/^^^^-/^-w'^s^f^. ■iJ^tu.n^^^'f.^ . :*»*»'*■*•"'*•'*%*,;;,;" PRINCETON, N. J. ' BS 480 ,B62 1862 Birks, T.^ R. 1810^1883. The Bible and modern thougl: Shelf.. THE BIBLE MODEKN THOUGHT. REV. T. R. BIRKS, M.A., EECTOE OF KELSHALL, HEKTS. NJ!:W EDIT] ON, WITH AN APPEND IX. L O N IJ O N : THE RELIGIOUS TRACT SOCIETY; 50, PATERNOSTER ROW ; (J5, ST. PAUL'S CHURCHYARD ; AND 104, PICCADILLY : AND SOLD BY THE BOOKSELLERS. 18G2. London: pkinteo bv w. clowks anu sons, stasitokd street and cuakino ckoss. PREFACE. The present volume was written last spring, in com- pliance with a request from the Committee of the Tract Society, in order to supply some antidote, in a popular form, to that dangerous school of thought, which denies the miracles of the Bible, explains away its prophecies, and sets aside its Divine authority. Various circum- stances have occasioned some unexpected delay in its publication. Though suggested by the appearance of tlie Essays and Reviews, which have gained so wide a notoriety, it is not, of course, a direct and formal reply to them. It is designed for the use of thoughtful Chris- tians, or serious inquirers, who may have been per- plexed by modern speculations, and not for scholars and learned divines. My aim has been to treat the subject of the Christian evidences and the authority of the Bible in a simple, clear, and solid style of argument, logically connected and continuous ; and to deal with recent objections only so far as they lie directly in the way, and, like the lions in the allegory, block up the road of the Christian pilgrim to the palace of heavenly truth. At the same time, the fourth chapter, on the Reasonableness of Miracles ; the eighth, on tbe Pro- phecies of the Old Testament ; the twelfth and thir- teenth, on the Interpretation of Scripture, and on its iv PEEFACE. Alleged Discrepancies ; the fourteenth and fifteenth, on Modern Science ; and the sixteenth, on the Bible and Natural Conscience, contain a full discussion of the principles advanced in the Third, the Second, the Seventh, the Fifth, and the First Essays. But my desire has been not so much to detect and expose error as to unfold the truth, and guide the minds of sincere inquirers into a well-grounded faith in the truth, wis- dom, harmony, and Divine authority of the Gospel, and of the written word of God. May it please the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life, to use it, however humble in itself, for a help to the faith of the people of Christ in these latter days. Kelshall Bectory, Oct. 10, 1861. The appendix of the present edition contains five notes on topics connected with the main subject. The first, on the Evidential School of Theology, examines the statements of the Sixth Essay. The second en- deavours to throw some light on the controversy occa- sioned by the Bampton Lectures on the Limits of Re- ligious Thought. The third selects four topics, from Baron Bunsen's work on Egypt, by which to test the amount of authority due to its negative criticisms. The fourth offers some remarks on the Human Aspect of Scripture, as essential to a just view of inspiration ; and the last enters at some length into the question of Geology, in connection with the Essays in the " Re- plies " and the " Aids to Faith." Kelshall, July 25, 1862. CONTENTS. Introduction, pp. 1-7. Infidelity defined, 1 ; its changing forms, 2 ; covert infidelity, 3 ; its praise of the Bible, 4, 5 ; need of spiritual discernment, 6 ; questions to be answered, 6, 7. Chap. I. — The Natuee of Divine Eevelation, pp. 8-21. Truths imphed — (1) the Being of God, 8, 9 ; (2) reality of creation, 9 ; (3) Divine Nature capable of being revealed, 10, 11 ; (4) man capable of Divine knowledge, 12 ; (5) the fallen condition of man, 13, 14 : theory of the "Absolute Religion," 15, 16; doctrine of the Fall, the key to supernatural revelation, 17, 18. Chap. II. — Man's Need of Divine Eevelation, pp. 22-28. Objection of the Theist, 22 ; the need i)roved by facts, 23, 24 ; due to man's corruption, 25 ; no disparagement of natural religion, 24 ; kinds of inspiration distinguished, 20, 27 ; a true revelation no burden, but a blessing, 27, 28. Chap. III. — The Supernatural CLAnia op Christianity, pp. 29-50. The main question — is Christianity human or Divine ? 29 ; first appeal to the Bible itself, 29, 30 ; midway position untenable in the presence of its claims, 30, 31 ; St. Matthew's Gospel, 32-34 ; St. Mark and St. Luke, 35 ; St. John's Gospel, 3G-38 ; Book of Acts, 39-41 ; Apos- tolic Epistles, 42-49. Conclusion, a supernatural claim of the essence of Christianity, 50. Chap. IV. — The Eeasonableness of Miracles, pp. 61-85. (^Examination of Tliird Essay.') Appeal to miracles by INIoscs, 51; our Lord himself and the apostles, 51, 52 ; recent objections, 52, 53. I. Charges against Christian advo- cates, 53 ; reply, 54; an inquirer not a judge, 5G; reasoning consistent with moral guilt of unbeUef, 57 ; historical and moral evidence rigjitly mingled, 58-(i0 ; beUef not a simple act of will, 61 ; right order of vi CONTENTS. honest inquiiy, 62 ; moral preparation needed, 63. II. Objections to miracles stated, 63-65 ; Scripture view of their orii;iu, 65 ; imply a false view of induction, 66, 67 ; false view of the constancy of natural law, 68, 69 ; false definition of miracles, 70 ; contradictions of the sceptical argument, 71. III. Objections to miracles as evidence, 72, 73 ; definition of miracles, 74-76 ; their main use, 77 ; relation of external and internal evidence, 79-81 ; result of the inquiry, 82-85. Chap. V. — The Historical Truth op the New Testament, pp. 86-114. Historical character of the Bible, 86, 87 ; assaults on the Gospels and Pentateuch, 88, 89 ; preliminary remarks, 90-94 ; the Book of Acts to the death of Herod, 95-98 ; to St. Paul's voyage, 99-103 ; internal har- mony, 104, 105; the four Gospels — times, 105-107; places and persons, 109, 110; reconcilable diversity, 111-114. Chap. VI. — The Historical Truth of the Old Testament, pp. 115-147. I. From the captivity to Christ — Limits in time, 115-117 ; absence of miracle, 118; chronological distinctness, 119, 120; fulness of detail, 121; Book of Esther, 123. II. From Solomon to the Captivity. — Chronology, 124, 125 : heathen history, 126, 127 ; Kings and Chro- nicles, 128 ; prophetic books, 130. III. From the Conquest to Solo- mon.— General remarks, 132, 133 ; Book of Joshua, 134-140 ; Book of Judges, 140-143; its chronology, 143. IV. The Pentateuch, 145; results of induction, 146, 147. Chap. VII. — The Miracles of the Bible, pp. 148-162. Circular reasoning of modern sceptics, 148. I. Infrequeucy of miracles, 149-152. II. Their publicity, 153, 154. III. Their consistent plan, 155-161. IV. Their moral purpose, 161, 162. Chap. VIII. — The Prophecies op the Old Testament, pp. 163- 198. (^Remarks on the Second Essay.) Christianity, an appeal to miracles, 163 ; and to prophecy, 163 ; ex- amples in the Gospels, 164-169; their wide range, 170 ; recent objec- tions examined, 170-173; prophecy. Is. vii.-ix., 173-178; later pro- phecies of Isaiah, 178-187 ; Book of Daniel, its genuineness, 187-197 ; conclusion, 197, 198. Chap. IX.- -Christianity and Written Eevelation, pp. 199-214. Reception of the Bible, a corollary of Christian faith, 199 ; general out- line of the argument, 200-203 j stage of doubt, 204 ; faith in the Gospel, and in the inspiration of the Bible, distinct, though closely united, 205-207 ; inspiration, a positive idea ; 208, 209 ; enti'ance of written revelation, a great era; 210; its uses and reasons, 211 ; its original perfection inferred, 213. CONTENTS. vii Chap. X. — The Inspikation of the Old Testament, pp. 215-235. Solemn introduction of written revelation, 215 ; testimonies of our Lord himself — (1) the temptation, 217 : (2) Galilean ministry, 217 ; (3) Ser- mon on the Mount, 218 ; (4) charge to the leper ; (5) testimony to the Baptist 221 ; (6) Matt. xii. 3-7, 222 ; (7) teaching in jiarables, 223 ; (8) tradition, Matt. xv. 1-9, 223 ; (9) the transfiguration, 223 ; (10) divorce, 224; (11) entrance to Jerusalem, 225; (12) answers to Sadducees, 226 ; (13) Matt, xxiii. 227 ; (14) the passion, 228 ; (15, 16) St. Luke's Gospel, 230-233 ; later books, 233 ; general conclusion, 234. Chap. XI. — The Inspiration of the New Testament, pp. 236-257. Evidence less direct, 236. I. Analogy of the Old Testament, 237. II. Special nature of the new dispensation, 238. III. Resemblance in structure of New and Old Testaments, 240. IV. Promises to the apostles, 241. V. Tbeir rank compared with the prophets, 243. VI. Testimonials in St. Paul's Epistles to their own inspiration, 245. Vn. and to the Gospels and Acts, 248. VIIL Epistles of St. Peter and St. Jude, 251. IX. Writings of St. John, 254. Conclusion, 256. Chap. XII. — The Inteupretation of Scripture, pp. 258-279. {Memarlcs on the Seventh Essay.) Amount of Biblical literature, 258 ; temptation thus occasioned, 259 ; recoil from the maxim of Vincentius, 260 ; counter maxim of the Seventh Essay delusive, 261 ; Bible to be studied nutimtUy, 262 ; its inspiration not mechanical, 263 ; reverently, as the voice of the Spirit, 265 ; confusion of the nei^ative criticism, 269 ; contrast in two examples, 271 ; value of human helps, 274; real certainty of Bible theology, 275. Chap. XIII. — On Alleged Discrepancies of the Bible, pp. 280- 306. Theory of partial inspiration, 281 ; its difficulties, 282 ; divergence not contradiction, 283 ; variety one element of the true definition, Heb. i. 1, 283 ; Scriptures, a condensed record, 284 ; silence, no proof of igno- rance, 285 ; inferences not assertions, 287. I. Discrepancies alleged in the Essays, 289-293. 11. I'rolegomena to the New Testament, 294-306. Chap. XIV. — The Bible and Modern Science, pp. 307-335. (Examination of the Fifth Essay.) Question stated, 307 ; its true limits, 308 ; astronomical objection, 309 ; ba.sed on three errors, 311-314; geological difficulties, 315; o2)tical representation, 317-321 ; break in Gen. i. 2, 322-329 ; events of fourth day, 330 ; the firmament, 331 ; true relation of Genesis and geology, 334. viii CONTE^'TS. Chap. XV. — The same continued, ijp. 336-350. All the Bible of Divine authority, 330-339 ; contains materials of sciences, not sciences themselves, 340-350. Chap. XVI.— The Bible and Natural Conscience, pp. 351-372. (^Remarks on the First Essay.') Question stated, 351-353; direct authority of Scripture, 353; con- science not absolute or supreme, 359 ; its true nature, 361 ; no mediator, 362 ; needs to be corrected and purified by the word of God, 363 ; the Gospel, an external authority, 366. Chap. XVII. — The Historical Unity of the Bible, pp. 373-404. Chap. XVIII. — The Doctrinal Unity of the Bible, pp. 405-426. Chap. XIX. — Christianity a Progressive Scheme, pp. 427-441. APPENDIX. Note A. — The Evidential School of Theology, pp. 443-452. Note B. — The Limits of Keligious Thought, pp. 452-456. Note C. — The Bible and Ancient Egypt, pp. 457-475. Note D. — The Human Element in Scripture, pp. 476-485. Note E. — Genesis and Geology, jjp. 485-520. THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. INTRODUCTION. Christianity claims to be a Divine revelation, or a message of tnitli from the living God to the children of men, contained, embodied, and recorded in the Scrip- tures of the New Testament. It claims, further, to be the sequel and completion of earlier messages from the same Divine Author, contained and recorded, in like manner, in the Scriptures of the Old Testament. Christian faith, in the widest sense of the term, consists in the admission of this double claim. Infidelity con- sists in its rejection and denial. This denial may assume very different forms. It may be coarse, arrogant, and abusive, or polite, modest, and refined in its tone. It may load the Bible with reproach, as a gross imposture ; or admire its poetical beauty, extol its pure morality, and treat it with the reverence of the scholar and the antiquarian, as con- taining some of the choicest products of human intelli- gence. While one type of infidelity repels and disgusts by its open blasphemy, another allures and fascinates ingenuous minds by an air of caution and candour, and })uts on the garb of philosophical .research, moral sensibility, and religious reverence. But tliese, after all, may be only varieties of the same unbelief. The B 2 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. question between the Christian and the infidel does not turn upon the degree of merit or demerit assigned to the Scriptures, viewed as merely human compositions. It depends on the admission or rejection of their Divine authority. Is Christianity a supernatural message from the living and true God, or a mere product of the natural powers of the human mind ? Is the Bible the voice of God, or only the voice of some Hebrew histo- rians, poets, and moralists — the word of God, or the word of man ? The form of infidelity which prevailed at the close of the last century was daring, open, and blasphemous. It was bred amidst the rottenness of a corrupted church and a dissolute society; and ascribing to Christianity all the worst abuses of both, it kept no terms with " the wretch" it laboured to destroy. The experience of seventy years has wrought a great change in the tactics of this moral warfare. The hopes of an ungodly and blaspheming pliilosophy were quenched speedily, under the reign of terror, in a sea of blood. The liberty, equality, and philanthropy, which had trodden the Bible under foot, were replaced, in a few years, by the heaviest yoke of military despotism. At the same time Christian faith received a fresh impulse, and began to win new trophies, by tlie revival of missionary zeal, the increased circulation of the word of God, and the spread of the gospel, through the self-denying labours of faithful men, in almost every part of the heathen world. In consequence of these changes, the spirit of un- belief has revealed itself, of late years, in features less repulsive but more insidious. It rejects the Divine authority of the Bible, but is willing to extol its poetical beauty, and to recognise in it a high degree of historical value and antiquarian interest. It acquits the Sacred INTRODUCTION. 3 Writers of wilful imposture, and even gives them praise for high religious feeling, for deep thought, and lofty imagination, though it refuses to own that they are the messengers of God. Its motto is no longer that of the unbelieving Pharaoh — " Who is the Lord, that I should obey his voice ?" It resembles more nearly the " Hail, Master " of the false apostle, or the attempt of the spirit of divination to enter into partnership with the truth, when it cried — " These men are the servants of the Most High God, which shew unto us the way of salvation." This varied and more subtle form of assault on the authority of the gospel requires increased discernment and watchfulness on the part of all the true disciples of Chi'ist. Open blasphemies are more easily repelled. -They revolt us by their gross impiety, put the con- science at once on its guard, and may often produce a powerful reaction in favour of the truth which they assail. But the sapping and mining process of a covert infidelity, which borrows the very phrases of the gospel, to give them a philosophical meaning, and will own almost every kind of excellency in the Scriptures, except the authority of a Divine message, is far more perilous and seductive to thoughtful and serious minds. The chasm which separates faith from unbelief, submission to God from the rejection of his authority, is bridged over by a thin layer of ambiguous phrases, and thickly strewn with flowers of fancy, and a sentimental piety, till it disappears from view ; and those who are thorough unbelievers at heart mistake themselves for the genuine disciples of a pure and enlightened Christianity. Let us contrast, for example, the ribaldry of Paine and Voltaire with the following eulogy on tlie Bible by a modern ringleader in the attempt to replace Christian faith by deism or natural religion. It will be evident at B 2 4 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. once how total a change has occurred in the Aveapons of assault ; and what discernment and caution are required in the friends of truth, that they may not be deceived by smooth and complimentary phrases, while the foundations of their faith are silently, but vigorously and daringly assailed. " This collection of books," Mr. Parker writes, " has taken such hold of the world as no other. The literature of Greece which goes up like incense from that land of temples and heroic deeds, has not half the influence of this book from a nation despised alike in ancient and modern times. It is read in all the ten thousand pulpits of our land. In all the temples of Christendom is its voice lifted up week by week. The sun never sets on its glowing page. It goes equally to the cottage of the plain man and the palace of the king. It is woven into the literature of the scholar, and colours the talk of the street. It enters men's closets, mingles in all the grief and cheerfulness of life. The Bible attends men in sickness, when the fever of the world is on them. The aching head finds a softer pillow, when the Bible lies underneath. The mariner, escajDing from shipwreck, seizes it the first of his treasures, and keeps it sacred to God. It blesses us when we are born, gives names to half Christendom, rejoices with us, has sympathy for our mourning, tempers our grief to finer issues. It is the better part of our sermons. It lifts man above himself. Our best of uttered j^rayers are in its storied speech, wherewith our fathers and the patriarchs prayed. .The timid man, about to awake from his dream of life, looks through the glass of Scripture, and his eye grows bright ; he does not fear to stand alone, to tread the way unknown and distant, to take the death angel by the hand, and bid farewell to wife and babes and home. Men rest on this their dearest hopes. It tells them of INTRODUCTION. 5 God and of his blessed Son, of earthly duties and heavenly rest. Foolish men find in it the source of Plato's wisdom, of the science of Newton, and the art of Raphael. " Now for such effects there must be an adequate cause. It is no light thing to hold, with an electric chain, a thousand hearts, though but an hour, beating and bounding with such fiery speed : what is it then, to hold the Christian world, and that for centuries? Are men fed with chaff and husks ? The authors we reckon great, whose articulate breath now sways the nation's mind, will soon pass away, giving j^lace to other great men of a season, who in their turn shall follow them to eminence, and then to oblivion. Some thousand famous writers come up in this century, to be forgotten in the next. But the silver cord of the Bible is not loosed, nor its golden bowl broken, as Time chronicles his tens of centuries f)n,ssed by. Fire acts as a refiner of metals : the dross is piled in forgotten heaps, but the pure gold is reserved for use, and is current a thousand years hence as well as to-day. It is only real merit that can long pass for such ; tinsel will rust in the stonns of life ; false weights are soon detected there. It is only a heart can speak to a heart, a mind to a mind, a soul to a soul, wisdom to the wise, and religion to the pious. There must then be in the Bible, mind, heart, and soul, wisdom, and religion : were it otherwise, how could millions find it their lawgiver, friend, and prophet ? Some of the greatest of human institutions seem built on the Bible : such things will not stand on chaff, but on mountains of rock. What is the secret cause of this wide and deep influence ? It must be found in the Bible itself, and must be adequate to the effect."^ ' Parker's ' Discourse of Religion,' pp. 237-239, 242. 6 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. Such a school of infideHty, which assumes the garb, and borrows the phrases of Christianity, requires us to look below the surface, before we can discern its real nature, and guard against the inroads of its subtle delusions. All these praises of the Bible, in the writer just quoted, and others of the same t^^pe of thought, are followed by a distinct and deliberate rejection of its Divine authority. " The conclusion," we are told, " is forced upon us that the Bible is a human work, as much as the ' Principia' of Newton or Descartes. Some things are beautiful and true, but others no man in his senses can accept. Here are the works of various writers, thrown capriciously together, and united by no common tie but the lids of the bookbinder — two forais of religion which differ widely, one the religion of fear, and the other of love." The same spirit evidently pervades other writings, which profess to set Christianity free from the trammels of a traditional orthodoxy, and to bring it into harmony with the discoveries of modern science. It is essential, then, to look beneath the surface of the inquiry, and to examine the foundations themselves. A course of argument, like that of Paley,^ may be triumphant and complete against a direct charge of imposture, dis- honesty, and collusion. But the form of temptation which now assails the Church requires some previous questions, more subtle and delicate in their nature, to be examined. What do we mean by a Divine Revela- tion ? What are the conditions on which its possibility, its probability, or its certainty depend ? What need is there that such a revelation should be given to man- kind ? How far can miracles, prophecies, or moral excellence, separately or in combination, furnish decisive evidence of its reality ? How may we infer the Divine ' Note A. The Evidential School of Theology. INTRODUCTION. 7 authority of the Bil)le from the statement of the Bible itself, without a vicious circle in our reasoning ? How- are we to explain alleged contradictions between the language of Scripture and the results of antiquarian research, and the real or suj:)posed discoveries of modern science ? How can we reconcile the doctrine of Divine inspiration, and the claim of the Bible to a supernatural origin, with the innumerable signs of human authorship, with seeming discrepancies in its historical statements, and the diversity of manner and style in its different writers ? Such questions as these require to be carefully examined, if a bulwark is to be reared against the tidewave of sceptical thought, which threatens, at this moment, to bury the old landmarks of Christian faith. THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. CHAPTER I. THE NATURE OF DIVINE REVELATION. What do we mean by a Divine Eevelation ? What are the conditions on which the possibihty of its occurrence depends ? These are among the first questions which must be answered, that our acceptance of Christianity, under the character of a message from God, may be a well grounded and reasonable faith. The first truth, plainly imphed, is the being op God, as a personal and conscious Intelligence. " He that Cometh to God must believe that he is." Atheism, by its very nature, excludes all possibility of revelation. If there be no God, there can be no communication from God to man. A blind, mechanical, imconscious Fate, can never be the source of intelligible messages to intelligent beings. All faith in divine revelation must imply a previous conviction that " there is a God in heaven who revealeth secrets," an Unseen Lawgiver, who is capable of making known his will to mankind. That faith in God, however, which must precede our belief in a divine message, may be exceedingly dim, vague, and imperfect. It need not be more than a strong inpression that there is some Unseen Intelligence, higher, greater, and wiser than men. The true character of this Unknown Being may remain concealed in thick darkness, until it is learned from his own messages. Atheism makes the acceptance of a divine revelation a THE NATURE OF DIVINE REVELATION. 9 contradiction and an impossibility. A full and adequate knowledge of God, ajDart from such a revelation, and before it is received, would degrade it into a useless and unmeaning superfluity. A second truth, equally implied in the fact of reve- lation, is THE REALITY OF CREATED EXISTENCE. TllOSe who receive a divine message must be distinct from Him who sends it. It may seem needless, at first sight, to dwell even for a moment on a truth so clear and self- evident. Philosophers, however, both in ancient and modern times, have often stumbled at the very threshold of true science, and have mistaken a denial of the earliest lessons of self-consciousness for superiority to vulgar prejudice, and a proof of their own more pro- found wisdom. The Maya, or illusion of the Brahman, the absorption of Buddhism, the theories of Spinoza, the sceptical philosophy of Hume, and some later forms of German speculation, agree in denying the distinct reality of created existence. Whenever the Scriptural idea of creation is replaced by one of emana- tion or development, such a result seems naturally to follow. Pantheism in all its forms, no less than mere Atheism, excludes revelation and makes it impossible. If the souls of men are only parts of the Infinite Soul of the universe, there may be strange pulsations of life in this complex universe of being ; but revelation, or the conveyance of truth from a Creator to his own crea- tures, becomes a logical contradiction. We must believe that WE are, as well as that God is, before we can believe that God has made to his erring and sinful creatures, a true revelation of his own will. A Divine Message, like a mediator, is " not of one." It requires evidently two distinct parties, a giver and a receiver. The existence of the rational creature must be real, or there oiii be no manifestation of the Creator. 10 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. This fimdamental truth of our consciousness, without which all revelation would be impossible, is confirmed and ratified by the very first utterance of revealed re- ligion, when it tells us that " in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth," and that Man himself was formed " in the image of God." A third truth, also implied in the acceptance of a divine revelation, is the power of God to make KNOWiir His nature and will to his own creatures. His absolute dominion and infinite greatness do not make it impossible for him to reveal himself to men. The con- ception would, indeed, be strange, of a Being condemned by his own perfection to an eternal solitude ; able to give life and reason to finite and intelligent creatures ; but unable, because he is infinite, to bridge over the immense chasm which separates him from his own works, or to make known to those creatures his mind and will. On the contrary, one of those perfections which reason plainly requires us to ascribe to him is the capability of revealing himself to all the rational creatures he has made. We may here apply the de- cisive reasoning of the Psalmist : " He that planted the ear, shall he not hear ; he that formed the eye, shall he not see ?" The argument, when carried a step further, is equally cogent. He that fashioned the tongue, shall he not be able to make his voice heard in clearest accents, and to communicate his mind and will to the children of men ? It is quite possible, in recoiling from the proud claims of natural reason, while it pretends to form a priori systems of the universe, to fall into error no less dangerous on the opposite side. The finite cannot comprehend the infinite. Hence the inference may be drawn, that the nature of God must remain for ever inaccessible and wholly unknown. But this would be THE NATURE OF DIVINE REVELATION. 11 an illusion, contraclictecl by every analogy in every field of science. In all subjects, from the lowest to the highest, partial, but real knowledge, is the essential condition of a created and finite intelligence. Created existence is a middle term between nonentity and ab- solute being. The knowledge of rational creatures, in like manner, is a middle term between pure nescience and perfect omniscience. That a real, genuine, though of course an imperfect knowledge of God, is attainable, and ought to be attained, is one of the fundamental doc- trines both of natural and revealed religion. Tt ranks side by side with the doctrine of creation, that is, faith in the reality of our own existence, as the rational and intelligent creatures of God. In every subject of thought, knowledge may be real without being exhaustive or complete. The landscape may be spread beneath our eye in clear outline, though parts near the horizon are seen dimly, and all that lies beyond that horizon is wholly hidden from our view. The knowledge that two and two are four is within the reach of a child. It is a definite truth, contrasted with a falsehood, in excess and defect, on either side : but to comprehend all the properties and relations of any one number — even two, the simplest of them all — would require omniscience. There is no room for a contrast, in this resj^ect, between the knowledge of God and any other kind of knowledge whatever. The maxim, " we know in part," applies impartially to every field of natural, moral, and theological science. The degrees of our knowledge or ignorance may differ widely. Fallen man knows much of nature, little of himself, and least of his Maker. But even where his knowledge is greatest, far more than he has learned remains still unknown ; and even where his ignorance is deepest, some traces remain, though in broken 12 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. characters, of " the work of the law written in the heart." ^ Such is the third truth, imphed in the idea of a revelation, that the will and character, the ways and purposes of God, are capable of being made known to his intelligent creatures. But when we speak of a revelation to mankind, a further doctrine is implied ; that Man, in his actual state, has a capacity for LEARNING AND KNOWING THE TRUTH OF GOU. If we had no faculty of reason distinguishing us from the brutes, it would be unmeaning to address to us any message that requires the exercise of intelligence. There must be jDowers and capacities receptive of divine truth, or else revelation would be impossible, and the claim of Christianity to be a message from God to mankind would be convicted of absurdity. It could no longer have any reasonable foundation on which to rest. This truth, however plain, has been often obscured, and perhaps sometimes even denied, by over-zealous advocates of Christian orthodoxy. The strong state- ments of ScrijDture respecting the moral disease and inability of man may be so combined and isolated, as to engender a dull, passive fatalism, and turn into an idle mockery that earnest appeal to the human conscience, which runs throughout the whole course of the word of God. The heart of sinners, we are told, is gross, their ears are heavy, their eyes are blind. They are " dead in trespasses and sins." Such passages, taken alone, might appear to teach a natural incapacity for discerning any moral and religious truth, rather than deep moral aversion from the messages of God. But other statements, equally strong and clear, restore the balance of trutli. There is a frequent appeal to the ' Note B. The Limits of Eeliiiious Thought. THE NATURE OF DIVINE IIEVELATION. 13 conscience of the sinner himself on the equity of the Divine commands. " Come now, and let us reason together, saith the Lord." " And now, 0 inJiabitants of Jerusalem and men of Judah, judge, I pray you, betwixt me and my vineyard." " 0 my people, wherein have I wearied thee ? testify against me." " Yea, and why even of your own selves judge ye not what is right ?" The corruption of the sinful heart of man, and its averseness from the messages of God, is vividly portrayed in striking metaphors ; but the presence of a natural capacity to discern tlie authority of those mes- sages and to recognise their equity, is also stated in the most emphatic and decisive terms. * These four main truths — the being of God, the reality of created existence, the communicableness of Divine knowledge, and the capacity of men for apprehending spiritual truth, are fundamental conditions and pre- requisites of all f\iith in revealed I'eligion. They sepa- rate the Christian believer, at the outset, from tlie Atheist, the Pantheist or philosophical Buddhist, the sceptical Idealist of the transcendental school, and the sceptical Materialist of the Positive Philosophy. One further truth, however, is required, which distinguishes Christian faith from the most subtle and specious variety of unbelief, the doctrine of Spiritual Theism, with its admission of a constant, universal, unintermitted reve- lation of the will of God to the whole race of mankind. This further truth, on which tlie doctrine of super- natural revelation, when viewed practically, will l)e found to rest, is the fallen condition of man, which requires special interpositions of Divine love and wis- dom in order to effect his recovery. Let us conceive a world of perfect moral purity, where no cloud of sin has ever dinnned the light of the Divine presence, or concealed the Holy One from the 14 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. view of his own creatures. There might still, no doubt, be precepts and commands of the Creator, the reason of which was not explained, and which might retain the character of outward messages, communi- cated directly by the Word and the Spirit of God to sinless beings, willing subjects of the Divine au- thority. But where all was light, the only contrast would consist in various degrees of the same heavenly brightness. The heavens would declare the glory of their Maker, and the firmament would shew his handy work. Every breath, every pulse of life, in every creature, would be referred instinctively to its Divine Author*. His presence would be felt, and his praise would be sung, in the wonderful workmanship of the human frame, and in every exercise of the higher faculties of the soul within. All nature would be redolent of worship ; all creatures would reflect, like unsullied mirrors, some ray of the Divine goodness. Life, in all its forms and in all its activities, would be one series of ceaseless revelations of the bounty and wisdom of the Creator. The world itself would be bathed in the light of the Divine presence. Eevela- tions, ever new, and endlessly varied, would be im- parted to the souls of men, by every sunrise, and every sunset, by the song of the birds, and the fragrance of the flowers, by the joys of childhood, and the ripened wis- dom of age, by all the beauties of the earth, and all the glories of the sky. There might still be, from time to time, special manifestations of God's gracious presence, and more signal communications of his truth and love, by the visits of angels, or direct appearances of the Son of God. But where all was light and love, the sense of contrast between these special revelations and the ordinary course of Providence, since this itself would be a continual and conscious revelation of God's TEE NATURE OF DIVINE REVELATION. 15 presence and love, would almost disappear. A crystal palace, whose transparent walls admit tlie full day- light on every side, may receive a richer splendour when the sun breaks forth from a cloud, and lights it up with noonday brilliance ; but there was no dark- ness before, and that fuller light, however pleasant and joyful it may be, scarcely receives the name of a revela- tion. But let one such ray of sunlight, through some narrow crevice, visit the low dungeon whose massive walls exclude the least beam of day, whose narrow window, choked with dust, can do no more than make darkness visible, and where some unhappy prisoner is pining in hopeless gloom, and then it is a revela- tion indeed. The light becomes more conspicuous and' more joyful by the sudden contrast with the previous darkness. Pure Theism or Spiritualism is the most subtle and plausible rival of Christian faith. It approaches nearest to it, adopts its phrases, borrows its morality, and nestles, as it were, close to its side. It rejects the open blasphemies of atheism, and the misty dreams of a pan- theistic philosophy. It allows, and even asserts, that God is able to make himself known to his creatures, and that Man has faculties caj)able of receiving Divine communications. ' So far the spiritualist, the disciple of " Absolute Religion," and the Christian believer, travel side by side ; but here their paths diverge from each other. Christianity affirms the doctrine of the Fall, or a moral degeneracy and corruption of all mankind, which makes a supernatural provision of mercy desir- able, and even essential, for their recovery. The spirituahst sets the doctrine aside, as degrading to human nature, a mere dream of melancholy super- Btition. On this rejection he builds his own theory of revelation ; and the following extract from the eloquent 16 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. writer already quoted will shew its total contrariety to the lessons of Christian faith : — " We have direct access to God through reason, con- science, the religious sentiment, just as we have direct -access to nature through the eye, the ear, or the hand. Through these channels, and by means of a law, certain, regular, and universal as gravitation, God inspires man, makes revelation of truth. Tins inspiration is no miracle, but a regular mode of God's action on con- scious spirit, as gravitation on unconscious matter. It is not a rare condescension of God, but a universal uj)- lifting of man. To obtain a knowledge of duty, man is not sent away, outside of himself, to ancient docu- ments, for the only rule of life and practice ; the word is very nigh him, even in his heart ; and by this word he is to try all documents whatever. Inspiration, hke God's omnipresence, is not limited to the few writers claimed by the Jews, Christians, or Mohammedans, but is co-extensive with the race. " This theory does not make God limited, j)artial, or capricious. It exalts man. While it honours the excellence of a religious genius, of a Moses or a Jesus, it does not pronounce their character monstrous, as the supernatural theory, but natural, human, beautiful, revealing the possibility of mankind. ' Prayer is not a soliloquy, not an address to a deceased man, but a sally into the spiritual world, whence we bring back light and truth. There are windows towards God as towards the world. There is no intercessor or mediator be- tween man and God ; for man can S23eak, and God can hear, each for himself. He requires no advocate to plead for men, who need not pray by attorney. Each soul stands close to the omnipresent God, may feel his beautiful presence, and have famihar access to him, get truth at first hand from its author. Is inspi- THE NATURE OF DIVINE REVELATION. 17 ration confined to theological matters alone ? Is Newton less inspired than Simon Peter ? . . . . Plato and Newton, Milton and Isaiah, Leil)nitz and Paul, Mozart, Raphael, Phidias, Praxiteles, and Orpheus, receive into their various forms the one spirit from God most high."^ This theory of inspiration, it must be plain, is based on a silent assumption of the unfallen and sinless con- dition of mankind. Christianity, in its claim to be a supernatural revelation, special and distinctive in its messengers and messages, though world-wide in its aim, starts from an opposite assumption, that man- kind have fallen from original uprightness, and that means more powerful than the voice of nature alone are needed for their recovery. The doctrine of the Fall, once received, explains all the special features of supernatural revelation. Nature, in all her works, in the rain from heaven, and fruitful seasons, may still Ijear witness to the bounty of her Maker. The heavens may still declare the glory of God, and the firmament may shew his handiwork. But sin has made the eyes of men dim, and their ears deaf, that they seldom heed the message ; and it has rendered deeper revelations of God's character, than mere bounty and general benevolence, essential to man's recovery from a state of guilt, alienation, and moral ruin. It fills the conscience with terrors, and the understanding w4th strong and strange delusions. It turns men into tempters and deceivers, each to the other, instead of multiplying mirrors, reflecting brightly upon each other the beams of the Divine goodness. Its universal tendency, and in dark times its actual result, is to pervert human society into a gigantic system of moral falsehood, in which men are " foolish, disobedient, de- ' Parker's ' Discourse,' pp. 160-165. C 18 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. ceived, serving divers lusts and pleasures, living in malice and envy, hateful, and hating one another." Tit. iii. 3. The light from God's natural works still shines upon this land of mist and darkness ; but " the darkness comprehendeth it not." It is too feeble to penetrate the thick gloom. Every field of nature is either peojDled with phantom gods, the mere reflections of human lust and appetite ; or second causes alone are seen, and the great First Cause is thrust out of sight and forgotten. It becomes needful, then, by signs and wonders, to break through the monotony of nature, and to force on reluctant hearts the conviction that there is a living God, the Lord of nature, higher and nobler than the laws he has ordained for his creatures, the true Sovereign of the universe. Since men have become mutual deceivers, unable to discern even the simpler lessons of natural religion, and still more to anticipate the mysteries of redemption, and to devise, or even to understand, the means required for their own recovery, special messengers of truth must be provided, if the work of mercy is to be carried on. The Word of God, whether before his incarnation, or incarnate in Inunan flesh, may thus have to become the Messenger to sinners of his Father's will. Angels, whose vision of God has been dimmed by no fall, though their intercourse with a fallen race is almost wholly suspended, may still be sent from time to time on errands of mercy or of judgment, at the bidding of their Lord. Holy men, the choice first-fruits of redemption, in whom the work of moral recovery is more advanced than in their fellows, may be raised, from time to time, above themselves, and shielded from the influence of remain- ing infirmity and error, in order to become the veliicles of Divine messages to their fellow-men. And thus by prophets, by angels, and the Son of God himself, 'J' HE NATUKE OF DIVINE KEVELATION. 19 attested by miracles and by prophecies, a system of Divine revelation may be carried on, which meets the necessities of a fallen race, speaks to mankind in louder and clearer tones, and with wider and deeper truths, than a mere religion of nature can attain ; secures at every step of its progress some partial victories of truth and righteousness over sin, error, and delusion ; and moves on, with firm and measured step, toward a long- promised consummation of restored holiness, when the tabernacle of God shall be with men, and his will be done on earth as it is in heaven. To decide, then, between the high-sounding dreams of Spiritualism, with its pretensions to universal inspi- ration, and the modest claims of Christianity, with its sjDCcialties of miracle, projDhecy, and sacrifice, we need only to read the history of the world, and its long ages of sin and sorrow. The voice of nature might well sufiice for an unfallen race ; or if it were supplemented by special messages from heaven, these angels' visits need not be " few and far between," and would lose their strange and miraculous character amidst the unclouded sunshine of a sinless world. But when mankind have turned their backs on the light, and plunged them- selves into thick darkness ; when habits of sin have blunted the conscience, and tainted and defiled every faculty of the soul; when the laws of a holy God have been broken, and denounce a curse against the rebels who have trampled them under their feet ; when the pall of death broods over the whole race, and the daily spectacle of its ravages, with no return from the grave, has ahnost blotted out all faith in the soul's immoiiality ; when life is short, and death is near, and judgment at hand, and conscience accuses, and the law of God condemns, and dark clouds of fear and remorse have separated the souls of men from their God — it c 2 20 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. needs a clearer and stronger voice than that of nature alone, to restore peace to the troubled heart, to subdue the inveterate power of sin, and open the pathway of life to the trembling sinner. For Nature herself has solemn messages, and can terrify the guilty with the fear of judgment to come, no less than delight the children of innocence with her tones of gentleness and peace. Clouds and thick darkness, the volcano and the earthquake, the lightning, the whirlwind, and the hurri- cane, the spreading fever, and the destroying pestilence, all have their own voice of fear and alarm to the guilty conscience. They echo in loud accents the warning of the Bible itself, that " the wrath of God is revealed from heaven against all ungodliness and unrighteous- ness of men." Christianity, then, in claiming to be a special and supernatural revelation, implies and presupposes the ffreat doctrine of the fall of mankind. Whenever this truth is denied, the need for any such special interference of God, to make known his ways, will cease to be recog- nised, and the sufficiency of the mere light of nature will be maintained. The specialties of revealed religion will then be held for so many proofs of its arbitrary and capricious character, so as to make it unworthy a God of universal benevolence. The whole provision of supernatural evidence, in miracles and prophecies, will seem a laborious superfluity ; and then, by natural consequence, an incredible deviation from the fixed and usual laws of Divine Providence. When a whole neighbourhood are enjoying perfect health, the arrange- ments of a hospital, with its nurses and physicians, its wards and couches, its medicines and surgical instru- ments, however complete or skilfully devised, may seem to be only a complicated and laborious folly. " They that be whole need not a physician, but they that are sick." THE NATURE OF DIVINE REVELATION. 