, Jared, Enoch, jMethiiselah, and 
 Lamech in the other. The names Enoch and Lamech (it will 
 be seen) occur in both lists ; of the rest, Cain resembles Cainan ; 
 Irad, Jared ; Mehujael, Mahalaleel ; and Methusael, Methu- 
 selah. The resemblance, however, is in the Hebrew scarcely so 
 great as in the Authorized Version. Irad differs from Jared by 
 an initial letter of peculiar importance, the Hebrew am (^), 
 which had a strong guttural sound, and is rarely lost.* Maha- 
 laleel differs from Mehujael by one entire element out of the 
 two which make it up ; it is really no nearer to Mehujael tlian 
 Theodosius to Theophilus, or Jeroboam to Jerubbaal. In Methu- 
 sael, and Methuselah, again, the concluding element is different, 
 there being probably no connection between the sael or shael of 
 the one and the selah or shelaeh of the other. Further, there is 
 a considerable difference in the order which the names hold in 
 the two lists ; and of this difference no account has been even 
 attempted. The second name in the Cainite list is the fourth 
 in the list of the Sethites ; and conversely the fourth among the 
 Cainites is a name resembling the second name among tlie 
 Sethites. Hence, if we allow the names to correspond, we must 
 say that the two lists agree in no single relationship, except 
 only that of the last jDair. Cain is the son of xldam and father 
 of Enoch ; but Cainan is the son of Enos and father of Mahala- 
 leel. Enoch the Cainite is the son of Cain and father of Irad ; 
 but Enoch the Sethite is the son of Jared and ftither of J\Iethu- 
 selah. Irad is son of Enoch and father of Mehujael ; but Jared 
 is son of Mahalaleel and father of Enoch. Finally, Methusael 
 is son of Mehujael, but Methuselah of Enoch ; and Lamech the 
 Sethite is father of Noah, but Lamech the Cainite, of Jabal, 
 Jubal, and Tubal-Cain. Altogether, wdiile the amount of re- 
 semblance in the two lists is certainly remarkable, the amount 
 of diversity is such as very clearly to distinguish them from one 
 another. Where confusion was most likely to ensue — that is to 
 say, in the cases of the two identical names of Enoch and La- 
 mech — the narrative in one or the other list is fuller and more 
 
 * In ilic LXX. the ain is represented 
 by the Greek 7. There the two names 
 scarcely retain any resemblance at all, 
 being respectively lared ('lapeS) and 
 
 Gaidad fFai'SaS). The copies used by 
 the LXX. evidently liud ~J in the j)laco 
 of-i. 
 
Essay VI.] THE TENTATEUCH. 273 
 
 detailed than usual, apparently for the very purpose of guarding 
 against the mistake of identification. All, therefore, that can 
 fairly be concluded is, that in the two families of the Sethites 
 and the Cainites, as in the two kingdoms of Israel and Judah,* 
 similar appellations, and to some extent the same appellations, 
 prevailed. It would seem that at first men were slow to invent 
 new names, and either used tlie old names over again or modified 
 them slightly. Thus we hay e Unos and Enoch, Adam and Ada}i,'\ 
 Jabal, Jubal, and Tubal-Gsdn, where no one suggests an identi- 
 fication. Probably names were considered of great importance, 
 and the experiment of an entirely new" name was not readily 
 made. 
 
 The mythical character of this same portion of the Biblical 
 history has been fm-ther based upon certain supposed etymolo- 
 gies. Seth, we are informed, represents, not a man, but God 
 Himself, since Set or Sutekh was an old Oriental root for God, 
 and Set or Suti continued to be an Egyptian deity. % Enos is 
 the same as Adam, since in Aramaic it means " man," as Adam 
 does in Hebrew. § Neither are real names of persons, but only 
 ideal appellations for the first founder of our race. Enoch, 
 " the seer of God," represents a religious period intervening be- 
 tween the time of the marauder Cain, and that of the agricul- 
 tural builder of cities Irad. || At the same time he is "the solar 
 year," since the number of years which he is said to have lived 
 coincides exactly witli the number of days in that division of 
 time.t Cain and Irad are the respective types of the nomadic 
 shepherd races and the agricultural dwellers in towns. The 
 other patriarchs also represent epochs ; and Xahor, the grand- 
 father of Abraham, is tlie first real Biblical man.** 
 
 It is clear that all history whatsoever may be made to evapo- 
 rate under such treatment as this. If Ave may guess at etymo- 
 logies, and then at once assume our guesses to be coincident 
 with truth ; if we may regard all significant names as mythic, 
 and the personages to whom they are assigned as ideal, there is 
 no portion of the world's annals which may not with a very little 
 
 * Taking the five consecutive and 
 contemporary monarcbs of these two 
 kingdoms, who follow upon Ahab and 
 Jehoshaphat, we find three names com- 
 mon to the two lists. 
 
 t The resemblance is less in the He- 
 
 brew, but still it is real. 
 
 + Bnnsen, ' Egj'pt,' vol. iv. p. 208. 
 § rijid. p. 385. 
 II Ibid. p. 390. 
 \ Ibid. p. 389. 
 ** Ibid. p. 409. 
 
^74 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay VI. 
 
 ingenuity be transferred to the region of myth. A witty writer 
 noted some ten years since the certainty that, if such views 
 prevailed, a famous passage from the ecclesiastical history of 
 our own time Avould be relegated by posterity to that shadowy 
 region ; for how could it be doubted that such names as New- 
 man, Wiseman, Mastermau, Philpotts, Wilde, were " fictitious 
 appellations invented by an allegorist, either to set forth 
 certain qualities or attributes of certain persons whose true 
 names were concealed, or to embody certain tendencies of the 
 times, or represent certain party characteristics ?" * Similarly 
 it might be argued that Athenian history, from Draco to 
 Pericles, is mythical — that Draco was intended to represent the 
 bloody and cruel spirit of the old aristocracy, Cylon their 
 crooked courses, Solon the first establishment of a sole authority 
 (for it would seem to be thought allowable to draw a derivation 
 from a cognate dialect), Pisistratus the usurpation in which a 
 chiei persuaded an army to help him, Hippias, Hipparchus, and 
 Thessalus, the time when, with the aid of Thessaly, the cavalry 
 service w^as first fully organised, Isagoras the establishment of 
 democracy, Clisthenes the triumph of physical strength, Themi- 
 stocles the ascendancy of laiv, Aristides the completion of the best 
 form of government, Pericles the age wdien Athens attained her 
 full glory. Where names are significant, and their etymology 
 is accurately known, it is generally easy to bend them into 
 agreement even with the actual history of the time. How much 
 more easy miLst it be, when their signification is unknown, to 
 affix a meaning on plausible grounds w^hich shall square with 
 our historical fancies ! 
 
 But, it is said, the histories of all other nations run up into 
 myth. Can the Hebrews be a solitary exception? This is 
 simply to ask : Can there be direct revelation at all ; or, in 
 other words, can God or a Divine messenger speak to man face 
 to face, as the prophets declare they were spoken to ? If He 
 can, there is certainly nothing to prevent the subject matter of 
 His revelation from being historical. And the beginnings of 
 human history might in this way be as well communicated as 
 any other facts, past, present, or futm-e. Nor is it at all impos- 
 
 * ' Eclipse of Faith; pp. 347, 348. 
 The significance of two of the names 
 belonging to tliis passage of our his- 
 tory gave occasion to the following 
 
 couplet, wi'itten by a li\dng scholar at 
 tlie time of the " Papal Aggi'cssiou " :— 
 "Cum Sapiente Pius nostras Juravit In aras : 
 Inipius beu Sapiens insipiensque Pius !" 
 
Essay VL] THE PENTATEUCH. 275 
 
 sible tliat the true history may have been handed down in one 
 line by an undefiled tradition, while in all other lines it was 
 €orrupted. The laws which govern human action are general, 
 not universal ; and an exception is so much a matter of course 
 that some regard it as " proving the rule." It is unphilosophical 
 to assume, merely on the analogy of other nations, that the 
 Hebrew " beginnings " are mythic. At the least, they ought 
 first to be formally compared with the "beginnings" of those 
 other nations, and only pronounced mythic if found to resemble 
 them. Such a comparison has not been made at all fully as 
 yet ; and, if it were made, would exhibit the most striking 
 diversity.* The " beginnings " of other races have an air of 
 extravagance about them, a tone of quaintness and grotesque- 
 ness utterly alien from the " Origines " of the Hebrews. In the 
 former gods have their heads cut off, or devour their children, 
 or undergo marvellous transformations, or marry their mothers, 
 or are fished up out of the sea by fishermen, or are otherwise 
 set before us in ludicrous aspects, which take away all solemnity 
 and seriousness from the narrative. How different from this is 
 the simple and awful grandeur of Genesis ! What a deep and 
 solemn earnestness greets us in the very first words ! What 
 sustained seriousness do w^e find throughout ! How evident that 
 we are on holy ground, in the hands of a writer who does not 
 dare to jest or sport with things divine, who is no fanciful 
 allegorizer, weaving quaint fables to delight us as he instructs, 
 but one who speaks as in the presence of God, with a simple 
 reverent solemnity, incompatible with any conscious departure 
 from literal truth ! It is impossible to illustrate this subject to 
 any large extent here ; but the reader may gain, from the two 
 passages placed below in parallel columns, a tolerably fair 
 notion of the extent to which the " Origines " of other nations 
 differ in tone from Genesis. 
 
 accouxt of the creation from account of the creation from 
 
 Berosus.-j- Genesis4 
 
 " 111 the beginning all was darkness " In the beginning God created the 
 
 and water, and therein were generated heaven and the earth. And the earth. 
 
 monstrous animals of strange and pe- was without I'orm and void ; and dark- 
 
 * M. Bunsen makes a very incom- 
 plete comparison in the fourth volimie 
 of his ' EgyiJt ' (pp. 364-375 ,. He cannot, 
 however, even proceed so far as he has 
 gone without beins: struck with the di- 
 
 versity here spoken of. (See p. 374.) 
 t Ap. Syncell. ' Clu-onograph.' vol. i. 
 
 p. 53 ; compare Euseb. ' Chi'on. Can.' 
 
 i. 2 ; pp. 11, 12, ed. Mai. 
 + Gen. i. 1-8 ; 24-27 ; ii. 7. 
 T 2 
 
276 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay VI. 
 
 culiar forms. There were men with 
 two wings, and others even with four, 
 and with two faces : and others with 
 two heads, a man's and a woman's, on 
 one body : and there were men with 
 the heads and the horns of goats, and 
 men witli hoofs like horses, and some 
 with the upper parts of a man joined 
 to the lower parts of a horse, like 
 centaurs ; and there were bulls with 
 human heads, dogs with four bodies 
 and with fishes' tails, men and horses 
 with dogs' heads, &c. &o. A woman 
 ruled them all, by name Omorka, 
 which is the same as ' the sea.' 
 
 ncss was upon the face of the deep. 
 And the Spirit of God moyed upon 
 the face of the waters. 
 
 "And Belus appeared, and split 
 the woman in twain ; and of the one 
 half of her he made the heaven, and 
 of the other half the earth ; and the 
 beasts that were in her he caused to 
 perish. And he split the darkness, 
 and divided the heaven and the earth 
 asunder, and put the world in order ; 
 and the animals that could not bear 
 the light perished. 
 
 " Belus, upon this, seeing that the 
 earth was desolate, yet teeming with 
 I)roductive power, commanded one of 
 the gods to cut off his liead, and to 
 mix the blood, which flowed forth, 
 with earth, and form men therewitli, 
 and beasts that could bear the light. 
 So man was made, and was intelligent, 
 being a partaker of the Divine wis- 
 dom." 
 
 " And God said, Let there be light ; 
 and there was light. And God saw 
 the light that it was good ; and God 
 divided the light from the darkness. 
 And God called the light Day ; and 
 the darkness he called Night. And 
 the evening and the morning were the 
 first day. 
 
 " And God said, Let there be a fir- 
 mament in the midst of the w-aters ; 
 and let it divide the waters from the 
 waters. And God made the firma- 
 ment, and divided the waters which 
 were under the firmament from the 
 waters which were above the firma- 
 ment; and it was so. And God called, 
 the firmament Heaven. And the even- 
 ing and the morning were the second 
 day. 
 
 " And God said. Let the earth bring 
 forth the living creature after his kind, 
 cattle and creeping thing and beast 
 of the earth after his kind ; and it was 
 so. And God made the beast of the 
 earth after his kind, and cattle after 
 their kind, and everything that creep- 
 eth upon the earth after his kind : and 
 God saw that it was good. 
 
 " And God said, Let us make man 
 in our image, after our likeness; and 
 let them have dominion over the fish 
 of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, 
 and over the cattle, and over all the 
 earth, and o\-er every creeping thing 
 that creejK'th ujion the earth. So God 
 created man in his own image ; in the 
 image of God created he him ; male 
 and female created he them. 
 
 " And the Lord God fonned man 
 of the dust of the ground, and breathed 
 into his nostrils the breath of life. 
 And man became a living soul." 
 
Essay VI.] THE PENTATEUCH. 277 
 
 y. The longevity of the Patriarchs appears to modern 
 critics "at variance with all the laws of human and animal 
 organism," and therefore " as contrary to common sense as the 
 notion of there being any real chronology in astronomical 
 cycles of hundreds of thousands of years." * Men, we are told, 
 cannot ever have lived more than 150, or, at the most, 200 
 years ; and a document which assigns them lives of 300, 600, 
 800, and even 900 3^ears, must be unhistorical, and is either, in 
 respect of its numbers, worthless, or to be explained in some 
 not very obvious way. This argument is supposed to be drawn 
 from physiology, another of the " infallible sciences," which are 
 held to lay down laws, not only for our practical guidance at 
 the present day, but for our intellectual belief as to the occur- 
 rences of all past ages. In truth, however, the science of phy- 
 siology has not spoken on the point before us. Its problem has 
 been, not what length of time it is possible for man ever to 
 have lived, but how long it is possible for him now to live 
 under the present circumstances of the earth, and in the present 
 known condition of human bodies. And even this question it 
 can only answer empirically. It finds the body to be a machine 
 which wears out by use ; but it fails to discover any definite 
 rate at which the process of wearing out must proceed. In 
 this difiiculty, comparative physiology does not help it, for the 
 law of longevity in the brute creation is capricious in the 
 extreme. All the proposed standards of measurement — the 
 period of gestation, the time occupied in gro^^i:h, the size of the 
 full-grown body — when applied to species severally, fail in 
 certain instances. Physiology then can only say : These human 
 bodies are mortal ; death is inevitable ; and, so far as modern 
 testimony goes, men do not seem now able to resist the ten- 
 dency to decay beyond the term of 150, or at the utmost 200 
 years. But the possible duration of life, when the species was 
 but recently created, and had its vigour unimpaired by the taint 
 of hereditary disease, is beyond the cognizance of physiological 
 science, which, by the month of its most celebrated professors, 
 declines to pronounce a positive judgment. The great Haller, 
 
 * Bunsen, 'Egypt,' vol. iv. p. 391 ; I vol.i. p. 197; Brodow, 'Uutersiiclrangen,' 
 compare Wiucr, ' Realworterbueli,' vol. | vol. i. p. 1, &c. 
 ii. p. 207 ; Bauer, ' Hebr. Mytliologic,' | 
 
278 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay TI. 
 
 ■when led to s^^eak on the subject, declared tlie problem one 
 which could not be solved, on account of the absence of suffi- 
 cient data,* while Buffon accepted the Scriptural account, and 
 thought he could see physical reasons why life should in the 
 early ages have been so greatly extended. t 
 
 It cannot, therefore, be said with truth that the longevity of 
 the Patriarchs is " at variance with all " — or indeed with any — 
 "of the laws of human and animal organism." We do not 
 know on what longevity depends ; we could not possibly tell d 
 priori whether man, or any other animal, would live one, ten, 
 twenty, fifty, a hundred, or a thousand years. The whole ques- 
 tion is one of fact, and so of evidence. Men now do not, except 
 in very rare instances, exceed 100 years. Was this always so, 
 or was it once different ? The Bible answers this question for 
 us very clearly and decidedly, showing us that human life gra- 
 dually declined, beginning with a term little short of a millen- 
 nium, and by degrees contracting, till, in Moses' time, it had 
 reached (apparently) its present limits — the days of man's age 
 having become then " threescore years and ten," and only a 
 few, "by reason of strength," reaching to fourscore years. ± Does 
 other historical testimony really run counter to this, and render 
 it even hard to believe? or is it not the fact that all the 
 evidence we have is in accordance with the Scriptural narrative, 
 and strongly confirmatory of the statement that in the early 
 ages human life was prolonged very much beyond its present 
 term? 
 
 In the Hindoo accounts there are four ages of the world. In 
 the first, man was free from diseases, and attained to the age of 
 400 years ; in the second the term of life was reduced to 300 
 years ; in the third it became 200 ; and in the fourth 100. 
 The Babylonian traditions gave to then* early monarchs reigns 
 of between two and tliree thousand years. The Greeks told of 
 a time when men were children till they reached a hundi-ed.§ 
 Pliny mentions a number of authors, according to whom men 
 had lived 300, 500, 600, and 800 years. || Josephus relates tluit 
 
 * " Problema ob paucitatem datorum 
 insolubile." (' Element. Physiolog.' viii. 
 §21.) 
 
 t 'Histoire Naturelle de rHomme,' 
 (Euvres, vol. iv. pp. 358-361. 
 
 J Ps. xc. 10. The litle of this psabii 
 "a prayer oi 3Ioses, the ma7i of God." 
 § Hesiod, ' Op. et Dies,' 130, 131. 
 II 'Hist. Nat.' vii. 48. 
 
Essay YI.] 
 
 THE PENTATEUCH. 
 
 279 
 
 the Egyptian, Phoenician, Babylonian, and Grecian historians 
 united in declaring that there had been cases of persons living 
 nearly 1000 years.* It seems to be quite certain that a very 
 "wide-spread tradition existed in the ancient world, to the effect 
 that the term of human life had been greatly abbreviated since 
 man's first appearance upon the earth. 
 
 VI. The duration of the sojourn in Egypt, whether taken as 
 430 years, according to the apparent meaning of Ex. xii. 40, 41, 
 or as 215 years, accorchng to the traditional explanation of that 
 passage, is thought to be mihistorical because of the impossibi- 
 lity (as it is said) of a family of seventy persons having, even in 
 the longer of the two periods, multiplied into two millions of 
 souls. So strongly is this difficulty felt, that for a theologian 
 not to perceive its force, is regarded as " one of the most melan- 
 choly signs of the times," reducing modern exegesis to a level 
 with the absurdities of Rabbinical comment. f The chronology, 
 it is argued, must of necessity require a very considerable ex- 
 pansion ; and this it is proposed to give by substituting for the 
 430 years of Moses and St. Paul,+ 1400, or (more exactly) 1427 
 years (!) as the real length of the interval between the going- 
 down of Jacob into Egypt and the Exodus under Moses. § 
 But it is more easy to make a vague and general charge of ab- 
 surdity against an adversary than to point out in -what the 
 absurdity with which he is taxed consists. |1 No one asserts it to 
 be natm-ally probable that such a company as went down with 
 Jacob into Egypt would in 215, or even in 430 years, have be- 
 come a nation jDossessing 600,000 fighting men. Orthodox com- 
 mentators simply say that such an increase of numbers was 
 possible even in the shortest of these terms. They note that 
 Jacob brought into Egypt fifty-one grandsons,^ and that if, under 
 the special blessing of God so repeatedly promised to Abra- 
 
 * 'Ant. Jiid.'i. 8. 
 
 t Bimsen, ' Egj-pt,' vol. i. p. 179. 
 
 + Gal. iii. 17. 
 
 ;^ Bunsen, ' Egypt,' vol. iv. pp. 492, 
 493. 
 
 II When M. Bunsen condescends to 
 particularize, he tails liimself into a re- 
 markable error. Baumgarten had ob- 
 served that, " if we deduct from the 70 
 souls who came into Eg\-pt 14, viz. 
 Jacob, liis 12 sous, and Dinah, there re- 
 
 main 56 pair who produced children." 
 M. Bunsen says this reminds him of 
 Falstaff's mode of reckoning. But the 
 reckoning is perfectly correct, since the 
 " 56 pair'" who remain consist of the 56 
 male grandcliihken and gi-eat-grand- 
 children of Jacob (who, together with the 
 14 deducted, make up the 70 souls), and 
 their wives, who were additional to the 
 70. (See Gen. xlvi. 8-27.j 
 
280 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay V 
 
 ham,* his male descendants had continued to increase at the 
 same rate, they woukl h)ng Avithin the specified period have 
 reached the required number. In point of fact, they Avould in 
 the fifth generation have exceeded 850,000, and in the sixth 
 have amounted to six millions.f If God can bless with increase, 
 if fecundity and life are His gifts, He might, by making every 
 marriage fruitful and every child grow up, raise, even with 
 greater rapidity than the record declares to have been done, a 
 family into a nation. At the same time, as we are bound not to 
 exaggerate the Divine interference with the ordinary course of 
 nature beyond what is actually stated or implied in Scripture, it 
 ought to be borne in mind that we have no need to suppose the 
 (J00,000 fighting men who quitted Egypt, though they are all 
 called Israelites, to have been all descendants of Jacob. The 
 members of the Patriarch's family came down into Egypt ivith 
 their houselwlds.X What the size of patriarchal households was, 
 we may gather from that of Abraham, whose "trained ser- 
 vants born in liis house " amounted to 318. § Nor Avas this an 
 exceptional case. Esau met Jacob on his return from Padan- 
 aram with 400 men, who were probably his servants, |1 and 
 Jacob at the same meeting had such a number that lie could 
 divide them into two "bands," or "armies" (niJTO).^ It is 
 not milikely that the whole company which entered Egypt M'ith 
 Jacob amounted to above a thousand souls.** As all were cir- 
 cumcised,tt all would doubtless be considered Israelites; and 
 their descendants would be reckoned to the tribes of their 
 masters. Again, we must remember that polygamy prevailed 
 among the Hebrews ; and that though polygamy, if a nation 
 lives by itself, is not favourable to rapid increase, yet, if foreign 
 wives can be obtained in any number, Xt it is an institution by 
 means of Avhich population may be greatly augmented. A recent 
 Shah of Persia is said to have left at his death nearly three 
 
 * Gen. xii. 2 ; xiii. IG ; xvii. 4-G ; 
 xxii. 17. 
 
 t Tlie average increase of tlie males 
 in tilt' two generations had been more 
 than sevenfold each generation. A se- 
 venfold increase would have given 
 857,157 males in the fifth generation, 
 and 0,01)0,099 in the sixtli. 
 
 X Gen. xlv. 18 ; Ex. i. 1. 
 
 § Gen. xiv. 14, 
 
 II Gen. xxxii. 6. 
 
 i Gen. xxxii. 7. 
 
 ** Kurtz tliinks they must have con- 
 sisted of " several thousands." < ' Hist, 
 of Old Covenant; vol. ii. p. 149, E. T.) 
 
 tt Gen. xvii. 12. 
 
 XX The Israelites could prolmhly have 
 olitained wives from the lower castes of 
 the Eiryj)tians; also from the Midianites 
 (Ex. ii. 21), tlie Libyans, and others. 
 
Essay VI. 
 
 THE PENTATEUCH. 
 
 281 
 
 thousand descendants ; and it is a well-kno^Yn fact that one of 
 his sons had a body-guard of sixty grown men, who all called 
 him father * Egypt, moreover, was a country Avhere both men and 
 animals are said to have been remarkably prolific ;f where, there- 
 fore, natm-al law would have tended in the same direction as the 
 special action of Divine Providence at this time. These consi- 
 derations do not indeed reduce the narrative within the category 
 of ordinary occurrences ; but they diminish considerably from 
 its extraordinariness. They show that at any rate there is no 
 need to extend the period of the sojourn beyond the 430 years 
 of the Hebrew text, unless we seek to deprive the increase of 
 that special and exceptional character which is markedly 
 assigned to it by the sacred historian. | 
 
 It is further maintained, that, even apart from the entire 
 question of the rapid increase of the Israelites in Egypt, the 
 Biblical number, 430, cannot be historical, because it is the 
 exact double of the period immediately preceding it, that, namely, 
 between Abraham's entrance into Canaan and Jacob's journey 
 into Egypt. It is " repugnant," we are told, " to any sound 
 critical view," to believe the one period to have really been 
 exactly the double of the other. § The nature and ground of the 
 repugnancy are not stated ; but apparently the principle 
 assumed must be, that numerical coincidences are in no case 
 historical, and that where they occur we are justified in assuming 
 that one or other of the two numbers is purely artificial — the in- 
 vention of a writer not honest enough to admit his ignorance. 
 But is this principle really sound ? Will there be no numerical 
 coincidences in historical chronology ? What, then, shall we 
 say to the ready acceptance by the writer who takes this view, 
 of a statement made by Manetho, that during a certain period 
 of 151 years there reigned in different parts of Egypt two 
 contemporary dynasties consisting of exactly forty-eight kings 
 each ? Yet this is exhibited as part of a " clear historical pic- 
 
 * Sir H. Kawlinson in the writer's 
 ' Herodotus,' vol. i. p. 277. 
 
 t Aristot. 'Hist. Au.' vii. 4; Strab. 
 XV. 1, § 22 ; Plin. ' H. N.' vii. 3 ; Senec. 
 ' Quajst. Nat.' iii. 25 ; Columell. ' de Ee 
 Kust.' iii. 8. 
 
 X " And the chiklren of Israel ■were 
 fruitful, and increased abundantly, and 
 multiplied, and waxed exceeding mighty; 
 
 and the land was filled with them." (Ex, 
 i. 7.) " But the more they afflicted them 
 the more they multiplied and grew ; and 
 they (i. e. the Egyptians) were grieved 
 because of the people of Israel." (lb. 
 verso 12 ; compare also verse 20.) 
 
 § Bunsen, ' Egypt's Place,' vol. i. p. 
 173. 
 
282 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay VI. 
 
 tiire " in the very same work wliich proclaims the belief iu a less 
 exact coincidence repugnant to all sound criticism.* The truth 
 is, that a certain number of these coincidences will be presented 
 by the historical chronology of any nation. For instance, from 
 the commencement of the Persian to the end of the Pelopon- 
 nesian war — a very marked period of Grecian history — was 
 eighty-six years ; and from the end of the Peloponnesian war to 
 the termination of the struggle between Sparta and Thebes — 
 the next marked j)eriod — was exactly half the time, or forty- 
 three years. At Eome, from the beginning of the disturbances 
 caused by the Gracchi to the first civil war between Sylla and 
 Marius was forty-four years, and from the breaking out of this 
 war to the death of Julius Caesar Avas likewise forty-four years. 
 (It was also exactly forty-four years from the death of Julius 
 Csesar to the reputed year of the birth of Christ.) In the jMo- 
 hammedan Caliphate the family of Mohammed occupied the 
 throne from B.C. 632 to B.C. 661, or (inclusively) thirty years ; 
 and the succeeding dynasty of the Ommiades held it from B.C. 
 660 to B.C. 750, or just ninety years, thrice the time of their 
 predecessors. Again, in the portion of Jewish history with re- 
 spect to which there is no dispute, the lengtli of the period of 
 independence intervening between the Syrian and the Roman 
 servitudes is exactly equal to that of the servitude under Rome, 
 which began with Antipater and terminated with the destruc- 
 tion of Jerusalem by Titus.f But it is needless to multiply in- 
 stances. Common sense assm-es us that such accidental coinci- 
 dences must occasionally take place ; and no chronology claim- 
 ing to be historical is to be rejected on account of them, unless 
 they are of more frequent occurrence in it than can be accounted 
 for by the doctrine of chances. It is not pretended that they 
 are frequent in the Pentateuch ; nor indeed in the whole of the 
 five books of Moses is there any other instance of a recurring- 
 number that has given rise to any suspicion. 
 
 18. It appears, then, fi'om this Avhole review, that there is 
 nothing in the history of the world, so far as it is yet kno^vn, that 
 forms even a serious objection to the authenticity of the Penta- 
 teuch. Were we boimd down to the numbers of the Hebrew text in 
 
 Bmisen, 'Egypt, vol. iv. p. 510. I l.yJuliu.sCxsarin I5.C.48. Jerusalem was 
 t Ju.las IMuecalwMi.s revolted B.C. KiG. ilestroved .\.d. 70. But IGG - 48 = 118, 
 Autipater was made Procurator of Judtca | and 48 + 70 = 118. 
 
Essay VI.] THE PENTATEUCH. 283 
 
 regard to tlie period between the Flood and Abraham, we should, 
 indeed, find oui-selves in a difficulty. Three hundred and seventy 
 years would certainly not seem to be sufficient time for the 
 peopling of the world, to the extent to which it appears to have 
 been peopled in the days of Abraham, and for the formation of 
 powerful and settled monarchies in Babylonia and Egypt. But 
 the adoption of the Septuagint numbers for this period, which 
 are on every ground preferable, brings the chronology into har- 
 mony at once with the condition of the world as shown to us in 
 the account given in Scripture of the times of Abraham, and 
 with the results obtainable from the study, in a sober spirit, of 
 profane history. A thousand years is ample time for the occu- 
 pation of Mesopotamia, Syria, and Egypt, by a considerable 
 pojDulation, for the formation of governments, the erection even 
 of such buildings as the Pyramids, the advance of the arts 
 generally to the condition found to exist in Egypt under the 
 eigliteenth dynasty, and for almost any amount of subdivision 
 and variety in languages. More time does not seem to be in 
 any sense needed by the facts of history hitherto known to us. 
 The world, generally, is in a primitive and simple condition at 
 the time of the call of Abraham. Men are still chiefly nomades. 
 Population seems sparse ; for Abraham and Lot find plenty of 
 vacant land in Palestine, and the descendants of Abraham ex- 
 perience no difficulty in overspreading several countries. Settled 
 kingdoms appear nowhere, except in Egypt and in Babylonia ; 
 and there the governments are of the simplest form. Art in Baby- 
 lonia is in a poor and low condition, the implements used being 
 chiefly of stone and flint. Yet Babylon is much superior to her 
 neighbom-s, holds Assyria in subjection, and claims the second 
 place in the history of the world. Her historical beginnings 
 reach back, at the utmost, to B.C. 2458, while those of Egypt 
 are probably but a very little earlier. All other nations acknow- 
 ledge themselves yomiger than these two, and have no traditions 
 even of theii- existence much before B.C. 2000. The idea that 
 the Biblical chronology is too narrow, that it cramps history, 
 and needs to be set aside in favour of a scheme which puts 
 10,000 years between the Deluge and the birth of Chiist, is not 
 one which has grown upon men gradually through the general 
 tenor of then- inquiries into the antiquities of different nations. 
 It is merely the dream of a single historical enthusiast, who, 
 
284 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay VI. 
 
 devoting himself to the history of one country, and pinning his 
 faith on one author — whom after all he exaggerates and mis- 
 represents — has come to imagine that the additional time is 
 required by the history of his favom-ite, and has then forced and 
 strained the histories of other coimtries, with which he has no 
 special acquaintance, into a distant agreement with the chrono- 
 logical scheme formed upon the supposed necessities of a 
 single kingdom and peoj)le. As for the further requirement 
 of another 10,000 years between the Deluge and the creation of 
 man, it rests upon linguistic phantasies of the most purely 
 speculative character. The remainder of the historical objec- 
 tions to the authenticity of the Pentateuch, though sometimes 
 ingenious, have in them nothing to alarm us. Profane history 
 is decidedly favourable to a Deluge extending to all races of 
 men, and to the greater longevity of man in the earlier ages. 
 Ethnological research tends continually more and more to con- 
 firm, instead of shaking, the account given of the affiliation of 
 nations in the tenth chapter of Genesis. The more accurately 
 old myths are examined, the more evident does it become that 
 their tone and spirit are wholly different from the tone and spirit 
 of Scripture. The Pentateuch has the air and manner of history ; 
 the Jews have always regarded it in that light ; and modern 
 historical and geographical inquiries, whenever they afford an 
 opportunity of testing the accuracy of the narrative, are found 
 to bear witness to its truth. Whatever may be the scientific 
 difficulties in the way of a literal reception of some portions, 
 historical difficulties of any real magnitude there are none. 
 Internally, the narrative is consistent with itself ; externally, it 
 is supported by all that has any claim to be considered sober 
 earnest in the histories of other nations. The Christian world, 
 which has reposed upon it for nearly 2000 years, as an authentic 
 record of the earliest ages, is justified, by all the results of 
 modern historical research, in still continuing its confident 
 trust. Tliere is really not a pretence for saying that recent 
 discoveries in the field of history, monumental or other, have 
 made the acceptance of the Mosaic narrative in its plain and 
 literal sense any more difficult now tlian in tlie days of Bossuet 
 or kStillin'rfleet. 
 
ESSAY VII. 
 INSPIRATION. 
 
CONTENTS OF ESSAY VII. 
 
 1. iNTKonrcTiON — All spiritual en- 
 
 lightenment derived from the Di- 
 ^•ine Spirit ; but is all derived in 
 the same -way ? 
 
 2. A Divine and a human element in 
 
 all inspiration— How co-existing? 
 
 3. History of the question — Jewish 
 
 opinions — Patristic opinions. 
 
 4. No argument against a high view 
 
 to be deduced from the patristic 
 beUcf in the inspiration of others 
 besides the Apostles. 
 
 5. Middle ages — Mysticism. 
 
 G. The Eeformation favourable to a 
 very high esteem of Holy Scrip 
 ture, but favourable also to free- 
 dom of thought. 
 
 7. Tendency of thought in Germany 
 
 in the 18th century. 
 
 8. Deism passed from England, through 
 
 France, to Germany — Doctrine of 
 the English Deists. 
 
 9. Causes leading to the controversy 
 
 on inspiration in the present day. 
 
 10. English writers of the present cen- 
 
 tury and their theories. 
 
 11. Clu-istian Evidences in a measure 
 
 independent of theories of inspi- 
 ration. 
 
 12. Definite theories not desirable. 
 
 13. Objections to inspiration closely 
 
 connected with objections to mi- 
 racles. 
 
 14. Origin of doubts about miracles. 
 
 15. Miracles not improbable, if there bo 
 
 a spiritual world coiniected more 
 or less closely with the physical 
 world, and a Personal lluler of 
 / the world. 
 
 16. If miracles ever should occur, we 
 
 should most naturally expect them 
 to be connected witli some special 
 communication of God's -ft-ill to 
 man. 
 
 17. The common course taken by pliilo- 
 
 sophical scepticism. 
 
 18. As to inspiration : we have first cer- 
 
 tain phenomena in the Bible, prov- 
 ing the existence of a human ele- 
 ment — The manifestation of that 
 human element most valuable in 
 the matter of evidence — AVe have 
 next certain plieuomena manifest- 
 ing a Divine element. — (a.) Pro- 
 phecy — Question as to the exist- 
 ence of true predictive prophecy 
 in the Old Testament — Objection 
 — Nihil in scripto quod non prius 
 in Scriptore — Objection replied 
 to — Cases of Balaam and Caia- 
 phas. — {b.) Types. 
 
 19. How far all this proves the special 
 
 inspiration of tlie Old Testament 
 — Coleridge's view considered. 
 
 20. Argument a fortiori for the inspira- 
 
 tion of the New Testament — Sir. 
 Maurice's question replied to. 
 
 21. Mr. Morell's theory of the intuitional 
 
 consciousness considered. 
 
 22. Latitude of opinion on some points 
 
 may l)e allowable. 
 
 23. Tlie Scriptures an mfalUhle deposi- 
 
 tory of religions truth. 
 
 24. Question concerning physical 
 
 science. 
 
 25. Conclusion — Some trials of our 
 
 faith ought not to stagger us — 
 Tlie proper condition of mind in 
 the present day. 
 
INSPIRATIOiN. 
 
 1. As in the natnrar world wisdom and intelligence are among 
 tlie signs of life in an intelligent being, so in the spiritual world a 
 spiritual understanding follows on the possession of spiritual life. 
 As the Divine Spirit gives life, so He inspires wisdom. Indeed 
 all spiritual gifts flow equally from the same Spirit. St. Paul 
 says that " there are diversities of gifts, but the same Spirit," 
 who gives to one the word of wisdom, to another the word 
 of knowledge, to another faith, to another miracles and gifts of 
 healing, to another prophecy, to another divers kinds of tongues, 
 to another the interpretation of tongues. So he describes the 
 influence of that one and the selfsame Spirit on the early disciples 
 in the Church of Corinth. Are we to take this literally ? Are 
 we to believe that, whilst some had spiritual wisdom and under- 
 standing — and that in larger or less degrees — others were en- 
 abled to work miracles, others to prophesy ; that whilst to some 
 there was only the common understanding of spiritual truths and 
 mysteries, such as an enlightened mind among ourselves could 
 penetrate, to others there was given an infallible knowledge 
 of future events or of Divine truths otherwise unknown to man ? 
 Or, on the other hand, shall we think no more than this — that 
 the Holy Spirit, who is the inspirer of all wisdom, by .rege- 
 nerating the heart, purifying the soul, exalting the affections, 
 and quickening the intuitions of the mind, gives to some men 
 more than to others an insight into things heavenly, and so 
 enables them in all times and in all ages of the Church to 
 be exponents of the Divine will? — that He reveals God and 
 Christ to their inmost consciences, inspiring them with all high 
 and holy thoughts, and that thus they can utter things which 
 would be deep mysteries to other men, and which are, indeed, 
 the oracles of God ? 
 
 2. This is pretty much the question concerning insj^iration so 
 much agitated now. When we come to consider it, there can be ^ 
 no doubt but that we must admit a hnman and a Divine element. 
 There is the mind of the Prophet or Apostle to be enlightened, 
 
288 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay VII. 
 
 and the Holy Spirit, the inspii'er or eulighteuer. The question 
 will be, in what manner and in what proportion these two ele- 
 ments coexist. We may suppose the human mind perfectly 
 passive, acting simply under a mechanical influence of the Holy 
 •Spirit, speaking or writing not its own thoughts or its own words, 
 but only the thoughts and words of the Spirit of God. Or we 
 may suppose the mind of the writer or speaker acting altogether 
 freely, speaking entirely its own thoughts and words, but having 
 derived from Divine communion and enlightenment a higher 
 tone, having acquired a corrector judgment, and, from a deep 
 spiritual insight, able to speak spiritual things such as the 
 natural man receiveth not. These are the two extremes. The one 
 is verbal inspiration, simple dictation, so that the lips of the 
 Prophet and the pen of the Evangelist are but mechanical organs 
 moved by the Spirit of God. The other is no more than an ex- 
 altation of the natural faculties by the influence of the same 
 Spirit, such an exaltation as we must believe all wise and holy 
 men to have received, an inspiration such as that by which 
 a Hooker or a Butler wrote the works which bear their names. 
 There are many intermediate steps between these two, but 
 no one can exceed either of these extremes and yet call him- 
 self a Christian. 
 
 3. Many causes have brought this subject into controversy at 
 present. It has, however, occupied the thoughts of thoughtful 
 men, and has been debated and disputed on in earlier times ; 
 and a rapid glance at the history of the question may be a 
 help to giving it its true place, and perhaps to finding its true 
 solution. 
 
 The reverence which the ancient Jews felt for the Jewish 
 Scriptures, must have sprung from the highest theory of verbal 
 inspiration. Their care to count every verse and letter in every 
 book of the Old Testament, to retain every large or small letter, 
 every letter above or below the line, their belief that a mystery 
 lurked in every abnormal state of letter, jot, or tittle, cannot 
 have resulted from any lower principle. Later Jews, like the 
 Cabbalists or IMaimonidcs, may have become Pantheists or Eation- 
 alists ; but the more ancient have left us the clearest proof that 
 they esteemed the Scriptures as the express word of God Him- 
 self. The well-known tradition amongst the Alexandrian Jews 
 concerning the verbal agreement of all the LXX. translators, 
 
Essay VIL] INSPIRATION. 289 
 
 tlioiigli working in seventy separate cells, looks the same way. 
 There is considerable reason to believe that the distinction 
 between the different books of Scripture — the Hagiographa 
 being esteemed inferior to the Prophets, and the Prophets infe- 
 rior to the Law — was at least much magnified, if not wholly 
 invented, by the later Jews. So far, however, as such a distinc- 
 tion and such difference of estimation existed at all, so far we 
 must perhaps believe that there was a notion of something like 
 degrees of inspiration. 
 
 The earlier Christian Fathers seem to have followed much the 
 same course as their Jewish predecessors, Clemens Eomanus 
 calls the Holy Scriptures " the true words of the Holy Ghost " 
 (c. 45). No definite theory of inspiration would be likely to be 
 propounded ; but the general reverence for the words of Holy 
 Writ, and the deep significance believed to exist underneath the 
 letter, prove the belief in inspiration to have been very strong and 
 universal. Justin Martyr, and his Jewish opponent, seem fully 
 agreed in their aj)preciation of the Old Testament. " No Scrip- 
 ture can be opposed to any other Scripture" ('Dialog.' p. 289). 
 Irengeus saw in our Lord's promise to His Apostles — "He that 
 heareth you, heareth Me " (Luke x, 16) — an assurance of their 
 infallibility in the Gospel. " After the Lord's resurrection they 
 were indued with the power of the Holy Ghost, and had perfect 
 knowledge of the truth. He, therefore, who despises their 
 teaching despises Christ and God " (L-en. iii. 1). Still it may 
 be fairly said that L-enseus, in his accounts of the composition of 
 the Gospel, seems to combine a human element with the Divine. 
 (See L-en. iii. IL) 
 
 TertuUian embraced the Montauist belief, that Divine commu- 
 nications were made to man by means of a condition of trance 
 or ecstasy. In this trance the prophet was supposed to lose all 
 sense, like a Pythoness under the influence of the Divine afflatus 
 (c. Marcion. iv. 22). This was the highest kind of inspiration. 
 Yet he seems to have thought that the Apostles were at times 
 allowed to speak their own words, and not the words of God, as 
 where St. Paul (1 Cor. vii. 12) says, "To the rest speak I, not 
 the Lord " (' De Monogam,' c. 3). 
 
 The Alexandrian Fathers, Clement and Origen, though adopt- 
 ing somewhat of the Neo-Platonic views of the soul, as receiving 
 an enlightenment by communion with the Divine Logos, appear 
 
 u 
 
290 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay Yll. 
 
 to have held firmly the iufallibility of every word of Scriptm-e ; 
 and the mystical sense which they attach to the history and the 
 language of the Old Testament seems to point even to verbal in- 
 spiration. (See Lumper, ' Historia Theologico-critica,' vol. 9. c. 4. 
 § iii. art. 2.) Origen was, however, the first great Biblical 
 critic : few things have tended more than Biblical criticism to 
 modify the theory of verbal inspiration : and this appeared even 
 in the patristic ages and among some of the most illustrious 
 of the patristic writers. The critical labours of Chrysostom and 
 Jerome, in the beginning of the fifth century, made them 
 observe the apparent discrepancies in the accounts of the Evan- 
 gelists, and other like difficulties in Holy Writ. Such observa- 
 tions led to a greater appreciation of the human elentent in the 
 composition of Scripture. St. Chrysostom could see that some 
 slight variations in the different narratives of the same event 
 were no cause for anxiety or unbelief, but rather a proof that the 
 Evangelists were independent witnesses. And St. Jerome could 
 discern in the New Testament writers a dialect inferior to the 
 purest Greek, and even at times a mixture of human passion in 
 the language of the Apostles.* All this, however, these Fathers 
 clearly held to be subjected and subordinate to the general 
 Divine influence of the guiding and overruling Spirit. 
 
 4. No argument against a high doctrine of inspiration, as held 
 by the Fathers, can be fairly deduced from the fact that they 
 were disposed to admit the inspiration of other Aviitings besides 
 the Canonical Scriptures. Many of them knew the Old Testa- 
 ment only in tlie Greek translation, and were inclined to pay the 
 same reverence to that Avhich may have been due only to the 
 Hebrew original. The writings of Clement and Hermas were at 
 first received as canonical, though more careful inquiry ex- 
 cluded them from the Canon of the New Testament. This may 
 be an argument against the critical accuracy of the Fathers, but 
 is none against their belief in the inspiration of the Bible. Nor, 
 again, are we warranted in thinking that they confounded natu- 
 ral enlightenment M'ith spiritual inspix-ation, because some of 
 them speak as if prophetic powers and supernatural illummation 
 were vouchsafed to others besides the Apostles of Christ. There 
 can be no question that the earlier Fathers believed in the con- 
 
 Neamlor, ' History of Doctrines,' i. 280. (Bolm.) 
 
Essay VII.] 
 
 INSPIRATION. 
 
 291 
 
 tinuation of the miraculous powers of tlie Apostolic age down to 
 tlieir own times, and lience they looked themselves for a spe- 
 cial illumination from the Holy Ghost. Yet, even so, they 
 distinguished carefully between the gift of infallibility in things 
 spiritual vouchsafed to the writers of the New Testament, and 
 the gift of Divine illumination to themselves and their own 
 contemporaries.* 
 
 5. The Church of the middle ages had, for the most part, a 
 belief similar to that of the earlier Fathers. Visions, and 
 dreams, and sensible illuminations were still expected. Mu-acu- 
 lous powers and Divine inspiration were still believed to reside 
 in the Church ; but the Scriptures were not the less esteemed as 
 specially, and in a sense distinct and peculiar, the lively oracles 
 of God. Still the bold speculations of Abelard, in the twelfth 
 century, reached the doctrine of inspiration as well as other 
 deep questions of theology. The Prophets, as he taught, had 
 sometimes the gift of prophecy and sometimes spoke from their 
 own minds. The Apostles too were liable to error, as St. Peter 
 on the question of circumcision, who was reproved by St. Paul.t 
 Abelard's tendency was rationalistic. But here a very important 
 phenomenon, not confined to the middle ages, but very ap- 
 parent then, deserves our careful attention. In all ages of the 
 Church we find frequent tendencies to mysticism. The desire 
 for a kind of ecstatic vision of things Divine, of abstraction from 
 the external world, and an absorbed contemplation of the Deity, 
 is natural to enthusiastic temperaments, and is not uncommon in 
 times of dogmatic controversy. The state so sought after seems 
 to offer a refuge from the strife of tongues, from the din and 
 noise and uncharitableuess of the world and the Church without. 
 Those who have taken this line, indulged in this spirit, have, of 
 course, a firm belief in the communion of the Christian soul with 
 the Spirit of God, and look for constant revelations from the 
 
 * Ignatius claims for himself that lie 
 knew the doctrines which he taught, 
 not from man, hut from the testimony 
 of the Spirit ('ad Philadelph.' 7) ; hut 
 then he clearly distinguishes hetwccn 
 liimself and the Apostles. " I do not 
 enjoin you as Peter and Paul ; they 
 were Apostles, I a condemned man." 
 ('ad Eph.' 15.) And Tertullian, who 
 took a peculiarly high view of the 
 Divine illumination of the true Chris- 
 
 tian, says distinctly that " all the faith- 
 ful have the Spirit of God, hut all are 
 not Apostles." "The Apostles have 
 the Holy Spirit in a peculiar sense." 
 ('De Exhortatione Oastitatis,'4.) See 
 Westcott, ' Introd. to the Gospels,' pp. 
 386, 400. 
 
 t ' Sic et Non.' Ed. Hencke, p. 10. 
 See Neander, 'Hist, of Doctrine,' vol. ii, 
 p. 492. 
 
292 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay YII. 
 
 Divine to tlie human intelligence. The mystic is transported 
 out of self, and aims at frequent supernatural communion with 
 God. To such a person the condition of the devout soid is 
 a condition of constant inspiration. It is very true that the 
 Holy Spirit is ever present with the Church, ever dwells in the 
 souls of Christians, is our teacher and guide in all things, is 
 ever ready to enlighten our understandings, as well as to convert 
 our hearts. But this truth of Scripture, pressed to the extent of 
 mysticism, breaks down the boundary between the inspiration of 
 Prophets or Apostles, and the enlightenment of the Christian 
 soul. The genuine mystic is himself in a state of the highest 
 inspiration. The intuitions of his spirit enable him to see things 
 invisible. High doctrine concerning the Church is favourable 
 enough to such a view of tilings. Belief in the infallibility of 
 the existing Church, in its miraculous powers, and in frequent 
 revelations to the higher Saints, looked all this way. Again, it 
 is well known how mysticism tended to Pantheism. Striving 
 after absorption in God, men learned to identify their own minds, 
 more or less, with Deity. The Divine Spirit was believed to 
 dwell in all human souls, and needed only to be stirred up 
 within them. The inclination to look wholly witliiu, neglect of 
 the objective, cultivation only of the subjective — all this too 
 readily takes a pantlieistic direction. And so we find many sects 
 of medieval mystics lapsing at length into pure Pantheism — a 
 state of belief in which it is plain enough that anything like the 
 Christian doctrine of the inspiration of the Scriptures is impos- 
 sible, as it cannot be distinguished from the illumination of any 
 devout mind, or from the inspirations of genius. This is a thing 
 of great importance to observe, as it sliows itself in subsequent 
 ages of Church History. Mysticism and extreme spiritualism 
 destroy any definite doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture, and 
 they very readily glide into Pantheism. 
 
 6. The Reformation, of course, introduced much thought and 
 controversy about Scripture. " The sufficiency of the Scriptures 
 for salvation " became a Eeformatiou watchword : Scripture, 
 the written word of God, — not the unwritten record of the 
 Church, Tradition. The natural inclination was to a very high 
 esteem of the Bible, as the definite deposit of Christian truth, in 
 contradistinction to the indefiniteness of the traditions of the 
 (!] lurch, and of that teacliing of the Holy Spirit ever present with 
 
Essay VII.] INSPIRATIOX. 293 
 
 the Church, on which the Eoman divines insisted. Neverthe- 
 less, the tendency of the Eeformation Avas to boldness of thought 
 and freedom of inquiry. Erasmus, the great forermmer of 
 Luther, had from his critical investigations been led to a some- 
 what freer view of inspiration than had been common before 
 him. He thought it unnecessary to attribute everything in the 
 Apostles to miracidous teaching. Christ suffered the Apostles 
 to err, and that too after the descent of the Paraclete, but not so 
 as to endanger the faith.* Even Luther, the great master 
 mind of the age, with his strong subjective tendency, and with 
 his indomitable boldness, ventured to subject the books of the 
 New Testament to the criterion of his own intuition. The 
 teaching of St. Paul penetrated and convinced his soul ; St, 
 James seemed to contradict St. Paul ; and his Epistle was 
 rejected as an Epistle of straw. There is reason to believe that 
 he afterwards regretted and retracted ; but words once spoken 
 reach far and wide, and can never be unsaid again, 
 
 7. The tendency of Calvin and the Calvinist reformers was 
 less subjective and more scholastic than that of Luther and the 
 Lutherans. Their distinct and definite system of doctrine, like 
 that of their forerunners Augustine and Aquinas, naturally 
 found a place for the plenary and even verbal inspiration of the 
 Scriptures, so that some of the Swiss Confessions speak of simple 
 dictation by the Holy Ghost. ' The Eemonstrants or Arminians, 
 on the other hand, were more disposed to Rationalism than the 
 generality of the reformed ; and writers, like Grotius and Epis- 
 copius, made clear distinctions between the Divine and the 
 human elements in the writers of the Old and New Tes- 
 taments.-f- 
 
 The Socinians were, of course, the most rationalising sect of 
 those which early sprang from the Reformation, a fungus- 
 growth, rather than one of the natural branches. At first, how- 
 ever, they took the same view as otlier Protestant writers of the 
 authority of Holy Writ, only they were less sensitive about 
 difficulties and apparent discrepancies in Scripture, and more 
 
 * Non est uecesse ut quicqiiid fuit in | ^ E. g. A Spiritu Saucto dictari ]iis- 
 
 Apostolis protinus ad miraculuni vo- torias nou fuit opup. Satis fuit sorip- 
 
 cemus. Passus est errare suos Christus, | toreui memoria valere. — Grotius, Vof. 
 
 otiam post acceptum Paracletum, scd | p-o pace iJccZes., torn. iii. p. 672. Loud, 
 
 nou usque ad fidei periculum. — Erasm. j 1G79. 
 
 Epistt., lib. ii., torn. iv. Edit. Basil. I 
 
294 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay VII. 
 
 disposed to cut and square it so as to accord with wliat aj)peared 
 to them to be reasou and common sense. This tendency more 
 and more fully developed itself. The modern Unitarian is a 
 genuine Eationalist often little different from a Deist. 
 
 The mystical spirit, which had long been swelling up under 
 the weight of the Medieval Church, sometimes wholly within it, 
 sometimes bursting forth from the pressm-e, showed itself in 
 many places and many forms, after the triumph of the Eeforma- 
 tion. Its elevation of the subjective over the objective, of the 
 inward life over the outward letter, led insensibly to a disregard 
 of the Bible in comparison with the internal testimony and the 
 intuition of the soul. The Anabaptists of Germany were of the 
 coarsest class of mystics. Among the best have been the 
 Quakers in this country. The leading principle of George Fox, 
 their founder, Avas the doctrine of the InAvard Light. This is 
 the true principle of all knowledge of religion. The outward 
 Word is cliiefly valuable as it stirs up the Word within. The 
 highest source of knowledge is this inward illumination. All 
 outward forms, all outward tests, all creeds and confessions, are 
 strictly forbidden. Even the Bible must be subordinated to the 
 light of God within. It is evident that, on this princij)le, there 
 can be no distinction between the inspiration of Prophets and 
 Apostles and the inspiration of every devout soul. It is also 
 observable how this theory produces results Hke those which 
 spring from the Eoman doctrine of tradition. The written 
 Word of God is no longer the final court of appeal in controver- 
 sies of doctrine. The Church of Borne finds an infallible inter- 
 preter in that Divine Sphit which ever dwells in and guides the 
 Church. The mystic has an infallible interpreter in his own 
 bosom, who not only opens his understanding that he may 
 understand the Scriptm'cs, but communicates directly and sen- 
 sibly truth to the soul. It is also very deserving of remark, 
 however painful it may be, that at one time the Quakers were 
 rapidly hurrying into Bationalism, and even Socinianism — the 
 coldest forms of unbelief — from the Avarm mysticism of their 
 first founders. 
 
 To come nearer to our own times, the whole spnit of the last 
 century in Germany was subjective. There seemed a reaction 
 from the positive spii'it of the seventeenth century, which has 
 been called the middle age of the Reformation. Pietism was 
 
Essay VII.] INSPIRATION. 295 
 
 the form taken by tlie religious revival, a form which was emi- 
 nently subjective, and which partook much of the mystical. 
 The philosophical spirit was of the same character. The very 
 principle of illuminism (aukllirung) was, that there is in man's 
 inmost consciousness an intuitional knowledge of truth. Its 
 motto — "Wahr ist was klar ist," "that is true which is clear," 
 — sufficiently indicates its character. Proceeding from such a 
 ground, and raising Natural Eeligion to the rank of a Revelation, 
 Tollner, the disciple of Wolff, reduced Scripture to the level of 
 a natm-al light.* At the same time, the Pietists used the Bible, 
 not so much to be the source of truth and the fountain of faith, 
 as for a book of devotion and to raise pious emotions.f In both 
 ways there was a move towards the confounding of the light of 
 Natm-e with the light of Revelation, of the light of the Spirit in 
 the devout or illumiuated soul with the light which had been 
 specially vouchsafed to Prophets and Apostles for communicating 
 God's truth to the world. 
 
 8. In the latter half of the eighteenth century, the Deism, 
 which had been troubling England, had passed through the 
 alembic of French scepticism, and now settled down in a shower 
 of Rationalism on Germany. The Rationalism of Paulus, the 
 Pantheism of Hegel, the liistorical myth of Strauss, derive their 
 pedigree from the writings of Lord Herbert of Cherbury, Toland, 
 Tindal, and other English Deists of the seventeenth and early 
 eighteenth centuries, through the school of Rousseau and Vol- 
 taire.:}: The special principle of Lord Herbert and his followers, 
 the Deists, was that there were several positive religions — 
 Christianity, Judaism, Mohammedism, &c. In the main all 
 these are the same. The general religion is at the bottom of all 
 of them, i. e., the Religion of Nature, a religion founded in the 
 natm'al perception of truth, the intuitional consciousness of the 
 human mind. Positive religions may be very good for practical 
 purposes ; but all that is positive in them is evil, or at the best 
 worthless ; the valuable part being that which they hold in 
 common of the general religion. It was this principle which 
 passed through the various forms of French uifidelity, German 
 
 * See Kalmis, 'Hist, of German % See Kahnis as above, p. 31, &c. 
 