21 An unfa lien and sinless race would have little need for a long series of miraculous messages and supernatural revelations. Once admit, however, the truth that man is fallen and apostate, and needs rescuing from moral degrada- tion and spiritual danger, and the seeming anomaly disa2:>pears. Christianity, with its miracles and pro- j^hecies, and mysterious doctrines, is no longer an inexplicable paradox, a strange, incredible excrescence on a simpler creed of pure theism and universal phi- lanthropy— a creed reckoned complete and effective, without this higher aid, to meet every want of the souls of men. On the contrary, the truth of its own descrip- tions of its blessed office commends itself at once to the Inn-dened conscience and the sorrowing heart. The salvation it brings to sinners is " the power of God, and tlie wisdom of God ; and the Saviour in whom it centres is " the Dayspring from on high," sent on a visit of mercy to a race of wandering prodigals, " to give light to them that sit in darkness and the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace." 22 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. CHAPTER II. man's need of divine revelation. " I DEEM it unnecessary to prove that mankind stood in need of a revelation, because I have met with no serious person who thinks that, even under the Christian reve- lation, we have too much light, or any degree of assur- ance that is superfluous." The objection, which Paley has thus pithily dismissed in his opening sentence, has been revived by some late writers in a more paradoxical form. A supernatural revelation, they affirm gravely, instead of a help, would be only a hindrance to the souls of men. It would charge the scheme of Providence with an inexcusable defect. Its admission disparages and sets aside natural religion, and denies the ceaseless activity of the Divine goodness. It would lay a heavy yoke upon the reason and conscience, and subject them to a degrading and oppressive tyranny. The charge has been made in these words. " This theory makes inspiration a very rare miracle, confined to one nation, and to some score of men in that nation, who stand between us and God. We cannot pray in our own name, but in that of the Mediator, who makes intercession for us. It exalts miraculous persons, and degrades men. Our duty is not to inquire into the truth of their word ; reason is no judge of that : we must put faith in all which all of them tell MAN'S NEED OF DIVINE REVELATION. 23 US. It sacrifices reason, conscience, and love to the words of the miraculous men ; and thus makes its mediator a tyrant who rules over the soul by external authority, not a brother who acts in the soul by awaken- ing its dormant powers. It says the canon of revelation is closed ; God will no longer act on man as heretofore. We have come at the end of the feast, are born in the latter days and dotage of mankind, and can only get light by raking among the ashes of the past. The religion of supernaturalism is worn out and second- handed. Its vice is to restrict the Divine presence and action to towns, places, and persons. It overlooks the fact, that if religious truth be necessary for all, then it must either have been provided and put within the reach of all, or else there is a fault in the Divine plan. If the two main points (a knowledge of the existence of God, and of the duty we owe to him) be within the reach of man's natural powers, how is a miracle, or the tradition of a miracle, needed to reveal the minor doc- trines involved in the universal truth ? Where, then, is the use of miraculous interposition ?"' I. The first objection is here made to lie against the notion itself, that a supernatural revelation could be needful, or even desirable, for mankind. It would imply, it is said, a serious fault in the plan of Pro- vidence. That scheme must be perfect ; and could not be perfect if m6n stood in need of any supernatural light. No matter what the historical evidence may be, that men, without tliis aid, have groped for ages in thick darkness, the whole must give way, in the view of sucli confident theorists, to this one aphorism of a pno7'i reasoning, and is refuted by their own conception of what a perfect scheme of Providence inevitably requires. The simplest reply, then, to this first objection, is an ' ' Discourse of Religion,' pp. 156, 158. 24 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. appeal from dreams to facts, from the fancies of rash and ignorant speculation to the stern realities of the world's liistory. Whatever the means of natural light which, in the view of such theorists, must have been provided, the gi'eat hulk of mankind have been steeped, for long ages, in gross religious darkness. The same writers who assure us that a miraculous revelation is needless, or else the Divine plan would be imperfect, maj) out the religious history of the Past into three stages, which they describe as follows. The first is Fetichism, in which " the saint is a murderer, and the fancied God presides over the butchery." The second is Polytheism, in which " the gods were to be had at a bargain ;" and the priesthood " separated morality from religion, life from belief, good sense from theology," and the story is " a tragedy of Sin and Woe." The third and latest is a corrupt Monotheism, whose disciples " make earth a demon-land, and the one God a king of devils." Men have groped, it seems, in such blindness for thousands of years ; but they must be held, on a priori grounds, to have lived all the time in clear daylight, rather than scej^tics will own that there could be any real need for a supernatural revelation. But the objection is no less faulty and worthless in its reasoning, than opposed to the plainest facts in the relio'ious history of the world. Miraculous messajxes imply no fault in the Divine plan, but only sin and corruption on the part of men. Means of religious light, adequate to the wants of sinless creatures, have been provided from the first, in the works of nature and the rich bounties of providence, and have never been withdrawn. It is sin and rebellion alone, which have (lulled the imderstanding, and perverted the will, so that nature no longer avails to lead the souls of men " through nature up to nature's God." This same MAN'S NEED OF DIVINE REVELATION. 25 apostasy lias also called into exercise deeper attributes of the Godhead, and has made it needful for men to apprehend higher truths than nature alone could teach them, before they can be recovered to the lost favour and iihage of their Maker again. Even in the outwai'd world, the food of health is far more abundant than the medicines which are required in sickness. The pro- fh'gate, wlio has ruined his health by vice and intemper- ance, has no right to blame the constitution of nature, if the remedies of the physician, unlike his daily bread, are costly in price, and possibly difficult to procure. Christianity, on the face of it, professes to be a Divine remedy for a dangerous moral disease. The Saviour, to whom it points, is the Physician of souls. The disease wlijch needs an effectual cure, is guilt, disobedience, and rebellion against the Divine will. Those who are suffering from such a malady only prove its depth and malignity, when they claim that the Great Physician shall consult their notions of equity, rather than his own wisdom arid holiness, in the means he may gra- ciously devise for restoring guilty and rebellious sinners to moral health and happiness again. II. The second charge against miraculous revelation is, that it would be positively hurtful, because it dis- ])n rages and sets aside natural religion, and confines inspiration to a few persons onl^^ in a remote age of the world's history. The reply to this strange indictment is very simple. Tlie 2:ift of revelation withdraws from mankind nothino: which tliey really possessed before. Instead of blotting out the lessons of God's natural works, it revives them, and makes all those works speak in clearer accents than ever to the souls of men. The only sacrifice it involves is that of mischievous delusions, l)y whicli men indulge in vain fancies of light and knowledge, while they are really sunk in gross darkness. It forl)ids tlie guilty 26 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. rebel to say " Peace, peace," when there is no peace. It forbids tlie cruel savage, " his hands smeared all over with the blood of human sacrifice," to think that he needs no mediator or advocate, but " stands close to God, may feel his beautiful presence, and have familiar access to him," and without change or repentance, may " sit down " with prophets and saints " in the kingdom of God." All the means of instruction, which nature without or conscience within supply to men, remain as before, or rather their efficacy is largely increased. The only loss is that of the moral delirium, which boasts of health amidst the symptoms of a raging fever ; and extols man's high capacities for knowing and loving his Maker, amidst the wide-spread ruin of a moral desola- tion which has reached from the first dawn of history down to our own days, and has made every page of the world's history resemble the roll of the prophet, full of " lamentations, and mourning, and woe." Again, the charge that inspiration is thus confined to a few individuals, and the presence of God restricted to particular times, places, and persons, has no other ground than a palpable abuse of terms. Inspiration, in the sense in which the Christian claims it for pro- phets and evangelists, instead of being made universal by the sceptic, is denied and rejected altogether. In the sense affirmed by the sceptic himself, or as a conmion gift or capacity of all men, it is not denied by the Christian, but is only freed from an absurd and mis- chievous exaggeration. It is the constant and daily prayer of the Church of Christ, to the God of the Bible, that " by his holy inspiration we may think those things which be good ; and by his merciful guiding we may perform the same," and that he would " cleanse the thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of his Holy Spirit, so that we may perfectly love him, and worthily magnify his holy name." The double doctrine, MAN'S NEED OF DIVINE REVELATION. 27 of a natural action of the Spirit of God on the souls of all men in sustaining and npholding their various faculties, and of a special action on tlie souls of the good and holy, to renew and sanctify them from day to day, is a main and fimdamental part of the orthodox Christian faith. The belief in a more special inspiration, usually confined to " holy men of God," but given in some rare cases to others, and designed to fit them for the special work of transmitting pure truth from God to their fellow men, does not interfere in the least with those wider statements of the gospel, which are confirmed by the daily experience of all pious Christians. There is tlius a natural, a moral, and a prophetic inspiration. The natural belongs to all mankind. Gen. ii. 7 ; Job xxxii. 8. The moral is the privilege of holy and re- generate souls* The prophetic belongs to those whom the sovereign will of the Supreme Lawgiver has singled out to convey and record his own messages, with Divine authority, for the general benefit of the human race. III. The third objection brought against Divine re- velation is, that it lays a yoke upon the reason and conscience, and makes them subject to a degrading tyranny. The true relation between the Bible and human con- science needs a distinct inquiry, since it is this point which fomis the main divergence between Christian Faith and a Negative or Semi-infidel Theology. As a preliminary objection, this indictment against the word of God in the Bible only calls for a very brief reply. Assuming the claim of a supposed revelation to be false, and its contents to be unworthy of that God in whose name it is given, there can be no doubt that the admission of its Divine authority will impose a heavy burden upon the conscience and reason of all whom it has deceived. They must either lower their 28 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. conceptions of the Almighty to the level of a hiTinan forgery ; or else put a force upon language, and submit to the immoral practice of making disingenuous and forced interpretations of the messages they profess to receive as Divine. At least this result must follow, unless we ascribe a moral wisdom and excellence to the pretended revelation, which it seems incredible that a mere imposture should attain. On the other hand, if the God of truth and wisdom lias really been pleased to make known his will to men, and has given them messages, sealed with clear marks of their Divine origin; then the obligation to receive these messages in their true character, and to use them for gaining insight into the ways and works of God, can never be felt as an oppressive yoke by the wise, the humble, and the pious. Such a gift can be irksome and oppressive only to the proud, the self- willed, and the profane. It is not reason and con^ science, but rather a Satanic pride, which refuses to sit humbly at the feet of our Lord ; and instead of wonder- ing at " the gracious words which proceed from his lips," and treasuring them in the heart with gladness and reverence, sees in them a usurpation on its own fancied right to speculate, without restraint, and with- out a guide, on the character, the works, and the provi- dence of the Most High. The mere fact that such an objection could be made to the reception of the Bible, as endued with Divine authority, by those who have been reared in a Christian land, and have had means of acquainting themselves with its treasures of grace and holiness, is only a new illustration of the truth of one of its inspired warnings. The God of the Bible, in every age, hides his truth from the wise and prudent, and reveals it to babes. " He hath filled the hungry with good things, and the rich he hath sent empty away." THE SUPERNATUKAL CLAIMS OF CHEISTIANITY. 29 CHAPTER III. THE SUPERNATURAL CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY. The contrast between Christian faith and that school of thought which professes to introduce a more free and rational theology, lies much deeper than the question whether the canon of Scripture be perfect, and its inspiration verbal, plenary, and complete. It relates to that main feature of the whole message, on wdiich its practical worth and excellency entirely depends. Is Christianity itself human or Divine ? Is it simply a product of imposture or superstition, or at best of the unaided wisdom of imperfect, prejudiced, and falliljle men ? Or is it the voice of the living God, speaking to his creatures by prophets, whom he has himself commissioned and inspired, and by his only begotten Son ? Is it a message, every part of which must stand or fall, separately, according to our private opinion of its merit ? or one which has been ratified, in all its parts, "with signs and wonders, and divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will ?" Here the first duty of every honest inquirer is to learn what the writers of the Bible themselves affirm resjjecting the nature of their message. Their state- ment, of course, will not of itself prove the reality of their Divine mission. " If I bear record of myself," our Lord said to the Pharisees, " my record is not true." 30 THE BIBLE AND MODEEN THOUGHT. The mere assertion of liigli claims, uiisiistained by any furtJier evidence, is always snspicious. It may often be a mark of imposture, or of fanatical delusion. But still an important end is at once fulfilled, when it is seen that the Law and the Gospel, as recorded by Moses and the Evangelists, do manifestly claim for themselves a supernatural character as the proof of their Divine origin. The controversy is greatly nar- rowed. Men will be saved from the delusion of supposing that they are genuine Christians of a more enlightened school, while they submit the gospel piece- meal to the tribunal of their own private reason, and admit or reject in its pages just whatever jDleases them. If the Bible is, or even if it contains, a Divinely-attested message, then our first duty is to ascertain to what part, whether more or less, the attestation is given, and to receive all such portions with the docility of a childlike faith. But a book, every part of which is to be received or rejected independently, according as we judge its histories to be true or faulty, its doctrines reasonable or foolish, its morals sound and true, or unsound and erroneous, differs in no respect from any other book whatever. Miraculous attestations to such a jnessage are a ridiculous superfluity, since we cannot tell what it is they are meant to attest. There would thus be an apparatus of special interferences for no practical end ; a miraculous derangement of the course of nature, and a singular change in the usual laws of Providence, completely wasted and thrown away. Every midway position between belief and disbelief becomes untenable, in the presence of a distinct claim by our Lord and his apostles to a miraculous commis- sion. If this claim be true, then a merely eclectic Chris- tianity is an absurdity in logic, and, in morals, a direct rebelhon against the authority of God. If the claim be THE SUPERNATURAL CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY. 31 false, those who make it must be either impostors or fanatics ; and hence they must rank lower, either in simple honesty, or in wisdom and good sense, than good men of an ordinary stamp, who have never been guilty of so great an extravagance. The mere exist- ence of this claim on their part, when once proved, shuts out every compromise. Those cannot be safe guides, as mere human teachers and moralists, who have either feigned or fancied a direct commission from heaven they never received. It is absurd in tin's case to deny the authority of the message, and still to look up to the messengers with high admiration and peculiar deference. We ought rather to abhor them for their dishonesty, or else to pity them for their delusion. The remark of a modern sceptical writer has a wider appli- cation than to the doctrine and the moral virtue directly named in it. " When the New Testament attributes humility to Christ, it is manifestly under the notion of him as a Divine Being, who has descended from a celestial condition into this lower state of human suffer- ing and degradation. As soon as Jesus is regarded as a real (mere) man, the reversed condition of necessity requires the corresponding reversal of the moral charac- teristic into one or another phase of lofty daring and unmeasured aspiration." Let us turn, then, to the New Testament, and inquire what is its own evidence. Are the miracles and alleged fulfilments of prophecy a mere excrescence, which may be entirely pruned away, leaving behind them a system of pure morality imaltered and im- impaired? Or do they form the woof of the whole narrative, so that almost every page, and every main fact, receives the stamp of a Divine authority, or else is tainted with a hopeless leprosy of fraud and delusion ? Let us examine in succession the GosjdcIs of St. Mat- 32 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. thew and St. John, the Book of Acts, and the Apostohc Epistles. I. The Gospel of St. Matthew. Out of the twenty-eight chapters of the first Grospel, three-foin"ths contain the mention of some miracle, or some asserted fulfilment of prophecy. But this fact alone would give a very imperfect impression of the way in which the supernatural element forms the tex- ture of this Divine biography. Let us begin with the narrative of our Lord's birth and infancy. The first verse alludes evidently to two leading prophecies, ten and fifteen centuries old, as beino; fulfilled in the whole course of the sacred narra- tive. The birth of our Lord is next declared to be a miracle, and also to be the fulfilment of a third prophecy in Isaiah. The wise men are led to Jerusalem, miracu- lously, by the star which appears to them in the East. They, along with Herod, learn the birth-place of Christ from the prophecy of Micah, also seven centuries old. The star re-appears, and guides them to the very place. A dream from God warns them not to return to Herod. An angel, by a dream, directs the flight of Joseph into Egypt. The angel reappears to direct his return, and a fifth dream from God instructs him to leave Judea and return to Galilee. The opening of the Public Ministry, in the next two chapters, has the same character. We have first, at our Lord's baptism, the opening of the heavens, the descent of the Spirit, and the miraculous proclamation from heaven — " This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well- pleased." Next follows a supernatural fast of forty days, a direct conflict of the Redeemer and the Tempter, a miraculous transfer of our Lord to the pinnacle of the temple, and a record of the ministration of angels. A ]irophecy of Isaiah is shewn to be fulfilled in the chosen THE SUPEIIXATURAL CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY. 33 theatre of our Lord's ministry, and his work is affirmed to be the cure of " all manner of sickness and all manner of disease." The Sennon on the Mount is mainly a code of Chris- tian morality, but still it contains the strongest asser- tions of our Lord's supernatural mission. Near its opening the Divine authority of the Law and the Pro- phets is stated in most emphatic terms ; while a claim of like authority on the part of our Lord was the main impression his words left on the mind of his hearers. " They were astonished at his doctrine, for he taught tliem as one having authority, and not as the scribes." Miracles, also, are represented as so closely linked with his message that many counterfeits would arise. " Many will say to me in that day. Lord, Lord, have we not prophesied in thy name ? and in thy name have cast out devils ? and in thy name done many wonderful works ?" In the six chapters that follow, the miraculous ele- ment is conspicuous from first to last. They begin Avith the healing of the leper, of the centurion's ser- vant, and the mother-in-law of Simon Peter. Many miraculous cures are then dismissed in a brief sentence. " When the even was come, they brought unto him many that were possessed with devils, and he cast out the spirits with his woixl, and healed all that were sick." Then follows the stilling of the tempest, and the dis- possession of the demoniacs of Gadara, the cure of the palsy, and of the issue of blood, the resurrection of the ruler's daughter, the liealing of the two blind men, and of a duiiil) man possessed with a devil. The eiglith and ninth chaptei's, in short, are filled almost entirely with the mention of these miracles, and close with the more general statement that Jesus went through the cities and \ill;!ges " lienling every sickness and every disease among the people." 34 'J'HE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. The commission of the twelve apostles confers on them miraeiiloiis gifts. " He gave them power over unclean spirits, to cast them out, and to heal all manner of sickness and all manner of disease." The words of Christ are recorded, by which the power was given : " Heal the sick, cleanse the lepers, raise the dead, cast out devils ; freely ye have received, freely give." The reply to the Baptist's message alludes to the number of the miracles and their notoriety. " Go and shew John again those things which ye do hear and see. The blind receive their sight, and the lame walk, the lepers are cleansed, and the deaf hear, the dead are raised up, and the poor have the gospel preached to them. And blessed is he, whosoever shall not be offended in me." The Baptist's own mission is next declared to be a distinct fulfilment of prophecy. Ohorazin, Bethsaida, and Caper- naum have solemn judgments denounced, because of the greatness of the miracles they had witnessed, and of their own stubborn unbelief. The next chapter con- tains the cure of the withered hand, and a signal dis- possession, attended by a double cure of dumbness and blindness, which fills the people with amazement. The following discourse is occasioned by an admission of the truth of the miracles on the part of the Pharisees, and their attempt to elude the natural inference, of our Lord's Divine mission. The visit to Nazareth, at the close of the next chapter, gives two indirect assertions of the same general fact. The Nazarenes exclaim, " Whence hath this man this wisdom and these mighty works ?" while the evangelist adds to his account of their perplexity the brief and simple comment, " He did not many mighty works there, because of their unbehef." The next division of the Gospel, ch. xiv.-xx. is equally full of statements of miracle and fulfilled pro- phecy. It begins with the attempt of Herod to THE SUPERNATURAL CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY. 35 account for our Lord's mighty works by the supposi- tion that the Baptist was risen from the dead (xiv. 2.) Then follow, in quick succession, the healing of many sick on the further side of the sea of Galilee (ver. 14), the miraculous feeding of the five thousand (verses 15- 21), the walking of Jesus on the sea (verses 22-27), the attempt of Peter, its partial success and speedy failure (verses 28-32), the healing of many sick after the return to the western side (verses 34-36), the disposses- sion of the daughter of the woman of Canaan (xv. 21- 28), multiplied cures of " the lame, the dumb, the blind, the maimed, and many others" (29-31), and the second miracle of the seven loaves and the four thousand (xv. 32-39) ; a rebuke of the disciples for their forget- fulness of the two successive miracles of the loaves (xvi. 9), a prophecy of our Lord's resurrection (ver. 21), the transfiguration (xvii. 1), the cure of the demoniac child (ver. 14), the procurement, miraculously, of the tribute-money (ver. 27), and, last of all, the healing of the two blind men in the neighbourhood of Jericho (xx. 30-34). The last portion, occupied with the events of Passion Week, begins with the fulfilment of a prophecy of Zechariah, the healing of the blind and lame in the temple, and the curse on the barren fig-tree, speedily fulfilled ; while it is chiefly occupied with two main subjects — the accomplishment of many prophecies in our Lord's betrayal and crucifixion, and the last and crowning miracle of his resurrection from the dead. It is needless to enter into the details of the second and third gospels, which agree very nearly with that of St. Matthew. St. Mark has thirty-five or thirty-six records of miracles, or allusions to their occurrence, and the number is still higher in St. Luke. Out of the few incidents peculiar to St. Mark, two are records of fresh D 2 36 THE BIBLE AND MODEBN THOUGHT. miracles, unnoticed by St. Matthew — the cure of the deaf man wlio liad an impediment in his speech, and of tlie l)hiid man at Bethsaida. St. Luke, also, in addition to the miracles of the first Gospel, contains the vision of Zechariah, his miraculous dumbness and his recovery, the visit of the angel to the Virgin, the appearance to the shepherds, the prophecy of Simeon, the mission of the Seventy with miraculous gifts, like those of the Twelve, and their return with the joyful exclamation, " Lord, even the devils are subject to us through thy name." The mention of the miracles, also, in each of these gospels, reaches from their first opening to their common close in the history of the resurrection. II. The Gospel of St. John. The fourth G ospel has so plainly a doctrinal aim, and is composed so largely of our Lord's discourses, that we might expect to find in it only a sparing men- tion of the miracles. . This is true of the number of them, but not of their prominence in the history. On the contrary, all the main divisions of this Gospel, and all its chief discourses, depend on some miracle of our Lord. The opening chapters proclaim his Divine glory, and recount his first entrance on his public ministry. And how are the}' introduced ? By a signal testimony of the Baptist, our Lord's forerunner, to the sign by which the Messiah would be made known to him. " I saw the Spirit descending like a dove, and it abode upon him." And this sign concurred Avith a previous message to the Baptist himself. " And I knew him not ; but he that sent me to baptize with water, the same said unto me, Upon whom thou shalt see the Spirit descending, and remaining on him, the same is he which baptizeth with the Holy Glu).st. And I saw, and bare record that this is the Son of God." The call of the apostles is marked by THE SUPERNATURAL CLAIMS OF CHRTSTLVNITY. 37 a miraculous revelation to Natlianael ; and the opening of our Lord's ministry, by the miracle at Cana, and other works in Jerusalem at tlie feast. The conversation witli tlie Samaritan woman ascribes to our Lord prophetic insight, plainly supernatural, which forced from her the exclamation, " Come, see a man which told me all things that ever I did : is not this the Christ ?" The return into Galilee is marked by the cure of the noble- man's son at Capernaum. The fifth chapter forms a distinct "portion of tlie Gospel, separated in time from wliat precedes and follows ; and the whole is based upon the cure of the impotent man at the pool of Eethesda, Tlie sixth is another distinct portion, about the time of the last passover but one. It rej^eats, with some varia- tions of detail, the miracles of the five thousand and the walking on the sea, recorded in the earlier gospels. It adds also a full mention of the discourse at Capernaum, which arose out of the miracle, and alludes to it from first to last. The visit at the Feast of Tabernacles con- tains various discourses at Jerusalem (ch. vii.-x.), but the central fact is the cure of the man blind from his l)irth, which is given in this Gospel alone. Then follows the remarkable history of the raising of Lazarus, in the eleventh and part of the twelfth chapter, which links itself, by the allusion (xi. 17), with the great concourse at our Lord's last entry into Jerusalem. In the midst of the discourses, again, at tlie Last Supper, we find this striking summary of our Lord's ministry, and the gmlt of Jewish unbelief: " If I had not done among them the works which no other man did, they had'not had sin ; but now have they both seen and hated both me and my F'ather." To complete the series, in the closing chapter of this Gospel we have the record of a miracu- lous draught of fisiies, which followed our Lord's resur- rection— a counterpait, but with important difl'erences. 88 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. of an earlier miracle recorded by St. Luke, which took place near the commencement of our Lord's public ministry. This Grospel also, in harmony with its later date and more reflective character, not merely recounts various miracles, but suggests and unfolds the connection between these tokens of our Lord's Divine mission, and the truth of which they were the public confirmation and evi- dence. Thus we read in chap. ii. 11, " This beginning of miracles did Jesus in Cana of Galilee, and manifested forth his glory ; and his disciples believed on him." In the same chapter we are told once more that " many believed on his name, when they saw the miracles which he did." Nicodemus opens his interview with the simple statement — " Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from Grod, for no man can do these mira- cles that thou doest, except God be with him." The sluggish faith which craves perpetually for fresh mar- vels, is reproved in the words " Except ye see signs and wonders, ye will not believe." Yet a sign is given to . the nobleman by the speedy and sudden cure of his son, and " himself believed, and his whole house." In the discourse which follows the cure of the impotent man, our Lord assigns his miracles a middle place among the proofs of his Divine mission. " I have a witness greater than that of John ; for 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." In the discourse at Capernaum, he blames their sordid interest in the ofitward meal provided for them, instead of their thoughts being fixed on the miracle itself, and on the proof which it supplied of his true character. " Ye seek me, not because ye saw the miracles, but because ye did eat of the loaves, and were filled." In the narrative of the blind man, the same lesson is put into his own lips. THE SUPERNATUliAL CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY. 39 " Since the world Legan was it not lieard that any man opened the eyes of one that was born bhnd. If this man were not of God, he could do nothing." In the case of Lazarus, the conclusion apjDcars from the lips of tlie Pharisees themselves : " What do we ? for this man doeth many miracles. If we let him alone, all men will believe on him : and the Romans will come, and take away both our place and nation." Our Lord's con- demnation of the Jews, because of the greatness of his own works, has been already quoted from his parting discourse before the crucifixion. The apostle himself sums up these brief but instructive comments, in his own statement of the scope of his whole narrative, " And many other signs truly did Jesus in the presence of his disciples, which are not written in this book. But these are written, that ye might believe that Jesus is the Christ, the Son of God, and that believing, ye might have life through his name." in. The Book of Acts. The Book of Acts forms a transition from the long- series of Bible histories to those of later times, after the canon of Scripture was closed, in which the supernatural element ceases to appear. In time, it occupies more tlian thirty years (a.d. 30-63J, and includes the reigns of four emperors, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, and Nero, one of whom is mentioned by name. In place, it includes nearly all the main centres of civilization in the brightest days of the Roman empire — Jerusalem, Ca^saren, the Syrian and Pisidian Antit)ch, Philippi, Atliens, Corinth, Ephesus, Alexandiia, and Rome. It includes also the mention of two Jewish kings, and four Roman governors, two of Judea, one of Cyprus, and one of Achaia ; of the Asiarchs of Ephesuft, the chief man of Melita, and the mihtary })refeet of Rome ; and thus Hnks itself at every turn with the most familiar ele- 40 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. ments of classical and Jewish history. Yet the mi- raculous element continues throughout its whole course, and is not less prominent than in the gospels them- selves. Let us briefly notice the successive passages. A series of simple references, with a few words of occa- sional comment, will perhaps exhibit this feature in the clearest way. Cliap. i. 9-11. The Ascension, with the appearance and message of two ano-els. 16-21. Fnlfihnent of prophecy in the death of Judas, ii. 1-12. The miraculous descent of the Holy Spirit, and the gift of tnn;j;ues. 43. Many wonders and signs done by the apostles, iii. 1-11. The healing of the lame man at the gate of the temple. The rest of the chapter is an address, founded entirely upon this piiblic miracle, iv. 13-18. The confession of the miracle by the Jewish council, with their charge to the apostles to speak no more in the name of Jesus. 21, 22. " So when they had further threatened them, they let them go, finding nothing how they might punish them ; for all men glorified God for that which was done. For the man was above forty years old on whom this miracle of healing was shown." iv. 31. The place is sliaken where the disciples were assembled, and they are all filled with the Holy Ghost. V. 1-11. The miraculous judgment on Ananias and Sapphira. 12. Many wonders and signs done bj^the hands of the apostles. 15, 16. The sick are cured by the shadow of Peter passing by, and multitudes resort for healing to Jerusalem. 19-26. The a])0stles are miraculously freed from prison by an angel, vi. 8. Stejihen works great wonders and miracles among the ]ieople. vii. .^5, 56. A miraculous vision to Stephen before his death. viii. 5-8. Great joy in Samaria from the miraculous cures wrought by Philip the Evangelist. 14-19. Gifts of the Spirit bestowed by imjx>sition of the apostles' hands, and money offeiied by Simon Magus, to purchase the same ])ower. 26. Philip sent, by the message of an angel, to meet the Ethiopian eunuch. 39, 40. Philip miraculously caught away, after the baptism of the eunuch, and lound at Azutus. ix. 1-9 Tlie conversion of Saul by a miraculous vision. 10-l->. The vision of Ananias, and miraculous cure of Saul's blind- ness. THE SUPERNATURAL CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY. 41 Cliap. ix. 32-35, The cure of Eneas by St. Peter ; 30-42, the raising ot Dorcas from the dead. X. 1-8. The vision of the angel to Cornelius; 9-16, the vision to St. Peter. 44-48, Miraculous gifts of the Si)irit bestowed on Cornelius and other Gentiles. xi. 1-18. Rehearsal to the church of the miraculous conversion of Cornelius. 28-30. The prophecy of Agabus fulfilled under Claudius, xii, 1-17, The deliverance of St. Peter from prison by the message of an angel. 22, 23. The sudden judgment on Herod ascribed to the angel of the Lord, xiii. 6-12. Blindness miraculously inflicted on I'llymas by St. Paul, xiv. 3. Signs and wonders done at Iconium by the hands of Paul and Barnabas. 8-18. Ciu'e of the impotent man at Lystra, and Divine honour offered to tlie apostles. XV. 12. Barnabas and Paul report in the council at Jei-usalem "what miracles and wonders God had wrought among the Gentiles by them," xvi. 8-10. St. Paul guided into Europe by a miraculous vision. 18. The damsel dispossessed of the spirit of divination. 25-34. The earthquake at Philippi, the loosing of all the prisoners, and the jailer's conversion, xvii. 31. St. Paul at Athens bears witness to the fact of Christ's resurrection, xviii. 9, 10. St. Paul at Corinth has a miraculous vision, and message from the Lord, xix. 6. Gifts of the Spirit are bestowed on twelve disciples at Ephesus, 11, 12. Special miracles are wrought by St. Paul at l-^phesus. 13-17. Vain attempt of Jewish exorcists to copy the miracles of the apostle. XX, 7-12. Miraculous recovery of Eutychus. 23. St. Paul claims to know by the Holy Ghost the bonds and imprisonment winch await him. xxi. 9-12. Pro[.hecy ol Agabus. xxii. 6-16. St. Paul's account of his own conversion, 17-21, and his vis;on in tlie temjile at Jerusalem, xxiii. 11. A vision to St. Paul, and a predietitm of his journey to Rome, xxvi. 8-23. S*. Paul's account of his conversion before Agrijipa and Festu.s. xxvii. 10. St. Paul's [irediction of the shipwreck, 23-20, angelic vision, and further prophecy, xxviii. 3-6. St. Paul's miraculous escape from the vijier, 7, and cure of Pul.lius' father, 9, 10, and many others. 25-27. Prophecy of Isaiah fultilled in the unbelief of the Jews. 42 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. This brief list of references will shew how intimate and inseparable is the union of the miraculous element with the whole course of this apostolic history. From the resurrection and ascension, in the first verses, to the gifts of healing exercised by St. Paul at Melita, after his escape from shipwreck, this feature gives its colouring to every main event in the narrative. To borrow the phrase of the able author of ' The Restoration of Belief,' the relation is one of intimate cohesion, and not of mere adhesion. Once attempt to remove it and " the vitality of the writer is gone, though much that he has recorded might still be true. We have slain the man, but if he carried about with him anything that is valuable, we take it to ourselves." Or rather, we may go still further, and say that, when the miraculous element is rejected, nothing of real value is left behind. The historical fragments that would remain would be too few, and too suspicious, to save the bandit's occuiDation of rifling the dead from being a pure waste of learned labour. ly. The Apostolic Epistles. When we turn from the historical books of the New Testament to the letters of the apostles to individuals, or to the churches they had founded, a marked change occurs in the frequency witli which any direct mention of miracles occurs. The fundamental doctrine, indeed, of tlie resurrection of Christ meets us in almost every page, and is the constant basis of the doctrinal state- ments of the apostles, and of their practical appeals to the conscience. Setting this aside, however, out of twenty-one epistles there are only seven in which the topic of miracles is directly introduced. In the other fourteen tliey are passed by in total silence ; or if there be allusion to them, it is so delicate and unob- trusive, as to require the most careful search to find THE SUPERilATURAL CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY. 43 any trace of it. Out of a liiindred and twenty-one chapters, there is only one whicli contains a formal and distinct statement of the existence and nature of mi- raculous gifts in the early churches ; and out of nearly three thousand verses, there are, besides that one chapter, only about twenty scattered up and dowTi, which contain distinct allusions to the same truth. This fact has been made, by the writer just quoted, the ground of a powerful argument, to confirm the honesty, the moral uprightness of aim, the practical soundness of judgment, remote from all false or blind enthusiasm, of the apostolic writers. It is doubly striking, when we observe that the churches where St. Paul's authority was most fully allowed, and in which he placed the most confidence, are the same with whom this topic is omitted ; and that he appeals to it only in those cases, like the churches of Galatia and of Corinth, where he had to administer strong- rebuke, or where his authority was encountered by some evil influence. The prominence, then, of the moral element in the epistles, and the comparative fewness of their direct allusions to miracles, form a striking pledge of the uprightness, veracity, and prac- tical wisdom of the apostles of Christ. But when we view tlie su])ject from the opposite side, it will be clear that the assertion of a miraculous element in the gospel, whether directly made, or indi- rectly implied, runs throughout the epistles, no less than through all the historical books of tlie New Testa- ment. Let us review them briefly in the j^robable order of time. The contrast of supernatural and non-super- natural epistles refers only to the explicit character of allusions to present miraculous powers exercised by the apostles themselves. But with regard to Christianity itself, the direct assertion or indirect assumption of its 44 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. supernatural evidence and authority is common to every one of these writings, without a single exception. The two Epistles to the Thessalonians hold the first place in order of time. They are earnest and warm outpourings of the apostle's, heart to young converts in a time of severe persecution. No direct assertion of his own miraculous gifts is therefore found in tliem.- They are reminded, however, that the gospel came to them " not in word only, but also in power, and in the Holy Ghost, and in much assurance ;" which, when compared with the history, contains a scarcely doubt- ful allusion to the hwa/dei^, or miraculous gifts of the Spirit, which accompanied his preaching. They are reminded that their new hope was " to wait for his Son from heaven, whom he raised from the dead," — a passing affirmation of the crowning miracle of the gospel history. The apostle associates himself and his fellows with the prophets of the Old Testament, and with the Lord Jesus himself, under the common cha- racter of messengers from God, whom the Jews had persecuted because of their messages. He speaks to them (1 Thess. iv. 1) as one endued with a Divine authority, and announces to them the order and cir- cumstances of the resurrection, with the significant prefiice — " This we say unto you by the word of the Lord." The double charge " Quench not the Spirit, despise not prophesyings," when collated with other epistles, includes evidently an allusion to miraculous gifts. h\ the second epistle even this indirect allusion is not found. Still, the first chapter is a warning of judgment ready to light on those " who obey not the gospel," wdiich clearly implies its authority as a direct message from heaven ; and the second contains a further warning of a strong delusion, with signs and wonders of falsehood, to which those would be aban- THE SUPERNATURAL CLAIMS OF CHRISTIANITY. 45 (loned wlio liiid rejected the truth of God. No stronger assertion could l)e made, by mere imph'cation, that true signs and wonders had been notoriously given to attest the truth of the gospel. The Epistle to the Galatians, unlike the two earlier ones to Thessalonica, is a polemic against Judaizing teachers, with strong rebuke of the churches addressed for their fickleness and inconstancy in the faith. The authority of the apostle was questioned or denied, and he begins his letter by asserting it in the plainest terms. lie calls himself " Paul, an apostle, not of men, neither by man, l)ut by Jesus Christ, and God the Father, who raised him from the dead." His reference to miracles, accordingly, becomes distinct, repeated, and earnest. He appeals, first of all, to the notorious fact of his own nn'raculous and sudden conversion, giving no details of the vision, it is true, but still asserting plainly the super- natural character of the revelation. Then, in the midst of the keenest censure and rebuke, he reminds the Galatians of gifts of the Spirit they had themselves received, and follows it by a reference to his own apostolic credentials. " He that ministered to you the Spirit, and wrought miracles among you, was it by the works of the law, or by the hearing of faith ?" Tlie Epistles to the Corinthians are addressed to a church, where the apostle had much to blame, and where his own authority had been depreciated and ()])posed. But* instead of avoiding, on this account, all reference to miracles, the allusions to them are unusually full and various. He begins by reminding them that they came behind in no spiritual gift, so that liis testimony respecting Christ had been visibly confirmed among them. He appeals to the notorious fact of his own miraculous conversion. " Am I not an apostle ? have I not seen Christ Jesus our Lord ?" 46 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. He occupies a whole chapter with a statement of the spiritual gifts, some directly miraculous, others more purely spiritual, which were in exercise among them ; and he gives the palm of excellence, not to those which were most startling to the outward senses, but to those which referred to the minds and hearts of Christians, and above all, to the crowning grace of charity or love. He resumes the subject in another chapter, and gives rules, with Divine authority, for the mode in which these wonderful gifts were to be exer- cised. He describes, in passing, their probable effect upon strangers who might be present in their assem- blies. " And thus are the secrets of his heart made manifest ; and so, falling down on his face, he will worship Grod, and report that God is in you of a truth." 1 Cor. xiv. 25. Amidst this clear recognition of their miraculous endowments, he firmly claims for himself a superior degree of them, and a Divine authority which it was their plain duty to allow. " I thank my God, I speak with tongues more than you all." " If any man account himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord," verses 18, 37. He refers to five distinct appearances of the Lord after his resurrection, as to notorious facts, which needed no proof or comment, and closes with a striking reference to the vision he himself had received. " Last of all ke was seen of me also, as of one born out of due time." With a calm and unaltered tone, he turns from a description of the most striking miracles to a course of earnest reasoning on the doctrine of the resurrection ; and from tliis he returns to minute details with regard to collections for the poor, and the arrangement of his own journeys. THE SUrEl{NATUUAL CLAIMS OF CHlUSTlAiMTV. 47 111 the second letter, after tlie tidings of tlieir repent- ance had reached liiiii, three-fourths are witlioiit any clear allusion to miraculous gifts, and are occupied only with a rich variety of moral lessons and exliortations, based on the doctrinal truths of the gospel. But towards the close, the mention of those gifts recurs in various forms. " I suppose I was not a whit behind the very chiefest apostles." " I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord." " In nothing am I behind the very chiefest apostles, though I be nothing. Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience, in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds." " If t come again, I will not spare, since ye seek a proof of Christ speaking in me." " I write these things, being absent, lest being present I should use sharpness, according to the power which the Lord hath given me, to edification, and not to destruction." Words could not more plainly express a claim to authority, received directly from the Lord himself, and ratified by miraculous powers, which had been exercised already in the midst of the Corinthian converts. The Ej^istle to the Romans is occupied throughout with a full statement of Christian doctrine, and of the practical lessons based upon it. Nine-tenths of it are complete before there is any distinct allusion whatever to miraculous attestations of the gospel. But at the close it appears, though briefly, in the most decisive form. " I will not dare to speak of any of those things which Christ hath not wrouglit by me, to make the Gentiles obedient, by word and deed, through miglity signs and wonders, by the power of the Spirit of God ; so that from Jerusalem, and round about inito Illyri- cum, I have fully preached the gospel of Christ." The assertion is doubly striking from its association with 48 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. this precise geographical hmit, and the mention of a province named nowhere else in Scripture, so as to bring out the strictly historical character of the state- ment into full and bold relief. The Epistles from Rome during the first imprison- ment are addressed to prosperous churches, and contain praise and encouragement, rather than rebuke. Ac- cordingly they have only the slightest and most general allusions to Christian miracles. Traces of them, how- ever, do appear. The Ephesians, after they believed, had been " sealed with the Holy Spirit of promise." The mystery of the gospel had been made known to St. Paul " by revelation," and was revealed unto all the " holy apostles and prophets by the Sj)irit." Tlie Lord, when he ascended on high, " gave gifts unto men," and foremost among these the endowments of apostles and jDrophets, where even the second and lower title implies a supernatural claim. In the Pastoral Epistles similar allusions are found. The Spirit had spoken expressly of a great dejoarture from the faith. 1 Tim. iv. 1. Timothy is charged not to neglect the gift that was in him, and given by j^ropliecy ; meaning, apparently, by the voice of some inspired prophet, before or at the time of his first public separation for the work of God. He is charged, again, to stir up the gift of God, received by imposition of the hands of the apostles, a spirit of power as well as of love. The allusion to Jannes and Jambres compared with Acts xiii. 7, 8 ; XV. 12, seems also to imply that signs and wonders, like those of Moses, accompanied the jireacliing of the gospel. The statements in the Epistle to the Hebrews, on the other hand, where rebuke and censure are needed, become explicit and full once more. " How shall we escape, if we neglect so ■ great salvation ; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, THE RUPERXATURAL CLAIMS OF CHRTSTIAXITY. 40 and was confirmed to us by tliem tliat heard liim ; God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will ?" " It is impossible for those who were once enlightened, and have tasted the good word of God, and the powers of the world to come, if they shall fall away, to renew them again nnto repentance." " He that despised Moses' law died with- out mercy under two or three witnesses : of how much sorer punishment, suppose ye, shall he be thought worthy who hath done desj)ite unto the Sj^irit of grace?" Heb. ii. 3—5 ; vi. 4, 5 ; x. 28. It is needless to pursue the inquiry further. The claim to a miraculous and supernatural character, on the part of our Lord and his Apostles, runs clearly through the whole of the New Testament, and coheres inseparably with its historical narrative, its doctrinal teaching, and practical exhortations. It appears con- spicuous in the whole course of the Four Gospels, from the birth of our Lord to his resurrection and ascension into heaven. It continues, with the same frequency and fulness, throughout the apostolic history, from the hour of the Ascension to the voyage and shipwreck of the apostle of the Gentiles, and his arrival at the metropolis of the Gentile world. In the Epistles it is present throughout, but usually as a latent assumption, which needed no express and direct statement. But in pl'oportion as the authority of the apostle is resisted, or sinful practices have to be rebuked, or doctrinal declensions exposed, the claim reappears ; and it is made most strongly in those very cases wliere the assertion would be evident madness, if it were not ini- deniably true. It is a weapon sheathed in the presence of friends, but drawn from its scabbard whenever vice E 50 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT, has to be rebuked, error resisted, or doubts of the ajjostle's authority reduced to silence. The result of this review must be plain. A super- natural claim is of the essence of Christianity. When- ever this is rejected, the nature of the message is changed ; the heart is torn out from it, and its life expires. It ceases to be the word of God, and acquires, by fatal necessity, the very opposite character. It be- comes a system of human fraud and imposture, or a strange, inexplicable mass of lunacy and mental de- rangement. Our Lord and his Apostles must either have been messengers with a direct commission from God, or else they can have no title to retain the cha- racter even of honest, upright, and reasonable men. They must either be condemned to an asylum, or else obeyed with reverence, because they are seen to be clothed with supernatural and Divine authority. THE IIKASOXABLENESS OF MIRACLES. 51 CHAPTER lY. THE REASONABLENESS OP MIRACLES. The Prophets of the Old Testament, and the Apostles of the New, and One greater than both — the Lord Jesus Christ himself, agree in appealing to miracles to prove themselves teachers and messengers sent from God. The commission of Moses, as recorded in the law, began with a formal statement of this principle of Divine revelation. " It shall come to pass, if they will not believe thee, neither hearken to the voice of the first sign, that they Avill believe the voice of the latter sign." The rejection of this evidence is declared to be the reason why an unbelieving generation were shut out from the land of promise. " Because all those men which have seen my glory, and my miracles, which I did in Egypt and in the wilderness, have tempted me now these ten times, and have not hearkened to my voice ; surely they shall not see the land which I sware unto their fathers." The language of our Lord in the gos- pels is exactly the same: "Woe unto thee, Chorazin ; woe unto thee, Bethsaida ; for if the mighty works which were done in you, had been done in Tyre and Sidon, they would have repented long ago in sackcloth and ashes. But it shall be more tolerable for Tyre and Sidon in the day of judgment than for you." The lesson taught in these direct and solemn warnings to the cities of Gahlee, is repeated in his secret instruc- tions to his own disciples on the eve of his departure. E 2 52 THE RIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. " 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." So also St. Paul writes to the Corinthians, appeahng to the same proof of Divine authority. " Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you in all patience, in signs, and wonders, and mighty deeds." In another epistle the same truth appears once more in its aspect of solemn warning. " For if the word spoken by angels was stedfost — how shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation ; which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard him ; God also bearing them witness, both with signs and wonders, and with divers miracles, and gifts of the Holy Ghost, according to his own will ?" This view of miracles, as the proper and reasonable tests of a Divine message, though affirmed by prophets and apostles, and our Lord himself, and consequently received by' all the advocates of Christian faith, both in ancient and modern times, has been recently questioned or contradicted by some who have not openly renounced the Christian name. They allege that the progress of science has introduced insuperable difficulties into the admission of any suspense or reversal of the laws of Nature.^ Miracles, in their opinion, are no longer the evidence, but rather the stumbling blocks and encum- brances of a professed revelation.''^ The faculty of faith has now turned inward, and cannot accept any outer manifestations of the truth of God.^ Narratives inhe- rently incredible cannot change their nature, or become credible, by the supposition that they fulfil some reli- gious purpose.^ The region of physical change, then, must be given up to the imbroken and undisturbed ' Essays ami Reviews, Ess. iii. p. 104. - P. UO. ^ Ess. i. p. 24. " Ess. ii. p. fc3. THE REASONABLENESS OF MIRACLES. 53 dominion of natural laws ; and our faith in spiritual truth must rest on moral grounds, or acts of pure reason, without the least dependence on external tes- timony. It has thus become needful to examine whether these modern Christians, by means of their superior attainments in physical science and meta- pliysical speculation, have really been able to convict their .Lord and his Apostles of direct falsehood or grievous folly, in that appeal to the evidence of miracles, as conclusive tests of a Divine mission, which they have plainly and repeatedly made. The objections which have been lately urged against the usual view of the Christian evidence, are of three kinds. They relate, first, to the temper, style, and tone of the advocates of Christianity ; secondly, to the credibility of miracles in themselves ,• and thirdly, to their suitableness and sufficiency, as proofs and tests of a Divine revelation. Objections of the first kind are prehminary, but still deserve some notice and reply. The others enter into the heart of the whole subject, and involve the whole controversy between Christian Faith, and a spirit of utter and hopeless Disbelief. I will examine each of them in order. I. The tendency of objections of the first class is to ]>rejudge the whole subject, by creating an impression of habitual unfairness and ifisincerity, or of secret doubt, on the part of the defenders of Christianity. Their usual tone, we are informed, is that of " the special partisan and ingenious advocate," and not of the unbiassed judge. It is one of polemical acrimony, and settled and inveterate prejudice. There is a dis- position to triumph in lesser details, ratlier tlian to grasp comprehensive principles. While infidel oljec- tions may have been urged in an offensive manner, there is often, in Christian writers, -a want of sympathy 64 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. with difficulties which many inquirers seriously feel in admitting the evidences of the Gospel. An appeal to argument implies perfect freedom to receive or reject the conclusion. It is absurd to reason with men, and anathematize them if not convinced by the reasoning ; to make honest doubts a proof of moral obliquity, and denounce men as sceptics, because they are careful to discriminate truth from error. The distinction between questions of external fact and of moral truth has been extensively overlooked and kept out of sight. Advo- cates of historical evidence inconsistently make their appeal to conscience and feeling ; while upholders of faith and moral conviction, with equal inconsistency, regard the external facts of revelation as not less essen- tial truth, which it would be profane to question.^ It is alleged, further, that it is the common language of orthodox writings to advise men not to seek for precise answers to objections and difficulties, but to regard the whole subject as one which ouglit to be exempt from scrutiny, and received with silent sub- mission. Their frequent reply is, that we are not to expect demonstrative evidence, that we must be content with probabilities, that exact criticism is always sure to rake up difficulties, that cavillers find new objections when the first are refuted, and reason cannot be con- vinced unless the conscience and will are disposed to accept the truth. TJius the inquiry is removed from the ground of truth and honesty to one of practical expedience ; objections are treated as profane, and ex- ceptions dismissed, as shocking and immoral, without an answer."'^ Now it cannot be doubted that on this subject, just as in many others of inferior moment, the zealotry of unscrupulous partisans, bent only on silencing an ' Essays and Reviews, Ess. iii. pji. 95-98. " Ess. iii. pp. 96-100. THE REASONABLENESS' OF MIRACLES. 55 opponent, or gaining; a clieap reputation for ortliodoxy and controversial ability, niay sometimes counterfeit the earnestness of a genuine faith. The description, however, when applied generally to the modern ad- vocates of Christifinity, is a serious calumny. The arrogance, which partially disfigures the writings of a Bentley or a Warburton, is the exception, and not the rule. An opposite charge may be made with more truth against Paley and other apologists of the last century. Their treatment of an inquiry so vital to the highest interests of men, however clear, is perhaps too cold and passionless. Though mere earnestness is a bad substitute for strict reasoning, yet on a subject which involves the welfare of souls, and issues of eternal life and death, we canjiot be reasonable unless we are earnest ; — so earnest as to shock the taste of mere intellectual theorists, and disturb the deathlike placidity of their speculations. The tone of calm, cold, abstract philosophizing, which the objection seems to prescribe to such discussions, has no sanction in the practice of the apostles. Their maxim was widely dif- ferent. " Knowing therefore the terrors of the Lord, we persuade men." St. Paul, it is clear, had not made the modern discovery, that it is absurd to appeal to men's reason, and still to warn them of their guilt and danger, when they refuse to yield to the force of evi- dence, and thus reject the message of the Gospel. His own practice was based on the opposite maxim, that in proportion to the strength of the reasons, which prove tlie reality of a Divine message, must be the guilt of those who, mider any pretext whatever, set aside its authority, and reject its claims. It is no doubt a serious fault, and a great stumbling- block to inquirers, when professed champions of re- vealed religion betray the tone of unscrupulous advo- 56 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. cates, wlio are contending for victory alone. But it is no less unseemly, either for the inquirer or the believer, to affect the character of an unbiassed judge. Such a jDretension betrays in itself a bias of the worst kind, because it involves a plain denial of one of the simplest truths of the Gospel. Christianity does not appeal to us as a culprit, to be cleared from a charge of imposture and mendicancy before the tribunal of our superior wisdom. "We have to plead at the bar of Christ, not Christ at ours. He appeals to our reason ; but from above, not from beneath ; as a judge, a physician, a father, pleads with a culprit, a patient, or a child. For any of these parties to claim the character of an un- biassed judge, because their obedience requires some exercise of judgment on their own part, would be a ridiculous affectation. If the Gospel be true, no one to whom it is fully made known can reject it, unless from the strong bias of " an evil heart of unbehef ;" and no one truly receives it, imless by the expulsive power of a new affection. They must have yielded to an in- fluence still more powerful than sensual appetite or the pride of false reason — the mighty attraction of the cross, and the constraining power of the love of Christ. An appeal to argument implies a natural capacity in those to whom it is made to apprehend the force of sound reasoning. But it does not imply a state of entire equilibrium and strict moral indifference. It would then have to be confined to some distant world, and could have no place in our intercourse with sinful men. Even among philosophers and metaphysicians, since their speculations began, tliei-e has never been a case of pure, abstract, colourless indifference to the truth or fjilsehood of Christianity. The words of Christ make no exception eitlier for sceptics, philosopliers, or divines — " He that is not for me is against me, and he THE REASONABLENESS OF jMlRACLES. 57 tliat gatliereth not with me scattercth abroad." Neu- trality here is strictly impossible. It is quite consistent and reasonable, then, to set before the inquirer or the unbeliever the evidences of the Christian revelation ; and still, when these are rejected after their full exhibi- tion, to ascribe that rejection to a moral obliquity, possibly quite unsuspected by themselves, and thus to refuse the flattering title of honest doubt to their culpable nnbelief. This implies, it is true, that the sceptic, in many cases, is " no judge of his own mind ;" but it does not imply, on the part of the Christian advocate, any claim to omniscience and infallibility. It simply proves that he has more faith in the true sayings of Christ than in the self-knowledge of those who reject the messages of their Maker, and flatter themselves that the only reason is their scrupulous care to avoid imposture and delusion. The disclaimer of all moral bias by the sceptic, who refuses to own the authority of Christ, however sincerely made, is only one ingredient in his unbelief. The Christian advocate who admits the claim, in order to acquire a reputation for sujDerior candour, only shares in the guilt, since he disowns a truth which is clearly revealed in the word of God. A second charge, brought against many advocates of Christianity^ is a neglect of the wide distinction between questions of external fact, and of internal, moral, and religious truth. They digress irregularly, it is said, from one subject into the other. They mingle a moral element with their treatment of the evidence for the facts of Christianity ; or when they urge the moral claims of the Christian faith, they include in their view of it the historical facts of the creed, along with ideas of the pure reason.^ The fact must be allowed, that such a union and interchange of topics does continually occur. ' Essays and Reviews, Ess. iii. pp. 97, 98. 58 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. But the question remains, whether it is the advocates of Christian faith, or their critic and censor, who betrays a grievous bhndness to the lessons of daily experience, of sound philosophy, and of Christian truth. Let us begin with the simple analogy which is sug- gested by the very form of the objection. The Christian religion has external facts and internal princij)les : it has a body and a soul. Is it a great error to treat them as if joined together in closest union? Christianity must be slain, before we can turn it into a disembodied spirit. I^ it a fault in the psychologist, who treats of the human mind, to spend chapters on the five senses, on touch and taste, hearing, sight, and smell ; all of which involve a direct reference to the body, and are inseparable from it ? Is it a fault in the physician, who prescribes for a dangerous fever, to direct that the mind of the patient should be kept free, if possible, from causes of excitement, that would aggravate the disease, and make it more dangerous ' Is it confusion of thought, when a treatise on the preservation of bodily health is connected with moral lessons on the benefit of chastity and temperance ? Or is it a culpable irregularity, when the connection is traced, either by the physician or the moralist, between the indulgence of vice and exposure to fatal disease ? If not, then analogy alone refutes the objection so hastily and superficially brought against the advocates of revelation. Let us examine the subject, next, by the light of reason. Is it unreasonable to introduce a moral element at all in discussing the external evidences of Chris- tianity ? To justify this view, three assumptions must be made : that there are no moral obstacles to be over- come in those to whom these evidences are addressed ; that no moral feature enters into the miracles of Christ and liis Apostles, or into the predictions of tlie Bible, THE REASONABLENESS OF MIRACLES. 59 and adds immensely to their force as evidence ; and finally, that there is no moral aim in the message itself, to which the outward evidence is entirely subordinate. Unless all these assumptions were true, the objection is clearly baseless and unreasonable. But every one of them is exactly the reverse of the truth. The only wonder is how any one, with the lowest pretensions to the faculty of reasoning, could impute a fault to a number of able and thouglitful writers, which implies his own neglect of the simplest analogies of daily life, and of the most prominent feature in the miracles of the Gospel. There is still a third, and a higher test, which may be applied to this strange censure of so many Christian writers for yielding to a clear necessity of common sense and sound reason. We may appeal to an autho- rity which all Christians are bound to revere. How did Christ and his Apostles treat the external evi- dences and the moral elements of the message they de- livered to mankind ? Did they part them fi'om each other by a wall of separation ? Did they jealously avoid any mixture of a moral element in their statement of the outward facts of the Gospel, or any mention of the outward facts in their moral appeals to the conscience ? Plainly and notoriously, their conduct was just the reverse. Far from being at pains to separate these two elements, as the objection prescribes,- they labour to unite them closely together. Their intermarriage is a feature C(^nspicuous on almost every page both of the Old and New Testament. There is scarcely a fact announced, but some great moral truth beams out from beneath it, and lights it up with a deeper significance. There is scarcely a precept or a promise, a doctrinal statement, or an utterance of devotion, but some historical allusion is mingled with it, so as to give it a firmer hold on the 60 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. affections, and translate it from a mere abstraction into a living reality of Divine providence. The Sermon on the Mount, for example, abounds in every part with distinct and specific historical allusions. Its usual title is bor- rowed from the place where it was uttered, a mountain in Galilee. It was addressed to the disciples, and to multitudes " from Judea, Decapolis, Tyre, and Sidon." It refers to all the persecutions of the prophets under the Old Testament, to the giving of the law by Moses, and a variety of precepts therein contained, to the daily facts of providence, the sunshine and the rain from heaven, to the taxgatherers of Palestine, to the long and pretentious jorayers of the Pharisees, to the birds of heaven and the lilies of the field, to the natural habits of the dogs and the swine, to the whole range of earlier revelations in the Law and the Pro- phets, to the number of the unbelieving and profane, and the fewness of the faithful, to trees and their fruits, to outward miracles wrought by false disciples, to the wonder of the people at our Lord's teaching, and its contrast with the teaching of the Jewish scribes. All these are external elements, united inseparably with one of the purest and simplest exhibitions of moral and spiritual truth. The union, then, of external facts with moral elements, in writing on the Christian evidences, is justified by the clearest analogies, by sound reason, and by examples which every Christian is bound to revere. The only ground of surprise is how any one, claiming the cha- racter of a philosopher or a Christian, can make a charge against the judgment of others, which implies his own rejection of the plainest lessons of natural reason and of Christian faith. The objection brought against many advocates of revelation, that they counsel an evasion of difficulties TIIK RKxVSONABLENF.SS OF MI1{ACLES. 61 rather tluiii an attempt at their solution, and a wiUing- ness to rest on j^robable evidence alone, with a certain submissiveness of the conscience and will, is less easy to answer ; and there are cases in which it has a foun- dation in justice and truth. It is clear that, in subjects of this kind, a willingness to be taught, and the absence of a settled purpose to find excuses for unbelief, is a moral prerequisite for tlie acceptance of the message of the Gospel. It is also certain that, wliere strict de- monstration is not attainable, we are bound to act upon mere probabihty ; and tliat, whenever there is a desire to multiply difficulties, occasions for cavil and objection will never cease to be found. They are like the heads of the fabled hydra, and when one is cut off, a dozen more will appear in its stead. But still it cannot be denied that some professed antidotes of scepticism are not unlikely to aggravate the disease they seek to cure, by seeming to transfer their advocacy of revelation from the ground of definite and intelligible reason to a vague, undefined religious sentiment. Men are urged to believe, — simply because unbelief leaves a painful vacuum in the heart, — with a faith arising from no cahn conviction of the judgment, but from a mere effort and determination of the will. A faith so produced can scarcely be genuine. It does not meet difficulties in the face, but merely shuts its eyes, and endeavours not to see them. The effect of such a tone in the ad- vocates of Christianity on the minds of thoughtful, but perplexed inquirers, can hardly fail to be iDcrnicious. Advice to cast off sceptical doubts and suggestions by a mere effort of will may sometimes only aggravate the disease which it attempts to cure. On the other hand, no sounder advice can be given to those whose faith is unfixed, but who profess a sincere desire after religious truth, than to fix their 62 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. thoughts, first of all, on the direct and central evidences of Christianity. They do well to delay any attempt at solving particular difficulties, or settling knotty ques- tions as to the correctness of the Scripture canon, the mode and degree of inspiration, the seeming discre- pancies of the Gospels, or the propriety of New Testa- ment quotations ; until they have come to a clear and firm decision on the main subject, whether Christ is indeed a teacher come from God, and the Bible, at least in substance, a record of real messages from the God of heaven. There is no difficulty in detail, for which the humble and thoughtful Christian may not expect to find a solution, partly even in this life, and wholly in the life to come. But in the pursuit of Divine knowledge, just as in natural science, there is an order and discipline which must be observed, and the neglect of which may be punished with total failure. A student would vainly strive to master the Principia of Newton, or the Mecanique Celeste, who has not first stooped to learn Euclid, and the Elements of the Diffe- rential Calculus. Even when these elements have been mastered, the ascent must be gradual, or real knowledge will elude the grasp, and demonstrations that bring delight and conviction to the well-prepared student, become a heap of incomprehensible verbiage to those who strive to enter into their meaning without sub- mitting to the needful preparation. The case of Chris- tian inquirers is exactly similar. A humble and patient spirit brings the key which will unlock, by degrees, a thousand mysteries, and solve a thousand enigmas in the word of God, or in the course of Providence. But pride and impatience are like a i^icklock, and the wards are so constructed, by Divine art, as to resist and defeat all unlawful violence. Even those who bring the key with them must often be content to wait; and the THE REASONABLENESS OF MIRACLES. 63 solution of each particular doubt or difficulty may depend on the previous solution of others, which come earlier in the j)athway of truth. The ways of heavenly wisdom " are all plain to him that understandeth, and right unto them that find knowledge." But, however obnoxious the truth may be to the pride of jDhilosophy, without a moral preparation, without a humble and teachable spirit, mere intellectual cleverness is here of httle avail. The death-knell of its jjresumptuous hopes may be heard in that solemn utterance of the Son of God ; " I thank thee, 0 Father, Lord of heaven and earth, because thou hast hid these things from the wise and prudent, and hast revealed them unto babes. Even so. Father, for so it seemed good in thy sight." From these preliminary objections let ns turn to the two main topics, which have been involved in no little mist — the credibility of miracles in themselves, and their sufficiency and limits as real ^^roofs and tests of a Divine revelation. II. The difficulties respecting miracles in general, or suspensions of natural law, have assumed, it is said, a much deeper importance in our own time. The credibility of alleged events, and the value of testimony, must be estimated by a reference to the fixed laws of belief, and our convictions of established order and analogy. In appreciating the evidence for any events of a wonderful kind, our prepossessions have an enor- mous influence. We look at them through the medium of our prejudices. The more remarkable any occurrence, the more unprepared we are to view it calmly. Dis- belief of an event by no means implies a denial of the honesty or veracity of the impression on the minds of its witnesses. It means merely that the probability of some mistake, somewhere, is greater than that of the event happening in the way or from the causes assigned. 64 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. What is alleged is a ease of the supernatural ; and no testimony reaches to the supernatural, but only to apparent sensible facts. That these are due to super- natural causes depends on the previous belief or assump- tion of the parties who observe them. If any strange, unaccountable fact were observed at the present day, an unbiassed, educated person would not doubt for a moment, if a physical student, that it was due to some natural cause, and might at some future time be ex- plained by the advance of discovery. Miracles, there- fore, are now discredited, and have become really incredible. This result has arisen from growing study of the phenomena of the natural world. The inductive philosophy is based on one grand truth, the universal order and constancy of natural causes. This is a pri- mary law of belief, so firmly fixed in the mind of every truly inductive inquirer, that he cannot even conceive the possibility of its failure. An opposite view can arise only from want of power to grasp the positive scientific idea of the order of nature. Its boundaries exist only where our present knowledge places them ; to-morrow's discoveries will enlarge them. The pro- gress of research will unravel what seems now most marvellous, and what is now least understood will here- after be familiarly known. " A miracle," it is continued, " means something at variance with nature and law. There is no analogy between it and a mere unknown phenomenon, or an exceptional case of a known law included in a larger, still unknown. Arbitrary interposition is wholly dif- ferent in kind. Imagined suspensions of the vast series of dependant causation are now inconceivable, from our enlarged critical and inductive study of the natural world. These are the principles we should apply to marvellous events in common history and at the j^resent THE PiEASONAr-LKNESS OF MlilACLES. 65 flay. But the attempt to claim an exceptional character for tlie Gospel records forfeits or tampers witli tlieir his- torical reality. Those who woukl shield them from the criticism, to which all history and fact are amenable, force upon lis the alternative of a mythical interpretation." An appeal here to the Divine Onmipotence, it is said, is out of place. " That doctrine is an inference from the language of the Bible, and is founded on the assumption of our belief in revelation. And besides, it admits of being applied in an opposite way. Our ideas of Divine perfection tend to discredit the notion of occasional interference. It is derogatory to Infinite Power and Wisdom to sup230se an order of things so imperfect that it must be interrupted and violated to provide for the emergency of a revelation. All such reasonings, if pushed to their limits, must lead to a denial of all active operation of the Deity, as inconsistent with unchange- able and infinite perfection.^" Such is the pliilosophical objection against the mi- racles of the Law and the Gospel in its more recent and ])opular form. In the eyes of the thoughtful Christian, it lies open at once to ?(, prima facie suspicion of entire falsehood, of the most formidable and decisive kind. It ngrees punctually with an apostle's definition, eighteen centuries ago, of the form of presumptuous unbelief that would mark the last days of the Church of Christ, ;iiid ripen scoffers for the severest strokes of Divine judgment. He even requires us to place this truth very early in our list of Christian lessons, to be treasured up for our own guidance. " Knowing i\\\?> first, that there shall come in the last days scoffers^ walking after their own lusts, and saying. Where is the promise of his coming? for since the fathers fell asleep, all things continue as they were from the beginning of the crea- ' Essays and Reviews, Ess. iii. pp. 107-114. P on THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. tion. For tliis tliey willingly are ig-norant of, that by the word of Gocl the heavens were of old." The theory, as thus described to us long ago, has by no means an attractive genealogy. It is born, according to the apostle, from wilful ignorance of the Creator ; its twin children are sensuality and scoffing ; and its final issue is a solemn and terrible judgment. Let us inquire, however, apart from the testimony of apostles, what claim this doctrine has to be received on the ground of philosophy alone. It is made up of mere assumptions, and even self-contradictions, of the most unphilosophical kind. It involves a false view of induc- tion, a false conception of the order of nature and the constancy of its laws, a false definition of miracles, and a denial of special features which plainly attach to every real or supposed message of religious truth, immediately conveyed from God to man. First, the view of induction which this objection im23lies is unphilosophical and untrue. Inductive re- search and mathematical deduction are different, and even contrasted, both in their processes and results. The deduction of pure science is the development of truths, or results of an hypothesis, which are necessarily true, or the contrary of which involves a self-contradic- tion. Such are the truths that the three angles of a triangle are equal to two right angles, or the rectangles of the segments of intersecting chords equal, or that every prime number of the form 4?i + 1 is the sum of two squares. But induction ascends from observed facts to generalizations of fact, or actual laws. It includes three stages ; the accumulation of observed phenomena ; the development of some hypothesis for their explanation ; and the correction or confirmation of the hypothesis, by collating its results with the whole series of observations. The middle step is here borrowed THE ItEASOXABLENESS OF MIL'ACLES. 67 fi-om pure or deductive reasoniuc;, but tlie two others are of an opposite kind. The observations are known to be true, simply by testimony, or the evidence of our senses ; and contrary or different facts are equally con- ceivable. Tlie law obtained, being merely the sum and integration of the separate phenomena, shares in tlie same character. It is true, but not necessary. AVe believe it on the joint evidence of testimony to certain facts, and of deductive reasoning from a pro- posed hypothesis ; but the result cannot rise higher in certainty than the weaker of its two components. It is credible on the ground of repeated or multiplied testimonies to the facts which agree with it. But the deviation of other facts from it is equally conceivable, equally credible upon due evidence, and our faith in the law would receive at once a new limitation. In short, all such laws are provisional, not necessary truths, a summation of fjicts which might have been different. We can easily believe, on credible testimony, of their apparent suspension or reversal, in particular cases, either by the intersection of some higher law, or l)y some directly spiritual and sujDernatural agency. AVe can even conceive, without much difficulty, of their total replacement by other laws entirely different. It is thus a wholly false view of the nature of in- ductive science, that it is occupied with the inves- tigation and discovery of laws which are necessary and unalterable. The exact reverse is the truth. Deduc- tive science alone is occupied with the develojiment of necessary truth ; but applied or inductive science deals with phenomena, and through these with laws, of which tlio essential feature is that they are not necessary, liowever real, and that they repose on the basis of multiplied testimonies ; so that deviations from them, and even their reversal, are quite conceivable, and F 2 68 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. would demand our faith, if sustained by due evidence, on the very same principle on which the laws them- selves are believed to exist. Again, the objection involves a total misconception of the order of nature, and the constancy of natural laws. It is true that the progress of physical science enables us, in these days, to refer many phenomena to some law or property of matter, which were once in- explicable. We cannot doubt, also, that further ad- vances in the same direction will still be made. Other laws, hardly less wide than that of gravitation, may be discovered ; and many things now mysterious, like the phenomena of comets, and tlie subtle and delicate movements of light and electricity, will be more clearly understood, and greatly enlarge the field of human knowledge. But this movement by which the horizon of science perpetually recedes and enlarges, instead of proving the inflexible constancy of natural laws, in the sense which the objection requires, proves exactly the reverse. It transfers the certainty from the physical laws of nature, as now defined by our present know- ledge, to the scheme of universal Providence, as it lies open to the view of Omniscience ; and thus resolves itself into a philosophical rendering of the great doctrine of the Bible, that " known unto God are all his works from the beginning of the world," and that, in the counsels of Infinite Wisdom, there is " no variableness, nor the shadow of turning." Our own experience reveals the constant action of the human will upon the human body, and upon all portions of matter that lie within the range of the muscular strength and physical powers of man. These are small, indeed, compared with the forces ever at work in the great cosmical sys- tem— but still their action, tln'ough successive ages, has wrought sensible effects even on the physical con- THE REASONABLENESS OF MIIJACLES. 69 dition of whole regions of the earth. We should count it absurd to speak of mere physical laws deciding the movements of the ball, the marble, or the orange, when once placed within the grasp of a human hand. Once let us conceive of spiritual beings, wliose power over matter bears the same proportion to ours as the orange to the mass of the earth, and the seeming immutability of physical laws, even in the case of the planetary movements, would equally disappear. It would resolve itself at once into some higher law of the sjDiritual world. But we can have no proof, from reason alone, that no such creatures exist in the universe. Our proof is limited to the fact that for a certain number of years, as far as human testimony can reach, though the will of man interferes ceaselessly Avith all the products of nature on the surface of our own planet, there has been no such gigantic interference with the regularity of the celestial motions. But this contrast between the vastness of the starry world, and the narrow range of human volition, however conspicuous in fact, has no semblance whatever of being a necessary truth. AVe have no proof whatever, on grounds of pure reason, that the constancy, for thousands of years, of the ])lanetary courses, undisturbed by spiritual agencies immensely more potent than the human will, is more than a counterj)art, on a larger scale, to the quiet and silent growth of the corn in the harvest field, until the liom- wJicn the husbandman "puts in his sickle, because llie harvest is come." Thirdly, the objection involves also a false definition of miracles themselves. They are defined to be " some- ihing at variance witli n;;tui'e and law," suspensions of a known law, arl>itrary interpositions, and events "iso- lated and uncaused." But none of these descriptions are correct. They are not, in the view of the Bible or 70 THE BIBLE AND MODEEN THOUGHT. of Cliristians, mere arbitrary interferences ; but are acts of Divine power, exerted for a special purpose, in linr- mony with a scheme of moral government, to which all physical laws whatever are subordinate. They obey a moral and spiritual law of the Divine wisdom, higher and nobler, but possibly no less clear and definite in its own sphere, than the law of gravitation itself. They are suspensions of known law, just as the law that bodies fall towards the earth is suspended, when wood floats in water, or a balloon mounts towards the sky ; or the law that a bell is sonorous is inter- cepted, and suspended, when it is rung in an exhausted receiver. The difference is not in the principle, but in the special cause of the suspension. In one case a lower physical law is intersected and reversed by another law, equally physical, but more extensive. In the other, the same law is suspended and reversed by some spiritual agency, or a direct act and purpose of the Supreme Will. The objection denies, further, that any special fea- tures of the Christian records will justify our departure from the general incredulity, with which the ascription of a miraculous character to any strange event would be regarded in the present age of scientific attainment. To regard them as an exceptional case, it is alleged, transfers them from the domain of genuine history to that of mere legend. But it is hard to understand by what obliquity of judgment an assertion so preposterous could be made. The exact reverse is self-evidently true. A professed message from God, which barely affirmed its own Divine origin, and was accompanied by no credentials worthy of its Author, such as the signs and wonders of the Law and the Gospel supply, would be open, without defence, to the charge of being a mere dream of the imagination, and might be trans- THE REASONABLENESS OF MIRACLES. 