 Protestantism,' English Translation, by McCaul's Kationalism and Deistic In- 
 
 Meycr, p. 11 G. fiilelitv, passim. 
 
 t lb., p. 100, IIG. 
 
296 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay VII. 
 
 nationalism and Pantiicism, and wliich has been brought back 
 to us, as the highest result of modern discoveries in science 
 and mental philosophy. How it Avas calculated to act upon 
 the theory of inspiration, and to unsettle it even with those 
 who had not become either Rationalists or Deists, it is needless 
 to remark, AYhcre a shadow of infidelity is obscuring the 
 light, many, who are not wholly under its darkness, will yet 
 pass through the penumbra that surrounds it. Even the apolo- 
 gists in the last century, from the wish to take positions which 
 Avere impregnable, surrendered, at least for argument's sake, the 
 higher ground of their forerunners in the faith. And, in the like 
 manner, among the German divines, who still held Christian 
 and orthodox opinions, there was a tendency to depart from the 
 higher doctrine of inspiration held by the Church and the Re- 
 formers ; to speak of degrees of inspiration, of fallibility in 
 things earthly, of a Divine influence elevating the mental Acui- 
 ties of the sacred writers ; not simply to ascribe all to the direct 
 teaching of the Spirit of God.* 
 
 9. Distinct theories of inspiration were in old times seldom 
 propounded, even where some attention was directed to the ques- 
 tion. Definite controversies upon it scarcely arose. The present 
 century has been rife in both ; and they have prevailed not a 
 little among ourselves. Several causes have contributed to call 
 them forth. First, and chiefly, the spread of rationalising spe- 
 culations, and the consequent unsettling of faith, f Next, the 
 greater attention which has been paid to the criticism of the 
 Bible, and especially of the New Testament, has exposed to view 
 some of the difficulties concerning the origin of the books of the 
 Bible, concerning the historical accuracy of some statements, 
 concerning the slight apparent variations in the testimony of the 
 Evangelists. In ordinary historians these would puzzle no one. 
 The strictest integrity is com])atible with slight inaccuracy or 
 divergence of testimony ; but if all was the work of God's Holy 
 Spirit, speaking through human agents, the least discrepancy is 
 formidable. Hence the human element has been thought more 
 
 * SeoKalmis, pp. IIG, 117. 
 
 f It is impurtunt to observe, that 
 tliis was first in iime as well as in 
 importance. Dr. McCaul has sliown 
 clearly (' nationalism and Deistic In- 
 
 opinions in Germany was first, the 
 criticism came afterwards. Faith in 
 Revelation was shaken by Deism antl 
 Kationalism, and then the unfriendly 
 criticism was brought to bear ujjon the 
 
 fidelity ') that the spread of unbelieving | records of Christianity. 
 
Essay VU.] INSPIRATION. 297 
 
 of among modern critics, and by some has been elevated above 
 the Divine. Thirdly, the rapid discoveries of modern science 
 have been supposed to. contradict the records of the Old Testa- 
 ment Scriptm-es ; and, in order to account for such a contradic- 
 tion, eiforts have been made to interpret anew the words of 
 Moses ; and, where these have proved unsatisfactory, many have 
 more or less believed that the writers of the historical books 
 were merely chroniclers of historical events or collectors of an- 
 cient records, the providence of God having watched over the 
 preservation of such records, but the Spirit of God having in no 
 sense dictated them. Still freer views have been propounded ; 
 but this may suffice as the expression of the thoughts of serious 
 men, 
 
 10. One of the first among ourselves to put forth a bold theory 
 of insj)iration was Coleridge. His ' Confessions of an Enquiring 
 Spirit ' was indeed not published till after his death ; but the 
 tone of many former writings is much the same. In the 
 posthumous work just mentioned he unfolds his theory pretty 
 freely. Of the Bible he speaks as a library of infinite value, 
 as that which must have a Divine Spirit in it, from its appeal 
 to all the hidden springs of feeling in our hearts. " In short," 
 he writes, " whatever j^??c?s me bears witness that it has proceeded 
 from a Holy Spirit." (Letter i.) " In the Bible there is more 
 that finds me than I have experienced in all other books 
 put together ; the words of the Bible find me at greater depths 
 of my being ; and whatever finds me brings with it an irre- 
 sistible evidence of its having proceeded from the Holy Spirit." 
 (Letter ii.) But then he protests against " the doctrine which 
 requires me to believe that not only Avhat finds me, but all 
 that exists in the sacred volume, and Mhicli I am bound to 
 find therein, was not only inspired by, that is, composed by men 
 under the actuating influence of, the Holy Spirit, but likewise 
 dictated by an Infallible Intelligence ; that the writers, each and 
 all, were divinely informed, as well as inspired." The very 
 essence of " this doctrine is this, that one and the same Intelli- 
 gence is speaking in the imity of a person, whicli unity is 
 no more broken by the diversity of the pipes through whicli it 
 makes itself audible, than is a tune by the different instruments 
 on which it is played by a coiisummate musician equally perfect 
 in all. One instrument may be more capacious than another. 
 
298 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay VII. 
 
 but as far as its compass extends, and in what it sounds fortli, it 
 Avill be true to the conception of the master." Such a doctrine, 
 he conceives, must imply infallibility in physical science and in 
 everything else as much as in faith, in things natural no less 
 than in spiritual. Pie expresses a full belief " that the word 
 of the Lord came to Samuel, to Isaiah, to others, and that 
 the words which gave utterance to the same are faithfully re- 
 corded." But for the recording he does not think that there 
 was need of any supernatural working, except in such cases as 
 those in which God not only utters certain express words to a 
 prophet, but also enjoins him to record them. In the latter 
 case he accepts them " as supernaturally communicated and 
 their recording as executed under special guidance." The argu- 
 ments of Coleridge are calculated rather to j)ull down than to 
 build up. He brings many reasons against a rigid mechanical 
 theory, against a belief that the Bible is simply the voice of 
 God's Holy Spirit uttered through different organs or instru- 
 ments ; bat he does not iix any limit, he does not say how far 
 he admits Divine teaching or inspiration to extend, nor does he 
 apparently draw any line of distinction between the inspiration 
 of holy men of old and the spnitual and providential direction 
 of enlightened men in every age and nation. 
 
 AVlierever Coleridge has trodden Mr. Mam-ice follows him ; 
 not that he is a servile imitator, but he is a zealous disciple, and 
 one who generally outdoes his master. In his ' Theological 
 Essays ' he begins to speak of the inspiration of poets and pro- 
 phets among the Greeks ; he speaks again of the quickening 
 and informing spirit, to which all good men ascribe their own 
 teaching and enlightenment ; he quotes the language of our 
 Liturgy as ascribing to " God's holy inspiration " the power of 
 " thinking those things that be good ;" and then he asks the ques- 
 tion, " Ought we in om- sermons to say, ' Brethren, we beseech 
 you not to suppose the inspiration of Scripture to at all resemble 
 that for which we have been praying ; they are genericaUy and 
 essentially unlike ; it is blasphemous to connect them in our 
 minds ; the Church is very guilty for having suggested the 
 association ?' " Proceeding in this course he naturally arrives 
 at the conclusion that all which is good and beautiful comes 
 from the inspiration of the Spirit pf (lod, and that the sacred 
 words of Scripture came in the same manner from the same 
 
Essay VIL] IXSPIRATIOX. 299 
 
 Spirit. (See Essay xiii.) In some of bis writings, especially in 
 his work on ' Sacrifice,' he appears to have carried his disbelief 
 of a more special inspiration of Holy Scripture to a greater 
 length than in his ' Theological Essays,' as where God's tempting 
 of Abraham to slay his son is attributed to a horrible thought 
 coming over him and haunting him. 
 
 A very able and interesting writer on the same side of the 
 same subject is Mr. Morell in his ' Philosophy of Eehgion.' The 
 work is one of considerable acuteness and philosophical power. 
 The writer's theory of inspiration is based on liis theory of the 
 human mind. The different powers of consciousness he classes 
 thus : 
 
 Powers of Consciousness .. to wbicli correspond .. Emotions. 
 
 1. The Sensational „ „ The Instincts. 
 
 2. The Perceptive ' „ „ The Animal Passions. 
 
 3. The Logical „ „ Eelational Emotions. 
 
 4. The Intuitional „ ,, Jilsthetic, Moral, and 
 
 Eeligious Emotions. 
 
 JSTow, the intuitional consciousness, he contends, is that which 
 alone is properly susceptible of religious impressions and reli- 
 gious truths. Revelation he considers to involve an immediate 
 intuition of Divine realities. All revelation implies an intelli- 
 gible object presented, and a given power of recipiency in the 
 subject, which poAver is lodged in the intuitional consciousness. 
 In distinguishing revelation and inspiration, he defines " revela- 
 tion, in the Christian sense, as that act of the Divine power by 
 which God presents the realities of the spiritual world imme- 
 diately to the human mind, while inspiration denotes that espe- 
 cial influence wi'ought upon the faculties of the subject, by virtue 
 of which he is able to grasp these realities in then- perfect fulness 
 and integrity." (p. 150.) " God made a revelation of Himself " 
 to the world in Jesus Chi-ist;*but it was the inspiration of the 
 Apostles, which enabled them clearly to discern it." 
 
 Mr. Morell argues that " the canonicity of the New Testament 
 Scriptures was decided upon solely on the ground of their pre- 
 senting to the whole Church clear statements of Aijostolical Chris- 
 tianity. The idea of their being written by any special command 
 of God, or verbal dictation of the Spirit, was an ide^ altogether 
 foreign to the primitive Christians" (p. 165). "The proper idea 
 of inspiration, as applied to the Holy Scriptures, does not include 
 
300 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay TIL 
 
 either miraculous powers, verbal dictation, or any distinct com- 
 mission from Crod." (lb.) On the contrary, it consists " in the 
 impartation of clear intuitions of moral and spiritual truth to the 
 mind by extraordinary means. According to this view of the 
 case, inspiration, as an internal j^henomenon, is perfectly consistent 
 with the natural laws of the human mind — it is a higher kind of 
 potency, which every man to a certain degi'ee possesses" (p. 166). 
 This view, he thinks, " gives full consistency to the jjrogressive 
 chamcter of Scripture morality" (p. 167). " It gives a satisfac- 
 tory explanation of the minor discrepancies to be found in the 
 sacred writers" (p. 170), M'hether those discrepancies be between 
 Scriptm-e and science, or in statements of facts, or in reasoning. 
 In every case in which the moral nature is highly purified, and 
 so a harmony of the spiritual being with the mind of God pro- 
 duced, a removal of all outward disturbances from the heart, 
 " What," he asks, " is to prevent or disturb the immediate intui- 
 tion of Divine things ? ' Blessed are the pure in heart, for they 
 shall seg God'" (p.^186). 
 
 It is clear that this theoiy makes great purity of heart, or 
 high sanctification, equivalent to, or the unfailing instrument of, 
 inspiration. If one man is a better Christian than another, and 
 so has a purer heart, he must be more inspired than the otlier. 
 Hence, if a man of modern times could be found of a higher re- 
 ligious tone and character than an Apostle, he would have a 
 higher intuition of Divine things, and therefore would know 
 Christian truth more infallibly. jMoreover, it appears that the 
 value of the Scriptures consists, not in their proceeding from any 
 direct command of God, or from any infallible guidance of His 
 Spirit, but in their embodying the teaching and experience of 
 men whose hearts were elevated, and so their understandings 
 enlightened ; to this it being added, in the case of the Now Tes- 
 tament, that tlie writers were such as were specially qualified to 
 represent the Apostolical Church, and so to transmit its spirit 
 and teaching to us. 
 
 A writer of less ability, but moi-e boldness, ]\[r. Mac Nauglit 
 of Liverpool, has carried the same theory to its fm-thest limits. 
 He defines inspiration to be " that action of tlie Divine Spirit by 
 which, apa^-t from any idea of infallibility, all that is good in 
 man, beast, or matter, is originated and sustained" (j). 130, 
 Second Edition). He denies all distinction between genius and 
 
Essay VII.] INSPIRATION. 301 
 
 inspiration. He doubts not that " David, Solomon, Isaiah, or 
 Paul would have spoken of everything, which may with pro- 
 priety be called a work of genius, or of cleverness, or of holiness," 
 as " works of the Spirit of God, written by Divine inspiration." 
 (p. 132.) 
 
 11. The liistorical sketch thus rapidly given seems to show 
 that there have always been some slight differences of tone and 
 opinion touching this important question, but that these diifer- 
 ences have never so markedly come out as in the nineteenth 
 century. The subject at present causes great anxiety, and not 
 witliout reason. Many feel that, if they must give up a high doc- 
 trine of inspiration, they give up Christianity ; and yet they 
 think that a high doctrine is scarcely tenable. Such a feeling is 
 not unnatural, and yet it is not wholly true. All the history, 
 and even all the great doctrines of the Gospel, might be capable 
 of proof, and so deserving of credence, though we were obliged 
 to adopt almost the lowest of the modern theories of inspiration. 
 For instance, all, or almost all, the arguments of Butler, Paley, 
 Lardner, and other like authors, are independent of the question, 
 "What is the nature and degree of Scriptural inspiration?" 
 Paley, for instance, undertakes to prove the truth of Christ's 
 resurrection and of the Gospel history, and thence the truth of 
 the doctrines which Christ taught to the world. But this he 
 argues out, for the most part, on principles of common historical 
 evidence. He treats the Apostles as twelve common men, of 
 common honesty and common intelligence. If they could not 
 have been deceived, and had no motive to deceive the world, 
 then surely we must accept their testimony as true. But if 
 their testimony is true, Jesus Christ must have lived, and taught, 
 and worked mu-acles, and risen from the dead, and so in Him we 
 have an accredited witness sent from God. His teaching, there- 
 fore, must have been the truth ; and if we have good grounds for 
 believing that His disciples carefully treasured up His teaching, 
 and faithfully handed it on to us, we have then in the New Tes- 
 tament an unquestionable record of the will and of the truth of 
 God. Even if the Apostles and Evangelists had no special 
 inspiration, yet, if we admit their care and fidelity, we may trust 
 to their testimony, and so accept their teaching as true. 
 
 So then, even if we were driven to take the lowest view of in- 
 spiration, we are not bound to give up our faith. External 
 
o02 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay VII. 
 
 evidence must almost of necessity begin by taking low ground. 
 It must treat nothing as certain until it is proved. It must not, 
 therefore, even presume that witnesses are honest till it has 
 found reason to think them so ; and, of course, it cannot treat 
 them as inspired till it meets Avith something which compels an 
 acknowledgment of their inspiration. This is taking the ex- 
 tremest case, one in which Ave altogether doubt the inspiration 
 of the Apostles. A fortiori, we need not throw away aU faith, if 
 Ave should be led to tliink that some books of the Old Testament 
 are only historical records, collected by JeAvish antiquarians, and 
 ])Ound up Avitli the Avritiugs of prophets, as venerable and A'alu- 
 able memorials of the peculiar people of God. All this might 
 be, and yet God may have spoken by holy men of old, and after- 
 Avards more fully by His Son. 
 
 Some Christian controversialists, avIio take high ground them- 
 selves, Avrite as if they thought that Christianity Avas not worth 
 defending, unless it Avas defended exactly on their principles. 
 The minds of the young more especially are sometimes greatly 
 endangered by this means. The defender of the Gospel may be 
 but an indifferent reasoner. He fails to make his ground sure 
 and strong. His reader finds more forcible, at least more 
 specious, arguments elsewhere. He thinks the advocate he 
 rested on defeated, his arguments answered and upset, and Chris- 
 tianity itself seems lost. Noav, avc may surely begin by saying, 
 that the question of insph-ation is, Avithin certain limits, a ques- 
 tion mternal to Christianity. No doubt, it may materially affect 
 the evidences of Christianity ; but the questions of A'erbal inspi- 
 ration, mechanical inspiration, dynamical inspiration, and the 
 like, are all questions on Avhich persons belicA^ing in the Gospel 
 may differ. There is a degree of latitude Avhich must be fatal to 
 faith; but AAdthin certain limits men may differ, and yet believe. 
 We shall be Avise to take safe ground ourselves, and to bear as 
 chai-itably as we can with those Avho may take either higher or 
 lower. Only it cannot be concealed that the temper of mind 
 which disposes to a very low doctrine of inspiration is one that 
 may not improbably lead in the end to the rejection of many 
 religious truths — to scepticism, if not to unbelief. 
 
 12. It seems pretty generally agreed among thoughtful nieu 
 at present, that definite theories of uispiration are doubtful and 
 dangerous. The existence of a human element, and the existence 
 
Essay VII.] INSPIRATION^. 303 
 
 of a Divine element, are generally acknowledged ; but the exact 
 relation of the one to the other it may be difficult to define. Yet 
 some tlioughts may aid us to an approximation to the truth, per- 
 haps sufficiently clear for practical purposes. 
 
 13. In the first place, then, let us consider for a moment what 
 is the real principle which seems to actuate^ those writers and 
 thinkers, of the present day especially, who endeavour to root 
 out all distinction between the inspiration of the Apostles and 
 Prophets, and the ordinary illumination of good and mse men. 
 Is it not that morbid shrinking from a belief in anything mi- 
 raculous in religious history, now so commonly prevalent ? that 
 fear to admit the ^possibility that the Creator of the universe 
 should ever specially interfere ^^dth the universe which He has 
 created? There can be no "question but that that inspiration of 
 Holy Scripture in which the Church has generally believed is of 
 the nature of a miracle ; and so its rejection follows upon the 
 rejection of miracles in general. Many marvellous things exist 
 in nature, things at least as marvellous as any mu-acles recorded 
 in Scripture. It is marvellous that the worlds should have come 
 into being, and should all be under the government of the 
 strictest laws and the most undeviating rules — that life should 
 exist at all — that new life should be constantly bursting forth — 
 that eyes should open curiousl}- formed to see, and ears curiously 
 constructed to hear ; — all this, and much beside, is as marvellous 
 as the suspension of a natural law, as the restoring life to the 
 body from which it had gone forth, as the gi\^ng sight to the 
 blind, or hearing to the deaf. But the latter startles us into 
 conviction that some living personal being of creative power has 
 newly put forth his strength : the former state of things is so 
 general, uniform, and constantly recurring, that we can go on as 
 usual without much thinking of it, call it Nature, or perhaps 
 Deity, or any other abstract generality, and so rest satisfied. 
 
 14. Without doubt we witness in the universe the constant pre- 
 valence of general laws, and the regulation of all things by them. 
 In proportion to this general constancy is our natural expecta- 
 tion that it will continue. And, moreover, even though we 
 may be led to believe that the whole must have been framed, 
 and that the laws must have been given by a creative intelli- 
 gence ; still the uniform operation of those laws disposes us to 
 doubt the probability that they will ever be interfered with by 
 
304 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay VII. 
 
 tlie hand that first ordered them. This doubt is streugtheued 
 by the belief that the wisdom, which first gave being to an 
 universe, could never have -swouglit so imperfectly as that its 
 active interference should afterwards be needed, to remedy 
 defects or to repair the machinery. And all this might perhaps 
 be probable enough, if we could see but a natural creation, and 
 if there were no moral and rational creation too. But suppose 
 it to be true, that there is in the physical universe, and more or 
 less connected with matter and the laws of matter, a multitude 
 of intelligent, rational, moral, and accountable beings ; some 
 more powerful than others ; some, the angels, wholly good ; some, 
 the evil angels, wholly bad ; some of a mixed character, like 
 man ; all capable, more or less, of communication with each other 
 — those indeed of mixed character closely connected with matter, 
 joined to material bodies, whilst the more powerful intelligences, 
 good and evil, are freer and more independent of mere physical 
 influences : suppose, too, that there is one great Intellect, one 
 Sovereign Mind, who made all, and who governs all; with 
 premises like these, where is the improbability that there should 
 be occasional interferences with natural laws ? Life does not 
 exist at all without producing some interference with tlie mere 
 laws of matter and motion. Where intelligent beings exist 
 capable of acting on material substances, they ever do mould 
 those material substances to their will, and make the laws of 
 nature servo them. If created intelligences superior to man 
 have any power to act through material instruments, we should 
 expect that they could only act, as man does, by taking advan- 
 tage of the laws by which matter is guided, and so controlling 
 one law by bringing a more powerful law to bear upon it. Even 
 of the providence of the Supreme Being, if that providence be 
 continually at work, controlling the moral and intellectual, and 
 upholding the material creation, it is most probable that such 
 providential agency would be exercised in overruling and 
 directing natural causes and laws rather than in displacing or 
 superseding them. But there certainly seems no a priori 
 improbability that the Creator should be also tlie Euler of the 
 universe ; that where the creation is moral and intelligent. He 
 should rule and interfere as He might not where it was simply 
 material or animal; that, Avhere moral, personal beings were 
 acting upon one another, striving to benefit, and striving to 
 
Essay VII.] INSPIRATION. 305 
 
 ruin one anotlier, He too at times should be at hand, to punish 
 or to protect. And so the doctrine of a special providence 
 seems only consistent with the belief in a personal God. But 
 the step from thence to a belief in miracles is no great stride. 
 For, if the great personal Creator rules and guides and inter- 
 feres in the affairs of His creation, thougli He would be likeliest 
 to do so commonly by mere guidance of natural laws, yet, if 
 there were need or occasion for it, it must be quite as easy for 
 Him to interfere by the entire suspension of those laws, or by 
 a temporary alteration of them.* 
 
 15. Indeed it is hard to see how miracles should appear either 
 impossible or improbable ; but either on the theory that what 
 we see commonly we must see always, or else on the theory 
 that there is no personal providence of God. And, in short, is 
 it not true, that the natural tendency of those wdio try to get rid 
 of miracle and special inspiration is to the resolving of provi- 
 dence into law, and of God into simple intelligence ? We are all 
 well aware that we see the government of law, not only in the 
 jahysical, but even in the intellectual world; and there are 
 those, who, from observing this, have been led to a belief in law, 
 and nothing but law. God with them is but law ; and provi- 
 dential or moral government gives place to mere necessity. Of 
 course, this is simple Atheism, and involves all the difficulties, 
 as well as all the miseries, of Atheism. And yet, surely it is 
 more consistent and logical than the system, which does not 
 deny the wisdom that seems to have planned and still seems to 
 order all things, but which yet shrinks from acknowledging the 
 distinct, individual personality of the Creator, His personal 
 presence to all the universe which He has created. His superin- 
 tending providence over it, and His active interference in it. 
 Unquestionably this latter is the doctrine of the Hebrew Bible, 
 and that which Jesus Christ taught in the Sermon on the Mount. 
 But philosophic religion talks to us of a general . principle of 
 
 * Of course, if Professor Baden ' soul aud body must bo impossible ; at 
 
 Powell's theory be true, that the phy- j all events, all religious knowledge must 
 
 sical and the spiritual worlds are so | be impossible. It can bo founded on 
 
 separate that they can never come into I no evidence, and can result only from 
 
 contact, then all this is impossible, j certain convictions of the mind, wholly 
 
 But then all creation is impossible. : incapable of being tested as to their 
 
 The spiritual could never have created ] truth, 
 
 the material. Indeed, the union of ' * 
 
306 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay VIL 
 
 intelligence diffused tlirougliout all things, moving, and breatliing 
 in, and animating all beings. Now this general principle of 
 intelligence sounds philosoi^hical euongh ; but how can it be 
 reconciled Avitli Avliat Englishmen call common sense ? What, 
 on principles of common reason, can be meant by intelligence 
 where there is no intellect, or a great principle of mmd where 
 there is no personal mind at all ? We know Avhat is meant by 
 the intelligence of a man, or the intelligence of a beast — intelli- 
 gence being the power of perceiving, understanding, and reason- 
 ing j)redicable of the mind of that man or that beast. In like 
 manner we can understand that if there be one great infinite 
 mind, then infinite intelligence may be predicable of that 
 infinite mind. But to say that there is any general principle 
 of intelligence separable and distinguishable from any particular 
 mind, is surely to palter with us in a double sense. We can no 
 more appreciate intelligence as separated from the intellect of 
 which it is a quality or attribute, than we can understand agency 
 without an agent, potency without a power, sight Avithout a seer, 
 thought without a thinker, or life without that which lives. In 
 short, may we not demur altogether to mere abstractions, except 
 as they may exist in the mind, or in systems of pliilosophy ? 
 And so, is not the conclusion inevitable, that our real alterna- 
 tive lies between a mere Stoical law, a Buddliist Kharma, blind 
 and inexorable, working in matter, it is useless to inquire whence 
 or how — between this and a belief in a God, personal, present, 
 j\ Taker, Ruler, Guider of all things, and of all men? 
 
 IG. Give us this, as the Bible ffives Him to us : and thouoh 
 we should never expect Him to be perpetually setting aside the 
 laws which He has made for the universe, yet we need not — 
 rather we cannot — believe, that He should be so inevitably fet- 
 tered by them, as that He should not continually guide them for 
 the good of His intelligent and moral creatures — guide them, as 
 in a less degree those creatures themselves can guide them, or 
 that, Avhen He may see fit. He should not suspend, or even for a 
 season alter them. And if this latter contingency should ever 
 take place, we should naturally expect that it would be never so 
 probable as when it was His pleasure to communicate to rational 
 beings some special revelation of His will, and to teach them 
 concerning Himself what they might not bo able to learn from 
 mere natural phenomena. 
 
Essay VII.] INSPIRATION. 307 
 
 Can tliere be any inconsistency in sucli a putting aside of the 
 veil of nature, and giving man a somewhat clearer vision of God ? 
 Doubtless, other courses are possible. God might be pleased,, 
 instead of making any objective communications to mankind, to 
 breathe silently into each individual spirit, and to teach 
 separately each one of His will and of Himself. But no one 
 has a right to say that such must be God's plan of action — that 
 such only is consistent with Divine wisdom, or human capacity, 
 or philosophical theology. If God be not the mere pervading 
 intelhgence, which informs the universe, but which can exert 
 itself only through the medium of things in the universe ; if, on. 
 the contrary. He is a personal, present ruler and guide, there 
 can be no inconsistency in the belief that He may at times let 
 Himself be heard by those who can hear Him — in other and 
 clearer tones than the voices of mere natural phenomena, or 
 even of the intuitional consciousness. 
 
 17. jSTow, the common course which we see philosophic scepti- 
 cism taking at present is tin's : First, there is a doubt about 
 miracles, then about special inspiration. To build our faith in any 
 degree on miracles is unwise. Inspiration is wholly a question of 
 degree. One man has by the teaching or breathing of God's Spirit 
 greater insight into spiritual truth than another. The Apostles^ 
 doubtless, had an unusual brightness of such vision, and so Ave 
 may truly call their writings inspired ; but the difference between 
 their inspiration and that of St. Augustine, or even of Plato, is 
 but a difference of degree. Next comes a doubt or a denial of 
 the existence of personal spiritual beings. The devil, Satan, 
 wicked spirits, are but names for a general evil principle, which 
 we cannot but see and feel influencing and pervading om-selves 
 and all things around us. Angels are soon placed in the same 
 category ; and the last step of all reduces God Himself to a 
 principle of intelligence, if it does not go yet farther, and make 
 Him but a law. 
 
 But in all honesty, is there a middle course? Does not 
 the Bible at all events — Old Testament and New alike— 
 speak of a present, personal God, of a multitude of personal 
 spiritual beings — some good and others evil — working-^ 
 around us and within us, of miracles wrought by teachers sent 
 from God, of predictions uttered before the event, of holy 
 men of old moved by the Spirit of God to speak things, which 
 
 X 2 
 
308 AIDS TO FAITH. [Eh^xr VII. 
 
 could be known to none but God Himself? It is quite 
 impossible to get rid of all this, and to retain the Bible as 
 in any proper sense true. Let it be said, that good men who 
 wrote books of the Bible were good men, but spoke according 
 to the prejudices of their times. They believed in prophecies 
 and miracles, and evil spirits, and so spoke of them. Their 
 inspiration quickened their intuitions, but it did not make them 
 infollible, and so in these matters they may have erred. But, if 
 ( 'hristianity be Christianity, and not a system of mere morals 
 and philosophy, there was One Man, who was so much more 
 than man, that if we disbelieve Him, we make God Himself a 
 liar. And may Ave not ask, if His discourses be not so unfaith- 
 fully handed down to us, that we might as well or better not 
 have them at all, whether He did not perpetually appeal to 
 miracles, whether He did not continually quote prophecies as 
 fulfilled, or soon to be fulfilled, whether He did not speak much 
 of angels and devils, whether He did not in the most signal 
 manner promise to His disci^^les the guidance and teaching of 
 His Holy Spirit, to bring to their remembrance all that He had 
 said to them, and to lead them into all truth ? Is it possible to 
 reject all this without rejecting Christ ? 
 
 18. And so much of miracles and inspiration generally. Now 
 let us take a few facts, and see what they seem to teach us. 
 We have a number of different books written in different styles, 
 indicating the different characters of the writers. At times, too, 
 there appear slight diversities of statements in trifling matters 
 of detail. Here we mark a human element. If God spoke, it 
 is plain that He spoke through man ; if God inspired, He 
 inspired man. Even the Gospel miracles were often worked 
 with some instrumental means ; no wonder, then, that when 
 God would teach men. He would teach through human agency. 
 And the difference of style — perhaps the slight discrepancies in 
 statements — seem to satisfy us that some portions at least of the 
 Bible Avere not simply dictated by God to man ; there was not 
 Avhat is called mere mechanical or organic inspiration ; God did 
 not simply speak God's words, using as a mere machine man's 
 lips to speak them Avith. Of course, Ave must not forget the 
 benefit wc derive from these differences between Avriters of the 
 same narrative. The apparent or trifling discrepancies in the 
 statements of the different Evangelists, for instance, convince us 
 
Essay VII.] INSPIRATION. 309 
 
 that tliey were independent witnesses, and that tlie whole story 
 did not arise from some well concerted plan to deceive the 
 world : the homely and even barbarous style of some of the 
 writers proves to us that they were really fishermen, and not 
 philosophers ; and so we have a convincing evidence that the 
 ^eepest system of theology, and the noblest code of ethics ever 
 propounded — the one stirring the deptlis of the whole human 
 heart, the other guiding all human life — came, not from the 
 profound speculations of the wisest of mankind, but either from 
 God Himself, or else from a source more inexplicable and im- 
 possible ; from the poor, the narrow-minded, and the untaught. 
 But whilst we see the benefit of all this, and admire the wisdom 
 which so ordered it, we learn from it that there must have been 
 a human element in Scripture ; that God may, nay must, have 
 spoken, but that He dealt His own common dealing with us — 
 that is. He used earthly instruments for giving heavenly bless- 
 ings, human means for communicating Divine truth, 
 
 Now, let us look the other way. Scripture is not a mere 
 system of theology, nor is it a mere historical record. If it were 
 either or both of these, and nothing more, of course we could 
 believe that nothing might be needed, beyond the quickening of 
 the intuitional consciousness, to enable men to conceive its 
 truths and to communicate them to others. There is, however, 
 as has been already noticed, a distinctly miraculous element in 
 it ; and here, if we admit its existence, we cannot fail to see the 
 working of a present, personal God. Take away the miraculous 
 element, and we may easily get into any kind of philosophical 
 abstraction. Admit it, and we are brought back again into the 
 intelligible region of common, plain sense. 
 
 If anything in the world can be supernatural or miraculous, 
 it sm-ely must be the infallible foreknowledge of future events. 
 iS^o elevation of the intuitional consciousness can account for 
 such foreknowledge. None can certainly foretel the future, but 
 one who can certainly guide the future. Do we, then, admit 
 that any of the prophets in the Old Testament were enabled to 
 foretel coming events, the events of the Gospel history in j)ar- 
 ticular ? Some modern writers go so far as to deny this in toto. 
 According to them every prophecy of the Old Testament con- 
 cerned, primarily at least, contemporaneous history, or history so 
 nearly contemporaneous, that it required only common foresight 
 
.310 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay VIL 
 
 and " old experience " to look into it. Burke early shadowed 
 forth the French devolution : Isaiah, on the same principle, 
 could forewarn Israel of its dangers, threaten sinners with punish- 
 ment, and promise protection to penitents. Of course, we can 
 understand such a view ; but can we admit it and not reject 
 Christianity? And let us remember that, in arguing on tli^ 
 nature of inspu-ation, we are not arguing in proof of Christianity ; 
 but that, admitting the truth of Christianity, we are inquiring 
 into somewhat which, as has been already observed, is really in- 
 ternal to Christianity. ]\Iost Christians are ready to believe that 
 the passages of the Old Testament to which oiu- Lord and His 
 Apostles appealed, as proofs of His Divine mission and of the 
 truth of their teaching, were really predictions, and not guesses. 
 This is not the place to enter at length into such a question. 
 But, if we just think of what Jacob said of Shiloh — Moses, of a 
 prophet like himself — David and others, of a great Son of David 
 — Isaiah, in his ninth and fifty-third chapters, of a Child born, a 
 Son given, called Mighty God, Eternal Father, Prince of Peace, 
 and of a righteous Servant, on whom the Lord should lay the 
 iniquity of us all — Daniel, of Messiah the Prince, cut off, but not 
 for Himself, and of one like a Son of Man, to Avhom a Idugdom 
 is given by the Ancient of days, an everlasting kingdom, a do- 
 minion that shall not pass aAvay — Haggai, of the glory of the 
 second temple, so much surpassing that of the first — Malachi, of 
 the forerunner of the Messiah — and many prophecies of like 
 ' Itind ; we shall feel that the burden of proof must lie with those 
 who deny, not with those who believe, that there were prophets, 
 who bore witness to the coming of tlie Christ centuries before 
 His birth.* We may remember that these predictions have 
 been preserved to us both in the original Hebrew, and in trans- 
 lations made from the Hebrew before the birth of Christ, made, 
 not by^Clmstians, but by Jews — that the more ancient Jews did 
 undeniably interpret these prophecies, as pointing forward to a 
 
 * It iiiiittcrs little to this argument 
 whether all tlie books of the Old Testa- 
 3uciit were written by those whose 
 names they bear ; whether, for in- 
 stance, the last cliapters of Isaiah were 
 Isaiah's or some other's ; wlictlier the 
 book of Daniel was written at the 
 time of the captivity, or not collected 
 till some centmies later. It is certain 
 
 tliey were all written V)eforc Christ ; 
 and if in tliem there be found pro- 
 phecies of the IMessiah, prophecies, bo 
 they many or few, like precious stones 
 imbedded in a roek; we have then the 
 lilicnomenon existing, and we have to 
 explain how it came. Idoneum, opinor, 
 testimonium divinitatis verit:is divina- 
 tionis. (Tert. Ajwing. c. 20.) 
 
Essay VIL] INSPIRATION- 311 
 
 prince who should be sent from heaven to save their own nation, 
 and to bless other nations in them. Comparatively modern Jews 
 have explained some of these prophecies away, because they too 
 manifestly favour the Christians ; but even so, they continue to 
 believe that the Scriptures foretold a Messiah. Moreover, we have 
 the clearest testimonies from Jews and Gentiles alike (Jews and 
 Gentiles who never became Christians, and so are independent 
 witnesses) that in the East generally, Oriente toto, and especially 
 among the Israelites themselves, there had prevailed an ancient 
 and constant persuasion that by Divine appointment a Deliverer 
 was to arise out of Judea, who should have dominion ; and, 
 moreover, that he was impatiently expected in the reigns of the 
 early emperors of Eome, Jews, who have lived since those 
 times, have confessed that the period presignified is apparently 
 past. Now, it is quite certain that the most remarkable and 
 most influential religious teacher that ever lived in any nation 
 upon earth did arise and live in Judea, at the time so marked 
 and agreed on. It is undoubted that He declared the predictions 
 in question to have pointed to Him. His followers have always 
 claimed them as fidfiUed in Him. Of all religious revolutions, 
 nay, of all revolutions, moral, spiritual, social, or political, ever 
 produced in the world. He has produced the greatest, the most 
 influential, the most extensive. As Christians, w^e, of course, 
 believe that He was the Christ ; and we are justified in urging 
 on the Jews such considerations as the above, in proof that their 
 own cherished Scriptures pointed to Him. 
 
 Now, if the prophets really did centuries before foresee an 
 event, most unlilvely, but which we have witnessed as true, they 
 must have had something more than the inspiration of genius, 
 or than the exalting of their intuitional consciousness. For, 
 whatever degree of insight into the truth of things spiritual we 
 may attribute to such intuitional consciousness, and Avhatever 
 communion it may give with the mind of God, it can hardly be 
 said to make us partakers of God's omniscience, or to endue us 
 with His poAvers of foresight. 
 
 One of the favourite modes of evading such conclusions as 
 this, and so one of the favourite positions of the low inspirationists 
 is, that Nihil in scripto quod 7ion prius in scriptore ; a man can 
 speak nothing but what he thinks. In a sense this is true 
 enough ; and, as a general rule, Ave may suppose the holy men ' 
 
312 . AIDS TO FAITH. [Essav VII. 
 
 of old, -wlio spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost, to 
 have been first gifted ^yith the knowledge of the future, and then 
 moved to communicate that knowledge to others. But still, if 
 there be an overriding and over-guiding Providence as well as an 
 informing and inspiring Spirit, may not a man be guided to 
 speak unconsciously words of deep import ? We see this in the 
 Old Testament in the case of Balaam. If the history of him be 
 not a false legend or a mere myth, the Almighty told liim that 
 he was to speak to Balak that word which was put into his 
 mouth. His Avill was quite the other way. He willed to curse 
 Israel, and so to obtain from Balak the wages of unrighteous- 
 ness ; but his own will was overruled by the direct command of 
 God. If Balaam prophesied, if he prophesied, as most Christians 
 have believed, not only of the future fortunes of Israel, but of 
 the future coming of Christ ; it is certain that his extraordinary 
 knowledge could not have been the result of his purity of heart 
 qualifying him to see God, could not have come from the clear- 
 ing away of those clouds of sin, and therefore of error, which 
 darken the mental vision ; for his heart was set upon covetous- 
 ness, and he perished with the enemies of God. The same, or 
 much the same, may be said of Caiaphas, who was altogether 
 bent on evil, and yet of whom the Evangelist testifies that 
 " being High Priest that year he prophesied." If miracles are 
 impossible, of com-se all this is impossible. But how miracles 
 can be impossible, unless God is impossible, it seems that we 
 have yet to learn. 
 
 Though, therefore, we may not generally look for a work of 
 the Spirit through the mere bodily organs of men, without an 
 elevation of their souls ; we surely have no power to limit the 
 operations of God, or to say that He may not, if He will, use the 
 very unconscious Avords of wicked men as well as the heart ser- 
 vice of pious men. 
 
 19. But farther, is it not true that Almighty God has made even 
 acts and histories to prophesy, independently of any utterance of 
 men's mouths ? Are there not types in the Law, and through all 
 the Old Testament history, which have their antitypes in the 
 New Testament ? There are those, no doubt, who will say that 
 we can find historical parallels in profane, as readily as in sacred, 
 history. But are these really to be compared with the sacrifice 
 of Isaac typifying the death and resurrection of Christ— with the 
 
Essay A^II.J 
 
 INSPIRATION. 
 
 3i: 
 
 liistory of Joseph, sold by his brethren, and then exalted to be 
 their prince and saviour — with the brazen serpent, lifted up to 
 heal all that looked on it — ^vith the passage of the Ked Sea, and 
 other parables put forth by the history of the Exodus — with the 
 priesthood of xiaron, the passover, the ceremonies on the day of 
 atonement, and the many Levitical rites forepicturiug- Christ — 
 Yvitli the kingly types, such as David and Solomon — with the 
 prophetic parallelism of Elijah and John the Baptist — and the 
 many others, too many to enumerate now ?* If there be, as the 
 writers of the New Testament all assert, and as Christians have 
 ever hitherto believed, a complete system of type and antitype 
 in the Old and New Testament respectively ; to what can we 
 attribute this, but to an overruling Hand guiding the fortunes of 
 the chosen race, and of individuals in that race, and to the con- 
 tinual presence of that Holy Spirit who divideth to every man 
 severally as He will ? Is not all this to be esteemed a special 
 inspiration ? And if all this is in the Old Testament, then, 
 whatever human elements there be in it, there is surely such a 
 Divine element as to make its books emphatically the " Oracles 
 of God," to which we may look as unmistakably embodying His 
 will and word. We may admit that the word of God so em- 
 bodied in the Scriptures was designed to communicate to us 
 great moral and spiritual truths, that there w^as no purpose to 
 give any revelation of physical science or of mere general liistory. 
 Yet if we have abundant evidence that Almighty God chose 
 the prophets and the books of the Bible as channels for commu- 
 nicating His will to mankind, we have surely abundant evidence 
 that they would not be permitted to err in things pertaining to 
 God. It may not be proof that their language will not be 
 popular, and so possibly inaccurate, in matters of science, or that 
 their statements will be infallible in the matter of a date or in 
 other things immaterial ; but it is surely proof enough that they 
 
 * Professor Jowett thinks we must 
 give up the types appealed to iu the 
 New Testament, just as we do not press 
 the patristic appeal to the scarlet thread 
 of Eahab, or the 318 followers of Abra- 
 ham. That is to say, we must attach 
 no more importance to the language of 
 the Apostles, or of our blessed Lord 
 Himself, than to the language of any 
 Christian writer in the earlier days of 
 
 Christianity. The New Testament has 
 appealed to types of Christ in tlie Old 
 Testament. The early Christians uni- 
 versally acknowledged such types, but 
 perhaps unwisely found moreover cer- 
 tain fanciful resemblances unknown to 
 the Apostles and Evangelists. Because 
 the latter were fanciful, must we con- 
 clude that the former were false ? 
 
314 AIDS TO FAITPI. [Essay YII. 
 
 would never be permitted to mislead ns in questions of faith ; 
 for otherwise they Avould bring us credentials to their faithful- 
 ness from God Himself, and with these credentials in their 
 hands, deceive, and mislead, and delude us. 
 
 And here may we not see the fallacy of Coleridge's view, who 
 accepts Scripture where it " finds " him, but not in its less inter- 
 esting and merely historical records ? If we go on this principle, 
 where are we to stop ? If we read the second book of Chronicles, 
 perhaps we may discover very little Avhich " finds " us ; whereas, if 
 we read Baxter's ' Saint's Everlasting Eest,' it may "find" us in 
 nearly every page. To carry out Coleridge's principle, we ought 
 to uncanonize, or reject the inspiration of, the book of Chronicles, 
 and set up as canonical the book of Baxter. But, if our former 
 arguments be correct, and the general belief of Christians in all 
 ages be true, the vrhole historical record of the Old Testament is 
 part of the great depository of God's revealed will. One part 
 may be more important than another. But when we see that 
 God spoke by words of man, and also by acts of man — that even 
 actions were predictions — when we find Christ Himself and His 
 Apostles citing the books of the Old Testament, as the " Scrip- 
 tures," as the " Oracles of God," as " God-breathed" {Qeonrvevo-ra) 
 — surely we have no right to say that one part " finds me " and 
 another does not, and to settle our own Canon accordingly. The 
 whole collection of the books of the Old Testament comes to us 
 with Divine credentials — f>rophecies in it fulfilled after they 
 were uttered — Christ's attestation to them, that they all testified 
 of Him — St. Paul's testimony to them that they were " given by 
 inspiration of God " — and, liaving such Divine credentials, we 
 cannot suppose that any of these books would mislead us, at 
 least in things heavenly. 
 
 20. If all this holds of the Old Testament, it liolds, <>. fortm-i, 
 of the New ; for probably no one Avill contend that the xVjJostles, 
 with Christ's own mission, with the gift of tongues and miracu- 
 lous powers, with the special promise of the Comforter and 
 of guidance by Him into all trutli, with the assurance of Christ's 
 own presence, and with the command to preach on the house- 
 tops what He had told them in the ear, — were in a worse posi- 
 tion or more liable to error than the prophets of the Old 
 Testament. And, though we may Mell believe that each in- 
 dividual Apostle, like every Christian man, may have grown in 
 
Essay VII. i 
 
 INSPIRATION. 
 
 515 
 
 grace and in the knowledge of our Lord and Saviour Jesus 
 Christ ; yet this belief need in no wise interfere with our ac- 
 hnowledgment that messengers, specially accredited by God to 
 man, would never be permitted to deliver a false message, or to 
 mislead those whom they were so signally commissioned to lead.* 
 For Mi\ Maurice's question, as to whether we ought not to con- 
 sider the inspiration of Holy Scripture like to that inspiration 
 for Avhich all of us pray, there seems but little difficulty 
 in the reply. Undoubtedly, the inspiration for Avhich we 
 pray is the same as the inspiration of the writers of Scrip- 
 ture — that is to say, it is the inspiration of God's Holy Spirit 
 which guides not only into holiness, but also into truth. Pro- 
 bably pious men in general never begin any work of im- 
 portance without praying for grace and guidance ; but when they 
 do so, they do not expect to be answered vrith, for instance, the 
 gift of tongues. They ask for the word of wisdom or the word of 
 knowledge, not for the working of mu'acles ; yet they look for 
 it from one and the selfsame Spirit. And surely we may admit 
 that that great Teacher of the Church may teach one in one way 
 and another in another. It may be His will to give one a deep 
 insight into sphitual mysteries, but yet not to give him a know- 
 ledge of future events. To another, at a particular period of the 
 Church or under a peculiar dispensation, He may give the 
 power of propliecy, or the gift of tongues, or the working of 
 
 * Eevelation Las all along been pro- 
 gressive, but not on that account self- 
 contradictory. Aliel offered the first- 
 lings of his flock ; Abraham offered a 
 ram instead of liis son ; Moses insti- 
 tuted the Paschal sacrifice ; John the 
 Baptist pointed to " the Lamb of God, 
 which taketh away the sin of the 
 Avorld " ; St. Paul spoke of " Clu-ist our 
 Passover " ; St. Peter of " the jirecious 
 blood of Christ, as of a lamb without 
 blemish and without spot." There is 
 the same testimony here through a 
 course of at least four thousand years ; 
 but yet the knowledge was progressive. 
 John the Baptist knew more of Christ 
 than all that before him had been born 
 of woman, but less than the least in 
 the kingdom of the Saviour. What is 
 true of the knowledge of the Church 
 may be equally true of the knowledge 
 •of the Apostles. If they had not been 
 
 I capable of growth in wisdom, they 
 ; would not have been human ; but no 
 ( proof whatever has yet been given that 
 I tlie testimony of one Apostle is, on 
 I points of Christian doctrine, in conflict 
 with the testimony of another, or that 
 the more matured knowledge of any 
 particular Apostle ever led him to con- 
 tradict, in the least degree, his own 
 former witness to tlie truth. Certainly 
 they themselves always appeal to the 
 consistency of their own teaching, and 
 denounce all teaching which is incon- 
 sistent with their own. " Though we 
 or an angel from heaven preach any 
 other Gospel unto you than that which 
 we have preached unto you, let him be 
 accursed." (Gal. i.8.) "If there come 
 any unto you, and bring not this doc- 
 trine, receive him not into your house, 
 neither bid him God speed." (2 John 
 10.) 
 
316 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay YII. 
 
 miracles, or sucli guidance and direction as shall render Lis testi- 
 mony, as to things heavenly, infallibly true. Are we to deny 
 that God can do so ? Or again — is it impossible for Hiui to 
 give such a knowledge except in the way of giving a higher 
 degree of sanctification, purifying the soul from all that may 
 darken the understanding, and so sharpening the spiritual in- 
 sight? t^uch a view of things is surely in direct opposition 
 to the constant record of the Bible. If it be true, it must convict 
 the writers of the books of the Bible of false testimony. Is it 
 not clearly set down that Balaam, that " the man of God, who 
 was disobedient to the word of the Lord " — that Jonah, avIio fled 
 from God's jjresence — that Caiaphas, even when compassing 
 Christ's crucifixion — were all empowered to speak of future 
 things, and some of them sorely against their wills ? Although 
 it is most likely that God v.ould in general use sanctified instru- 
 ments to speak to man of sacred tilings, yet, if the record of the 
 Bible be true, there may be a revelation to the mind, and 
 so through the mouths of men, which is not the result of high 
 sanctification, of purifying the heart that it may see God. A 
 man may have " the gift of prophecy and understand all myste- 
 ries and all knowledge," may " speak with the tongues of men 
 and angels," and yet lack charity and be nothing. 
 
 21. And so, to pass to another view of the question, Mr. Morell 
 argues that the Divine or religious truth can only be revealed to 
 our highest and deepest intuitional consciousness. It is not to 
 be received by the senses, by the understanding, or by the 
 reason, but deeper down still in our inmost being. There is no 
 reason to quarrel with this statement so far as it goes. Its fault 
 is, that it is one-sided. " When it pleased God to reveal His Son 
 in " St. Paul, doubtless the revelation was not to the intellect 
 only, but to the very heart of hearts. But there may be abun- 
 dant head-knowledge without any such revelation to the soul 
 and spirit. And must we not distinguish here between objective 
 and subjective revelation ? Of course objective revelation must 
 suppose a subject ; that is to say, if an object is to bo revealed, 
 there must be a subject by which that object may be embraced 
 and conceived. But is it not jjlain to common sense, setting aside 
 all logical subtlety, that there may be an outward manifesting 
 (<f)avep(oai<;, if aTTOKciXv^i^i be ambiguous) of God to man, with- 
 out any inward reception of Him to the soul '? And if so, may 
 
Essay VIL] INSPIRATIOX, 317 
 
 not a man be taught, as Daniel or St. John, by a vision of God, 
 and yet, like Balaam or Jonah, not have his soul converted to 
 God ? He may " see the vision of the Almighty, falling into a 
 trance, and having his eyes open ;" and yet his heart may 
 not be opened to know and to love God. It really seems as if 
 Mr. Maurice, Mr. Morell, and others of similar sentiments, 
 deny the possibility of this.* But on what principle can it 
 be denied, excej)t on a principle which rejects all that is mira- 
 culous, and which makes God, not a Personal Being, but an 
 impersonal influence? 
 
 22. But if we believe -that God has in different ages authorised 
 certain persons to communicate objective truth to mankind, if 
 in the Old Testament history and the books of the prophets we 
 find manifest indications of the Creator, it is then a secondary 
 consideration, and a question on which we may safely agree to 
 differ, whether or not every book of the Old Testament was 
 ^vritten so completely under the dictation of God's Holy Spirit, 
 that every word, not only doctrinal, but also historical or scien- 
 tific, must be infallibly correct and true. The whole collec- 
 tion of the books has been preserved providentially to the 
 Church as the record of God's early dealings with mankmd, and 
 especially with one chosen race, as the collection of the prophe- 
 cies and of the religious instruction which God was pleased to 
 communicate to man in the preparatory dispensations of His 
 grace : and with these there is a book of sacred psalmody, em- 
 bodying the religious experience of men living under the The- 
 ocracy, some at least of the hymns contained in it evincing the 
 power of prophecy in their writers. Whatever conclusion, then, 
 maybe arrived at as to the infallibility of Jhe writers on matters 
 of science or of history, still the whole collection of the books 
 will be really the oracles of God, the Scriptures of God, the 
 record and depository of God's supernatural revelations in early 
 times to man. And we may remember that om- Blessed Lord 
 quotes the Psalms as the Scripture, adding, " And the Scripture 
 cannot be broken." 
 
 * Of course, Professor Baden Powell | in two distinct planes, wliicli can never 
 
 must have held this impossible, because i come in contact. But to what must 
 
 he held that there was no contact point I such a tlieorylead short of Materialism 
 
 between the spiritual and the physical | and Atheism, in minds of the common 
 
 worlds. They lie, according to" him, , stamp ? 
 
•^18 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay VIL 
 
 23. It has been already observed that what holds good of the 
 Old Testament holds a fortiori of the Ne^v^ If the writers 
 of it were the accredited messengers from God to man, taught 
 by Christ, assm-ed by Him of the teaching of His Holy >Spirit, 
 sent to bring to man the knowledge of God and of His highest 
 truths, we cannot doubt that that Spirit, who was to guide them 
 into all truth, would never let them err in things pertaining to 
 God. This is really what we want. We want to be assured 
 that we have an infallible depository of religious truth. And if 
 Ave are satisfied that the Apostles were accredited messengers 
 for delivering God's message and communicating God's truth to 
 the world, clearly we have this assurance. It may, no doubt, 
 be true that all ministers of Christ in all ages are God's accre- 
 dited messengers ; but the difference is this : the Apostles had 
 new truths to deliver direct from heaven ; other ministers of 
 Clmst have old truths to impress — truths wliich may perhaps be 
 new to tlieii- hearers, but which are old to the Church. In the 
 one case there is a direct commission with a need of infallibility 
 in things spiritual ; in the other the mission is through the in- 
 tervention of others, and with the power of correcting errors by 
 appealing to the authority of the written record. 
 
 If we can establish this much, then there seems no need to fear 
 the admission of a human element, as well as a Divine, in Scrip- 
 ture. The Apostles had the treasure of the Gospel in earthen 
 vessels. The Holy Spirit taught the Churches through the in- 
 strumentality of meii of like passions with ourselves. The diffi- 
 culty of enunciating a definite theory of inspiration consists 
 exactly in this — in assigning the due weight resj)ectively to the 
 Divine and the human elements. A human element there 
 clearly was. Though in instances like those of Balaam and 
 Caiaphas we seem to have something more like organic inspira- 
 tiou, yet in ordinary cases God was pleased to take the nobler 
 instruments of man's thoughts and hearts through which to 
 communicate a knowledge of Himself to the world, rather than 
 to act through the organs of speech, moving men's mouths as 
 mere machines. With all the pains and ingenuity which have 
 been bestowed upon the subject, no charge of error, even in 
 matters of human knowledge, has ever yet been substantiated 
 against any of the Amters of Scriptm-e. But, even if it had been 
 otherwise, is it not conceivable that there micfht have been 
 
Essay VIL] INSPIRATION. 319 
 
 infallible Divine teacliing in all things spiritual and heavenl}", 
 whilst on mere matters of history, or of daily life, Prophets and 
 Evangehsts might have been suffered to write as men ? Even 
 if this were true, we need not be perplexed or disquieted, 
 so we can be agreed that the Divine element was ever sucli 
 as to secure the infallible truth of Scripture in all things 
 Divine. ■"•^ 
 
 24. All this, of course, is applicable to questions of physical 
 science. Scripture was not given to teach us science, but to 
 teach us religion ; it may not have been needful that the in- 
 spired writers should have been rendered infallible in matters of 
 science, nor is it at all likely that they should have been directed 
 to teach to the ancient world truths which would anticipate the 
 discoveries either of Newton or of Cuvier. It woukl have been 
 almost as strange if they had not used popidar expressions in 
 writing on such subjects, as if they had written not in the 
 tongue of their own people, but in a new dialect more refined 
 and philosophical. But may we not ask, whether in this ques- 
 tion of physical science, as in many like things, sceptical writers 
 have not been sharp-sighted on minute discrepancies, whilst 
 they have been blind to the great general harmony of truth ? 
 It is ever so ; each petty difference of date, each little incon- 
 sistency in two concurrent narratives, every, the slightest appear- 
 ance of doubtful morality, anything lilve a supposed repugnance 
 to what we consider the necessary attributes of the Most High, 
 have been dwelt on and magnified, and used as objections to the 
 inspiration of Holy AVrit ; wliilst the general truth of its histor}^, 
 the purity and holiness of its general moral teaching, the 
 grandem' and sublimity of its doctrines concerning God, are 
 altogether forgotten or concealed. Yet is it not . true that, both 
 in moral and in physical science, nothing short of miraculous 
 inspiration can account for the superior knowledge of the writei's 
 of the Old Testament compared with the most enlightened sages 
 of heathen antiquity ? The Jewish philosophers, lilvc Philo, felt 
 that the Scriptures of their own prophets had brought in simple 
 language to their unlettered fellow-coimtrymen moral and 
 spiritual truths, after which the Platonists had been " seeldng, 
 if haply they might feel after them and find them." Greeks, 
 like Justin Martyr, who had tried one school of philosophy after 
 another, discovered in the Gospel all that was most valuable in 
 
320 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay VIT. 
 
 the teaching of all schools. And may not we, who have come 
 upon an age of rapid discoTery in physical science, confess that 
 the account giveu of the Creator and His works in the Bible 
 was an anticipation and is an epitome of all that has lately come 
 to light ? The telescope has revealed to us worlds and systems 
 of worlds rolling in unbroken order through infinity of space ; 
 the microscope has shown us living and organised beings so small 
 as to bewilder the mind with their minuteness as the suns and 
 planets bewilder it with their vastness ; the geologist takes us 
 back through countless ages, the records of Avhich are indelibly 
 engraven " as with lead in the rock for ever." And the Bible, 
 but no other ancient book that is written, had told us tliat the 
 Being who created all things was such that the Heaven and 
 the Heaven of Heavens could not contain Him, that He was 
 the High and lofty One inhabiting eternity, but that though He 
 had His dwelling so high, yet He humbled Himself to behold the 
 tilings that are in heavenand eai-th, that a sparrow did not fall 
 without Him, that the very hairs of man's head were numbered 
 by Him. Infinite greatness, infinite minuteness, infinity of 
 duration, infinity of action, eternity of past existence and of past 
 operation, as well as an eternity of the future, are all distinctly 
 predicated in the fScriptures of the mind of Him who made us 
 all. And here for the first time, now in the nineteenth century, 
 we find the same infinity in heaven and in earth, and in the sea, 
 and under the earth. 
 
 "Why, then, must w^e be puzzled because some recently dis- 
 covered geological phenomena seem hard to reconcile witli a 
 few verses in one chapter of Genesis ? Are we to forget the 
 marvellous harmony between God's word and His works, which a 
 general view of both convinces us of, because there are some small 
 fragments of both, which we have not yet learned to fit into each 
 ' other ? Nay ! even here, we may fairly say, that the harmony 
 already found is greater tlian the as yet unexplained discord. For, 
 putting aside all doubtful interpretations and difficult questions 
 concerning the six days of creation and the like, these two facts 
 are certain ; all sound criticism and all geological inquuy prove 
 them alike ; viz., first, that the original creation of the universe 
 was at a period indefinitely, if not infinitely, distant from the 
 present time ; and secondly, that of all animated beings, the last 
 that came into existence was man. Geology has taught us both 
 
Essay VIL] INSPIRATION. 321 
 
 these facts ; but the first verse of Genesis clearly teaches the 
 first, and the twenty-sixth verse teaches the second. 
 
 To touch but for a moment on one other subject which has 
 been so strongly pressed of late, the uniform prevalence of law, 
 not only in things inanimate, but where there is life and even 
 reason and morality, — can anything be more consistent than this 
 with the whole of the Old Testament? Indeed its peculiar 
 teaching from first to last may be said to have been that God 
 is a God of order ; that He has impressed His law on all creation ; 
 that all things serve Him, all tilings obey Him ; that to break 
 laws, whether moral or physical, is inevitably to entail suffering ; 
 and that even rational and spiritual beings, even in their 
 rational and spiritual natures and capacities, are subject to laws 
 which cannot be broken ; that the sins of the fathers go down in 
 sin and sorrow to the children ; and that even repentance, though 
 it may save the soul, cannot undo the sin or avert the suffering. 
 There is nowhere in creation or in history written more plainly 
 the record of order and law. 
 
 25. Surely such thoughts as these seem fit to satisfy us, that 
 God's works rightly read are not likely to contradict God's word 
 rightly interpreted. There will be for a time, perhaps for all 
 time, apparent difficulties. When new questions arise, at fii'st 
 many will feel that it is hopeless to attempt to solve them. 
 Some will despair, some will try to smother inquiiy ; some will 
 rush into Atheism, and others will fall back into superstition. 
 Patience is the proper temper for an age like our own, which is 
 in many ways an age of transition. The discoveries of Galileo 
 seemed more alarming to his contemporaries than any discoveries 
 in geology or statistics can seem to us. We see no difficulty in 
 Galileo's discoveries now. Such things, then, are probably the 
 proper trials of our faith. Sober views, patience, prayer, a life 
 of godliness, and a good conscience, will, no doubt, keep us from 
 making shipwreck of faith. What now seems like a shadow 
 may only be the proof that there is a light behind it. And even 
 if at times there should come shadows seeming like deep night, 
 we may hope that the dawn of the morning is but the nearer. 
 
ESSAY VIII. 
 THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 
 
 T 2 
 
CONTENTS OF ESSAY VIII. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 The Essay is addressed to those 
 who attacl) some preternatural 
 efficacy to the Kedeemer's suf- 
 ferings for men, but propose to 
 alter the terms in which it is 
 usually conveyed 325 
 
 I.— The Scripture doctrine . . 326 
 
 1. In tlie three first Evan- 
 
 gelists 326 
 
 2. Especially the institution 
 
 of the Last Supper . . . . 327 
 
 3. In St. John's Gospel . . 328 
 
 4. The Baptist 330 
 
 5. The Apostolic teaching . . 331 
 
 6. The Epistles in general . . 332 
 
 7. Epistle of St. James . . 333 
 
 8. Epistles of St. Peter . . 334 
 
 9. Epistles of St. John . . . . 335 
 
 10. Epistles of St. Paul.. ..335 
 
 11. Epistle to the Hebrews .. 336 
 
 12. Harmony of Scripture upon 
 
 the Atonement . . . . 337 
 
 n.— 1. The doctrine of Cliurch 
 
 writers 339 
 
 PAGE 
 
 2. Atonement often implied 
 
 in another doctrine, in 
 controversies 340 
 
 3. Wrong account by modern 
 
 writers of patristic teach- 
 ing 341 
 
 4. Irenseus 342 
 
 5. Athanasius 343 
 
 G. Other writers 345 
 
 7. Anselm 347 
 
 8. How far original . . . . 349 
 
 9. " Sacrifice " and " Satis- 
 
 faction" 350 
 
 10. Defects of Auselm's sys- 
 
 tem 351 
 
 11. Summary 352 
 
 III. — 1. Modern repugnance to 
 
 the doctriue 352 
 
 2. Guilt caused by others 
 and cured by another . . 352 
 
 3. Sin revealed to us by its 
 crowning act— the death 
 
 of the Lord 355 
 
 4. The wratli of God .. ..357 
 
 5. Did Christ bear it ? . . . , 358 
 
 6. Conclusion 363 
 
THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 
 
 Jesus, tlie Son of God, died on the Cross to redeem mankind 
 from sin and death. This is the truth which for eighteen cen- 
 turies has been preached to Jew and Gentile ; the truth which 
 the Apostles took in their mouths when they went to teach 
 Christianity to nations who had never heard of Christ before. 
 The doctrine of Eeconciliation has not escaped the fate of other 
 Christian truths : it has done and is doing its work in converting 
 the world, and consoling many a crushed heart ; but at the same 
 time the terms in which it should be set forth have been disputed, 
 and sometimes the doctrine itself denied. Eecent writers have 
 discussed the subject, avowing for the most part the wish to 
 preserve the tenet itself; but in some cases dealing so hardly 
 with the evidence on which it rests, as to leave an impression that 
 the doctrine of the Atonement is a modem invention, which can 
 well be dispensed with in teaching Christianity ; and some even 
 speak of it as a dishonour to God the Father, in that it repre- 
 sents Him as accepting the sufferings of the innocent for the 
 guilty. The present Essay is directed to those who profess to 
 attach to the sufferings of the Eedeemer some preternatural 
 efficacy, beyond that of mere example, yet who would substitute 
 for the received account of their effect some other doctrine. 
 With those who utterly deny the doctrine of Atonement we have 
 nothing here to do, except to wish them an increased conscious- 
 ness of the need of a pm-gation from sin : for when Christ is 
 needed, then, and not sooner. He will be found ; when man sees 
 the serpent twining round his limbs, and feels serpent-poison 
 beating in his blood, and sees over all his beauty and glory the ser- 
 pent's defiling trail, he will look to the Son of Man lifted up, and 
 be healed. But the promise that the doctrine shall in spirit be 
 preserved, but heightened and spiritualised, has much attraction 
 ■for the inquiring. In approaching them with the key of a 
 profounder gnosis, men profess to give to the well-worn pages 
 
326 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Ebsay VIII. 
 
 of the Bible the freshness and originality which is all they need. 
 And the attempt in this Essay will be to show that the 
 doctrine of the Atonement, although a mystery, is made known 
 to us in the Bible in certain strong and definite touches which 
 allow of no mistake ; that this doctrine has been, in fact, con- 
 tinuously held and taught in the Church, altering from time to 
 time in form, but in substance neither gaining anything nor 
 losing anything ; and that the difficulties, which beset this as 
 they do other mysteries, are not at all lightened by the remedies' 
 proposed on behalf of human reason, but rather increased. 
 
 I. Much has been made of the supposed silence of our Lord 
 as to the atoning virtue of His death ; and it has even been 
 hinted that in this respect the words of Jesus are at variance 
 with those of His Apostles.* If this were so, the questioa 
 would bear no discussion; and much else would fall to the 
 ground at the same time. The only proof of it which we are 
 offered is, that Christ Himself " never uses the word sacrifice"! as' 
 applied to His o^\'n life or death. But this is a purely artificial 
 test. It remains still to inquire what the Lord does say of that 
 death- for such is the copiousness of language, that an act 
 which has the nature of a sacrifice may be described without 
 the use of that particular word. When He speaks of " My 
 blood of the new Covenant," no doubt the word sacrifice is 
 dispensed with ; but there must be very few, we should hope, 
 who cannot discern in such words the " sacrificial allusion." 
 
 1. The three first Evangelists, as we know, agxee in showing 
 that Jesus unfolded His message to the disciples by degrees. 
 He wrought the miracles that were to be the credentials of the 
 Messiah ; He laid down the great principles of the Gospel 
 morality until He had established in the minds of the Twelve 
 the conviction that He was the Clu-ist of God. Then as the 
 clouds of doom grew darker, and the malice of the Jews became 
 more intense, He turned a new page in His teaching. Drawing 
 from His disciples the confession of their faith in Him as Christ, 
 He then passed abruptly, so to speak, to the truth that 
 
 * Professor Jowett on the Epistles, ii. 
 556. " In [the words of Christ] is con- 
 tained the inner life of mankind and of 
 the Chnrch ; there too the individual 
 beholds, as in a glass, the image of a 
 goodness which is not of this world. 
 
 To ranli their authority below that of 
 Aj)ostlcs and EvujKjeli^ts, is to give up 
 the last hope of reuniting Christendom 
 in itself, and of making Christiauily au 
 universal religion." 
 t Ihid. 
 
Essay VIII.] THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 327 
 
 remained to be learned in the last few months of His ministry, 
 that His work included suffering as well as teaching.* He was in- 
 stant in pressing this impalatable doctrine home to His disciples, 
 from this time to the end. Four occasions when He prophesied 
 His bitter death are on record, and they are probably only ex- 
 amples out of many more.f We grant that in none of these places 
 does the word sacrifice occur ; and that the mode of speaking is 
 somewhat obscure, as addressed to minds unprepared, even then, 
 to bear the full Aveight of a doctrine so repugnant to their hopes. 
 But that He must (Bel) go and meet death ; that the powers of 
 sin and of this world are let loose against Him for a time, so that 
 He shall be betrayed to the Jews, rejected, delivered by them to 
 the Gentiles, and by them mocked and scourged, crucified, and 
 slain ; and that all this was done to achieve a foreseen work, and 
 accomplish all things written of Him by the prophets — these 
 we do certainly find. They invest the death of Jesus with a 
 peculiar significance; they set the mind inquiring what the 
 meaning can be of this hard necessity that is laid on Him. 
 For the answer we look to other places ; but at least there 
 is here no contradiction to the doctrine of sacrifice, though the 
 Lord does not yet say, " 1 bear the wrath of God against your 
 sins in your stead ; I become a curse for you." Of the two sides of 
 this mysterious doctrine, — that Jesus dies for iis willingly, and 
 that He dies to bear a doom laid on Him as of necessity, because 
 some one must bear it, — it is the latter side that is made pro- 
 minent. In all the passages it pleases Jesus to speak not of 
 His desii-e to die, but of the burden laid on Him, and the power 
 given to others against Him. 
 
 2. Had the doctrine been explained no further, there would 
 have been much to wait for. But the series of announcements 
 in these passages leads up to one more definite and complete. 
 It cannot be denied (we might almost say that before Mr. Jowett 
 it never was denied) that the words of the institution of the 
 Lord's Supper speak most distinctly of a sacrifice. " Drink ye 
 all of this, for this is My blood of the new covenant," or, to 
 follow St. Luke, " the new covenant in My blood." We are 
 carried back by these words to the first covenant, to the altar 
 with twelve pillars, and the bumt-ofiferings and peace-ofierings 
 
 Malt. xvi. 20, 21. f Matt. xvi. 21. 
 
328 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay YIII. 
 
 of oxen, and the blood of the yictims sprinkled on the altar and 
 on the people, and the words of Moses as he sprinkled it : " Be- 
 hold the blood of the covenant which the Lord hath made with 
 you concerning all these words."* No interpreter has ever 
 failed to draw from these passages the true meaning : " AA^hen 
 My sacrifice is accomplished, My blood shall be the sanc- 
 tion of the new covenant," The word sacrifice is wanting ; but 
 sacrifice and nothing else is described. And the words are no 
 mere figure used for illustration, and laid aside when they have 
 served that turn, " Do this in remembrance of Me." They are 
 the words in which the Church is to interpret the act of Jesus to 
 the end of time. They are reproduced exactly by St. Paul.t 
 Then, as now, Christians met together, and by a solemn act 
 declared that they counted the blood of Jesus as a sacrifice 
 wherein a new covenant was sealed ; and of the blood of that 
 sacrifice they partook by feith, professing themselves thereby 
 willing to enter the covenant and be sprinkled with the blood. 
 
 3. So far we have examined the three " synoptic " Gospels. 
 They follow a historical order. In the early chapters of all 
 three the doctrine of our Lord's sacrifice is not found, because 
 He will first answer the question about Himself, " Who is this ?" 
 before he shows them " What is His work ? " But at length 
 the announcement is made, enforced, repeated; until, when 
 the feet of the betrayer are ready for their wicked errand, 
 a command is given which secm'es that the death of Jesus shall 
 be described for ever as a sacrifice and nothing else, sealing a 
 new covenant, and carrying good to many. Lest the doctrine of 
 Atonement should seem to be an afterthought, as indeed De 
 Wette has tried to represent it, St. John preserves the conversa- 
 tion -vdth Nicodemns, which took place early in tlie ministry ; 
 and there, under the figure of the brazen serpent lifted up, the 
 atoning "vartue of the Lord's death is fully set forth. " As Moses 
 lifted up the serpent in the wilderness, even so must the Son of 
 Man be lifted up ; that whosoever believeth in Him should not 
 perish, but have eternal lifo."J As in this intercessory act, 
 the image of the deadly, hateful, and accursed § reptile became 
 by God's decree the means of health to all who looked on it 
 earnestly, so does Jesus in the form of sinful man, of a deceiver 
 
 Exod. xxiv. t 1 Cor. xi. 25, J Jolm iii. 14, 15. § Gen. iii. 14, 15. 
 
Essay VIIL] 
 
 THE DEATH OF CHEIST. 
 
 329 
 
 of tlie people,* of Antichrist, f of one accursed,:}: become the 
 means of our salvation; so that whoever fastens the earnest 
 gaze of faith on Him shall not perish, but have eternal 
 life. There is even a significance in the word "lifted up;" 
 the Lord used probably the word t^pi, which in older Hebrew 
 meant to lift up in the widest sense, but began in the Aramaic 
 to liave the restricted meaning of lifting up for punishment. § 
 ^Vith Christ the lifting up was a seeming disgrace, a 
 true triumph and elevation. But the context in which 
 these verses occur is as important as the verses themselves. 
 Nicodemus comes as an inquirer ; he is told that man must be 
 born again, and then he is directed to the death of Jesus as the 
 means of that regeneration. The earnest gaze of the wounded 
 soul is to be the condition of its cure ; and that gaze is to be 
 turned not to Jesus on the mountain, or in the temple, but on 
 the Cross. This, then, is no passing allusion, but it is the sub- 
 stance of the Christian teaching addressed to an earnest seeker 
 after truth. 
 
 Another passage claims a reverent attention — " If any man eat 
 of this bread he shall live for ever, and the bread that I will 
 give is My flesh, which I will give for the life of the world." || 
 He is the bread ; and He will give the bread.TF If His presence 
 on earth were the expected food, it was given already; but 
 would He speak of " drinking His blood " (ver. 53), which can 
 only refer to the dead? It is on the Cross that He will afford 
 this food to His disciples. "VVe grant that this whole passage 
 has occasioned as much disputing among Chi-istian commentators 
 as it did among the Jews Avho heard it; and for the same 
 reason, — for the hardness of the saying. But there stands the 
 saying ; and no candid person can refuse to see a reference in it 
 to the death of Him that speaks. 
 
 In that discourse, which has well been called the Prayer of 
 Consecration offered by om- High Priest, there is another passage 
 
 * Matt, xxvii. 63, 
 
 t Mutt. sii. 24; John xviii. 33. 
 
 X Gal. iii. 13. 
 
 § So Tholuck and Knapp, ' Opuscula,' 
 p. 217. The treatise of Knapp on tliis 
 discourse is valuable throughout. 
 
 11 John vi. 51. 
 
 ^ Some, omitting V f'T'*' Scicrw, would 
 
 read, " And my flesh is the bread that I 
 ^^^ll give for the life of the world.'' So 
 TertuUian seems to have read " Panis 
 quern ego dedero pro salute mundi caro 
 mea est." The sense is the same -with 
 the omission ; but the received reading 
 may be successfully defended. 
 
330 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay VIII. 
 
 which cannot be alleged as evidence to one who thinks that any 
 word applied by Jesus to His disciples and Himself must bear 
 in both cases precisely the same sense, but which is really per- 
 tinent to this inquiry : — " Sanctify them through Thy truth : Thy 
 word is truth. As Thou hast sent Me into the world, even so 
 have I also sent them into the world. And for their sakes I 
 sanctify Myself, that they also might be sanctified through the 
 truth."* The word dyid^eiv, " sanctify," " consecrate," is used in 
 the Septuagint for the offering of sacrifice,! and for the dedication 
 of a man to the Divine service. J Here the j^resent tense, " I conse- 
 crate," used in a discourse in which our Lord says He is " no more 
 in the world," is conclusive against the interpretation " I dedicate 
 My life to thee ;" for life is over. No self-dedication, except that 
 by death, can now be spoken of as present. " I dedicate Myself 
 to Thee, in My death, that these may be a people consecrated to 
 Thee ;" such is the great thought in this sublime passage, which 
 suits well with His other declaration, that the blood of His sacri- 
 fice sprinkles them for a new covenant with God. To the great 
 majority of expositors from Chrysostom and Cyril, the doctrine 
 of reconciliation through the death of Jesus is asserted in these 
 verses. 
 
 The Eedeemer has already described Himself as the Good 
 Shepherd who lays down His life for the sheep,§ taking care to 
 distinguish His death from that of one who dies against his 
 will in striving to compass some other aim : " Therefore doth 
 my Father love Me, because I lay do^voi ]\Iy life that I might 
 take it again. No man taketh it from i\Ie, but I lay it do^vn 
 of Myself I have power to lay it do'OTi, and I have power to 
 take it again." 
 
 Other passages that relate to His death will occur to the 
 memory of any Bible reader. The corn of wheat that dies in the 
 ground to bear much fruit, || is explained by His own words 
 elsewhere, where He says that He came " to minister, and to 
 give His life a ransom for many." T[ 
 
 4. Thus, then, speaks Jesus of Himself "V^Hiat say His witnesses 
 of Him ? " Behold the Lamb of God," says the Baptist, " which 
 taketh away the sin of the world."** Commentators differ about 
 
 * John xviii. 17-19. t Levit. xxii, 2. % Numb. iii. 15. 
 
 § John X. 11, 17, 18. II Joha x. 24. % Matt. xx. 28. ** Joliu i. 29. 
 
Essay VIII.] 
 
 THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 
 
 331 
 
 the allusion implied in that name. But take any one of their 
 opinions, and a sacrifice is implied. Is it the Paschal lamb 
 that is referred to? — Is it the lamb of the daily sacrifice? 
 Either way the death of the victim is brought before us. But 
 the allusion in all probability is to the well-known prophecy 
 of Isaiah (liii.), to the Lamb brought to the slaughter, who 
 bore our griefs and carried our sorrows.* 
 
 5. The Apostles after the Resurrection preach no moral system, 
 but a belief in and love of Christ, the crucified and risen Lord, 
 through whom, if they repent, men shall obtain salvation. This 
 was Peter's preaching on the day of Pentecost ;t and he appealed 
 boldly to the Prophets on the ground of an expectation of a 
 suffering Messiah.^ Philip traced out for the Eunuch, in that 
 picture of suffering holiness in the well-known chapter of 
 Isaiah, the lineaments of Jesus of Nazareth.§ The first sermon 
 to a Gentile household proclaimed Christ slain and risen, and 
 added "that through His name whosoever believeth in Him 
 shall receive remission of sins."|| Paul at Antioch preaches "a 
 Saviour Jesus ;"% " through this Man is preached unto you the 
 forgiveness of sins, and by Him all that believe are justified from 
 all things from which ye could not be justified by the law of 
 Moses."** At Thessalonica all that we learn of this Apostle's 
 preaching is " that Christ must needs have suffered and risen 
 again fi-om the dead ; and this Jesus, whom I preach unto you, 
 is Christ."tt Before Agrippa he declared that he had preached 
 always " that Christ should suffer, and that He should be the 
 first that should rise from the dead fXX and it was this declara- 
 tion that convinced his royal hearer that he was a crazed 
 fanatic. The account of the first founding of the Chiu-ch in the 
 Acts of the Apostles is concise and fragmentary ; and sometimes 
 we have hardly any means of judging what place the sufferings 
 
 * See this passage discussed fully in 
 the uotes of Meyer, Lange {Bihelwerhe), 
 and Alford. The reference to the Pas- 
 chal Lamb finds favour with Grotius 
 and others ; the reference to Isaiah is 
 approved by Chrysostom and many 
 others. The taking away of sin {atpeiv) 
 of the Baptist, and the bearing it 
 {(pepeiv, Sept.) of Isaiah, have one mean- 
 ing, and answer to the Hebrew word 
 
 Nb'J. To take the sins on himself is to 
 remove them from the sinners ; and how 
 can this be through his death except in 
 the way of expiation by that death 
 itself? 
 
 t Acts ii. I Acts iii. 18. 
 
 § Acts viii. ; Isai. liii. 
 
 II Acts X. 1 Acts xiii. 23. 
 
 ** Acts xiii. 38, 39. ft Acta xvii. 3. 
 
 XX Acts xxvi. 23. 
 
332 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 CESSAT VIII. 
 
 of Jesus held in the teaching of the Apostles ; but when we read 
 that they " jireached Jesus," or the like, it is only fair to infer 
 from other passages that the Cross of Christ was never concealed, 
 whether Jews, or Greeks, or barbarians were the listeners. And 
 this very pertinacity shows how much weight they attached to 
 the facts of the life of our Lord. They did not merely repeat 
 in each new place the pure morality of Jesus as He uttered it in 
 the Sermon on the Mount : of such lessons we have no record. 
 They took in their hands, as the strongest weapon, the fact that 
 a certain Jew crucified afar off in Jerusalem was the Son of 
 God, who had died to save men from their sins; and they 
 offered to all alike an interest, through faith, in the resurrection 
 from the dead of this outcast of His own people. No wonder 
 that Jews and Greeks, judging in their worldly way, thought 
 this strain of preaching came of folly or madness, and tm-ned 
 from what they thought unmeaning jargon. 
 
 6. We are able to complete from the Epistles our account of the 
 teaching of the Apostles on the Doctrine of Atonement. " The 
 Man Christ Jesus " is the mediator between God and man, for 
 in Him the human nature in its sinless purity is lifted up to the 
 Divine, so that He, exempt from guilt, can plead for the guilty.* 
 Thus He is the second Adam that shall redeem the sin of the 
 fii'st ; the interests of men are bound up in Him, since He has 
 power to take them all into Himself, f This salvation was pro- 
 vided by the Fatlier, to "reconcile us to Himself;"! to whom 
 the name of " Saviour " thus belongs ; § and our redemption is a 
 signal proof of the love of God to us.|l Not less is it a proof of 
 tlie love of Jesus, since He freely lays down His life for us — 
 offers it as a precious gift, capable of purchasing all the lost.l 
 But there is another side of the truth more painful to our 
 natural reason. How came this exhibition of Divine love to be 
 needed ? Because wrath had already gone out against man. 
 The clouds of God's anger gathered thick over the whole human 
 race; they discharged themselves on Jesus only. God has 
 made Him to be sin for us who knew no sin ;** Ho is made " a 
 curse " (a thing accursed) for us, that the curse that hangs over 
 
 * 1 Tim. ii. 5 ; 1 Jolin ii, 1, 2 ; Heb. 
 vii. 2.'). 
 
 t Eph. V. 29, 30 ; Rom. xii. 5 ; 1 Cor. 
 XV. 22 ; Eom. v. 12, 17. 
 
 t 2 Cor. V. 18. 
 
 § Luke i. 47. |1 1 John iv. 10. 
 
 i 1 Tim. ii. 6 ; Tit. ii. 14 ; P^ph. i. 7. 
 
 Compare Matt. xx. 28. ** 2 Cor. v. 21. 
 
Essay YIII.] THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 333 
 
 us may be removed :* He bore our sins in His own body on the 
 tree.f There are those who would see on the page of the Bible 
 only the sunshine of the Divine love ; but the muttering thun- 
 ders of Divine wrath against sin are heard there also ; and He 
 who alone was no child of wrath, meets the shock of the 
 thunderstorm, becomes a curse for us, and a vessel of wrath ; and 
 the rays of love break out of that thunder-gloom and shine on 
 the bowed head of Him who hangs on the Cross, dead for our 
 sins. 
 
 We have spoken, and advisedly, as if the New Testament 
 were, as to this doctrine, one book in harmony with itself That 
 there are in the New Testament different types of the one true 
 doctrine, may be admitted without peril to the doctrine. The 
 principal types are four in number. 
 
 7. In the Epistle of James there is a remarkable absence of all 
 explanations of the doctrine of the Atonement. But this ad- 
 mission does not amount to so much as may at first appear. 
 True, the key-note of the Epistle is that the Gospel is the Law 
 made perfect, and that it is a practical moral system, in which 
 man finds himself free to keep the Divine law. But with him 
 Christ is no mere lawgiver appointed to impart the Jewish system. 
 He knows that Elias is a man like himself; but of the Person of 
 Christ he speaks in a different spirit. He calls himself " a ser- 
 vant of God and of the Lord Jesus Christ," who is " the Lord of 
 Glory." He speaks of the Word of Truth, of which Jesus 
 has been the utterer. He knows that faith in the Lord of Glory 
 is inconsistent with time-serving and " respect of persons." J 
 " There is one lawgiver," he says, " who is able to save and to 
 destroy ; " § and this refers no doubt to Jesus, whose second 
 coming he holds up as a motive to obedience. H These and like 
 expressions remove this Epistle far out of the sphere of Ebioni- 
 tish teaching. The inspired writer sees the Saviour, in the 
 Father's glory, preparing to return to judge the quick and dead. 
 He puts forth Christ as Prophet and King, for he makes Him 
 teacher and judge of the world ; but the office of the Priest he 
 does not dwell on. Far be it from us to say that he knows it 
 not. Something must have taken place before he could treat 
 
 Gal. iii. 13. t 1 Pet. ii. 24. J James i. 1, ii. 1, i. 18. 
 
 § James iv. 12. || James v. 7-9. 
 
334 
 
 AroS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay YIIT. 
 
 them with confidence, as free creatures, able to resist tempta- 
 tions, and even to meet temptations with joy. He treats " your 
 faith " as something founded already, not to be prepared by this 
 epistle.* His purpose is a purely practical one. There is no 
 intention to unfold a Christology, such as that which makes the 
 Epistle to the Romans so valuable. Assuming that Jesus has 
 manifested Himself, and begotten anew the human race, he 
 seeks to make them pray with undivided hearts, and be consi- 
 derate to the poor, and strive with lusts, for which they and 
 not God are responsible ; and bridle their tongues, and show 
 their fruits by their works.f 
 
 8. In the teaching of St. Peter the doctrine of the Person of our 
 Lord is connected strictly with that of His work as Saviour and 
 Messiah. The frequent mention of His sufferings shows the pro- 
 minent place he would give them ; and he puts forward as the 
 ground of his own right to teach, that he was " a witness of the 
 sufferings of Christ." | The atoning virtue of those sufferings he 
 dwells on with peculiar emphasis ; and not less so on the 
 pm-ifying influence of the Atonement on the hearts of believers. 
 He repeats again and again that Christ died for us ; § that He 
 bare our sins in His own body on the tree. |1 He bare them ; 
 and what does this phrase suggest, but the goat that " shall 
 bear " the iniquities of the people off into the land that was not 
 inhabited ? H or else the feeling the consequences of sin, as the 
 word is used elsewhere?** We have to choose between the 
 cognate ideas of sacrifice and substitution. Closely connected 
 with these statements are those which connect moral refor- 
 mation with the death of Jesus. He bare our sins that we 
 might live unto righteousness. His death is our life. We are 
 not to be content with a self-satisfied contemplation of our 
 redeemed state, but to live a life worthy of it.ff In these 
 passages the whole Gospel is contained ; we are justified by the 
 death of Jesus, wlio bore our sins that we might be sanctified 
 and renewed to a life of godliness. And from this Apostle we 
 
 * Jiimes i. 2, 3, 21. 
 
 t See Ncander, ' Pflanzung,' b. vi. c. 
 3 ; Sclimifl, ' Theologie dcr N. T.,' part 
 ii. ; and Dorner, 'Cliristologie,' vol. i. p. 
 95. X 1 Pet. V. 1. 
 
 § 1 Pet. ii. 21, iii. 18, iv. 1. 
 
 II 1 Pet. ii. 24:. If there were any 
 
 doubt tbat "for us" {virlp rifiwy) means 
 " in our stead" (see verse 21), this 24th 
 verse, wliich explains the former, would 
 set it at rest. 
 
 If Lev. xvi. 22. 
 
 ** Txv. xjc. 17. 19. 
 
 tt 1 Pet. u. 21-25, iii. 15-18. 
 
Essay VIII.] THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 335 
 
 hear again the name of " the Lamb," as well as from John the 
 Baptist ; and the passage of Isaiah comes back upon us with 
 unmistakeable clearness. We are redeemed " with the precious 
 blood of Christ as of a lamb without blemish and without spot."* 
 Every word carries us back to the Old Testament and its sacri- 
 ficial system : the sj)otless victim, the release from sin by its 
 blood (elsewhere, i. 2, by the sprinkling of its blood), are here ; 
 not the type and shadow but the truth of them ; not a cere- 
 monial purgation but an effectual reconcilement of man and 
 God. 
 
 9. In the inspired writings of John we are struck at once with 
 the emphatic statements as to the Divine and human natures of 
 Christ. A right belief in the incarnation is the test of a 
 Christian man ;f we must believe that Jesus Christ is come in 
 the flesh, and that He is manifested to destroy the works of the 
 devil. X And, on the other hand, He who has come in the flesh 
 is the One who alone has been in the bosom of the Father, seen 
 the things that human eyes have never seen, and has come to 
 declare them unto us.§ This Person, at once divine and human, 
 is " the propitiation for our sins," our " advocate with the 
 Father," sent into the world " that Ave might live through him;" 
 and the means was His laying down His life for us, which should 
 make us ready to lay down our lives for the brethren.! And 
 the moral effect of His redemption is, that " the blood of Jesus 
 Christ cleanseth us from all sin." IT The intimate connection 
 between His work and our holiness is the main subject of his 
 first Epistle : " Whosoever is born of God doth not commit sin."** 
 As with St. Peter so with St. John, every point of the doctrine 
 of the Atonement comes out with abundant clearness. The 
 substitution of another who can bear our sins, for us who cannot ; 
 the sufferings and death as the means of our redemption, our 
 justification thereby, and our progress in holiness as the result 
 of our justification. 
 
 10. To follow out as fully in the more voluminous writings of 
 St. Paul the passages that speak of our salvation would far trans- 
 gress the limits of our space. Man, according to this Apostle, 
 
 * 1 Pet. i. 18, 19, with Isaiah liii. 7. 
 t 1 John iv. 2 ; John i. 14 ; 2 John 7. 
 + 1 John iii. 8. 
 § 1 John i. 2, iv. 14 ; Jcbn i. 14-18. 
 
 II 1 John ii. 1, 2, iv. 9. 10, v. 11-13, 
 iii. 16, V. 6, i. 7 ; John xi. 51. 
 
 % 1 John i. 7. 
 ** 1 John iii. 9. 
 
336 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay YIII. 
 
 is a transgressor of the law. His conscience tells him that he 
 cannot act up to that law which, the same conscience admits, 
 is di\ane, and binding ui:)on him. Through the old dispensations 
 man remained in this condition. Even the law of Moses could 
 not justify him : it only by its strict behests held up a mirror to 
 conscience that its frailness might be seen. Christ came, sent 
 by the mercy of our Father who had never forgotten us ; given 
 to, not deserved by us. He came to reconcile men and God, by 
 dying on the Cross for them and bearing their punishment in 
 their stead.* He is " a propitiation through faith in his blood :"t 
 words which most people will find unintelligible except in 
 reference to the Old Testament and its sacrifices. He is the 
 ransom, or price paid, for the redemption of man from all 
 iniquity.]: The wrath of God was against man ; but it did not 
 fall on man. God made His Son " to be sin for us " though He 
 knew no sin ; and Jesus suffered though men had sinned. By 
 this act God and man were reconciled. § On the side of man 
 trust and love and hope take the place of fear and of an evil 
 conscience ; on the side of God, that terrible wrath of His, which 
 is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteous- 
 ness of men, is turned away.|| The question whether we are 
 reconciled to God only, or God is also reconciled to us, might 
 be discussed on deep metaphysical grounds : but we purposely 
 leave that on one side at present, content to show that at all 
 events the intention of God to punish man is averted by this 
 " propitiation " and " reconcilement." 
 
 11. Different views are held about the authorship of the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews, by modern critics. But its numerous points of 
 contact with the other Epistles of St. Paul must be recognized. 
 In both the incompleteness of Judaism is dwelt on ; redemption 
 from sin and guilt is what religion has to do for men, and tliis 
 the law failed to secure. In both, reconciliation and forgiveness 
 and a new moral power in the believers are the fruits of the 
 work of Jesus. In the Epistle to the Romans, Paul shows that 
 
 * 2 Cor. T. 14-21 ; Eom. v. 6-8. Tlieso 
 two passages are decisive as to tlie fact 
 of substitution ; they might be fortified 
 witli many otliers. 
 
 t llijm. iii. 2"), 26. Compare Levit. 
 xvi. 15. 'Waa-T-ltpiov means "victim for 
 expiation." 
 
 X Titus ii. 14. Still stronger in 1 
 Tim. ii. 6, "ransom instead of" {avrl- 
 \vrpnv]. Also Eph. i. 7 (diroAurpwffJs) ; 
 1 Cor. vi. 20, vii. 23. 
 
 i^ Koin. V. 10 ; 2 Cor. v. 18-20 ; Eph. 
 ii. 16: Col. i. 21. 
 
 II Horn. i. 18, V. 9 ; 1 Thes. i. 10. 
 
Essay VIII.] THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 337 
 
 the Law failed to justify ; and that faith in the blood of Jesus 
 must be the ground of justification. In the Ej^istle to the 
 Hebrews the same result follows from an argument rather 
 different : all that the Jewish system aimed to do is accom- 
 plished in Christ in a far more perfect manner. The Gospel 
 has a better Priest, more effectual sacrifices, a more profound 
 peace. In the one Epistle the Law seems set aside wholly for 
 the system of faith ; in the other the Law is exalted and glorified 
 in its Gospel shape. But the aim is precisely the same, to 
 show the weakness of the Law and the effectual fruit of the 
 Gospel. 
 
 12. We are now in a position to see how far the teaching of the 
 New Testament on the effects of the death of Jesus is continuous 
 'and consistent. Are the declarations of our Lord about Himself 
 the same as those of James and Peter, John and Paul ? and are 
 those of the Apostles consistent with each other ? The several 
 points of this mysterious transaction may be thus roughly 
 described : — 
 
 1. God sent His Son into the world to redeem lost and ruined 
 man from sin and death, and the Son willingly took upon Him 
 the form of a servant for this purpose ; and thus the Father and 
 the Son manifested their love for us. 
 
 2. God the Father laid upon His Son the weight of the sins 
 of the whole world, so that He bare in His own body the wrath 
 which men must else have borne, because there was no other 
 way of escape for them ; and thus the Atonement was a mani- 
 festation of Divine justice. 
 
 3. The effect of the Atonement thus wrought is, that man is 
 placed in a new position, freed from the dominion of sin, and 
 able to follow holiness ; and thus the doctrine of the Atonement 
 ought to work in all the hearers a sense of love, of obedience, 
 and of self-sacrifice. 
 
 In shorter words, the sacrifice of the death of Christ is a proof 
 of Divine love, and of Divine justice, and is for us a document of 
 obedience. 
 
 Of the four great writers of the New Testament, Peter, Paul, 
 and John set forth every one of these points. Peter, the 
 " witness of the sufferings of Christ," tells us that we are 
 redeemed with the blood of Jesus, as of a lamb without 
 blemish and without spot; says that Christ bare our sins in 
 
 z 
 
338 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay VIII. 
 
 His own body on the tree. If we "have tasted that the 
 Lord is gracions,"* Ave must not rest satisfied with a con- 
 templation of our redeemed state, but must live a life worthy of 
 it. No one can well doubt, who reads the two Epistles, that 
 the love of God and Christ, and the justice of God, and the 
 duties thereby laid on us, all have their value in them ; but the 
 love is less dwelt on than the justice, whilst the most prominent 
 idea of all is the moral and practical working of the Cross of 
 Christ upon the lives of men. 
 
 With St. John, again, all three points find place. That Jesus 
 willingly laid dovm His life for us, and is an advocate with the 
 Father ; that He is also the propitiation, the suffering sacrifice, 
 for our sins ; and that the blood of Jesus Christ cleanseth us 
 from all sin, for that whoever is born of God doth not commit 
 sin ; all are put forward. The death of Christ is both justice 
 and love, both a propitiation and an act of loving self-surrender ; 
 but the moral effect upon us is more prominent even than 
 these. 
 
 In the Epistles of Paul the three elements are all present. In 
 such expressions as a ransom, a propitiation, Avho was " made sin 
 for us," the wrath of God against sin, and the mode in which it 
 Avas turned away, are presented to us. Yet not Avrath alone. 
 " The love of Christ constrain eth us ; because we thus judge, that 
 if one died for all, then were all dead : and that He died for all, 
 that they Avhich live should not henceforth live unto themselves, 
 but unto Him which died for them, and rose again."-f- Love in 
 Him begets love in us, and in our reconciled state the holiness 
 which Ave could not practise before becomes easy. 
 
 The reasons for not finding from St. James similar evidence, 
 we have spoken of already. 
 
 NoAV in which of these points is there the semblance of con- 
 tradiction between the Apostles and their Master ? In none of 
 them. In the Gospels, as in the Epistles, Jesus is held up as 
 the sacrifice -and victim, quaffing a cup from Avhich His human 
 nature shrank, feeling in Him a sense of desolation such as Ave 
 fail utterly to comprehend on a theory of human motives. Yet no 
 one takes from Him His precious redeeming life ; Ho lays it down 
 of Himself, out of His great love for men. But men are to deny 
 
 1 Pet. ii. 3. t 2 Cor. v. 14, 15. 
 
Essay VIIL] THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 339 
 
 themselves, and take up their cross and tread in His steps. They 
 are His friends only if they keep His commands and follow His 
 footsteps. 
 
 II. We must consider it proved that these three points or 
 moments are the doctrine of the whole New Testament. What 
 is there about this teaching that has provoked in times past and 
 present so much disputation ? Not, I am persuaded, the hardness 
 of the doctrine, — for none of the theories put in its place are 
 any easier, — but its want of logical completeness. Sketched out 
 for us in a few broad lines, it tempts the fancy to fill it in and 
 lend it colour ; and we do not always remember that the hands 
 that attempt this are trying to make a mystery into a theory, an 
 infinite truth into a finite one, and to reduce the great things of 
 God into the narrow limits of our little field of view. To whom 
 was the ransom paid ? What was Satan's share of the trans- 
 action? How can one suffer for another? How could the 
 Redeemer be miserable when He was conscious that His work 
 was one which could bring happiness to the whole human race ? 
 Yet this condition of indefiniteness is one which is imposed 
 on us in the reception of every mystery : prayer, the incarnation, 
 the immortality of the soul, are all subjects that pass far beyond 
 our range of thought. And here we see the wisdom of God in 
 connecting so closely our redemption with our reformation. If 
 the object were to give us a complete theory of salvation, no 
 doubt there would be in the Bible much to seek. The theory is 
 gathered by fragments out of many an exhortation and warning ; 
 nowhere does it stand out entire, and without logical flaw. But 
 if we assume that the New Testament is written for the guidance 
 of sinful hearts, we find a wonderful aptness for that particular 
 end. Jesus is proclaimed as the solace of our fears, as the 
 founder of our moral life, as the restorer of our lost relation with 
 oiir Father. If He had a cross, there is a cross for us ; if He 
 pleased not Himself, let us deny ourselves ; if He suffered for sin, 
 let us ]iate sin.* And the question ought not to be. What do all 
 
 * Pages might be filled with examples 
 of tliis, and yet Mr. Garden (' Tracts for 
 Priests and People,' iii. p. 4) starts 
 back from one of them as Crusoe did 
 from the footprint in the sand. " In 1 Pet. 
 i. 18, we have an impressive sentence, 
 which we read on in our habitual key 
 of thought, but are surprised to find 
 
 that it does not end on the key-note :-r- 
 ' Forasmuch as ye know that ye were 
 not redeemed with corruptible things, 
 as silver and gold, from [it is here that 
 modern ears and thoughts will antici- 
 pate a dift'erent ending] your vain con- 
 versation received by tradition from your 
 fathers.' " This is the usual key-note of 
 
 z 2 
 
540 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay YIII. 
 
 tliese mysteries mean ? but, Are these thouglits really sucli as will 
 serve to guide our life and to assuage om- terrors in the hour of 
 death ? The answer is twofold — one from history and, one from 
 experience. The preaching of the Cross of the Lord even in this 
 simple fashion converted the world. The same doctrine is now the 
 ground of any definite hope that we find in ourselves, of forgive- 
 ness of sins and of everlasting life. 
 
 Now, in examining the history of the Doctrine we shall 
 expect to find, as in the case of other doctrines, that attempts 
 have been made to force from Scripture a clearer and more de- 
 finite statement than is found there at fu'st sight. We should 
 also expect that these attempts at greater precision had ])een 
 accompanied often, if not always, with the loss of some element 
 on winch the Bible insists. 
 
 But we are told at the outset that the position which this 
 doctrine holds in the history of early controversies is far from 
 being so prominent as that which we assign it now. The answer 
 is, tliat in the first ages the disputes which prevailed about the 
 Person of Jesus superseded tlie discussion of the Atonement, 
 because they contained and implied it. More than once, when 
 the ostensible argument was the nature of the Redeemer, Atha- 
 nasius insisted that if the Son of God had been such a one as 
 Arians and Sabellians dreamed of, He could not have redeemed 
 the world. How could a man who was only one among other 
 men have power to redeem them all ? It needed the Son of 
 God, who had power over all men, to redeem them.* And 
 Arians, conscious of this, rested the redemption of men, not on 
 any power inherent in the Saviour's natm-e, but on the simple 
 declaration of God that the curse was removed, t Cyril 
 objects to Nestorius that his doctrine makes the Atonement 
 meaningless, for it refers it, not to one who is God and man, 
 but to a man, whose relation to God the Word is only ex- 
 ternal. | When the whole doctrine of the Person of Clirist 
 was the subject of searching controversy, the doctrine of Atone- 
 ment did not emerge as the subject of a separate dispute ; but 
 we may be sm-e that it Avas never far off. And it may be that 
 
 Scripture, but not the only note. The 
 same Epistle speaks of redemption from 
 wrath and eternal death (1 Pet. i. 5, ii. 
 10, iv. 17, 18, . 
 
 * Cont. Arian. i. § id. 
 5 19, 37, ii. § 14, 20. 
 + Cont. Arian. ii. § G8. 
 j Adv. Nestorius, iii. 2. 
 
 Comp. 
 
EssIyVIII.] the death of CHRIST. 311 
 
 this is the clue to our present discussions about the Atonement. 
 As of old it was involved in another controversy, so now the 
 subject of that other controversy is involved in this ; and when 
 we are in\"ited to chscuss whether one man can ever bear the 
 sins of another, and whether vicarious punishment could ever be 
 agreeable to God's justice, we cannot but notice tliat the divine 
 nature of Christ is never strongly asserted on tliat side, or 
 assumed as an element in the argument. The death of Jesus 
 is discussed as the death of a mere man. The most incautious 
 rhetorical flights of orthodox sermons are selected for assault, in 
 which a substitution of the innocent for the guilty is spoken of 
 under the forms and phrases of human law, in the very points 
 where human law is not applicable ; and the more deliberate 
 expositions of faith are put on one side. We are accused of 
 making that the corner-stone of the Christian faith which 
 no creed fully defines. The necessity of our position compels 
 us to make the Atonement prominent. But all the faith is 
 involved in the discussion. When the views of Socinus on the 
 Atonement are brought fortli again. Ins notions as to the Ee- 
 deemer's person are probably not far off. 
 
 In modern wTiters who have touched the subject, an undue 
 prominence is given to one feature of the patristic teaching, the 
 notion that the ransom paid by our Lord was paid to the Devil, 
 into whose power man had passed tlu-ough sin.* Thus what is 
 for tlie most part rhetorical playing with words, is put forward 
 as if it were the sole and the serious , belief of these Avi-iters. 
 The story bears a very different telling. There is not space for it 
 here ; but a few quotations may be useful. The old Epistle to 
 Diognetus f tells how God gave His Son a ransom for us ; and 
 we are to rejoice that the Holy One died for the evil doers, 
 the sinless for the sinful ; for wliat was there, short of His right- 
 eousness, that would cover our sins ? Clement of Eome j sees the 
 truth not less clearly. According to Ig-natius,§ we owe our 
 salvation to Christ crucified for us in the flesh, and to His " God- 
 blessed passion." To the Je\nsh objection that the cross is 
 accursed, and therefore unworthy of Messiah, Justin Martyr 
 
 * Professor Jowett, ii. 572. Mr. Gar- [ if there were no otlier opinions worth 
 
 den (p. 4) devotes seventeen lines to j mentioning, 
 
 the subject of the Fatliers, and this | f Cli. ix. I Ch. 1. 
 
 theory occupies the whole of them ; as | § Ad Smyrn., ch. i. 
 
342 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay VIII. 
 
 retorts that tliis is matter for those to be ashamed of wlio 
 inflicted the death, when the Father of all had " willed that His 
 Cln-ist should take tlie curses of all for the whole race of man, 
 knowing that He would raise Him up after He had been cruci- 
 fied and put to death." * By Irenseus the Scriptural accounts 
 of the Eedemption are prominently put forward. As a man 
 caused the fall, a man must cause the restoration ; he must be a 
 man able to sum up (recapitulare) all the human species in 
 himself, so as to bear the punishment of all, and to render an 
 obedience that will compensate for their innumerable acts of 
 disobedience. It suits not with the Divine nature to effect His 
 will by force, but rather by love and influence ; hence came the 
 voluntary self-sacrifice, out of exceeding love, of the divine Son 
 of Man, who is truly God and man ; and hence too men are 
 not dragged, but drawn back to God from sin, embracuig by an 
 act of their will the offers of mercy made them through Christ. 
 But, combined with these statements, there are indications at 
 least of the idea that Christ died to redeem men from a real 
 objective power which Satan had acquired over them, so that the 
 redeeming price was paid, not so much by way of debt due to the 
 righteousness and justice of God, as by way of ransom to release 
 them from a conqueror, and to restore them to God, to wliom they 
 originally belonged. " Since," says he, " the apostasy [the Devil] 
 unjustly got the dominion over us, and, though Ave belonged by 
 nature to the omnipotent God, alienated us against natm-e and 
 made us his own disidples, the Word of God [Clu'ist], powerfid 
 in all things and perfect in justice, acted justly in regard to the 
 apostasy [the Devil], redeeming from it that Avhich was His own ; 
 not by force in the way that it got dominion over us in the 
 beginning, when it carried off insatiably that which belonged 
 not to it, but by persuasion (secundum suadelam),- as it became 
 God to receive what He would, by the use of persuasion, not of 
 force, that justice sliould not be infringed, nor yet that which 
 God created of old should perish," •]• Some have supposed that 
 the words " by persuasion " mean by a way which the Devil 
 himself must be convinced was right and reasonable, but this 
 would be strangely inconsistent with the general views of the 
 writer. The apostate spirit, as he says in another place, per- 
 
 Diul. Tryph., § 1)5. f Adv. Hter., v. 
 
Essay VIIL] THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 843 
 
 suaded men to transgress, but he used Iraud and wrong to com- 
 pass his purpose; and here Irenoeus contrasts with this false 
 persuasion, wliich he calls force and injustice, the fair and just 
 persuasion by which the Son of Man who has been lifted up 
 draws all men back to Him. The persuasion is addressed to lost 
 men, and not to Satan. With Irenseus the redemption was not 
 a fi'iendly treaty between two powers for the release of pri- 
 soners ; he says that Christ contended with, repulsed, conquered, 
 despoiled, and bound the enemy of God and man. The j^oint 
 on which he lays most stress is certainly not the power which 
 Satan has acquired, but the power that belongs inherently to 
 our Redeemer of summing up in Himself the mterests of the 
 whole human race. He sees that to offer a sacrifice for all 
 mankind is a privilege that can belong only to man on one side, 
 for man's fault is in question ; only to the Divine Son of God on 
 the other, for only He can control the destinies of all men. If 
 the " persuasion " has been rightly referred to man, and not to 
 Satan (and Dorner seems to have clearly established it *), then 
 IrensBUs goes very little beyond Holy Scriptm-e in his attempt to 
 explain the mystery of the power of the Evil One over ns. In 
 both we are to be redeemed from Satan and from death, in both 
 the offering of One whose power over the human race is unli- 
 mited shall procm-e deliverance. The doctrine of the Atonement 
 is knit up with that of the Incarnation ; and he does not ask 
 whether one man can suffer for another, but what manner of 
 person He must be whose sufferings can have power over all 
 others to save them. 
 
 The doctrine of Athanasius will furnish another sample of 
 patristic teaching. Man fell through sin, says this great teacher ; 
 and the righteousness of God was thus brought into conflict 
 with His goodness. According to His righteousness and truth. He 
 who has given the law must inflict the allotted punishment on 
 those who break it : but then His goodness could not suffer 
 that man, made in His own image, should perish through the 
 deceit of the Devil and his angels. It were better he had not 
 been created. How shall this contradiction be solved? By 
 man's repentance ? Simple repentance would be insufficient on 
 
 * 'Person Christ!,' vol. i., p. 479, 1 compare note in Thomson's ' Bamp ton 
 note against Baur, ' Versubnung,' p. ?>5 : j Lectures,' p. 287. 
 
344 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay YIII. 
 
 two g;roiincls ; l^eeaiise the Divine veracity, wliich had promised 
 death, would not have been satisfied, and because this woidd not 
 free man from the physical corruption (7; Kara (pvaiv ^Oopa) 
 which he had incurred. Tlie AVord of God, the Son, who 
 created the world, can alone restore it. He is alcove all, and can 
 suffer and satisfy for all, and free all from their natm'al coriaip- 
 tion ; for He indeed created them at fii-st, and so can re-create. 
 In order to this restoration, He, the incorporeal and incor- 
 ruptible Word, made for Himself a temple, a house, in a human 
 form and flesh. Now and then the expressions of Athanasius 
 savour of Apollinarian views, as though Christ were the nature 
 of God in the form of man, the human mind being left out of 
 the account ; but in other places no one has more strongly 
 expressed himself against this very error, and his comment on 
 the words " Let this cup pass from me," and on " The spirit is 
 willing, but the flesh is weak," is that they reveal two Avills in 
 man, — the human, tliat is of the flesh, and the Divme which is 
 from God. The analogy between the creation and the restora- 
 tion of man is closely pursued by Atlianasius. He describes the 
 redemption more as a mere renewal than as a development and 
 completion of the creation of man ; and here lies the peculiarity 
 of his system. The curse of death is taken away ; but more 
 than this, the Word becomes, tln-ough the Holy Ghost, a living 
 principle diffused through the hearts of men, freeing them from 
 the power of sin, and enduing them with immortality. What 
 part the death of the Lord bears in our restoration will appear 
 from such expressions as these. His death is " a sacrifice offered 
 on behalf of all and instead of all ;" * and it reconciles us to the 
 rather,t for in it Jesus took on Him the punishments to wliich 
 we were liable, and, by suffering in His own body oiu- punishment, 
 conferred salvation on us. J His death paid a debt,§ and was a 
 ransom for us. || As our High-Priest He brought Himself as an 
 offering to the Father, to purge us from our sins by His own 
 blood.U The power of this sacrifice to reconcile for the whole 
 human species arose from the position in which Jesus stands to 
 us all ; He is the Creator, and again He is the Ruler of all the 
 world and of mankind, and so nothing that He does but must 
 
 * D(j Incar. 20. % Cont. Ar. i. GO. || Cout. Apol. ii. 12. 
 
 t Du Deer. 14. 5 Cout. Ar. ii. CO'. U Caut. Ar. ii. 7. 
 
Essay VIIL] THE. DEATH OF CHRIST. 345 
 
 influence all. When a king comes into a great city, and takes 
 up his dwelling in a single house of it, the honour of the visit is 
 reflected on all the city ; enemies and robbers desist from their 
 work, and, through the presence in one house, the whole city is 
 protected. So it is with the presence of our King.* Who can 
 fail to see in this system all the Scriptural elements of the 
 Atonement faithfully preserved? More than this might be 
 proved if space and time allowed : the anxious recurrence to 
 Holy Writ as the rule of faith, the correction by the light of 
 Scripture of statements that run perilously close to error. 
 _ In the Fathers the various representations of the work of the 
 Lord, — the ransom, the sacrifice, the conflict with Satan, — all 
 have reference to His death. We have seen this in Athanasius. 
 Tertullian uses the phrase that Christ is " the universal Priest 
 of God,"f in reference to His offering of Himself for men. No 
 doubt the theories on tliis subject were indefinite and incomplete ; 
 but a greater mistake could not be made than to suppose that 
 the doctrine of satisfaction and substitution was absent from the 
 jiatristic writings, and lay dormant till the voice of Anselm woke 
 it. Origen, who is often said to know nothing of the substi- 
 tutive sufferings of the Lord, asserts them expressly in several 
 passages.} Cyril of Jerusalem not less so : — " We were enemies 
 of God through sin, and God had appointed the sinner to die. 
 One of two things therefore must needs have happened, — that 
 God keeping His word should destroy all men, or that in His 
 loving kindness He should cancel the sentence. But behold the 
 wisdom of God ; He preserved both the truth of His sentence 
 and the exercise of His loving kindness, Christ took our sins in 
 His own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sin, should 
 live to righteousness."§ So Cyril of Alexandria : — " Since they 
 who were the servants of sin were made subject to the punish- 
 ment of sin, He who was free from sin, and had trod the paths of 
 all righteousness, underwent the punishment of sinners, destroy- 
 ing by His Cross the sentence of the old curse . . . ' being made 
 a curse for us.' " |1 The same doctrine is found in Augustine, 
 
 * De Incar. ix. 
 t Cont. Marc. iv. 9. 
 j Cont. Cels. ii. 23, and vol. xviii. 
 14, Explan. in Epist. ad Rom. iii. 8. 
 
 Compare Mohler, Symbolik. p. 247. 
 
 § Catech. xiii. 33. 
 
 II De Incarnatione, ch. xxv. in Mai's 
 Patrum Bibliotheca. It is doubtful 
 
346 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay YIII. 
 