71 ferred at once from the region of fact and real history to tliat of mere legend. Miracles answer here to the crucial tests of the inductive philosophy, and form the contrast between a tissue of mere human fancies, and authentic messages from heaven, sealed with the royal signet of the King of kings. Besides these errors, there is a deejier charge of self- contradiction, which lies against the whole tenor of this sceptical argument. Writers of this school, the disciples of the Positive Philosophy, when they would free physical science from the intrusion of metaphysics and religious faith, insist on the doctrine that our task, as students of nature, is confined to the discovery of laws, the mere generalization of classes of phenomena, and that causes lie completely beyond our reach ; that their existence is doubtful, and their nature incon- ceivable. We know a series of events, of antecedents and consequents ; but of secret links, named causes, which have been supposed to bind them together, we know, and can know, nothing. On this basis is raised a theory of negative Atheism, that God may possibly exist, but that his existence must for ever be uncertain, and is also needless for all the wants of human science. But when the miracles of the gospel are to be set aside, and the supernatural banished from the thoughts of men, tliis reasoning is suddenly and completely reversed. These laws of nature, which before were nothing else than a summation of observed facts, are transformed into real causes, inflexible and unalterable as the fate of the old heathens, which admit neither God, nor angel, nor man, to interfere with their absolute and siipreme dominion. What contradiction can be more gross and intolerable ? The heathen, who cut down the cypress or the oak of the forest, liewed and squared it into decent sliape, and, after using part to cook his 72 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. food, turned the rest into an idol, and Lowed down before it, was only a type of the more pretentions, but not less foolish course of this unbelieving philosophy. Its disciples hew and carve the phenomena of nature, and turn the chips and parings, the secondary laws of art and of applied science, into passive instruments that minister to the comfort of human life. All the rest of those laws, though equally perishable in themselves, being a little more firm and massive in appearance, they invest with the attributes of Divinity. These are fixed, unalterable, eternal, incapable of being varied by the will of man, or by the power of the living God. The worship of such speculators, so far as they worship at all, is paid to this system of physical law, and to that alone. They fall down before it, like the old heathen before liis wooden idol or molten image, and say, " Deliver me, for thou art my god." And there is little doubt, if one of the old prophets were to rise again, that he would jiro- nounce over them once more that indignant sentence, " They have not known nor understood ; for He hath shut their eyes, that they cannot see, and their hearts, that they cannot understand." III. The third class of objections refer to the suffi- ciency of miracles as the proofs and tests of a Divine revelation. And here it is urged that their force must be only relative, and depend on the knowledge or ignorance of those to whom they appeal. The miracle of an ignorant age ceases to be such in an age of greater light. Columbus's prediction of an eclipse was super- natural to the islanders of the Antilles. Some have, therefore, applied to tliem the Grreek j^roverb, that they are "marvels for fools," and supposed it equivalent witli the rebuke of the evil generation, who sought after a sign. Schleiermacher held them to be only THE REASONABLENESS OF MIRACLES. 73 relative to the notions of tlie age. Tlie Pharisees ascribed them to evil spirits, and the later Jews to a 1 heft of the ineffable name. Signs may thus be suited to one age or one class, and not to others. Miracles, which would now be incredible, were not so in the age when they are said to have occurred. Evidence, which might be convincing and powerful to an age of ig- norance, may have only an injurious influence when urged in these days, with whose scientific conceptions it is at variance. Where there is an indiscriminate l)elief of the supernatural, or where it is wholly dis- believed, the allegation of particular miracles will be equally in vain. Some recent writers have held that revelation ought to be received, though destitute of strict evidence either internal or external. Others have strongly denied that historical testimonies can be justly styled the evidences of Christianity. When- ever, instead of miracles being the sole certificate of the message, the force of evidence is made to lie in their union with the internal excellence of the doctrine, the latter becomes the real test for the admission of the former. Such a principle appears in the Bible itself, since false prophets might j)redict signs and wonders, which might also come to pass; and false Christs and lalse prophets, under the Gospel, by similar miracles, almost deceive the very elect. What is the value of faith at second hand ? Many Christian writers have held a light of appeal, superior to all miracles, to our own moral tribunal, as Be Wette, Doderlein, and others. Thus all outward attestation would seem super- fluous, if it concur with these moral convictions, or to be icjected if it ojipose them. And hence the general con- clusion is reached, that " the more knowledge advances, the more Christianity, as a real religion, must be viewed ;ip;nt from connection with jihysical things." 74 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. There are here two important questions, much con- troverted even among Christian divines, which need some patient thought, before they can receive a dis- tinct answer. How far is the evidence of miracles real and absolute, or only relative to the ignorance of those who witness them ? What is the connection, also, between external and internal evidence ? Do miracles, apart from every moral test, form a com- plete attestation of a Divine message ? Or do they need rather to be joined with some moral evidence, before they can be received as decisive ? Christian writers, as Wardlaw and Trench, have given opposite replies to these questions. It becomes the more need- ful to use caution in seeking to answer them. The truth, if once clearly defined and explained, will per- haps spare the necessity for sifting the divergent state- ments of Christian apologists. It will then be need- less to pursue the sceptical argument in detail through the pages of an Essay, which pretends to throw new light on the study of the evidences, and seems only to wrap the subject in mist and confusion, that it may securely undermine the old foundations of the Christian faith. The reply to the first of these questions must plainly depend on the true definition of a miracle. If it be simply the suspension or reversal of the known laws of nature, then it must clearly be relative to our vary- ing knowledge of those laws ; and events miraculous in one age, or to one class, may cease to be so in a later age, or among better instructed men. If it be a direct act of God, in contrast to all agency of second causes, by an exercise of power strictly and exclusively Divine, then its nature is absolute and not relative, and must remain the same to all classes, and in every age of the world. THE KEASONABLENESS OF MUIACLES. 75 The latter view has been adopted by many Cln-istian writers in tlieir works on the evidence of revelation. It seems to have the advantage of simplifying the argument ; since miracles, thns defined, must plainly be a decisive i)roof that the message they accompany is Divine. But this seeming benefit is more than counter- balanced by the loss. On such a view, it must be impossible to know when a miracle has been wrought, unless we could know all the jx)ssible results of second causes, in their most unusual combination, or define the limits of that power which may belong to a superhuman, but created intelligence. Now this is a knowledge which no one has ever attained, even with our actual ad- vances in science, and amidst all the light of revelation. How mucli less can it be the condition, on which the evidence /or the truth of that revelation is made to depend ! No definition of miracles can leave them available as the proper tests of a Divine message, which requires a knowledge, both of God and of nature, quite beyond the attainments of those to whom the message is given. The following view is free from this fatal objection. Miracles, as evidence, may be immediate, mediate, or improper. Immediate miracles are those which satisfy tlie last definition, or distinct and immediate actings of the Great First Cause, apart from all second causes whatever. The resurrection of our Lord is an instance which seems clearly to belong to this first and highest category. Mediate miracles are those wrought by some unusual and supernatural power bestowed on a Divine messenger. The miracles of our Lord himself, as the Son of Man, may be correctly referred to this class, and still more undeniably tliose of his Apostles. They were not immediate acts of the Divine power alone, but are distinctly ascribed to a gift imparted to them as God's 76 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. messengers. " He gave them power over unclean spirits, to cast tliem out, and to heal all manner of sickness and of disease." " Behold, I give unto you power to tread on serpents and scorpions, and on all the power of the enemy." A deputed and real power, then, cannot he denied, without contradicting Scripture, and the adoption of a line of reasoning which would destroy the distinction between miracles and common events, resolving all alike into -the ceaseless operation of the First Cause alone. Improper miracles are those which result from rare and unusual combinations of second causes. In these foresiglit, and not power, is the really supernatural element. The plague of the locusts, the feeding with quails, and even the destruction of the cities of the plain, may probably be referred to this class. In each case second causes, already in being, were clearly employed ; and it is not certain that more was needed than a j^re-arrangement, by Divine wisdom, of special conditions for their combined action. The effect on those who saw the events would be equally miraculous, and create a full persuasion of the jDresence of the mighty hand of God. These three kinds of miracles, howev^er distinct in their definition, it may be impossible in many cases to distinguish from each other. Their v^alue, as evidence, cannot then depend upon such a discrimination liavdng been previously made. We need a practical definition which shall include them all, and bring into relief that common feature on which their strength as evidence for a Divine revelation depends. Miracles, then, viewed as evidences for revelation, are *' unusual events not within the ordinary power of man, nor cajDable of being foreseen by man's actual know- ledge of second causes, and Avrouglit or announced by professed messengers of God, to confirm tlie reality of THE REASONABLENESS OF MIRACLES. 77 their message." Tlie definition has a negative and a positive element. Tliere must be no second causes, or at least none within human knowledge, that will ac- count for the event; and there must be an apparent connection with some plain moral object or some pro- fessed message from God. Whenever these two con- ditions meet, we have a case of miraculous evidence. Some of these, by the progress of science in later times, might come within the range of man's actual 23ower over nature, or his insight into natural changes, and w^ould then cease to be miraculous ; while others may surpass not only human, but superhuman power, and im]ily a direct exercise of the Divine Omnipotence. The use of miracles as evidence, like the need itself for supernatural revelation, depends on the doctrine of tlie Fall. It results from the dimness and blindness of the heart of man in all spiritual things. In a perfect state, all second causes would be referred instinctively to the will of God, and all nature be translucent with the Maker's presence. Miracles, in their strangeness and peculiarity, would cease to exist. All we behold would be miracle. Even the direct converse of the Word of God with his sinless creatures would only be the crown and topstone of one harmonious system of communion among men and angels, and all the holy creatures of God. But when, through the power of sin, creation has grown opaque to the eyes of men, and the physical course of nature conceals the presence of the great Lawgiver, miracles are needed, to form an antidote to blind nature-worship, and undo the subtle spell of unbelief. This end may be secured, either by acts of Divide power, suspending or reversing the laws of nature ; or else by combining these in such an ini- usual way, and with so clear a moral purpose, as to force the conviction on reluctant minds that nature is 78 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. only a servant and handmaid of the Hving God, the moral Governor of the universe. The evidence, then, of miracles, in the widest sense of tlie term, may in some cases be only relative to the knowledge of those who witness them. Still there are few, if any, of those recorded in the Bible, which lie so near to this inferior limit as to be really affected in their evidential power by the discoveries of modern science, and the increase of man's power over the works of God. Even supposing some of the plagues of Egypt to have been effected simply by a pre- adjiistment of second causes ; no reach of science, even now, could enable the wisest philosopher to rival Moses, and to predict the coming of the scourge and the time of its removal. Our chemistry, with its immense dis- coveries, leaves the miracle at Cana as purely miracu- lous as in the hour when it was wrought ; and the feeding of the five thousand remains until now, as clearly as ever, a work truly supernatural and divine. The evidence derived from miracles, to confirm the truth of revelation, needs thus no intrusion into tlie deep things of God, no exact discernment of limits which sejDarate all created power and second causes from acts of Divine Omnipotence, in order to give it force and validity. It depends simjDly on the union of two conditions : that second causes, adequate to the result, either do not exist, or are hidden from view ; and that a moral cause, such as the exhibition of Divine power and holiness, or the confirmation of a Divine message, shall be plainly conspicuous. The words of the conscience-stricken magicians will then be ap- 23licable : " This is the finger of God ;" and the rea- soning of our Lord will apply — " If I by the finger of God cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come upon you." THE llEASONAJiLENESS OF MlllACLES. 79 This leads to a second inquiry of equal importance. What is the relation between the external and internal evidence, between the miracles which attest a message, and the moral features of the alleged revelation ? The path of truth seems here, as in many other cases, to lie almost midway between opposite extremes. First, it is not the doctrine of Scripture that miracles alone, simply as miracles, are decisive proofs that any message or teaching they accompany is from God. The marvels of the Egyptian sorcerers who withstood Moses, the caution in the law against teachers of idolatry, whose signs and wonders should come to pass, the account of our Lord's temptation, his own warning against fldse prophets, whose great signs and wonders miglit almost deceive the elect, and other passages in the Epistles and Book of Revelation, conspire to teach an opposite lesson. It avails nothing to allege that wicked spirits can never attain to works properly Divine. IJevelation would be needless, if men were already so wise as to know the highest possible reach of all created power, and instinctively to discern it from tlie workings of real Omnipotence. Indeed we have no ])roof that most of the miracles in the Bible require a Jiigher power than its own promises assure to saints and angels in the kingdom of God ; and the contrary may perhaps be implied, where miraculous gifts of the early Christians receive that impressive title — " the ])Owers of the world to come." The opposite extreme, however, that tlie goodness of the message, discerned by the lig'ht within, is the real test of tlie admissibility of miracles, instead of miracles being.the tests of the message itself, is still more remote from the truth. A conscience so enlightened befoi-e- hand as to decide at once on the wisdom or folly, the truth or falsehood, of every part of a message that 80 THE B113LE AND MODEllN THOUGHT. claims God for its Author, can stand in no need of a direct revelation from heaven. The same moral blind- ness, which alone calls for the remedy of a supernatural message, unfits men entirely for the perilous task of sitting in judgment on the vi^ords of their Maker. To see truth in the light of God is not the state of those to whom either the Law or the Gospel is first given. It is the best and highest attainment of those who have received in faith the words of their Maker, and been trained by them to the full enjoyment of his presence ; where faith is lost in sight, and provision for their journey through a land of moral pitfalls is exchanged for the gladness and glory of a heavenly inheritance. Miracles, of themselves, simply attest the presence and working of a sujDcrhuman power. They do not, without some further test, prove that this power is that of the true and only God. The Bible affiiTQS the existence of spirits of evil, superior to men in natural power and wisdom, who must therefore be capable of working wonders, or predicting events, and revealing secrets, beyond the range of mere human abihty. Some further element, then, is required beyond mere signs and wonders, though apparently supernatural, to prove the doctrine or message to be Divine. And tliis test may be twofold — the greatness of the miracles themselves, or the moral features of the message when viewed as a whole. The first is the simplest, the second the most decisive. Both of tliem rest alike on the voice of reason, and distinct examples in the word of God. The Divine Power must surpass the power of all spirits of evil ; and if they are permitted to work seeming wonders, it seems reasonable to expect that the Lord of heaven and earth will merely suffer it, so far as to illustrate more brightly his own sujDremacy and omnipotence. Again, though revelation would THE REASONABLENESS OF MIRACLES. 81 lie useless, if men were able to pass judgment safely ill fletuil on every part of a Divine message ; such a degree of moral discernment as would enable them, on the whole, to discern good from evil, the message of a holy and benevolent Deity from the lying voice of spirits of darkness, must surely belong to all mankind who have not reached the worst and lowest stage of judicial blindness. Now both of these tests, which alone are needed to make the evidence of miracles adequate and complete, are distinctly recognised in the Bil)le history itself. The magicians of Egypt, so far as the words of Scrip- ture are any guide, rivalled outwardly the signs of the first plagues and the previous wonders, with an infe- riority in degree alone. After this limit, their per- mitted power, or that of the false gods whose servants they were, failed them, and they were comjoelled to own, " This is the finger of God." Again, when a prophet sjioke in the name of Jehovah, the success or failure of the signs he gave was declared to be the test of his sincerity or falsehood in his claim to a Divine commission. But if a prophet or dreamer showed a sign or wonder to persuade the Israelites into idol- worship, even the success of the sign was to be no proof of his authority. On the contrary, it is declared to be merely permitted for the trial of their fidelity, and the teacher of falsehood and idolatry was to be put to death for his crime. The words of Nicodemus, in his secret interview with our Lord, are quite consistent with the same view. The conclusion rested, apparently, not on the mere fact of miracles, but on their number or their greatness. " No man can do these miracles wliich tliou doest, ex- cept God be with him." Our Lord himself assigns the same reason for the guilt of the Jews in rejecting him. Q 82 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. It was not simply because miracles had been wrought, but greater miracles than by any of the proj)hets, and therefore in fullest harmony with the rank and cha- racter of the true Messiah. " If I had not done among them the works which no other man did, they had not had sin." The presence of miracles, then, simply and in itself, is not a completely decisive proof of a Divine message. They may, in rare cases, accomjiany the permitted delusions of spirits of darkness. But miracles, striking and impressive in themselves, and not con- fronted by others still more miraculous, or when joined with a general impress of holiness in the message they attest, do form a complete and decisive evidence that the teaching is from God, and the revelation truly Divine. Let us now sum up the general result of this inquiry. All science tends towards unity. But the true source of that unity cannot be found within the boun- daries of physical science alone. This vast ocean has its tides secretly controlled by a higher law than the currents and ripj)ling of its own waves. The real unity consists in a scheme of moral government, guided and disposed in every part by the wisdom of the great Lawgiver, of which only a small part is disclosed to us in our present state. There is a partial unity in every compartment of nature, but this is limited by its subor- dination to a greater whole. Mechanical laws, which govern solid matter, are modified by the subtle influ- ences of heat and electricity. These higher laws, again, are modified by vital action in all the forms of vege- table and animal life. All the lower forms of life upon earth, as well ?is all material objects, are controlled in various degrees by the reason and will of man. At this point in the ascent higher laws begin to appear, THE REASONABLENESS OF MIRACLES. 83 not of mechanical agency or physical sequence, but of moral government. Ideas force themselves upon our notice, of right and wrong, duty and disobedience, of sin and holiness, of reward and punishment. Beyond tlieso there emerges to the view of faith, when en- lightened by the word of God, and by its echoes and reflections in the purified conscience, the glorious vision of a scheme of creation, providence, and redemption, which spans eternity in its range, begins from the foundation of the world, stretches forward into the ages to come, includes all events, small and great, within its own capacious bosom ; and makes all the outward works of the Creator, from the stars of heaven to the cedar of Lebanon and tlie hyssop on the wall, subserve the mysterious counsels of Infinite Wisdom and Love. The knowledge which man has attained, in any age of the world, of the laws of nature, is like an islet in the midst of this vast, undiscovered ocean of the counsels of the Most High. It gives him a firm standing-place for the active duties of his daily life ; while its narrow limits teach him the duty of owning a Higher Power, and adoring with reverence at the footstool of his Al- mighty Creator. In a perfect moral state, this limited and imperfect knowledge would never be a veil to hide from his eyes the presence and dominion of the Unseen King. But sin has darkened the human conscience ; and ages of the world in which " many run to and fro, and knowledge is increased," may blind the eyes of men to the limitations of physical law, and its dependence on the higher purposes of God's moral government. Tliey mistake this ocean islet — this narrow region of discovered j^hysical laws, reared by the' insect labours of thousands of men of science in successive generations — for that mightier world to which the islet itself, and G 2 84 THE BIBLE AND MODEBN THOUGHT. the ocean that girdles it, equally belong. It becomes needful, then, either by the unexpected interference of other physical laws still undiscovered and unknown, by signal and secret arrangements of Providence, or by the direct agency of spiritual messengers higher than men, to break through the thick crust of atheism which has begun to darken the conscience ; and to force on it anew the conviction, that man is a creature subject to the control of an All-wise Creator, and that higher laws than the dull mechanism of unconscious matter, or the low instincts of animal life, enter into the mighty scheme of God's universal providence. This is the first and immediate effect of the repara or wonders, that herald and accompany the messages of God. But to arouse the attention, and disperse the atheistic blindness which worships dead nature is only their first effect. They are signs as well as wonders, or significant attendants of some message from heaven, some moral truth which they partly convey of them- selves, and partly confirm, as it flows from the lips of God's appointed messengers. The miracles of the Bible startle men from their apathy, but they also teach and signify some celestial truth. The flood, the destruction of the cities of the plain, were messages of solemn anger against abounding sin. The smitten rock, from whence the water flowed at Rephidim, and the manna in the wilderness, were signs of a higher provision for the souls of men. The healing of the sick, the cleansing of lepers, the unstopping the ears of the deaf, the opening the eyes of the blind, the draught of fishes, the feeding of the multitudes, in our Lord's ministry, had all of them a deep moral significance. The little islet of known natural laws was invaded, its dull monotony was disturbed, and its tenants wakened up to wonder, curiosity, and eager inquiry, by a ship of heaven, laden THE REASONABLENESS OF MIRACLES. 85 with good news from a far country. But tlie ship liad a firmness of its own, not less complete in its kind than the islet it was sent to visit, and its treasures were the products of a continent, far more rich in its extent than the self-satisfied hut ignorant islanders could ever have dreamed of, before it anchored on their distant shore. The miracles of revelation are that ship of heaven. They have a system and structure of their own, adapted wonderfully to convey heavenly truth to the dwellers of eartli, although the visit breaks through their con- tented slumber within the narrow region of sensible things. They seem, then, in themselves, like infractions on the dominion and permanence of the lower laws of nature, already known to men. But in truth they convey to them the products of a nobler and higher world of thought, of which the laws are equally firm, and even firmer, than those which the miracles seem to reverse, and are larger, wider, deeper, and nobler, un- changeable and everlasting. That higher world is the vast scheme and counsel of redeeming love. Its foun- dations are the attributes of Him who is unchangeable. Its hills and valleys are the wide range of moral and spiritual truth. Its rich productions are all those various lessons of duty, laws of holiness, and instincts of purity, wisdom, and grace, which will nourish and gladden the souls of the redeemed for ever. Physical laws may be firm, but the moral laws of the Divine government are still firmer. The pillars of earth may tremble and be astonished ; but no change can assail that city " which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God." THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. CHAPTER Y. THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE BIBLE, The Bible differs from all other ancient books which have claimed a sacred origin, by its historical character. In this respect it stands alone. The Koran of Mo- hammed is simply a series of monologues ; only a few Scripture narratives rhetorically disguised, or Arabian legends, interrupt the wearisome monotony of its reli- gious appeals, invectives, and exhortations. The Hindu Vedas are equally unhistorical. Learned students, with their utmost efforts, can only just infer from them, indirectly, the age when they were written. The same feature appears in the Zendavesta, and the Egyptian sacred writings and Ritual of the Dead. All of these flit before us like ghosts or disembodied spirits, and the garment of historical fact or allusion with which they are clothed is of the most thin and shadowy kind. The Old and the New Testament agree in a common character, precisely the opposite to these j^retended revelations. They include the history of a long and connected series of events, of great, pubHc, and notorious acts of Divine Providence. In each of them, four- sevenths of the whole is simple narrative ; and the other books also, whether didactic, devotional, or prophetic, with hardly one exception, are fixed by clear internal marks to their own place in the history. This is the stem which supports them all, the Psalms, Proverbs, Canticles, and Prophets in the Old Testament, and the THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE BIBLE. 87 Epistles and Book of Revelation in the New. The Bible narrative, so simple and unadorned in itself, seems here, Hke the rod of Aaron, to bud, and bring forth blossoms, and yield almonds. In these other books only a few chapters are direct history ; but still their connection with the historical portions is intimate, un- broken, and comjjlcte. This character of the Bible is most favourable to the detection of its falsehood, or to the establishment of its truth. It multiplies greatly the tests which separate faithful testimony from the impostures of fraud and the mere illusions of fancy. Unreal history is too sandy a foundation, on which to rear, with the least hope of success, a temple of pure and everlasting truth. Sincere and honest narratives, though slightly discordant, or imperfect in a few minor details, might certainly be the means of conveying to us Divine messages of the highest worth and authority. But it is incredible that histories, legendary and decej^tive in their broad outlines, which would be condemned in all other cases as dishonest or worthless, should be the stem upon which are found to grow the blossoms and richest fruitage of heavenly wisdom. Men do not gather grapes of thorns, nor figs of thistles. A pure morality and theology can never be the fruit of dishonest and deceptive history. Once let the conviction spread that whole books of the Bible, and main portions of its narratives, are gross, strange, and monstrous distortions of the real facts, or else mere legends containing no real facts wliatever, and Christianity will have received a fatal death-wound in the minds of educated and thoughtful men. The Pentateucli and the Four Gospels are the his- torical ])asis, on which all the other Scriptures of the Old and of the New Testament entirely depend. Each has been exposed, of late years, to repeated and persevering 88 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. charges of liistoiical flilseliood. Early forms of scepti- cism ripened at length, in Strauss's ' Lehen Jesii,' into an attempt to dissolve the whole of the Gospels into a heap of fables, due entirely to the dreaming and in- ventive imagination of the early Christians. The cool audacity of the hypothesis, with the laborious minute- ness of its detailed criticisms, created a momentary sen- sation ; just as the tale of a lunatic may be so minute and particular in its various inventions, as to make us almost forget for a time how preposterous it is. But this tide- wave has gone by, though some traces of it may be left behind. The Gospels are too recent in their date, too intensely real in their tone, too fruitful in his- torical consequences, to make it possible for so wild a theory to gain more than a brief popularity among unbelievers themselves. The oscillation from naturalism into mythicism was followed inevitably by a backward movement into naturahsm again. And indeed this uneasy alternation can never cease, until the eyes of the soul are opened, like those of the blind man in the Gospel, and it learns to bow the knee in reverence and worship before the Son of God. The attacks on the Pentateuch began earher, and have been still more persevering. Scepticism had here many advantages which were entirely wanting in its assaults upon the Gospel history. The period itself is more remote by nearly two thousand years. The Law, being a revelation originally for the Jews alone, has a much weaker hold than the Gospel on the faith and sympathy of the great body of modern Christians. Till quite lately, there were few collateral sources of infor- mation to be found, either in ancient monuments or heathen records. The efforts of unbelieving criticism were thus confined mainly to a dissection of the books themselves. From the time of Astruc onward, a long THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE BIBLE. 8^ series of writers have laboured to detect inconsisten- cies, to disprove tlie Mosaic authorship, and to transfer broken fragments of the Pentateuch to various legend- makers, or compilers of loose tradition, under the Jewish kings. More recently the progress of discovery in the remains of Egypt, Assyria, Persia, and Babylon, has supplied far more copious materials for comparison with the histories of the Old Testament. Its later books have gained singular and unexpected confirmation from results of Assyrian and Babylonian research. But the effect of Egyptian discovery, in the comparison of the monuments with the books of Moses, is more contro- verted and ambiguous. Here also many facts, usages, and details in the sacred narrative, are confirmed by the monuments in a striking manner. But on the main question of the general outline of the early history, some learned students, while differing by whole centuries and millennia in their own reckonings, agree to set aside the Book of Genesis as legendary and unhistorical, that they may replace it by their own views of the im- mense antiquity of Egyptian civihzation. An attempt has lately been made to bring these supposed disco- veries within the general reach of English readers m a popular form ; and thus to destroy their faith in the veracity of those books of Moses, which form the his- torical basement of the whole series of the Jewish and Christian revelations.^ It would be impossible, in a few images, to enter into the details of an mquiry so iimnense and various. The Bible histories occupy seventeen books of the- Old, and five of the New Testament, and spread over a space, at the lowest reckoning, of nearly four thousand years. Within this wide range, and with all the various materials amassed by modern research, hundreds, and ' Note C. The Bible and Ancieut Egypt. 90 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. almost thousands of questions may be raised, tliat would each require a chapter or small volume for their full discussion. Our knowledge of the earliest j^eriod is still so obscure, and the views both of those who reject the authority of the Pentateuch, and "of those who maintain it, are so diverse, that a suspense of judgment on several important questions may be still the wisest course, even after the most careful use of all the existing evidence. But the way lies open by which, in spite of some questions still unsolved, and confident assertions by a few men of science, agreed in rejecting Moses, but at variance among themselves, we may come to a full assurance, in agreement with the plainest maxims of inductive jDhilosophy, on the massive strength and so- lidity of the historical foundations of the Christian faith. The great question which requires an answer is this : Have we any clear and full warrant for believing the veracity of the Bible historians, and the substantial truth of their narratives, however plainly intermingled with statements of supernatural events, and whatever minute discrepancies may seem, at first sight, to be detected by a rigid and searching inquiry ? And here two prefatory remarks seem desirable, before we pro- ceed to consider the direct evidence of their truth. First of all, the veracity of these writers is closely linked, in the general faith of Christians, with the doctrine of their special llispiration, and an implied belief of their freedom from all error in delivering the messages of God. This intimate union of two distinct ideas, however natural and desirable for the uses of practical piety, may become a snare and a source of perplexity in tracing out the reasonable grounds of our Christian faith. We may be charged with a circular and sophistical mode of reasoning ; as if we believe the Scriptures inspired and infallible because a few texts THE niSTOmCAL TRUTH OF THE BIBLE. 91 seem to affirm it, and reckon these texts decisive evi- dence, because all Scripture is true and inspired. Faith, however, in the exact limit and extent of the Scrij)ture canon, and in a mode of inspiration so complete as to exclude the slightest error or dis- cre^^ancj, is rather the crown and topstone, than the basis, of a reasonable belief in Christianity. It could not have been essential while the canon was unfinislied, nor for centuries afterward, when several books were widely, but not universally received ; while in modern times a less rigid view of the effect of inspiration can claim many advocates of deep and earnest piety, and of general soundness in the faith. On the other hand, a conviction that the sacred writers, especially the Evangelists, are sincere, honest, and credible witnesses of the facts they record, seems a first essential of all real faith in Christianity. For surely no one can hold the Evangelists and Apostles to have been fraudulent his- torians and dishonest witnesses, and still receive the Gospel itself as a message truly Divine. There is here an important distinction between the doctrinal and prophetic books or passages of Scripture, and the historical books themselves. In the former there is generally a direct or virtual claim of Divine authority. Their character is totally changed when we view them as purely human. We must accept them as Divine, or own theui to be an immoral ex- periment on the credulity of mankind. But the his- torical books, with the exception of prophetic passages or doctrinal discourses, require no such alternative. The claim to inspiration is not made by each historian on his own behalf. It is not plainly implied by the mere existence of the record. No one, without a special commission, can reveal heavenly truth, so as to claim with full authority the obedience of mankind. But every honest witness may give a true report of 92 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. discourses lie lias heard, or events lie has seen, or of which copious evidence has been placed within his reach, without special and supernatural inspiration. If St. Luke had not written, and the accounts to which his preface alludes had survived, they might have been disfigured by some mistakes and errors, and have obscured the due proportion of the events they con- tained ; but they would doubtless have agreed in the main with our present Gospels, and might have nourished for ages the spiritual life of the whole Church. Entire freedom from the least error, if ' proved by distinct evidence, is a superadded per- fection of the sacred narratives, which increases their practical value, and simphfies the acting of Christian faith ; but their honesty, as the work of upright wit- nesses, and careful and well-informed historians, is the first condition on which all reasonable faith in Chris- tianity must depend. The life, death, and resurrection of Christ, the bases of Christianity, are recorded by four distinct writers in the four Gospels. This agrees with the maxim of the law of Moses, and the lesson of common sense, that " in the mouth of two or three witnesses every word should be established." The plurality of the wit- nesses is thus made one chief element in the strength of their united testimony. Every view, then, of the inspiration of these books which sets aside or obscures the individuality of the four writers, and reduces them to fingers of the same hand, used mechanically by the Spirit of God, defeats one main purpose for which the message was conveyed to us in its actual form. No furtlier truth resj^ecting the sjDCcial inspiration of the Evangelists ought to cloud from our view the fact, so conspicuous in itself, and so important in reference to the great object of the revelation, that we have the concurrence of four distinct and separate witnesses THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE BIBLE. 93 to all the main facts, and many details, of the Gospel Secondly, the veracity of the Bible has been often questioned and denied, on the simple ground that it contains miraculous events and prophecies. A whole series of German critics base their rejection of its histories, in their actual form, entirely on this prin- ciple, that the mention of a miracle is " evident proof of a later narrator, who was no eye-witness of the event." The great question is thus prejudged in the gross, before any attempt is made to confirm this general disbelief by detailed criticism. But such a line of argument bears its condemnation on its face. For the claim of the Bible is plainly that it contains a series of messages from' God to man, attested by signs, wonders, and prophecies. To make the presence of these in the narrative a disproof of its reality is there- fore a flagrant contradiction of all common sense. Two demands alone can be reasonably made ; that the history, setting apart its miraculous character, shall possess all the other marks of honesty and truth ; and that the testimony to these miracles and prophecies, in its strength and clearness, shall correspond with their importance as public and solemn credentials of a reve- lation from God. Again, the improbability of miracles, which evidence has to overcome, depends entirely on their association with some great religious ol)ject, or their indej)endent occurrence. In the former case they cannot be more unlikely than one or other of these affirmations : that there is a God ; that men stand in need of fuller light from their Maker ; and that a God of wisdom and love has made provision fortius wide and deep want of man- kind. In the latter case, their occurrence is just as unlikely as the sujiposition, that an All-wise Governor 94 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. will abrogate the laws lie lias ordained, in mere caprice, and with no apparent motive whatever. Thus, in one case we have a high probability that they will, and in the other that they will not occur. The proj)Osal to test the Bible, in this respect, by the rules applied to common histories, is therefore a logical absurdity of the most glaring kind. We have been told, for instance, that the outward evidences of Scripture are " not ade- quate to guarantee narratives inherently incredible," and that our investigation " forfeits its historical cha- racter " unless we scrutinize the Christian miracles " on the same grounds on which we should investigate any ordinary narrative of the supernatural or marvellous." This amounts, in fact, to an assertion that it is just as unlikely an All-wise Creator should work signs and wonders with the highest reason conceivable for such an exercise of his omnipotence, or out of mere caprice, with no reason whatever. The way is now open for a brief review of the direct evidence which attests the historical truth of the Old and New Testaments. We may distinguish six main periods ; from Creation to the Exodus, from the Exodus to the Temple, from thence to the Captivity, and from the Captivity to Christ : and, in the New Testament, from the Birth of our Lord to his Ascension, and from thence to the close of the history, or St. Paul's arrival at Rome. The earliest period is lost in the shades of remote antiquity, where, until of late, few outward materials for comparison could be found ; but the last answers to the palmiest days of the Roman Empire, and the most public and conspicuous era of classical history. The sacred history, however, from first to last, is re- corded on the same general scale, with a marked har- mony of character, style, and tone. The natural course is to ascend from the last period, where the means for THE HISTOKICAL TKUTH OF THE BIBLE. 