 Hilary of roiticrs, aud Ambrose. None of these writers worked 
 out into a system tlie doctrine of the substitutive sacrifice of 
 Christ ; but it is absm-d to pretend, with these passages before 
 us, that Anselm was the inventor of the doctrine, and the de- 
 stroyer of another which is supposed to have usm-ped dominion 
 over the minds of all the Fathers. It is something more than 
 absurd when words are put into the mouth of Gregory Nazianzen 
 wliich he never spoke, to the effect that there is no danger in 
 errors about the mode of our redemption.* 
 
 ■whether tliis work is Cyril's, but it is of 
 about the same ('.ate, aud otlier passages 
 as express are quoted from Cyril's ac- 
 knowledged works. 
 
 * By what means a weak cause may 
 be supported will appear from the his- 
 tory of a spurious quotation. Mr. 
 Garden, in liis tract already quoted, 
 suys : " In the strong language of Gre- 
 gory Nazianzen, we may affirm that 
 'the mode in which Christ has re- 
 deemed us is a matter in which we 
 may err without danger.' " If Gregory 
 the Theologian had made such an as- 
 sertion, no doubt the language would 
 have been as strong as it was startling. 
 But he never did. Mr. Garden follows 
 Professor Jowett, who says : " Gregory 
 of Isic'] Nazianzen numbers specula- 
 tions about the sufi'erings of Clii'ist 
 among those things on which it is 
 useful to have correct ideas, but not 
 dangerous to be mistaken." Professor 
 Jowett has followed F. C. Baur, who, 
 however, quotes the whole passage, 
 and not a fragment of a sentence, and 
 admits that it is not in harmony with 
 the rest of Gregory's views. The pas- 
 sage in question comes from the lirst 
 of the ' Tlieological Orations ' of Gre- 
 gory (^Orat. xxvii. [xxxiii.]), in wliich 
 he is inveighing against the Euno- 
 niians for the length to which they 
 carry tiieir speculations on the nature 
 and counsels of God. Ho suggests 
 other subjects of discussion from pro- 
 fane phiiosoi)liy, in which they may 
 show off their skill and eloquence 
 without wronging God by irreverence. 
 He then says : " But if you think these 
 things unworthy of discussion, as tri- 
 fling things that have been often re- 
 futed, and desire to employ yourself on 
 your own subjects, and seek the dis- 
 tinction that may arise from these, I 
 
 will atford you even here a wide field. ■ 
 Philosophize about the world or worlds, 
 about matter, the soul, about reason- 
 able creatures higher and lower, about 
 resurrection, judgment, retribution, the 
 sufferings of Christ; for in these things 
 to attain our object is not useless, and to 
 fail of it is free from peril (to iirirvyxa- 
 viiv ovK &xpTi\ffTov Kou rh StaixapravfLU 
 aKivSwov ,." Here there is not a word 
 about " the mode in wliich Christ has 
 redeemed us ;" the nature of our Lord's 
 sufferings is what they are allowed to 
 discuss, and not the consequences of 
 those suiferings, of which no hint is 
 given. As well say that the passage 
 tells us it is safe to err on the side of 
 materialism, because matter is men- 
 tioned ; or safe to deny the soul's im- 
 mortality, because the soul is men- 
 tioned. There are questions, physical 
 and metaphysical, about all these 
 things, which admit of discussion, and 
 yet need not trench on vital Christian 
 truth. The origin and duration of the 
 world, the nature of matter, the soul's 
 connexion with the body, the nature of 
 reason, the state of tlie body in the 
 resurrection, the nature of future re- 
 wards and j)nnishments, the sufferings 
 of the Lord, how far physical and how 
 far mental, are all questions of this sort. 
 It is not even clear that the word Sia- 
 napraveiv means " to err from the 
 truth ;" it may be, as Leunclavius 
 renders it, " to fail of your object," and 
 tiie object in this case is success in 
 disputation. But on this I do not 
 insist. We have here the solitary pa- 
 tristic quotiition by which lax views 
 about the Atonement are supposed to 
 be encouraged ; and Mr. Jowett prints 
 part of tiie sentence, when the whole 
 would have at once disarmed his argu- 
 ment, whilst Mr. Garden puts worda 
 
Essay VIII.] 
 
 THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 
 
 347 
 
 7. But it is time to pass to Anselm, the reputed parent of our 
 modern teacliing ; and we ought to be tlioroughly satisfied upon 
 tlie question whether he has or has not supplanted tlie Bible in 
 our pulpits and treatises, and in our thoughts. The Gur Beus 
 Homo, of this great and truly humble writer, is an attempt to 
 answer the question, Why was it requisite for man's salvation 
 that God should become man ? Considering the Divine omnipo- 
 tence, we might expect that the mere fiat of His will or the 
 acceptance of some lower sacrifice than that of the only begotten 
 Son of God might have sufficed to effect the reconciliation. The 
 incidents of the Incarnation and the Crucifixion seem derogatory 
 to God ; the Infinite Spirit clothing Himself with a finite nature, 
 and allowing finite men and the power of evil to assail and 
 triumph over Him, these are representations that may shock our 
 reverence. If redemption was required at all, why was it not 
 effected by means of a sinless man who was no more than man ? 
 A mere man caused the faU, a mere man might have sufficed for 
 the restoration. Anselm replies that this would not have pro- 
 cured man's perfect restoration, for it would have left men 
 dependent on one of themselves ; he to whom they owed re- 
 demption would have been in some sense then- master instead of 
 God. But Avhy, it may be urged, was there any need of redemp- 
 tion at all ? When we speak of God's anger, we mean neither 
 more nor less than His will to punish. The moment that will is 
 withcbawn, there is neither anger nor punishment to fear ; and 
 so it might appear that a mere revocation of the will to punish 
 would of itself constitute salvation. The argument that God 
 gave His Son as a ransom for man from the power of Satan, 
 because it was right and just to recover by fair means a race 
 who had freely and voluntarily given themselves over to his 
 power, is at once dismissed : for the true reasons, namely that 
 
 into the mouth of this Father which 
 he never used, which he could not and 
 would not have used. We are thankful 
 for the admission that this is the best 
 that can be done on that side of the 
 argument. Let us put a true quotation 
 from Gregory in the place of the sham 
 one : " . . . the very suiferings of Christ 
 by wliich all of us, without exception, 
 were restored {aveirXdad-nixev) who par- 
 take of the nature of the same Adam, 
 
 and were deceived by the serpent and 
 brought iuto the death of sin, and 
 were saved again by the heavenly 
 Adam, and were brought back to the 
 tree of life whence we had fallen, by 
 means of the tree of ignominy " (_Orat. 
 xxxiii. p. G09, ed. Paris, 1840). Tliis 
 is one among many statements as to 
 " the mode in which Christ redeemed 
 us." 
 
348 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay VIII. 
 
 tlie Devil cannot properly liave either merit or power or riglit 
 over man ; tliat the power which in one sense he exerts against 
 mankind was only permissive, and that it expired when the per- 
 mission Avas withdrawn. He then proceeds to establish the need 
 of redemption on pm-er grounds. Every creatm-e that can will 
 and act owes to God an entire obedience, as the honoiu' due to 
 Him. All sin, then, is a AATong done to His honour, of what kind 
 soever the offence is. Punishment must attach to sin invariably, 
 in order to mark tlie chfference between sin and holiness ; it 
 would not only encourage sin, if men thouglit that the Almighty 
 were blind to it, but would obscure and distort our views of the 
 Divine natiu-e itself, if we conceived of Him as one to whom sin 
 and its opposite are both alike. We should thus regard God as 
 admitting sin into the order of the universe without dissent or 
 protest, whereas we know that the very nature of sin is disorder. 
 God, however, cannot suffer disorder ; for though sin could not 
 really detract from His p'ower and dignity, its aim and intent 
 are to dishonour and deface, as far as may be, the beauty of the 
 Divine government. If it may do this and yet draw at pleasure 
 on the Divine but free forgiveness ; unrighteousness is more free 
 and unshackled than obedience. Now no man can render for 
 his brethren the full obedience required: "a sinner cannot 
 justify a sinner." Even if a man with his heart full of love and 
 contrition were to renounce aU earthly solaces, and in labour and 
 abstinence to strive to obey God in aU things, and to do good to 
 all and forgive all, he Avoiild only be doing liis duty. But he is 
 unable to do even tliis ; and it is his misery that lie cannot plead 
 his inability as an excuse, because that proceeds from sin. He 
 must be of the same natm-e as those for whom lie renders the 
 obedience, in order that it may be accepted as theirs ; and yet if 
 the satisfaction is to be complete, he must be able to render to 
 God something greater than every created thing, for among men 
 pure righteousness is not to be found ; and if so, he must be 
 God, for what is there above the creature but God Himself? 
 Therefore he must be God and man, A\'hose life far exalted above 
 all created things must be infinitely valuable. As to the manner 
 of this redemption, Anselm uses these words, Avhich bear on a 
 controverted point in his theory : — " If man sinned for pleasure, 
 is it not consistent that he should make satisfaction by hardness ? 
 And if he were most easily overcome by the Devil, so as to 
 
Essay VIII. 
 
 THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 
 
 549 
 
 dishonour God by sin, is it not just tliat man making satisfaction 
 to God for sin, should conquer the Devil, for the honour of God, 
 in the most difficult manner ? " If he departed from God com- 
 pletely by sin, the mode of making satisfaction sliould be by a 
 tjomplete devotion to God. Now man can undergo nothing 
 harder or more difficult, for the honour of God, than death ; nor 
 can he devote liimself to God more completely than when he 
 delivers himself to death for His honom-.* But Anselm insists 
 more on the life of obedience which was acted out by Jesus, and 
 which no other could have rendered, as the satisfaction which 
 was rendered to God. He made atonement for men, by ren- 
 dering througli life a perfect obedience, in lieu of tlieirs, and by 
 a death which, as sinless, He did not owe, and as God He might 
 have escaped. Thus is the Divine mercy, which seems to be 
 excluded when we tliinlv of the Divine justice and of the infinite 
 amount of sin, brought into perfect harmony with justice, so that 
 the reason can discern that no better scheme of redemption could 
 have been devised. 
 
 8. This is a rough sketch of the system to wliicli, as we are 
 often told, modern theology is indebted for the theory of satis- 
 faction which it teaches. We are supposed by many to owe the 
 doctrine of the Cross to a pious Christian writer as late as the 
 eleventh century. Let us sift the claim. 
 
 The foundation of Anselni's theory is found in Athanasius. 
 Botli tliese writers view the Atonement habitually as a transac- 
 tion before the bar of Divine justice in heaven ; both seek the 
 explanation of its possibility in the divine nature of Him who 
 atones ; both conceive it as the payment of a debt due to God. 
 It would have been equally hard for both to admit the force of 
 the modern objection that it is not lawful for one man to be 
 punished for another ; for wliile the perfect human nature of the 
 Lord was essential to complete the Atonement, the human nature 
 is dwelt in by the divine, and the will that chooses to suffer for 
 man is divine. With both these writers the great moment of 
 the Atonement is found in the Incarnation ; in the presence in 
 
 * II. 11. I find in this passage the 
 doctrine of vicarious retribution, which 
 Baur fails to find in the Cur Detis Homo. 
 Mr. Garden (p. 5), in deciding between 
 us on this point, thinks it enough to 
 quote a passage in the next chapter 
 
 (II. 12) which is supposed to preclude 
 the doctrine. The passage, however, 
 seems to me wholly irrelevant, refer- 
 ring merely to the question whether 
 what one does willingly can be tlie 
 cause of misery. 
 
350 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay A^II. 
 
 human flesh of one able to act for men. What we owe to 
 Ansehn is not so much the general plan of salvation as the 
 minute and careful delineation of it. Nowhere else is there 
 such logical precision, such a continuous chain of deduction. 
 This is the kind of originality which we ought to attribute to him. 
 9. Anselm has indeed introduced a word, which has ever since 
 been associated with the dogma of the Atonement — the word 
 satisfaction. But a new Avord is not necessarily an innovation in 
 thought. The legal sense of the word satisfaction is the ap- 
 peasing a creditor on the subject of his debt, not necessarily by 
 the payment of it (solutio), but by any means that he will accept. 
 It is used more than once by Tertuilian, but not in the sense of 
 vicarious satisfaction ; in that sense no doubt it owes its cmTency 
 to Anselm. It has gone far to replace the word sacrifice. But 
 the fundamental ideas of the two words are not so far apart as is 
 often assumed. Sacrifice, in the usage of the Bible, is the 
 appointed rite by which a Jewish citizen who has broken the 
 law and forfeited thereby his position within the pale of the 
 Covenant, is enabled to procure his restoration. It is a Jewish 
 word, and belongs to the positive provisions of the Jewish 
 pohty, and not to general ethics. Still, as the Jewish constitu- 
 tion reflected the general dealings of God with all the world, 
 the term sacrifice applies to the restoration of all men who 
 have strayed from God by their sins. With thankful hearts Ave 
 may look up to Christ as the lamb ■ of our paschal sacrifice ; 
 since by His death and resurrection, and without any merit or 
 effort of our own, we are restored to the place before God which 
 we had lost. The word satisfaction, on the other liand, implies 
 a debt which we have not the means of paying, a debt of punish- 
 ment in consequence of our sins, or of obedience to compensate 
 fonner disobedience. Both terms imply a restoration tlirougli 
 something which is not us nor ours. Whether we speak of it as 
 a sacrifice or a payment, the same thought may be present to 
 our minds ; a reconcilement of God and us, wrought not by us 
 but by our Iledeemer. It is a gain to us, as sacrificial usages 
 become forgotten, to acquire a term which expresses the same 
 idea appealing to the principles of general ethics. But iticts, 
 and not words, are tlie subject of revelation ; Avhat Ave believe is 
 that tlie death of the Redeemer purcliased our life, our recon- 
 cihation, that without His obedience our sins Avould have borne 
 
Essay YIII.] THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 351 
 
 tlieir natural fruit of death. And whether we call this act a 
 sacrifice, on account of its being an offering to appease the 
 Divine wrath, or a satisfaction, as it is a mode of payment which 
 God accepts instead of the debt of obedience that we cannot 
 render, is of less importance than might at first appear. So 
 long as we believe that the wrath of God because of our disobe- 
 dience fell in the shape of affliction on Him who alone had so 
 acted as to please God, the terms in which it may be expressed 
 may be suffered to vary. 
 
 10. The system of Anselm is indeed open to criticism, but 
 not for the introduction of the word sacrifice. So for is it from 
 being an undue development of Holy Writ, that it falls far 
 short of it in the completeness of its statements. As the Atone- 
 ment transcends all our means of exposition, it must needs be 
 that, the more exactly it is fitted to any analogous human affairs, 
 the more entirely will some of its complex elements be omitted 
 from the description. Hence, for example, there is the danger 
 lest the Atonement degenerate into a transaction between a 
 righteous Father on the one side, and a loving Saviour on the 
 other, because in the human transaction from which the analogy 
 is drawn two distinct parties are concerned ; whereas in the plan 
 of salvation one will operates, and in the Father and the Son 
 alike justice and love are reconciled. Again, the reconciliation 
 effected by Christ appears rather as a bringing God into 
 harmony with Himself, His mercy with His justice, than as a 
 reconciliation of man with God. The passages of Scripture that 
 speak of the wrath of God against man are not explicable of 
 Anselm's system. The exclamation of the Baptist, that Jesus is 
 the Lamb of God, that taketli away the sin of the world ; the 
 prophecy of His sufferings by Isaiah (ch. liii.) ; the w^ords of Peter 
 that He "his own self bare our sins in his own body on the 
 tree ;"* and passages of like import in St. Paul's writings,f can 
 only find place with Anselm by a very forced interpretation. 
 His scheme is mainly this, that the merit of the perfect obedi- 
 ence of Jesus was so great as to deserve a great reward, and 
 that in answer to the prayer of the Lord this reward was given 
 in the form of the salvation of His brethren. But Christ 
 does not appear in this system as groaning and suffering under 
 
 1 Pet. ii. 21. t Cial. iii. 13. 2 Cur. v. 21. 
 
352 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay YIII. 
 
 the curse of the world, as He does in Holy Scripture. Until 
 the time of Anselm the doctrine of the Atonement had within 
 certain limits fluctuated with the change of teachers; the 
 doctrine itself was one and the same, but this or that aspect of 
 it had been made prominent. Anselm aimed at fixing in one 
 system the scattered truths ; and the result has been that he, 
 like his predecessors, made some parts of the truth conspicuous 
 to the prejudice of the rest. 
 
 II. Looking fauiy at the whole period from Ignatius to 
 Anselm, we are obliged to own that the efficacy of the death of 
 the Lord was always believed, and that of the three parts or 
 moments of this doctrine, the love, and the justice, and 'the 
 practical obedience, not one fell to the ground. The theory of a 
 victory over Satan, gained by deceit, shrinks into its proper pro- 
 portions ; it is an excrescence on the truth, and not a leprosy 
 turning all the truth into corruption. 
 
 III. 1. Holy Scripture contains the doctrine, and the Church 
 has always taught it. Whence, then, the repugnance to it which 
 some persons of serious and devout minds have expressed ? The 
 objections for the most part take the form of a denial that it is 
 possible that one man should suffer for the sin of anotlier ; that 
 the wrath of God could be appeased by the sacrifice of one wlio 
 had done no sin in the place of the smful. A thoroughgoing- 
 sense of man's responsibility for liis own acts, and a reluctance 
 to own that the sufferings of the just can ever be the conse- 
 quence of the sins of others, are the two principal motives at 
 work. How can these be most easily dealt with ? 
 
 2. All the difficulties that belong to this question are intro- 
 duced prior to it by a consideration of sin itself. The conscience 
 of man admits that there is such a thing as guilt ; and so strong, 
 decided, and constant is its witness, that there is no fear that 
 mankind in the long run will attempt to explain away the fact 
 that sin exists. But when 1 am asked to believe that it is 
 against the Divine plan that any other being should take away 
 from me any of the consequences of my guilt, I think myself 
 entitled to say that it is the correlative of tliis proposition that 
 no one should have brought upon me any of the guilt and its 
 consequences. It is sm-ely not more repugnant to God's justice 
 that another should bear my guilt than that I should be guilty 
 because of another ; nay, Divine justice Mill be more readily 
 
EswAY VIII.] THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 353 
 
 reconciled with a plan in Avliieli One who is entirely willing to 
 bear my sin should take off its intolerable burden from me 
 Avlio am earnestly desirous to get rid of it, than with a plan 
 in which sinfulness devolves from one who did not mean his 
 own faults to do me harm, upon me who by no means wished 
 to inherit them. But this kind of devolution, or transmission, is 
 a fact of constant occurrence of which no man can be ignorant. 
 We open the works of writers like Broussais and Biichner, and 
 find such importance given to the influence on moral habits of 
 hereditary transmission, of age, sex, maladies, mode of living, 
 and climate, that the doctrine of individual responsibility seems 
 for the moment to be in peril. AYe need to retire within, and 
 take counsel of conscience, in order to resist the invitation to 
 believe "that what we call free-will is notliing but our being 
 conscious of a will, without being conscious of the antecedents 
 that determine its mode of action," which, translated into plainer 
 nonsense, would mean — being conscious of our will without being- 
 conscious that we did not possess one. But all are agi'eed that 
 outward circumstances and inward constitution derived from pa- 
 rents and ancestors by physical laws, have a great influence upon 
 the character of men. In extreme cases this may be true to the 
 extent of paralysing the will altogether. If a young man has 
 sprung from parents of intemperate habits, who lived by steal- 
 ing, and has been brought up among companions of the same 
 sort, we shall hardly look to find him any better than the 
 soil in which he grew ; and any efforts to amend him and 
 call forth his moral nature would be preceded by the effort to 
 transplant liim. Alike in the good and evil qualities of men 
 the effect of hereditary transmission comes under daily notice. 
 And since w^e are always invited in tliis question to discuss it 
 in forensic language, and are told that no man can be allowed 
 before a human tribunal to take upon himself the position of the 
 criminal and suffer the punishment of another, because every 
 one arraigned there must bear his own bm-den, we must remark 
 that, if every one did actually bear his own burden there, limnan ' 
 justice would have attained a perfection wliich it has never yet 
 boasted. In graduated punishments for the same offence there' 
 is a rough attempt to take into account the antecedents of the 
 criminal and the amount of his temptation ; but these palliations 
 are not proved in evidence, and it is by a rough truess onlv that 
 
 '"2 a 
 
354 AIDS TO FAITH. [E.ssay YIII. 
 
 an equitable appoi-tionmeut of pimisliment is attempted. In 
 defining the line at whicli mental imbecility extinguishes all 
 sense of responsibility laws have utterly failed, and tribunals have 
 stultified themselves by conflicting decisions. But the argu- 
 ments on these cases prove that all believe in a class of minds 
 yvhexe guilt is just imputable and no more, — where the mental 
 debility, often congenital, all but extinguishes the moral 
 offence. In cases of such nice difficulty, mistakes must be 
 made ; punishment must fall on the wrong man. Nor is this 
 mere speculation ; a man has been decided insane at one place 
 for a crime for which another man at another place has been 
 hanged, according as the judge and jmy made prominent in 
 their minds the safety of society or consideration for the 
 supposed criminal. Capital punishment has fallen upon men 
 who, upon the same facts before a different tribunal, would have 
 been judged to have exercised no choice at all, but to have 
 acted out the course to which birth and disease and the like 
 compelled them. Absolute compidsion of this kind is no doubt 
 rare ; but absolute freedom is more than rare, it is impossible. 
 Men enter this world the heii'S of passions, perhaps cultivated 
 in the last generation to an unnatural height ; they are nurtured 
 on bad examples and a low morality, so that they cannot do 
 the things that they would. And it is the rule, and not the 
 exception, that men's moral actions are tinctured with the colour 
 of the actions of others before and around them, Avliich they 
 could not possibly have caused. Now, if these facts are ad- 
 mitted, — if, instead of that perfect isolation of responsibility 
 which some insist on, a joint responsibility is the universal rule, — 
 Avith what show of reason can they pretend that it is" on this 
 ground that the Christian scheme is untenable ? Look [into the 
 black London alleys teeming with ignorance, improvidence, and 
 vice ; do you not see written in those faces eloquent in wretched- 
 ness, "We did not place ourselves here': were the choice given 
 us freely, we would not be as we are " ? Then what do we 
 think of the consistency of those A\ho see guilt brought on by 
 others, but think it revolting that another should take it off? 
 Living comments upon the words " In Adam all die " abound, 
 and cannot be blotted out : it ought not then to revolt our 
 moral sense that those other words are added, " In Christ shall 
 all be made alive." The latter words, in fact, go far to solve 
 
E>SAy VIII.] THE DEATH OF CHRIST. o5o 
 
 the mysteiy of the former. For the constant transmission of 
 rsiufuhiess, the heritage of sins bequeathed from the fathers to 
 tlieir children, is revolting to the moral sense when severed 
 from the thought of a Deliverer, The message of Heaven to 
 us is, " Ye are all of one family, partakers of the family heritage 
 of sin, and wretchedness, and ruin ; and yet every one of you 
 driven by the stimulus of conscience to protest against the ruin, 
 and to erect yourselves above it. Ye are accustomed to this 
 derived destruction, this hereditary partnership in guilt; lift 
 your eyes one step further back, to that common Father from 
 whom ye sjjrung, from whom ye have lived in separation. By 
 taking your nature I will re-establish that lost connection, I will 
 make the Father's lost favour accessible to you again. I -will 
 imdo the curse, by placing myself under it. I will sanctify the 
 flesh, which the sin of generations has made unclean. For I 
 am partaker of the Father^s nature, and the power over you 
 which belongs to Him is mine also ; and I am partaker of your 
 nature in all save in the sin of it ; and thus I am the Mediator 
 between God and man." 
 
 3. There is then nothing new or startling in the revelation of 
 a great moral good bestowed on us without our effort ; it is in 
 harmony with the system under which we live, as members 
 of a great family having common interests even in things 
 belonging to the soul. But, beside the general fact, the mode 
 of our redemption, m3^sterious as it must be, should still be in 
 harmony with our mental constitution; it should be such as 
 not to shock our natural expectation. We cannot possibly 
 hope to understand it ; but it must not be such that we can 
 understand it ouglit not to be. The question — Why should' 
 Jesus have died for our sins instead of simply declaring forgive- 
 ness ? Why was not He the ambassador of forgiveness instead 
 of the artificer of it? — will obtrude even upon submissive 
 minds. Now the death of Jesus, after such a life as His, was 
 the crowning act and achievement of sin ; and so showed to 
 man the extent of his own corruption. Here was one whose 
 every act went to deserve the titles of " the Holy One, and the 
 Just," whose love for His own people gushed forth through the 
 openings of a hundred miracles wrought for their good ; whose 
 speech was meek, and whose life could provoke no jealousy, nor 
 threaten the foundations of any lawful power ; who had fed, 
 
 2 A 2 ' 
 
356 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay VIII. 
 
 or healed, or taught many thousands of the people that ought 
 to have been ready witnesses in his behalf; whose doctrines 
 seldom failed to produce on the hearers a profound impression 
 in favour of a teacher different from and far above all others ; 
 yet whose goodness quickened the hatred of those in authority, 
 and was the direct cause of reviling, persecution, and death. 
 By how much the example of the sinless Jesus is conspicuous, 
 by so much is the sin of His persecution and death intensi- 
 fied. Had there been in the Lord (the supposition must be 
 pardoned) one trace of human folly or sin, high-priest and Pha- 
 risee would have been more tolerant, because the contrast that 
 rebuked them would have been less violent. But that shining 
 armour showed no flaw nor stain. Their hatred was pure 
 hatred of goodness ; their sentence of death was passed because 
 there Avas no crime ; the death itself was the first death that 
 was the wages of no sin. And so the Apostles, in preaching 
 the Gospel, wanted no better arguments for condemning sin : 
 that men had imbrued their hands in the blood of One who 
 was sinless and who loved them, was enough to abase any 
 candid spirit. As when some man of doubtful repute becomes 
 suddenly recognised as the author of some enormous crime, 
 and all his fellows recoil from him, and will not give him a cup 
 of water lest they seem to countenance his evil deed, so, when 
 mankind saAV that the blood of the sinless Jesus was red on the 
 hand of the rulers and the people, they were pricked to the 
 heart by the spectacle, and fled from a haunt of guilt too 
 horrible for them . to live in longer. " Men and brethren, 
 
 what shall we do ? Save yourselves from this untoward 
 
 generation." * In the death of Jesus sin stood revealed to 
 itself. In that deed it first reached its full height ; it brought 
 forth into act all the potential consequences of ages of lust 
 and malice. The devil was a liar and a murderer from the 
 beginning, and men obeyed him in all falsehood and wrong. 
 But he never showed what he was capable of till he murdered 
 the sinless Bedeemer in the name of God. And Avith that 
 crowning act his power was scattered and overtlu-own. We are 
 almost tempt(>d to recur to the language of the Fathers, as to 
 the delusion into which Satan was betrayed. Satan as lightning 
 
 Acts ii. 37, 40. 
 
Essay VIII.] THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 357 
 
 fell from heaven, just as be stood upon the highest heap of ruin. 
 And out of the discord and the darkness of that hour, the most 
 terrible in human history, was heard a voice proclaiming peace 
 to man, just when Satan's foot was planted most firmly on his 
 neck. 
 
 4. '• But," it is answered, " what we object to is the use of 
 such words as imply that Jesus fell under the wrath of God and 
 became a cm-se for us. These cannot be applied properly to 
 our Lord ; but if at all, only in a loose and figurative way." Xow 
 what are the tokens of the curse under which man labours ? * 
 It shows itself in his social relations, in his relation to nature, 
 and in his relation to God. 
 
 The contrast between our aspirations after social progress and 
 the actual state of society marks strongly the effect of sm and 
 wrath upon it. Whilst we sigh after a reign of industry and 
 peace and love, the thunders of a causeless and profitless war 
 mutter again in the air, and portend the loss of the fruits of fifty 
 years of progress to the devoted nations engaged in it. We 
 would befriend and raise the poor, but the necessities of their 
 position are a chain round them that seems to make us and them 
 helpless for good. For want of a little more food and a little 
 more room in their dwellings, the sublimest truths fall dead 
 upon their ears. Every great step of social progress, however 
 plainly good and just, has had its battlefields or its scaffolds. 
 Doubt, and suffering, and selfishness abound. Commercial spe- 
 culations, founded in sheer fraud, collapse and bury the trusting- 
 multitude in their ruins. Life must be for most of our popula- 
 tion a constant struggle against starvation. The complaints 
 against our present social condition come not from Christian 
 writers only, but from social reformers of every degree and 
 creed.t 
 
 The relations of man to nature are likewise " out of joint." 
 The high purposes that the soul is able to conceive are thwarted 
 by the body. Hereditary indolence, or temper, or desire, stands 
 across the path ; and men despair when they measure their 
 meagre performance 'with their high promise, and find too often 
 
 * Sec Gess, Lebre, v. d. 'Versuli- [ chapter of Buchez, 'Science de I'His- 
 nung.' toirc' 
 
 t For example, see the opening | 
 
358 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essat VIIL 
 
 the evil habit growing on them and checking their pace, as the 
 cheetah pnlls down the running deer. And the bodily organism, 
 crippled at the outset with the faults perhaps of a former gene- 
 ration, breaks down prematurely ; and " the night when no man 
 can work" overtakes the pilgrim when morn has scarcely 
 
 But the thu-d effect of the curse is worse than these ; the 
 relation between God and man is broken by sin. " Sin is a 
 great ditch and wall, dividing us from God." * The law of God 
 is lost, and the soul becomes dark and self-seeking, and without 
 purposes of good. Sometimes extravagant and nameless horrors 
 of vice show what man without God may be capable of :-f- but 
 always the want of God has been accompanied by want of love 
 and of good purposes and of self-government. And the wages 
 of sin have been death ; a death of the spirit in men that seemed 
 to live. 
 
 5. Now it is idle to discuss M'hether we ought to say that our 
 Lord became a curse for us, if we have not exhausted the direct 
 evidence of what He became and suffered for us. Did He or 
 did He not put His neck under the yoke of this curse and bear 
 His share of it ? 
 
 Did He claim any social exemption? He accepted the evils 
 of poverty ; it followed Him fi-om the manger to the carpenter's 
 workshop, to the wilderness. For thirty years He dwelt with 
 a family that did not understand Him, in a city that despised Him 
 and would rebel against His first efforts to teach. His con- 
 versation was not among scholars t nor statesmen ; but with 
 lepers and lunatics, with halt and maimed, Avith men afflicted 
 and possessed. All the sufferings of our social state, all that 
 makes the aspect of society painful to a feelmg heart, were brought 
 around Him, and He showed no repugnance. The twelve whom 
 He chose for His friends, to receive his constant teaching, were 
 dull scholars, w^ho knew Him not, even to the end. At last a 
 disciple betrayed Him ; the priest of His Father pronounced that 
 it was good that He should die for the people ; the Prince of the 
 chosen people was delivered up by thorn to the Gentiles, and put 
 to death ; and His disciples fled in terror from His side. 
 
 But it is to be observed that, even if the death of our Lord 
 
 * Thcoi)liylac(. in Luc. 14. f Kom. i. 2S. Gal. v. 10. J Luke iv. 2S. 
 
Essay VIII.] THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 359 
 
 liad not taken place, even if He had ascended in glory without 
 being pnt to death in shame, it wonld have been true that He 
 became a curse for us. In point of justice there would be no 
 question of degree ; and even if there had been no death, that 
 Jesus should have suffered even one look of scorn from some 
 proud Nazarene who knew Him as the carpenter's son, and this 
 on our account, Avould involve the Avhole discussion of the Divine 
 justice. The sinless and the just has suffered something which 
 He did not deserve, be it little or great. If we are so rash as 
 to impugn the Divine justice at all, understanding it so little, 
 we must begin before the cross, with the first indignity, with the 
 first pressm-e of earthly want. It is, perhaps, natural that the 
 shocking discrepancy between the Divine sufferer and the mode 
 of His death should shock our sense of justice more than all 
 that had gone before ; because death awakens our sympathies 
 more powerfully than the less harrowing incidents of a life of 
 hardship. But if we are to appeal to a metaphysical theory of 
 Divine justice, we must analyze our facts more exactly ; and 
 then one of our first admissions must be, that if it is unjust to 
 slay it is unjust to smite or to degrade. And in order to set our 
 theory going, we shall have to soften with docetic glosses not 
 only the account of the passion, but that of the whole life of the 
 Eedeemer. 
 
 But He tastes also the bitterness of death. Death came by 
 disobedience ; and the fear of death, and of all the possible con- 
 sequences of death, has been one of the burdens of the human 
 race ever since. " Through fear of death " men "were all their life- 
 time subject unto bondage." * One who should be exempt from 
 the fear of death would not bear the whole burden of man's 
 condition. How far was the Eedeemer partaker of this fear ? 
 Perhaps it is difficult to sever the dread of death from the 
 burden of sin which was in death to be born ; but towards the 
 close of the history we see the Redeemer girding Himself for 
 the terrible suffering, "steadfastly setting his face to go to 
 Jerusalem," t expressing His state of pain until the baptism 
 that He must be baptized with could be accomplished. J Tears 
 had fallen from His eyes at seeing the stroke of death take 
 effect on Lazarus his friend ; and from the thought of His own 
 
 Heh. ii. 15. f Matt. x. 32. J Luke xii. 50. 
 
oGO AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay VIII. 
 
 'leath there was that slirinking which belongs to a man. He 
 sliared our curse in tasting the bitterness of death. 
 
 And with the thought of death must liave mingled a still 
 more gloomy thought — the sense of the weight of sin. It is at 
 this point that some will cease to go along with us. That any- 
 true feeling of sin, as of a burden on His ^own spirit, can ever 
 have belonged to Jesus, is what some, careful for the honour of 
 their Lord, will not admit. Let us refrain from theories on such 
 a subject on both sides. But there are two places of the Gospel 
 history that cannot be understood except on the supposition that 
 sin and the power of darkness were suffered to press upon Him 
 Avith a terrible weight. The scene in Gethsemane is one which 
 Christians would fain keep out of their disputes ; * yet it is 
 described for our instruction, and we must venture to enter 
 there. And it seems to me that those Avho would place all the 
 import of the Lord's death in its being a heroic termination of a 
 lieroic and devout life, and an example of a faith true to itself 
 even in extremity, receive under these olive-trees their most com- 
 ' plete refutation. For iirst, the Redeemer here appears harrowed 
 hj a misery which many a martyr has been free from, utterly 
 perturbed by a prospect which a Stephen, an Ignatius, a 
 Ridley viewed without dismay. If no more than death is in 
 question, we should expect an example of calm reliance on the 
 present help of God. But we find the unaccountable agony, the 
 bloody sweat, the prayer for deliverance : all fortifying and 
 calming influences seem withdrawn for a time from Him who 
 through His life so constantly enjoyed them. We are astonished 
 that the curse of our race should be suffered to press in all its 
 terrible reality upon the sinless and divine Son. Yet there is 
 tlie description of His great struggle. We cannot refuse to see 
 that it relates to One utterly broken down for a time in a 
 wretchedness beyond our conception, a prey to thoughts M'hich, 
 judging by their outward effects, were far darker than those 
 of the felon the night before his execution, when He counts 
 the quarters of each hour, and hears the hammers that are 
 
 "■ '• A feeling tihvuys seizes me," says 
 Knuuiiiacher, "as if it were unljccom- 
 ing; to act as a spy on llie Son of tlie 
 livingGod in His last secret transactions 
 with ills heavenly Father ; and that a 
 sinful eye ventures too much in daring 
 
 to look upon a scene in wliich the I^ord 
 appears in such a stiite of weakness 
 and abandonment that places Him on 
 the same footing with the most mise- 
 rable among juen."" 
 
ESSAT VIII.] 
 
 THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 
 
 361 
 
 busy at his scaffold. If our salvation is to be made an easier 
 work, if the price paid is to be abated, we must forget Geth- 
 semane or deny it.* But if Ave believe with the Apostle that 
 " G-od hath made Him to be sin for us Who kncAV no sin, that we 
 might be made the righteousness of God in Him," f then the 
 terror and the agony become accountable. All the inner horror 
 of sin is revealed to Him. Sin in its nakedness is more hor- 
 rible than death. And He sees it as it is ; the blasphemous 
 self-worship that it is, the revolt against God, the violation of 
 order, the death in life. And all this sin is His, though He 
 is sinless of it : for He has thrown in His lot with men, and 
 has proposed to Himself the task of breaking down this foul 
 and destroying tyranny. The mystery of that agency lies in 
 the completeness of His humanity. He is no bystander, watch- 
 ing how men sin. He is one of tliemselves, but with the 
 power of God over them to make their interests His own. In 
 Him, as God, they live, and move, and have their being : and 
 now the power of darkness is let loose to show Him all the sin 
 and misery, and defiance of God, that He, by clothing Himself 
 with human nature, has taken into His bosom. The words of 
 the Lord upon the cross are an echo from the garden of agony : 
 " Why hast Thou forsaken me ? " These words from the 
 twenty-second Psalm, uttered at such a moment, are of course 
 no mere ejaculation of pain ; they recall a Psalm which, as any 
 one may see, contains matter that can apply to Messiah only. 
 But the words themselves express a sense of desertion by God : 
 they can have no other meaning. Vain would it be to attempt 
 to explain how He, one with the Father, and never severed 
 from Him by spot or stain of guilt, could have admitted such a 
 feeling. But there are the words : we dare not deny them. 
 They belong to Him, not as Son of God, but as burdened with 
 the sins of the world. They express perhaps the complete 
 separation which sin makes between man and God. He is now 
 the Advocate of all mankind ; and their separation from God 
 because of sin extends itself to Him for a season. It appears, 
 then, that the question whether the wrath of God can be said 
 
 * !Mr. Garden, whose theory is that 
 the Lord woukl never have felt miserj-, 
 is here consistent. He forgets Geth- 
 eemane altogether : he quotes only our 
 
 Lord's words upon the Cross. — Tract? 
 &e., p. 10. 
 
 t 2 Cor. V. 21. 
 
362 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay VUI. 
 
 to liave fallen upon the Sou, who has done no sin, is no verbal 
 question, but a question of fact. Jesus did suffer all those 
 things which are the evident tokens of wrath against us. He 
 tried the sufferings of our disjointed social state ; He knew the 
 fear of death, and the anguish of sin which separates from 
 God. Tlie motives of those who would protect His name from 
 the supposed contamination of sin, are not unworthy of respect. 
 " Be it far from thee, Lord !" came from one wlio loved his Lord 
 sincerely ; but " Get thou behind me, Satan !" was the answer 
 he received. When the Son of God is minded, of His own free 
 will and His exceeding love towards our race, to come down 
 from heaven, and in the form of a servant to explore all the 
 secrets of our vile condition, it is more reverent in us to observe 
 and love His condescension, than to say, out of some private 
 text-book of morality, '-'This shall not be unto thee!" The 
 mystery of evil is far beyond om- rules and measm-es. There 
 must be a cause Avhen such a great act of condescension had to 
 be done. But done it Avas ; and when all the vials of wrath 
 were poured out upon His head, and when He did not shrink 
 from receiving them, it is idle to discuss whether this shall be 
 called wrath or love ; when He smarted under all that we call 
 punisliment, it is idle to say that it must have another name. 
 
 But you that are so jealous lest the name of sin should 
 attach to the sinless One, carry the jealousy another step. 
 When the Pharisees revile and the Priests entrap the Lord, 
 and when the scourging, and the buffets, and the spitting 
 mangle and defile His innocent frame, you think that nature 
 itself should give tokens of indignation. And yet, how close to 
 God sin has ever come ! how sins have ever polluted and 
 defiled the world, which is His temple ! and you have not con- 
 ceived of the sins in that light, as sins that touch Him. AMien 
 a man slays his brother, or pollutes the virtue of a woman, and 
 each is dear to the Almighty Maker, does not the murderer 
 smite God, and the betrayer spit upon Him ? and the long-suffer- 
 ing Ruler of the world bears, as in His bosom, all our wayward 
 sins, and weaves them into the web of His providence, and 
 contrives an order of tilings in which these evil elements may 
 work and not destroy. Jealous of the Son's contact with sui, 
 can we not, by a larger reach of the same morality, conceive 
 that the Father's contact with, and permission of sm, is a pro- 
 
Essay VIIL] THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 363 
 
 found mystery? Can you not see in this fact a greater liideous- 
 ness in evil, since every day that it is permitted seems to 
 impugn the justice or the power of Him who could abolish 
 every sin, with the doers of it, by the breath of His mouth ? 
 If so, let us at least assent to the position that a disease so 
 utterly past our comprehension may require means to cm-e it 
 that shock the ordinary conclusions of our conscience ; and that 
 a wider view, if we could stand high enough to take it, might 
 correct our crude impressions. 
 
 G. The doctrine of Atonement is many-sided, as all mysteries 
 are when we try to express them in the forms of human 
 thought. And no doctrine has suffered so much, on the part 
 both of friend and foe, from a one-sided treatment. " It has 
 been said, that tliis doctrine represents the Almighty as moved 
 with fm-y at the insults offered to His Supreme Majesty, as 
 impatient to pour forth His fury upon some being, as indifferent 
 whether that being deserves it or not, and as perfectly appeased 
 upon finding an object of vengeance in His own innocent Son. 
 It has been said, that a doctrine which represents the Almighty 
 as sternly demanduig a full equivalent for that which was due 
 to Him, and as receiving that equivalent in the sufferings of 
 His Son, transfers all the affection and gratitude of the human 
 race from an inexorable Being, who did not remit any part of 
 His right, to another being who satisfied His claim. It has been 
 said, that a translation of guilt is impossible, because guilt is 
 personal ; and that a doctrine which represents the innocent as 
 punished instead of the guilty, and the guilty as escaping by 
 this j)iiMi5^^ient, contradicts the first principles of justice, 
 subverts all om' ideas of a righteous government, and, by hold- 
 ing forth an example of reward and pimishment dispensed by 
 Heaven, without any regard to the character of those who 
 receive- them, does encourage men to live as they please."* So 
 the objections were summed up many years since, and there is 
 little to alter after the recent controversy. Now, most of these 
 objections have arisen from a crude and one-sided way of stating 
 the doctrine on the part of its friends, and disappear when all 
 the elements of the truth are taken in. Sin exists ; and there- 
 with must enter a host of contradictions. Sin is that which turns 
 
 Kev. Dr. Hill's Lecti^rcs, b. iv., cli. 3, quoted by Dr. Candlisli. 
 
o64 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay YIII. 
 
 the love of God into wratli ; not into the passion of Avratli as , 
 men feel it, but to the intention of \isiting with punishment. 
 With sin, the face of God is altered against us and turned away. 
 We know the theological objections to this mode of speaking, 
 but there is no other open to us. God cannot change ; but 
 yet His inn-pose towards us is changed in its workings by our- 
 selves. And this enormous power all classes of Christians 
 assign to sin, that it can dam up and divert the current of 
 Divine love, that set so strongly towards us. We are obliged 
 to pick our expressions, whenever we touch the subject, lest sin 
 itself should be laid to the account of Him who is the governor 
 of the world, and suffers sin in the world. Sin turns love to 
 wrath, the life of our souls to the death of them, our light to 
 darkness, our free adherence to God to enmity against Him. 
 From tliis view of sin, as something which is suffered to thwart 
 the free workings of God's love, and which casts shadows as of 
 the darkness of Gethsemane over all the scenes of history, 
 where evil is suffered to come in and overcloud the good, 
 there is no escape except in the pantheistic view, which reads 
 all sin and evil as good in a transition state. And against 
 that view conscience will ever protest; for it is the best 
 proof of our still retaining vestiges of good that conscience 
 linds all the suggestions of physiological materialists, and of 
 metaphysical pantheists, powerless to lull to sleep the sense of 
 individual guilt, which yet she has so strong an interest in 
 getting rid of. To remove sin and its consequences God sent 
 His tSon, the Eternal Word of the Father, to become truly man 
 as He was truly God, and to mediate between men and Him for 
 their relief. It is not true, whatever friend or foe shall say it, 
 that God looked forth on His works to find some innocent man 
 able and Avilling to bear the weight of His wrath, and found 
 Jesus and punished Him. It is all false, because it is only half 
 true. The Son of God took our natm-e upon Him, and there- 
 with the sins of it, at least in their consequences ; not because 
 He became one man among many, but because when God takes 
 inan's nature He still has divine right and power over all, and 
 so manhood is taken into God. That sinfulness should press 
 upon the Son of God, in any of its consequences, revolts us at 
 first ; nay, it was intended to revolt us and tliereby to secure 
 our repentance : and jealous for His liouour we protest that of 
 
Essay VIII.] THE DEATH OF CHRIST. 365 
 
 sill He sliall know nothing. Yes ; but we have been flaunting 
 
 our sins in the face of the Father, to His disi^leasure, ever since 
 
 we were born ; using the limbs He makes and keeps strong, for 
 
 purposes of lust and violence ; quickening the pulses that He 
 
 controls, with draughts of passionate excitement : in a word, 
 
 sinning before God's face and under His hand. Is it less 
 
 shocking that sin should be in the world which is God's, than 
 
 that it should be in the manhood which is Christ's ? No : both 
 
 before and after the incarnation sin is a contradiction ; and it is 
 
 less difficult to conceive sin taken by the Son upon Himself for 
 
 a time and by way of remedy, than it is to understand it as 
 
 suffered by the Father always as a permitted destruction. The 
 
 punishment in this transaction falls on the innocent. And we are 
 
 told that such a doctrine is cruel, unjust, and useless : cruel, 
 
 because it punishes where it could forgive ; useless, because it 
 
 misses the true end of punishment in striking the guiltless, 
 
 which can never deter from guilt ; and unjust, because it 
 
 falls on one who knows no sin. But it is not cruel, if it 
 
 thereby marks for ever the enormity of sin which needed such 
 
 a sacrifice ; it is not useless, if it changed the relation of man to 
 
 God, and if in fact it has ever since been turning men to 
 
 holiness and " drawing all men unto " Jesus ; * and it is not 
 
 unjust, because the Father's will to punish never outstripped the 
 
 Son's to suffer, and because His death was a solemn offering of 
 
 Himself in love, for man's redemption. Nor can there be any 
 
 tendency to transfer from the severe Father to the loving Son, 
 
 the love we owe to both ; for the mode of our redemption was 
 
 designed by both, and the Son adopts the Father's and the 
 
 Father sanctions the Son's loving self-sacrifice. Nor is there 
 
 the least pretext for saying that this doctrine encourages men 
 
 to live as they please, by holding forth the spectacle of rewards 
 
 earned for those who do not deserve them and punishments 
 
 warded off from those who deserve them Avell : since the blood 
 
 of the Kedeemer, all-sufficient as it is to cleanse the sins of the 
 
 world, saves from wrath only those who repent and turn to Him. 
 
 The power of the doctrine of the Atonement has been felt 
 
 wherever the Gospel has come. It has carried comfort to 
 
 sinners where nothimr else could do so. Wherever the conviction 
 
 John x'u. 32, 
 
?>66 AIDS TO FAITH. [Es>AyYIII. 
 
 of sin has been deepest, the power of the Cross has been most 
 conspicuous ; and this in the face of objections which it was not 
 left to modern times to suggest, against such a punishment for 
 such a deliverer. Let it still be preached ; and our lesson from 
 these controversies be that we preach the whole of it, so far as 
 Scripture informs and our mind comprehends. Let us not so 
 exalt the justice of God that we seem to record the harshness of 
 a tyrant, and not the device of a Father seeking to bring His 
 children back. Lot us not so dwell on the love of Christ as to 
 forget that one great moral purpose of this sacrifice was to set 
 the mark of God's indignation upon sin. Let us not so offer the 
 benefits of the Cross to our people as to lose sight of it as a 
 means of their crucifying their own flesh and dying to their o^vu 
 sins. He bare our sins in His own body on the tree ; He is 
 our ransom, our propitiation ; He is made sin for us ; because 
 God is just. He laid down His life for the sheep, out of love, 
 and God so loved the world that He gave Him for this labom- ; 
 because God is love : and we are to run with patience the race 
 that is set before us, looking unto Jesus the Author and Finisher 
 of our faith ; because the work of justice and love has restored 
 us to our position of moral freedom and moral life, and we must 
 live as the redeemed servants of our Lord. 
 
ESSAY IX. 
 SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 
 
CONTENTS OF ESSAY IX. 
 
 Sect. 1. The alleged variations in 
 TUE Interpretation of Scrip- 
 ture, p. 371. 
 
 1. Introductory comments and defini- 
 
 tions, 
 
 2. Present attitudes and expectations. 
 
 3. Amount of varying interpretations 
 
 much exaggerated— as shown by, 
 ^rs<, Ancient and modern versions; 
 secondly. Comparison of earlier 
 and later expositions. 
 
 4. Literal and historical mode of in- 
 
 terpretation adopted from the first. 
 
 5. Kecapitulation. 
 
 Sect. 2. The Characteristics of 
 Scripture, p. 388. 
 
 6. Ditferences of interpretation in de- 
 
 tails. 
 
 7. This diversity in unity to be ac- 
 
 counted for — I. By the difference 
 of the Bible from every other book. 
 — II. By the fact that Scripture 
 often involves more than one 
 meaning : — as shown by (1) Ap- 
 plications of prophecy, (2) Types, 
 (3) Deeper meanings, even in his- 
 torical passages. — III. By the fact 
 that Scripture is divinely inspired. 
 
 8. Examination of the assertions of 
 
 opponents concerning the Inspi- 
 ration of Scripture, as regards, 
 first, the Testimony of Scripture in 
 reference to itself; sc-ondly, the 
 Statements of the Early Church ; 
 thirdly, the Subjective testimony. 
 
 9. Affirmative observations upon In- 
 
 spiration — Considerations con- 
 cerning, first, its Mode ; secondly, 
 its Lunits ; thirdly, its Degree. 
 10. Eecapitulation. 
 
 Sect. .S. General Evles of Interpre- 
 tation, p. 419. 
 
 11. Preliminary conaments — Duty of -^ 
 
 Prayer — Necessity for candour. 
 
 12. Eules for the Interpretation of 
 
 Scripture. — 1st Rule — Interpret 
 grammatically — Examples. 2ud 
 Rule — Iiderpret historically — Ex- 
 amples. 3rd ^xilc— Interpret con- 
 textually — Examples. 4th Rule 
 — Interpret minutely — Examples. 
 Failiu-e of these rules in cases of 
 difficulty. Gradual emergence of 
 supplementary rules. 5th Rule — 
 Interpret according to the analogy 
 of faith. 
 
 13. Concluding observations. 
 
 Sect. 4. The Application op Scrip- 
 ture, p. 447. 
 
 14. Application of Scripture considered 
 
 in reference to, I. Prophecy and 
 Typology — II. Second and deeper 
 meanings — III. Practical and spe- 
 cial deductions. 
 
 Sect. 5. Grammar and the laws of 
 
 THE LETTER, p. 455. 
 
 15. Introductory remarks. 
 
 IG. General character of the language 
 of the New Testament, as com- 
 pared with earlier and later Greek. 
 
 17. Peculiarities as shown in details, 
 
 especially in reference to (1) the 
 Article, (2) Substantives, (3 ) Verbs, 
 (4) Prepositions, (5) Particles. 
 
 18. Conclusion. 
 
SCRIPTDRE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 
 
 § 1. 
 
 1. It can hardly be considered strange that great differences of 
 opinion should exist respecting the interpretation of Scripture. 
 When we consider the nature of the Sacred Writings, their 
 number, their variety, the different epochs to which they belong 
 and the vast period of time over which they extend, we can 
 hardly be surprised to find the opinions concerning the interpre- 
 tation of the Volume into which they are collected not only to 
 be various, but even conflicting. When we turn from the out- 
 ward to the inward, and ponder over " that inexhaustible and 
 infinite character " of the Sacred Writings, which even the 
 better portion of our opponents are not unwilling to concede, 
 when we observe that " depth and inwardness," which, it has been 
 rightly considered, require something corresponding in the 
 interpreter himself, — when we reverentially recognize throughout 
 the Volume references alike to the past, the present, and the 
 futm^e ; teachings in history only partly realized, lessons in 
 prophecy "not yet learned even in theory," germs of truth 
 which, we are told, have yet to take root in the world, — when 
 we consider all this, are we to wonder that differences of opinion 
 exist concerning the interpretation of a volume so ancient, so 
 wondrous, and so multiform ? 
 
 It would indeed be strange if it had been otherwise ; it would ' 
 be a phenomenon in the literary or mental history of Christianity 
 not easy to account for, if expounders of Scripture had been 
 found always accordant in their views; nay, it may even be 
 considered a subject for surprise, though for thankfulness, that 
 the differences of opinion about the interpretation of a volume 
 such as we have described are not greater than we find them 
 to be. 
 
 When, however, we are thus speaking of the differences of 
 opinion respecting the interpretation of Scripture (and we are 
 using the language of oi)ponents), let us, from the very outset, 
 agree to avoid all ambiguities in language. Let us be careful 
 
 2 B 2 
 
372 AIDS TO FAITfl. [Essay IX. 
 
 not to fall into an error wliicli we may fairly impute to tliose 
 with Avliom we are contending, — the error, to choose the mildest 
 expression, of using terms of a vague and undefined character, 
 and, as the sequel will show, of a somewhat convenient elasti- 
 city. What do we mean by differences resj)ecting the interpre- 
 tation of Scriptm-e ? We may mean two things. Either we 
 may mean that there have been differences of opinion about the 
 meanings of the actual words of Scripture, or we may mean that 
 there have been differences of opinion about the manner in 
 wliich those meanings have been obtained. We may include 
 both if we choose in the same form of words, but in so doing let 
 us not fail to apprize the reader, and in conducting the argument 
 let us act with fairness. Let us be careful to recognize the clear 
 logical difference between these two meanings, and avoid that 
 really culpable method of dealuig with a momentous subject 
 which does not scruple to mix up illustrations or arguments 
 derived from one of its aspects with those which really and 
 plainly belong to the other. There may have been from the 
 very first many methods of interpreting Scriptm-e : allegory 
 may have prevailed in one age, mysticism in another ; scholastic 
 methods of interpretation may have been succeeded by rhetori- 
 cal, and these again may both have given place to methods in 
 which grammar and history may have borne a more prominent 
 part. All this may have been so, but it still does not necessarily 
 follow that the meanings actually assigned to any given text 
 have been as manifold or as discordant as the methods which 
 may have been adopted to obtain them. The modes and prin- 
 ciples of interpretation may have been very different and yet, in 
 the main, they may have led to very accordant results. Such a 
 probability, however, is now somewhat studiously passed over in 
 silence, or mentioned only to be dismissed as unworthy of 
 serious consideration. The object, we fear, is to create anxiety 
 and uneasiness, to unfix and to unloosen, to awaken a general 
 feeling of distrust in current interpretations, and, in the case of 
 doctrinal statements and every form of exposition that involves a 
 reference to the analogy of faith, to arouse even hostility and 
 ' antagonism. This has been done of late, as we have already 
 implied, by a judicious combination of two methods of pro- 
 ceeding, — on the one hand, by calling attention to the discord- 
 ances of interpretation iu a few extreme cases where such 
 
Essay IX ] SCEIPTUEE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 373 
 
 discordance is sure to be a maximum ; on the other, by dwelling 
 exclusively on the varieties of the different systems and methods 
 of interpretation, and leaving it to be inferred that the results 
 arrived at are as various and diversified as the methods by 
 which they have been obtained. In a word, such a phenomenon 
 as a Catholic interpretation, substantially the same under all 
 systems but varied only in details or application, is assumed to 
 be an exegetical impossibility. The true state of the case we 
 are told is this, — that Scripture has had every possible variety 
 of meaning assigned to it, that it has been understood to say 
 this to one age and that to another, that all hitherto has been 
 conflict or uncertainty. We learn, however, that now a better 
 era is dawning ; that a fundamental principle, viz., that Scripture 
 has one meaning and one meaning only, has at length clearly 
 been made out ; and that a little " free-handling," a few assump- 
 tions, and a free use of a so-called "verifying faculty," will 
 finally adjust all difficulties and discordances in the interpreta- 
 tion of the Book of Life. 
 
 . There is obviously something very attractive in all this. 
 There is a fascination in the whole procedure that imperfectly- 
 disciplined or willingly sceptical minds find it impossible to 
 resist. There is the charm of the alleged discovery that criti- 
 cism at last has made, the attractiveness of the generalization, 
 the variety of the modes of applying the principle so as to meet 
 all needs, whether of the reader, the preacher, the missionary, 
 the teacher, or the interpreter, — and then the retrospect, the 
 backward look of serene triumph over the accumulated errors 
 and prejudices of eighteen long Christian centuries, all chased 
 away by the brightness of this second Keformation and the 
 " burst of intellectual life " that is at last becoming visible above 
 the clouded horizon of Scriptural interpretation. One topmost 
 stone and the monument of our exegetical successes must be 
 pronounced complete. Philosophy and Theology claim of us, 
 we are told, as of value to themselves a history of the past. Be 
 it so. Let us take the pen of the historian and sit do^vn and 
 trace the record of our own mental supremacy in a history of 
 the prejudices and errors of the Exegesis of the past. Let us 
 show by this tacit comparison how "great names must be 
 accounted small," how few ever " bent their mind to interrogate 
 the meanuig of words," how men who were accounted bene- 
 
374 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 factors of the human race have yet only left to us the heritage 
 of erring fancies and party-bias, — let us write the history of all 
 this littleness, confusion, and bondage to the letter, and the 
 fabric of our own greatness, harmony, and intellectual freedom 
 will appear by the contrast only the more stately and unique. 
 
 Such is the dream of the present. Such, stated in no exaggerated 
 or unkindly terms, is the course which men whose general good- 
 ness and high principles we have no cause to doubt or deny are 
 now inviting us to follow. What are we to say of all this ? The 
 comment rises to the lips, but we suppress it. We may feel, 
 perhaps, that as in Corinth of old so now in nineteenth-century 
 England, vain knowledge may puff up, yet remembering that 
 " love edifieth," we sit by silent and wondering, even though the 
 fire is kindling within, and silence is becoming a pain and a grief 
 to us. At first perhaps we prepare to answer the call to join the 
 wise and tranquil few, who, knowing that the Eternal Spirit has 
 been ever present with the Church, and that what things were 
 written aforetime were WTitten, not for our contempt but for oui- 
 learning, smile pensively at these childish exultations and straw- 
 woven crowns, and see in them only one more of the premature 
 triumphs that have been claimed for some shifting form of the 
 errors or heresies of the time. W^e feel tempted to join this 
 quiet company, and calmly to smile as they alone can smile 
 whose feet stand within the sheltering walls of the City of God, 
 and whose faith is that which was not only delivered but handed 
 down to the saints in each age of the Church of Christ. A^liat 
 can we do but smile, when we recognize old quibbles and diffi- 
 culties all mustered up again, disguised in new trajjpings, and 
 arranged in new combinations, — but yet the same, the very 
 same that have been dispersed a hundred times over, and which 
 the very generation to which we now belong will see dispersed 
 again, though it may be to ally themselves finally with powers 
 and principles of which at present they are only permitted to 
 act as the scout and the courier ? 
 
 But with this last thought the smile fades away. When we 
 remember that the forms of error which of late Ijave been re- 
 appearing among us may belong, consciously or unconsciously, to 
 the great apostacy of the future, — when we observe how they 
 instinctively associate themselves with masked or avowed deny- 
 ings of the Divinity of our blessed Lord, and of the full efficacy 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 375 
 
 of His sacrifice, — when we mark liow their vanities and self-con- 
 fidences bear a strange family likeness to that Pelagian pride in 
 the perfectibility of our corrupted nature which tears open the 
 wounds of a crucified Lord more heartlessly than the hands that 
 first inflicted them, — when we ponder over that puffed up and 
 unyoked sj)irit of the day that is now calling on us to clear 
 away the remains of dogmas and controversies, and when we 
 see, as we must see, with a shudder, that it is but the harbinger 
 of him who is to set himself against everything " that is called 
 God or that is worshipped " (2 Thess. ii. 4), — then it does seem 
 our duty to play our part in the great controversy, to quit our- 
 selves like men, and to strive with all Christian earnestness, 
 with stern broAv yet with true and loving heart, to rescue the 
 endangered souls of our own time and age, and to bring them 
 back into the City of God. 
 
 2. The position of the defender of the faith in the present day 
 is that of one whose home and citizenship is in the City " that 
 lieth foursquare," whose builder and whose maker is God. The 
 storm of battle has often raved round those massive walls, wild 
 rout and turmoil have often striven to shake those solid gates. 
 Passwords have been tried ; treachery has played its dastardly 
 part, — but all stands firm and sure. The rising sun that smites 
 on the broad front of those fair walls and towers, beholds them 
 as stately in their strength and their beauty as they were ever 
 of old ; the shadows they cast when day declines are as many 
 and as lengthened as they were of yore. Who within would 
 wish to see a stone displaced, who would fain see one battlement 
 laid low ? Perhaps none who are really and truly within the 
 circuit of those sheltering walls. But there are voices without 
 that we know full well, voices of those with whom we have dwelt 
 as friends, Avhose God has been our God, and whose Lord has 
 been our Lord, — men who went from among us on strange mis- 
 sions, and are come back to tell us strange tidings, and to bid 
 us do strange deeds. That beleaguering host whose flaunting 
 standards we can see on every wooded knoll around, and whose 
 open or covert assaults our fathers and forefathers have expe- 
 rienced so often, and resisted so successfully and so long, — that 
 motley eager host they tell us is not composed of foes, but of 
 friends and well-wishers, changed by civilization and the glory of 
 human development, eager to meet us as kindred and brothers 
 
376 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 if we will but remove tlie envious barriers that separate us, 
 relics of a religious feudalism, as they term it, long passed away. 
 Shall creeds separate brothers ? Shall doctrines divide those 
 whom unity of race and shared civilizations plainly declare to 
 be one and inseparable ? Shall we churlishly strive any longer 
 to stint the growth of the ideal man ? Shall the orient and 
 glowing future be darkened with jealousies of sects and rivalries 
 of religions ? " We are couriers," they impetuously cry aloud ; 
 " ambassadors, friends of both, friends of truth, friends of Christ. 
 Unbar, then, these envious gates ; down Avith these unfriendly 
 walls ; let us learn from each other the great lesson of mutual 
 concessions, and so at last realize the great hope of tlie future, 
 the fabled restitution of theologians, and at last, all in fraternal 
 triumph, merge into the one great family of Truth and of Love." 
 Such are the voices now sounding in our ears ; voices that the 
 young and the generous, as well as tlie godless and the world- 
 worn, give ear to with ready sympathy. But shall the true 
 defenders of the ark of their God, that ark of the New Covenant 
 wherein lie the written words of life, yield it and themselves up 
 to this stratagem which one " whose time is short " has put into 
 the hearts of unconscious instruments ? Never. God defend us 
 from such fearful, such frantic disloyalty ! God indeed forbid 
 that, in any sense, however modified, it should hereafter be the 
 boast of the spirits of perdition, that it was with the City of the 
 hills even worse than it was with a city of the plain, — that the 
 host wound round it, that sounding brass brayed forth, and eager 
 voices shouted, and that, mined by traitorous occupants, wall 
 and tower fell flat as those of Jericho, and fell never to rise 
 
 again 
 
 Such, it would seem, is the allegory of our OAvn times. — Such 
 no overdrawn picture of the exact attitude in which true be- 
 lievers now appear to stand. We are called upon by specious 
 words to give up every defence which the mercies of God have 
 permitted to be reared up around us ; and our reward is to be 
 a bondage, to which the bondage of the worst age of the Church 
 of Rome would be found light and endurable. There is no 
 bondage like that of scepticism. There is no intolerance more 
 intolerable than that of those who are themselves the servants 
 of a hard master. It may be a bondage different to bondages of 
 the past in its mode of being brought about, but it is no less 
 
Essay IX. ] SCRIPTUEE, AND ITS INTERPEETATIOX. 377 
 
 complete and coereive. It is the bondage of contempt and of 
 scorn. Do we doubt it ? Are there not writings of our own 
 times, writings that claim scholars and ministers of the Gospel 
 for their authors, that show, only too painfully, what we have to 
 expect if we allow such to be leaders of thought among us, if wall 
 and tower are to be thrown down to let such men come in and 
 have the rule over us? Granted that there may be numerous 
 exceptions, that there may be those who, even while we are 
 compelled to number them among our secret foes, we may be 
 free to own have many kindly and elevated sympathies, — granted 
 that there may be silver sounds heard amid all this clanging 
 brass, yet does not common sense, does not history itself tell us, 
 that the voices of this better part will be the first to be silenced, 
 that their kindly idealisms will be rudely swept aside to make 
 room for varied and repulsive forms of aggressive materialism ; 
 that they will themselves be the earliest victims of the Frank- 
 enstein their own hands have helped to shape into existence ? 
 Let the thoughtful reader pause only for a moment to muse 
 upon some of the present aspects of modern society as revealed 
 by, as commented on, and sometimes even as defended by, our 
 public papers, and then answer to his own heart what he thinks 
 must be the issue if laxity of religious thonglit seriously increase 
 among us. Vice will borrow its excuses from scepticism ; law- 
 lessness of act will become the natural sequel of lawlessness of 
 thought ; and the end will be, no noble, colossal, heavenward- 
 looking, ideal man, but a grovelling satyr, the slave of his omu 
 appetites, and the vassal of his own abominations. 
 
 But we must pass on to, or rather return to, the subject which 
 lies more immediately before us. Enough, perhaps, has been said 
 to show that there can be no safe compromise, no over-liberal 
 parleying with those without, be they the kindliest or the most 
 silver-tongued of the children of men. The believer of the pre- 
 sent day must put himself in the attitude of an opponent, kind 
 indeed it may be, and large in heart and sympathies, ready and 
 anxious to rescue, prompt to spare, — yet an opponent ; one who, 
 when asked to give up old principles, may not, for the sake of 
 others, wholly refuse to hear the natm-e of the demand, but who 
 hears it with a full knowledge of the true attitude and posture of 
 those by whom it is urged. We are asked especially to give up 
 old principles in the interpretation of the Word of God. Some 
 
378 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 concession, we are warned, is almost imjDeratively demanded. We 
 ask why. We bid our opponents state tlieir reasons for a de- 
 mand so sweeping and comprehensive. One of these reasons we 
 have heard ah-eady, and we have abeady observed that it in- 
 volves an ambiguity. We are told that the differences respect- 
 ing the interpretation of Scripture are such that they show that 
 prejudice rather than jDrinciple is the true mainspring of Scrip- 
 tural exegesis. Pictures are held up to us of the successive 
 schools of interpreters, their follies and their fallacies, their 
 bondage to the influences of the age in which they lived, their 
 hostility to all intellectual freedom. Be it so ; but is it proved 
 that the interpretations which they actually advanced are as 
 varied as their methods of procedure are so confidently alleged 
 to be ? Wliether a great deal too much has not been said even 
 on- this subject, whether the diversities or antagonisms of early 
 systems of explaining Scripture have not greatly been exagge- 
 rated, is a question into which here we will not enter. Our 
 inquiry is simply, whether the differences of interpretation are at 
 all more than the nature and importance of the subject-matter 
 would lead us to expect, and whether a great deal that has been 
 said about the differences of interpretation does not wholly be- 
 long to the differences of the modes of procedure. It is, of 
 course, quite natural and conceivable that the spirit of each age 
 may have swayed teacher and preacher more to this method than 
 to that ; that passing controversies may have left their traces, and 
 that declarations which seemed of great moment to one gene- 
 ration may not have been found equally so to another. All this 
 may be so, but with this we are now only j)artially concerned. 
 If we were endeavouring to form an estimate of the variety of 
 deductions that have been made from the words of Scripture in 
 different ages of the Church, or were discussing the varying ap- 
 plications that the same sentiment has been found to bear, much 
 that has been said on the subject might pass unchallenged. We 
 should probably account for these varied forms of application or 
 deduction on different principles to om* opponents ; we might 
 see, for instance, in all this diversity of application only evi- 
 dences of " the manifold wisdom of God," and of that hidden 
 life with all its varying aptitudes to human needs which we 
 know to be m the Written Word. Our opponents, on the con- 
 trary, might see in it only evidences of the foUy, ignorance, 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTUEE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 379 
 
 prejudice, or bad faith of successive expositors : we might differ 
 widely in our manner of accounting for these different applica- 
 tions of Scripture, but we might to a great extent agree as to their 
 number and variety. This, however, is not the question between 
 us. What we are now told is not merely that the applications or 
 adaptations of Scripture have been very varied, but that the dif- 
 ference of actual meaning assigned to the words of Scripture 
 by expositors of different ages is so suspiciously excessive, that 
 the duty of purging our minds from past prejudices is impera- 
 tive, and that Scripture must henceforth be explained on 
 sounder principles. The one true meaning must be discovered, 
 and adopted, the many disregarded or rejected. The first question 
 between us, then, is a question of amount and of degree. Our 
 opponents assert that Scripture has had so many meanings, often 
 too so hostile and suicidal, that it presents one meaning to the 
 Frenchman, another to the German, and another to the English- 
 man. We are asked if this is not in itself an utter absurdity, 
 and if it is not time to enter upon some more reasonable course. 
 That assumed reasonable course is sketched out ; canons of inter- ' 
 pretation are laid down ; appeals are not wanting to current 
 prejudices ; disinclination or inaptitude for that wrestling with 
 the Word of God which marked earlier and better ages of the 
 Church is dealt gently with ; disregard of the great exegetical 
 writings of the past is not only excused but commended ; we are 
 advised wholly to trust to ourselves, and are cheered by the 
 assurance that " if we will only confine ourselves to the plain 
 meaning of words and the study of their context," we may bene- 
 ficially dispense with all the expository labours of the past or of 
 the present. Such is the modern mode of dealing with one of 
 the most momentous subjects of our own times, and with which 
 personal holiness and man's salvation are more intimately con- 
 nected than with any other that can be specified. Is it unfair 
 to characterize the whole as nothing more than positive asser- 
 tions, resting on ambiguities of language, or on the assumed 
 identity of things logically different, and supported by covert 
 appeals to the idleness, vanity, and self-sufficiency of the day ? 
 
 3. We revert, however, to the preliminary question before us. 
 Are the differences of meaning that have been assigned to 
 Scripture such in amount as they are said to be, and such 
 as to demand the rehabilitation of Scriptural interpretation 
 
880 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 wliicli is now proposed ? Are they such that, as it has been 
 asserted, Scriptiu-e bears an utterly different meaning to men 
 of different ages and nations ? Assuredly not. No statement 
 seems more completely at variance mth our general Christian 
 consciousness ; no assertion can more readily be disproved when 
 we come to details. These, however, can never be made 
 palatable to the general reader, nor are they commonly con- 
 vincing, unless carried out much further than would be possible 
 in an Essay of this nature. To prove, clearly and distinctly that 
 there is not this great amount of discordance in the interpreta- 
 tions of Scripture, it would be necessary to compare, and that 
 not in a few selected cases, but in a portion of Scripture of some 
 length, the results arrived at by commentators of different ages 
 and countries. Less than this would fail to convince ; for in the 
 case of a few prerogative instances, which would be all we should 
 have space for, the feeling is ever apt to arise that lists equally 
 telling and convincing could be made out on the other side. We 
 have, therefore, as it would seem, little left us than to meet 
 assertion by counter-assertion, and leave each reader to ascer- 
 tain for himself on which side the truth lies, — whether the 
 differences in the interpretations of Scripture (except in a com- 
 paratively few cases) have been thus excessive, or whether there 
 has not been a very considerable amount of accordance in 
 general matters, and variations only in details. Those who are 
 acquainted with the subject, and have had experience in refer- 
 ring to expository treatises belonging to different ages and 
 countries, will have no difficulty in pronouncing which is the 
 true state of the case, and whether assertion or counter-assertion 
 is to be deemed most worthy of credit. As, however, the 
 general reader is not always likely to have it in his power to de- 
 cide between the two statements, and as the mere denial of the 
 major in an opponent's syllogism is never satisfactory Avithout 
 some reasons being assigned, we will mention one or two general 
 considerations which, though not amounting to a positive proof 
 that Scripture has not been interpreted as diversely as has 
 been asserted, may yet render it probable that such is the 
 case, and supply some grounds for the counter-assertion above 
 alluded to. 
 
 In the first place, we may perhaps with justice appeal to the 
 Ancient Versions, especially when combined with some of the 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 
 
 381 
 
 best Modern Versions, as tending to show that the amount of 
 variety in interpretation is not so great as has been imagined. 
 Let us take, for example, seven of the best Ancient Versions of 
 the New Testament — the Syriac (Peshito), the Old Latin (as far 
 as it has been ascertained), the Vulgate, the Gothic, the Coptic, 
 the Ethiopic (Pell Piatt's), and the Armenian, and with them 
 let us associate the Authorized English Version and Luther's 
 German Version, and then proceed to mquire what general 
 opinion a comparison of the characteristics of these Ver- 
 sions leads us to form as to the question of a prevailing 
 imanimity, or a prevailing discordance, of interpretation, as far 
 as it can be evinced by a Version. Now, admitting on the one 
 hand that there may be such relations existing between some of 
 these Versions, that each can hardly be considered an inde- 
 pendent witness, — that the Vulgate, for example, is but an 
 amended form of the Old Latin, that the Ethiopic sometimes 
 seems to indicate dependence on the Syriac, that the Armenian 
 was retouched at a late period, and possibly that the Vulgate 
 was in the hands of the reviser, — admitting all this, and making 
 also a deduction for the influence of the Vulgate, and, perhaps, 
 to some small extent, of the Syriac over the two Modern Ver- 
 sions, we may still most justly point to these nine Versions, of 
 ages and countries so different and distant, as evincing an 
 unanimity in their renderings, not only of general but even of 
 disputed passages, far beyond what could have been expected 
 a priori, or can in any way be accounted for by the admissions 
 we have already made. If it be said this must necessarily be the 
 case in Versions which are all strictly literal in their character, 
 these two remarks may be made by way of rejoinder : first, that 
 the very fact that nine Versions of different ages and countries 
 should agree in this important feature, that not one of tliem 
 should in any respect be paraphrastic,* and that some, as for in- 
 stance the Old Latin, should almost be barbarous in their exact- 
 ness, does seem to show that not only in later ages, but even in ' 
 the earliest, the very letter of Scripture was regarded as of the 
 utmost importance, and treated with the most scrupulous accu- 
 
 * It may be noticed that we have 
 specified the Ethiopic Version as that 
 edited by Mr. Pell Piatt. The Etliiopic 
 found in Walton's ' Polyglott ' often de- 
 
 generates into a paraphrase, especially 
 in difficult passages. The Peshito is 
 sometimes idiomatically free, but never 
 paraphrastic. 
 
382 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 racy. Where Versions were so punctilious, it does not seem 
 natural to expect tliat interpretation would have been very wild 
 or varied, except when it was allowed to degenerate into appli- 
 cations, or busied itself with minutiaj and details. Secondly, it 
 may be added, that even the most literal Versions involve inter- 
 pretation in the fullest sense of the word, especially in the 
 opinions they necessarily express on the connexion of clauses, 
 and in the renderings of words of disputed meaning. A good 
 translation is often the very best of commentaries, and it was a 
 full appreciation of this fact that led a venerated scholar and 
 divine when asked what he judged to be the best commentary 
 on the New Testament to name the Vulgate. The general 
 unanimity of the early as well as later Versions is thus a testi- 
 mony, at any rate, of some little weight, in favour of the belief 
 that the amount and degree of differences of interpretation in 
 earlier, when compared ^with later ages, have been much 
 overstated. 
 
 Still it may be urged, that whatever may be the case with 
 Versions, it is perfectly certain that, in the results at which com- 
 mentators of different ages have arrived, there is a vast amount 
 not only of variety but of antagonism. In reference to a certain 
 number of difficult passages this may be true ; if, however, this be 
 intended as a general statement referring to Scriptural interpreta- 
 tion at large, it must be regarded as open to considerable doubt. 
 Let us endeavour to show this in the following way. It is said 
 that there is an increasing agreement between recent German 
 expositors, and it is also implied that the results at which they 
 have arrived are far more consonant with truth than any that 
 have preceded. Of these expositors, De Wette and Meyer are 
 often mentioned with respect by modern writers. Let us agree 
 to take them as two fair representatives of the exegesis of our 
 own times. Let us now go to a remote past, and choose two 
 names to compare with them as representatives of the interpre- 
 tation of a former day. Let us take for example Chrysostom and 
 Theodoret. They belonged to an age sufficiently distant ; they 
 shared in its feelings and sympathies ; they took part in its con- 
 troversies. They were not specially in advance of their own 
 times. One of them had, what many will judge to be not 
 always compatible with calmness of interpretation, a strongly 
 rhetorical bias ; the other did not escape some suspicion of 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATIOX. 383 
 
 heresy. Such as they were, or have been judged to be, let us 
 compare them, in some portion of Scripture (St. Paul's Epistles 
 for example), on which all have written, with the two modern 
 commentators above specified, and state what seem to be the 
 general results of the comparison. We naturally set out with 
 the expectation of finding very great diversity. If all that has 
 been said on this subject be true ; if the fourteen centuries 
 which lie between the two pairs of men be as plentifully diversi- 
 fied as they are said to have been by changes in methods of 
 interpretation, — changes, too, asserted to have been gradually 
 leading us up to more perfect principles of interpretation, — we 
 must expect to find a very great amount of discordance between 
 them. Yet what do we discover when we actually institute the 
 comparison ? To speak very generally, it would seem to be as 
 follo\YS. There will be found in the first place a considerable 
 amount of variety in matters of detail, the older interpreters 
 more commonly giving what may be termed an objective refer- 
 ence to words and expressions, where the two modern writers 
 will be found agreeing to adopt a more subjective view. In the ' 
 second place, differences will be observed in the treatment of 
 doctrinal passages ; the older interpreters usually expounding 
 them with reference to the great controversies of their own times, 
 and to points of polemical detail ; the modern interpreters 
 usually trying to generalize, and not unfrequently to dilute and 
 explain away, whenever doctrinal statements appear to assume 
 a very distinctive or definite aspect. In a word, the tendency 
 of the two earlier writers is to what is objective and special ; of 
 the two later to what is subjective and general. These distinc- 
 tions will certainly be observed, especially in the two depart- 
 ments above alluded to — matters of detail and matters of 
 doctrine, and may perhaps be deemed sufficient to justify the 
 recognition of some clear lines of demarcation between earlier 
 and more modern interpretation. When, however, these points 
 of difference are set aside, there will be found remaining in the 
 great bulk of Scripture, and in all general passages, an amount 
 of accordance so striking and so persistent, that it can only be 
 accounted for by the assumption that these four able expositors 
 all instinctively recognized one common and sound principle of 
 Scriptural interpretation. The precise nature of that principle 
 will become apparent as we advance further in our investiga- 
 tions. 
 
3S4 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 4. Believing that these remarks are just, and capable of being 
 fully substantiated, we may claim to have at least made it pro- 
 bable, that the extent of the alleged differences in the interpre- 
 tation of Scripture between our own times and the ]mst has been 
 unduly exaggerated. Here we might pause as fi\r as the present 
 portion of our subject is concerned. It may be well, however, 
 to take one step further, and show, what fairly can be shown, 
 that from the very earliest times, the literal and historical 
 method of interpreting Scripture, now so often claimed as the 
 distinguishing characteristic of our own times, has ever been 
 recognized in the Church as the true method on man's side of 
 interpreting the Oracles of God. On this subject, ovdng to the 
 small amount of exact knowledge, even among more professed 
 students, and to the currency which a few popular comments 
 readily obtain among those whose acquaintance with these 
 ancient writers must ever be second-hand, many questionable 
 statements are allowed to pass unchallenged. It would, perhaps, 
 seem hopeless to attempt to say one word in favour of the method 
 of interpretation adopted by Origen. Every waiter of the day 
 uses that great name to illustrate what is to be regarded as wild 
 and fanciful. And yet what is the opinion which any real 
 student of Origen's exegetical works would certainly give us ? 
 What, for instance, would be the statement of an unbiassed 
 scholar who had thoughtfully read what remain to us of his 
 commentaries on St. Matthew and St. John ? Would he not tell 
 us that in these portions of his works, whatever may have been 
 his theories elsewhere, Origen rarely failed to give the fii'st 
 place to the simple and literal interpretation, and that his diver- 
 gences into allegory far more often deserve the name of api)lica- 
 tions than of actual expositions? Allegory seems really and 
 primarily to have commended itself to Origen as the readiest 
 method of dealing with those difficulties which his acute mind 
 almost too quickly recognized as transcending human reason 
 and explanation. The remark of one who has carefully read 
 and well used one portion of his works — the expositor Liicke — 
 is probably not wholly unjust, that a tendency to rationahze, of 
 which Origen himself was unconscious, may to a great degree 
 account for his bias to allegory and mystical modes of interpre- 
 tation, whenever the difficulties of the passage seemed to rise 
 above the usual level. Where there was uo necessity for this, 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 385 ' 
 
 where there were no historical details which seemed at issue 
 with human reason, or with received views of morality and justice, 
 Origen shows plainly enough what method of interpreting the 
 Word of Crod he deemed to be the true and correct one. We may 
 abundantly verify this from his extant writings. We may also 
 further judge from fragments preserved in Catense (his scattered 
 comments, for example, on the Epistle to the Ephesians) what 
 were really his leading principles ; and we may fairly ask if 
 they were so very different from the principles of interpreting 
 Scripture which all parties, friends and foes, seem now in the 
 main agreed in regarding as reasonable and correct. 
 
 We might extend these remarks almost indefinitely by dis- 
 cussing the true nature of the leading methods of interpreting 
 Scripture — these methods which we are told are so strangely 
 discordant — in the case of each one of the more distinguished 
 expositors of different ages of the Church. We might show, for 
 instance, that no amount of strong polemical bias prevented 
 Cyril of Alexandria from expounding portions of Scripture (the 
 Gospel of St. John for example) with what, even in our own 
 critical days, must be called felicity and success. We might 
 make it clear that the rhetorical turn of Chrysostom's mind 
 never prevented him from fully discussing verbal distinctions, 
 analysing the meanings of prepositions, estimating the force of 
 compound forms, and so placing before his reader as calm, clear, 
 and persuasive a view^of the passage under consideration as we 
 may find in the best specimens of modern interpretation. We 
 might turn to the West, and in spite of some growing disposition 
 to admit more generally those studied distinctions in reference 
 to threefold or fourfold senses of Scripture which Origen be- 
 queathed to his successors, we might still appeal to Augustine 
 as a writer, whose special interpretations can never be spoken of 
 without respect, and whose perceptions of the inner mind of 
 Scripture, and of the true bearing of its deeper declarations, 
 remain to this very hour unequalled for their perspicuity and ^ 
 truth. Nay, we might even show that the studied recognition of 
 several senses in Scripture was rather a form oi application than 
 of definite and genuine interpretation. We might even go 
 onward, and pass into those ages which have become very bywords 
 for perverted interpretation of Scripture — the ages of the earlier 
 and later sclioolmen — and even in them, amid subtle and narrow 
 
380 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [E^SAY IX, 
 
 logic on tliis side, and a wild and speculative idealism on that,- 
 Ave should have no difficulty in showing that there was a via media 
 of sound j)rinciples of interpretation which was both recognized 
 and proceeded on. It is perfectly true that at this period not 
 only the earlier threefold and fourfold senses of Scriptui'e were 
 re-asserted and re-applied, but that even sevenfold, eightfold,* 
 and, if we choose to press the words of Erigena, infinite senses of 
 )Scripture were admitted by mediaeval interpreters; but it is 
 also perfectly true and demonstrable, from passing comments 
 and cautions, that the simple, plain, and literal sense was always 
 admitted to be the basis, and that other forms of interpretation 
 were commonly regarded more in the light of deductions and 
 applications. The rule laid down by Aqumas was clear enough,- 
 and expresses fairly the general feeling of the interpreters of his 
 OAvntime, — "In omnibus qufe Scriptura tradit, pro fundamento 
 est tenenda Veritas historica, et desuper spirituales expositiones 
 fabricandfc" [Summa Theol. Pars 1, Qu. 102, Art. 1): the 
 literal and historical came first, the rest were fonns of applica- 
 tion. It is not, however, merely from passing comments, or 
 from asserted, but really neglected principles, but from the 
 general tenor of the better expositions of the time that the full 
 force of the above remarks A\ill best be felt. Let a fair and 
 intelligent reader consent to give a little time to some of the 
 interpretations of difficult passages in St. Paul's Epistles as put 
 forward by Lombard or Aquinas, and then tell us his impres- 
 sions. "We will venture to state what his report would be, — that 
 it was a matter of surprise to him, in an age which has ever been 
 a very byword for subtleties and pedantry, to find such a large 
 amount of reasonable and intelligent interpretation of the Word 
 of God. 
 
 5. To gather up, then, our preceding comments, may we not 
 fairly &qx,— first, that much that has been said about the extent 
 and variety of interpretations of Scripture is exaggerated; 
 secondlij, that even tlie various methods of interpretation — 
 
 * The cnumerutiou maj- amuse tlic 
 reader : (1) Sensus literalis vel liistori- 
 cus ; (2) ivllegoricus vcl parabolicus ; 
 (3) tropologiciis vel etjinolo.2;ieus ; (4) 
 unagogicus vel aiialogicus ; {O) tj-picus 
 vel cxemplarls; (6) anaplioricus vel 
 
 proportloiialis ; (7) boarcatleiuicus veJ 
 priniordialis (t. e. quo ipsa principia re- 
 rum coinparantur eum beatitudino seter- 
 na et tota <lispensatione salutis): see 
 BihJ. Max. I'atr. torn. xvii. p. 315 seq. 
 (Lugd. 1677). 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 387 
 
 "wliicli, when it serves a purpose, our opponents regard as mean- 
 ing the same as the results arrived at — may in many, perhaps 
 most, cases be regarded as modes of applying or expanding the 
 primary sense, rather than of eliciting substantive and inde- 
 pendent meanings ; thirdly, not only that God has never left 
 Himself without a witness, and that in every age there have 
 been a few faithful representatives of faithful principles of inter- 
 pretation, but further, that there has been from the very earliest 
 times, not only in theory but in practice, a plain, literal, and his- 
 torical mode of interpreting Scripture ; and finally, that there 
 may be traced so great an identity in tlie results arrived at by 
 successive interpreters, that we have full warrant for using the 
 term Catholic in reference to a far larger portion of what may 
 be considered current orthodox interpretations than the mere 
 popular disputant is at all aware of? Let the inquiry be put 
 with all simplicity to those, whether in this country or abroad, 
 who have made Ancient Versions and expositors their study, and, 
 however different their opinions may be on other points, on this 
 they will be agreed, — that there is such a concordia discors in the 
 results obtained, that in very many passages we can produce 
 interpretations which may stand even the test of Vincent of 
 Lerins, and may justly be termed the traditional interpretations 
 of the Church of Christ. 
 
 We know, of course, how these statements both have been 
 and will be disposed of by the impatient and the confident. It 
 will be said, probably, that granting merely for the sake of argu- 
 ment, that there is that species of concord of interpretation in 
 many important passages, it has been only the result of tradi- 
 tional prejudices from which it is now our duty to make our- 
 selves free. It will be added that any form of such consent is in 
 itself suspicious, and that if our intuitions run counter to it we 
 are at once to listen to the voice of reason within us, and reject 
 the interpretation of every Church and every age of the world, 
 if it does not approve itself to om* own convictions. Brave and ' 
 buoyant in our own self-esteem, we shall perhaps never pause to 
 ask how far the so-called voice of reason may not be the voice 
 of prejudice, — how far convictions may not be merely the results 
 of secret influences within, and of some half- consciousness that 
 what we reject bears aspects or involves conclusions sadly at 
 variance with our habits or our propensions. We may at last 
 
 2 c 2 
 
^jS8 aids to faith. [Essay IX. 
 
 perceive that it is the Word of God in its dreaded function of 
 searching the intents of the heart that is now being brought 
 liome to us, and in our very dismay and perplexity we may have 
 ielt forced to come to the determination that every interpreta- 
 tion, be it of Church or of Council, that makes us thus tremble 
 for ourselves, both must be and shall be either rejected or 
 ignored. Thus, perhaps, will all that has been urged be disposed 
 of. Be it so. There is a proud and confident spirit abroad ; there 
 is a love of self, self in its more purely intellectual aspects, 
 above measure painful and revolting ; there are forms bearing 
 the names of moral goodness and freedom, and yet involving 
 the denial of the essence of both, that bring an Apostle's pre- 
 dictions sadly and strangely to our thoughts, — and we feel it 
 must be so, and that there are some whose ears must be and 
 will 1)6 turned away from the truth. Yet there are others — 
 L'SjDecially the young, the ardent, the inexperienced — to whom 
 what has been thus far urged may not have been urged in vain. 
 To them our arguments are mainly addressed, to them we are 
 speaking, for them Ave are pleading, " Young man, true in 
 lieart and earnest in spirit, honest searcher, anxious yet prayerful 
 inquirer, let not thy eyes be liolden by proud, unkindly hands, 
 judge for thyself. Believe not every one that tells thee that the 
 records of the Church are scribbled over with every form of 
 strange, idle, and conventional interpretation of the Word of 
 God. Judge for thyself, but judge righteous judgment. If 
 there be fuller concords in the voices of the past than thou hast 
 believed, close not thine ears to them because as yet they sound 
 not fully harmonious to thee. Wait, ponder, pray: ere long, 
 perchance tliine own voice \vill spontaneously blend with Avhat 
 thou hcarcst ; thou thyself, by the grace of God, may at length 
 liear sounding round thee, and by thine own experience make 
 others hear with thee, the holy accords and harmonies of the 
 deep things of the AVord of God." 
 
 §2. 
 6. We now pass naturally onward to anotlier portion, or rather 
 to another, and that at first sight an opposed, aspect of our 
 present subject. Hitherto Ave have shoAvn not only tliat the 
 amount of the differences of interpretation has been clearly over- 
 estimated, but even that the true and honest method of inter- 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATIOX. 380 
 
 preting the Word of God — the literal, historical, and graDi- 
 matical — has been recognized in every age, and that the results 
 are to be seen in the agreement on numberless passages of im- 
 portance that may be found in expositors of all ^Jeriods ; in other 
 words, that the illuminating grace of God has ever been -with 
 His Church. This being so, it is but waste of time to consider 
 the causes that have been alleged for the existence of the multi- 
 tude of interpretations, when that multitude has been proved to 
 a great extent to be imaginary. We will not, then, pause to 
 discuss the amount of varying interpretations that have been 
 ascribed, whether, on the one hand, to rhetoric and desii-es to 
 edify, or, on the other, to party feeling and efforts to wrest the 
 meanings of Scripture to different sides. We deny not that 
 both have produced some effect on the interpretation of Scrip- 
 ture. We do not deny that the Christian preacher may have 
 often urged meanings that do not lie in the words, and that 
 these may have been adopted by contemporaries and echoed and 
 reproduced by those that have followed. We deny not, again, 
 that the natural meaning of many texts may have been per- 
 verted by prejudice on one side or other, and that traces of this 
 may still remain in some of the current interpretations of oui' 
 own times. All this we deny not, but, on the other hand, we 
 confidently assert that the eifects have been limited, and that 
 all the assumptions that the contrary has been the case fall with 
 the fallen assumption, viz., that the discordance of Scripture- 
 interpretations is excessive, and that all methods hitherto 
 adopted have been uncertain or untrustworthy. 
 
 But we now come to what at first sight may appear a reversed 
 aspect of our subject. While, on the one hand, we consider it 
 proved that there has been from the first a substantial agree- 
 ment, not only in the mode of interpreting Scripture, but in 
 many of its most important details, we are equally prepared, on 
 the other hand, to recognize the existence of great differences of 
 opinion about the meanings of individual passages, and even in 
 reference to the methods by which these meanings may be best 
 obtained. No one who has had any experience in the interpre- 
 tation of Scripture can with honesty assert the contrary. It 
 may be true that in the great majority of all the more important 
 passages careful consideration will show that what logic, 
 grammar, and a proper valuation of the significance of words, 
 
390 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 seem to indicate as the principal and primary meaning of the 
 passage, -will be found to have been recognized as such ages 
 before, and has substantially held its ground to om- own times, — 
 still experience teaches us that there is a very large residuum of 
 less imj3ortant passages in which interpreters break up into 
 groujDs, and in which the expositor of the nineteenth centuiy has 
 to yield to the guidance of principles perhaps but recently 
 recognized, yet, from their justice and truth, of an influence and 
 authority that cannot be gainsaid. There are, indeed, even a 
 few cases, but confessedly unimportant, where the modern in- 
 terpreter has to oppose himself to every early Version and every 
 patristic commentator, and where it is almost certain he is right 
 in so doing. Let the connexion of the concluding portion of 
 Gal. iv. 12 be cited as an example. Such instances are, how- 
 ever, very rare, and need hardly be mentioned, save to show 
 that principles can never be dispensed with, and that, though 
 we yield all becoming deference to interpretations in which an- 
 tiquity is mainly agreed, we yet by no means pledge ourselves 
 unreservedly to accept them. All these differences, then, in the 
 interpretations of individual passages, we frankly recognize ; nay 
 more, we may in many cases admit that there are clearly de- 
 lined differences in the method of interpreting — perhaps an ex- 
 tended context. Last of all, it is not to be sujDpressed that 
 there is a somewhat large class of passages so far-reaching, so 
 inclusive, and so profound, that not only are all the better in- 
 terpretations remarkable for their varied character, but for their 
 appearing, perhaps each one, to represent a portion of the true 
 meaning, but scarcely, all of them together, what our inner soul 
 seems to tell us is the complete and ultimate meaning of the 
 words that meet the outward eye. 
 
 7. We are thus admitting the existence of diversity of interi^re- 
 tation, especially in individual passages and details, as readily 
 and as frankly as we have argued for the existence of a far 
 greater prevailing unity both in tlie meanings themselves, and 
 the methods of arriving at them in all more important })assages, 
 than is Avillingly recognized by popular writers. The question 
 then naturally arises, how do we account for these apparently 
 reversed aspects ? How can we in the same breath assert pre- 
 vailing imity, and yet admit diversity ? How do we account 
 for a state of tilings Avhich in Sophocles or Plato would be pro- 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. o91 
 
 no^mced incredible or absurd? Our answer is of a tlireefold 
 natm-e. We account for tliis by observing, First, tliat the Bible 
 is different to every other book in the world, and tliat its inter- 
 pretation may well be supposed to involve many difficulties and 
 diversities. Secondly, tliat tlie words of Scripture in many parts 
 have more than one meaning and application. TJiirdly, that 
 Scripture is inspired, and that though written by man, it is a 
 revelation from God, and adumbrates His eternal plenitudes 
 and perfections. 
 
 On each one of these forms of the answer we will make a few 
 observations. 
 
 I. On the first, perhaps, little more need be said than has 
 been incidentally brought forward in earlier parts of this Essay. 
 It is, indeed, most mireasonable to compare, even in externals, 
 the Bible Avitli any other book in the world. A collection of 
 many treatises, w'ritten in many different styles, and at many 
 different ages, can never be put side by side with the works of 
 a single author, nor will any canons of interpretation which may 
 be just and reasonable in the latter case, be necessarily applica- 
 ble to the former. What, for instance, can really be more 
 strange than to lay dowai the rule that we are to interpret the 
 Scriptm-e like any other book, when, in the merest rough and 
 outside view, the Scripture presents such striking differences 
 from any book that the world has ever seen ? The strangeness 
 becomes greater when we look inward, and observe the varied 
 natm-e of the contents, — prose and poetry, history and prophecy, 
 teachings of an incarnate God, and exhortations and messages of 
 men to men. How very unreasonable to insist on similar modes 
 of interpreting what our very opponents rightly term " a world 
 by itself" — a world from which foreign influences are to be ex- 
 cluded — and any other documents or records that have come 
 from the hand of man ! How can we with justice require that 
 amount of exegetical agreement in the former case that might 
 naturally be looked for and demanded in the latter ? How very 
 reasonable, on the other hand, is the supposition that in the 
 interpretation of a collection of treatises of such varied and 
 momentous import w'e may have to recognize both unities and 
 diversities, — unities as due to the ilkiminating grace of the one 
 and self-same Spirit similarly vouchsafed to all meek and holy 
 readers of Scripture in every age of the Church, — diversities as 
 
392 AIDS TO FAITH. [E.>say IX. 
 
 due to the profundity and variety that must ever mark the out- 
 pourings of the manifold wisdom of God ! It seems, indeed, idle 
 to dwell upon what is thus obvious and self-evident ; but it has 
 been rendered necessary by what we are obliged to term the 
 unfairness of our opponents. At one time, w^hen the argument 
 seems to require it, the Scripture is considered as a single book, 
 to be dealt with like other books, subject to the same critical 
 canons, amenable to the same laws of interpretation : at another 
 time it emerges to view as a collection of records, nncomiected 
 and discordant, which it is desirable to keep thus divided, that 
 they may be the more readily disposed'of ; and, whenever it may 
 seem necessary, the more successfully pitted against one another 
 in contradictions and antagonisms. 
 
 II. We pass onward to our second form of answer. Here we 
 find ourselves, as might have been foreseen, in undisguised con- 
 flict with the sceptical writers of our own time. That Scripture 
 has one meaning, and one meaning only, is their fundamental 
 axiom : it is seen to be, and felt to be, one of the keys of their 
 position. When, however, Ave pause to ask how that one 
 meaning is to be defined, we receive answers that are neither 
 very intelligible nor consistent. If we are told that it is " that 
 meaning which it had to the mind of the Prophet or Evangelist 
 who first uttered or wrote, to the hearers or readers who first 
 received the message," we may justly protest against an answer 
 involving alike such assumptions and such ambiguities. What 
 right have we to assume that the speaker kne^^• the full meaning 
 which his own Avords might subsequently be found to bear ? A 
 very little reflection Avill show the justice of this query. What 
 right, again, have we to assume that the meaning which the 
 Prophet or Evangelist designed to convey was identical with 
 that which the hearers or readers who first received the message 
 conceived to be conveyed in its words ? Assuming even that it 
 was so, how are Ave to arrive at this one meaning common to 
 hearer and speaker ? How are Ave to recognize it, when the Avords 
 before us may bear two or more meanings, each, perhaps, equally 
 probable and supported by arguments of equal validity ? It Avill 
 be said that this is precisely the duty of the Literpreter ; that it 
 is for him to disengage himself from the trammels of the present, 
 and free from the bondage of prejudices and creeds to transport 
 
Essay IX.] SCFJPTUEE, AND ITS INTEKPIIETATIOX. 393 
 
 liimself back into the past, to mingle in spirit with those who 
 first heard the w^ords, to feel as they felt, to hear as they heard, 
 to recover the one, the true, and the original meaning, and to 
 bring it back to the hearer or reader of om* own times. All this 
 is high-sounding and rhetorical ; it is sure to attract the young 
 and the entlmsiastie, and by no means ill-calculated to excite 
 and delude the inexperienced. But it is rhetoric, and nothing 
 more. No one who has had genuine experience in the interpre- 
 tation of Scripture woidd hesitate to pronounce such "magnifyings 
 of an office "as completely delusiye, if even not deserving the 
 graver term, mischievous. Delusive they certainly are, because 
 all this self-projection into the past is in reality, and ever has 
 been, imostentatiously practised by all better interpreters — by 
 all who have sought witli humility and earnestness to catch the 
 spirit and mind of the writer whom they are striving to expoimtl. 
 All this has been practised, almost from the first. Chrysostom 
 spoke of it, Augustine commended it, and yet what has been the 
 result of experience ? Why, that passage after passage has 
 been found to be so pregnant with meaning, so mysteriously 
 full, so comprehensively applicable, that the most self-confident 
 interpreter in the world could scarcely be brought to declare his 
 complete conviction that the one view out of many which he 
 may have adopted was certainly the principal one, mucli less 
 that it was the only meaning of the words before him. 
 
 But to give up such attitudes of delusive self-confidence, and 
 to return to modesty and reason, we may now proceed to illus- 
 trate our first assertion, that Scripture has frequently more than 
 one meaning, by references to tlu-ee particulars in which this is 
 very clearly exemplified, — double meanings, or applications of 
 prophecy, types, and deeper senses of simple historical state- 
 ments. A few^ remarks shall be made on each. 
 
 (1.) On the first so much has been said of late tliat it might 
 almost seem pure knight-errantry to undertake the advocacy of 
 what (we are told) ought now to be regarded as a mere outw^orn 
 2)rejudice. And yet what is more thoroughly consonant witli 
 reason, and, we might almost add, experience, than such a belief? 
 We say experience, — for there must be few calm observers of tin* 
 course of events aromid them who can fail to have been struck 
 with the curious re-appearance, under unlikely circumstances, of 
 
394 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 former eombinatioiis, and who have not occasionally been almost 
 startled by the recurrence of incidents in relations and con- 
 nexions that coidd never have been reasonably expected again. 
 It does not seem too much to say that in many instances nations 
 and individuals alike seem moving as it were in spirals, con- 
 stantly returning, not exactly to the same point, but to the same 
 bearings and the same aspects, — not precisely to a former past, 
 but to a present that bears to it a very strange and wholly un- 
 looked-for resemblance. If this be true in many things that 
 fall under om' own immediate observation (and very unobservant 
 must he be who has not often verified it for himself), if we often 
 seem to ourselves to recognize this principle of events becoming 
 in many respects doubles of each other, and that not only in 
 minor matters, but even in circumstances of some historical im- 
 portance, — if this be so, is it strange that m the spiritual history 
 of our race there should be such parallelisms ; that words appa- 
 rently spoken in reference to a precursory series of events should 
 be found to refer Avith equal pertinence to some mysteriously 
 similar combinations that appeared long afterwards ? Are w^e to 
 think that counsels sealed m silence from eternity, that purposes 
 of the ages formed before the worlds were made, that dispensa- 
 tions of love and mercy laid out even before the objects for 
 whom they were designed had come into being, were not over 
 and over again reflected, as it were, in the history of our race, 
 and that the events of a former day were not often bound in 
 mystical likenesses and affinities with the events of the future 
 by that principle of redeeming love which permeated and per- 
 vaded all ? Unless we are prepared plainly to adopt some of the 
 bleakest theories of the scepticism of these later days ; unless 
 we are determined to find civilization and development and not 
 God in history ; unless we have resolved to see in the Gospel no 
 foreordered dispensation, but only a system of morality, unan- 
 nounced, unforeshadowed, as strange in its isolated and excep- 
 tional character as it has been strange in its effects, — then, and 
 then only, can we consistently deny the lilcelihood and jiroba- 
 bility of God's purposes to the world having imparted to events 
 seemingly remote and unconnected, and to issues brought about 
 by varied and dissimilar circimistances, real and spiritual re- 
 semblances. Then only can we justly deny that the word of 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 395 
 
 prophecy might truly, legitimately, aud consistently be con- 
 sidered to refer as Avell to earlier as to later events, wherever 
 such resemblances could be reasonably demonstrated to exist 
 
 To illustrate the foregoing comments by an example, let 
 us take an instance which our opponents are never wearied 
 with brmging forward, — our Lord's prophecy relative to the 
 fate of Jerusalem and the end of the world. Here it is said 
 that the system of first and second meanings, which we are 
 now defending, is most palpably nothing whatever else than an 
 attempt to help out the verification and mitigate the inco- 
 herence of a somewhat confused and partially unrealized 
 prophecy. Now, in disposing of this idle but painfully 
 familiar comment, we will make no allusion to the question of 
 the fom- Apostles, which, it may be observed, necessitated in 
 the answer reference to the end of the world as well as to the 
 end of the Theocracy (Matt. xxiv. o) ; we Avill only take the pro- 
 phecy as we find it, with its mingled allusions to a near and to a 
 remote futm-e, and simply inquire whether there is any such 
 resemblance, spiritual or otherwise, as might make expressions 
 used in reference to the one almost interchangeably applicable 
 to the other. Who can doubt what the answer must be ? Who 
 that takes mto consideration the true significance of the fall of 
 Jerusalem, who that sees in it, as every sober reader must see, 
 not merely the fall of an ancient city, but the destruction of the 
 visible seat of Jehovah's worship, the enforced cessation of the 
 ancient order of things, the practical abrogation of the Theocracy, 
 — all closely synchronous with the Lord's first coming, — who is 
 there that will take all these things faii'ly into consideration and 
 not be ready to acknowledge resemblances between the end of 
 the fated city and the issues of the present dispensation, suffi- 
 ciently mysterious and sufficiently profound to warrant om' even 
 alternating between them (we use the studiedly exaggerated 
 language of opponents) the verses of the Lord's great pro- 
 phecy ? Till it can be sIioavq that the course of things is for- 
 tuitous, that providential dispensations are a dream, and the 
 gradual development of the counsels of God a convenient fiction, 
 — till it can be made clear to "demonstration, that there are no 
 profound harmonies in the Divine government, no mystical 
 recurrences of foreordered combinations, no spiritual affinities 
 
396 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essav IX. 
 
 Letween the pust and the present, no foreseen resemblances in 
 epochal events, and no predestined counterparts, the ground on 
 which the reasonable belief in double meanings and double 
 applications of prophecy has been rightly judged to rest will 
 remain stable and unshaken ; the perspective character that has 
 been attributed to Scriptural predictions will still claim to be 
 considered no idle or unreal imagination. 
 
 (2.) The subject of tyjjes has been much dwelt upon by 
 modern writers, and in most cases with singular unfairness. The 
 popular mode of arguing on this subject is to select some instances 
 from early Christian writers Avhich are obviously fanciful and un- 
 tenable, to hold up the skirts of their folly, to display theii' 
 utter nakedness, and then to ask if a system of which these are 
 examples either can or ought to be regarded with any degi'ee of 
 favour or confidence. If Justin tells us that the king of Assyria 
 signified Herod, and Jerome was of opinion that by Chaldajans 
 are meant Demons, if the scarlet thread of Eahab has been 
 deemed to have a hidden meaning, and the number of Abra- 
 ham's followers has been regarded as not wholly without signifi- 
 cance, we are asked whether we can deem the Avhole system 
 otherwise than precarious and extravagant, whether we can at 
 all safely attribute to the details of the Mosaic ritual a reference 
 to the New Testament, or rea% believe that the passage of the 
 Ked Sea can be very certainly considered a type of baptism. 
 The ultimate design of this mode of arguing will not escape the 
 intelligent reader ; — it is simply an endeavour by slow sap to 
 weaken the authority of some of the writers of the New Testa- 
 ment, and to leave it to be inferred that our Lord Himself, in 
 recognizing and even giving sanction to such applications of 
 Scripture (]\Iatt. xii. 40, John iii. 14 ; conip. ch. vi. 58), either 
 condescended to adopt forms of illustrations Avhich He must have 
 felt to be untrustworthy, or else really in this did not rise Avholly 
 above the culture of His own times. Now at jjresent, without 
 at all desiring to press Avhat we have not yet discussed — the 
 inspiration of Scripture— wo do very earnestly call upon those 
 Avho are not yet prepared wholly to fiing off their allegiance to 
 Scripture, to bear in mind the following facts : — (a) That our 
 Blessed Lord Himself referred to the Brazen Serpent as typical 
 of His being raised aloft, and that He illustrated the mvstcrv of 
 
Essay IX.] SCEIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 397 
 
 His own abode in the chambers of the earth by an event of the 
 past which He Himself was pleased to denominate as a sign, — 
 the only sign that was to be vouchsafed to the generation that 
 then was seeking for one ; (5) that the Evangelists recognize 
 the existence and significance of types in reference to our 
 Lord (Matt. ii. 15 ; John xix. 36) ; (c) that the teaching of 
 St. Paul is pervaded by references to this form of what has 
 been termed " acted prophecies " (Eom. v. 14 seq. ; 1 Cor. v. 
 7, X. 2 seq. ; Gal. iv. 24 seq. ; Col. ii. 11) ; (d) that the greater 
 part of the Epistle to the Hebrews is one continued eluci- 
 dation of the spiritual significance of the principal features 
 of the Levitical law : its sacrifices, rites, and prjiests were 
 all the shadows and typical resemblances of good things to 
 come (Heb. x. 1) ; (e) that St. Peter plainly and distinctly 
 declares that the water of the Flood is typical of baptism 
 (1 Pet. iii. 21) ; (f) that in the last and most mysterious reve- 
 lation of God to man the very realms of blessedness and glory 
 are designated by a name and specified by allusions (Eev. xxi. 
 22) wliich warrant our recognizing in the Holy City on earth, 
 the " Jerusalem that now is," a type of that Heavenly City 
 which God hath prepared for the faithful (Heb. xi. 16), a simili- 
 tude of the Jerusalem that is above, a shadow of the incorruptible 
 inheritance of the servants and children of God. 
 
 When we dwell calmly upon these things, when we observe 
 further how, not only thus directly and explicitly, but how, also, 
 indirectly and by allusion, nearly every writer in the Ncav 
 Testament bears witness to the existence and significance of 
 types, how it tinges their language of consolation (Eev. xxi, 
 2 seq.), and gives force to their exhortations (Heb. iv. 14) ; when 
 we finally note how the very Eternal Spirit of God, by whom 
 they were inspired, is specially declared to have vouchsafed 
 thus to involve in the ceremonies of the past the deep truths of 
 the future (Heb. ix. 8), — when we calmly consider the cumula- 
 tive force of all these examples and all these testimonies, we 
 may perhaps be induced to pause before we adopt the sweeping- 
 statements that have been made in reference to the whole 
 system of typology. We may admit that types may have been 
 often injudiciously applied, that it may be difficult to fix bounds 
 to their use or to specify the measure of their aptitude, and yet 
 
398 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 wo may indeed seriously ask for time to consider whether such 
 recognitions of the deeper meanings of Scripture thus vouch- 
 safed to us, and thus sanctioned by our Lord and His Apostles,, 
 are to be given up at once because they are thought to come in 
 collision Avith modern views of Scripture and modern canons of 
 interpretation. Our opponents may well be anxious to get rid 
 of the whole system of types ; we can understand their anxiety, 
 we can even find reasons for the sort of desperation that scruples 
 not to represent what was once sanctioned by our Lord and His 
 Apostles as now either mischievous or inapplicable. It is felt 
 that if typology is admitted, the assertion that Scripture has but 
 one meaning is invalidated. It is seen clearly enough that if it 
 can be shown, within any reasonable degree of probability, that 
 the details of a past dispensation were regarded by tlie first 
 teachers of Christianity as veritable types and symbols of things 
 that had now come, then the recognition of further and deeper 
 meanings in Scripture, of secondary senses and ultimate signiii- 
 cations, must directly and inevitably follow, and the rule that the 
 Bible is to be interpreted like any other book at once be shown 
 to be, what it certainly is, inapplicable. Need we wonder then 
 that every effort has been made to denounce a system so 
 obstructive to modern innovations ; need we be surprised that 
 the rejection of what is thus accredited has been as persistent 
 as it would now seem proved to be both unreasonable and 
 without success ? 
 
 (3.) Our third subject for consideration, the existence of 
 deeper meanings in Scripture, even in what might seem simple 
 historical statements, follows very naturally after Avhat has been 
 just discussed. Here again we can adopt no more convincing mode 
 of demonstration than is supplied by an appeal to Scripture. 
 Yet Ave may not unprofitably make one or two preliminary 
 comments. In the fii'st place, is not this assertion of a oneness 
 of meaning in the Avritten Avords of an intelligent author open to 
 some discussion ? Is it at all clear, even in the case of unin- 
 spired Avriters, that the primary and literal meaning is the only 
 meaning Avhich is to be recognized in their AA'ords ? Is it so 
 wholly inconceivable that more meanings than one may have 
 been actually designed at the time of AVTiting, and that, con- 
 jointly Avith a leading and primary meaning, a secondary and 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPEETATIOX. 399 
 
 subordinate meaning may have been felt, recognized, and in- 
 tended ? Nay, can we be perfectly certain that even words may 
 not liave been sjiecially or instinctively chosen which sliould leave 
 this secondary meaning fairly distinct and fairly recognizable ? It 
 would not be difficult to substantiate the justice of these queries 
 by actual examples from the writings of any of the greater 
 authors whether of our own or some other country. Still less 
 difficult would it be to show that in very many passages 
 meanings must certainly be admitted which it may be probable 
 were not intended by the writer, but which nevertheless by their 
 force and pertinence make it frequently doubtful whether what 
 has been assumed to be the primary meaning of the words is 
 really to be deemed so, and whether what is judged to be an 
 application may not really represent the truest aspects of the 
 mind and intentions of tlie author. 
 