95 testing its reality are most abundant, to the earlier ones, where they are of recent discovery, and still compara- tively uncertain and obscure. I. The Book of Acts is a whole, complete in itself, distinct in character from the Gospels, and not less distinct from the histories of the Old Testament. It abounds in testimonies to the resurrection and ascension of Christ, and to the fact of numerous miracles wrought during its course by the apostles to confirm their message. Apart from these features, has it all the marks of genuine history ? Does it satisfy the various tests by which an authentic record of facts may be discerned from the tales of imposture, from deliberate fiction, or from the dreams of excited fancy ? The evidence may clearly be of three kinds ; derived from its allusions to a real geography and the actual history of the times, from its coincidences with the rest of the New Testament, especially St. Paul's Ejoistles, and from the internal keeping and harmony of its own narrative. In each of these it is imusually full and copious, and space will not allow more than an enumeration in the briefest form. (1.) From the Ascension to the death of Herod Agrippa. The book oj)ens with an allusion to a former treatise by the same author, containing the events of our Lord's ministry till his ascension. This treatise is still extant in our third Gospel, and agrees with the description, and also with several features of style in the later nar- rative. (Conf. Luke iii. 1-4 ; ii. 1-G ; Acts v. 37; xi. 28 ; xviii. 12 ; xxiv. 27.) It alludes next to forty days from the resurrection to the ascension, followed by a few days of earnest and continued prayer, before the day of Pentecost. This is the usual name of the second Jewish festival in Philo, Josephus, and other Greek writers ; 96 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. and its meaning, the fiftieth day from the passover, corresponds with the double definition of the intervals of time. The disciples are called, in the first and second chapters, Galileans. This agrees both with the Grospel account of the chief scene of our Lord's ministry, and with the nickname of the Christians, as late as Celsus, Porphyry, and Julian. Olivet is called " a sabbath day's journey from Jerusalem." This is confirmed by the known topography, and by Jewish authorities on the distance allowed to be travelled on the sabbath. Aceldama is said to be the name of the field of blood in " the proper dialect " of Jerusalem. This agrees with the local use of Syriac in Judea. Joseph, called Barsabas, was also surnamed Justus. This indicates the presence of the Romans in Palestine, leading to the occasional acquisition, by Jews themselves, of Latin surnames. The countries, from which Jews are said to have been present on the day of Pentecost, agree with the known state of intercourse in the Roman world, and with their wide dispersion through all those lands and provinces, as confirmed by Josephus and other testimonies. Mesopotamia and Judea come together ; for the grouping refers to dialects, and the Chaldee and the Syriac of Palestine were near akin to each other. Both Jews and prose- lytes are mentioned as numerous ; and the number of Gentile proselytes in that age is confirmed by all his- torians. In the sermon of St. Peter, the sepulchre of David is said to be among the Jews at Jerusalem to that day. It still occupies a leading place in plans, views, and descriptions of Mount Zion and its vicinity (Williams's Holy City, Front, and p. 417). The Beau- tiful Gate of the 'J'emple and the porch of Solomon are named as places of especial resort. The latter is de- scribed by Josephus (Antiquities, xx. 9), and the former, THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE BIBLE. 07 tlioiigli the Greek name does not seem to occur, answers, ])0t]i in position and meaning, to the gate called Susan \)y the Jews from its beauty. The captain of the temple is named, in passing, along with the chief priests. The same officer is mentioned by Josephus (Ant., xx. (5, 2 ; B, J., ii. 12, G ; and vi. 5, 3), and under the kindred name of " overseer of the temple," in 2 Mac. iii. 4. The rivalry of the Sadducees and Pharisees, which runs through the history, and the special opposition of the former to the preaching of the resurrection, agrees fully with larger details in Josephus. Annas is named as high priest, and Caiaphas is associated with him. The former, under the name Ananus, is noted by Josephus, as " most fortunate, for he had five sons, and all of these had the high priesthood, and he himself first of all held the same honour a long time, which happened to no other of the high priests." The ap- pointment and deposition of Caiaphas is also named (Ant., xviii. 2, 2, and 4, 3), the latter just after Pilate was removed from his office. The contemporary rule of Herod Antipas and Pilate (Acts iv. 27) ap23ears also both in Josephus and Suetonius. The surname Bar- nabas, given to Joses, and its interpretation, agree with the relative use of the two languages in Judea and Syria. The celebrity of Gamaliel agrees with the mention in the Mischna of Rabbin Gamaliel, son of Ivabbi Syineon and grandson of Hillel. The state- ment that those who were with the high priest were of the Sadducees answers to the statement (Ant., xx. 0, 1), where Ananus, the son of Annas, is said to follow tlie " sect of the Sadducees, who were fierce with refe- rence to legal judgments beyond all the Jews." The passing use of the title, " the taxing or census," applied to that under Cyrenius or Quirinus, agrees with the account in Josephus of its political celebrity, as a main H 98 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. era in Jewish and Syrian history. The mention of Hebrews and Hellenists at Jerusalem, the prevalence of Greek names among Hellenist Jews, as in the seven deacons, and the existence of national synagogues, as that of the Libertines, or Jewish freedmen, are all features of instructive correspondence with the actual circumstances of the times. The road to Gaza is called " desert," in agreement with the topography. The name, Candace, according to Pliny (vi. 29), was taken in succession by the queens of Upper Egypt, or of the district of Meroe. Other features of correspondence with general history are — the resort of worshij)pers to Jerusalem from remote countries at the feasts ; the relative position of Gaza, Azotus, and Caesarea ; the temporary dominion of Aretas over Damascus (Acts ix. 23-25; 2 Cor. xi. 32, 33); the rest of the churches, explained by Caligula's persecution of the Jews in the last years of his reign ; the nearness of Lydda and Joppa ; the use of the name Tabitha by the apostle, and Dorcas by the Greek historian ; the mention of the Italian band ; the military force at Cassarea ; the rigid practice of the Jews about eating with Gentiles ; the importance attached to the distinction of food, as lawful or impure ; the greater freedom shown by the Jews from Cyprus and Cyrene ; the place and occasion when the name Christian was introduced ; the mention of the reign of Claudius, in contrast to that of Caligula, wdien Agabus gave the prophecy, and that of Nero when the history was written ; the reign of Herod Agrippa over Judea under Claudius, his quarrel with Tyre, his re- conciliation, and his sudden death, after a public oration at Caesarea. (2.) From the death of Herod to St. Paul's voyage to Rome. The number and variety of the external allusions THE HiyTOUICAL TRUTH OF THE BIBLE. 99 and confirmations of tlie history seem only to increase, wlien the gospel is formally spread among the Gentiles ]>y the first missionary journey. Seleucia is mentioned familiarly, in passing, as the port of Antioch. Salamis and Paphos are placed on opposite sides of Cyprus, the first nearer Antioch, the second more remote from it. The Jews were numerous in the island, and had many synagogues there, in agreement with the mention of their expulsion from it in the time of Trajan. A pro- consul, not a propraetor, is named. Suetonius mentions that Cyprus was at first an imperial province, when Augustus shared the provinces with the senate, but that he restored it to the senate again. The sorcerer had an Arabic as well as a Hebrew name, and the apostle a Roman. This agrees with the extensive intermixture of the Jews, by residence, with other nations, and with St. Paul's birth as a Roman citizen. The site of An- tioch in Pisidia has been lately re-discovered, " with an inscription, Antiochese Csesare." Iconium is assigned l>y Xenophon to Phrygia (Anab. i. 2, 19), but by Strabo, Cicero, and Pliny to Lycaonia, and by Ammianus Marcellinus to Pisidia. Here no province is named for it, and it seems at the time to have been a distinct territory, rided by a tetrarch (Plin. Nat. Hist. v. 27). Lystra and Derbe are called cities of Lycaonia, and it is said to have a distinct dialect. So we read in Ste- phanus Byzantinus, " Derbe is a garrison and port (?) of Isauria ; but some call it Derbea, which is, in the dialect of Lycaonia, the juniper bush." Attalia is mentioned as near to Perga, and a seaport. It lies on the opposite side of a large plain, and was built by Attalus for trade with Syria and Egyj^t, and is still called Satalia. The land route from Antioch to Jeru- salem is briefly described as passing through Phenice and Samaria. The law of Moses is affirmed by St. James H 2 100 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. to be read in tlie s3magognes every sabbath tlirouglioiit the Eastern cities. This wide extension of Jewish synagogue worship, and its constant character, is con- firmed by Jewish and classic writers. Phrygia, Ga- latia, Asia, ■ Mysia, Bithynia, and Troas are named incidentally, but in their natural order, in the apostle's journey to the coast. The voyage to Philippi takes three days, witli a notice that the wind was favourable. The return, with no such notice, is said to have been in five days. Samothracia and Neapolis are made the two stages of these voyages in their due order, Philippi is termed " the first city of that part of Macedonia, and a colony." The province had been broken into four dis- tricts, on its conquest by JEmilius Paullus, and PhilijDpi was the first city of importance within the province on the line of route. It was also a Roman colony, and the inscription is still found on coins : " Colonia Augusta Julia Philippensis." The Jewish jAace of jorayer was " by a river side." A small stream, Gangites, ran by the town ; and such proseuchce were near running streams for convenience in Jewish purifications. Lydia was " a seller of purple, of Tliyatira." Inscriptions still remain of " the guild of dyers " of Thyatira. The names of the magistrates and officers, and the mode of punishment, beating with rods, agree with the character of the city as a Roman colony. The apostle " journeyed through Amphipolis and Apollonia to Thessalonica." The great Egnatian road (o^o*;-) connects these towns, and an ancient itinerary reckons these three stages at thirty- three, thirty, and thirty-seven Roman miles. Thessa- lonica was a free Greek city. The mention of the Demus and the politarchs, or rulers, corres23onds. They are Greek . rather than Roman names. The original " where was the synagogue of the Jews," implies that one was foimd here only, and not in the three other THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE BH5LE. 101 towns. Tliessalonica was tlie capital of the province, and hence was a natural place for this preference on the part of the Jews. Athens is said to be " wholly given to idolatry ;" and Xenophon calls the city " one entire altar, altogether an offering to the gods." Pansanias calls the Athenians " more devout towards the gods than other persons." The sects of the Epicureans and Stoics, and the curious, inquisitive, talkative character of the Athenians, are other features of strict historical reality. Altars, also, ayvwarw Oew, to an iniknown God, are affirmed by Pausanias and Philostratus to have been reared in several parts of the city. Mention is made of a decree of Claudius, that all Jews should depart from Rome. Suetonius writes of that emperor : " Judaaos, Chresto impulsore assidue tumultuantes, Poma expulit." It is named, in passing, that Gallic was deputy of Achaia while St. Paul was at Corinth. Tacitus gives particulars of his appointment through his brother Seneca, and the time agrees punctually with the date inferred here from the rest of the history, or A.D. 52 — 54. He is called Proconsul; and the pro- vince had been imperial for a time under Tiberius, but was transferred by Claudius to the senate. The allusion to St. Paul's vow, and his haste to reach Jerusalem by Pentecost, agrees with the customs of the Jews. The }»hrases " he went up, and saluted the cliurch, and went d(jwn to Antioch," answer to a time when Jeru- salem was still the sacred metropolis even of Gentile believers, since the place is implied, but not named. Asiarchs are mentioned at Epliesus, and also the worship of Diana, as the tutelar goddess of the city. A passage occurs with the phrase, " I swear by our country's deity, the great Artemis of the Ephesians," and also an inscription with the woi'ds, " the great goddess Artemis before the city." The ruins of the 102 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. theatre, and its site, indicate it to be the largest of any known in the remains of antiquity. The name of Asiarchs is also given, in many inscriptions, to oJBficers chosen by the cities of Asia to preside over their fes- tivals. The title of the " townclerk," or " ^pa/i/xaTey?," occurs in existing Ephesian inscriptions. So also the description of the image AtoTrere?, or Jove-descended, and the title of the city, New/ro/ao?, or temple-keeper, are confirmed as in actual and frequent use at Ephesus. The intervals of the return voyage from Philippi correspond minutely with the known distances, and with the interval from the Passover to the Pentecost (Acts XX. 6, 16; xxi. 8). Philippi, Troas, Assos, Mity- lene, Chios, Samos, Trogyllium, Miletus, Ej)hesus, Coos, Rhodes, Patara, Cyprus, Tyre, Ptolemais, Co3sarea, are all mentioned on the route in the most rapid manner ; but the presence of an eyewitness is apparent in every part, and is also imj^lied, in the most unobtrusive way, by the transition to the first person- — " JVe sailed away from Philippi after the days of unleavened bread," Acts xx. 6. We have, next, the mention of the Egyptian, and of the Sicarii, both of them named more fully by Josephus ; of the Stairs of Antonia, where was the Roman garrison ; of the preference, by the Jews, of their native dialect, while Greek was still widely intelligible ; of the privileges of Roman citizens, and the fear of the captain who had violated them ; of the feud of the Pharisees and Sadducees ; of the recent change of high priest, after the death of Jonatlian, mentioned in Josephus, which accounts for St. Paul's ignorance that Ananias held the office ; and of the letter of Lysias to Felix, so characteristic of a Greek holding office under a Roman governor. We have a further har- mony with facts, otherwise known to us, in the govern- ment of Fehx at this time, his covetous spirit, his THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE BIBLE. 103 niarriage with the Jewess Drnsilla, and his removal, when Festus became his successor; in the frequent appeals from Judea to the emperor at Rome ; in the royal dignity of Agripi^a and Bernice, though, nnlike Herod Agrippa, they had plainly no authority at Jerusalem ; and in the whole course of procedure of a Roman pro- vincial governor, when conducting a cause of public importance. In all these numerous particulars every conceivable test of genuine history is satisfied and fulfilled. (3.) The Yoyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul. These two closing chapters, when minutely examined, with all the light which can be thrown upon them by modern knowledge of the Levant, and by classical accounts of the ships and navigation of the ancients, become a striking and impressive demonstration of the truth of the whole narrative to which they belong. The subject has been fully treated by Mr. Smith, in his " Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul," to which the reader must be referred ; or to the brief abstract of its , chief results in Dean Alford's Notes, or in Supplement G to Pa ley's Evidences.^ It is almost impossible to con- ceive how a narrative of the same length, without any loss of perfect simplicity, could be more densely crowded with decisive tokens of its being the result of ocular testimony, and in every part historically true. (4.) Coincidences with the Epistles of St. Paul. These have been traced at length in the Ilor^ Paulina3, and placed in so clear a hght, that it seems impossible to conceive how more convincing proofs could be given of the genuineness of the letters, and of the historical truth of St. Luke's narrative, from the first missionary journey to the arrival of St. Paul at Rome. The indirect nature of the coincidence, in ' School Ed., Religious Tract Society. 104 THE BIBLE AND MODEKN THOUGHT. almost every instance, creates an impression of reality, which no hoiiest and candid mind can resist. A few remarks require correction, and other particulars of the same kind may be added, as in my own supplement ;^ but the effect of Paley's own work must be so decisive, on minds open to conviction, as scarcely to admit of sensible increase. (5.) Another class of evidence may be found in the Internal Harmony of the history itself. Amidst the simplicity and truthfulness of tone in the separate narratives, there is a unity of design in the successive steps of the progress of the Gospel, which leads our thoughts to the percej3tion of a Divine plan, steadily fulfilled, while it only confirms the historical reality of each separate portion. The opening words of our Lord are like a key to the structure of the treatise. " Ye shall be witnesses to me, both in Jerusalem and Judea, and Samaria, and to the uttermost parts of the earth." This order is observed in the accounts that follow. Seven chapters record the spread of the Gospel at Jerusalem and in Judea. After the death of Stephen it is preached with great success in Samaria. The con- version of the eunuch is a first step in its diffusion to the ends of the earth. An apostle for the Gentiles is then provided. Their formal and public admission into the church follows next, in the history of Cornelius. A central post among the Gentiles is gained at Antioch, and a Gentile name replaces that of Nazarenes. The persecution of Herod, and the murder of an apostle, sever the link which bound the church so closely to Jerusalem. Then the first missionary journey begins, with Antioch for its starting point and goal of return. The freedom of Gentile believers from the law of Moses is secured by the council at Jerusalem. Then the ' Uora3 ApostoL, Religious Tract Society. THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE BIBLE. 103 Gospel, set free from its Jewish moorings, spreads swiftly forward through the heathen provinces, Phrygia and Galatia, to Troas, Philippi, Thessalonica, Athens, Corinth, and Ephesus, where the apostle receives a prophecy of that visit to Rome, with which the Bihle history comes to its final close. " Paul purposed in the spirit, when he had passed through Macedonia and Achaia, to go to Jerusalem, saying, After I have been there, I must also see Pome." Acts xix. 21. His arrival there marks the close of the narrative ; which begins with the acceptance of the Gospel by Jews at Jerusalem on the day of Pentecost, and ends with its rejection by Jews, and acceptance by Gentiles, in the metropohs of the heathen world. When all these various kinds of evidence have been summed up together, and weighed in an mipartial balance, it may be safely affirmed that there is no extant history of the same age, and of similar length, which can claim to approach the Book of Acts in full, various, and decisive proofs of historical veracity. Coins, in- scriptions, nautical records of ancient and modern times, Jewish and classic authors, the Epistles of St. Paul, and the truest and deepest chords of the human heart, all conspire to stamp it, from first to last, with the plainest signature of reality and truth. II. The Four Gospels. The Four Gospels and the Book of Acts form two distinct portions of New Testament history. The space of time is probably just the same, or thirty-three years. Their structure, however, is very different. In the former we have four parallel biographies, but in the latter, one continued narrative. The account in the Gospels, also, is confined to our Lord's childhood, and his public ministry ; and ^twenty-eight years, or six- sevenths of the whole interval, are passed by in almost 106 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. total silence. All is here centred on the person and public work of the Messiah. This simple and sublime unity of object distinguishes them, not only from common histories, but from the other historical books of Scrip- ture themselves. They seem only to echo in every page the Baptist 's message — " Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world." This character of the Grospels, so different from the Book of Acts, hinders them from offering numerous points of contact with general history. Their theatre is Palestine, and not the Roman world. The persons and places named in them are less numerous, and Josephus is almost the only writer with whom a direct historical comparison can be made. On the other hand, the concurrence of four historians supplies marks of reahty of a different and most impressive kind. The vital connection, also, of the life of Christ, both with all the prophecies of the Old Testament, and with the later history of the New, forms a peculiar and most weighty proof of the deep and intense reality of the whole nar- rative. We may consider the evidence under the heads of Time, Place, Persons, Reconcilable Diversities, and the double reference to the Old Testament and to the latter history of the Church of Christ. (1.) The Time to which the Gospels refer is his- torically well defined. The possible variations amount only to three or four years at either limit. They are due mainly to the fact that Josephus is the only writer who affords very full data for comparison, and that some of his statements appear slightly inconsistent with each other. The limits of the date of our Lord's birth are B.C. 6 and 3, and those of the date of his death A.D. 29 and 33. The direct statement of Josephus places the death of Herod between the summer of li.c. 4 and of B.C. 3. But from his mention of an eclipse before THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE BIBLE. 107 tliat death, many have inferred that it took place earher, or in March B.C. 4, and others that it was tln^ee years later, or Jan. B.C. 1, when an ec]ij:»se took place about three months, instead of one month, before the Pass- over. The direct statement of Josephiis, being reckoned from a double date of the reign, is probably the safest guide. In this case Herod's illness must have lasted the greater part of a year after the echpse of March 13, B.C. 4, and the birth of our Lord, if referred to Dec. B.C. 5, would be nearly a year before Herod's death. His baptism would then be in a.d. 27, when he would be one or two months above thirty years of age, and his first Passover, soon after, would be the forty-sixth year of Herod's rebuilding the temj^le. His death, after a three years' ministry, would be in a.d. 30, when Thurs- day would naturally be the Passover day. The notes of time, which serve to fix the chronology, are indirect and various, and lie scattered through the different Gospels ; and their agreement, with only a very slight degree of uncertainty, is a striking evidence of their common truth. The birth of our Lord, and his flight into Egypt, are fixed by St. Matthew to the reign of Herod, and the return from Egypt to the accession of Archelaus. St. Luke, again, places just six months between our Lord's birth and that of the Baptist, and assigns the Annunciation to the reign of Herod, and the Nativity itself to the time of a census, either made by Cy renins, or before his government of Syria began. It places the preaching of the Baptist in the fifteenth year of Tiberius, under the government of Pilate, states the age of our Lord at his baptism to be about thirty years, notices one Passover in the course of his nn'nistry, and assigns it indirectly, by one of its parables, a length of about three years. The Grospel of St. John makes our Lord's ministry begin very soon after his baptism, 108 THE BIBLE AND MODEEN THOUGHT. at the time of a Passover, when the temple of Herod had been forty-six years in building ; implies a second Passover at or near the time when the cure took place at the pool of Bethesda, and a third about the time of the miracle of the five thousand ; and specifies visits to Jerusalem at the feasts of Tabernacles and Dedication in the last year. In its notice of the last Passover it seems at first sight to vary from the other Gospels, and to place the Jewish festival a day later, as referred to the week days ; and the solution of this difficulty has divided the judgment of critics and expositors from the earliest times. Now if we retain the direct statement of Josephus on the length of Herod's reign, confirmed by the coins of Herod Antipas, and the account in Dio of the exile of Archelaus ; and also accept his date for Herod's rebuilding the temple ; if we suppose that our Lord's birth was nearly a year before Herod's death, as St. Matthew seems to imply ; and that St. Luke, a writer of Antioch, dated the years of Tiberius by a provincial reckoning, from his association with Augustus in power over the provinces, two or three years before his sole reign, as attested by Suetonius ; and also that our Lord was just about thirty years old at his baptism, the due priestly age ; if we assume farther that his ministry lasted three full years, as implied in the parable of the fig-tree, and inferred with strong likeli- hood from the feasts of St. John ; and finally, if we expound the statements of St. John on the last Passover, as is both possible and reasonable, so as to agree with the joint evidence of the three first Gospels ; then all these notes of time, so widely dispersed, so indirect and various, will agree perfectly together, and with the proper age of the moon at the time of the Passover, and thus become cumulative evidence to the reality of the THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE BIBLE. 109 events, and the liistorical accuracy of the record. Even if" we were led, by a different view of the testimony of Josephus, to place the death of Herod part of a year earlier, or more than two years later, which is the limit of possible variation, the agreement will be only affected in a small degree, if we raise the Crucifixion to a.d. 29 or place it lower in a.d. 33 ; and in every alfernative the evidence of reality, from the concurrence of notes of time so widely scattered, will scarcely receive a sensible abatement. (2.) The Places named in the Gospels are about fifty in number, or half as many as in the Book of Acts, They include the province of Syria, the tetrarchies or districts of Judea, Samaria, Galilee, Iturea, Trachonitis, Abilene, the regions of Perea, of Tyre and Sidon, of Gennesaret, Dalmanutha, and Decapolis, and the land of Gadara. Besides these, we have the following towns or localities, partly with Old Testament, partly with Syriac, and partly with classic names — Bethlehem, Bethabara, Bethany, Bethphage, Bethsaida, Chorazin, Capernaum, Cana, Nazareth, Nain, Jericho, Jerusalem, Sychar in Samaria, and Ephraim near the border, Aenon, Salim, Emmaus, Olivet, Arimathea, Tiberias, and Ciesarea Philippi, Bethesda, Gabbatha, Golgotha, Gethsemane, the Pool of Siloam, and the Brook Kidron. All these local allusions have only had their truth and accuracy confirmed by the assiduous research of modern travellers. Bethany, Nain, the probable site of Caper- naum, Cana of Galilee, Sychar, and the well of Jacob, have all been brought to liglit once more ; or new points of coincidence have been discovered in the mention of places and scenes already known. (3.) Besides our Lord and his Apostles, about thirty other Persons are named in the course of the Gospel history. These include the two emperors, Augustus 110 THE BIBLE AND MODEKN THOUGHT. and Tiberius, Herod the Great, Arclielaus, Herod Antipas and Herodias, Pontius Pilate, Annas and Caiaplias, the Syrian governor Cyrenius or Quirinus, and the tetrarchs Phihp and Lysanias. In every one the statement is in agreement with the known facts of Roman, Syrian, and Jewish history ; while in some of them there is a special and minute coincidence. The birth of our Lord is placed under Herod the Great. But it Hes, from the other notes of time, so near to his death, as placed by Josephus, that when the latter is removed only half a year backward, some difficulty begins to arise, and a shortening of his reign by only three years would involve the Gospels in direct contra- diction to other facts of history. Again, the return of Joseph into Galilee has its reason assigned, that Arclie- laus was reigning in Judea. The reign of Herod himself was over both provinces. But Galilee was separated, and placed under Herod Antipas as tetrarch, at the accession of Arclielaus ; while the latter, we find from Josephus, gained a character for cruelty from the slaughter of the Jews at the very first Passover in his reign. The marriage of Herod with Herodias, after her divorce from Herod's brother, is also narrated at some length in Josephus ; and was the occasion of a great reverse in a battle with Aretas, whose daughter, his former wife, was dismissed for her sake. Josephus adds that this defeat was looked upon by the Jews as a Divine judgment for his murder of John the Baptist, which confirms incidentally another main fact in the three first Gospels. The government of Pilate, again, is said to have lasted ten j^ears, and his removal by Vitellius is placed at the Passover in the year before the death of Tiberius, or a.d. 36. That government will thus include the opening, as well as the whole course, of the joint ministries of our Lord and his forerunner. TllK HISTORICAL TKUTH OF THE BIBLE. Ill The high priesthood of Caiaphas yields another coinci- dence of a similar kind. (4.) The Eeconcilable Diversity of the Gospels, with substantial unity amidst their variation in details, is a ])OAverful evidence of their common truth. The resem- blance of the three first is so extensive, as to have led many critics to the hypothesis that they are varieties of one original document. The fourth has all the marks of a later and supplementary narrative. All of them agree in their mention of the Baptist as the forerunner of Christ, in their allusions to our Lord's baptism, in the account of the miracle of the five thousand, and in the closing scenes of the crucifixion and resurrection. The agreement of the three first is much more exten- sive, and includes about thirty leading incidents of the Saviour's ministry. Still each has its own distinct character, and there is considerable diversity in arrange- ment and in the minor details. There are two opposite ways, in which the testimony of witnesses to the same events may be rendered sus- ]iicious or proved false. Their agreement in details, or in pli rases, may be so complete as to seem the artificial result of collusion, or there may be extensive and irre- concilable contradiction. On the other hand, the com- bination which gives the strongest impression of reality and truthfulness is when substantial agreement in the main facts is joined with freedom and variety in the tone and method of the description, and with slight discrepancy, real or apparent, in secondary details. Now this is precisely the character of the four Gospels. The agreement, in a few passages, is verbally complete ; and in all the main outlines it is full and clear. In other cases, the difference is such as almost to give tlie impres- sion of bemg irreconcilable. The historical unity is so appjirent that scores of harmonists have endeavoured, 112 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. with considerable success, to combine them all into one continuous narrative. On the other hand the differences have occasioned many disputes, among the most skilful harmonists, on the exact order of several events, and the most probable method of reconciliation. Side by side with their labours, a deep conviction is felt by the most careful critics and students, that each Gospel has a plan, style, and purpose of its own, and that it justly claims the rank of a distinct and unborrowed testimony. These two oj^posite tendencies, in the criticism of the Gospels, began early, and have continued down to our own days. At the close of the last century, the docu- ment hypothesis was in much favour. From the amount of agreement, extending often to the very phrases, an attempt was made to resolve the three first or synoptic Gospels into a kind of hterary patchwork, formed in each case by combining three or four shorter documents, no longer extant, in a particular way. The principle, after being espoused by some eminent critics, was at length elaborated into such a complex scheme, to account for all the observed diversities, that its triumph proved its ruin. The documents required were so numerous, and the conjectural processes so intricate, as to disprove effectually tlie hypothesis out of which they arose. An opposite view is now in vogue, that the Gospels were derived from oral tradition, but in all other respects strictly independent of each other. This hypothesis has perhaps equal difficulties on the other side. The writer of the last, it is plain, must have known of and seen the earlier ones, unless we contradict equally its tra- ditional authorship and its internal features. Yet the diversity here is the greatest of all. There is nothing, then, in the smaller differences of the others, to preclude the idea that each knew the writing of his predecessors. Whether this were the case or otherwise, the actual TUP] IIISTOEICAL TRUTH OF THE BIBLE. 113 measure of divergence is the same, and effectually disjoroves the notion of any attempt at collusive and artificial agreement. No one of tliem is a mere echo of any other. St. Mark, who narrates only two or three incidents that are not given m St. Matthew, is the most original and copious of all the four in the minuter details. St. Luke, who seems through several cha2^ters (ch. iv. — ix.) to follow closely in the steps of his two predecessors, diverges from them ahnost entirely through- out nine chapters that follow ; and thus foims a midway transition to the Gospel of St. John, wliich consists almost wholly of new and distinct matter. But the simple fact that two extreme hypotheses have been widely maintained, of a common documentary origin, and of total and entire independence, is a convincing proof, on the large scale, that there is just that union of substantial agreement and partial diversity, which imparts to the concurring testimony of different witnesses the most decisive evidence of honesty and truth. Viewed in this light, the difficulties of harmonists on several points in the Gosjoels, whatever perplexity they may occasion as to the exact nature and extent of the inspiration of the evangelists, are a striking confirma- tion of their historical fidehty. The four witnesses, whom the Lord has provided for his church, that its faith in the great facts of his life and death may rest on a sure foundation, cannot, by any effort, be fused and melted down into one. They offer us stereoscopic views of their great Object. You cannot simply superpose them without producing a sense of partial confusion. The lines overlap, and seem here and there to interfere ; though the great resemblance is plain at once. But combine them rightly, as views taken from points of sight slightly different, but of the same object, and the combined picture has a depth, massiveness, and I 114 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. solidity, wliicli no single outline, however full and clear in itself, could ever attain. A comparison of the Gospels with the predictions of the Old Testament, and with the later history of the Church would supply still further evidence of their historical truth. The facts they record are so deeply and closely interwoven with the whole course of Provi- dence, both in earlier and later times, that no amount of violence can rend them away, without destroying the entire texture of the world's moral history. But it is needless to dwell on further proofs, where the marks of reality are so deeply impressed on every page. Igno- rance is here the usual source of scepticism ; and a simple perusal of the histories of the New Testament leaves an irresistible impression of their substantial truth and historical fidelity on every thoughtful and ingenuous mind. THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 115 CHAPTER YI. THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. The Old Testament history is naturally parted by the Exodns, the Building of the Temple, and the Captivity, into four distinct portions. In inquiring into the evidence of its reality, the proper order is to begin with the latest and nearest portion, and to ascend successively to those wliich are more remote. I. From the Captivity of Babylon, to the Birth of Christ. Three books of sacred history — Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, belong to this fourth period ; but their joint length 1)arely equals the average of the six boohs wliich come before them, four of which belong wholly to the third period. These three books, however, offer many features of great interest, in considering the evidence for the genuineness and veracity of the Bible histories. (1.) The first feature worthy of notice in these books is their chronological limitation. The fourth period reaches from the Captivity, or the Return, to the Birth of Clirist. Now the course of the Bible history is luibroken and continuous from the Creation to the Cap- tivity, and no blank of a single century is found through a range of not less than three thousand five hundred years. Even the fifty years from the Fall of the Tcnqile to the Return are bridged over by historicjil chajiters in Ezckiel and Daniel, and by the last verses of Jeremiah, I 2 116 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. and the book of Kings. The thread is resumed after the Return in these three books, and continues through a whole century, down to the 32nd year of Artaxerxes Longimanus. But here the canon closes abruptly. There is a space of more than four centuries, of which no Bible history is given. The broken thread is resumed, however, in the New Testament ; and then continues unbroken through two generations, till the arrival of St. Paul at Rome, only seven years before the total dissolution of the Jewish polity. The books of Macca- bees, it is true, belong to the interval ; but they range over only two generations at most, and also it is clear that they never formed a part of the Hebrew Scriptures, or Jewish canon. This break, then, of four centuries is quite unique. It is a solitary exception to the continuity of a history which ranges through more than four thousand years. Sacred prophecy, in Malachi, and sacred history, in Nehemiah, cease almost at the same moment ; and both reappear together, in tenfold effulgence, in the history of St. Matthew's Gospel, and the prophecy on the Mount of Olives. This sudden suspension, also, of the Bible history is attended by other circumstances which add to its signi- ficance. The interval is 430 years, or exactly the same which is noted so prominently as closing at the Exodus, that conspicuous type of the Christian redemption. It is also spanned by two prophecies of Daniel, in successive chapters, one of which serves to fix and define its length ; while the other predicts its political changes so clearly, as to have suggested the solution, from Porphyry down to the modern sceptics of England and Germany, that it must certainly have been composed after the events had occurred. Viewed as parts of a Divine plan, the relation of all these facts to each other is clear and THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 117 intelligible. Sacred history and prophecy ceased together, about four centuries before the coming of the Messiah, that there might be a clearer mark of the dying out of the old covenant, and that the dawn of the new, the predicted rising of the Sun of righteousness, might by contrast be rendered more deeply impressive. But still the faith of the Jewish church needed support and guidance during this long interval of delay. Therefore, while sacred history and actual prophetic messengers were withdrawn, the light of prophecy was given with pecuhar clearness. These visions of Daniel well supphed the place of direct history. The prophecy of the Seventy Weeks, beginning from one of the decrees in Ezra and Nehemiah, defined a space of sixty-nine weeks, or 483 years, to the appearance of " Messiah the Prinoe" in his pubhc ministry ; and the later prophecy of the " Scripture of truth " described the main events of Persian, Syrian, and Egyptian history, in connection with the Jews, through nearly four of the five centuries which make up the whole period from the Eeturn to the Nativity. The concurrence of this double clearness of prophetic hght with the suspense of Bible history, both of them facts unique and without a parallel, marks clearly the presence of a Divine plan. On the sceptical hypothesis with regard to Daniel, both facts are alike inexplicable. Why should Jewish writers at this moment have sud- denly ceased to compose their own annals, and to add them, as fresh books equally sacred, to the early histories ? Or why should some unknown Jew, in the days of Antiochus, instead of openly assuming the upright and honourable character of a simple annaHst, usurp the pro- phet's mantle, in order to write a mere syllabus of Persian and Syrian reigns already past ; and then impose it on his countrymen, under the name of Daniel, for a true predic- tion, with the audacious title, when applied to a shameless 118 THE BIBLE AND MODEEN THOUGHT. forgery, of " the Scripture of truth ?" Nothing can be more meagre and threadbare than Dan. xi. 2 — 30, when taken for history written after the event. But when viewed as genuine prediction, it stands alone, even in the Bible, in the clear testimony it yields to the Divine foreknowledge, and in its fulness of prophetic light, vouchsafed at the exact moment when prophetic inspira- tion and sacred history were withdrawn together. (2.) A second feature of these three books is the entire absence of the supernatural. No trace of an alleged miracle occurs in any one of them. The old covenant, which the earHer books of Exodus and Num- bers usher in with signal wonders, seems here to be indeed waxing old, and " ready to vanish away." This character belongs equally to the three books, though in other respects there is a singular and total contrast. Ezra and Nehemiah are loaded with details that seem almost trivial, and their outline appears fragmentary and unfinished. The Book of Esther, on the contrary, has such a striking dramatic unity, that the suspicion might easily arise, in some minds, of its being a purely artificial composition. But the entire absence of direct miracle is a feature common to it with both the others, while the contrast in other respects is complete. This negative character, besides the dee^Der truth it conveys with regard to the decay of the Jewish dis- pensation, has plainly an important bearing on the reality and truth of the whole Bible narrative. The inspired annals close abruptly, but there is no abrupt- ness in the transition from sacred to common history. We have an easy stepping-stone, by which the mind may rise from the level of ordinary events, and find itself unawares in the outer court of the temple of God. There is no shadow of a plea, in these books, for doubt- ing their entire truthfulness, because of the presence THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 119 of a miraculous element in the narrative. Yet, when once received in simplicity, they lead us by the hand, upward and onward, by the decree of Cyrus which fulfilled the jDrophecy of Jeremiah ; by the mention of the Urim and Thummim, as a former means of sujoernatural guidance since withdrawn ; by the Feast of Tabernacles, referring back to the history in the wilderness; and above all, by the prayer and song of the Levites, — to all the earlier miracles of the old cove- nant. " Thou didst divide the sea before them, so that they went through the midst of the sea on dry land ; and their jDersecutors thou threwest into the deep, as a stone into the mighty waters. Moreover, thou leddest them in the day by a cloudy pillar, and in the night by a pillar of fire, to give them light in the way they should go. Thou camest down also upon Mount Sinai, and spakest with them from heaven, and gavest them right judgments and pure laws, good statutes and com- mandments ; and gavest them bread from heaven for their hunger, and broughtest forth water for them out of the rock for their thirst." (3.) Chronological distinctness is a third character very conspicuous in two of these books, by which the main lino of the history is continued and brought to its close. They occupy just a century under the Persian kings, the dates are expressly given, and tlie reigns can be identified without difficulty, in full agreement with the canon of Ptolemy and other autho- rities. The reign of Cyrus dates in the canon from the capture of Babylon, B.C. 538, and no place is there left for Darius the Mede. But the book of Daniel, which places his reign after the capture, almost implies its short duration by the mention of his age ; and by a further allusion, xi. 1, implies that this short reign was secured by a special Divine interference, against a 120 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. strong current of Persian supremacy wliich had now set in. Thus a comparison of texts restricts it to two years. The decree of Cyrus is thus referred to B.C. 536, his first year in Scripture, but his third in the canon. The setting up of the altar is referred to the seventh month of the same year, and the foundation of the tem23le to the second month, or the early spring of the year following. We have, next, a brief mention of two reigns before Darius, during which the building was delayed by vexatious opposition. The beginning of this interval answers to the time of Daniel's fasting and humihation, when he received his last and fullest pro- phecy of the future history of his people. History supplies just two reigns before Darius Hystaspes ; Cambyses, who from his cruelty and passion, and Smerdis, who from his character as a Magian impostor, adverse to Cyrus and his race, would be likely to reverse the poHcy marked by the decree of restoration. The work is then resumed in the second year of Darius, or B.C. 520, and the temple is finished in Adar of the sixth year, that is, February or March, B.C. 515 ; while in the fourth of Darius, agreeably with Zech. vii. 1 — 5, exactly seventy years were complete from the destruction of the former temple. The reign of Xerxes is here passed over, though clearly described in Daniel's prophecy ; and the history resumes with the mission of Ezra in the seventh of Artaxerxes Longimanus, or April B.C. 458 ; while his arrival at Jerusalem is referred to the first day of the fifth month, or August in the same year. The history closes with the separation of the strange wives, complete by the first day of the next year, March or April B.C. 457. An interval of " seven weeks and threescore and two weeks," or 483 years, seems to lead exactly to the first month of the Baptist's ministry, and to the baptism of oin- Lord, followed by his first Pass- THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 121 over; after wliicli lie began his preaching with the message — " The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of heaven isat hand." The book of Nehemiah comes a little later under the same reign. It begins with the month Chisleu, of the twentieth of Artaxerxes, and continues with the month Nisan, or the first Jewish month, in the same twentieth year. This agrees with the indirect evidence of classic history, wliicli refers both the true and nominal acces- sion of Artaxerxes to December, and not to the early months of the Julian year, in which case these two notices would have contradicted each other. The history closes in the 32nd year, or soon after (Neh. xiii. 22), or B.C. 433 ; exactly 430 years before the Exodus of our Lord himself from Egypt after Herod's death. Thus we have plainly, in these two last books of Bible history, a high degree of clearness and consistency in their notes of time. (4.) Another feature of these books is the multitude and variety of personal and local details. The sacred Instory gives here, at first sight, a strong impression of being tediously and superfluously minute. We have, first, an enumeration of the vessels restored from Ba- bylon : " thirty chargers of gold, a thousand chargers of silver, nine-and-twenty knives, thirty basins of gold, silver basins of a second sort four hundred and ten, and other vessels a thousand ; all the vessels of gold and silver five thousand four hundred." Next follows a list of the cajDtives who returned with Zerubbabel, in thirty- three companies of the people, each distinctly named and numbered ; four companies of priests, and one of Levites, one of singers, and one of the porters, tliirty- five companies of Nethinims, and eleven of Solomon's servants, of wliich only the total is given — three hundred and ninety-two. We have then two Persian decrees. 