 Let us add this second remark, that the instances in which 
 words have been found to involve meanings, not recognized at 
 the time by reader or by writer, but which after-circumstances 
 have shown were really to be regarded as meanings, are by no 
 means few or exceptional. The whole group of illustrations 
 supplied by " ominata verba," the whole class of cases which 
 belong to that sort of unconscious prescience Avhich is often 
 found in minds of higher strain, the various instances where 
 gbmpses of yet undiscovered relations have given a tinge to 
 expressions wliich will only be fully understood and realized 
 when those relations are themselves fully known, — all these 
 things, and many more than these, might be adduced as illustra- 
 tive of the deeper meanings that are often found to lie in the 
 words of mere uninspired men. Such meanings neither they 
 nor theii- own contemporaries may have distinctly recognized, 
 but meanings they are notwithstanding ; not merely applica- 
 tions or extensions, but meanings ui the simple and regular 
 acceptation of the term. How this is to be accounted for, we 
 are not called upon to show. We will not speculate how far the 
 great and the good of every age and nation may have been 
 moved by the inworking Spirit of God to declare truths of wider 
 application than they themselves may have felt or realized ; we 
 will not seek to estimate the varying degrees of that power of 
 partially foreseeing future relations which long and patient studv 
 
•100 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 of the past and the present lias sometimes beeu found to impart. 
 All such things are probably beyond our grasp, and would most 
 likely be found to elude our present powers and present means 
 of appreciation. AYitli reasons we Avill not embarrass ourselves ; 
 we will be satisfied with simply calling attention to the fact that 
 the existence of such phenomena as that of words having deeper 
 and fuller meanings than they were imderstood to have at first 
 is not only not to be denied, but may even|,be deemed matter 
 of something more than occasional experience. 
 
 The two foregoing observations will, perhaps, have in some 
 measm-e prepared us for forming a more just estimate of the 
 further and second meaiungs that have been attributed to the 
 words of Scripture. If it be admitted that some of the pheno- 
 mena to which we have alluded are occasionally to be recognized 
 in purely human mitmgs, is it altogether strange that in a 
 revelation from God the same should exist in fuller measures, 
 and under still clearer aspects ? If the many-sidedness, mobility, 
 and varied powers of combination existing in the human mind, 
 ajapear at times to invest Avords written or spoken mth a signifi- 
 cance of a fuller and deeper land than may at first be recognized, 
 are we to be surprised if something similar m kind, but higher ui 
 degree, is to be observed in the language of Holy Scripture ? Is 
 the Divine mind not to have influences wliicli are conceded to 
 the himian ? Are the words of Prophets or Evangelists to be 
 less pregnant in meaning, or more cu-cumscribed in their appli- 
 cations, than those of poets and pliilosophers ? Without assuming- 
 one attribute in the Scriptm-e beyond .what all our more 
 reasonable opponents would be A\Tlling to concede, without 
 claiming more for it than to be considered a revelation from 
 God, a (•onmiunication from the Divine mind to the minds and 
 hearts of men, we may justly claim some hearing for this form of 
 the a priori argrnnent ; we may with reason ask all fair disputants 
 whether they are prei)ared positively to deny, in the case of a 
 • •ommunication dnectly or even indirectly from God, the proba- 
 bility of our finduig there some enhancement of the liigher 
 i-liaracteristics and more remarkable phenomena that have been 
 recognized hi communications of man to men ? 
 
 When we leave these a j^riori considcn-ations, and turn to dc-finitt^ 
 examples and illustrations, our anticipations cannot be said to 
 have disappointed us. We have iviiUy an affluence of examples 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, ANDJTS INTERPRETATION. 401 
 
 of second and deeper meanings being deliberately assigned to 
 passages of Scripture tliat might have been otherwise deemed to 
 have only the one simple or historical meaning that seems first 
 to present itself. Let us select two or three instances. Is it 
 possible to deny that our Lord Himself discloses, in what might 
 have been deemed a mere title of Jehovah under His aspects of rela- 
 tion to favoured worshippers, a meaning so full and so deep that 
 it formed the basis of an argument (Matt. xxii. 31 seq. ; Mark 
 xii. 24 seq. ; Luke xx. 37 seq.) ? The familiar titular designation 
 is showTi to be the vehicle of a spiritual truth of the widest 
 appKcation ; the apparently mere recapitidation of the names of 
 a son, a father, and a grandfather, in connexion with the God 
 whose servants they were, and whom they worshipped, is not 
 only urged as proving a fundamental doctrine, but is tacitly 
 acknowledged to have done so by gainsayers and opponents 
 (Luke XX. 39). And further, let it be observed, that it is clearly 
 implied that this was no deeply-liidden meaning, no profound 
 interpretation, wliich it might reqmre a special revelation to dis- 
 close, but that it was a meaning which really ought to have been 
 recognized by a deeper reader, — at any rate that not to have 
 done so argued as plain an ignorance of the Written Word as it 
 did of the power and operations '^of God (Matt, xxii. 29). Let 
 tliis really " prerogative " example be fahly considered and pro- 
 perly estimated, and then let it be asked if the existence of 
 deeper meanings in Scriptm-e can consistently be denied by any 
 who profess a belief in our Lord Jesus Christ. It seems to us 
 that tliis is a plain case of a dilemma : either with Strauss and 
 Hase we must regard the argument as an example of Eabbinical 
 sophistry,— and so, as Meyer reminds us, be prepared to sacrifice 
 the character and dignity of our Lord, — or we must admit that, in 
 some cases at least, there is more in Scripture than the mere 
 literal sense of the words. 
 
 Such an example opens the way for the introduction of others, 
 which, without this prerogative instance, could not have been 
 strongly urged, except on assumptions which, in our present 
 position in the argument, it would not be logically consistent to 
 make. By being associated, however, with the present example, 
 they certainly seem to be of some force and validity in confirm- 
 ing our present assertion, and, to say the very least, can be more 
 easily explained on that hypothesis than on any other that has 
 
 2 D 
 
402 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 yet been assigned. Let us specify Matt. ii. 15. Now the question 
 presents itself in the following form : — Is not this an example 
 furnished by the Apostle of what we have already seen must be 
 recognized in an example vouchsafed by his Lord ? Is not this a 
 case of deeper meaning ? Do not the words of Hosea, the second 
 meaning of which Avas doubtless not more apparent even to the 
 prophet himself than it was to his earlier readers, seem only to 
 have a simple historical reference to the earthly Israel ? and yet 
 do they not really involve a further and typical reference to 
 Him who was truly and essentially what Israel was graciously 
 denominated (Exod. iv. 22 ; comp. Jerem. xxxi. 9), and of whom 
 Israel was a type and a shadow ? So, at any rate, St. Matthew 
 plainly asserts. Which, then, of these hy])otheses do we think 
 most probable, — that St. ]\Iatthew erroneously ascribed a mean- 
 ing to words which they do not and were not intended to bear, 
 that the two chapters are an interpolation (for such an hypo- 
 thesis has been advanced), or that they supply an instance of a 
 second and typical meaning in words of a simply historical 
 aspect, and that a truth is here disclosed by an Apostle similar 
 to what we have already seen has been clearlv disclosed bv our 
 Lord? 
 
 Let us take yet another, and that, as it might be thought, a 
 very hopeless instance. St. Paul, in his Epistle to the Ephe- 
 sians (ch. iv. 8), not only makes a citation from a Psalm, which 
 at the part in question appears to have a simple historical refer- 
 ence to some event of the time (perhaps the taking of Eabbah), 
 but even alters the words of the original, so as to make its 
 application to our Lord more pertinent and telling. What are 
 we to say of such a case? Does it not really look like an 
 instance of almost unwarrantable accommodation ? Does it not 
 seem as if we had now fairly fallen upon the point of our own 
 sword, and that, in citing an example of a second meaning, we 
 liad unwittingly selected one in which the very alteration shows 
 that the words did nut originally have the meaning now attri- 
 buted to them ? Before we thus yield, let us at any rate state 
 the case, and leave the fair reader to form his own opinion. 
 Without at present assuming the existence of any influence 
 which would have directly prevented the Apostle from so 
 seriously misunderstanding and so gravely misapplying a pas- 
 sage of the Old Testament, and only assuming it as proved that 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 403 
 
 there is one authentic instance of words of Scripture bearing a 
 further meaning than meets the eye, we now ask which is to be 
 judged as most likely : that the Apostle to substantiate a state- 
 ment, which could have been easily substantiated by other pas- 
 sages, deliberately altered a portion of Scripture which had no 
 reference to the matter before him, or that he rightly assigned 
 to a seemingly historical passage from a Psalm, which (be it 
 observed), in its original scope, has every appearance of being 
 prophetic and Messianic, a deeper meaning than the words seem 
 to bear (such a meaning being in one case, at least, admitted 
 to exist), and that he altered the form of the words to make more 
 palpable and evident the meaning which he knew they involved ? 
 We have no anxiety as to the decision in the case of any calm- 
 judging and unbiassed reader One further remark we 
 
 may make in conclusion, and it is a remark of some little im- 
 portance, viz., that if the present instance be deemed an example 
 of Scripture having a second and deeper, as well as a first and 
 more simple meaning, it must also be regarded as an example of 
 an authoritative change in the exact words of a quotation, — the 
 change being designed to bring up the underlying meaning 
 which was known to exist, and to place it with more distinctness 
 before the mind of the general reader. 
 
 III. Having thus, as it would seem, substantiated our asser- 
 tion that deeper meanings lie in Scripture than appear on 
 the surface, and that this may be properly considered as in part 
 accounting for the existence of some of those difficulties and 
 diversities which are met with in Scripture-interpretation, we 
 now pass to the third assertion relative to the subject, viz., 
 that Scripture is divinely inspired. 
 
 Here we enter upon a wide subject, which may with reason 
 claim for itself a separate and independent essay, and which 
 certainly ought fully to be disposed of before any rules bearing 
 upon interpretation can properly be laid down. As a longer 
 discussion of this subject will be found in another portion of our 
 volume, we will here only make a very few general remarks 
 upon inspiration as immediately bearing upon interpretation, 
 and more especially upon the estimate formed of its nature and 
 extent by the advocates of the system of Scriptural exegesis now 
 under our consideration. 
 
 In the outset, let it be said that we heartily concur with the 
 
 2 D 2 
 
404 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 majority of our opponents in. rejecting all theories of inspiration, 
 and in sweeping aside all those distinctions and definitions 
 which, only in too many cases, have been merely called forth by 
 emergencies, and di-awn up for no other purpose than to meet 
 real and supposed difficulties. The remark probably is just, 
 that most of the current explanations err more especially in 
 attempting to define what, though real, is incapable of being 
 defined in an exact manner. Hence all such terms as " me- 
 chanical " and " dynamical " inspiration, and all the theories 
 that have grown round these epithets, — all such distinctions as 
 inspirations of superintendence, insjiirations of suggestion, and 
 so forth, — all attempts again to draw lines of demarcation between 
 the inspiration of the books of Scripture themselves and the 
 inspii-ation of the authors of which those books were results, 
 may be most profitably dismissed from our thoughts, and the 
 whole subject calmly reconsidered from what may be termed a 
 Scriptural point of view. The holy Volume itself shall explain 
 to us the nature of that influence by which it is pervaded 
 and quickened. 
 
 8. Thus far we are perfectly in accord with om* opponents. We 
 are agreed on both sides that there is such a tiling as inspii-a- 
 tion in reference to the Scriptures, and we are fmlher agreed 
 that the Scriptures themselves are the best som-ces of informa- 
 tion on the subject. Here, however, all agreement completely 
 ceases. When we invite our opponents to go with us to the 
 Scriptm-es to discuss their statements on the subject before us, 
 and to compare the inferences and deductions that either side 
 may make from them, we at once find that by an appeal to 
 Scripture we and our opponents mean something utterly and en- 
 tu-ely different. We mean a consideration of what Scripture says 
 about itself : we find that thei/ mean a stock-taking of its errors 
 and inaccm-acies, of its antagonisms with science and its oppo- 
 sitions to history, — all wliicli they tell us must fii-st be estimated, 
 and with all which, they urge, that inspu-ation, be it whatever it 
 may, must be reconcileable and harmonized. In a word, both sides 
 have started from the first on widely different assumptions. We 
 assume that what Scriptm-e says is trustworthy, and so conceive 
 that it may be fittingly appealed to as a witness concerning its 
 o\\Ti characteristics ; thei/ assume that it abounds in errors and 
 incongruities, and suggest that the number and natm'e of these 
 
Essay IX.] SCEirTUEE, AND ITS INTERPEETATION. 405 
 
 ought to be generally ascertained before any further step can be 
 taken, or any opinion safely arrived at on the whole subject. 
 Such seems a fair estimate of the position and attitude of the two 
 contending parties. 
 
 If tliis statement of our relative positions be just, it seems per- 
 fectly clear that several different lines of argument may be 
 adopted. We may examine the grounds on which their assump- 
 tion rests, or endeavour to establish the validity of our own. 
 We may deny that any errors or inaccuracies exist, and throw 
 upon them the onus probandi, or we may take the most popular 
 and telling instances in their enumeration and endeavour to dis- 
 cover by fair investigation how far they deserve theu* position, 
 and how far prejudice and exaggeration may not have been at 
 work on their side, as conservatism and accommodation on ours. 
 All these are comrses which may be adopted with more or less 
 advantage, but any one of which would occupy far more space 
 than we can afford for tliis portion of our subject. We must 
 satisfy ourselves, on the present occasion, with making, on the 
 one hand, a few affirmative comments upon the nature, degree, 
 and limits of the inspiration which we assign to the Scripture ; 
 and, on the other hand, a few negative comments upon counter- 
 statements advanced by opponents, which seem more than 
 usually untrustworthy. 
 
 To begin with the negative side, let us observe, in the first 
 place, that nothing can really be less tenable than the assertion 
 that there is no foundation in the Gospels or Epistles for any of 
 the liigher or supernatural views of inspiration. It is a perfectly 
 intelligible line of argument to assert that for the testimony of 
 any book upon its own nature and characteristics to be worth 
 anything, it must first be shown that the book can fully be relied 
 on : it is quite consistent with fair reasoning to refuse to accept 
 as final or conclusive the evidence of what it may be contended 
 has been shown to be a damaged witness. Such modes of argu- 
 ment are quite fair and intelligible, and as such we have no fault 
 to find with them ; but to make at the outset an assertion, such 
 as we are now considering, — to prejudice the minds of the inex- 
 perienced by an affirmation, which, if beheved, cannot fail to 
 produce the strongest possible effect, and which all the time is 
 the very reverse of what is the fact, is indeed very like that 
 " random scattering of uneasiness " which has been attributed to 
 
400 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 our opponents,* and wliicli such cases as the present go very far 
 to substantiate. It is scarcely possible that those who make 
 such assertions can be ignorant of the terms in which our Lord 
 is represented by the Gospels to have spoken about the Scrij^- 
 tures of the Old Testament. It cannot surely be forgotten that 
 He said, that they " could not be broken " (John x. 35), and 
 that when He so spake He was using Scriptm-e in a manner that 
 almost vouched for its verbal and literal infallibility. It cannot 
 have been overlooked that when He was citing the words of 
 David He defined the Divine influence under which those words 
 were uttered (Mark xii. 3G). Does not an Evangelist record His 
 promise to His, Apostles that the Holy Ghost " should teach 
 them all things, and bring all things which He said to them to 
 their remembrance " (John xiv. 20) ? and does not that same 
 Evangelist mention the yet more inclusive promise that the 
 same Eternal Spirit should lead the Disciples into "the whole 
 truth " (John xvi. 13) ? and are such words to be explained away 
 or to be limited? Does not the same writer further teU us 
 that the Holy Ghost was almost visibly given to the Apostles by 
 the Lord Himself (John xx. 22) ? and does not another Evange- 
 list tell of the completed fulness of that gift, and of men so 
 visibly filled with the Holy Spirit that the lips of bystanders 
 and strangers bore their ready and amazed testimony ? Have 
 we no foundation for asserting a higher inspiration when eleven 
 men are told by a parting Lord that they are to be his witnesses, 
 and that they are to receive supernatm-al assistance for their 
 mission ? Is testimony to be confined to words spoken, and to 
 be denied to words written ? Did the power that glowed in the 
 heart of the speaker die out when he took up the pen of the 
 WTiter ? Was not, again, the " demonstration of the Spirit " laid 
 claim to by St. Paul (1 Cor. ii. 4); was it not "God's wisdom" 
 that he spake (ver. 7) ? Does he not plainly say that the things 
 " which God prepared for those that love Him," His pm-poses of 
 mercy and counsels of love, were revealed to him by God tlu-ough 
 the agency of the Sphit (ver. 10) ? and does he not enhance his 
 declaration not only by affirmatively stating from whom liis 
 teaching was du-ectly imparted, but by stating, on the negative 
 side, that to man's wisdom he owed it not ? Yea, and lest it should 
 
 See Moberly, Preface to ' Sermous ou the Beatitudes,' p. 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 407 
 
 be tliought that such high prerogatives belonged only to words 
 spoken by the lips, does not the same Apostle guard liimself, as 
 it were, by claiming for liis written words an origin equally Divine ? 
 and does he not make the recognition of this a very test of 
 illumination and spirituality (1 Cor. xiv. 37) ? We pause, not 
 from lack of further statements, but from the feeling that quite 
 enough has been said to lead any fair reader to pronounce the 
 assertion of there being "no foundation" in the Gospels or 
 Epistles for any of the higher or supernatural views of inspu-a- 
 tion contrary to evidence, and perhaps even to admit that such 
 assertions, where ignorance cannot be pleaded in extenuation, 
 are not to be deemed consistent with fair and creditable argu- 
 ment. To deny the worth or validity .of such testimony is per- 
 fectly compatible with fair controversy ; to deny its existence in 
 the teeth of such evidence, — and such evidence is known and 
 patent, — can only be designed to give a bias to a reader, and to 
 raise up antecedent prejudices in reference to subjects and 
 opinions afterwards to be introduced. How far such a mode of 
 dealing with grave questions is just or defensible, we will leave 
 others to decide. 
 
 Let us make a second remark of a somewhat similar character, 
 and earnestly protest against hazy and indefinite modes of 
 speaking about the testimony of the Church in reference to 
 the doctrine of inspiration. WTiether the Chm-ch is right or 
 wrong in its estimate of the nature and limits of tliis gift, is cer- 
 tainly a question wliieh those who feel the necessity of inquiry 
 are perfectly at liberty to entertain. We may pity a state of 
 mind that is not moved by such authority, and we may suspect 
 it to be ill-balanced ; but we do not complain of such a mode of 
 proceeding. If a man wishes to find out whether the Early 
 Chm-ch, for instance, is right or wrong in its estimate of a prin- 
 ciple or a doctrine, let liim (in a serious and anxious spirit) com- 
 mence his investigation, but let liim not seek by vague and 
 indefinite language to make it first doubtful whether the Early 
 Church really did form any estimate at all, — when that estimate 
 is plainly set down in black and white in fifty different treatises. 
 Let us, at any rate, have a clear understanding on the question 
 at issue, and agree as honest men to throw no doubts upon simple 
 matters of simplest fact. Now, when we are told that the tenn ^ 
 inspiration is but of yesterday, and more especially that the 
 
408 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 question of inspiration was not detei-mined by Fathers of the 
 Church, we do seem justified in protesting against such really- 
 unfair attempts to gain over those who have neither the time, 
 the knowledge, nor perhaps the will, to test the truth of the asser- 
 tion. Let there be no mistake on this subject. The Fathers of 
 the Church may be right or they may be wrong ; but, at any 
 rate, on this topic they have spoken most frequently and most 
 plainly, and if any question in the world may be considered de- 
 termined by them this certainly is one. The Apostolical Fathers 
 term the Scriptures "the true sayings" of the Holy Ghost 
 (Clem. Rom. ad Cor. i. 45). In quoting passages from the Old 
 Testament they often use the significant formula "the Holy 
 Ghost saith." Those that followed them used their language. 
 Justin Martyr describes the natm-e of inspiration, and even hints 
 at its limits ( Cohort. § 8) ; Irenaeas speaks of the Scriptures as 
 " spoken by the Word of God and His Spirit " (Hcer. ii. 28. 2) ; 
 and even attributes to the foresight of the Eternal Spirit the 
 'choice of this rather than that mode of expression in the opening 
 words of St. Matthew's Gospel (Hcer. iii. 16. 2). In quoting a 
 prophet, Clement of Alexandria pauses to con-ect himself, and 
 say it was not so much the prophet as the Holy Spirit in him 
 {Cohort. § 8, p. QQ), and on the question of Scripture infallibility 
 and perfection he is no less precise and definite [Cohort. § 9, p. 
 68 ; Strom, ii. p. 432, vii. p. 897, ed. Potter). TertuUian and 
 Cyprian carry onward the common sentiment ; those who follow 
 them reiterate the same so frequently and so definitively that 
 we become embarrassed by the very affluence of our examples. 
 Eusebius of Caesarea deals even with technicalities, and brands 
 those who dared to say that the WTiters of Scripture put one 
 name in the place of another {Comment, in Psalm, xxxiii., ed. 
 Montf ). Augustine states most explicitly liis views on the whole 
 subject, and asserts the infallibility of Scripture in language 
 which the strongest asserter of the so-called bibliolatry of the day 
 could not desire to see made more definite or unqualified (see for 
 example Epist. Ixxxii. 3, tom. ii. p. 285, ed. Bened. 2). . . Again 
 we pause. We could continue such quotations almost indefi- 
 nitely. We could put our fingers positively on hundreds of such 
 passages in the writings of the Fathers of the first five or six 
 centuries ; we could quote the language of early Councils ; we 
 could point to the silent testimony of early controversies, each 
 
Essay TX ] SCRIPTUEE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 409 
 
 side claiming Scripture to be that from which there could be no 
 appeal ; we could even call in heretics, and prove from their 
 own defences of their own tenets, from their o^\^l admissions and 
 their own assumptions, that the inspiration of Scripture was of 
 all subjects one that was conceived thoroughly settled and 
 agreed upon. Enough, however, has perhaps been said, enough 
 quoted, to place the matter beyond doubt, and to m.ake this per- 
 fectly certain, — that what are called high views of inspiration 
 were entertained almost unanimously by the earlier ^vi'iters of 
 the Church. So obvious, indeed, is the fact that -^Titers like 
 Gfrorer not only concede the fact of the agi-eement of the early 
 writers, and admit the strong opinions they held on the subject, 
 but use it as a very ground of reproach against them, and call 
 upon us to wonder how men who entertained such high views on 
 the inspiration of Scripture could possibly be such arbitrary and 
 unfaithful interpreters. 
 
 A third remark may be made on the negative side by way of 
 complaint that we find so little weight assigned to the subjective 
 argument, as it may be termed, for the inspiration of Scripture. 
 In the sceptical writings of the day the argument is rarely stated 
 except to be dealt with as a form of a natural but not very harm- 
 less illusion. Yet it is an argument of the greatest force and 
 importance, and an argument which, if rightly handled, it is 
 much easier to set aside than to answer. Is it nothing that the 
 Bible has spoken to millions upon millions of hearts, as it were 
 with the very voice of God Himself? Have not its words 
 burned within till men have seen palpably the Divine in that 
 which spake to them ? Is it not a fact that convictions on the 
 nature of the Scriptm-es deepen with deepening study of them ? 
 Ask the simple man to whom the Bible has long become the 
 daily friend and counsellor, who reads and applies what he reads 
 as far as his natural powers enable him ; ask him whether 
 longer and more continued study has altered to any extent his 
 estimate of the Book as a Divine revelation. What is the inva- 
 riable answer ? The Book " has found him ;" it has consoled 
 him in sorrows for which there seemed no consolation on this 
 side the grave ; it has wiped away tears that it seemed could 
 only be wiped away in that far land where sadness shall be no 
 more ; it has pleaded gently during long seasons of spiritual 
 coldness ; it has infused strength in hom'S of weakness ; it has 
 
410 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 calmed in moments of excitement ; it has given to better emo- 
 tions a permanence, and to stirred-up feelings a reaHty ; it has 
 made itself felt to be what it is ; ont of the abundance of his 
 heart the mouth speaks, and he tells us with all the accumulated 
 convictions of an honest mind, that if he once deemed the Bible 
 to be fully inspired on the testimony of others, now he knows it 
 on evidence that has been brought home to his own soul. He 
 has now long had the witness in himself, and that witness he 
 feels and knows is unchangeably and enduringly true. 
 
 Ask, again, the professed student of Scripture, the scholai', the 
 divine, the interpreter, one who, to what we may term the testi- 
 mony of the soul, in the case of the less cultivated reader, can 
 add the testimony of the mind and the spirit, — ask such a one 
 whether increased familiarity with Scripture has quickened or 
 obscured his perception of the Divine within it, whether it has 
 led him to higher or to lower views of inspiration. Have not, 
 we may perhaps anxiously ask, the difficulties of Scripture 
 wearied him, its seeming discordances perplexed, its obscurities 
 depressed him ? Have not the tenor of its arguments, and the 
 seeming want of coherence and connexion in adjacent sentences, 
 sometimes awakened uneasy and disquieting thoughts ? What 
 is almost invariably the answer ? — " No ; far otherwise." Deep- 
 ened study has brought its blessing and its balm. It has shown 
 how what might seem the greatest difficulties often tm-n merely 
 upon our ignorance of one or two um-ecorded facts or relations ; 
 it has conducted to standing-points where in a moment all that 
 has hitherto seemed confused and distorted has arranged itself 
 in truest symmetry and in the fairest perspective. In many an 
 obscure passage our student will tell us how the light has oft- 
 times suddenly broken, how he has been cheered by being per- 
 mitted to recognize and identify the commingling of human 
 weakness and Divine power, the mighty revelation almost too 
 great for mortal utterance, the " earthen vessel " almost parting 
 asunder from the greatness and abundance of the heavenly 
 treasure committed to it. He will tell us, again, how in many 
 a portion where the logical connexion has seemed suspended or 
 doubtful, — in one of those discom-ses, for instance, of his Lord 
 as recorded by St. John, — the true connexion has at length 
 slowly and mysteriously disclosed itself, how he has perceived 
 and realized all. For a while he has felt himself thinkiu": as 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. -Ill" 
 
 his Saviour vouchsafed to thiuk, in part beholding truth as 
 those Divine eyes beheld it ; for a brief space his mind has 
 seemed to be consciously one with the mind of Christ. All this 
 he has perceived and felt. And he will tell us, perchance, what 
 has often been the sequel ; how he has risen from his desk and 
 fallen on his knees, and with uplifted voice blessed and adored 
 Almighty God for His gift of the Book of Life. 
 
 The cold-hearted may smile at such things, the so-called 
 philosophical may affect to account for them ; they may be put 
 aside as illusions, or they may be explained away as projections 
 of self on the passive page, unconscious mfusion of one's own 
 feelings and emotions m the calm words that meet the outward 
 eye. All tliis has been urged against such testimony, and will 
 ever be m-ged even to the very end. But when the end does 
 come the truth will appear. That witnessing of soul and spirit 
 will, it may be^ rise up in silent judgment against many a one 
 who now slights it ; that testimony so often rejected as self- 
 engendered and fanciful, will be seen to have been real and 
 heaven-born, a reflex image of an eternal truth, a part and a 
 portion of the surest of the sure tilings of God. 
 
 9. But let us now pass from the negative to the positive, and 
 make a few affirmative observations on the subject before us. 
 Let us begin, not with a theory, but with a definition and a 
 statement of the belief that is m us. If asked to define what we 
 mean by the inspu-ation of Scripture, let us be bold, and make 
 answer, — that fully convinced as we are that the Scriptui-e is the 
 revelation thi'ough human media of the infinite mind of God to 
 the finite mind of man, and recognizing as we do both a human 
 and a Divuie element in the wiitten Word, we verily believe 
 that the Holy Ghost was so breathed into the mind of the writer, 
 so illumined his spuit and pervaded liis thoughts, that, while 
 notliing that mdividualized him as man was taken away, every 
 thing that was necessary to enable liim to declare Divine Truth 
 in all its fulness was bestowed and superadded. And, as con-' 
 sonant with tliis, we fm-ther believe that this influence of the 
 Sphit, whether by illumination, suggestion, superintendence, or 
 all combined, extended itself— first, to the enunciation of senti- 
 ments and doctrines, that so the will and comisels of God should 
 not be a matter of doubt, but of certain knowledge ; secondly, to 
 statements, recitals, facts, that so the truth into which the writer 
 
412 
 
 AIDS TO FATTH. 
 
 [Essay IX. 
 
 was led should be kno"^ni and recognized ; thirdly, to the choice 
 of expressions, modes of speech, and perhaps occasionally even of 
 words (the individuality of the writer being conserved), that so 
 the subject-matter of the revelation might be conveyed in the 
 fittest and most appropriate language, and in the garb best 
 calculated to set off its dignity and commend its truth. 
 
 Let such be our definition. If asked how we justify it, how 
 we prove our assertions, we answer in two ways : first, by a priori 
 arguments of great force and validity ; secondly, by a posteriori 
 arguments of equal or even greater strength, — arguments wliich 
 our preceding remarks on the negative side have been designed 
 indirectly to set forward and substantiate. Into these argu- 
 ments we do not intend to enter, but we may profitably pause 
 to specify them. On the a priori side, and especially in reference 
 to the Old Testament, we may specify evidences of inspira- 
 tion derived from the clear accordance of various events vdih. 
 prophecies special or general that can be proved to have 
 been uttered before the events in question. Among instances 
 of this nature the history and present state of the Jews 
 have been always rightly and confidently appealed to.* Again, 
 on the same side, but more in reference to the New Testa- 
 ment, it has been fairly urged that, if we admit the general 
 truth and Divine character of the Christian dispensation, we 
 can hardly believe that those who were chosen to declare its 
 principles and to make kno^\^^ its doctrines were not especially 
 guarded from error in the execution of their weighty com- 
 mission, and were not divinely guided both in the words they 
 uttered and the statements they committed to writing. On the 
 a posteriori side we may specify the three great arguments to 
 wliich we have already alluded : the direct declarations of Scrip- 
 ture, the trustworthy character of Scripture having been first 
 demonstrated f ; the unanimous consent of the early writers, and 
 unchanging testimony of the Catholic Church ; and, lastly, the 
 inward and subjective testimony to the Divine nature of the 
 Scripture yielded by the soul and spirit of the individual. Other 
 arguments there are, especially on the a priori side, of var}ing 
 
 * See Moberly, Preface to ' Sermons 
 on the Beatitudes,' p. xxxii. 
 
 t Thus to appeal • to Scripture to 
 define its own character in reference 
 to inspiration seems perfectly fair, when 
 
 the trustwortliy cliaracter of the volume 
 has bi'i'ii i)roprrly (1( inonsti-ated ; com- 
 pare the ruinark.s of Clialmers, ' Christ- 
 ian Evidences,' iv. 2. 2G, vol. iv., p. 3'JO. 
 (Glasgow ed.) 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 413 
 
 degrees of strength and solidity, appealing in different ways to 
 different minds ; but the chief perhaps have been specified, and 
 on these we may safely and securely base our preceding asser- 
 tions, and our unhesitating and unqualified belief in the full 
 inspiration of the Word of God. 
 
 But it may be asked, how do we conceive that this inspiration 
 took place ? What is our theory of the process ? what do we 
 conceive to be the modus agendi of the Holy Spu-it in the heart of 
 man ? Tliis we plainly refuse to answer. We know not, and 
 do not presume to inquire into the manner ; we recognize and 
 believe in the fact. Individual writers may have speculated ; 
 imagery, suitable or unsuitable, may have been introduced as 
 illustrative by a few thinkers in early ages ; but the Catholic 
 Chm-ch has never put forward a theory. On this subject she 
 has always maintained a solemn reserve : she declares to us that 
 in the Scriptm-e the Holy Ghost speaks to us by the mouths 
 of men ; she permits us to recognize a Divine and a human 
 element; but, in reference to the nature, extent, and special 
 circumstances of the union, she warns us not to seek to be wise 
 above what has been wi'itten, not to endanger our faith with 
 speculations and conjectures about that which has not been 
 revealed. Theories of inspiration are what scepticism is ever 
 craving for : it is the voice of hapless unbelief that is ever 
 loudest in its call for explanation of the manner of the assumed 
 union of the Divine with the human, or of the proportions 
 in which each element is to be admitted and recognized. Such 
 explanations have not been vouchsafed, and it is as vain and 
 unbecoming to demand them as it is to require a theory of 
 the union of the Divinity and Humanity in the person of Christ, 
 or an estimate of the proportions in which the two perfect 
 natures are to be conceived to co-exist. 
 
 Not much more profitable is the inquiry into the exact limits 
 of inspu-ation, whether it is to be considered in all cases as 
 extending to words, or whether it is only to be confined to senti- 
 ments and doctrines. At first sight we might be inclined to 
 adopt the latter statement, and such, to some extent, would 
 certainly seem to have been the view of a writer of no less 
 antiquity and learning than Justin Martyr: still when we 
 remember, on the one hand, that there are instances in Scrip- 
 tiu:e in wliich weighty arguments have in some degree been seen 
 
414 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 to depend on the Veiy words and expressions that are made use 
 of (John X. 34 ; Gal. iii. 16), and on the other, that many- 
 important truths must have lost much of their force and signi- 
 ficance if tiiey had not been expressed exactly with that verbal 
 precision which the subject-matter might have demanded, we 
 shall be wise either to forbear coming to any decision, or else to 
 adopt that guarded view which we have abeady indnectly 
 advocated, viz., that in all passages of importance, w^heresoever 
 the natural poAvers of the wi'iter would not have supplied the 
 befitting word or expression, there it was supplied by the real 
 though probably unperceived influence of the Spirit of God. 
 
 A question of far greater moment, and far more practical 
 importance, is that which relates to the exact degree of the 
 inspiration, the fallibility or infallibility of the Sacred Eecords. 
 Was the inspiration such as wholly to preclude errors and 
 inaccuracies, or was it such as can be compatible with either one 
 or the other? This is clearly the real anxious question of our 
 own times, and one to which we must briefly return an answer, 
 as general canons of interpretation must obviously to some 
 extent be modified by the opinions we form on a subject which 
 so seriously affects the character of the documents before us. 
 Let us pause for a moment to consider the answer that is now 
 commonly returned by those among us who claim to be con- 
 sidered of advanced thought and intelligence. They tell us, in 
 language of unrestrained confidence, that no man of candour 
 can fail to acknowledge the existence not only of mistakes as to 
 matters of minor importance, but of such positive " patches of 
 human passion and error," such " weakness of memory," or 
 such " mingling of it with imagination," such " feebleness of 
 inference, such confusion of illustration with argument," and 
 such variations in judgment and opinion, that in the study of 
 Scripture we must continually have recourse to a "rectifying 
 or verifying faculty," that we may properly be enabled to 
 separate the Divine from the human, — what is true, real, and 
 unprejudiced, from what is perverted, mistaken, and false. In 
 a word, the Sacred writers now stand charged with errors of two 
 kinds, — errors of mind and judgment, and errors in matters of 
 fact, but on evidence (as the following remarks will tend to 
 show) which cannot be regarded either as suflicient or con- 
 clusive. 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTUEE, AND ITS INTERrRETATIOX. 415 
 
 To substantiate tlie first class of errors we may commonly 
 observe two modes of proceeding : on the one hand, the more 
 reckless method of citing difficult texts, assuming that they 
 contain a meaning arbitrarily fixed on by the critic, and pro- 
 bably not intended by the writer, and then censuring him for 
 not having intelligibly expressed it; on the other hand, the 
 more guarded but equally mischievous suggestion that the logic 
 of the Scriptm-es is rhetorical in character, and that such 
 passages as Eom. i. 16 seq., Rom. iii. 19, al., are examples of 
 some forms of error in reasoning, and such oppositions as " light 
 and darkness," " good and evil," " the Spirit and the flesh," " the 
 sheep and the goats," oppositions of ideas only, which are not 
 realized in fact and experience. With regard to these methods, 
 we will say briefly that the first is unfair and discreditable ; 
 the second, simple assertion that can either be disproved in 
 detail, or that fairly admits of counter-assertion of gi'eater 
 probable truth. 
 
 The second class of alleged errors is, at first sight, of more 
 importance and plausibility. It professes to include oppositions 
 to science, oppositions to received history, and cases of direct 
 mutual contradiction. Of these thi-ee forms we may again 
 briefly say that instances of the first kind, far from increasing, 
 are steadily decreasing under a just comparison of the true 
 meaning of the words of Scripture with the accredited conclu- 
 sions of science. Recent discussions of the subjects of contro- 
 versy by men of acknowledged scientific attainments have 
 tended to show that the oppositions of Scripture and science 
 are really far more doubtful than they are assumed to be, and 
 that though they still hold a very prominent place on the pages 
 of the charlatan, they one by one disappear from the treatises of 
 men of real science who have scholarsliip suflicient to extract 
 the real meaning of the language of Scripture in the passages 
 under consideration. . . . Much the same sort of remark, mutatis 
 mutandis, may be made on alleged oppositions to received 
 History or Chronology ; many of the supposed oppositions held 
 in former times to be inexplicable have now entirely passed 
 away from the scene, and have alike ceased to stimulate the 
 sceptic or to disquiet the believer; others, like the case of 
 Cyrenius (Luke ii. 2), are all but gone ; and as to what remain 
 there is a growing feeling among unbiassed scholars and 
 
416 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 historians that if we could but obtain the knowledge of a few 
 more facts relative to the various points at issue, the oppositions 
 of (Scripture and History would wholly cease to exist. ... In 
 regard of mutual contradictions, it might be thought a better case 
 has been made out. Writers from whom we might have looked 
 for more guarded comment have done much to exaggerate the 
 so-called discrepancies of the Scripture narrative, and have some- 
 what too emphatically denounced modes of explanation that, both 
 from their simplicity and, not unfrequently, their antiquity, have 
 very great claims on our consideration. Sceptics have not been 
 slow to take advantage of tliis ill-advised course. When, however, 
 all these so-called contradictions are mustered up, they are but 
 a motley and an enfeebled host. We survey them, and we 
 obseiTe some as old as the days of Celsus, and as decrepit 
 as they are old ; others vainly hiding all but mortal wounds 
 received in conflicts of the past, and now only craving a coup de 
 grace from some combatant of our own times ; some of a later 
 date, and a more aspiring air, recruited from Deistical contro- 
 versies of a century or two back, but all marked with uncomely 
 scars, and armed with nothing better than broken or corroded 
 weapons. There they stand; the discrepancy between two 
 Evangelists about the original dweUing-place of Mary and 
 Joseph, explained and well explained fourteen hundred years 
 ago ; the two genealogies, fahly discussed in ancient times, and 
 in our own explained in a manner that approaches to positive 
 demonstration ; the blasphemy of the tivo tliieves, disposed of 
 veiy reasonably by Chrysostom, and since his time on the same 
 or a similar principle by every unprejudiced commentator ; the 
 narrative of the Avoman who anointed our Lord's feet, fii'st 
 prepared for the occasion by the assumption that the narratives 
 in aU the fom* Gospels relate to the same woman, — an assumption 
 regarded even by Meyer, and apparently De Wette, as plainly 
 contrary to the fact. And so on. When we survey such a 
 company, and are told that, at any rate, we should respect theii* 
 numbers, tlieir aggregate authority, their cumulative weight, an 
 uneasy feeling arises in the mind that those who parade them 
 must really be aware that there is sometliing amiss with each case, 
 that, however numerically strong they may be, it is disagreeably 
 true that as individual instances they are disabled or weak. If 
 60, is there not a great responsibility resting on those who brmg 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 417 
 
 forward catalogues of such instances, and yet do not apprize 
 the simple and the inexperienced that each supposed difficulty 
 has most certainly been met over and over again, and with very 
 reasonable success; that this array, so to be respected for its 
 numbers, is really strong in nothing else, — a mere rabble of half- 
 armed or disarmed men ? 
 
 But finally, it may be said, are we prepared to assert that no 
 inaccm-acy, even in what all might agree in regarding as a 
 wholly unimportant matter of fact, — a date, for instance, or a 
 name, or a popular statement of an indifferent matter, — either has 
 been, or can ever be, found in the whole compass of Scrijjture ? 
 To that question, in its categorical form, we should perhaps be 
 wise in refusing positively to retm-n any answer. We have no 
 theory of inspu'ation, we only state what we find to be a matter 
 of fact, we only put forward what those facts and the testimony 
 of the Chm-ch alike warrant us in defining as the true and 
 Catholic doctrine. We have no means of settling definitely 
 whether a posse peccare in minor matters may, or may not, be 
 compatible with a Divine revelation communicated through 
 human media ; but certainly till inaccm-acies, fairly and incon- 
 testably proved to be so, are brought home to the Scripture, we 
 seem logically justified in believing that as it is with nine-tenths 
 of the alleged contradictions in Scriptm'e, so is it with the 
 alleged inaccuracy. Either the so-called inaccuracy is due to ' 
 our ignorance of some simple fact, Avhich, if known, would ex- 
 plain all ; or it is really only an illustration of one of those very 
 conditions and characteristics of human testimony, however 
 honest and truthful, without which it would cease to be human 
 testimony at all. If positively forced to state our opinion, we 
 wiU express what we believe to be the true doctrine of inspu-a- 
 tion in this particular by an example and a simile. As in the 
 case of the Incarnate Word we fully recognize in the Lord's 
 humanity all essentially human limitations and weaknesses, 
 the hunger, the tliirst, and the weariness on the side of the 
 body, and the gradual development on the side of the human 
 mind (Luke ii. 40), — in a word, all that belongs to the essential 
 and original characteristics of the pure form of the nature He 
 vouchsafed to assume, but plainly deny the existence therein of 
 the faintest trace of sin, or of moral or mental unperfection, — 
 even so in the case of the written Word, viewed on its purely 
 
 2 E 
 
418 AIDS TO FAITH, [Essay IX. 
 
 human side, and in its reference to matters previously admitted to 
 have no bearing on Divine truth, we may admit tlierein the exist- 
 ence of such incompleteness, such limitations, and such imper- 
 fections as belong even to the highest forms of purely truthful 
 human testimony, but consistently deny the existence of mis- 
 taken views, perversion, misrepresentation, 'and any form what- 
 ever of consciously committed error or inaccuracy, 
 
 10. We have thus at length touched upon all the main points 
 in which the doctrine of the inspiration of Scri^jture is in any 
 degree likely to come in contact with rules and principles of 
 interpretation. Less than this could not have been said. Less 
 it was not logically consistent to say. It may, indeed, seem 
 plausible to urge that we have no right to express any prior 
 opinion on such subject ; that we have only to apply to Scrip- 
 ture the ordinary rules of interpretation which we observe in the 
 case of other books, and that we ought to leave the question of 
 inspii-ation to be settled by the results we arrive at. Is it not, 
 however, abundantly clear that if there be even a low presump- 
 tion, arising from external or internal evidence, for supposing 
 that the Scripture has characteristics Avhich render it very unlike 
 any other book, then it is only right and reasonable to examine 
 that evidence before we apply rules of interpretation which, 
 perhaps, may be found in the sequel to be inadmissible or inap- 
 plicable ? Surely, on the very face of the matter it seems some- 
 what strange to be told to interpret the Scripture like any other 
 book, while in the same breath it is avowed that there are many 
 respects in which Scripture is unlike any other book. It is 
 really very much the same as being told to ascertain with a two- 
 foot rule the precise linear dimensions of a room of which it is 
 known or admitted that the sides are not always straight, but 
 variously curved and embayed. The application of our two-foot 
 rule would doubtless put very clearly before us, if we had ever 
 doubted it, not only the fact that bays and curvatures really did 
 exist, but also that the instrument in our hands was a singularly 
 unfit one for measuring what it was plain requu-ed something 
 less rigid and impracticable. The duty of the two-foot rule 
 would really then be over, unless we chose to reserve it for 
 those parts where the walls somewhat more nearly conformed 
 to the straight line. If, however, we desired properly to com- 
 plete our task, we should have to go home for our measuring- 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 419 
 
 tape. The nature and application, iirst of the two-foot rule and 
 then of the measuring-tape, may now very fitly engage our atten- 
 tion, and occupy the remaining portion of the present essay. 
 
 11. Hitherto we have been engaged in two very important 
 departments of the subject before us. In the first part of our 
 paper we have done our best to clear away some of the errors 
 and misrepresentations connected with the great alleged variety 
 of Scripture interpretations. In the second portion we have 
 endeavoured to arrive at a just estimate of the nature and cha- 
 racteristics of Scripture, which must be recognized by the 
 careful and reverent interpreter. We have seen that variety is 
 to be expected, and difficulties to be prepared for in the inter- 
 pretation of Scripfure, and we have further seen that tliis variety 
 and these difficulties are to be ascribed, first, to the real dif- 
 ference between Scripture and every other book ; secondly, to 
 the existence in it of deeper meanings, as shown in its prophetic, 
 typical, or even historical portions ; and thii'dly, to the fact of 
 its being a volume written under the influence of an inspiration 
 which w^e have endeavoured briefly to explain and substantiate. 
 These two portions of om- subject being finished, we now proceed 
 to tlie thu'd portion, — a discussion of what appears generally to 
 be the true and right method of interpreting a volume charac- 
 terized as we have found the Scripture to be ; and a statement 
 of a fcAV principles, rules, and observations, Avhich may he of 
 some service to younger students, and which experience has cer- 
 tainly shoAvn to be sound and trustworthy. 
 
 This forms the main department of our subject, and admits of 
 several subdivisions. Perhaps our simplest course will be to 
 devote the present section to a discussion of general rules of in- 
 terpretation — the really imiDortant portion of the subject ; and to 
 append in concluding sections a few comments, on the one hand, 
 upon the application of Scriptm-e, and, on the other, upon the 
 grammar and law^s of the letter. In so doing we confine our- 
 selves principally to the New Testament, but we shall perhaps 
 be found not unfrequently to allude to canons and principles 
 that will apply to all parts of the Sacred Volume, and may 
 benefit the student of the Old as well as of the New Testament. 
 Ere, however, we enter into these discussions, let one point be 
 
 2 E 2 
 
420 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 clearly understood, — that tlicre is a requisite, a necessary prepa- 
 ration for the study of the Scripture, which we assume tlirough- 
 out, a preparation of more value than a knowledge of all the 
 rules and canons of the wisest interpreters of the world : that 
 requisite and preparation is preliminary prayer. It is not ne- 
 cessary to enlarge upon a subject which speaks for itself; it is 
 not necessary to commend what the very instincts of the soul 
 tell us is a preparation simply and plamly indispensable. We 
 allude to it as by its very mention serving to hallow our commg 
 remarks, and as useful in rerainthng us, in the pride and glory 
 of our intellectual efforts, that it is more than probable that 
 the very simplest reader that takes liis translated Bible on his 
 knees, and reads with prayer that he may understand, will 
 attain a truer and more inv/ard knowledge of the words than will 
 ever be vouchsafed to him who, with all the appliances of philo- 
 logy and criticism, reads the original but forgets to mark its 
 holy character, and to pray that he may not only read, but may 
 also learn and understand. Would to God that this rule were of 
 more universal adoption, and had been of late more regularly 
 observed ; for then we may be well assured that none of the 
 scornfulness and rash modes of interpretation against which we 
 have now to protest would ever have been put forth, and have 
 tried, as they now are trying, both the faith and the patience of 
 humbler students of the Word. 
 
 One further preliminary and requisite in the case of the 
 interpreter of Scripture we must here allude to, both on account 
 of its own intrinsic importance, and still more in consequence 
 ^ of the startling way in which it has been recently neglected. 
 That requisite is candour. Next, in the work of interpretation, 
 to a prayerful and humble stands a candid and honest spirit, — 
 a brave and faithful spirit that knowing and believing that God 
 is a God of Truth hesitates not to state with all clearness and 
 simplicity the results to which humble-minded investigation 
 seems in each case to lead, — that scorns to palter and explain 
 away, to gloss or to idealize, — that shrinks not from frankly 
 specifying all the details of the apparent discrepancy, be it with 
 other portions of Scripture, with science, or with history, be- 
 lieving thus that the true reconciliation will hereafter be more 
 readily discovered, — in a word, that has faith clearly to tell the 
 dream, and patience to wait for the interpretation thereof. We 
 
EssAT IX.] SCEIPTUEE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 421 
 
 cannot but observe that even sounder interpreters botli of our 
 own and other times have often sadly failed in this particular. 
 We own with sorrow that there have ever been over-eager 
 Uzzahs among us that have sought to U2;)bear the endangered 
 truth with aids that have brought on themselves their own 
 chastisement. We admit, alas ! that good and earnest men 
 have sometimes been driven by anxieties and antagonisms into 
 patently inadmissible solutions ; Ave know that they have urged 
 untenable accommodations, and we are even willing to believe, 
 as our opponents tell us, that they have dwelt on evidence that 
 Avas in their favour, and have been very insufficiently sensitive to 
 that AA'hich was against them. This we know and admit, but at the 
 same time we fail not to observe that, as our coming examples 
 will shoAV, they Avho have brought this charge against others 
 lie grievously open to it themselves, and that it is indeed time 
 that both jiarties should desist from courses which do such deep 
 dishonour to the Word of God, and imply such an utter want 
 both of faith and integrity. 
 
 Let the interpreter then resolve, with God's assisting grace, to 
 be candid and truthful. Let him fear not to state honestly the 
 results of his own honest investigations ; let him be simple, 
 reverent, and plain-spoken, and, above all, let him pray against 
 that sectarian bias Avhich by importing its own foregone conclu- 
 sions into the Avord of Scripture, and by refusing to see or to 
 acknowledge what makes against its OAAm j^rejudices, has proved 
 the greatest knoAvn hindrance to all fair interpretation, and has 
 tended, more than anything else in the world, to check the free 
 course of Divine Truth. To illustrate our meaning by examples. 
 Let the interpreter in the first place be seduced by no timidity ' 
 or prejudices from ascertaining the true text. Let him not fall 
 back upon the too often repeated statement that, as readings 
 affect no great points of doctrine, the subject may be left in 
 abeyance. It is indeed most true, that different readings of 
 such a character as 1 Tim. iii. 16, or interpolations such as 
 1 John V. 7, are fcAV and exceptional. It is indeed a cause for 
 devout thankfulness, if not even for a recognition of a special 
 providence, that out of the vast number of various readings so 
 few affect vital questions ; still it is indisputably a fact that but 
 feAv pages of the Ncav Testament can be turned over Avithout 
 our finding points of the greatest interest affected by very 
 
422 AIDS TO FAITU. [Essay IX. 
 
 trivial variations of reading. On the presence or absence of an 
 article in John v. 1 the whole chronology of our Lord's ministe- 
 rial life may be said almost entirely to depend. A very slight 
 alteration in Mark vii. 31 opens out a fact of deep historical 
 interest, and is of very great significance in reference alike to 
 commands subsequently given to the Apostles to preach the 
 Gospel, and to former prohibitions (^latt. x. 5). The absence 
 of two words in Eph. i. 1 (now rendered somewhat more probable 
 by the testimony of the Codex Sinaiticus) gives a fresh aspect 
 to an important Epistle, disposes at once of several prima facie 
 difficulties, and further must be taken greatly into account in 
 the adjustment of some subordinate but interesting questions 
 with which the Epistle has been thought to stand in connexion 
 (Col. iv. 16). The presence or absence of a few words in ]\Iatt. 
 xxviii. 9 affects considerably our ability to remove one of the 
 many seeming discrepancies in the narratives of the first hours 
 of the morn of the Resurrection. We could multiply such 
 examples, but perhaps enough has been said. There are 
 indeed several gi-ounds for thinking that there is an improved 
 feeling on the whole subject ; and there seem some reasons for 
 hoping that though no authoritative revision is likely to take 
 place, nor, at present perhaps, even to be desired, yet that the 
 time is coming when there will be a considerable agreement on 
 many of the results of modern criticism, and when it will be as 
 startling to hear a sermon deliberately preached on Acts viii. 
 37, as it would be now on the Heavenly Witnesses. There are, 
 alas ! still many signs of uneasiness and obstruction ; but we do 
 entreat and conjure those who would only too gladly put the 
 whole question in abeyance to pause, seriously to pause, before 
 they do such dishonour to the words of inspiration, and leave 
 clinging to our Church both the rei^roaches which are now so 
 pitilessly cast upon us all by the gainsayer, and that still deeper 
 reproach of our own hearts, — that, believing the Bible to be a 
 special, direct, and insj)ired revelation from God, we have yet 
 not used the means now at hand of ascertaining the exact 
 language in which that revelation is vouchsafed. JMournful 
 indeed will be the retrospect, and gloomy indeed the future, if 
 unbecoming anxiety or a timid conservatism is to tempt honest 
 hearts to show sadly lacking measures of faith, and to deal 
 deceitfully witli the Oraclrs of (Jod. 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 423 
 
 If this be the first form in which candour is to be shown, let 
 the second be the fearless statement of the apparent results of 
 investigation, whether on this side or on that, in the case of 
 collective or individual passages. A few remarks will illustrate 
 our meaning, and will incidentally substantiate what we have 
 stated above, viz., that those who have recently most inveighed 
 against M^ant of candour in others are grievously lacking in it 
 themselves.* What, for instance, can be more uncandid than to 
 imply that justification by faith may mean " peace of mind or 
 sense of Divine approval," when against it we have not only the 
 current of two important Epistles, but observe that in the very 
 passage from which such a perverted view might have been 
 derived (Rom. v. 1) the mention of the Saviour as the medium 
 shows in what sense the A230stle meant his words to be under- 
 stood, and how consistently he could state eight verses after- 
 wards that we were justified in and by the blood of Christ {iv 
 TM aifjuari), and Avere reconciled by His death (ver. 10)? How' 
 really unpardonable to hint that resurrection may mean " a 
 spu-itual quickening," and to stamp the exact meaning of 
 the hint by the subsequent assertion, that Heaven is not a place 
 so much as fulfilment of the love of God, when this is a perver- 
 sion of the word against which an Apostle has left a special and 
 determinate protest ! How opposed to all principles of honest ' 
 explanation to imply that propitiation is the recovery of a peace 
 Avith God which sin has interrujDted, and to follow it up by the 
 supplementai-y assertion that negation of " rite of blood " belongs 
 essentially to a spiritual God, when we have the drift of part of 
 a long Epistle opposed to such a view, and when we further 
 observe that a mention of the material element " blood " in con- 
 nexion with our redemption and our Lord's atonement (Eph. i. 
 7, ii. 13, 1 Pet. i. 2, 19, al.) is in the New Testament so per- 
 petual and pervasive that he who denies it must be prepared to 
 deny the evidence of his own senses ! Such melancholy perver- 
 sions of Scripture may perhaps be extreme cases, but they may 
 suitably serve as examples of the lengths to which prejudice and 
 want of candour may at last proceed, and may incidentally 
 warn us that the dread term " judicial blindness " expresses no 
 
 * For the culjjable statements and insinuations reprehended in the text, see 
 ' Essays and Reviews,' p. 80 seq. 
 
424 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 mere fancy of tlieologians, but a frig-litful and a substantive 
 truth. 
 