122 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. one of Smerdis, and another of Darius Hystaspes, given at length. A third decree of Artaxerxes follows. The chiefs of the fathers are then named, and j)articulars are given of Ezra's journey. The minuteness of the account is like a pre-Raphaelite drawing. " Then we departed from the river of Ahava on the twelfth day of the first month, to go unto Jerusalem ; and the hand of our God was upon us, and he dehvered us from the enemy, and such as lay in wait by the way. And we came to Jerusalem, and abode there three days. Now on the fourth day was the silver and the gold of the vessels weighed in the house of our Grod by the hand of Mere- moth son of Uriah the priest ; and with him was Eleazar the son of Phinehas, and with them Jozabad son of Jeshua, and Noadiah son of Binnui, Levites ; by number and by weight of every one : and all the weight was written at that time. Also the children of those that had been carried away, which were come out of the captivity, offered burnt - offerings unto the God of Israel ; twelve bullocks for all Israel, ninety and six rams, seventy and seven lambs, and twelve he-goats for a sin-offering; all a burnt-offering unto the Lord." The book closes with a list of those who put away their strange wives, in which a hundred and nine names are separately given. About double this number occur in the book of Nehemiah, which gives coj^ious and minute details of the various parties, who joined in rel)uilding the walls of Jerusalem. The fibres are thus multiplied at the close, by which the sacred canon strikes root downward into Jewish history. Simplicity, gran- deur, dramatic unity seem all to be in some measure sacrificed, to secure the In'ghest possible assurance of thorough reahty and historical truth. (5.) The Book of Esther differs widely from these THE ULSTORICAL TRUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 123 two other works. History meets us liere in its most ideal, as in the others in its most real, fonn. The poetry of the opening description, the doomed race of Haman the Amalekite, the beauty of Esther, the law of the golden sceptre, the sleepless night of the king, wliich forms the crisis of the drama, and the greatness of Mordecai at the close, all conspire to throw around it the air of a dramatic composition. The entire absence of the name of God from first^^to last is another remark- able feature, which only deepens the moral significance of the whole. Even the reign to which it belongs is not quite clear. It must plainly be later than Cyrus, since Persia and Media, not Babylon, are in power, and Persia takes the precedence ; but opinions are still divided whether Xerxes or Artaxerxes is the true Ahasuerus. An internal coincidence, however, of a delicate and unol3trusive kind, makes it seem to me very probable tliat Josephus is right in referring the narrative to the latter of these two kings. But if any should infer, from the dramatic features of this book, that it is rather a poetical fiction than a real history, there is one plain and decisive argument, besides many others, which proves its unquestionable truth. The Feast of Purim, on the fourteenth and fifteenth of Adar, is affinned at the close to have been appointed, by Esther and Mordecai, for a yearly me- morial of this great deliverance. This festival was observed in the days of Josephus, and has been ever since, throughout the long dispersion of the Jewish people. It still keeps its place in their calendar, along with the Passover, Pentecost, the Feast of Tabernacles, and the Feast of Dedication. No testimony could be more decisive and complete to the reality and greatness of this national deliverance. The sacred history, then, in this closing portion, the 124 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. fourth and latest period of the Old Testament, diverges on one side into the greatest minuteness of detail, and on the other, into the highest degree of dramatic unity and power ; but in both alike exhibits the clearest and fullest evidence of historical reality and truth. The overruling hand of Providence is placed in striking relief, but no trace of miraculous intervention is found in it ; as if these books were designed to form a step- ping-stone of transition from common history to the miraculous story of the previous books, and every hindrance were purposely removed, which might pre- vent sceptical minds from recognising at once the truth of the sacred history. II. From Solomon to the Captivity. This third period occupies a space of about four hundred and thirty years from the accession of Solomon to the destruction of the Temple, or four hundred and eighty years to the fall of Babylon. It occupies the two books of Kings, and also the second of Chronicles, and includes the period of all the prophets, except Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. The greater part of it consists of the record of the divided kingdom, from the death of Solomon to the fall of Samaria. The proofs of its historical reality may be ranked under these heads — a clear and distinct chronology ; relations with heathen history ; the harmony of the accounts in Kings and Chronicles ; the multiplied allusions in the writings of the proj)hets ; and the internal harmonies and marks of truth in the narrative alone. (1.) The chronology of this period, compared with other histories, is very full and complete. The notes of time are numerous, and occupy about forty verses in Chronicles, and eighty in Kings. AVith one or two very slight exceptions, where an error has probably entered in the numbers (such as the thirty-seventh in- THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 125 stead of the thirty-ninth year of Joash, 2 Kings xiii. 10), they are all consistent with each other. The interval fixes itself accurately by the data which the text supplies, so that the latitude of reasonable doubt amounts only to about three years. Baron Bunsen, it is true, in his work on Egypt, devotes twenty pages to the subject, and professes to have found twenty inconsistencies and errors in the notes of time in the second of Kings. These, however, are due entirely to his own strange incapacity to discern a simple and uniform law, which guides the notation of the syn- chronisms. When this is once perceived, and it is very simple, the alleged confusion disappears, and the intervals can be traced, from first to last, with the greatest ease. Even Usher and CHnton seem to have adopted a less natural view, which renders the process of comparison more subtle and laborious, though the final result is hardly aftected at all by the difference in the two modes of computation. Those cross references, which Baron Bunsen seems to regard as full of error, and a source of hopeless perplexity, are in reality a series of strict and severe tests of the consistency of the whole narrative. The most erratic and illogical minds are thus almost compelled, in spite of their own instincts, to keep close to the true chronology. His own labours are a striking example. After contracting the space, in his first edition, to ten years less than the true period, he returns in the second to the received chronology, with a slight variety, which may probably give the true year of Solo- mon's accession ; though he has only reached this result by the help of conjectural emendations, which rest on no external evidence, and which falsify a large number of the plainest and most consistent notes of time. In fact, a chronology which depends on the reckoning of a double series of reigns, hke those of Israel and Judah, 126 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. of kings sometimes at war, sometimes in alliance, some- times joined in actual affinity, is itself a condensed history, and forms by its own consistency a most power- ful evidence for its own historical truth. (2.) The various references to heathen history in this period are another sign of reality, which alone is enough to prove the history real. Mention is made in its course of Hiram and Eth-baal, or Ithobalus, kings of Tyre ; of Shishak, Zerah, So, Tirhakah, Necho, and Hophra, kings of Egypt or Ethiopia ; of Pul, Tiglath Pileser, Shalmaneser, Sargon, Sennacherib, Esarhaddon, kings of Nineveh ; and of Merodach Baladan, Nebu- chadnezzar, Evil Merodach, and Belshazzar, kings of Babylon. These allusions are spread over the whole period. Under the reign of Solomon mention is made of Hii'am of Tyre, and Shishak of Egypt ; and under his son Rehoboam, of Shishak alone. Under Asa, the invasion of Zerah occurs and is repelled. Jezebel, the wife of Ahab and contemporary of Jehoshaphat, is the daughter of Eth-baal, king of Tyre. Pul, the king of Assyria, exacts tribute from Menahem in the reign of Uzziah. Under Jotham and Ahaz, Tiglath Pileser invades Israel, and a second stage of captivity begins. Hoshea makes a compact with So, or Sevechus, king of Egypt, and *is carried away captive by Shalmaneser. Sennacherib invades Judea under Hezekiah, and is checked in his career of conquest by tidings of the approach of Tirhakah, king of Ethiopia. He is slain after his return to Nineveh, and Esarhaddon reigns in his stead ; to whom, under the name of Asnapper, the transfer of the Apharsites and other settlers, the fathers of the Samaritans, is ascribed in the book of Ezra. (Ezra iv. 2, 9, 10). Merodach Baladan, king of Babylon, sends messengers to Hezekiah, after the repulse of Sennaclierib. Pharaoh Necho slays Josiah in the battle at Megiddo, THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 127 and conquers Jerusalem. Nebuchadnezzar's reign extends through those of Jehoiakim, Jeconiah, and Zedekiah, and extends to the thirty-seventh year of Jeconiah's captivity. Evil Merodach then succeeds to tlie throne, and Belshazzar is in power at the time when the kingdom is numbered and finished, and the reign of the Medes and Persians begins. It is thus plain that the links of connection with heathen monarchs and dynasties belong to the whole period, from its com- mencement to its close. Now in all these allusions to the history of four or five distinct nations — Tyre, Assyria, Babylon, Egypt, and Etliiopia — and to eighteen or twenty kings, all mentioned by name, the palpable agreements are many, while not one contradiction or error has ever been shewn to exist. If there be any defect in this branch of the evidence, it is due to the imcertainties and variations of the heathen dynasties or annahsts, which require us, in some cases, instead of treating them as independent witnesses, to adjust their uncertainties by the clearer hght and stricter chronology of the sacred writings. Thus the two fists of Egyptian dynasties, from Shishak to Amasis, who answer to Solomon and Zerubbabel, differ from each other as given by Afri- canus and Eusebius, above a whole century, and each falls nearly a century short of the true interval. In the proposed restoration of Baron Bunsen, six reigns out of twenty-two, and three dynasties out of five, have their length altered by mere conjecture, and half a century is added to the longer reckoning, so as to gain the desired result of making the reign of Shishak correspond with the scriptural date of Solomon's death. The recent discoveries in the remains of Assyria and Babylon have added greatly to the strength of this external evidence. Monuments disinterred, after being 128 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. buried for ages, and deciphered slowly and laboriously out of languages, of wliicli the very letters were pre- viously unknown, have risen up to bear witness to the truth and accuracy of the inspired narrative. Thus the exact amount of the tribute of gold, thirty talents, imj^osed by Sennacherib on the kingdom of Judah, has been deciphered from an Assyrian obelisk in the British Museum, in full agreement with the passage in the Book of Kings. The name of Belshazzar has, in like manner, been discovered in the monuments of Babylon, and a minute and delicate coincidence has been brought to light. It appears from the decipherment that he was a joint ruler with his own father, who seems to be the Labynetus, or Nabonadius, who fled to Borsij^pa ; and this explains the contrast, that Josej^h was made second ruler in Egypt, but Daniel was promised to be " the third ruler in Babylon." (3.) The double account, in Kings and Chronicles, supplies strong additional evidence of the historical fidelity of the whole narrative. The writer of Chronicles, it is true, must have been familiar with the books of Kjngs ; and many passages in both are verbally the same. We cannot, therefore, ascribe to them the cha- racter of two testimonies wholly independent. The later account, however, differs in several important features from the first. It is confined almost entirely to the history of Judah, and overlooks the contemjDorary events in the kingdom of Israel. A prediction of Elijah is recorded ; but his miracles, and those of Elisha, which form one of the main features in the earlier history, are entirely unnoticed. No miraculous inci- dents occur, except the sudden infliction of leprosy on Uzziah, and the destruction of Sennacherib's army, and possibly the mutual destruction of the enemies of Jehoshaphat may be referred to the same class. In THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF.THE OLD TESTAMENT. 129 general, we have a signal series of providential mercies and judgments in connection with proj)hetic messages ; l)ut signs and wonders, in the strict sense of the words, do not appear. When we compare the two histories in detail, we find that the later one gives many incidents, of which there is no mention in the former, but which cohere intimately with the common portion of the narrative. Some of these notices are very minute, others refer to events of high importance. Of the former class are the notices that " Solomon went to Hamathzobah, and prevailed against it," and that, " he went to Eziongeber and to Eloth, at the sea side of the land of Edom." The book of Kings mentions the preparation of the navy, but not the visit itself of the king. Again, that Rehoboam built " cities of defence in Judah, Bethlehem, and Etam, and Tekoa, and Bethzur, and Shoco, and Adullam, and Gath, and Mareshah, and Ziph, and Adoraim, and Lachish, and Azekah, and Zorah, and Aijalon, and Hebron, fenced cities in Judah and in Benjamin." That one of these, Lachish, was a fenced city in the time of Hezekiah is mentioned both in Kings and Chronicles, and is recently confirmed by the Assyrian remains. Of the same character is the mention of the three chief wives of Rehoboam, and of seven of his sons ; the mention of Adnali, Johahanan, Eliada, and Jehozabad, the chief captains of Jehoshaphat ; the help given to Uzziali " against the Philistines, the Arabians that dwelt in Gurbaal, and the Mehunims," and the towers he built in Jerusalem " at the inner gate, and at the valley gate, and at the turning of the wall." Of the other class are the battle between Abijah and Jeroboam, with the immense loss of the Israelites ; the invasion and defeat of Zerah the Ethiopian ; the covenant in the fifteenth year of Asa ; the publication of the law K 130 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. under Jehosliapliat, and his victory over the confederates near Engedi ; the sin and judgment of Jehoram ; the repairs under Joash ; the murder of the prophet Zecha- riah ; the prosperity of Uzziah, and his leprosy ; the restoration, under Ahaz, of the captives of Judah ; the reformation and passover of Hezekiah ; and the cap- tivity and repentance of Manasseh. On the other hand, the histories of EHjah and EHsha, and of the captivity of the ten tribes, and even most of the names of the kings of Israel, are passed by in silence. We have thus plainly two distinct testimonies to the portions common to both histories, and a direct confirmation, by this means, of their historical truth. (4.) Thirteen prophetic books belong to this period, and abound throughout with direct or indirect allusions to the history. In Isaiah we have mention of Uzziah, Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, and allusions to all the main events of the three later reigns. In Jeremiah there is an equal fulness of reference to the reigns of Josiah, Jehoiakim, Jeconiah, and Zedekiah. Ezekiel dates all his prophecies by the years of Jeconiah's captivity, and refers to the chief events of Nebuchad- nezzar's reign. The book of Daniel ranges throughout the seventy years, from the beginning of the captivity to the third year of Cyrus. In Hosea there is mention of Joash, king of Israel ; in Amos of Jeroboam, son of Joash, and of an earthquake under his reign, also men- tioned by Zechariah. Obadiah alludes to the events at the beginning of the captivity, Micah to the reigns of Jotham, Ahaz, and Hezekiah, Nahum to the invasion of Sennacherib, Habakkuk to the near approach of the Chaldean armies, and Zephaniah to the reign of Josiah, and the judgments then close at hand. These books contain also nearly thirty chapters of direct history, besides more than a hundi^ed references and allusions to THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 131 the events in Chronicles and Kings. The whole texture, indeed, of these j^roj^jhecies is manifestly foimded ujDon the truth of the narrative, wliich the historical books of the Bible contain. When the external evidence is so abundant and various, it is needless to dwell on the internal har- monies, indicative of truth, which the history itself supplies. The reality of these Jewish annals, from Solomon downward, is so clear, the links of connection with the prophecies and with heathen dynasties are so multipHed and indissoluble, and the chronology itself so complete, that scepticism must degenerate into insanity, before it can venture to deny their substantial truth. In one respect, however, this third period, from Solomon to the Captivity, is plainly contrasted with the period that follows. It includes, interwoven throughout the narrative, both miracles and miraculous predictions. Such are the prophecy of Ahijah the Shilomite, the rending of the altar at Bethel, the withering of Jeroboam's hand and its restoration, the prediction of Josiali by name three centuries before his birth, the death of the prophet from Judah, the famine under Elijah, the widow's cruse and the raising to life of her son, the lire from heaven at Carmel, and the abundant rain after Elijah's prayer, the vision at Horeb, the destruction of the two captains and their fifties, the rapture of Elijah, tlie parting of Jordan, tlie healing of the waters, the raising of the Shunamite's child, the healing of the \)ottnge and multiplying of the loaves by Elisha, the blindness inflicted on the Syrians, the dehverance of Samaria, the man raised after Elisha's death, the cure of Naaman and tlie leprosy of Grchazi, the leprosy of Uzziah, the reversal of the shadow on the dial of Aliaz, and the sudden destruction of the Assyrian army. The K 2 132 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. historical footing is just as firm as in tlie later period ; but we are plainly within the borders of a sacred history, where the special presence of the God of Israel is revealed " in signs and wonders according to his own will." III. From the Conquest to Solomon. This period, from the entrance of Canaan under Joshua to the accession of Solomon and the building of the temple, answers to the books of Joshua, Judges, the first and second of Samuel, and the first of Chronicles. Two of these, however, belong to the last forty years, or the reign of David alone. For the rest of the period, or about four centuries (if we accept the date in 1 Kings vi. 1), we have only one record of the events, in Joshua and the Book of Judges, and the first of Samuel. We have here, also, no collateral prophecies, though many of the Psalms refer to the events of David's reign, and the Book of Euth is a short episode of the time of the Judges. There are no references either to Assyrian, Babylonian, or Egyptian reigns. The truth of the Bible history, in this period, rests therefore almost entirely on its internal consistency, and on the constant reception of these books, as sacred and authoritative records of their own history, by the whole Jewish nation from-the earliest times. Now, first of all, it is plain that these books cohere most intimately with those which follow, both in their structure, style, and scale of composition, and in their external evidence. They fonn one continuous series of national Jewish history through a space of nine hun- dred years. They have been received by the Jews, without distinction, as the sacred annals of their nation from the death of their lawgiver till open prophecy was withdi^awn. Even the scale on which the two portions are constructed is the same. The periods of time are THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 133 nearly equal, from Joshua to David's accession, and from that of Solomon to the fall of the temple ; and the col- lective length of Joshua, Judges, Ruth, and the first of Samuel, and, again, of the second of Chronicles and first and second of Kings is also nearly the same. The only difference is tliat, in the earlier period, we have fuller details of its beginning and its close, and the middle is passed over more rapidly. But the general harmony, both in the scale and the style of the history, leaves instinctively the impression that they are parts of one consistent whole. In the next place, these books are national annals of such a nature, that their national reception, as true and genuine, is inconceivable on the hypothesis of their spurious origin. The Book of Joshua contains a record of the allotments of the twelve tribes and their separate possessions, on which the whole fabric of Jewish law and family inheritance would plainly depend. Along with this we have the singular economy, by which the tribe of Levi were dispersed among the others, and separate cities with their suburbs allotted for their exclusive possession. The six cities of refuge were a still more pecuhar institution. It is incredible that the origin of such laws, so definite and peculiar, should have been forgotten within a few generations, or that there should have been no public and national record to confirm and sustain their authority. The first of Samuel, again, contains the origin of the kingly fonn of government ; and is linked throughout with three names so conspicuous and so di'amatic in their interest, Samuel, Saul, and David, as to exclude the possibility of later fictions being accepted for real history. The Book of Judges is the only one to which these proofs of authority do not apply; but here we have 134 THE BIBLE AND MODEEN THOUGHT. another quite distinct and equally strong. For this book, from first to last, is one record of national sin, humihation, and punishment. It is the very last work by which an unj)rincipled forger could seek to gain public favour, and a place among the historians of his own people. From first to last it is like an expansion of the later song of Moses, a witness against the people on behalf of God, a humbling record of repeated and persevering apostasy. No external pledge of its veracity could be more decisive than this moral feature which runs through the whole narrative. Thirdly, these books abound, even more than those which follow them, with geographical details. This results at once from the nature of the Book of Joshua, as a national record of the inheritance of all the tribes of Israel. Nearly three hundred names of places occur in it, and a large proportion of them are linked with events locally defined in the subsequent history. Since, however, the Books of Joshua and Judges have been assailed, like the Pentateuch, by a school of negative criticism, and a late origin and fragmentary character assigned to them, it may be useful to j)oint out briefly, with regard to each of them, the strong internal proofs of their historical reality. Now the Book of Joshua bears on its face a character of unity and completeness. It describes, in succession, the passage of Jordan, and four main steps by which the land was conquered ; the destruction of Jericho and of Ai, and the defeat of two successive confederacies in the south and the north. Then follows a detailed list or catalogue of twenty-nine kings who were subdued. After the conquest we have an account of the settlement of the tribes. There is, first, a retrospective statement of the territory assigned by Moses himself to two tribes and a half on the east of Jordan. There is then a de- THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 135 scription of the boundaries and possessions of the two leading" tribes of Judah and Ephraim, including the other half tribe of Manasseh. We have next a state- ment of the districts allotted to the remaining seven tribes, Benjamin, Simeon, Zebulun, Issachar, Asher, Naphtali, and Dan. After this are mentioned, in order, the appointment of the cities of refuge and the selection of the forty-eight cities for the Levites out of all the tribes. There is, next, the dismissal of the two tribes and a half to their own possessions on the east, and the controversy which it occasioned, from their erection of an altar of witness near the fords of Jordan. Last of all, there are the two successive interviews of Joshua with the people before his death ; the first, apparently, at Sliiloh, where the tabernacle was set up ; and the other at Shechem, sacred by the memory of their forefather, where the covenant was solemnly renewed. The his- tory closes with three events, all marking the termina- tion of a distinct era — the death of Joshua, the burial in Shechem of the bones of Joseph, which had been brought out of Egypt, and the death of Eleazar the high-priest. Again, the composition seems fixed by internal marks to the generation after Joshua's death, and agrees well with the sup^^osition that Phinehas, the son of Eleazar, was its author. The words, " until we were passed over," suit best with the view that the writer actually took part in the first entrance into the land. So again the statement about Rahab, " She dwelleth in Israel unto this day," naturally implies that it was written during her lifetime. Her age was probably less than fifty at Joshua's death, and she might easily survive him twenty 'or thirty years. On the other hand, the conquest of Leshem by the Danites took place after the death of Joshua, as we learn from 136 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. the fuller account in Judges. It was, however, during the lifetime of Phinehas, since a still later event, the conflict with the Benjamites, is said to have happened during his high-priesthood. The last event mentioned in the Book of Joshua is the death of Eleazar, whom Phinehas succeeded in that ofiGce. The separate statements, again, are confirmed indi- rectly in every part of the book by later allusions of the most incidental kind. The first is the charge to the Reubenites and Gadites to share the campaign with their brethren (i. 12 — 18), which is referred to again, iv. 12, 13, and corresponds with the mention of their dismissal to their own possessions at the close of the work. The mention of the " stone of Bohan the son of Reuben," in the border line of Judah and Benjamin, seems probably an indirect allusion to the same event. The most natural explanation would be, that it was a stone or pillar, set up by one of the leading Reubenites to mark his participation in the campaign of Israel, since it was placed not far from Gilgal and the banks of the Jordan. The history of Rahab and the spies is confirmed by the mention of her, vi. 25, as still alive when the book was written, and by the statement in St. Matthew, that she was married to Salmon, and the mother of Boaz. The place where the miracle was wrought, in staying the waters of the Jordan, is said to be near the city of Adam, beside Zaretan ; and the latter is mentioned incidentally in the Book of Kings, with reference to the brazen vessels of Solomon's temple. " In the plain of Jordan did the king cast them, in the clay ground between Succoth and Zarthan." The place, Gilgal, where the stones were set up, and the Israelites encamped after the j)assage, besides other passages where it is named, is referred to by Micah in a proj^hetic appeal to Israel after seven hundred years. " 0 my THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 137 people, remember what Balak king of Moab con8Tilted, and what Balaam the son of Beor answered him from Shittim unto Grilgal ; that ye may know the righteous- ness of the Lord" (Mic. vi. 5). Tlie curse of Joshua upon Jericho is mentioned, when it was fulfilled after six hundred years, but only in one passing sentence in the Book of Kings. " In his days (Ahab) did Hiel the Bethelite build Jericho : he laid the foundation thereof in Abiram his first-born, and set up the gates thereof in his youngest son Segub, according to the word of the Lord which he spake by Joshua the son of Nun." The sin of Achan is alluded to in the genealogy in Chronicles. " The sons of Canni, Achan the troubler of Israel, who transgressed in the thing accursed." The valley of Achor is also mentioned again, by Hosea, after seven hundred years, and in the most incidental way. " I will give her her vineyards from thence, and the valley of Achor for a door of hope ; and she shall sing there as in the days of her youth, when she came up out of the land of Egypt." The mention of the blessings on Moimt Gerizim, (viii. 33,) agrees with the high venera- tion shown to it by the Samaritans in later times, and its selection for the site of a temple to rival the temple at Jerusalem. The narrative respecting the Gibeonites is confirmed by the later mention of their destruction by Saul " in his zeal for the children of Israel and Judah," and the retributive judgment on the people. " There was a famine in the days of David tln-ee years, year after year, and David inquired of the Lord. And the Lord answered, It is for Saul and for his bloody house because he slew the Gibeonites." Gibeon is also named as the place where the tabernacle was pitched in the times of David and Solomon, before the build- ing of the temple, where Solomon received a vision, 1 Clnon. xvi. 39; 2 Chron. i. 3, G, 13. Ik'croth is 138 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUaHT. named among tlie five cities of the Gribeonites, included in the lot of Benjamin. The mm"derers of Ishbosheth were sons of Rimmon a Beerothite, and we have this incidental notice : " For Beeroth also was reckoned to Benjamin, and the Beerothites fled to Grittaim, and were sojourners there unto this day." No further light is thrown on this incident, so simply recorded as to speak its own reality. Once in Nehemiah, and there only, we find mention of their new residence among the towns of Benjamin after the captivity. " The children of Benjamin dwelt at Michmash and Aija and Bethel, and their villages ; at Anathoth, Nob, Ananiah, Hazor, Ramah, Gittaim, Hadad, Zeboim." Of the five confederate kings, two of the towns, Jerusalem and Hebron, continue to this day ; and a third, Lachish, is prominent in the history to the time of Sennacherib, and his siege of it seems depicted in the sculjDtures recently found. Bethhoron, the upper and the nether, are also prominent places in the later history, and their site is still identified by travellers. Azekah is named again in the war with the Philistines, who j)itched *' between Shochoh and Azekah " before David's victory. Libnah, one of the cities destroyed by Joshua, occurs in two incidental notices in Kings. First, in the reign of Jehoram. " Yet Edom revolted from under the hand of Judah unto this day. Then Libnah revolted at the same time." It was a city of the priests, Josh. xxi. 13, and its revolt might be occasioned by Jehoram' s open apostasy, through his affinity with Ahab. One wife, also, of Josiah, was " a daughter of Jeremiah of Libnah." (2 Kings xxiii. 31.) The fist of the thirty- one kings in Joshua, chap. xii. 9 — 24, by the admission of negative critics themselves, " is either a contem- poraneous, or what is equivalent to a contemporaneous authority." THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 139 Tlie confimiations of the local notices that follow, in the later history, are too numerous to be specified. The following are a few examples : — " The children of Israel expelled not the Greshurites nor the Maacha- tliites" (xiii. 13) ; and Absalom "fled for refuge to Talmai, son of Ammihud, king of Greshur." Hebron and its environs were given to Caleb, and Maon and Carmel are named next to it in the list of the cities of Judah ; and Nabal was " of the house of Caleb," and is called " a man in Maon, whose possessions were in Cannel." Ziklag is named amongst " the uttermost cities of Judah, towards the coast of Edom southwards ;" and the history of David's sojourn there answers per- fectly to the description. Shochoh and Azekah are joined together in the list, (xv. 35,) and also in the account of the Philistine army, 1 Sam. xvii. 1. Achzib is found in the list, (xv. 44,) and no mention of it occurs till after seven centuries, in Micah i. 14, " The house of Achzib shall be a he to the kings of Israel." The same is true of Mareshah ; while Adullam, a third j^lace in the list and in the prophecy, occurs rej^eatedly in David's history, and its caves are known and explored to this day. Giloh is known only by one later allusion, but in connection with a striking and public event. " And Absalom sent for Ahithophel the Gilonite, David's counsellor, from his city, even from Giloh, while he offered sacrifices." Gezer is connected with two notices, at long intervals, but mutually consistent. " Neitlicr did Ephraim drive out the Canaanites that dwelt in Gezer, but tlie Canaanites dwelt in Gezer among them." (Judges i. 29.) " And this is the reason of the levy which king Solomon raised — to build the house of the Lord, and his own house, and Millo, and the walls of Jerusalem and Hezer and Megiddo and Gezer. For Pharaoh king of Egypt had gone up and 140 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. taken Gezer, and burnt it with fire, and slew the Canaanitcs that dwelt therein, and given it for a present to his daughter, Solomon's wife." The cities and villages of the tribe of Simeon are reported, in Chronicles, with a very slight change in two or three names ; but two facts are added, of an extension in the days of Hezekiah, when some of them " went to the entrance of Gredor, the east side of the valley, to seek pasture for their flocks," and others " went to Mount Seir, and smote the rest of the Amalekites that escaped, and dwelt there unto this day." Bethlehem, again, is mentioned in the tribe of Zebulun : and besides the contrast implied in the two names Bethlehem Ephratah or Bethlehem Judah, applied to David's birth23lace, we are told that " Ibzan a Bethlehemite, judged Israel, and was buried at Bethlehem ;" and his place between Jeplithah the Gileadite and Elon the Zebulonite shows that a northern Bethlehem is intended, while the other is called, for distinction, a few chapters later, Bethlehem Judah. The marks of unity in the Book of Judges are equally plain. It begins with a review of the state of the Israelites at the time of the conquest, and after Joshua's death, which forms the historical basis of the later narrative. It then gives a moral summary of the whole period, which it describes as one series of national apostasies, followed by merciful deliverance. We have then a brief, but connected history of the whole period, from the death of Joshua to that of Samson, after whom the double series of prophets and kings began, with Samuel, Saul, and David. The book then reverts to the earHer part of the whole period, and describes the first public entrance of idolatry, in the tribe of Dan, and the narrow escape of the tribe of Benjamin from extinc» tion, through unnatural vice and crime. This event is THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 141 alluded to long after, by the prophet Hosea : " They have deeply corruj)ted themselves, as in the days of Gibeah." " 0 Israel, thou hast sinned from the days of Gibeah : there they stood : the battle in Gibeah against the children of iniquity did not overtake them." By these episodes, the practical aim of the whole narrative is brought out at last more clearly into view ; that a fii-mer government was needed for the welfare of the people — a king whom the Lord himself should provide for them. " In those days there was no king in Israel : every man did that which was right in his own eyes." The allusions to the history of this period in the later Scrij^tures are not few, and some of them are so indirect, as to lend it all the confirmation of an undesigned coin- cidence. The statement about Gezer, (i. 29,) is con- firmed by the mention of it as conquered by Pharaoh in the time of Solomon. The family of Othniel is traced downwards in Chronicles for several generations. The overthrow of the Canaanites is alluded to in Psalm Ixxxiii. : " Do unto them as to Sisera, as to Jabiu, at the brook of Kishon, which perished at Endor, and became as dung for the earth." So also the victory over the Midianites : " Make their nobles like Oreb and Zeeb, and all their princes hke Zebah and like Zalmunna." The triumphal song of Deborah lends its language to Psalm Ixviii. : " Thou hast led captivity captive." The truthfulness of the history, in all the local circumstances of the battle, and the ravine of Kishon, has been shown, in a most graphic manner in a recent work on Palestine, " The Land and the Bible." The successive deliverances are appealed to by Samuel, when the people chose Saul for their king. " He sold them into the hand of Sisera, captain of the host of Hazor, and into the hand of the Philistines, 142 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. and into the hand of the king of Moab. And the Lord sent Jeriibbaal, and Bedan (Barak), and Jeph- thah, and Samuel, and dehvered you out of the hand of your enemies." Again, in Isaiah ix. 4, " Thou hast broken the yoke of his burden, and the staff of his shoukler, the rod of his oppressor, as in the day of Midian," Ophrah, the city of Gideon, is named again in the account of the Phihstine incursions. " The spoilers went out of the camp of the Philistines in three com- panies, and one company turned to the way to Ophrah, to the land of Shual." Penuel is mentioned among the cities which were fortified by Jeroboam. Succoth, in Joshua, is placed in the valley. The Psalmist sjoeaks of " the valley of Succoth," and the brazen vessels of the temple were cast in the plain " between Succoth and Zaretan." "The pillar that was in Shechem" where Abimelech was made king, answers to the " great stone " by the sanctuary of the Lord which Joshua had set up for a memorial, and would seem especially suited for the scene of a royal contract. The land of Tob is named in the history of Jephthah, as the scene of his exile, and the men of Islitob are among the Syrians hired by the Ammonites in the time of David. A great slaughter of the Ejohraimites, forty-two thousand, was made by Jephthah near the fords on the east of Jordan ; and a wood of Ephraim, probably named from this conspicuous calamity of the tribe, since it was not in their territory, is the scene of Absalom's defeat, also on the east of Jordan, not far from Mahanaim, or in the land of Gilead. Timnath is placed on the border of Judah, near to Ekron, and is named, in the account of Samson, as a city of Philistines. The expedition of the Danites, after being mentioned briefly in Joshua, is recorded more fully in Judges. Bethrehob, where Laish lay, occurs in 2 Sam. x. 6, where the Syrians of I^HE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 143 Betli-reliob are hired by the Ammonites. Dan, the city, is mentioned in the numbemig of the people under David, and more generally, in descriptions of the hmits of the country " from Dan to Beersheba." The conflict with the Benjamites, for the crime of the men of Gibeah, is named repeatedly in Hosea, and it was the city of Saul, where seven of his sons were put to death, because of his cruelty to the Gibeonites. " We will hang them ujd in Gibeah of Saul, whom the Lord did choose." The resemblance of the conduct of the Israelites, when, sin was susj3ected in the Reubenites, and when it actually occurred among the Benjamites, illustrates the reahty of the whole history. For, though separated in appearance by the whole period of the judges, the real interval of time was short; since Phinehas, who took part in the first message, was still aHve, and high priest, when the Israehtes assembled at Mizpeh. The sense of national unity was' still strong, and had not been weakened by the declen- sions and apostasies of three hundred years. The chronology of this period offers some difficulty. If all the separate intervals are successive, the