 With such painful examples before us, surely the duty of 
 resolving at all costs to be candid, to estimate fairly the details, 
 and state honestly the residts of investigations, be the apparent 
 tenor of those results whatever it may, seems to press itself upon 
 us Avath redoubled force. Never was there a time when candour 
 on all sides seemed more necessary, never a period in the history 
 of om- Church when a frank recogTiition of points of difficulty and 
 difference seemed likely to be productive of more real good. 
 Above all things, let us not jdeld to the temptation of holding 
 back what we believe to be the true aspect of a passage because 
 it may be thought to lend a passing countenance to the tenets 
 of opponents. Let us be fair to all sides. \\'liile then, for ex- 
 ample, we justly protest against the use of 1 Cor. iii. 13 to esta- 
 blish Purgatory, because, on the one hand, perspicuity, and, on 
 the other, details {ev irvpl), as illustrated by parallel passages 
 (2 Thess. i. 8 ; Dan. vii. 9, 10 ; Mai. iv. 1), alike seem to point 
 to 77 77/xepa (previously agi-eed upon by both sides to be " dies 
 Domini," Vulg.) being the nominative to airoKaXvirTeTat ; so, in 
 the case of 2 Tim. i. 16 (comp. ch. iv. 19) we do not shrink from 
 giving the opinion that the terms of the verse seem to imply 
 that Onesiphorus was dead at the time that the Epistle was 
 written, tliough we may know the use that will be made of the 
 statement. \Miile, again, Ave deny the fairness of using Gal. v. 6 
 to support the theory of a fides formata, we are not deterred by 
 the known use of the text in support of Tradition from stating the 
 opinion that, in the case of 2 Thess. ii. 15, the use of ehhdxdrjre 
 and tlie general tenor of the context justify the reference of 
 7rapa66(T€t<i to matters, not only of discipline, but also of doctrine. 
 ... To pass to other opponents : Ave fear not, on the one side, to 
 give up several of the examples said to fall under Granville Sharp's 
 rule, as, for example, Epli. v. 5, 2 Thess. i. 12, deeming the ap- 
 plication of the rule in Avords like 0eo9 and Kvpto<i to be, gram- 
 matically considered, precarious ; on the other side, we feel the 
 contextual allusions to be so distinct in Tit. ii. 13, that we have 
 no hesitation in statmg our firm belief that the title " Great 
 God " is there applied to the Lord Jesus. Again, we are not 
 afraid to OAAnthat vTrejO, though apparently so used in Phil em. 13, 
 is net safely to be pressed in CA-ery doctrinal passage simihir to 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 425 
 
 Gal. iii. 13, or 1 Pet. iii. 18, as serving to establish tlie doctrine 
 of our Lord's vicarious sufferings : we claim however, in return, 
 the same candour at the hands of our opponents in the interpre- 
 tation of such passages as 1 Tim. ii. 6 (dvrlXvTpov), 1 Pet. ii. 24, 
 which, if words mean anytliing, do assuredly imply that doctrine 
 in the most plain and unqualified way. We deny not all the 
 fair inferences that flow from such passages as — " every soul 
 shall bear its own iniquity," — but we do justly complain, with 
 such words before us as reKva 0/37779 (Eph. ii. 2 ; actually ren- 
 dered by one living writer " children of impulse "*), and with a 
 variety of similar allusions positively pervading the Noav Testa- 
 ment, that we should be told that the Christian scheme of 
 redemption " has been staked " on two so-called figurative 
 expressions of St. Paul, as found in Eom. v. 12 and 1 Cor. xv. 22. 
 We chaw back with positive repugnance from such a gloss as 
 that of Beza (" quosvis homines ") on the holy inclusiveness of 
 the TTCLvra^ in 1 Tim. ii. 5, yet again we do not shrink from a 
 single inference that legitimately comes from the e^eke^aro in such 
 passages as Eph. i. 4, nor do we deny that few topics have been 
 more overlooked, and few which throw a greater light on the final 
 adjustment of all tilings, than the circumstances, characteristics, 
 and prerogatives of the elect. Few perversions, again, have been 
 more decided than the change of nommative in Heb. x. 38, yet 
 this ought all the more to urge us, on the other side, to set an 
 example of candour in the interpretation of the eTnrekecret in 
 Phil. i. 6, and not to tamper with the tense of /Se/Saicocrei, or the 
 meaning of ero? TeXov^ in 1 Cor. i. 8. So again, though we may 
 use Calvin's own words, and regard it in truth as a horribile 
 decretum that would involve in a predetermined perdition the 
 darkened nations of a pagan world, we yet refuse to interpret 
 against the usus scribendi of an inspired author, and in a passage 
 like Rom. i. 24 we dare not regard a grammatical formula which 
 appears in almost all cases to mark purpose, as in this case only 
 indicative of issue and result. Lastly, to gather uj) a handful of 
 passages with which party bias has dealt deceitfully, — if we 
 regard it as unprincipled that such a word as iXaaTijptov should 
 be explained away in Rom. iii. 25, perverse that such a j^lain 
 and positive concrete term as Xovrpov should be volatilised in 
 
 * See Maurice, ' Unity of the New Testament,' p. 538. 
 
426 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX, 
 
 Epli. V. 26, Tit. iii. 5, or such a passage as John iii. 5 toned 
 down, monstrous that such a clear prohibition as tliat in 
 CoL ii. 18 shoukl be evaded by an unauthorized limitation of 
 one word {dprjo-Kela), or a non-natural explanation of another 
 (dyyeXfov), — if, again, we recoil from the expressed or implied 
 denials of the tyjiical relations of cu-cumcision and baptism, when 
 we can put our fingers on such verses as Col. ii. 11, and the ex- 
 planatory verse which follows it, — if we start to find the use of a 
 strong word (opKc^co), where we should not have expected it 
 (1 Thess. V. 27), suggest the assumption that an Apostle at times 
 was not master of, or did not know the value of, the words 
 which he was using, — if, with reason, we shrink from and even 
 denounce all such instances of prejudice and want of candour in 
 our opjDonents ; yet let us also remember that on the side of 
 over-anxious orthodoxy every instance could find its exact 
 parallel, and that we may be well reminded ourselves to take 
 good heed that we be not ensnared by perverted principles of 
 interpretation that liave thus long retained such a baneful 
 ascendency. On reviewing such a list, does not the con\4ction 
 arise that the " sj^eaking the truth in love " of the Apostle is a 
 principle that needs anew to be commended to every interpreter 
 of Scripture ? and does not also the melancholy reflection rise 
 with it that it is, perhaps, almost exclusively owing to the long 
 neglect of this principle that we must ascribe the present state of 
 parties, and their present attitudes of increasing hostility and 
 antagonism ? 
 
 12. But to pass from these preliminary comments to the main 
 question with which we are now more especially concerned, let 
 us proceed to consider what, judging from the experiences of 
 the past and the present, seems to be the most befitting and 
 trustworthy method of interpretmg a Volume bearing such 
 striking and unique characteristics as we find in the Holy Scrip- 
 tures. The answer, it can hardly be doubted, after what has 
 been said in tlie earlier i)ortion of this essay, must be-^" the 
 literal and historical metliod," that method wliich not only con- 
 cerns itself with the simple and gi-ammatical meaning of the 
 words, but also with that meaning viewed under what may be 
 termed, for want of a better word, its historical relations, viz., as 
 ilhistrated by facts, modified by the context, substantiated by 
 the tenor of the Holy Book, and receiving elucidation from 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERRRETATION. 427 
 
 minor specialities and details. On the general propriety of sucli 
 a method there will not be, perhaps, any very gi-eat differences 
 of opinion. On the particular rules for carrying out the method 
 we must natm'ally expect considerable debate and disagi-eement. 
 For example, the seemingly comprehensive and plausible rule 
 which has been lately so much pressed upon om- attention — 
 " Interpret Scripture like any other book" — has akeady been 
 seen to be at best only of limited application, and to involve 
 assumptions — e. g. the resemblance of Scripture to other books 
 in respect of its having one and only one meaning — wliich we 
 have apparently had the fullest reasons for refusing to concede. 
 Many just objections may also be urged against other rules that 
 have been proposed, especially against those wliich, tacitly 
 assuming an exaggerated amount of figm-ative language in the 
 Scriptm-es, tend to exempt many portions of the inspired Volume 
 from being regarded to mean what they actually say, and many 
 declarations from having assigned to them their real force and 
 significance. It is scarcely too much to say, that most of these 
 modern rules have involved some sinister tendency, and have 
 been based on very tliinly covered assumptions of an amount of 
 error in the Scriptm-es that is totally undemonstrable. In this 
 real difficulty of accepting what has hitherto been advanced, w& 
 will ourselves venture to propose for consideration a few short 
 canons of a very simple nature which, perhaps, may be found 
 practically useful in carrying out the method of interpretation 
 above alluded to. Not to be unnecessarily minute, we may first 
 specify, with illustrations, fom- rules or principles, two of which 
 relate rather more to the letter, two rather more to the sjjirit 
 and applications of it. Whether we need any further rule Avill 
 be best seen as we proceed. 
 
 The first rule is an extremely obvious one, yet a rule which, 
 if it had been always followed, would have spared the Church a 
 large amount of bitterness and controversy. ■ It is simply this, — 
 Ascertain as clearly as it may he possible the literal and grammatical 
 meaniyig of the ivords : in other words, ascertain first what is the 
 ordinary lexical meaning of the individual words ; and next, what, 
 according to the ordinary rules of syntax, is the first and simplest 
 meaning of the sentence which they make up. . . . We almost 
 turn away with a smile from such a thread-bare I'ule, and yet 
 there is really no rule that has been less followed in the inter- 
 
428 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 pretation of the New Testament ; and none which, in spite of all 
 boasted recent improvement, it is more necessary calmly to re- 
 state and enhance. The full force of Hermann's almost indignant 
 protest* against the principles, or rather absence of all principles, 
 on which the New Testament was interpreted dm-uig all the 
 earlier portions of his life, is now happily rendered somewhat 
 unnecessary. A pupil of the gi'eat scholar was among the first 
 to restore the more reverent and accurate exegesis of an e^^^rlier 
 day, and since that time there has been a continuance of efforts 
 in the same du'ection. Still it must be clear to every quiet 
 observer, that there is a strong desire evinced in many quarters 
 to evade the rule, and, under cover of escape from pedantiT, to 
 endeavour to make Scripture mean what we think, or what we 
 wish, not what it really says to us. The mode of procedure is 
 simple, but effective. We are fir-st told, as Chiysostom told us 
 long ago,t that we are to catch the spirit of the author, and next 
 invited to take a step onward, and do what that great inter- 
 preter neither did nor sanctioned — rectify by the aid of our own 
 " verifying faculty " the imperfect utterance of words of which it 
 is assumed we have caught the real and intended meaning. No 
 mode of interpretation is more completely fascinating than this 
 intuitional method, none that is more thoroughly welcome to the 
 excessive self-sufficiency in regard to Scriptm-al interpretation of 
 which we are now ha^ang so much clear and so much melan- 
 choly evidence. To sit calmly in our studies, to give force and 
 meaning to the faltering utterances of inspii'ed men, to correct 
 the tottering logic of an Apostle, to clear up the misconceptions 
 of an Evangelist, and to do this without dust and toil, without 
 expositors and without Versions, ■without anxieties about the 
 meanings of particles, or humiliations at discoveries of lacking 
 scholarship, — to do all this, thus easily and serenely, is the 
 temptation held out; and the weak, the vain, the ignorant, 
 and the prejudiced are clearly proving unable to resist it. Hence 
 the necessity of a return to fost principles, however homely they 
 appear. 
 
 To set forth, if need be, still more clearly the practical value 
 of the foregoing rule, let us take a few, almost chance-met 
 
 * In his edition of ' Viger's Idioms,' p. 788. 
 
 t Sec Chiysostom, ' Commeut. on Gal.,' tom. x., p. 801 B (ed. Bencd. 2) 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 429 
 
 examples, iu which attention to grammatical accuracy often 
 serves to remove difficulties or misapprehensions of old standing, 
 and that, too, in questions of considerable importance. Let us 
 observe, for instance, how an attention to the force of a tense 
 removes all possible difficulty from such a verse as Acts ii. 47, 
 and adds a deepened sig-nificance to the weighty words we find 
 in such passages as 2 Cor, ii. 15. How simply, yet how instruc- 
 tively, the simple participles place the two classes before us, each 
 under its aspects of progress and development, each capable of 
 reversed attitudes and directions, but each at the time of con- 
 sideration wending its way ; the one silently moving onward to 
 light and to life, the other tm-mng its sad steps to darkness and 
 to death ! The mere tense is iu itseK a sermon and a protest : a 
 sermon of blended warning, consolation, and hope, to those who 
 will pause to meditate on its significance ; a protest, and a very 
 strong protest, against those who tell us that the existence of 
 "two classes of men animated by two opposing principles," 
 though the teaching of Scripture, " is contrary to the teachuig of 
 experience." Let us observe agaui how, upon a due recognition 
 of the very same grammatical fact, the imputation of mistaken 
 expectations in an Apostle (1 Thess. iv. 17) becomes almost 
 wholly -sviped away, — how some details of the Last Supper 
 {hei-irvov ycvofievov, John xiii. 2 : even with the ordinary 
 reading jevo/xevov, the correct translation removes difficulties) 
 supposed to be conflicting or impossible to arrange, admit of 
 easy and natural explanation ; and how, to take a last instance, 
 the innocent but pointless imagery of the "cloven" tongues 
 (Acts ii. 3) passes at once into sometliing pertinent and intelli- 
 gible, and especially consonant with the workings of that Eternal 
 Spuit that divideth " to every man severally as He will." Under 
 the application of sunilar principles of accm-acy, much of the 
 verbal difficulty disappears in Mark xi. 13, the true force of the 
 dpa combined with the known fact of leaves being posterior to 
 fruit, making the reader feel how it Avas the unseasonable dis- 
 play that led to the inference, and how the Saviour drew nigh 
 to see if an inference so just was to be substantiated. To add 
 two or tlu-ee more instances : the great exegetical difficulty in 
 John XX. 17 appears modified, if not removed, by taking into 
 consideration the tense of the verb airrov (not a-^r)) ; a train of 
 profound speculation is suggested by the accurate translation of 
 
430 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 one Avord in Col. ii. 15 (direKSvad/xevo^), and relations, if not 
 established, yet rendered probable between the act specified 
 in that mysterious clause and the last three hom-s of darkness 
 on Golgotha. The recent controversy relative to the precept in 
 Matt. V. 32 is almost settled when we pause to recognize the 
 difference between the nature of the predications respectively 
 conveyed by the participle with and the participle without the 
 article ; and, to conclude with an instance of a similar apphca- 
 tion of the same grammatical principle, a very great amount of 
 difficulty is removed in the interpretation of the very obscure pas- 
 sage, 1 Pet. iii. 18 seq., if, besides adopting the true reading 
 irvevfiari (not rw Trvev/xarc, Bee.) and referring it to the 
 Saviour's human spirit, we also observe that the participle 
 d7reid/](Taatv invoh^es no direct predication (" who were "), but 
 partially discloses the reason of the gracious procedure (" inas- 
 much as they were "), and causes the difficulty ever felt in the 
 specification of this one class in some degree to disappear. 
 
 We now pass to a second rule, equally simple and homely 
 with that which we have just considered and exemplified, and to 
 which it may be considered to form a kind of supplement or 
 corollary. It is, in fact, involved in the very definition of the 
 true method of interpreting Scripture, and is simply as follows : — 
 Illustrate, wherever possible, hy reference to histm-y, topography, and 
 antiquities. 
 
 On a rule so very natiu-al and ob\dous little more need be said 
 than this, that the ordinary reader can scarcely form any con- 
 ception of the strangely different aspects wliicli many of the 
 leading events in Scripture — for example, many of the scenes in 
 our Lord's life — will be found to assume when the rule is carefully 
 observed. We may especially remark tliis in reference to illus- 
 trations from topography. To modern travellers in Palestine 
 the student of Scripture is under obligations which as yet have 
 not by any means been fully recognized. By the aid of then- 
 narrative we can sometimes almost place om-selves in the position 
 of the first beholders, and see the whole scene of mystery or 
 mercy disclose itself before our eyes. The Triumphal Entry 
 becomes almost an event in which Ave ourselves have borne a 
 part when we read the narrative with all the illustrations tliat 
 have been furnished by the traveller or the antiquary. We can 
 feel om-selves almost led to the spot where the opening view of 
 
Essay IX.] SCEIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 
 
 431 
 
 the Holy City called forth the first shouts of the jubilant multi- 
 tude ; we can realize the strange pause, and feel the naturalness 
 of the transition from meek triumph to outgushing tears, when 
 some turn in the rocky road made the City of the Great King 
 rise up suddenly, even as the modern traveller tells us it still 
 is found to do, in all its full extent, and in all that stateliness 
 and beauty wliich was so soon to pass away. All the scenes 
 near to or connected Avith the Lake of Gennesareth will be found 
 to be brought home to us by any of the better recent descriptions 
 of the locality, in a manner and to a degree that we could 
 scarcely have conceived possible beforehand. We seem, for 
 example, to appreciate, for the first time in all its fulness, the 
 allusion to the " city on a liill " (Matt. v. 14) when we are told 
 that from the horned liill that has been lately almost agreed 
 on as the probable scene of the Sermon on the Mount, the 
 heights on wliich Safed stands are distinctly visible, and form 
 the striking object in the distant landscape. We feel, again, the 
 force of the Kare/Sv in Luke viii. 23, when we recall what we 
 may perhaps have read but yesterday of the low-lying lake, and 
 the deep-cut ravines and gorges in the vast and naked plateau 
 behind, down which the storm-wind rushes as fiercely and as 
 continuously as of old.* We pause with interest on what other- 
 wise might have seemed a mere question of critical detail, when 
 we read in the traveller's journal that round a few scattered 
 ruins in a lonely wady still lingers a name which brings up the 
 Gergesa of the first Evangelist's narrative, and which almost 
 forces us to muse on the extreme naturalness of the circumstance 
 that he who knew the lake so well should almost instinctively be 
 specific, and that the other two narrators should use names of a 
 wider reference, and more familiarly known to their Greek or 
 then- Eoman readers.f How interesting again, in the hands of 
 an interpreter who ^vdll make it his duty to gather up all the 
 items of antiquarian information, is the narrative of the Lord's 
 presence among the Doctors in the Temple, or even the briefly 
 mentioned circumstances of His hastened Burial ! How well an 
 expositor Hlce Meyer, who never fails to use this mode of illus- 
 tration in a very telling way, brings at once up before us the 
 
 * See the remarkably interesting de- 
 scription in Dr. Thomson's ' The Land 
 and the Book,' vol. ii., p. 32. 
 
 t See Thomson, ' The Laud and the 
 Book,' vol. ii., p. 33 seq. 
 
432 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 scene and cii-cmnstance of the healing of the paralytic ! How 
 the narrative gains in freshness and interest ; how much nearer 
 we seem brought to the past ! Till we made use of this form of 
 illustration, the events of the Gospel histoiy, to use the words of 
 a popular writer when commenting on this very subject, are 
 almost regarded as if they had taken place in heaven : now they 
 seem, as they truly were, done on tliis very work-day earth we 
 tread on, under cu-cumstances which the mind can be brought 
 fully to realize, and amid scenes which, if the bodily eye has 
 not beheld, the imagination can readily depict to itself when 
 stimulated and quickened by the narrative of the graphic ob- 
 server. The real and vital effect that is thus produced on the 
 heart, — especially of the young, — the positive iacrease to our 
 faith that is supplied by this mode of illustration, has been far 
 too much undervalued by the modern interpreter. 
 
 A third rule of very great importance, and of a very "vnde 
 range of application, may be stated as follov/s : — Develop and 
 enuticiate the meaning under the limitations assigned hy the context, 
 or, in other words, Interpret contextually. 
 
 The value of tliis rule and its true and real importance will 
 be sensibly felt in all the various forms of applying Scriptm-e, 
 and giving its doctrines or precepts their true and proper signi- 
 ficance. As we have already remarked, the present rule has 
 rather more to do with the spirit and general sentiment of the 
 passage than with the immediate elucidation of the letter. Its 
 application, however, is extremely varied and extensive. In 
 really numberless cases we have notliing to guide us in our de- 
 cLsions except the connexion and the general aspect of the pas- 
 sage. Whenever we are in difticulty as to the justice or perti- 
 nence of a dedu(;tion, or find, as we often do find, that gTam- 
 matical considerations leave us in a state of uncertaiuty, the 
 context is that which acts as the final arbiter. Our ride has thus 
 two gTeat uses, — the one on the negative side, the other on the 
 affirmative. Under the first aspect, it serves to restrain improper 
 deductions or applications ; under the second, it helps in de- 
 ciding between two or more competing inter2)retations, each 
 supposed to be gi-ammatically tenable. We \\-ill give a few ex- 
 amples of its use and application in both cases. To take a 
 first instance, is it often that a text has been considered as more 
 thorouglily inclusive in its application than the latter part of 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTUEE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION, 433 
 
 Eom. xiv. 23 (" for whatsoever is not of faith is sin ") ? Is there 
 any text that in certain controversies is more frequently ap- 
 pealed to as final and absolute ? The mere English reader sees 
 in the very argumentative mode in which the words are intro- 
 duced, a strong confirmation of the axiomatic character of the 
 \vords, and estimates their force, and extends their application 
 accordingly. The inaccuracy of the translation of the particle 
 (Se) that connects the words with what precedes seems to make 
 certain what might otherwise have appeared doubtful, and the 
 clause is used without hesitation in its full and unlimited force. 
 On the exact extent of the application of such a statement, it 
 may not be easy, nor indeed are we called upon, to express any 
 very definite opinion ; but with regard to its plain, primary, and 
 general meaning, we can scarcely be in difficidty or hesitation. 
 AVhen we look back at the context and consider the subject- 
 matter, we may surely say, without fear of contradiction, that 
 the words in the passage before us were not meant to be ap- 
 plied to every imaginable case, but to be restricted to scruples 
 or cases of conscience that bear some analogy to the instances 
 which the Apostle is discussing. Take, again, on the other side, 
 such a text as Phil. ii. 12. The concluding clause is doubtless 
 most useful as a corrective to the many unlicensed estimates of 
 the course of the Divine procedure in man's salvation, but to 
 dwell upon such a text as in any degree ftivouring the idea 
 that, in the fullest sense of the words, our salvation is in our 
 own hands, is simply to ignore the important fact that the next 
 verse supplies the confirmatory ground (yap) of the command, 
 by stating that it is God that supplies both the wiQ and the 
 energy. To take a last instance : Can anything really be more 
 unreasonable than what has been lately said about our practical 
 neglect of certain commands given by our Lord, especially such 
 a command as Matt. v. 34 ? If we look only at the verse by 
 itself, dislocated from the context, it might reasonably be 
 tliought to be a command wliich was designed to include every 
 form of adjuration, judicial or otherwise. When, however, we 
 look at the verse in its proper connexion, the limitation becomes 
 apparent, — "Ecrrtu Be 6 X0709 v/icoy, Nat vai, Ov ov (ver. 37). 
 ,Sm-ely, without any casuistry or subtlety, these last words, with 
 their plainly implied reference to general life and conversation, 
 may be rightly urged by the interpreter as showing the true and 
 
 2 p 
 
434 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 real aspects of the prohibition, and may exempt the Saviour 
 from the charge of having, by an acceptance of the form of ad- 
 juration used by Caiaphas (Xv etTra?, Matt. xxvi. G4), practically 
 violated Ilis own command.* 
 
 To exemplify the second aspect of the rule, we may take 
 almost any disputed text that suggests itself to the memory, and 
 we shall at once see the use and application of the rule. Let 
 us take, for instance, the contested words Bi,a t^9 TeKvo<yovia<i, 
 1 Tim. ii. 15. Here we have at least two competing transla- 
 tions : the one wliich gives the substantive a somewhat vague 
 but still plausible application, the other which connects it with 
 the great Promise. The article, especially when thus present 
 after a preposition, throws some weight in the scale ; the con- 
 text, in which the allusion is specially to Gen. iii., and to the 
 circumstances of woman's first transgression, seems to decide the 
 question. So, again, to take another example out of the same 
 Epistle, it has long been doubted whether the command in 
 ch. V. 22, refers to Ordination or to Absolution. In favour of 
 the former there is a very general consent among the oldest and 
 best interpreters, and much may be urged in its favour ; when, 
 however, we carefully consider the context, the preponderance 
 seems so much on the side of the latter, that, in spite of the 
 amount of authority on the other side, we shall perhaps find it 
 difficult to resist coming to the decision to which a due obser- 
 vance of the rule of contextual interpretation seems certainly to 
 lead us. To take a last instance : the exact meaning of the 
 formula SoKLfid^etv ra Siacfiepovra, used on two occasions by St. 
 Paul (Rom. ii. 18, Phil. i. 10), has always been considered very 
 doubtful, owin f? to the differences of meanino; which each of the 
 two verbs will fiiirly admit of. As far as lexical usage goes, the 
 words may be understood to imj)ly a discrimmation between 
 things that are different, or a proving, and thence approval, of 
 Avhat is excellent. Which meaning are we to adopt ? In the fii'st 
 passage where the words are used we have but little to guide us 
 either way ; but in Phil. i. 9, the prayer for an increase of love 
 in knowledge and moral perception expressed in the preceding 
 verse seems to decide us in favour- of the latter view,— love beint; 
 
 * Sec Arcliduacon France, 'The Example of Cbrist and Service of Cbrist,' 
 p. 10i>. 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION". 435 
 
 more naturally shown in approval of what is excellent, and so 
 Avorthy of love, than in a mere discrimination between elements 
 or principles that involve distinctions or degrees of difference. 
 
 We now come to the fourth rule, which, as the very terms 
 in which it is expressed will sufficiently show, is of an importance 
 not inferior to that of any one of those which have preceded. 
 It may be thus expressed: — In every passage elicit the full signi- 
 ficance of all details. 
 
 The rule seems to speak for itself. Under one aspect it bears 
 a kind of supplemental relation to the first and second rules ; 
 under another it will be found to assist in applications of the 
 third rule, as being frequently concerned with the meanings of 
 connecting particles, and so with the contextual relations of the 
 passage, and its general logical or liistorical di-ift. It thus, 
 though at first sight a mere rule of detail and of the letter, has 
 much to do with the spirit of the passage, and will be found emi- 
 nently usefid in suggesting deductions. As the third rule served 
 to regulate the applications of Scripture, so this fourth rule will 
 be found to have much to do with the incidental inferences which 
 may be drawn from it. Further comments seem unnecessary. 
 Let this one remark, however, be made, — that the rule, besides 
 being obviously a rule of common sense, is really, in the case of 
 the Scriptm-e, a rule of necessity and duty. If we believe the ~ 
 Scripture to be inspired of God, then it surely follows that we 
 must never rest satisfied till we have elicited the fullest and most 
 complete significance of every item of the heavenly Eevelation 
 thus mercifully vouchsafed to us. It becomes positive unfaith- 
 fulness not to dwell upon every clause, every word, every par- 
 ticle, if we have any real and heart-whole belief that what we 
 are permitted to read are indeed, as they were rightly termed 
 by an Apostolical Father, "the true sayings of the Holy Ghost." 
 It is not that we are hampered with any theory of verbal or •*' 
 mechanical mspiration ; it is not that we completely sympathize 
 with the somewhat restricted view (noble, however, in its very 
 restrictedness) of a great Biblical critic* of om- own day, that 
 every individual word of Scriptm-e is written by the very finger 
 of God; it is simply because we know that in every case words'' 
 are the appointed media of ideas and sentiments, and believe, in 
 
 Dr. TregcUes, Preface to ' The Book of Revelation. 
 
 2 F 
 
436 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 the case of Scripture, that hoth the ideas are heaven-sent and 
 the sentiments inspired. Knowing this, and belie^'ing this, can 
 we deem it otherwise than our highest duty and privilege to ex- 
 haust the fullest significance of the outward letter, when it con- 
 tains enslu'ined in it an inward spirit thus holy and Divine ? 
 
 To come to examples. The first and largest class of cases 
 which may be alluded to, as exemplifying the value and useful- 
 ness of the rule, are those in which much depends on the true 
 force and meaning of the various connecting particles, whether 
 of cause, inference, or consequence. These, however, w^e must 
 be content merely to allude to, as examples of this kind can 
 scarcely be adduced without fuller remarks on the general 
 bearings of the passage than our limits will permit. Let one 
 instance, however, be given, and that in one of the most im- 
 portant of the doctrinal passages of the New Testament, — Phil, 
 ii. 6. Here it is scarcely too much to say tliat the interpretation 
 turns mainly on the proper recognition of the use and force 
 of aWa when following a negative, and on the remembrance 
 that in such cases it marks a full and clear antithesis between 
 two members of a clause, " not this — hut that." Apply this 
 to the passage before us, and we see that the Avords ou% apnay- 
 fiov rjryijaaTo k. t. X. must be understood to convey some idea 
 distinctly antithetical to aXka eavrov eicev(0(Te, and that no in- 
 terpretation can be safely regarded as admissible in which this 
 condition is not fully satisfied. Let tliis one example be suffi- 
 cient ; but let it carry with it both a suggestion and a protest : 
 a suggestion, that in many a contested passage similar methods 
 of grammatical generalization may be applied with equal sim- 
 plicity and success ; and a protest against mere assumptions that 
 the particles of the New Testament can ever be safely neglected, 
 or quietly cUsposcd of as mere " excrescences " of a vitiated 
 style. 
 
 A second and large class of instances to which the rule 
 applies, are passages in which simple and comparatively insigni- 
 ficant details are found, when properly considered, to supply 
 some fact of real historical interest. The Gospels, especially, 
 supply us w^ith a vast list of striking and suggestive examples. 
 To name only a few. Of what importance, liistorically considered, 
 is the sim[)le addition of the word 'lepouaaXrjfj, in Luke v. 17, as 
 showing the quarter whence the spies came, and marking, 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 437 
 
 throughout this portion of the narrative, that most of the 
 charges and macliinations came, not from natives of Galilee, 
 but from emissaries from a hostile centre! What a picture 
 does the rjv Trpodycov avTov<i "of Mark x. 32 present to us of 
 the Lord's bearing and attitude in tliis His last jom-ney, and 
 how fully it explains the idafi^ovvro Avhicli follows! How 
 exj^ressive is the single word KaOrjfievav (Matt, xxvii. 61) in 
 the narrative of the Lord's burial, as depicting the stupefying 
 grief that left others to do what the sitters-by might in part have 
 shared in ! How full of wondrous significance is the notice of the 
 state of the abandoned gTave-clothes in the rock-hewn sepulchre 
 (John XX, 7) ! what mystery is there in the recorded position 
 and attitude of the heavenly watchers (ver. 12) ! What a real 
 force there is in the simple numeral in the record of the two 
 mites which the widow cast into the treasury ! she might have 
 given one (in spite of what Schoettgen says to the contrary) ; she 
 gave her all. How the frightful ea of the demoniac (Luke iv. 
 34) tells almost pictorially of the horror and recoil which was 
 ever felt by the spirits of darkness when they came in proximity 
 to oiu- Saviom- (comp. Matt. viii. 29 ; Mark i, 23, v. 7 ; Luke 
 viii. 28), and what hght and interest it throws upon the koI IScdv 
 K. T. \. of Mark ix. 20 in the case of the demoniac boy ! Again, of 
 what real importance is the simple iropevOeh both in 1 Peter 
 iii. 19 and 22 ! How it hints at a literal and local descent 
 in one case, and how it enables us to cite an Apostle as attesting 
 the literal and local ascent in the other ! When we combine the 
 latter with the dve^epero of Luke xxiv. 51 (a passage undoubtedly 
 genuine), and pause to mark the tense, can we share in any of 
 the modern difficulties that have been felt about the actual, and 
 so to say material, nature of the heavenly mystery of the Lord's 
 Ascension ? 
 
 A^'^e pause, but only to pass onward by a very slight transition 
 to a tliird class of passages in which important deductions may 
 be made from details which an ordinary reader might think of 
 the most trivial or accidental natm-e. Who, for instance, would 
 take much notice of the order in which certain provinces are 
 enumerated in 1 Peter i. 1 ? and yet, from the general direction 
 the order involves (East to West), the locahty of the writer has 
 been surmised at, and an item suppUed toward settling the 
 geographical question in chap. v. 13 of the same Epistle. Who, 
 
438 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 again, would be likely to pause much on the fact that Samaria 
 was placed in order before Galilee in Luke xvii. 11? and yet, 
 uidess we adopt a very unnatural explanation of the passage^ the 
 order may be considered as placing the verse in connexion with 
 John xi. 54, and as pointing to the interesting fact that the 
 last journey of our Lord was a kind of farewell-circuit, which, 
 beginning from Epliraim, extended through Samaria, Galilee, 
 and Pertea, and terminated at Bethany and Jerusalem. Few 
 perhaps would at first sight be inclined to pause long on the 
 words ip')(p[ji€vo<i diro dypov used both by St. Mark (ch. xv. 21), 
 and St. Luke (ch. xxiii. 26) in reference to Simon of Gyrene ; 
 and yet they supply some ground for di-amng the inference 
 that, in the earlier part of the day referred to, field-work had 
 been done, and consequently that it was not Nisan 15, but 
 Nisan 14, and that thus, even according to the Sjmoptical 
 Evangehsts, the Lord celebrated the Last Supper on the day 
 preceding the legal Passover. Again, would not the term 
 "green grass" (Mark vi. 39) seem to imply but little? and yet 
 this specification of the gi-aphic Evangelist exactly harmonizes 
 with what we learn from another Evangelist (John vi. 4), viz., 
 that the time was spring, and fmlher renders the supposition 
 that the rich plain at the north-eastern corner of the lake of 
 Gennesareth was the scene of the Feeding of the Five thousand 
 in every respect worthy of attention. Lastly, the agitated 
 words of Mary Magdalene to St. Peter (Johii xx. 2) might be 
 thought of very little use in helping to decide between conflicting 
 views on the harmony of this portion of the narrative : yet from 
 the plural otSafxev, when compared with ol8a, ver. 13, we seem 
 justified in drawing the important inference that though St. 
 John only specifies Mary Magdalene as having gone to the 
 tomb, he was nevertheless perfectly well aware, that, even as 
 she herself implies, there were others who went with her to 
 do honour to the Holy Body. 
 
 Our lour rules of interpretation have now at length been 
 stated and illusti'atcd. That they are important, and of con- 
 siderable practical use, will perhaps have now been made plain 
 by the examples which have been adduced. From these we 
 shall probably have perceived that the rules have not only their 
 positive but their negative uses; and that, while tlie first two 
 rules are serviceable ui tending to ensure precision and stimulate 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 439 
 
 researcli, tlie second and third are no less useful in restraining 
 })rejudice, and checking that impatient and over-hasty method 
 of reading the Scripture which will not pause to seek in the 
 text for the associations that are really to be found there. 
 Further, the rules proposed have apparently the merit of being 
 simple and obvious. They involve no refinements, and may be 
 expressed in very few words : all the four being, in fact, reducible 
 to one general canon — Interpret grammatically, historically, con- 
 tcxtuallyf and minutely. 
 
 But the real point of interest has yet to be discussed. „ 
 
 On carefully considering the nature and characteristics of 
 the above rules, it must be plain to the thoughtful reader that, 
 though useful and adequate exponents of the grammatical and 
 iiistorical method of interpreting Scripture, they are still rules 
 that might be applied with nearly equal success to the inter- 
 pretation of any other collection of ancient documents. There ^^ 
 is nothing in any one of them that makes it especially a rule , 
 of mterpreting Scripture. We have really to a certain extent " 
 been agreeing to interpret Scripture like any other book. It 
 is true that Ave have advocated a greater pmictiliousness than 
 would be thought necessary even for interpreting Plato or 
 Aristotle ; it is true that we have pleaded for a minuteness of 
 attention to detail, which in the case of an ordinary Greek 
 writer would be tiresome and pedantic ; still there is plainly no 
 feature in any one of the rules that can fairly be considered as 
 of such an unique character as we should expect to find in the 
 rides for the interpretation of an unique book ; and, if our 
 premises are right that Scriptm-e is really unlike any other 
 })Ook in numerous points, we should certainly expect to find in 
 numerous points that our present rules are insufficient and 
 incomplete. 
 
 And so we find them. 
 
 There are at least three large classes of passages in which " 
 they fail ui ascertaining for us the true mind of Scriptm-e ; and 
 these very faUm-es, it will be observed, force upon us additional 
 rules, gradually more and more of an unique character, till we 
 find ourselves at last frankly accepting the yet lackmg general 
 rule of true Scriptural interpretation. But let us not anticipate. 
 We have said there are at least thi-ee classes of passages for 
 wliich the above rules are not sufficient. These may be defined 
 
440 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 roiiglily, as (1) passages of general difficulty, where the context 
 gives us no means of deciding between two or more competing 
 translations, of equal correctness in point of logic or grammar ; 
 (2) passages of doctrinal difficulty, where either the tenor of the 
 declaration is doubtful, or where opposing deductions have been 
 made as to the doctrine actually conveyed ; (3) passages of what 
 may be termed theological difficulty, i. e. where the fact specified 
 or the principle referred to involves mysterious relations between 
 things human and Divine which are at best very imperfectly 
 known to us. In all these tlrree cases, especially the two last, 
 the rules we have discussed, though of the greatest use in 
 clearing away preliminary difficulties, often leave the main 
 difficulty untouched. Let us illustrate this by a few examples, 
 and feel out by degrees for the further rule or rules that are 
 still needed for our gTudance. 
 
 (1.) Let us take for our first example a clause from a passage 
 of general difficulty, and indisputably of great importance, the 
 opening verses of St. Paul's Epistle to the Ephesians. In the 
 thu-d verse much turns on the exact meaning of the peculiar 
 term ev rot? eirovpavloi'i, and (to narrow the question by 
 leaving unnoticed obviously untenable interpretations) on a 
 decision of the question, — whether, with the Greek expositors, 
 we are to give the words an ethical reference, or whether, Avith 
 the Oriental versions, we are to conceive the words only to refer 
 to locality. The context does not seem definitely to favour 
 either view ; and grammatical considerations, it is almost unneces- 
 sary to add, leave the matter equally undecided. In other 
 words, our first and tliii'd rules, on which, in all cases of local 
 difficulty, we almost wholly rely, here fail to guide us. How 
 then are we to decide ? If we turn to the best modern commen- 
 taries we shall find, and rightly find, that the local meaning is 
 now very generally adopted, such seeming certainly to be the 
 meaning in the other passages in the Epistle (ch. i. 20, ii. 6, iii. 
 10, vi. 12) where the formula occurs. In a word the usus scri- 
 bendi of tlie author has decided the question. . . The meaning 
 of the difficult and similarly ambiguous expression a-TOLx^la tov 
 KocTfiov (Gal. iv. 3) is usually decided, though conversely, on 
 the same principle ; a comparison of the passage with Col. ii. 8, 
 20 seeming to cause the arguments in favom" of the etliicnl 
 meaning (rudimentary religious teaching of a non-Christ iuu 
 
Essay IX.] SCEIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 441 
 
 character) decidedly to preponderate. . . Somewhat similar prin- 
 ciples are used in deciding on the meaning of the doubtful irapa- 
 6i]K7]v (Bee. wapatcaradrjKnqv) in 1 Tim. vi. 20 compared with 
 2 Tim, i. 12, 14. . . In a much more difficult passage to which 
 we have already alluded, Col. ii. 15, a great part of the obscm-ity 
 rests on the first clause, and especially on the meaning of the 
 word aTreKhva-dfievo^. In spite of the contextual argument that 
 may be drawn from the meaning of the associated participle 
 Opi,a/ji^evaa<i, the translation of the Vulgate (' exspolians ') and 
 indeed of our own Authorized Version, is now commonly given 
 up by careful scholars in favour of the more grammatically 
 accurate, but certainly at first sight less intelligible " exueiis 
 se " of the Claromontane and Coptic Versions. What has led to 
 this decision ? To a certain extent grammatical precision, but 
 mainly the undoubted use of the word by the Apostle a few verses 
 later (Col. iii. 9) in the second of the two senses just specified. 
 
 But the examples above aUuded to have had mainly to do 
 with verbal difficulties. Exactly the same, however, might be 
 shown in cases of difficulties in the sentiment conveyed. Of tliis 
 let 1 Pet. iii. 19 and ch. iv. 6 be briefly specified as examples. 
 They are sister-texts, and so clearly allude to a kindred mystery, 
 that no interpreter of the one passage Avould fail to refer to the 
 other and be guided by it, as supplying him with the most natural 
 and indeed authoritative illustration. If, for example, he felt 
 swayed by the local term iropevOeU in the first passage, he would 
 probably find much difficulty in believing that the term veKpoh 
 in the second passage was to be referred to the spiritually dead, 
 those " dead in trespasses and sins " (Eph. ii. 1), rather than to 
 the dead in the ordinary and physical meaning of the term. If 
 one passage has a definite and local reference, so apparently 
 has the other. The same may be said of the excessively diffi- 
 cult passages Col. i. 19 and ch. ii; 9, the latter of which supplies 
 the only authoritative hint for the translation of the former. 
 
 Now to what do aU these examples point but to this, — the 
 admission that difficulties, even of a very serious natm-e, are 
 often to be removed by attending to the usus scribendi of the 
 author ; or, in other words, the plain and serviceable rule 
 emerges to view, — Let the writer interpret himself. 
 
 But it will certaiidy be said, this is exactly what is or ought 
 to be done in the case of any other writer whose precise meaning 
 
442 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 we wished to ascertain. True ; but the difference of the subject- 
 matter makes the two cases really very far from identical. In 
 the one case the A\Titer may be dealing wiih subjects in \^hich 
 the assumption of a regular aiid consistent way of expressing 
 himself in reference to tliem may be deemed perfectly reasonable 
 and natural. In the other case, the assumption really amounts 
 to nearly as much as this, — the expression of a conviction, that 
 in discussing subjects often transcending human faculties, and in 
 communicating the mysteries of a revelation from God, the writer 
 is consistent with himself. The rule above-mentioned, in the 
 case of one of the New Testament writers, is really little less 
 than an express recognition of a general and pervading inspira- 
 tion, — an influence which, contrary to what might have been 
 looked for in the case of a writer on subjects above man's natural 
 powers, kept the writer always in harmony Avith himself, and his 
 words always self-explanatory and consistent. 
 
 (2.) But, to pass onward, let us next observe what amplifica- 
 tions of the rule are suggested by examples of the second class 
 of Scriptural difficulties. Let us begin with a passage of very 
 great difficulty, principally of a doctrinal nature, and one in 
 which interpreters have arrived at widely different results, — the 
 description of the Man of Sin in 2 Thess. ii. 3 seq. Here no 
 interpreter would probably fail to refer to the parallel sujiplied 
 by Daniel (ch. xi. 36 seq.), on the one hand, and to the descrip- 
 tion of the characteristics of Antichi-ist as given by St. John in 
 liis first Epistle (ch. ii. 22, iv. 3 seq.), on the other. The expo- 
 sitor would i;i fact seek for his most trustworthy elucidation of 
 the passage before him in two books of Scripture written by two 
 authors, a Prophet and an Evangelist, between whose dates 
 there was probably nearly as great an interval as 600 years. 
 Does not this pomt to a tacit amplification of the preceding rule 
 and does it not, in effect, amount to this, — W7iere possible, let 
 /Scripture interpret itself, or, in other words. Interpret according 
 to the analogy of Scripture ? 
 
 If this bo stated fairly and correctly, is it not clear that the 
 assumptions that were practically involved in the former rule, 
 Let the writer interpret himself, become still more significant and 
 suggestive ? According to the obvious tenor of^ the latter rule, 
 Scripture appears tacitly to be recognized as an organized and 
 harmonious whole, all parts of which are so quickened by the 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 443 
 
 same life and animated by the same Spirit, that no sentiment of 
 any one of the Sacred Writers can ever receive a more con- 
 vincing and trustworthy interpretation than that wliich is sup- 
 plied by the sentiments or expressions of another. This, properly 
 considered, practically amounts to an admission of the inspiration 
 of Scripture of the most clear and decided kind. 
 
 But let us take yet one step further, and consider the inter- 
 pretation of a clause in another passage of doctrinal difficulty 
 which all will agree in deeming of the most profound importance. 
 What is the true meaning of the words 7rp<oTOTo/co? Trda-rj^ 
 KTia-eoyf (Col. i. 15) in their reference to the Eternal Son? 
 Here we have two interpretations, widely different, yet both 
 grammatically tenable, and one (the second) considered merely 
 with regard to grammar, perhaps even obvious and plausible. 
 According to the one interpretation, our Lord would be repre- 
 sented as " begotten before every creature," and the reference 
 would be to the eternal generation of Christ ; according to the 
 other, it would be " first-begotten of every creature," or, as in the 
 Syriac, " of all creatm-es," — prior to them in origin, yet a created 
 being like themselves. Wliich view are Ave to take ? Grammar 
 is silent, the context difficult and not decisive (the following iv 
 avTw is probably not "by Him"), the reasoning deep and 
 mysterious. The answer of every calm and attentive reader of 
 Scrip tm-e will probably be promptly given, — " Undoubtedly the 
 former." But why ? '' Because the whole tenor of Scripture is 
 opposed to the latter view." But how can this tenor of Scripture 
 be confidently stated ? on what does the assertion rest ? Is it 
 the result of actual and rigorous investigation of the whole of 
 Scriptm-e, or mere reliance on the opinion of the safe side? 
 "No, neither the one nor the other." Then on what is the 
 adoption of the former of the two views really based ? " On the 
 teaching of the Creeds, as the authoritative expositions of the 
 true tenor of Scriptui'e." In other words, the example has at 
 last led us to the full expression of the rule that has been 
 gradually disclosing itself. Scripture itself has at length taught 
 us, by the gentle leading of its own difficulties, the true and vital 
 principle of all really Scriptural exegesis, — Interp7-et according 
 to the analogy of Faith. 
 
 And this is the rule. This the rule — carped at, as it has been, 
 by the sceptical, disregarded by the self-confident, violated by 
 
444 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 party bias, sliglited by the disloyal, and derided by the profane — 
 to which we have at last come, almost by an inductive process, 
 and with the aid of which, in conjunction with preceding rules, 
 we may even venture to draw near to the tliird class of difficul- 
 ties, — the great and the deep things of God, 
 
 (3.) Into these, however, we cannot now even attempt to enter. 
 Our limits wholly preclude us from discussing passages of which 
 each would require not only a lengthened consideration of the 
 context, but also the introduction of details whicli would be un- 
 suitable in a general essay like the present. To show, however, 
 what class of passages Ave are alluding to, we will pause simply 
 to specify a few that now suggest themselves, and may partly 
 justify the distinctions above laid down. In addition to 1 Pet. iii. 
 19 and others, above alluded to, which perhaps may seem to 
 belong more exactly to the present class, let us specify Matt, 
 xxvi, 29, xxvii. 52 ; Mark xiii, 32 ; Luke x. 18 ; John xxi. 22 ; 
 Eom. viii. 19 seq., 26, ix. 18 seq. ; 1 Cor. iii. 13, vi. 3, xv. 28 seq. ; 
 2 Cor, V, 2 seq., xii, 2 seq. ; Eph. i. 12, 23, ii, 2 ; Col, i. 19, 20, 24 ; 
 1 Thess, iv. 15 seq. ; Heb, iv. 12, vi, 4 ; 2 Pet, ii, 4, iii, 10 ; Jude 6, 
 9 ; and, it is necessary to add, the greater part of the Book of 
 Kevelation. 
 
 On one of these passages, however, and on one only, let us 
 make a passing comment, and that because the passage has been 
 more than once alluded to as a corrective and counterpoise to 
 what are termed liigh views of the Divinity of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ, The passage is Mark xiii. 32, the words of wliich, 
 whether considered in reference to the occasion or to the con- 
 text, merit, indeed, some higher description than " simple and 
 touching," and are, as they have alvy^ays been deemed to be, among 
 the most deep and solemn that have ever been uttered in the 
 ears of man. Yet if we interpret them according to the analogy 
 of Faith, and, let us not fail to add, according to the very im- 
 plied limitations of the passage itself, we can feel no difficulty as 
 to their true meaning. In the very silent logic of the associated 
 terms, the ouSe/?, the oi ayyeXot ol Iv ovpavw, we feel a kind of 
 implied circumscription, which seems to prepare us for the sense 
 in which we are to understand the culminating ov^e 6 vm, " none 
 in earth, none in heaven, nay not even the Son," in so far as He 
 shares any element in common with either, in so far as He 
 vouchsafes to assume finiteness and corporeity. Wliat we in- 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 445 
 
 stinctively surmise as we read the passage, the analogy of Scrip- 
 ture and Faith assures us of, — that when the Lord thus spake to 
 His foiu- chosen Apostles, He does virtually assure us that He was 
 so truly man, that when He assumed that natm-e He assumed it 
 Avith all its limitations, and that in that natm-e He vouchsafed to 
 know not what as God He had known from everlasting. Why 
 are we to be deterred from this ancient interpretation, why are 
 we to obelize the words with Ambrose,* or regard them as a con- 
 ventional statement with Augustine,-|- when they admit of an 
 explanation so simple, and so consonant with all that we are told 
 of Him who vouchsafed not only to be incarnate, but to increase 
 in "Wisdom, and to be a veritable sharer in all the sinless imper- 
 fections of humanity ? Is there really any greater difficulty in 
 such a passage than in John xi. 33, 35, where we are told that 
 those holy cheeks were still wet with human tears while the loud 
 voice was crying, " Lazarus, come forth ! " 
 
 13. Tliis portion of om* subject has thus at length come to its 
 close. The four rules of interpreting Scriptm-e have received the 
 supplement they lacked. The canon which embraced them has 
 now the adchtion necessary to make it applicable to those passages 
 where the difficulties are of a doctrinal nature, and, fiu'ther, even 
 to those still deeper passages where the difficulties arise from the 
 profound natm-e of the revelation, and from the allusions such 
 passages may contain to mysteries beyond our full po\^■ers of 
 comprehension. Scripture interpretation is now not merely to be 
 grammatical, historical, contextual, and minute, but it is to be 
 also — according to the analogy of Faith. 
 
 Against such a rule, we are well aware, many an arg-ument 
 will be urged, many an exception will be taken. We have been 
 told, and we shall often be told-, again, that to interpret by the 
 Nicene or the Athanasian Creed is not only to mar the simplicity 
 of Scripture, by bringing it in contact with what is artificial and 
 technical, but consciously to involve ourselves in a plain and 
 patent anachronism. 
 
 To such mere assertions, for mere assertions they really are, it 
 is not-necessary, after what has been said, to return any formal 
 answer. It may be enough to make the two following remarks, 
 and with them this portion of the subject shall be concluded : — 
 
 ' De Fide/ v. 16 (193;. f ' I>e Gencsi contr. Mauicli," i. 22 ^34). 
 
446 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay IX. 
 
 First, tlie charge of anachronism may be readily disposed of by 
 observing- that, in thus interpreting Scripture, we are really in- 
 terpreting it by what, in a certain sense, is anterior to it, viz. 
 the principles of that faith of which Scripture is itself the expo- 
 nent. Ante mare jiuctus. What right have we to assume that 
 all the early Clii'istian preaching was only the outpouring of 
 " attachment to a recently departed fi-iend and Lord " ? With 
 what justice can we say that the whole of Christianity was con- 
 tained in the words, " Believe in the Lord Jesus Christ, and 
 thou mayst be saved," when, even in the very earliest of an 
 Apostle's letters, there seems satisfactory evidence (comp, 1 Thess. 
 v. 1, 2 Thess. ii. 5) that deeper things were communicated orally 
 to the earliest Christian converts than were afterwards committed 
 to writing? Most justly, then, has it been observed that, when 
 we thus appeal to the principles of the faith for our guidance in 
 expounding Scriptural difficulty, we are interpreting, not by 
 " the result of tlu-ee or four centuries of controversy,'^ but by 
 ajipeals to fixed principles of Christian doctrine, the greater part 
 of wliich were known, behoved, and acted on in the very earliest 
 age of the Gospel.* In succeeding centuries these fundamental 
 truths may have been couched in terms of greater scientific ex- 
 actness ; the various controversies of the times may have caused 
 the Church to put forth her doctrines in forms more technically 
 accurate or more logically precise, but the substance was the 
 same from the very first, and it is on that substance that our 
 interpretation of Scripture is really based, it is to that essential 
 truth of which the Church is a pillar, that we make our natural 
 and reasonable appeal. 
 
 The second remark is this, that those who are much opposed 
 to us in tlieir estimate of the character and inspiration of Scrip- 
 ture, really in effect admit the principle Ave are contending for. 
 To say nothing of the occurrence on their pages of such terms 
 as " the analogy of Scripture," when the subject is the best mode 
 of interpretmg it, or of the silent but important admission that 
 the principle which " enables us to apply the words of Clu-ist 
 and His Apostles" is neither more nor less than "the analogy 
 of faith,"t — to pass overall these tacit and almost instinctive re- 
 cognitions of the one great truth (1 Tim. iii. 15), from which all 
 
 * See MoIxtIv, Preface to ' Sermons 
 on the Befititiules ' p. Iii. .'"'7., where 
 this argument ih put ibrwanl with j^reiit 
 
 clearness and force. 
 
 t See 'Ebsuyd aud Reviews," p. 416. 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERRRETATION. 447 
 
 that lias been said above comes by way of legitimate deduction, 
 let us merely take tlie rule which others have laid down, and 
 fairly consider whether the recommendation to "interpret Scrip- 
 ture from itself" is not in effect and substance plainly identical 
 with much that has been already advocated in these pages. 
 Such a rule, in the first place, involves the very important 
 assumption which we have above alluded to, viz., that Scripture 
 is consistent with itself, even when such consistency might be 
 appealed to as a very evidence of its Divine origin ; and in the 
 second place, after every possible limitation — viz., that we are to 
 understand it to mean interpreting " like by like," — such a rule 
 is still, and must remain, based on the recognition of the sound 
 and proper principle that Scriptm-e difficulty must be explained 
 consistently with Scripture truth. Of this truth the Creeds, espe- 
 cially the two shorter, are not only compendious but authoritative 
 abstracts, summarily vouched for by the keeper of our archives and 
 the upholder of their integrity, the CathoHc Chm-ch of Chi'ist. 
 The same authority might justify us in similarly applying much 
 of her own history and traditions as illustrative of Holy Scrip- 
 ture, if even not deserving the title of an aid in its interpreta- 
 tion. It may be sufficient, however, to claim the Creeds as 
 authoritative summaries of Scriptm-e, and so authoritative guides 
 in interpreting Scripture, being in fact themselves the epitome 
 of that from which it has been properly conceded that Scripture 
 ought to be illustrated and ex^jounded. 
 
 §4. 
 
 14. The main department of our subject may now be consi- 
 dered as brought to its natural conclusion. Two portions, however, 
 still remain which require of us a passing notice. They are, in 
 fact, the two extremes between which the portion of the subject 
 on which we have been recently engaged seems to lie midway ; 
 the one relating exclusively to the laws of the letter, the other 
 to the principles of applying the spirit, — in a word, the Grammar 
 of the Sacred Text, on the one hand, and the various practical, 
 applications of the fully-ascertained meaning of that Text on the 
 other. A few words shall be said on each of these portions of 
 our subject, but a few words only, there being by no means that 
 amount of misconception and error in reference to either of 
 these portions of the subject as to that which lies between them. 
 Still a few comments may be profitably made on each. 
 
448 AIDS TO FAITII. [Essay IX. 
 
 Let us speak first of the application of Scripture, as tliis 
 seems most naturally to follow a discussion on the interpretation 
 of it,— application, in fact, being nothing more than interpreta- 
 tion in its ultimate and most extended form. 
 
 The different forms which the application of Scripture may- 
 assume are obviously as many and as diversified as the aspects 
 of Scripture itself. We have already seen that Scripture involves 
 a system of prophecies and types; we have recog-nized, also, 
 that it contains a wide range of double meanings even in simply 
 liistorical passages ; and, lastly, we have found it to be so per- 
 vaded by the Spirit of God, that not only in its sentiments, but 
 sometimes even in its very words and expressions (see above, 
 p. 408), it is found to mvolve a deep and a Divine significance. 
 These tlu-ee characteristics at once lead to tliree corresponding 
 modes of application, on each of which, as being one of the 
 tlu-ee more edifymg and practically useful modes of applying 
 Scripture, a few comments shall be made. 
 
 I. The subject of Prophecy and Typology is, undoubtedly, one of 
 difficulty, and in its practical bearings and expansions still more so. 
 It is extremely difficult to lay down any rules, and yet it is very 
 precarious to attempt such methods of applying Scripture with- 
 out some external guidance. In the case of unfulfilled prophecy, 
 especially, the temptation to indulge in unauthorized specula- 
 tion is often excessive. Uneducated and undisciplined minds 
 are completely carried away by it, and even the more devout and 
 self-restrained frequently give themselves up to sad extravagances 
 in this form of the application of God's Word. The result is, only 
 too often, that better educated and more logical minds, in recoil- 
 ing from what they justly deem unlicensed and preposterous, 
 pass over too much into the other extreme, and deem Prophecy 
 in every form as a subject far too doubtful and dobateable ever 
 to fall within the province of Scripture apphcation. It is, we 
 fear, by no means too much to say, that a great part of the 
 present melancholy scepticism as to Messianic prophecy is due 
 to the almost indignant reaction which has been brought about 
 by the excesses of apocalyptic interpretation. The utmost 
 caution, then, is justly called for. Nay, it perhaps would be 
 well if unfulfilled prophecy were never to be applied to any 
 other purposes than those of general encouragement and conso- 
 lation. We may often be thus made to feel that we are in the 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 449 
 
 midst of a providential dispensation, that tliough our eyes may 
 be liolden as to the relations of contemporaneous events to the 
 future, whether of the Church or of the world, we may yet 
 descry certain bold and broad outlines, certain tendencies and 
 developments, which may make us wend our way onward, 
 thoughtfidly and circumspectly, — wayfarers, who gaze with ever- 
 deepening interest on the contour of the distant hills, even 
 though we cannot clearly distinguish the clustered details of the 
 nearer and separating plain. But though it may thus be \Yise only 
 to notice unfulfilled prophecy in the broadest and most general 
 way, it is far otherwise with appKcations or illustrations derived 
 from what has either obviously received its fidfilment, or, like 
 Deut. xxviii., is so plainly still receiving it, that doubt becomes 
 unreasonable and impossible. In this last case, for instance, the 
 mere existence of such a prophecy has been with reason ap- 
 pealed to as almost sufficient in itself to establish the inspiration 
 of the whole associated Pentateuch. More particularly can 
 every form of Messianic prophecy be dwelt upon by the conscien- 
 tious interpreter. This, indeed, is the loftiest and most blessed 
 application of prophecy, for purposes of edification, that man can 
 make. Hereby, more especially, are we permitted to realize all 
 the deep harmonies between the earlier and the later dispensa- 
 tion. In the hght shed by Messianic prophecy, the two cove- 
 nants seem no longer disunited, but one. The Old Testament as 
 it " telleth of Chi-ist that should come," blends insensibly into 
 the New, that " telleth of Christ that is come,"* until both 
 become recognized as organically connected parts of one Divine 
 whole. The Scripture is at length seen and felt to be what it 
 truly is — one living Book ; one, because pervaded by the holy 
 presence of one ever-blessed Lord ; h\ing, because ever teaching 
 of Him who Himself is the Life, and whose " Life is the light of 
 Men." 
 
 In the case of ti/pes, and all the varied forms of supposed 
 tjTDical relations between the Old and New Testaments, some 
 greater latitude of application may perhaps be permitted. Much, 
 probably, will have to be left to that which must sometimes be 
 the only guide — the " sphitual understanding" (Col. i. 9) of the 
 expounder. Even in such cases, however, it will be found 
 
 Compare Hooker, 'Laws of Eccl. Polity,' 1. 14. 4, vol i., p. 270 (ed. Keble). 
 
 2 G 
 
450 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 desirable to recognize some general fixed principles. Special 
 rules it is never very easy to lay down ; but perhaps it may be 
 said that in tracing out types, the prudent expounder wiU do 
 well to observe, or at any rate conform to, the general spirit of 
 these two rides : First, not positively to assert the existence of 
 typical relations between persons, places, or tilings, unless it 
 shoidd appear, either du-ectly or by reasonable inference, that 
 such relations are recognized in Scripture ; Secondly, even in 
 the case of apparently reasonable inferences from Scripture, not 
 to press the typical allusion unless we have the consent of the 
 best of the earlier expositors. The use and general bearing of 
 each rule shall be briefly exemplified. 
 
 The fii-st ride, it will be easUy seen, will be especially useful 
 in lopping away all those supposed typical meanings which, as 
 we have ah-eady seen, some even of the soundest of the early 
 interpreters were ever discovering even in the simplest incidents 
 of the Old Testament. By this ride, for instance, the mystical 
 or typical meaning assigned to Eahab's scarlet thread, or to 
 Lot's two daughters, old as they may be, and belonging, as these 
 two cases really do, to the sub-apostolic age, must stdl be regarded 
 as at best only precarious fancies. By the same rule, too, many 
 of the exaggerated attitudes of popular typology will become 
 beneficially restrained. While we may enlarge with all con- 
 fidence not only on such undoubted historical types as Adam 
 (Rom. V. 14 ; 1 Cor. xv., 45), or Melchizedec (Heb. vii. 3) of 
 one kind, and the Flood (1 Pet. iii. 21), or the Red Sea (1 Cor. x. 
 2) of another, but even on such clear instances as the rite of 
 circumcision (Col ii. 11), the paschal lamb (1 Cor. v. 7), the 
 functions of the High-priest on the Day of Atonement, and other 
 things alluded to by the author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, 
 we may feel very suspended in our judgment as to such an 
 ancient and, at first sight, plausible type as Egypt and the evil 
 world. The acknowledged typical relations of Canaan and the 
 Christian's heavenly home, and of the Red Sea and Baptism, 
 might seem to throw back some probability on such a relation 
 between the world which the Christian renounces and the place 
 from which Israel was called ; but such a type could never be 
 insisted on : no argument could ever be built upon it, nor could 
 it ever claim to be ranked really higher than an ancient and 
 ingenious lancy. Nay, even such an almost self-evident type as 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 451 
 
 Isaac, with all its startling coiucidences of place and circum- 
 stances (Gen. xxii. G ; John xix. 17), can scarcely be regarded as 
 definitely resting on the authority of Scripture (Heb. xi. 19 does 
 not seem to prove it), but can only justly be regarded as an 
 inference from its general tenor, though, on the other hand, no 
 reasonable expounder in the world could fail to accept it as an 
 example that rests on the instinctive and unanimous consent of 
 the Chm'ch. 
 
 We thus are brouglit to our second rule, and can now see 
 that what otherwise might have seemed superfluous cannot very 
 readily be dispensed with. The united judgment of the earliest 
 and soundest expositors is, we perceive, not wholly to be set 
 aside ; the tradition of the Chm^ch not to be rejected when the 
 inference from Scripture might seem of a doubtful or suspended 
 character. And if the rrde be thus useful m its affirmative, un- 
 doubtedly it is so in its negative aspects, as serving to repress 
 mere conjecture and mgenuity. To conclude with an instance of 
 its negative use, we may allude to an ingenious attempt to con- 
 nect the circumstances mentioued by all the four Evangelists in 
 reference to our Lord and Barabbas, with the sortition in refer- 
 ence to the two goats (Lev. xvi. 5 seq.) on the Day of Atone- 
 ment. At fii'st there seems a strange persuasiveness in the 
 suggested relations of ij\)e to antitype ; nay, there might be 
 thought to be some Scriptural basis in the similar comparisons that 
 are mcUcated or hinted at (comp. ch. xiii. 11, 12) in the Epistle 
 to the Hebre^^•s. The opmion of the early writers here inter- 
 poses a salutary caution. We find that the ceremonies connected 
 with the scape-goat, and the somewhat similar ceremonies in 
 the cleansing of the leper (Lev. xiv. 2 seq.) were almost unani- 
 mously referred almu to Clu'ist,— to Cln-ist, as both dying for us, 
 and, by his Eesurrection, living again for evermore. The cirr 
 cumstances of the case, it was justly argued, reqmi-ed a type 
 wliich, to be complete, must necessarily be two-fold, and which, 
 to be fuUy significant, must present two aspects, as it were, of 
 the same antitypal mystery. If it be admitted that the scape- 
 goat can, by inference, be deemed a Scriptural type of Clmst, 
 it is probable that we shall reject the mgenious parallel, and 
 accept the view taken by the earlier expositors. 
 
 The substance of the preceding remarks is this, — not, by any 
 means, that the typical relations between the Old and New 
 
 2 G 2 
 
452 AIDS TO FAITIL [Essay IX. 
 
 Testaments are few and limited, for it is really probable tbat 
 they are much more numerous and extensive even than they 
 have been supposed to be, but simply that the number of 
 examples of such relations that rest on an undoubted Scriptiu-al 
 basis is not large, and hence that caution is required in pressing 
 as types what cannot actually be proved to be at all more than 
 ingenious and plausible analogies. In a word, we may frequently 
 and beneficially use typology by way of illustration, but it is not 
 often that we can use it as the foundation of an argiunent. 
 
 II. If caution be requii-ed in dealing with types, stiU more so 
 is it necessary in attempting to set forth second meanings in 
 passages, historical or otherwise, which have not been authorita- 
 tively declared to involve them. It is not um-easonable to 
 suppose that the passages which may have further and deeper 
 meanings than appear on the surface are by no means of 
 uncommon occm-rence. In a meditative reading, even of a few 
 chapters, we can scarcely fail to meet with passage after passage 
 which we feel, almost mstinctively, to be fraught with a signi- 
 ficance much beyond that of the mere letter, but in the case of 
 which we can never positively assert the existence of such a 
 meaning, much less state what we deem it to be. In the New 
 Testament, the passages wliich calm and reasonable expositors 
 have adduced as involving second and deeper meanings are 
 probably under ten, and out of these the more plausible, — the 
 reference of the Parable of the Good Samaritan to om- Lord, the 
 reference of John vi. 35 to one Sacrament, and of John xix. 
 34 seq. to both ; and, lastly, the significance of the position of 
 the two thieves (Luke xxiii. 33), — are all so debateable that 
 more perhaps can never be said than this, that they serve to 
 render it presumable that there are many passages which may 
 have second meanings ; not, however, that they substantiate their 
 existence. On such a subject then, no rule can be laid douTi ; 
 this only may be said, that he wlio reads Scripture under tlie 
 persuasion that it often contains depths not yet sounded, and 
 meanmgs not yet ascertained, Avill certainly read it with far 
 gi'eater spiritual profit to himself than he who believes he has 
 fully arrived at the mind of Scriptm-e when ho has made out 
 the mere outward meaning of the letter. The subject involves 
 many curicais details, such as the recurrence of certain numbers 
 {e. g., of " forty " in several incidents botli of the Old and of 
 
Essay IX.] SCRirTUEE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 453 
 
 the New Testaments), and the trace of a supposed mystical 
 economy of times and seasons ; — but mth these the wise and 
 reverent interpreter will never overmuch busy liimself. He may 
 feel and know that God is a God of order, and not of confusion, 
 and he may see much in details in wliich that order seems 
 plainly to be traceable, but he will never seek to prove it by an 
 appeal to facts that may probably have no such relations as those 
 ascribed to them, or by urging principles which aU graver 
 thinkers would not hesitate to pronounce as illusory or unde- 
 monstrable. 
 
 III. The same caution must obviously be displayed in the third 
 form of Scriptural application, — practical deductions from Scrij^- 
 tm-al statements. The very principle on which such a mode of 
 applying Scriptm-e is based, viz. that Scriptm-e is divinely 
 inspu-ed, and that deductions may be safely made from what are 
 thus, without metaphor, the very Oracles of God, alilce indicates 
 the necessity of such caution, and hints at its required amoimt. 
 In all passages, doctrinal or otherwise, in wliich the meaning 
 seems to be clear and unquestionable, deductions obviously may 
 be made of such a kind as to assume almost the aspect of 
 definite and authoritative revelations. In other passages, in 
 which the difficulties are more of what we have termed a theolo- 
 gical character, positive deductions will often be found to be not 
 only precarious, but presumptuous. They may sometimes be 
 permitted for private echfication, being in fact a sort of expanded 
 form of religious meditation, but can rarely or ever be safely 
 pressed upon others, or be profitably di-awn out into systematic 
 developments. 
 
 To illustrate what we mean by an example : ^^e may rightly 
 and properly make some deductions of a definite character from 
 such a passage as 1 Thess. iv. 15-17. There both the plam and 
 distmct statements of the passage, and the certain fact that this 
 was reaUy a definite revelation for definite purposes of Christian 
 comfort (ver. 13, 18), seem to warrant our di-awing inferences 
 and recognizing harmonies with other passages of Scriptm-e 
 which, however strange and mysterious they may appear, are 
 yet to be considered certain and legitimate. We seem to have 
 the fidlest right for assm-ing ourselves that there wUl be a first 
 resm-rection (ver. 16 compared with Eev. xx. 5) in which the 
 elect wiU alone participate, that the rising of the holy dead will 
 
454: AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 precede the assiimptiou of the holy liA^ng, and tliat the latter, 
 after the simiUtude of the Lord's Ascension (x\cts i. 9), robed 
 round by upbearing clouds (eV i/e^eXat?), perchance the mystic 
 chambers of tlie last change (1 Cor. xv. 52), vail leave earth, 
 and rise to meet the Lord in the air. Such statements may 
 seem revolting to the false and morbid spirituahsm of om- times, 
 but they are statements -v^hich the gravest expounders of an 
 earlier day (while traditions of the true meaning of such revela- 
 tions, might yet be lingering in the Church) have not shrunk 
 from putting forward, and wliich may be justly regarded as 
 calm, historical conclusions from a deep but historical passage. 
 
 The case is chfferent with such a passage as Matt. xxvi. 29. 
 Here we may perhaps allow om-selves, with all reverence, to 
 express a humble opinion that the words mai/ allude to some 
 participations in the elements of a new and glorified creation, in 
 which the Lord may vouchsafe to be united with His elect ; but 
 to say more than tliis, to draw any deductions as to the natm-e 
 of the resurrection-body, would obviously be in the highest 
 degree Avild and hazardous. Ecpially rash would it be to di-aw 
 any definite conclusions from such passages as Eph. iii. 9, 10, as 
 to the limits of the knowledge of angels m reference to the 
 mysteries of salvation (comp. 1 Peter i. 12), or of the precise 
 part which these Blessed Sphits take in human affairs from 
 such passages as Matt, xviii. 10, Heb. i. 14, or from the record 
 of such special interpositions as those related in Acts v. 19, x. 
 3, xii. 7, al. Even in passages of a simpler nature, our real 
 ignorance of the relations between the visible and invisible 
 world may prevent our making any positive deductions from 
 such passages as Luke iv. 39, or Mark iv. 39 ; though we can 
 hardly fail gravely to meditate on the strange fact that in one 
 case the seeming recognition of the disease as a hostile potency 
 is certainly where w^e should have least expected it — in the 
 record of a physician, and that in the other the w^arring 
 elements were checked by personifying words, wliich (with every 
 deduction for Oriental forms of speech, or whatever else may 
 be used to dilute plain terms) it does seem someM'hat hazardous 
 to explain away as merely picturesque or rhetorical. Again, to 
 take a last instance, we may feel that in the touching words at 
 the close of Matt. xxvi. 38 (jprjjopeLTe /ler e/xov) some desire, 
 on the part of the Saviour of tlie ^^ orld, for the sympathy in the 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 455 
 
 dread horn- of His agony, of those He loved, is actually tlioiigh 
 mysteriously disclosed. We may muse hereon in adorino- 
 wonder, and feel, perhaps still more freslily, the blessed comfort 
 that flows from such words as Heb. iv. 15, but we forbear 
 applying any such statements to the profound questions con- 
 nected Avith the two Natures, and refuse to see in them anything 
 more than silent but persuasive hurts against the varied assump- 
 tions and specidations of Apollinarian error. 
 
 To gather up all, — if in each of the three cases on which Ave 
 liave dwelt we Avould apply Scripture with profit, let us learn, 
 first, to use all types not Scripturally vouched for, as illustra- 
 tions, and not as supplying arguments ; secondly, to recognize 
 the existence of second meanings, but, except in such cases as 
 inspiration may have revealed them, not to be wise above what 
 is written ; and, lastly, to let om- deductions ever be of a devotional 
 rather than of a definitely doctrinal or liistorical aspect, — to accept 
 them as often tending much to inward comfort and edification, but 
 as rarely adding much to oiu- knoAvledge of the deeper mysteries 
 of Scriptm-e, and never to be so apphed Avithout our incurring 
 the heavy charge of great irreverence and presumption. 
 
 § 5. 
 
 15. One portion of the subject now alone remains to be noticed. 
 We have liitherto been concerned mainly with the general 
 aspects and spirit of the Sacred Volume ; but, as these must ever 
 depend on just recognitions of the laAvs of the letter, Ave avlU 
 make a few concluding comments on the language of Scrip- 
 ture, and on those grammatical principles by Avliich it seems to 
 be ruled and conchtioned. 
 
 Our remarks, hoAA^ever, must be confined simply to the lan- 
 guage of the New Testament. It is for others to speak of the 
 language of the Old Testament, and to state hoAV far our present 
 knoAvledge of the letter of the original is capable of extension or 
 improvement. Some of the remarks that have been abeady 
 made, and perhaps some even of the comments that follow, may 
 admit of partial apphcations to the Old Testament ; but it is clear 
 that the circumstances under Avhich the two parts of the Sacred 
 Volume appear before us, as regards language, are very different, 
 and that but little of what is said in reference to the details of 
 the one can be pertinently applied to the details of the other. 
 
456 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 Independently of all the recognized pliilologioal differences, Ave 
 have, in the case of the Old Testament, a collection of writings 
 which themselves constitute all that deserves the name of the 
 literature of the language ; while m the ease of the New we have 
 a small number of histories and letters wliich only form a very 
 minute, and that too m some respects an exceptional, portion of 
 the general literature of the language in which they are wTitten. 
 Still some broad principles may remain which may perhaps 
 equally apply to the interpretation of the letter in both Testa- 
 ments. It would certainly seem that, much as has of late been 
 done for the study of the Hebrew language, especially in Ger- 
 many, there is still room for a more scientific development of 
 many of the laws by which that ancient language appears to be 
 governed. There is even now, as a reference to any of the more 
 recent commentaries on the books of the Old Testament will 
 clearly show, less linguistic precision, less mastery of details, less 
 recognition of those bye-laws wliich, in every language, but espe- 
 cially in the Semitic, so much regulate special interpretation, 
 less, in a word, of scholarship, as distinguished from learning, 
 than we might have expected from the corresponding advances 
 in the Greek language. Nay, even in what falls more especially 
 under the head of learning, study of the ancient Versions, much 
 is still lacking. Oiu- modern commentaries on books of the Old 
 Testament are herein scarcely, if at all, more advanced than the 
 current commentaries on the New Testament, though in some 
 cases, especially in that of the Syi'iac, and perhaps also of parts 
 of the Arabic Version,* more real benefit, from the afiinities of 
 language, is to be expected from then- use in the Old Testament 
 than in the New. 
 
 16. But, to pass to that with which we are more immediately 
 concerned, — the language of the New Testament, — we may find 
 it convenient first to make a few comments of a general nature 
 relating to the language as viewed in connexion with earlier or 
 contemporary Greek, and then in the second place to append a 
 small list of selected comments on such details of syntax as may 
 seem to require notice or illustration. 
 
 * It is perhaps right to observe that i son supposed to he, derived from the 
 
 nearly all the other Versions of the j Septuagiiit. This, of course, greatly 
 
 Old Testament, except of course the detracts from tlieir value as exegutieal 
 
 Vulgate, are known to be, or with rea- | aids in reading the original. 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 457 
 
 With regard to the general character of the Greek of the 
 New Testament, the estimate commonly formed by modern 
 writers on this subject appears perfectly correct^ viz. that it is 
 neither in every respect classically pm-e on the one hand, nor yet 
 simply and essentially Hebraistic on the other, but that it has for 
 its basis that " common " or " Hellenic dialect " which the con- 
 quests of Alexander and those who succeeded him spread over a 
 great part of the East, and which, from involving a mixture of 
 dialects, and especially of the Macedonian, has sometimes been 
 designated simply by this last-mentioned name. It must not, 
 however, be forgotten that this " common," " Hellenic," or 
 "Macedonian dialect," though undoubtedly the foundation of 
 the Greek of the New Testament, received at least three very 
 important modifications when it became blessed by being the 
 vehicle of the message of salvation to the world at large. In 
 the fh'st place, the writers of the New Testament, though un- 
 doubtedly possessing a very competent knowledge of the Greek 
 language as used and spoken in their own times, must have often 
 tJiought in their native Aramaic, and so unconsciously have 
 imparted that Hebraistic tinge to their language which is 
 undoubtedly to be traced in it. The observation is perfectly 
 correct that the pure Hebraisms of the New Testament are not 
 very numerous, and that they are more of a lexical than a gram- 
 matical character,* stUl it cannot be denied that semi-Hebraisms, 
 or traces of this occasionally tliinking in their own language 
 while they were writing in another, are neitheijno few nor so 
 faint as sometimes has been asserted by -wiiterj' on this subject. 
 No discriminating reader can fail to observe this, especially in 
 the not uncommon tendency to co-ordination, where subordina- 
 tion would have seemed more conformable to the spii-it of the 
 language in which they were writing ; in the striking predomi- 
 nance of the direct over the indirect or oblique form when the 
 words or thoughts of another are referred to ; in the partially 
 redundant uses of pronouns, and even prepositions, and the cor- 
 responding and equally characteristic want of freedom in the 
 uses of the conjunction ; in the comparatively rare occurrence of 
 the optative mood, and yet again in uses of the infinitive (espe- 
 cially in reference to purpose) even more varied than we find 
 
 See Winer, ' Grammatik des Neutest. Sprach.' § 3, p. 26 (ed. 6). 
 
458 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 them in earlier ages of tlie language. All tliis cannot fail to 
 strike the observant reader, and to remiad him how much 
 Leyond the recurrence of simple and definite Hebraisms, hke 
 irpoawirov \afj,/3dveiv, or i^Tjrelv '^v^'iv, the semi-Hebraisms or 
 rather the Aramaic tmge of the New Testament must really be 
 considered to extend.* 
 
 Another general difference between the language of the New 
 Testament and the language of the ordinary Greek writers of 
 the same or even an earlier period, is clearly to be explained by 
 the fact tliat so much of the New Testament is marked, in 
 respect of language, by what may be roughly termed oral cha- 
 racteristics. The Gospels had only assumed the form in which 
 we find them, after some years, at least, of oral delivery. Pro- 
 bably the greater part of the Epistles, and certainly by far the 
 greater part of those which came from St. Paul, were AVTitten 
 down from dictatL;n. Even in the book (the Acts) which more 
 nearly approaches formal history than any of the others, the 
 speeches are not only numerous, but to all appearance faithful 
 recitals of words actually spoken. The oral element thus per- 
 vades the Avhole Sacred Volume, and, on the one hand, may 
 justly be considered as contributing in a very great degree to that 
 combined simplicity and force which is so observable in the nar- 
 rative portions, and, on the other hand, is equally clearly to be 
 seen and felt in the longer sentences, suspended structures, and 
 relapses to a nominative which we so often meet with in the 
 epistolary poittion, especially in the WTitings of St. Paul. The 
 whole subjecf'l't well worthy of attention. It has often been 
 alluded to by writers on the language of the New Testament, 
 but has never yet received that consideration and recognition 
 which it seems most fully to deserve. 
 
 A third difference is to be observed in the use of words and 
 terms, in what may be called a specially Christian sense. Words 
 sufficiently familiar to the general reader of Greek, e. g., ttlo-tk;, 
 TTtcneveiv, a-coTTjpia, crup^, k. t. X.., reappear in the New Testa- 
 ment in perfectly new combinations, and are found to be 
 
 * Winer very properly calls atten- wliicli, tlicmgli not without some paral- 
 
 tion to the existence of two classes of klisni in earlier or later Greek, are 
 
 Hebraisms in tlie New Testament : pure | probably to be referred simply to the 
 
 Hebraisms, and what he terms " im- influence of the m<ither tongue. See 
 
 perfect " Hebraisms, or expressions, ' Grammatik,' § 3, p. 26 seq. 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 459 
 
 invested with meanings completely distinctive and peculiar. 
 Many of these may be traced to the Old Testament, while 
 some others may have been applications in another language 
 of expressions not unknown to the Rabbinical writings of 
 the day ; still, in a general and popular way of speaking, 
 they may be considered to mark a specially Christian aspect of 
 the language we are considering, and one which is not always 
 sufficiently taken into account in comparisons of it with ordi- 
 nary Greek. Long ftimiKarity with these terms renders us less 
 sensitive to this difference than we are to some others, but to an 
 intelligent reader of Greek, in whose hands the New Testament 
 was placed for the first time, this perhaps Avould seem the most 
 striking point in which its language differed, not only from that 
 of the classical authors, but even from that of the Hellenic 
 writers who lived nearer to Christian times. 
 
 These tlu-ee elements, — a Hebraistic tone of thought, not only 
 showing itself in isolated terms but in the connexion and 
 dependence of clauses, the oral element, giving its character to 
 whole groups of sentences, and the Clmstian element to words 
 and expressions, all combine to place before us a form of the 
 " common dialect " as unique as, even in a mere literary point of 
 view, it is also interesting and instructive. But though so 
 unique it is still neither to be exempted from the application of 
 the ordinary laws of the Greek language, nor to be dealt with as 
 if it had neither certainty nor accuracy. This last is one of the 
 convenient assumptions of the time. Even grammar is thus 
 made to bend to prejudice. What seems tolerably certain and 
 agreed upon is at once dispensed -with whenever the " verifying 
 faculty " is thought to demand it. The plausible rule of inter- 
 preting Scripture like any other book gives place at once to 
 protests against the scholasticism of pliilology, warnings against 
 the danger of making words mean too much, and hints that 
 scholarship may not unlikely lead us to impress a false system 
 on words and constructions. Into all the forms of tliis really 
 deceitful dealing with ^^Titten words we ^^dll not here enter. 
 They can only be dealt satisfactorily with in detail, and disproved 
 by a just consideration of individual passages. We may, 
 however, dispose of the danger supposed to come from over- 
 much scholarship by these two brief remarks: — Fii-st, that no one 
 is to be esteemed really a good scholar in reference to the New 
 
460 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 Testament unless he is well acquainted with the miuutise of 
 Hellenic as well as of Attic Greek, and knows well when to 
 recognize later usage {e. g. fjjq with participles, tendency to 
 double compounds, &c.), and when (g. g. in tenses, conditional 
 sentences, &c.) to apply with some rigom- the rules of classical 
 G-reek. Secondly, let tliis undoubted fact never be forgotten, — 
 that the " common dialect," wliicli we so justly recognize as the 
 basis of the language of the New Testament, was really itself 
 placed on the corner-stone of Attic prose, and that a good 
 knowledge of Attic Greek is simply indispensable. All sound 
 scholars are now alike agreed in recognizing two contrary prin- 
 ciples in Hellenic Greek : on the one hand a tendency to assimi- 
 late provincialisms ; on the other hand a tendency to recur to 
 Attic usage, which passes at last often into a hypercritical 
 affectation. Are we then to relax our study of a pm-e phase of 
 language which thus implicitly is to be seen and recognized in 
 the ^Titings of the New Testament, and which, by being itself 
 so capable of precise definition, is ever such a useful standard 
 A\'itli wliich to compare supposed deviations or coiTuptions ? This 
 single remark may be appended by way of conclusion, — that if 
 the Greek of the New Testament be carefully examined ^ith 
 reference to this standard (Attic Greek), it aatII be seen, clearly 
 enough, that the difference is very far from bemg so great as 
 might have been expected, and that it is really more to be felt 
 in what is lacking and limited, in the less free use of the particles 
 of connexion, and the less facile combination of clauses, than 
 in Avhat is definitely solecistic and erroneous. A few instances 
 of this latter kind of usage may undoubtedly be found, as for 
 instance Xva with a present indicative (1 Cor. iv. 6, Gal. iv. 17*), 
 but they are very rare, and, considering the various elements 
 that enter into the lang-uage of the New Testament, even 
 strikingly exceptional. 
 
 17, Let us close this portion of the subject, and illustrate in 
 some measure what has been already said, by a short list of such 
 systematic details as may perhaps be useful in their collected form 
 to the student of the Greek Testament, and may not be wholly 
 
 * The attempt of Fritzchc and otlipi-s I plausiljle. See Winer, ' Graniinatik, 
 to explain this by supposing 'Iva. an ad- § 41. p. 259. 
 verb, does not seem at all natural or • 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTUIIE, AND ITS INTERPIJETATION. 461 
 
 out of place even in a general essay like the present. We will 
 endeavour to avoid all technicalities of language or arrangement ; 
 but, for the sake of perspicuity, will adhere to the ordinary 
 heads under which such observations are usually distributed. 
 
 (1.) The article claims the first place, and may be said still to 
 require more careful study than it has ever yet received, espe- 
 cially in regard to its usage in those portions of the New Testa- 
 ment which are supposed to be of latest date. We are told, 
 indeed, that such discussions have "already gone far beyond 
 the line of utility,'^ but we shall scarcely be moved by such 
 comments, when a reference to the pages almost of any expositor 
 shows how much uncertainty still prevails on this subject, and 
 how common an error it is to press the force of the article when 
 it is only present in consequence of the action of some general 
 rule. Thus, for example, what the grammarians call the law of 
 " correlation," or, to speak more simply, the general rule that if 
 two substantives are in regimen, either both will have the 
 article, or both be without it, is constantly and sometimes even 
 absurdly violated. Words are often pressed as peculiarly defi- 
 nite, which only assume the form of definiteness in consequence 
 of the action of the general rule ; and, again, deductions are 
 made from their supposed indefiniteness when the presence of the 
 defining article would be a simple solecism. The omission of the 
 article, however, in the later Epistles is perhaps the point which 
 at present most requires consideration ; nay, even in the case 
 of a writer where we should not have expected it, the Evan- 
 gelist St. Luke, the oldest manuscripts, especially as supported 
 by the new Codex Sinaiticus, disclose a far greater amount 
 of probable omissions than we should at all have been likely, a 
 jjriori, to expect. Careful consideration of these will probably 
 lead to some modification of the existing rules connected with 
 the use of the article in the New Testament. Meanwhile to 
 group hastily together what Ave know, it niay be remarked : — 
 (a) That the words which assume the privilege of proper names 
 and dispense with tlie article where it might have been expected, 
 are very numerous in the New Testament. Very important ex- 
 amples of this may often be found in the uses of the words Uvevfjua 
 and i/6yU.o<?, and doctrinal statements or deductions much modified 
 by a recognition of what is now, in the case of both these words, 
 a matter of simple demonstration, (b) That the article is often 
 
462 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 omitted after a preposition, but apparently subject to this sort 
 of rough limitation, viz., that when it is the apparent desire of 
 the writer to be peculiarly distinct and definite he rarely fails 
 to insert it. Of this, 1 Tim. ii. 15 may perhaps be referred to 
 as a pertment example. The rule seems to be in such cases, — 
 " Press the article when present, but do not press the absence of 
 it when it happens to be absent." (c) The popidarly known 
 omission of the article after the verb substantive and verbs im- 
 plying names or designations, is not always sufficiently remem- 
 bered by the interpreter of the New Testament, {d) The amount 
 and extent of the omissions of the article where the substantive 
 practically coalesces with the clause which follows (e. g. Col. i. 8, 
 TTjv v/xoov aydTTTjv ev YivevfxaTi, or Eph. i. 15, Trjv KaS" vfia<i 
 TTiaTLv iv Tft) Kvplo) 'Irjcrdv) have not yet, perhaps, been fully 
 recognized or agreed upon. PerhajDS some rule similar to that 
 alluded to in (b) may not be found in the sequel to be much 
 exaggerated, (e) Lastly, several examples of what is called 
 Granville Sharp's rule, or the inference from the presence of 
 the article only before the first of two substantives connected 
 with Kat that they both refer to the same person or class, 
 must be deemed very doubtful. The rule is sound in principle, 
 but, in the case of proper names or quasi-proper names, cannot 
 safely be pressed. 
 
 (2.) With regard to substantives, the points that seem most to 
 need attention are the different connections and constructions of 
 the genitive and, in a less degree, of the dative cases. The use 
 of the former, especially when under the regimen of a preceding 
 substantive, is peculiarly varied, and will require considerable 
 tact on the part of the accurate interpreter. Without descend- 
 ing to very minute details, or attempting to discuss all the nine 
 or ten divisions into which the various forms of the genitive may 
 be separated, we may direct attention to the following selected 
 exemplifications of the uses of this case as found in the New 
 Testament : — (a) The use of the genitive as specifying something 
 in apposition to, or identical with, the noun, by which it is 
 governed, e. g., 2 Cor. v. 5, tov appa^cova rov livevpiaro^;, Eph. 
 vi. 14, TOV 6(opaKa t?}? BcKaioavv'q<; ; {b) a widely extended use 
 to denote the ideas of origination (l\om. iv. 13, hLKaioavvrj 
 TTt'cTTeo)?), and not unfrcquently of definite agency (2 Thess. ii. 
 13, cvyiao-fio^ TlvevfjLaTo<i) ; (c) a still more extended use in whicli 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATIOxV. 463 
 
 very varied relations, both of time (Jude 6, Kplcrti; fMejaXi]^ 
 rjfx,epa<;) and of place, whether topographical (Matt. i. 11, 
 IxerotKea-ia ^ajBvXwvo^, ib. ch. x. 5, 6809 edvwv) or general (Col. i. 
 20, alfxa Tov aravpov), are all simply and briefly expressed by 
 this flexible ease. If we add to these {d) a smaller class, in 
 which ideas, so to speak, of ethical substance or contents appear 
 to predominate (see Eph. i. 13, tov \6yov ri}? a\7]6eia^ to 
 evayyeXtov r/}? (TcoT7]pLa<; v/xmv, where both ideas appear in adja- 
 cent clauses) ; and lastly (e), the not uncommon use of the geni- 
 tive to denote the prevailing character or quality (Luke xvi. 8, 
 oiKovo/xo^; T7]<i aScKia'i), — a use which probably owes its frequency 
 to the part which, in Aramaic, the dependent noun plays as a 
 representative of the adjective, — we shall joerhaps have enume- 
 rated all the more noticeable forms in which the dependent 
 genitive appears in the New Testament. Attention to tliis 
 case, especially in deeper and doctrinal passages, will often be 
 found to yield very important practical results, and to suggest 
 topics for application which popular writers, Avho commonly 
 treat all this as mere scholastic pedantry, are completely una- 
 aware of. 
 
 The use of the dative is much less varied, and may be dis- 
 posed of in two or three sentences. If the essential idea of the 
 case as that of limitation and circumscription (the whereat case, 
 just as the genitive is the yfheref rom case, and the accusative the 
 Avhere^o case) be properly borne in mind, it is not probable that 
 even in the less clirect uses, — e. g., in reference to ethical locality 
 (1 Cor. xiv. 20), rule and measure (Acts xv. 1), &c., any real diffi- 
 culty will be felt. The only usage which seems to requke any 
 notice is one of occasional occurrence, where ideas of instru- 
 mentality or manner seem to merge into those of the imaginary 
 place wJiere, or the general circumstances owing to ivMch, the 
 action is supposed to have taken place. Thus St. Paul writes, 
 in Gal. i. 22, that he was ayvoovfxevo<i tw TrpoaoiTTM to the 
 Chm-ches of Judea ; — his countenance was not the instrument, 
 but rather the imaginary scene of the display of the dyvoia. 
 Again, he tells his converts at Rome that the Jews (under the 
 image of the natm-al branches) rfj airLarla e^eKXdaOrjcrav (Eom. 
 xi. 20 ; comp. ver. 30, 1 Cor. viii. 7) by which he would seem to 
 refer, not to the actual instrument by which, but to the state of 
 heart and feeling owing to which the judicial act was performed. 
 
464 AIDS TO FAITH. [Essay IX. 
 
 (3.) We mayjpass onward to verbs. Here, again, we can only 
 make a few general comments, as an}i;limg like even a mere 
 rudimentary outline of the more striking usages would far 
 exceed our present limits. We may remark, however, first, that 
 the usual rules of correct Greek are observed very persistently, 
 in the moods, tenses, connexion of dependent clauses, and even 
 in the refinements of the conditional sentence. In this latter 
 case, however, one important element will commonly be found 
 lacking, — the optative mood. It occurs very rarely in such 
 sentences (comp., however, 1 Pet. iii. 14, 17, Acts xxiv. 19), 
 and, indeed, but seldom in the New Testament generally ; its 
 rarity of occurrence serving to remmd the reader that he is now 
 witliin the precincts of what Lobeck somewhat quaintly terms 
 " fatiscens Graecitas." A second general remark may be made on 
 another sign of gi-ammatical degeneracy, the use of the verb- 
 substantive \Nith participles, to mark with some distinctness, 
 ideas of continuance or contemporaneity. This we find in nearly 
 all the writings of the New Testament, and, perhaps, more fre- 
 quently than elsewhere, in the writings of an author m4io we 
 might have thought would have been least likely to have adopted 
 it, the weU-educated and practised St. Luke. The cases, how- 
 ever, in which it occm-s do not appear at all of a confused or 
 promiscuous natm-e ; but, as we have above suggested, whenever 
 the Sacred Writer desu^ed to be particularly definite in reference 
 to time and its duration. A third general remark in reference 
 to verbs (capable also of being extended to other parts of speech) 
 is this, — that compound forms cannot always be safely pressed. 
 There appears to have been a very marked tendency in later 
 Greek to an increase in composition without in every case a cor- 
 responding increase of meaning, and 5?om this the New Testa- 
 ment is not exempt. Caution, however, must be shown in 
 apj)lying tliis remark, as our knowledge of the exact meaning of 
 compound verbs in the New Testament is still very limited. It 
 is, indeed, much to be regretted that the German grammarian 
 Winer never completed his treatise on this subject. The four 
 or five parts of it that liave been published are excellent speci- 
 mens of a careful and scholarly analysis of a subject that 
 requires much reading, and not a little tact and penetration. 
 
 If we aUow ourselves to devote a few sentences to matters 
 of detail, we may profitably du-ect attention to four points : — 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTUEE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 465 
 
 (a) an occasional use of the middle voice in the New Testament 
 (Col. i. 6, Kap7ro(f)opovfi€vov, and 1 Tiin. i. 16, ivSel^rjTaL, may 
 perhaps be cited as examples) in which all tinge of a reflexive 
 sense appears lost, and in wliich we seem to recognize the pre- 
 sence of that sort of " uitensive " force which the best and latest 
 grammarians* have assigned to tliis yet imperfectly-understood 
 voice ; (b) the use of the present tense, not, as we are too often 
 told, " for the future," but with its usual proper force to mark 
 what is abiding, iixed, and predetermined, especially in reference 
 to the course of things as appointed by God (Col. iii. 6 ; Matt, 
 xvii. 11 ; xxvi. 2, al.) ; (c) the somewhat expansive use of the 
 future in the New Testament, and its partial assimilation of 
 various shades of meaning of an imperative character, especially 
 when in connexion with a negative (comp. Matt. vi. 5 ; Acts 
 xiii. 10 ; Matt. v. 21 ; Eom. vii. 7 ; xiii. 9) ; lastly, (d) the 
 uses of present and aoristic participles with a finite verb (espe- 
 cially in St. Luke and St. Paul) to mark the ideas of time, 
 cause, manner, and concession (comp. Luke iv. 35 ; ix. 16 ; Col. 
 1, 3 seq., al.). These uses, though not exhibiting quite the same 
 amount of flexibility as in earlier Greek, are still sufliciently 
 varied to call for a far greater amount of attention from the 
 interpreter than they have yet received. 
 
 (4.) We have now remaining only two groups of words on which 
 observation seems necessary, the particles and the prepositions. 
 In regard to their uses we may notice a very clear and instruc- 
 tive difference, serving to remind us how sensibly the influence of 
 the Aramaic element makes itself felt, both positively and nega- 
 tively, in some parts of the syntax of the New Testament. In 
 the prepositions, for instance, we observe a redundancy as well as 
 variety of use, which, if we did not call to mind the charac- 
 teristics of the mother-tongue of the writers, might seem parti- 
 cularly strange and perplexing. This desire to imitate the 
 expressiveness (in this respect) of the Aramaic, combined, pro- 
 bably, with a certain loss of sensitiveness to the full force of 
 cases may account for the appearance of the prepositions airo 
 and e/c with verbs of " giving " (Luke xxiv. 42), " receiving " 
 (Mark xii. 2), and even of "eating and drinking" (Matt. xv. 
 
 * See Donaldson, 'Greek Grammar,' § 432. 2. hh; Kriiger, ' Sprachlehre,' 
 § 52. 8. 
 
 2 H 
 
466 
 
 AIDS TO FAITH. 
 
 [Essay IX. 
 
 27 ; John iv. 14), where, to say the very least, they would be 
 excessively unusual in classical Greek. The same may be said 
 of the union of ek and 7r/3o<? with a large class of verbs where a 
 dative would have seemed much more consonant with the genius 
 of the language. The variety agam of the usage of individual 
 prepositions is pecidiarly striking, and still more so the studied 
 accumulations of them in a single sentence, especially in St. 
 Paul's Epistles (Rom. xi. 36 ; Col. i. 16, al). These latter, 
 though sometimes perhaps called forth and suggested by doc- 
 trinal distinctions (Eph. iv. 6), seem especially to indicate an 
 ease and freedom that Avould have been looked for in vain in 
 the ordinary Greek of the time. Equally well marked is the 
 general correctness with A\hich these varied usages are dis- 
 tinguished. If we except the tendency to over-use, which we 
 have already observed, and a few combinations (e. g. of ek with 
 some verbs of rest, ev with some verbs of motion, and the ex- 
 tended use of the latter preposition to forms and expressions 
 where vtto or hia miglit have seemed more usual) which, though 
 not without parallelism in earlier Greek, do certainly seem to 
 reflect some tinges of incipient degeneracy,* or some re- 
 miniscences of the mother-tongue, there is really not only no 
 prevailing incorrectness whatever in the use of the preposition 
 in the New Testament, but very frequently a sliarpness and pre- 
 cision (comp. Rom. xiii. 1) that reminds the student of the best 
 days of the language. When, then, a recent writer on the in- 
 terpretation of Scripture urges that in Gal. iv. 13, hua with the 
 accusative is to be conceived as used for or equivalent in mean- 
 ing to ha with the genitive, he not only shows himself a lax 
 interpreter of the passage in question, but also shows a de- 
 ficient knowledge of a general fact, — the accuracy of preposi- 
 tional usage in the New Testament, which ought to have made 
 such an assumption seem a priori m a very high degree im- 
 probable. 
 
 (5.) In strong contrast to this usage of prepositions stands that 
 of the Greek particles. With the exception of kuc, ovv, he, 'yap, 
 
 * No trace whatever of tliat utter 
 insensibility to the fundamental mean- 
 ing of cases which led the Byzantine 
 writers to confound, for example, /uera 
 with a gen. and /uera with an accus., 
 
 or to join airh with an accus. or dat., 
 avv with a gen., or koto with a dative, 
 is to be found anywhere in the New 
 Testtunent 
 
Essay IX.] SCRIPTURE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 467 
 
 and perhaps also co? and aWd, in the uses of wliich there is not 
 only variety but sometimes well marked idiomatic force and 
 character, there are not many other particles in the New Testa- 
 ment wliich are used with complete ease and freedom. There 
 is a certain degree of monotony, a deficient amount of combina- 
 tion, and a want of flexibihty hi the use of the particles of the 
 New Testament which stand in marked antithesis to the ease 
 and even redundancy which are to be observed in the use of 
 the prepositions. Yet, as it was in the case of the latter, so is 
 it with the particles : there is a jjrevailiug accuracy in their 
 usage, and a very general conformity to the laws of the language 
 in its earlier and better state. There are some exceptional 
 aspects, as for instance, the use of fxr] with participles when there 
 is no tinge of a subjective negation intended (the rule indeed is, 
 "Press ov when connected with a participle, but not yu-?;"), the 
 weakened force of ha, and its occasional use to designate some- 
 thing lying, as it were, midway between purpose and result, the 
 use oioTi to introduce another's words in their direct form, com- 
 binations like Kada)<?, and juxta-positions like ap' ovv, — such 
 there are, but all such childish statements as the use of one 
 particle for another, and so forth, are to be dismissed, as they 
 have long been dismissed by all better scholars, as very unpro- 
 fitable delusions. It is, however, painful to observe how, in 
 some quarters, such prejudices still hold their ground, and how 
 even those who affect to lay down well-considered rules on 
 Scripture interpretation, tell us that " it is an error to interpret 
 every particle in the New Testament as if it were a link in the 
 argument when it is often a mere excrescence of style." Such 
 comments on supposed error are really themselves very errone- 
 ous ; and the pages of any one of the better expositors of the 
 day, who has attended to the sequence of thought in his author, 
 would not only show them to be so, but would also make us 
 feel very sensibly how completely subversive they are of all 
 principles of faithfid and consistent interpretation. The German 
 commentaries of De Wette and Meyer are very good standing 
 protests against such hasty and ill-considered comments. These 
 writers, though in no way pledged to orthodoxy m matters of 
 doctrine, have had far too great experience in the language of 
 the New Testament to be heterodox in point of grammar. They 
 never hesitate to bestow the greatest possible attention on all 
 
 2 H 2 
 
468 AIDS TO FAITPT. [Essay IX. 
 
 minutiss, and exhibit in a very satisfactory way what strildng 
 results are to be obtained from a carefid estimate of connecting 
 particles, and how very near an approach can be made to the 
 mind of the inspired Avriter by this mode of patient and philo- 
 sophical investigation. 
 
 18. This last portion of our subject must now be brought to 
 its close. We have left very many points untouched, on which 
 comment might seem in some measure desirable, but our 
 article has already exceeded its prescribed limits, and it now 
 becomes necessary to transgress no further on the patience of 
 our readers. Yet it seems impossible to part from those who 
 have traversed with us the wide domain which belongs to such 
 subjects as those we have considered, without a few words of 
 valediction, and a few expressions of mingled anxiety and 
 hope. 
 
 Those against whom our observations have been directed will 
 probably not be affected by anything that we have urged. The 
 tone of self-coniidence which marks their writings ; the unfair- 
 ness or, to use the mildest term, the slipperiness that pervades 
 their arguments ; the really cruel and thoughtless way in which 
 they have allowed themselves to scatter doubt and uneasiness ; 
 their utter carelessness for the feeble, and the unstable, and the 
 many who, with all their frailties and shortcomings, still deserve 
 the name of " babes in Christ," — all these many painful charac- 
 teristics make us feel that as far as they are concerned Ave have 
 written and have spoken in vain. There are others, however, 
 with whom it may not be so. There are kindly eyes that may 
 have fallen on these pages, which, though not seeing wholly as 
 we see, may yet have been encouraged to gaze longer and more 
 earnestly, and to wait gently and patiently for a glimpse of the 
 fair landscape that lies beyond what now may seem to them 
 only a cloud-land of eddying vapour and wandering storm. God 
 in His everlasting mercy, for our dear Lord's sake, grant that it 
 may be so ! God grant that such may see and feel that these 
 are no cunningly devised fables, no mere arguments put forward 
 for love of controversy, no mere assumption of orthodox atti- 
 tudes for the sake of self-interest (untrue and ignoble taunt of 
 embittered opponents !), but a statement of earnest and serious 
 convictions, which deepen with deepening retlection, to which 
 every fleeting day bears its tribute of increasing assurance, 
 
Essay IX.] SCEIPTDRE, AND ITS INTERPRETATION. 469 
 
 which every prayer quickens, every blessing stimulates, every 
 trial confirms. May they be moved to judge us thus kmdly and 
 fairly ; and may our poor words be permitted in return to impart 
 some comfort in anxieties, and to answer some of those doubts 
 with which honest and good hearts are often permitted to be 
 tried. 
 
 Lastly, may the great Father of love and mercy di-aw all who 
 love His ever blessed Son, and who, see in Him the propitiation 
 for the sms of a whole guilty world, still nearer together. It 
 may be, when all was well, we dealt hardly with each other, that 
 we thought unkuidly and spoke with bitterness. It may be 
 even that we have acted in the same spirit, that we have helped 
 to break up the household of faith into hostile camps, that we 
 have smitten friends and brethren, and led those who would not 
 use om- shibboleths to the vale of slaughter and spared them not. 
 But now the foe is on the frontier. If love is still cold, yet at 
 least let danger reunite. Let us yield to instincts, if we care not 
 yet for principles. Let us do only this, and it may be that even 
 thus we may be allowed to see and feel that all was so ordered 
 by a loving Father, — that danger was to bring about reunion, 
 and reunion to rekindle love. And then at last, Avitli linked 
 hands and united hearts, may we again join in praising and 
 blessing our common Lord, evermore adoring Him who round 
 om- weakness and divisions winds the encircling bond of His 
 strength and love, " round our incompleteness His completeness, 
 round our restlessness His rest." 
 
 THE END. 
 
 LOKDON : PRINTED BY W. ClOWES AND SONS, STAMFORD STBKET 
 AND CHARING CROSS. 
 
KECENT WORKS. 
 
 Now Ready, with Illustrations, Vol. I., Medium 8i-o., 42s., 
 
 A DICTIONARY OF THE BIBLE, 
 
 ITS ANTIQUITIES, BIOGRAPHY, GEOGRAPHY, AND 
 NATURAL HISTORY. 
 
 EDITED BY WILLIAM SMITH, LL.D., 
 
 CLASSICAL EXAMINER LN THE IINIVEKSITy OF LONDON, AND EDITOR OF THE LATIN AND CLASSICAL DICTIONARIES. 
 
 To ho Completed in Two Volumes. 
 
 LIST OF CONTRIBUTORS. 
 
 REV. G. E. K COTTON, D.D.. 
 
 Bishop of Calcutta. 
 REV. WM. FITZGERALD, D.D., 
 
 Bishop of Kiilaloe. 
 REV. WM. THOMSON, D.D., 
 
 Bishop of Gloucester and Bristol 
 REV. LORD ARTHUR HERVEY. 
 REV. HENRY ALFORD, D.D., 
 
 Deaa of Canteibnry. 
 REV. C. J. ELLICOTT, B.D., 
 
 Dean of Exeter. 
 REV. E. HAROLD BROWNE, B.D., 
 
 Norrisian Professor of Divinity, Cambridge. 
 REV. .T. B. LIGHTFOOT, M.A., 
 
 Hulsean Professor of Divinity, Cambridge. 
 REV. GEORGE RAWLINSON, M.A., 
 
 Camden Professor of Ancient History, Oxford. 
 REV. W. SELWYN, D.D., 
 
 Margaret Professor of Divinity, Cambridge. 
 REV. A. P. STANLEY, D.D., 
 
 Regius Professor of Ecclesiastical History, 
 
 Oxford. 
 
 BAILEY, REV. HENRY, B.D., 
 St. Augustine's Canterbury. 
 BARRY, REV. ALFRED, M.A., 
 
 Grammar School, Leeds. 
 BEVAN, REV. W. L., M.A., 
 
 Vicar of Hay. 
 BLAKKSLEY, REV. J. W., B.D., 
 
 Vicar of Ware. 
 BROWN, REV. T. E., M.A.. 
 
 King William's CuU., Isle of Man. 
 BROWNE, ARCHDEACON. 
 BULLOCK, REV. W. T., M.A. 
 CLARK, REV. SAMUEL, M.A.. 
 
 Training Coll., Battersea. 
 COOK, REV. F. C , M.A., 
 
 Chaplain in Ordinary to the Queen. ' 
 DAVIES, REV. LLEWELYN, M.A. 
 DRAKE, REV. WILLIAM, M.A., 
 
 Vicar of Trinity, Coventry. 
 EDDRUP, REV. E. P. M.A., 
 
 Theological Coll., Salisbury. 
 FARRAR, REV. F. W., M.A. 
 FERGUSSON, JAMES, F.R.A.S. 
 FFOULKES, EDMUND S., M.A. 
 GARDEN, REV. FRANCIS, M.A., 
 Subdean, Chapel Royal. 
 
 GOTCH, REV. F. W., LL.D., 
 
 Hebrew Examiner, University of London. 
 GROVE, GEORGE. 
 HAWKINS, REV. ERNEST, B.D., 
 
 Prebendary of St. Paul's. 
 HAYMAN, REV. HENRY, M.A.. 
 Grammar School, Cheltenham. 
 HESSEY, REV. .JAMES A., D.C.L., 
 
 Merchant Taylor's School. 
 HOOKER, JOSEPH D., M.D., F.R.S. 
 HOUGHTON, REV. W., M.A., 
 
 Vicar of Preston. 
 HOWSON, REV. J. S., D.D., 
 
 Collegiate Institution, Liverpool. 
 HUXTABLE, REV. EDGAR, M.A., 
 
 Subdean of Wells. 
 LAYARD, A. H., D.C.L., M.P. 
 LEATHES, REV. STANLEY, M.A. 
 MARKS, REV. D. W., 
 
 Professor of Hebrew, University Coll., London. 
 MEYRICK, REV. FRED., M.A., 
 
 H.M.'s Inspector of Schools. 
 ORGER, REV. E. R., M.A. 
 
 St. Augustine's, Canterbury. 
 ORMEROD, ARCHDEACON. 
 PEARSON, REV. HUGH, M.A., 
 
 Vicar of Sonning. 
 PEROWNE, REV. J. J. S., B.D., 
 
 Hebrew Lecturer, King's Coll., London. 
 PEROWNP; REV. THOS. T., B.D., 
 
 C. C. (-'oil., Cambridge. 
 PHILLOTT, REV. H. W., M.A., 
 
 Rector of Stannton-on-Wye. 
 PLUMPTIiE, REV. E. H., M.A., 
 
 Professor of Pastoral Theology, King's Coll. 
 POOLE, E. STANLEY, M.R.A.S. 
 POOLE, R. STUART, M.R.S.L. 
 PORTER, REV. J. L., M.A. 
 PRITCHARD, REV. CHAS., M.A., 
 
 (j ram mar School, Clapham. 
 ROSE, REV. H. J., B.D. 
 THRUPP, REV. J. F., M.A., 
 
 Vicar of Barrington. 
 TWISTLETON, HON. EDW., M.A. 
 VENABLES, REV. EDMUND, M.A. 
 WESTCOTT, REV. B. F., M.A. 
 WRIGHT. WILLIAM A., M.A. 
 
 The Work is also issued in Monthly Paris, price 4s. each. 
 
 '°^.* The Second Volume, completing the Work, will be ready by the end of the present year. 
 
 January, \%Q2. B [^Continued on next page. 
 
2 MR. MUREAY'S LIST OF RECENT WO^KS— continued. 
 
 A HANDBOOK TO 
 THE CATHEDRALS OF ENGLAND. 
 
 SOUTHERN DIVISION. 
 
 WINCHESTER, SALISBURY, EXETER, WELLS, CHICHESTER, CANTERBURY, 
 AND ROCHESTER. 
 
 With 200 Illustrations. 2 Vols. Crown 8vo. 24s. 
 
 ' A Handbook that should provide a concise 
 but correct history of the several cathedrals 
 in this country has long been looked for, not 
 only by antiquaries and architects, but by all 
 men of art or of letters. There is a prospect 
 now of its speedy accomplishment. Two beau- 
 tiful volumes lie before us as the first instal- 
 ment. Regarding them from a literary point 
 of view, they are a great im])rovemeut upon 
 Britton and the series published previously. 
 The accounts given of the noble monuments 
 which grace our land are very different from 
 the bare technical descriptions which belong 
 to the books alluded to. The illustrations are 
 the best of their kind ; and though the large 
 quarto plates of Britton may be more impos- 
 ing, the carefully-executed woodcuts of Jewitt 
 are, we tliink, more pleasing to the eye, and 
 they supply all the detail that can be wished.' 
 ■ — Literary Churchman. 
 
 ' A history of our Cathedrals is indeed almost 
 a history of our country. The present vo- 
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 is clear, definite, and full.' — Press. 
 
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 cathedrals, and are intended to serve alike as 
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 The work will prove a great boon to the 
 architectural student; but it is so free from 
 meie technical phraseology, and is so plea- 
 santly written, that the general reader will 
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 the history and architecture of our great Ca- 
 thedrals. We cordially recommeud the book.' 
 — John Bull. 
 
 ' This is the first instalment of a series of 
 the like manuals to complete the English and 
 Welsh Cathedrals, the Southern group in 
 these volumes, the Western, Northern, and 
 Welsh in an early publication. We admire 
 the plan upon which these Handbooks have 
 been written, namely, the history and details 
 of each building are kept in a section apart 
 from the histoiy of the See and biographical 
 notices of the Bishops ; so that the visitor can 
 readily refer from one to the other division, 
 but has not, when using the book as a manual, 
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 method, and tlieir illustrations.' — Spectator. 
 
 To be followed by 
 
 II. THE EASTERN CATHEDRALS. 
 
 liOROUGH, Ely, Norwich, and Lincoln. 
 
 III. THE WESTERN CATHEDRALS 
 
 WoRCESTEU, Hereford, and Lichfiei,d. 
 
 IV. THE NORTHERN CATHEDRALS. — York, 
 
 Durham, Carlisle, Chester, and Manchester. 
 
 V. THE WELSH CATHEDRALS.— Llandaff, St. David's, 
 
 Oxford, Peter- 
 Bristol, Gloucester, 
 Ripox, 
 
 St. Asapji's, and Bangor. 
 
 [^Continued on next page. 
 
MR. MURRAY'S LIST OF RECENT WOUKS— continued. 
 
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