total from the Exodus to Solomon will be about six hmidred years, and the incidental mention of four hundred and fifty years for the time of the Judges in Acts xiii. seems to confirm this view. On the other hand, 1 Eangs vi. 1 assigns four hundred and eighty years for the interval from the Exodus to the fourth of Solomon, and this seems to agree better with the genealogies, and with the mention of three hundred years from the conquest to Jephthah's war with Ammon. But even the shorter reckoning disagrees with Baron Bunsen's hyjDothesis on the Egyptian place of the Exodus, and the lengths of the dynasties. He has therefore devised a singular expedient for setting it aside altogether. The Book of 144 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. Judges, he affirms, is not a history at all, but only has a historical basis. " It is an Epos, midway between Mytlios or fable, and genuine liistory. It is a strictly popular epic in shape, by generations of forty years." When we inquire wherein this poetical character consists, we find that it is solely in the substitution of four false dates, three of forty, and one of eighty years, for what he supposes to be the correct intervals, three of seven, and one of ten years. There is happily a simple test, by which every one may judge whether the Bible Epos, or the " history" framed out of it by this simple process, agrees best with " the fundamental princij^les of his- torical criticism." According to Judges vi. — ix., Grideon, before his call, was " the least in his father's house," and his eldest son Jether was a youth of eighteen or twenty years. The country " was in quiet forty years in the days of Gideon." After his victory " he had many waives," and in all seventy children. After his death Abimelech, one of them, slew all the others ; and Jotham, the youngest, alone escaped, and made the celebrated address to the men of Shechem from the to]^ of Mount Gerizim. Now, according to Baron Bunsen's revised version, by which the poetical element is removed, Gideon survived his victory just ten years. So that within that space sixty sons at least must have been born to him ; Abimelech must have been less than ten years old when he slew his infant brothers ; and Jotham, the youngest, a mere babe, when he addi^essed the Shechemites from Mount Gerizim, and " then ran away and fled to Beer." Clearly it is not the Bible narrative, but the modern substitute, which has here the best claim to be styled an ej^ical fiction. The superiority of the sacred text to the learned criticism wliich assails it, and pretends to detect its errors, could scarcely receive a more striking illustration. For in THE HISTORICAL TRUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 145 all particulars, except the chronology, the book is untouched by the ordeal of criticism, and no smell of fire has passed upon it. IV. The history of the Pentateuch. The Books of Moses contain a connected narrative from Creation to the conquest of Canaan, and are by far the oldest written history now extant. In conse- quence of their antiquity, no direct materials for com- parison exist, except the half-deciphered remains of Egyptian monuments brought to light within the last thirty years. The direct evidence of their authenticity is of the strongest kind. They have been accepted as the writings of Moses by the followers of three different and rival creeds — the Christians, the Samaritans, and the Jews, as far back in each case as their own history extends, or any record of their belief can be found. Their character, as the code of laws of a whole nation, entering into the minutest details of daily life, and involving the whole constitution of the state, and the local arrangements of all the tribes, would make a late forgery incredible and inconceivable. Apart from its record of miracles, and its views of the Divine character and holiness, which are so opposed to the whole spirit of an unbelieving philosophy ; there can be no doubt that its claims to the title of true and credible history would have been received without the least difficulty, and owned to rest upon the most solid grounds. Since, however, the tests which can be directly applied are few, and at present ambiguous and controverted in the conclusions drawn from them, we are bound to apply the maxims of the inductive philosophy. These books contain a narrative of the first out of six successive periods of sacred history, four in the Old, and two in the New Testament. The general character of the series, from first to last, is the same in its main features, L 146 THE BIBLE AND MODEIIN THOUGHT. though with ini23ortant varieties of a secondary kind. Each portion seems to grow, by a natural development, out of those which precede. The mutual references, from first to last, are very numerous. We have one summary of the Pentateuch at the close of Joshua ; a second, of the period of Exodus and the Judges, in Samuel ; a third and a fourth, from Abraham to David or to the Captivity, in the Psalms and Nehemiah ; a genealogical summary in the Gospels of St. Matthew and St. Luke ; a historical summary, from Abraham, in the discourse of Stephen ; a second, from the Exodus, in that of St. Paul at Antioch ; and a final outline from the beginning of Genesis to the Captivity, in the Epistle to the Hebrews. Now in all the five later periods, the truth of the sacred history, as we have seen, is confirmed by a large variety of external and internal evidence. The tests are more various and abundant in the later portions, and in proportion as they are multiplied, the evidence of reality becomes the more decisive. The period from Joshua to Solomon is internally consistent, but furnishes hardly any date for comparison, either with heathen dynasties, or between parallel records of the same in- terval. Where these do occur, in the reign of David, in 2 Samuel and 1 Chronicles, and the Psalms, the marks of consistency multiply in the same proportion. The period of the Kings supplies additional tests. We have two reports in Kings and Chronicles. We have thirteen books of prophecy belonging to the same interval, and we have the mention of eighteen or twenty foreign kings. The only result is to multiply the evidences of chronological accuracy and historical truth. The next period brings us within the early times of classic history. The minuteness and copiousness of tlie details is here carried to an extreme. There is no presence of THE HISTORICAL TllUTH OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 147 miracles, to awaken the doubts of sceptics, and tlic ag-reement with tlie Ijest heathen record of the Persian reigns is complete. Similar confii-mations are found in the history of the New Testament ; and especially in the Book of Acts, its latest portion ; wliicli belongs to the brightest days of the Roman empire, and is the period in which the elements for comparison are the most abundant, in historical works, inscriptions, and existing remains. The conclusion which results from this course of induction is plain. Wherever the tests are abundant, they confirm in the strongest manner the truth of the Bible history. We are justified, therefore, and even compelled by the laws of sound reason, to admit its truth, even in that earliest period, where from its antiquity it seems to stand alone in imapproachable dignity and pre-eminence. At least we are bound to accept its pimd facie claim to be real and genuine liistory ; till counter evidence can be found, so clear, distinct, and decisive, as to outweigh the collective strength of all those evidences of simplicity, consistency, and truth, which meet the eye of the careful student through all its later course of fifteen hundred years. How far the revised chronology of the time of the Judges, of which a specimen has just been given ; or hypotheses on the Hyksos period of Egypt, which Lepsius reckons at five, Bunsen at nine, and De Rouge at fourteen centuries, can effect this counterpoise, and, separating the early books of the Bible from their inti- mate organic union with the later history, can reduce them to Epos or Mythos, that is, narratives mainly or wholly fabulous, may be safely left to the judgment of every candid and thoughtful mind.^ ' Note C. Bunsen'a Chronology of Egypt. L 2 148 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. CHAPTER VII. THE MIRACLES OF THE BIBLE. Modern rationalism, in its criticisms on the Bible histories, adopts usually a laborious process of circular reasoning. Unbelief is assumed in the premises, and of course reappears inevitably in the conclusion. It is affirmed, first of all, that miracles and real predictions are incredible and impossible. By the help of this doc- trine the Bible is dissected, parted into imaginary frag- ments, resolved into, loose traditions of some later age, or completely dissolved into mere legend. Immense labour is bestowed on this double process of dissection or subhmation ; and the result is then announced, that criticism has proved the history to be merely common events distorted by tradition, or the clothing of some abstract ideas of truth. This is the coui^e adopted, alike by Strauss in the New, and Ewald and many others in the Old Testament. The same assumption is made openly in both cases, that a supernatural revela- tion, accompanied by miracles and prophecies, is " nei- ther a fact nor a possibility." From infidel premises, of course, there can be reached no other than an infidel conclusion. There are, on the contrary, only two questions which need an affirmative reply, that our acceptance of the Scriptures as a Divine revelation may be a reasonable faith. Has the Bible, setting aside in the first place THE MIRACLES OF THE BIBLE. 149 the supernatural elements involved in it, every other sign and evidence of historical truth ? And next, do the miracles or prophecies themselves agree in character with their alleged design, as the credentials to a series of Divine revelations? The former question has now been briefly answered. It remains to inquire, next, whether the miracles satisfy the required conditions. These may be reduced, perhaps, to these four heads — a wise parsimony, general publicity, a consistent plan, and a moral purpose. I. Miracles, to fulfil their great object of attesting and confirming messages from God, must retain an unusual and exceptional character. When they become habitual with any regular law of recuiTcnce, they cease to be miraculous, and only add one more element to the im- mense number of natural laws. If they become frequent, but remain irregular and unaccountable, they will cease to startle or surprise, or fulfil any moral purpose, and will come to be classed with shooting stars, or similar unexplained phenomena of the natural world. There is no conceival)le limit to the invention of mere legends ; but real miracles, it is plain, have strict and severe con- ditions to which they must conform. If too obscure and isolated, they will be insufficient for their professed object. If too numerous or constant, they forfeit the character of signs and wonders, and must lose a great part of tlieir influence over the minds of those who may witness them. A wise parsimony is one main feature wliich must l)e expected, therefore, to characterize their actual occurrence. Two causes have tended to create a false impression with reference to the number of the .miracles in the Bi])le history. The first is its extreme compression, and the vast period of time wliich it embraces from first to last. The other is the religious tone of the whole 150 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. narrative, so that common events, where there is no proper miracle, are ascribed habitually to the power and providence of God. When these two circmnstances have been duly weighed, it will be seen with surprise, how sparing, according to the Bible itself, has been the use of miracles in the Divine economy. For the ques- tion is not what proportion they bear to the facts ex- pressed in the record, but to those which are implied in it. Even without any inspired testimony, we know that the course of nature must have continued from day to day, and from generation to generation. But if miracles are given to attest and confirm Divine messages, the mere omission and silence of the record amounts almost to a full proof of their non-occurrence. The first period of Bible history reaches from the Creation to the Deluge, and occupies a space of more than sixteen hundred years. The record is very brief, but we may fairly assume, for the reason just named, that the chief events really miraculous have been included. Now these are only five or six in number — the temptation of the serpent in Paradise ; the expulsion of Adam and Eve, with the cherubic sword of fire at the east of the garden ; the vision to Cain after Abel's sacrifice ; the translation of Enoch ; the mixture, perhaps, of the sons of God with the daughters of men, and birth of the Nepliilim ; and lastly, the Deluge itself, and its attendant circumstances. Six instances of miraculous interference, three at the very beginning, two during the course, and one at the close, of nearly two whole millennia of the world's history, are surely no lavish and extravagant amount of supernatural inter- ference. The second period reaches from the Flood to the Descent into Egypt, and is a space of six — but according to the Septuagint, of fourteen centuries. Only three main THE MIRACLES OF THE BIBLE. 151 events of a public or a national kind occur in it, which are miracles, or quasi-miraculous ; the confusion of tongues at the Tower of Babel, the destruction of the Cities of the Plain, and the dreams of Pharaoh, with the seven years of plenty, and seven of famine. Even of these, the last belongs less naturally to miracles than to supernatural prophecy. But since the foundations of a new economy were now being laid, there is a considerable number of visions recorded, of a more private and personal kind. We meet with about ten instances in the life of Abraham, three or four in that of Isaac, and eiglit in that of Jacob. Most of them are simply dreams or visions, and only three or four involve a distinct angelic appearance. This, also, is a frugal provision of signs and wonders for the first foundation of an economy of grace, by which all the families of the earth were to be blessed, and which was to endure to a thousand generations. The third period is that of the Exodus and the Con- quest, and lasted about forty-five years. It was the season when the Law was given and written revelation first began. It forms, therefore, an exception to the character of the previous and the following periods, with regard to the numljer and frequency of the signs and wonders which attested the new economy, and that written law which was to be the foundation of all the later messages of God. All the other miracles of the four thousand years of the Old Testament are scarcely so numerous or so striking, as those which are crowded into the limits of this single generation, though com- paratively modern in its date ; since Abraham, and not Moses, is about midway in the Old Testament history. The fourth period, from the Conquest to Solomon, occupies considerably more than four hundred years. 152 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. But the miracles recorded in its course are compara- tively few. The chief are, the angelic vision at Bochim, the call of Gideon, the double miraculous sign of the fleece, the angelic vision to Manoah, the wonders of Samson's strength, and its loss when his vow was broken, the vision to Samuel when a child, the judg- ments on the Philistines and the men of Bethshemesh, the prophesying of Saul, the thunder and hail after Samuel's rebuke of the people, the appearance of Samuel to Saul after his death, and the infliction of the pesti- lence and its removal : or scarcely more than twelve through a period of nearly five centuries. In the fifth period, from Solomon to the Captivity, besides the number of prophets who were raised up, and whose writings are part of the canon, the direct miracles are more numerous. About forty distinct examples of them are recorded during this interval of four hundred and thirty years, and two or three others in the history of Daniel at Babylon. The signs and wonders approach in their striking character to those of the Exodus ; but they are spread over a longer in- terval, while the others are all concentrated within one instead of ten or twelve generations. In the last period of the Old Testament, after the Return, and till the Birth of our Lord, there is an entire absence of all recorded miracles through more than five hundred years. The whole range of New Testament history is only sixty-six years, or two generations. It begins with miracles in the narrative of our Lord's infancy, and they are found in the very last chapter, after the shij)- wreck of the Apostle, and before his arrival at Rome. They do not, then, shrink or disaj^pear from the history, when it comes into contact with the broad daylight of Greek and Roman civilization. On the other hand, THE MIRACLES OF THE BIBLE. 153 there are twenty-eight years of this period, or nearly one half" of the whole, which are passed by in silence, and where the absence of miracles is clearly implied. This same feature, also, continues to mark the ministry of the Baptist, the forerunner of Christ, The contrast is brought out plainly in the fourth Gospel in the words of the Jews, " John did no miracle, but whatsoever John spake of this man was true." Thus, on a review of the whole, we find that tlie Bible itself teaches clearly that miracles were a rare exception, and not the ordinary rule of Divine Provi- dence, and this even among the chosen people. From the purpose expressly assigned to them we may infer, with great probability, that all such departures from the usual course of nature, of a signal character, would be put on record ; and the whole number may be rather more than one hundred throughout the course of four thousand years, from the fall of Adam to the coming of the Second Adam, the Lord from heaven. The first condition, then, of true miracles, a wise parsimony in their exhibition, is clearly fulfilled in the Bible history. II. Again, miracles, in order to fulfil their office, as proofs of a Divine message or commission, require a character of publicity. To use the words of St. Paul before Agrippa, it would contradict their great object, if they were " done in a corner," and there were no adequate witnesses of their reality. This condition, again, is satisfied in the highest degree by the main body of the miracles, both of the Old and New Testament. The Flood, the confusion of tongues, the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the plenty and famine of Egypt, were events of the most pubhc kind, and on the largest scale. A public asser- tion of them, unless very remote in time, would 154 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. involve a speedy and complete exposure of fraud and falsehood. The plagues of Egypt, the ipiWar of cloud and fire, the daily manna, the passage of the Red Sea, the supply of water from the rock, have all the utmost possible degree of publicity. The same is true of the passage of the Jordan, and is there additionally striking because of the memorial appointed at the time, to be a public testimony of the occurrence to later genera- tions. The same character applies to several of Elijah and Elisha's miracles, and to the later overthrow of the Assyrian army. In the New Testament it is the common feature of all our Lord's miracles, and most of those of the apostles. The appeal is repeatedly made by our Lord himself, as well as his disci23les, to this character of the miraculous works. (John xv. 22-24 ; v. 36 ; xi. 47, 48 ; xii. 37; xviii. 20. Acts ii. 22; iii. 16; iv. 21, 16; V. 16; X. 37, 38 ; xix. 12. Rom. xv. 19.) But while this character of publicity belongs to the Bible miracles, as a whole, there are many exceptions, in which they are exhibited in the light of a special privilege, and witnessed by a few only. Such were the visions to the three patriarchs, the appearance in the bush to Moses, the messages of the angel to Gideon, and afterwards to Manoah and his wife, the support of Elijah by ravens, and again by the widow of Zarephath, and some others in the Old Testament. In the Gospels we see that our Lord, in several cases, enjoined silence on those who were healed, or chose out a few witnesses only. Thus three apostles alone were allowed to be present at the raising of Jairus' daughter, and at the Transfiguration ; and the blind man at Bethsaida was led aside out of the town before his eyes were oj)ened, and then charged not to tell it to any one in the town. The resurrection of our Lord holds in this respect a middle place. The number of witnesses was large, TEE MIRACLES OF THE BIBLE. 155 for " he was seen of above five hundred brethren at once ;" and the appearances were nmnerous, for no less than ten are distinctly put on record, and they reached through an interval of forty days ; but the privilege was reserved, in every case, for disciples alone. It is clear, then, that a second law intersects, and in some cases supersedes, the general rule of publicity ; and that the moral aspect of such manifestations, as a special privi- lege which must not be wasted upon senseless and stubborn minds, mingles with and modifies their fun- damental character, as "a sign to them who do not believe." 1 Cor. xiv. 22. III. A third feature, which may be expected to dis- tinguish real miracles, designed to fulfil some great object of the Divine government from the mere chance inventions of falsehood, or a fortuitous series of mere legends, invented by the caprice of imaginative minds, is the presence of a consistent plan in their actual dis- tribution and occurrence. It is common with sceptical writers to represent miracles, as maintained by the advocates of Christianity, to be " something at variance with nature and law," " arbitrary interposition " and acts of mere caprice, in " marvellous discordance from all law." But tliis is a gross misconception. The term law, instead of being confined exclusively to physical relations, is borrowed from a higher field of thought, the deliberate acts of intelligent wills, and is only transferred, by analogy, to the mere regularity of physical changes. Moral laws have a better claim to the title than the physical ; the latter have borrowed it from them, and are merely, so to speak, under-tenants at will. The higliest and noblest kind of law, of which we can have a conception, consists of the moral and spiritual maxims by which the Supreme Lawgiver, the Only Wise God, disposes 156 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. his own acts in the government of the creatures He has made. Viewed in this Hght, while miracles are either real or seeming infractions of some physical law of material sequence, they are, in every case, fulfilments of a higher law of God's moral government ; which may be discerned in them, more or less clearly, when the understanding has been purified by faith and prayer, and has learned to meditate with reverence on the ways of the Most High. The question between unbelief and Christian faith seems capable, then, of being brought here to a distinct and definite issue. If alleged miracles are the mere inventions of imposture, or the dreams of inventive fancy, we might reasonably infer that they would be ascribed most plentifully to periods remote from historic knowledge, and diminish gradually as we come within the region of authentic history, tested by col- lateral evidence and a well defined chronology. On the other hand, if they are the real credentials of Divine messages, we should expect them to abound at marked eras of revelation, when there is some conspicuous un- folding of the Divine will ; and to be more sparingly exhibited in those intervals, whether earlier or later in time, when there is merely a continuation of former degrees of light, and no sign of any new message from God to man. Now it will be plain, on the least inquiry, that this latter character, and not the former, belongs to the whole series of miracles which the Bible records. Three or four miraculous events marked the close of the brief economy of Paradise, and introduced the sixteen centuries of the antediluvian world. One miracle alone occurs during their long course — the translation of Enoch ; for the marriage of the sons of God with the daughters of men is either simply a natural THE MIRACLES OF THE BIBLE. 157 event, or else a marvel of sin, and not an interference of God. The Deluge and its attendant wonders ushered in a new dispensation, and a formal covenant with mankind in their new head. Two signal acts of judg- ment mark the long period from the Flood to the Exodus, when iniquity had reached its height, in the building of Babel, and the cities of the plain ; but all the other wonders are of a more private kind, connected with the persons of the three patriarchs alone, in whom the foundation was laid for all the later revelations of the Divine will. But with the Exodus a new dispensa- tion began. The revealed will of God was now, for the first time, embodied in a written and permanent form. The books of Moses, which were written by the great lawgiver of the Jews, form the key to all their later history, and are the basement story of the whole edifice of revealed religion. Here, then, we meet in the sacred narrative with a profuse display of miraculous agency, contrasted equally with earlier and with later ages. This contrast is boldly drawn out in the law itself. " For ask now of the days which are past, which were before thee, since the day that God created man upon the earth, and from one side of heaven unto the other, whether there hath been any such thing as this great thing is, or hath been heard like it. Did ever people hear the voice of God speaking out of the midst of the fire, as thou hast heard, and live ? Or hath God assayed to go and take him a nation from the midst of another nation, by temptations, by signs, by wonders, and by war, and by a mighty hand, and by a stretched out arm, and by great terror, ac- cording to all that the Lord your God did for you in Egypt before your eyes ?" This era of marvels lasts throughout the forty years of the Exodus, till Jordan is crossed, the book of the law complete, and the chosen 158 THE BIBLE AND MODEKN THOUGHT. people have entered into their promised inheritance. Its close is then hardly less marked than its commence- ment. The manna ceases as soon as the Jordan is passed. After the conquest is complete, except the solitary message of rebuke by the angel at Bochim, we have two whole centuries, to Gideon, in which no trace of a miracle is fomid, and only one prophetic message, that of Deborah to Barak. The few miracles that come later are of a personal kind, or messages to individuals, to fit them for some special work or service. Two pubhc miracles occur, at intervals, in the later half of the period between the Conquest and Solomon, and each of them is connected with a main event in the tabernacle worship of Israel. The first was the rescue of the ark from the Philistines, which was never again restored to the tabernacle at Shiloh ; and the other was the pestilence, which issued in the designation of a new site on Mount Moriah for the temple of God. But as soon as the Theocracy, under the law, began to wane, and new revelations were to be given, per- manently, by jorophets, to complete the old covenant, and link it with the Gospel that was to follow, not only prophetic messengers are multiplied, but pubhc miracles reappear. Their place is not found amidst the dimness of uncertain history, or an obscure chro- nology, but precisely where the annals of Israel and Judah dovetail into each other with recurring notes of time, and link themselves with the records of Tyre, Assyria, Egypt, and Babylon. A signal prophecy, by Ahijali the Shilonite, and three signal miracles, in connection with the prophet from Judah, usher in the first separation of the kingdom of Israel, and are like an earnest of the new era that was to begin. In the two generations of Elijah's and Elisha's ministry, nearly forty miracles are recorded in Chronicles and THE MIRACLES OF THE BIBLE. 150 Kings. A series of prophetic messages was thus piibhcly inaugurated, which reached from Jonah, the earhest, a contemporary of Eh'slia, to Jeremiah and Ezekiel at the time of the captivity ; wlien it was sealed once more by those two signal miracles, in which the faith of Daniel and his companions " stopped the mouths of lions, and quenched the violence of fire," during the interval between the Captivity and the return from Babylon. After this return, the Sinaitic Covenant was waxing old, and even the code of Old Testament prophecy was nearly complete. Three shorter books of pro- phecy sustained the faith of the remnant who had been restored to Judea in a time of weakness and Gen- tile opposition, and renewed the promise of brighter days at hand. But no outward miracle is found in these last books, of Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Haggai, Zechariah, and Malachi. Signs and wonders first, and very soon the gift of prophecy itself, are with- drawn, through a long space of five hundred years. The old dispensation, with its code of Divine messages, was complete ; and the fuller light of the Gospel was not come. When this time of waiting was gone by, a series of marvels accompanies the dawning of a new dispensa- tion, and ratifies the messages of the Gospel. They begin with the birth of our Lord, but their chief de- velopment attends the opening of his public ministry. Amidst the fullest light of classic literature, and in the height of the Roman dominion, when the whole civilized world was linked by perpetual and daily intercourse, we are suddenly confronted once more with " signs and wonders, and niiglity deeds," less startling and terrible than those which sealed the sterner messages of the Law, but still more numerous and varied ; and reaching, 160 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. like the otliers, through a space of forty years and up- ward, from our Lord's baptism to the very close of the Jewish polity. Their reality is attested, not only by the simplicity and truthfulness of the record, but by the admission of Celsus, Porphyry, and of the unbe- lieving Jews, and by their moral power in the foima- tion of the Christian Church, and its growth and spread through successive ages. They are the rock on which it is built so firmly, that the gates of hell have never prevailed for its overthrow. But when once the Church is founded, and the new dispensation of the Gospel established throughout the breadth of the Roman empire, the sacred canon is brought to a close ; and miracles beyond that limit either suddenly cease, or melt away insensibly, with the removal of the first believers and apostolic converts, and " fade into the light of common day." The miracles of the Bible, it thus apj^ears, are not scattered confusedly throughout the whole period ; as, if they were due only to the accidents of legend-weaving, we should expect them to be. They follow a manifest law in their distribution, no less than the planets of the solar system in their settled orbits. They are grouped mainly around two great centres, the Law of Moses, and the Gospel of Christ, the two known and essential components in one great, progressive scheme of revelation. An important, but secondary series, at- tends and introduces the teaching of the prophets, the connecting link between the two dispensations. When we add to these a few acts of solemn judgment, the Flood, the Confusion of tongues, the Destruction of Sodom, the overthrow of the Assyrian host, and more private messages or visions to the three patriarchs, and a few judges and kings, we have nearly exhausted the whole range of recorded miracles. Every feature of THE MIRACLES OF THE BIBLE. 161 their arrangement confirms the constant faith of the church, that they are neither the inventions of impos- ture, nor the dreams of wayward fancy, nor unaccount- able freaks of bhnd chance ; but credentials, appointed by the Only Wise God, to confirm and ratify the autho- rity of his own messages of holiness and grace to the children of men. ly. The last feature which marks the Bible miracles, and severs them widely from the idle tales of marvels, with which a sceptical criticism would confound them, is the presence, throughout, of a moral purpose. It is not merely true that they are shewn, by the law of their distribution, to be the seals and certificates of the messages of God. They form, themselves, one part of the message which they seal. This moral character of the miracles of the Bible has been often observed, and unfolded, by several writers, with rich and abundant evidence of its truth. It is the less needful, then, to dwell on it here at any length. The miracles of our Lord, with scarcely an exception, are parables also. Some deep spiritual truth shines out through the supernatural history. They are not, as the mythical theory pretends, mere ghosts or unembodied ideas, clothed with a shadowy veil of fiction. They have a body, real and true ; but it is a spiritual body, like that which is promised to the children of the re- surrection, translucent in every part with the powerful impress and energy of the living truth within. The plagues of Egypt partake of the severity and holiness of the legal dispensation. The works of Christ are gracious and gentle, though surpassingly wonderful ; and answer well to the grace which was poured into his lips, and forms the essential spirit, the distinguish- ing glory, of the Gospel. There is a Divine haiTQony of character between the signs and wonders themselves, M 162 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. the healing of the sick, the unstopping the ears of the deaf, and opening the eyes of the bhnd, the stilhng of the storm and tempest, and the truth which all of them were given to confirm and ratify — " the Gospel of the grace of God." The miracles of the Bible, then, have every feature of agreement with their professed design, as the public credentials of a Divine message. They are not lavish and indiscriminate, but frugal and sparing in their exhi- bition. They are not things " done in a corner," but a public appeal to the senses and experience of large bodies of men. They are meted out with an exact correspond- ence to the times and seasons of the Divine messages, and are rich with moral lessons, so as to illustrate the messages they are designed to attest. They have no resemblance to the fabulous legends of heathen history, but are grouped by secret laws of moral harmony, in which the wisdom of God may be seen as clearly, by intelligent observers, as in the blossoming of the flowers of spring, the ripening of the fruits of autumn, or the courses of the starry heavens. THE PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 163 CHAPTER yill. THE PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. Christianity, as a public message which claims the faith and obedience of mankind, rests evidently on a double foimdation, the miracles of our Lord and his Apostles, and the fulfilment of earlier prophecies of the Old Testament in the history of Christ, and the early progress of the Gospel. The appeal to the miracles is conspicuous in every part of the New Testament. " If I do not the works of my Father," our Lord said to the Jews, " believe me not. But if I do, though ye beheve not me, believe the works." And to his disciples, " If I had not done among them the works which no other man did, they had not had sin." Nicodemus, even in the first twihght of his faith, had already learned the same lesson : " Rabbi, we know that thou art a teacher come from God ; for no man can do these miracles which thou doest, excejot God be with him." But the appeal to the fulfilment of prophecy is no less frequent, both in the lips of our Lord himself, and in the teaching of his Apostles. It is, equally with the mira- cles, made the ground of a direct and earnest claim that Jesus of Nazareth should be received as the true Messiah, and tlie Gospel beheved to be the word and message of God. If this appeal be groundless and delusive, then Christianity, it follows by necessary con- M 2 164 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. sequence, is a system of delusion. Whatever elements of pure morality it may seem to contain, these too must be deceptive ; since it would come with a lie in its mouth, to claim submission and reverence in the name of a God of truth and holiness. Whoever denies the reality of these predictions ceases, de facto, to be a Christian. For a Christian means a disciple of Christ ; and those cannot be disciples of our Lord, who delibe- rately contradict and set aside many of the clearest and most emphatic sayings which proceeded from his lips. Christianity, it is evident, as a reasonable faith, nay, as a scheme of high morality, and not of false pretences, must stand or fall with the acceptance or rejection of the fulfilment of Old Testament prophecies, in the life, death, and resurrection of the Lord Jesus. Let us review first, the passages in which this claim is distinctly made. (1.) Matt. xi. 10. " For this is he of whom it is written. Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way before thee." This prophecy of Malachi is here distinctly asserted by our Lord to belong to the Baptist, his own fore- runner. It is implied with equal clearness, that the following clause is a prediction of his own presence among the Jews, and in the Jewish temple. " And the Lord whom ye seek shall suddenly come to his temple, even the messenger of the covenant, whom ye delight in : behold, he shall come, saith the Lord of hosts." (2.) Matt. xii. 38, 40. " An evil and adulterous gene- ration seeketh after a sign, and there shall no sign be given it, but the sign of Jonas the prophet. For as Jonas was three days and three nights in the whale's belly, so shall the Son of man be three days and three nights in the heart of the earth." Here we have not only a prophecy of the resurrection THE PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 165 on the third day, wliich lodged in the memory even of the imbeheving Pharisees (Matt, xxvii. 63) ; but a dis- tinct assertion by our Lord that the strange and unusual history of Jonah, which was a sign to the Ninevites, was a veiled prediction of his own resurrection from the dead. The same statement is repeated once more, Matt. xvi. 4. (3.) Matt. xxi. 42. "Jesus saith unto them, Did ye never read in the Scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is made the head of the corner : this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes ? Therefore I say unto you, The kingdom of God shall be taken from you, and given to a nation bringing forth the fruits thereof. And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken : but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder." Here our Lord not only affirms that the verse in Psalm cxviii. is a distinct prophecy of his rejection by the Jewish rulers, but infers from it the truth, soon fulfilled, of their own expulsion from the covenant of God, attended by heavy judgments. The apostle, who was jDresent at the time, twice repeats and confinns the saying of his Lord, Acts iv. 11, 12 ; 1 Pet. ii. 7, 8. (4.) Matt. xxii. 41, 46. " If David, then, call him Lord, how is he his son ?" The words of Psalm ex. 1, are here affirmed to be a prophecy of the exaltation of Messiah, which was fulfilled in the twofold nature of our Lord, and his future exaltation to the throne of God. (5.) Matt. xxiv. 15, 16. " When ye see the abomina- tion of desolation, spoken of by Daniel the prophet, stand in the holy place (whoso readeth, let him under- stand), then let those whicli be in Judea flee into the mountains." Here, when the words are compared with St. Luke, oiu' Lord teaches his disciples that one of Daniel's predictions, instead of being written after the 166 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. ■event in the time of Antiochus, was a true prophecy of desolation to be soon inflicted on Jerusalem by the Roman armies. (6.) Matt. xxiv. 30. " And they shall see the Son of man coming in the clouds of heaven with power and great glory." These words are a plain reference to Daniel vii. 13, 14, and a distinct claim by our Lord to be the Son of man, of whom Daniel had prophesied, and announced his everlasting dominion and glory. (7.) Matt. xxvi. 23, 24. " He answered and said, He that dippeth his hand with me in the dish, the same shall betray me. The Son of man goeth as it is written of him." We have here our Lord's declaration that his suffer- ings were the express subject of prophecy. But the connection shews that he refers immediately to Psalm xli. 9, and affirms its fulfilment in his betrayal by one of his own disciples. (8.) Matt. xxvi. 28. " For this is my blood of the new covenant, which is shed for many for the remission of sins." The declaration here, though indirect, is not the less decisive, that Jeremiah xxxi. referred to our Lord's sacrifice on the cross, and to the Gospel covenant which it sealed. (9.) Matt. xxvi. 31. " Then saith Jesus unto them. All ye shall be offended because of me this night ; for it is written, I will smite the shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad." No statement could be plainer than this. The pro- phecy in Zechariah, our Lord tells his disciples, made it certain that they would abandon him, in the hour when he was to be smitten, and lay down his Hfe for the sheep, (10.) Matt. xxvi. 53, 54. " Thinkest thou that I can- not now pray to my Father, and he shall presently give THE rilOPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 167 me more tlian twelve legions of angels ? But how then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be ?" Here, also, nothing can be more distinct than our Lord's assertion, rendered stronger by its interro- gatory form. The prophecies so truly foretold his suf- ferings as to make it essential for their truth and the faithfulness of God, that he should yield himself up without resistance into the hands of his enemies. The Scriptures would have failed and been falsified, unless he suffered. The Evangelist presently repeats and re- echoes the same doctrine. " But all this was done, that the Scrij^tures of the prophets might be fulfilled." (11.) Matt. xxvi. 64. " Hereafter ye shall see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." Our Lord has once before applied the description in Daniel to himself, in his dis- course to the disciples. He here repeats the same before the Sanhedrim. The saying, for which he was adjudged to be worthy of death, was simply a claim to be the express object of this prediction. If Daniel vii. were merely a pretended prophecy, or referred to some one else, there seems no escape from the conclusion that our Lord was a deceiver, and his condemnation a righteous sentence. (12.) Matt, xxvii. 4G. " About the ninth hour Jesus cried with a loud voice, saying, Eli, Eli, lama sabach- thani ? that is to say. My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me ?" This exclamation, if it stood alone, might be explained as a mere adoption of the Psalmist's words, because they suited his present experience of suffering. But when we compare tliem with the taunt in verse 43, which is a quotation from the same Psahn, and the quotation just before by the Evangelist in verse 35, they clearly imply a conscious appropriation by our Lord, on the cross, of 168 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT, the wliole Psalm, as a distinct prophecy both of his inward experience and outward shame. (13.) Luke iv. 17, 21. " And he began to say unto them. This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears." The prediction in Isaiah Ixi. 1, is here expressly re- ferred by our Lord to his own ministry, as its true and proper meaning. (14.) Luke xviii. 31-33. " Behold, we go up to Jeru- salem, and all things that are written by the j)rophets concerning the Son of man shall be accomphshed. For he shall be delivered unto the Gentiles, and shall be mocked and spitefully entreated, and spitted on, and they shall scourge him, and put him to death, and the third day he shall rise again," Nothing can be clearer than that the true and proper fulfilment of various predictions, such as Ps. xxii. 6, 7, 15 ; Is. 1. 6, is here asserted by our Lord to centre in his own person, and the sufferings he was about to undergo. (15.) Luke xxii. 37. " For I say unto you, that this which is written must yet be accomplished in me. And he was reckoned among the transgressors : for even the things concerning me have their fulfilment." (16.) Luke xxiv. 25, 26. " Then he said unto them, 0 fools, and slow of heart to beheve all that the prophets have spoken ! Ought not Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into his glory ? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself." Luke xxiv. 44. " And he said unto them, These are the words which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me." (17.) Luke xxiv. 45, 46. " Then opened he their un- THE PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 1G9 derstancling that they might understand the Scriptures, and said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of sins sliould be preached in liis name among all nations, be- ginning at Jerusalem." (18.) John V. 39. " Search the Scriptures; for in them ye think ye have eternal life : and they are they which testify of me." (19.) John V. 46, 47. " For had ye beheved Moses, ye would have beheved me, for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye beheve my words ?" (20.) John xiii. 18. " I know whom I have chosen; but that the Scripture may be fulfilled. He that eateth bread with me hath lifted up his heel against me." (21.) John xvii. 12. " And none of them is lost, but the son of perdition ; that the Scripture might be ful- filled." (22.) John xix. 28, 30. " After this, Jesus, knowing that all things were now accomplished, that the Scripture might be fulfilled, saith, I thirst. . . . When Jesus there- fore had received the vinegar, he said. It is finished, and he bowed his head, and gave up the ghost." After these plain and repeated statements of our Lord himself, it is needless to dwell on the many passages where the same doctrine is echoed by the Evangelists and Apostles. Twenty-five such passages, besides their parallels, occur in the Gospels, an equal number in the Book of Acts, and a still larger number in the various Epistles. The predictions, to wliich this ap23eal is publicly made by our Lord and his Apostles, range through the whole extent of the Old Testament from Genesis to Malachi. Besides many indirect allusions, or applica- 170 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. tions of types in the history, they inckide two passages in Genesis, one in Exodus, two in Numbers, two in Deuteronomy, one in 2 Samuel, nearly twenty in the Psalms, more than twenty in Isaiah, two or three in Jeremiah, as many in Daniel, and in Hosea, one in Joel, two in Amos, one in Jonah, two in Micah, four in Zechariah, and two in Malachi. The claim is made throughout the whole of the New Testament, from the first Chapter of St. Matthew to the last of Revelation (Mat. i. 22, 23, Rev. xxii. 6, 9, 16). And the prophe- cies to which it expressly belongs range equally throughout the Old Testament, from the third of Genesis to the last chaj^ter of Malachi. Of late years, however, some have ventured to re- nounce and contradict this uniform testimony of Christ himself and his Apostles, and still to retain the name of Christians. How those can be disciples of Christ who reject some of his plainest and most emphatic sayings, it is hard to understand. We have been told, for instance, that in Germany there has been " a pathway streaming with light, in which the value of the moral element in prophecy has been progres- sively raised, and the directly predictive, whether secular or Messianic, has been lowered." ^ It is by no means evident how the moral element can have been enhanced, by turning the prophets from inspired mes- sengers of God into successful practisers on the cre- dulity and superstition of their countrymen. But unless our Lord spent his time, after the resurrection, in delud- ing his own followers, this light is merely a relapse into that darkness which brought on them his severe rebuke, and from which they were finally set free, when " he opened their understanding, to understand the Scrip- tures." A school of negative criticism, which translates ' Essays and Reviews, Ess. ii. p. G7. THE PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 171 Psalm xxii. 16. — " For lions have compassed me, the assembly of the wicked have inclosed me, as a lion my hands and my feet," and then makes these hands and feet to be those of the whole Jewish nation, is more akin to lunacy than to real learning. A vast induction, composed of such elements, may prove to be only an accumulation of learned folly. A pathway of pro- phetic interpretation, streaming with such light, merely illustrates the words of our Lord : " If, then, the light which is in thee be darkness, how great is that darkness !" Hebrew prophecy, in all its parts, was doubtless a witness to the kingdom of God, or to a scheme of moral government, exercised through successive ages over a sinful world. And the real question at issue is, whether it were a true witness to a real redemption, and a living Redeemer, ^^romised from the beginning ; or a series of dim and imperfect guesses, by fallible men, as to the future results of the events which were pass- ing around them. In the view of Christian faith, it must contain, throughout, both a moral and a predic- tive element. It is neither bare and naked ethics, nor mere prediction of the future ; but a conjoint revelation of the will and purposes of God. If its predictions are mere guesses of man, with no Divine authority, then the message becomes a public and notorious immorality. It is a fraud upon the faith of men, and a blasphemy against the God of truth. On the other hand, merely to enforce duty was never the sole or chief j)art of the prophet's message. The contrast between a high standard and actual experience would make such a work, if carried on alone, a source of despondency and darkness. But prophecy, from first to last, is a message of hope. Amidst the darkness of sin and sorrow, it reveals the prospect of a great redemption. Every gleam of light, which it threw upon actual sin 172 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. and rebellion, was meant to awaken stronger desires for the rising of the Day spring from on high. It is a message from that God, who sees the end from the beginning, with whom a thousand years are as one day. While its precepts and warnings belong, of course, to the times when each message was given, its promises and encouragements are borrowed from that future, which lay hidden in the counsels of God, and which God alone could reveal. Hence its chief characteristic is a revelation, with increasing clearness, of " the good things to come." All centres in it around the person of the great Redeemer. The prophecies are a landscape, bright in every part with a light which flows from the still unrisen Sun of righteousness. " To him give all the prophets witness," and " the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy." Now every message of prophecy will receive a dif- ferent interpretation, as it is read with the face or the back turned towards this great hope of redemption, this sunrise in the eastern sky. One method results inevit- ably in the destructive criticisms of learned unbelief ; but the other is that instinct of faith and hope, which alone could profit aright by these messages, when they were first given, or can enable us, in the retrospect, to perceive their real fulness and divine beauty. They must be read, not as mere human guess-work by many authors widely remote in time, now brought together by mere acci- dental causes ; but as gifts from God to sinful men, per- vaded throughout by the unity of common purpose. This is essential, according to the Scriptures themselves, in order to attain a just view of their meaning. " Kjiowing this first, that no prophecy of Scripture is of self-interpretation. For prophecy came not at any time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." THE PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 173 It will be enough^ for our present object, to examine two or three main examples of that vast induction on the destructive side, which begins by reversing this first essential of true interpretation, and then glories in having stripped the prophecies, one by one, of their Messianic character ; as if it were a proud triumph of modern learning, to resume the exact position of the first disciples, when their understanding was ' still dark- ened, and they were pronounced, by the Truth himself, to be "fools, and slow of heart to believe what the prophets had spoken." I will select three instances alone, the earlier and the later prophecies of Isaiah, and the visions of the beloved Daniel, doubly sanctioned by our Lord in his own prophecy on the Mount of Ohves, and when he witnessed his good confession before the Sanhedrim of the Jews. I. The prophecy, Isaiah vii. — ix., according to the constant faith of the whole church, and the express words of the New Testament, is a prediction of our Lord's supernatural birth, and announces the lasting continuance of his kingdom. The Negative Theology rejects this interpretation altogether. The phrase, Mighty God, it assures us, may only mean " strong and mighty one, father of an age." It " can never listen to any one who pretends that the maiden's child was not to be born in the days of Ahaz, as a sign against the kings of Pekah and Eezin." In other words, the prophecy could only be read aright with the back turned upon the bright future, and the hope of that Seed of the Woman, who had been promised from the days of Paradise. The Jews were to fix their thoughts entirely on their trouble at the moment from the confederate kings; and the whole drift of the Divine message was a promise that they would soon have access to the pasturages, from which they were then shut off by the siege, and would 174 TEE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. be able to indulge their infant children once more with curds and honey ! Now let us turn to the prophecy, and see whether it lends us no key to its own real meaning. It begins with a startling offer, made by God himself to the people and their unbeheving king. " The Lord spake again unto Ahaz, saying, Ask thee a sign of the Lord thy God : ask it either in the depth, or in the height above." All nature seems here thrown open to his choice ; as if no token of God's power, however won- derful, would be withheld in this hour of temptation, if it were needed to confirm his faith in the Divine protection. But the same unbelief, which made Ahaz tremble before his enemies, led him to reject the gracious offer, with the vain excuse that it would be tempting God to obey his own command. The choice of a sign then reverts from the faithless king to the Lord himself, by whom the offer had been made. We must, therefore, expect it to be determined, not by the selfish fears of the wicked Ahaz, but by the grandeur of the Divine counsels of mercy, and in the spirit of that later declaration : — " As the heavens are higher than the earth, so are my ways higher than your ways, and my thoughts than your thoughts." With Him a thousand years are as one day. The mahce of Pekah and Rezin would be, in his sight, like dust in the balance, compared with his own thoughts of mercy to the chosen fine of David, and through them to Israel and the whole race of mankind. " And he said. Hear ye now, 0 house of David, is it a small thing for you to weary men, but will ye weary my God also ? There- fore the Lord himself will give you a sign. Behold, the virgin conceives and bears a son, and shall call his name Immanuel. Butter and honey shall he eat, that he may know to refuse the evil, and to choose the good." THE PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 175 The great oljject of the promised sign is clearly to give a full assurance of God's mercy towards the honse of David, however great its own sin and perverseness, and however fierce the threats of its enemies. Tlie sign, taken in its strictest meaning, fulfils this object ; esj^ecially since it appears from chap. ix. 6, 7, that this promised child was to be the heir of David's throne. It implies three things : a supernatural birth, answering to the first promise of the Seed of the Woman ; a superhuman character, so that in his person God would be truly present with his people ; and freedom from human corruption, since, unlike all other children, Im- manuel would know from his first infancy to refuse the evil, and to choose the good. Such, then, is a double reason in favour of the Christian interpretation. It agrees with the nature of the offer which introduces the prophecy, and with its return, after its rejection by Ahaz, to him who gave it. It supposes the sign to have been truly what the offer implied, " in the depth and in the height above ;" and it also ascribes to the terms of the promise their strictest, fullest, and most expressive significance. Again, the whole force of the sign, on the opposite view, depends on the immediate birth of the child before Rezin and Pekah's overthrow. It would have no force until the actual birth, and its value would cease as soon as Damascus was taken by the Assyrians. It would be simply an ephemeral sign of a momentary respite, in the prospect of heavier and more lasting judgments. It would require such a paraphrase as this : " A child shall be born, in the course of nature, within a year, to Ahaz or Isaiah ; and before it is three or four years of age, it will be possible for it to be fed on curds and honey, because these enemies will have been over- thrown, and the pastures be accessible once more." 176 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. Now it is plain that, on this view, the sign really precedes the event as little as in the Christian inter- pretation, at least in its most essential feature. For the natural birth of a child from human parents is the most commonplace of events, and, standing alone, has scarcely any character of a sign whatever ; while the circum- stance marked as significant, the peculiar diet of this child, was not to precede, but to follow, the wished-for deliverance from Ephraim and Syria. A third reason for the same view results directly from the passage Isaiah vii. 1 — 4, where the birth of a child' to the prophet himself is announced for a sign. This son of Isaiah, Maher-shalal-hash-baz, besides the entire difference of the two names prophetically given, cannot be the same with Immanuel for a clear and simple reason, that the latter is declared to be the owner of the land (chap. viii. 8), and the destined occupier of David's throne (chap. ix. 7). But the birth of the prophet's child evidently fulfilled every object required for the tem- porary purpose of being a pledge that the Syrian over- throw was close at hand. The birth of a second child, as a mere chronological sign, would have been a mere superfluity ; and in fact Hezekiah, the immediate heir, was born several years before. It results, plainly, that the promise of Immanuel had a different object ; and did not refer to that one moment of time, but to the whole series of troubles which were coming on the hoirse of David, from mightier foes than either Rezin or Remaliah's son. Again, on the naturalist view, the birth of Immanuel is simply a pledge of Rezin's speedy overthrow ; and is subordinate in its importance to that deliverance of Judah and of king Ahaz, which must constitute the main scope of the prophecy. But the whole passage, when compared together, points to an exactly opposite 'J'llE rilorilEClEy OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 177 coiichisioii. This overtlirow of Kezin is tlicre miidc •simply llio })reface to a long" series of lieavicr troubles from the kings of Assyria, by wbicli Israel and fliidali alike woukl be bronglit to comparative deso- lation. But the promise of the cliild Immanuel takes the lead of the whole prophecy. It appears in the middle of it, as the stay in the height of the Assyrian conquests of desolations, and breaks out once more c^t the close, as a full message of everlasting consolation. " He shall pass through Judah, he shall overflow and pass over, he shall reach even to the neck ; and the stretching fortli of his wings shall fill the breadth of thy land, 0 Immanuel. Take counsel together, and it shall come to nought, speak the word, and it shall not stand, for Immanuel. . . . For unto us a cliild is born, unto us a son is given, and the government shall be upon his shoulder ; and his name shall be called Won- derful, Counsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting- Father, the Prince of Peace. Of the increase of his government and peace there shall be no end, ujdoii the throne of David, and upon his kingdom, to order it, and to establish it with judgment and with justice, from henceforth, even for ever. The zeal of the Lord of hosts will perform this." Even those words of chap. vii. 16, which form the stronghold of the naturalist interpretation, and Avhich have led many Christian writers to admit a double ful- filment in a child of Isaiah or Ahaz, as well as in Messiah, will be found, I believe, on closer examination to lend no real support to this view. The mention of " butter (or ciu-ds) and honey " as the food of tlie infant Immanuel, is tlie link by which alone his birth is here connected, in time, with the overthrow of Pezin. " For before the child shall know to refuse the evil and choose the good, the land thou abhorrest shall be for- 178 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. saken of" both her kings." But the passage does not terminate here ; nor wonld the connection be at all clear, unless we read the verses that follow. Now these predict, along with, and after, the overthrow of Rezin, an Assyrian and Egyj)tian invasion, extending to Judali as well as Samaria. One result of these would be the general use of -a diet of " butter and honey" from the desolation of the country. " In that day a man shall nourish a cow and two young sheep ; and for the abundance of milk that they shall give he shall eat butter (or curds) ; for butter and honey shall every one eat that is left in the land." These deso- lations were to extend to Aliaz himself, his j^eople, and his father's house, (verse 17.) And thus the real drift of the prediction must be, that before the promised Immanuel was of age to refuse the evil and to choose the good, not only would Rezin have been overthrown, but the land of Judali itself have been desolated by the Ass}^rian armies. Thus the sole argument in favour of the lower and temporary view of the prediction, when closely examined, disappears ; and lends a further presumption to the nobler apj^lication to our Lord himself, the Son of the Virgin, the true Messiah, and the long-promised heir of David's throne. II. The later prophecies of Isaiah (ch. xh — Ixvi.) are another main object of assault to those modern critics, who labour to dispense with all supernatural prediction. It is asserted boldly that they were not Written by Isaiah himself, but nearly two centuries later, in the time of Zerubbabel, and are much rather a history of the present than prophecies of a distant future. The treatment of them in this sj^irit, so as to establish these conclusions, has been called the most brilliant portion of Baron Bunsen's prophetical essays. In this he only succeeds, it is said, to an inheritance of THE rROniECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 179 opinion, derived from Gesenius, Ewald, Maurer, and earlier and later authorities in Hebrew criticism, to dispute whose decisions would be reckoned, in Germany, a suicidal and ridiculous folly. In Germany itself, however, these views have by no means met with such a blind submission. On the contrary, there are critics of no inferior ability, who liave seen and proclaimed the hollow nature of the unbelieving assumption on which they rest. Thus Keil remarks upon Ewald's treatment of Joshua, and the words apply equally to this portion of Isaiah, " In this dissection the only principle which guides him is the old rationalistic doctrine, that a supernatural revelation, accompanied by miracles and prophecies, is neither a fact nor a possibility, and that the theocratic view of Israelitish history is altogether a creation of poetic myths. . . . This foregone conclusion of common rationalism is both the chief assumption, and the de- cisive rule, in the determination of the original sources. The different passages are said to date from the periods to which, in his opinion, the predictions contained in them refer ; since the prophecies are nothing but the veiled poetic method of picturing present events, or, at most, forebodings of future occurrences already involved in the present. Actual predictions do not exist. The entire theory is, therefore, built upon the sand. It has not the slightest objective truth in it, and does not admit of examination in detail, as it is not founded on any scientific principle." Let us now examine the direct j^roofs of authenticity in these later chapters of Isaiah, and the nature of those critical objections which have been urged to set it aside. (1.) First, the whole book has been received by the Jews, so far as evidence remains, from the very date of x\ 2 180 THE BIBLE AND MODERN TUOUGH'J\ its publication, as the genuine work of Isaiah. The inscription alone is a public testimony to the fact, and no trace of a contrary opinion can be found among them. The writer of Ecclesiasticus, also, in the second century before Christ, alludes distinctly to these later prophecies, and refers them without hesitation to Isaiah as their author. (2.) The Book of Ezra suj^phes a still stronger proof. It begins with a decree of Cyrus : " He made proclama- tion through all his kingdom, and put it in writing. Thus saitli Cyrus, king of Persia, The Lord God of heaven hath given me all the kingdoms of the earth, and he hath charged me to build him a house in Jerusalem, which is in Judah." There is here a distinct reference to Isa. xliv. 28 : " That saith of Cyrus, He is my shep- lierd, and shall perform all my pleasure, even saying to Jerusalem, Thou shalt be built, and to the temple. Thy foundation shall be laid." This explanation of the decree is not only plain in itself, but confirmed by the statement of Josephus, which proves that it was the current tradition of the Jews in the first century. " These things," he observes, " Cyrus knew through reading the book which Isaiah left of his own prophecies, two hundred and ten years before. For he reported the message of God : ' I have chosen Cyrus, whom I have made king of many and great nations, to send my people into their own land, and to build my temple.' These things Isaiah predicted a hundred and forty years before the temple was de- stroyed. When Cyrus had read these words, he won- dered at the Divine message, and a certain impulse and ambition seized him to do what was written." (3.) Our Lord and his Apostles bear witness to the same truth. There are about fifty-four quotations from Isaiah in the New Testament, and nineteen in which THE PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 181 lie is mentioned by name. Tliirty-tliree of tliein are from these later chapters, of which the authenticity has been denied, and they are referred eleven times to Isaiah by name. Thus Isa. xl. 3 is ascribed to him by John the Baptist and all the four evangelists. When our Lord opened his ministry at Nazareth, " there was given to him the Book of Esaias the prophet." He turned to the sixty-first chapter, read its oj^ening verses, closed the book and sat down, and then said, " This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears." This indirect testimony to the passage, as truly part of Isaiah's writings, and the direct acknowledgment of it as genuine prophecy, formed the starting-point of our Lord's Galilean ministry. Again, St. John accounts for the unbelief of the Jews in our Lord's miracles, by referring to another of these predictions. " That the saying of Esaias the prophet might be fulfilled, which he spake. Lord, who hath believed our report?" " Therefore they could not believe, because that Esaias said again," etc. The two quotations — one from the earlier and one from the later chapters — are followed by the common statement, " These things said Esaias, when he saw his glory, and^ spake of him." The theory, then, which assigns these chapters to some later writer during the exile, is in flagrant contradiction to the teaching of our Lord and his Apostles. (4.) The structure of the work yields decisive inter- nal evidence of its unity. Four chapters of simple narrative separate its two main portions. The Book of Isaiah's prophecies cannot be supposed to end with the first of these, or chap. xxxv. ; for then it would entirely omit the most impressive part of his personal history and message at the time of ITezekiah's sickness, anel of the Assyrian invasion. A final close at chap, xxxix. would be still more unnatural. How lame and impotent 182 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. a termination would it be to all the warnings and pro- mises even of the earlier portion alone — " Then said Hezekiali to Isaiah, Good is the word of the Lord which thou hast spoken. He said moreover, For there shall be peace and truth in my days." The book, on the contrary, as it now stands, has an almost dramatic unity. The earlier portion is grouped, in all its warnings and promises, around the great fact of the progressive desolations wrought in Palestine and the border countries by the kings of Assyria. The later portion has its basis and prophetical departure in the exile at Babylon, and the deliverance under Cyrus. The ten tribes were to be utterly desolated by the Assyrian ; but though the waters of the river, strong and many, would reach in Judah even to the neck, the adversaries were not to prevail, but to meet, on the contrary, a decisive overthrow. Under Babylon, the two tribes also would be overthrown, and led away into a long captivity ; but when the judgment had thus reached its height, the mercies of the Lord would begin to return to the chosen people. Now the four chapters xxxvi. — xxxix. exactly fulfil the j^in'pose of effecting the transition from one of this double series of prophecies to the other. They begin with the invasion of Sennacherib, and describe the weak- ness of Judah, the alarm of the j)eople, the insulting- boldness of the Assyrian invader, and the faith of the pious king. The message of Isaiah follows, which forms the climax and culminating point of his personal ministry. Then follows the brief account of the sudden destruction of the Assyrian army, and the death of the proud king- by parricide, after his return to Nineveh. The first woe from Assyria has now j^assed away, but another begins to dawn in the flir horizon. Merodach-baladan, the king of Babylon, sends messengers and a present to THE PROPPIECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 183 Hezekiah, to congratulate liim on his recovery. Under an impulse of vanity he shews them all his choicest treasures ; and the prophet is sent to him at once with the humhling message, that all these treasures, and his own sons and successors on the throne, shall be carried away in captivity to Babylon. This new danger, pro- phetically announced, now becomes the starting-point of a new and still more glorious series of predictions. The former were marked by a tone of warning and judgment ; but these are rich, from first to last, with promises of deliverance and blessing. The intermediate time of growing trial and distress, the more humbling details of the captivity, and of the return itself, are all passed over in silence. Two themes of hope and joy characterize the whole ; the deliverance under Cyrus in the nearer distance, or prophetic foreground ; and beyond it, the work, the sufferings, and the glory of the promised Immanuel, the true Israel, the Man of sorrows, the Anointed Prophet and Intercessor, the lasting inheritor of David's throne. The Book of Isaiah, then, in its actual form, has a symmetry of structure which the sceptical hy^oothesis completely destroys. The four historical chapters, l)y the nature of their contents, fulfil the purpose of linking together two contrasted series of prophecies. All the earlier ones converge towards the event narrated, chap, xxxvi. — xxxviii., the grand catastrophe of the Assyrian overthrow. All the later ones radiate from the warning to Hezekiah, chap, xxxix., and comjoose a treasury of hopes Ijy which the fixithful were to be sustained, through two centuries of sorrow and fear, until the return, and through five centuries more of conflict and delay, until the coming of the promised Inmianuel. If we tear away this later portion from the rest of the book, instead of one consistent whole we have two 184 THE BTRLE AXD MODERN THOUGHT. broken fragments, equally nnnatm-al and incomplete in their separate structure. ('),) A comparison with the real prophecies of the exile will yield a further proof of the baseless nature of the novel theory. Only five or six chapters of the Book of Jeremiah are simply prophetic, and all the rest are either pure history, or abound with historical details. The last sixteen chapters of Ezekiel are simple prophecy, but the others, being two-thirds of the whole, have historical dates, or various particulars of actual history. The same is true of the Books of Daniel and Zechariah. We have no single instance of a complete prophecy, without mention of the name of its author, or some statement of the time when he wrote, or some definite allusions to the actual events of the times. But these chapters, if not a part of Isaiah, would be a solitary contrast to this universal law of prophetic revelation. No name of a writer would be j^refixed, no mention of the place where, or the time when he wrote. No single detail occurs in them with regard to a single person among the Jewish exiles, no name of one king or noble of Babylon, or anything which has the air of historical narration. The passages which approach the nearest to this character, are not only prophetical in tone and style, with a constant use or intermixture of the future tense ; but are joined with distinct assertions that they are the words of that Grod who " declareth the end from the beginning, and from ancient times the tlu'ngs that are not yet done." AVitli such a concurrence of external and internal evidence for their authenticity, as the best and noblest j)ortion of Isaiah's j)i"ophecies, it seems impossible to account for the accej^tance of an opposite view, but from a spirit of settled unbelief in the ])ossibility of supernatural revelation. (G.) Tlie special reasons alleged for this view are THE PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 185 either of no force, or else prove exactly the reverse. First, in chap. xlvi. 1 — " Bel boweth down, Nebo stoopeth ;" the present tense is used, as it is very fre- quently in most prophecies. But the inference that the events were passing at the time is both inconsistent with the snpi^osed date, before the close of the exile, and with the words which immediately follow, verse 10, 11, which teach iis to read in this prediction a clear proof of the Divine foreknowledge. Again, in chap, xlviii. 20 — " Go ye forth from Babylon," the appeal is no less unfortunate. For the same chapter supplies this distinct explanation : " Because I knew that thou art obstinate, and thy neck an iron sinew, and thy brow brass ; I have even from the beginning declared it unto thee, before it came to pass I shewed it thee." The argument from the presence of a few Chaldee forms or jDhrases is only a curious illustration of the perversity of these sceptical criticisms. For the Book of Daniel, when viewed as genuine, was written by Daniel, a Jewish exile, dwelling in Chaldea ; and accordingly one-half of the book is Chaldee, and the rest is Hebrew. The negative critics, however, stoutly deny its authenticity, and ascribe it to some Jew of Palestine, in the time of Antiochus EjDiphanes, when neither Chaldee nor Hebrew, but a Syriac, distinct from both, was the usual language. On the other hand, these chapters of Isaiah, which are Hebrew throughout, and where not a single verse is Chaldee, as in Jeremiah, are referred to some Jew towards the close of the time of the exile, when the displacement of Hebrew by Chaldee would probably have reached its height. One of the very few words on which the argument is based, also, is sayan for prince in the verse, " I have raised one from the north, and he shall come ; from the rising of the sun he shall call upon my name, 186 TIIP] BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. and lie shall come upon princes as npon mortar, as the potter treaclcth clay." Now, certainly, the sixty years which had passed from the first Assyrian invasions to the fifteenth of Hezekiah, (since the Chaldeans were included among the dependencies of Nineveh,) were an interval quite long enough for the prophet and the Israelites to have learnt the Chaldean names for their princes ; and it would be only natural and significant to make use of it in a prediction of their overthrow by the Persian conqueror. Hezekiah, besides, had re- ceived an honourable embassy from the king of Babylon, and it is most probable that one or more sagans might have been the messengers ; so that nothing can well be more ridiculous than to found an argument on this solitary word, for lowering the time of the prophecy two hundred years. (7.) It is needless to dwell, in detail, on the violent and even monstrous glosses which have accompanied this hypothesis ; and which are necessary (even when its date has been lowered to the time of Zerubbabel, in defiance of all testimony and all internal evidence), to purify it completely from the character of a Divine and sujDernatural prophecy. Such is that brilliant discovery that Isaiah liii. is no prophecy, but a historical sketch of the life of the prophet Jeremiah. After nine distinct and exjDlicit applications of clauses of this prophecy to Christ, in the New Testament, including the discourse of Philip to the eunuch under the express teaching of the Sj^irit, when he " began at the same Scrij)ture, and preached to him Jesus," and the words, still more weighty, if possible, of our Lord himself: " I say unto you, that this which is written must yet be accom- plished in me : And he was numbered with the trans- gressors, for even the things that concern me must be fulfilled " — the acceptance of such a view, by any one THE PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. IS? wlio calls himself a Christian, can hardly be explained unless by another passage of the same j^rophet : "Stay yourselves and wonder : they are drunken, but not with wine ; they stagger, but not with strong drink ; for the Lord hath j^oured out upon them the spirit of deep sleep, and hath closed your eyes ; the pro- phets and rulers, the seers hath he covered, and the vision of all is become as the words of a book that is sealed." Truths, which are plain as daylight to simple and honest hearts, become wrapped in mist and darkness, when the pride of fancied learning usurps the place of lowly reverence for the oracles of the living God. III. The prophecies of Daniel are another object of determined hostility to the negative critics of modern times. In fact, a belief in their genuineness is fatal at once to the whole theory. The unusual fulness and clearness of the predictions in chap. viii. and ix. forces us to accept the alternative, that they are either due to the Divine foreknowledge, or else forged pro- phecies, written after the events which they pretend to foretell. Accordingly, the latter view is adopted by Celsus and Porjohyry, the open adversaries of the Gospel in early times, and by all those critics in our own days, who strive to reconcile the name of Christian with a rejection of all the most essential features of the Christian revelation. Now here it is well to rcmcmljcr, at the outset, the r(3al nature of the question at issue between unbelieving criticism and Christian faith, which it has been sought to disguise by smooth and flattering words, where real compromise is impossible. We have been told, for example, that although the writer lived after the events, and only borrowed the name of the true Daniel, he was a " patriot bard," who used it with no deceptive 188 TPIE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. intention, as a dramatic form, to encourage his conn- tiymen in their struggle against Antiochus. But this liypothesis, on the face of it, is incredible and ahsnrd. If ever there were a history which, clearly and un- deniably, was meant to be received as real, it is these chapters of Daniel. If ever there were prophecies which, if not real prophecies, are a series of blasphe- mous j)rofanations of the name of God, it is these visions. The real meaning, then, of the liypothesis is this, and can be nothing else — that the Book of Daniel consists of false and fraudulent history, invented by an un- principled and profane Jewish forger, to be the vehicle of pretended prophecies, written after the events they seemed to ]3redict ; and where the name of the Grod of trutli and holiness is profaned in every chapter, and almost in every verse, in order to give wider currency to an infamous lie. It means also that the unknown writer, though our Lord himself has called him " Daniel the prophet," was really one of the foremost in the class the apostle describes, who say, " Let us do evil, that good may come ; whose damna- tion is just." Once accept the premises of these critics, and it is impossible to escape the conclusion that a book more immoral, more recklessly profane than this Book of Daniel, has scarcely been written since the beginning of the world. The evidence must indeed be strong, which would persuade any pious mind to acquiesce for a moment in so hateful and hideous a conclusion. Let us now examine the direct evidence for the authenticity of these prophecies, and the nature of the objections which have been alleged to prove tlieni spurious. (1.) First, the book has been received without oppo- sition by the Jewish Church and people, from the time TIIL: PitOl'HKClES OF 1 111-: old TESTA.MENT. IbU wlieii the canon was finished, as tlic g'ennine work of Daniel liiniself. It rests, therefore, on the same internal evidence on which the Christian Church, from the beginning, has received every other book of the Old Testament, the constant and uniform tradition of the Jewish peoi:)le, whose jealous care of their Scriptures has been confirmed by tests of peculiar severity, both before and after the time of the Gospel. It has been urged, as some abatement of this testi- mony, that Daniel is placed among the Hagiograi^ha, between Esther and Ezra, and is not mmibered with the other prophets. But it seems a simple explanation, that the book was not only composed out of Palestine, and partly in a Gentile dialect, but that a considerable part is pure history, and forms an liistorical link be- tween the Books of Kings and those of Esther, Ezra, and Neliemiah. It is quite easy, then, to understand that its place might be fixed with reference rather to its histories than its projDliecies ; especially since two of the last are expressly sealed, and, when the canon was formed, their meaning would be still an unopened mystery. As a history, the book forms the natural transition from the close of Kings or Chronicles to the books of Ezra, Neliemiah, and Esther ; and its asso- ciation with these in the canon is therefore very simply explained, without the least impeachment of its authority. (2.) Next, we have a distinct testimony of Josephus tliat tlie book was extant in the time of Alexander, that one part of it was read to him when he visited Jerusalem, and that it was the occasion of joublic and especial favours being granted to the Jews, " And when the Book of Daniel the projDliet was shewn to liim, in which he revealed that some one of the Greeks would destroy the Persian dominion, judging that he 190 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. himself was pointed out, he was rejoiced, and dismissed the multitude ; and summoning them the next day, bade them a«k for what gifts they chose. And when the high priest requested that they might use their national laws, and be free from tribute every seventh year, he granted the whole. And when they further besought that he would allow the Jews in Babylonia and Media to use their own laws, he readily promised to do what they desired." The appeal is here made to facts which must have been notorious, of privileges given by Alexander to the Jews. There could be no stronger testimony to the full and undoubting convic- tion of Josephus and the Jews of his days, that the pro- phecy of Daniel was in the hands of Jaddua in the time of Alexander, or nearly two hundred years before Antiochus. (3.) A testimony still more decisive by far, in the eyes of every Christian, is that of our Lord himself, as recorded in the first two Grospels. " But when ye see the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet, standing in the holy place (or, where it ought not) (let him that readeth understand) then let them which be in Judea flee into the mountains." Soon after there follow these impressive words : " Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." One of the words of Christ, then, attested by this solemn sanction from the lips of him who is the Truth^ is the statement that the prophecy in the hands of the disciples, which they were charged to read witli in- telligence, and where the abomination of desolation is repeatedly named, is truly that of " Daniel the prophet." The theory, then, broached by those modern critics who would make it a forgery in the days ^f Antiochus^ gives the lie direct to the Lord of Griory, in one of his THE PROrHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 191 clearest averments, wliicli is followed by a most explicit and solemn attestation. It is hard to understand Low those who embrace it can still dare to call themselves disciples of Christ. (4.) The testimony of the apostle, in the Ejoistle to the Hebrews, is more indirect, but hardly less powerful and complete. In his list of the victories of faith in the worthies of the Old Testament, we find the two particulars, that they " stopped the mouths of lions, quenched the violence of fire." The allusion is plainly to the two histories, Dan. iii. and vi. These are placed in the same rank of historical certainty with all the other facts in the brief summary, and the conclusion is drawn : — " These all, having obtained a good report through faith, received not the promise, God having provided some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect. Wherefore seeing we are compassed about with so great a cloud of witnesses, let us run with patience the race that is set before us." But if some of these witnesses, and the asserted triumphs of their faith, are mere inventions of an mi- scrupulous -forger, the earnest appeal that follows is robbed entirely of its moral power, and becomes ridicu- lous and absurd. The truth of the facts is the basis of all the force and strength in this glowing exhortation to diligence, fidelity, and patience. (5.) The internal evidence, from the historical facts alone, is strong and clear. The chronology falls in with the statement of the other Scriptures, and also with the canon of Ptolemy. The name of Belsliazzar, after being looked for in vain in heathen writers, has now of late been detected in the decyphered remains of Baby- lonia, as a joint ruler with his own fiither at the time of Babylon's fall. This accounts, also, as remarked already, for the minute contrast, that while Joseph was 192 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. made second ruler in Egypt, Daniel was only promised by Belshazzar, in the hour of Lis terror, to be the third ruler in his kingdom. The madness of Nebuchadnezzar towards the close of his reign is attested by a fragment of Megasthenes. The supplication of Daniel, in the first year of Darius the Mede, corresponds punctually with the near approach of the expiration of the seventy years from Jehoiachin's captivity ; and the earnestness of his later prayer, with fasting, in the third of Cyrus, equally corresponds to the crisis in the Book of Ezra, when adverse counsels first interrupted the progress of the work at Jerusalem, and brought the Jews into dis- favour once more at the court of Persia. An un- principled inventor of fables in the days of Antiochus was little likely to form by accident, or to produce by artifice, such undesigned coincidences as these. The mention that Darius was sixty-two years old when he took the kingdom, while it agrees with all probability, if he were the uncle of Cyrus, is one of the clearest signs of a contemporary and well-informed writer. No other explanation is possible, except we impute to him a de- liberate fraud, in order to produce a false, impression, and clothe mere fiction with a mask of historical reality. (6.) The language of the book, and the mutual rela- tion of its histories and its visions, are another proof of its genuineness. The character of the whole, in these respects, is peculiar and complicated. The first six chapters are historical ; the other six are a series of prophetic visions. The first chapter, three verses of the second, and the last five are in Hebrew, but the rest, from ii. 4 to vii. 28, is in Chaldee. Again, the third person is used in tlio six historical chapters, and the first person in all the rest. Nothing could shew more clearly the unity of the whole, and the claim, throuR'hout, to be the writing- of Daniel himself. If the THE PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 103 separation of tlie lano-iiag'cs bad coincided witli tliat of liistoiy and propliecy, there ruig-lit be some excuse for an hypothesis whicli would ascribe the two parts to dif- ferent authors. Tlieir interlacing- together, where one chapter of history alone is in Hebrew and one of the four successive visions alone in Chaldee, proves that the whole forms one connected work, the j^arts of which cannot be severed. But it discovers also a secret rela- tion between the actual contents and the lano-uaffes employed, whicli marks the wisdom of an inspired prophet, and not the capricious narration of an un- principled forger. The history begins in Hebrew, so as to link itself both in form and substance with the canonical history at the close of Kings. It changes to Chaldee as soon as the Chaldeans are introduced in the dialogue, and continues in Chaldee throughout the time of the seventy years' captivity to its close. The first vision, also, is in Chaldee ; since it does not refer sj^ecific- ally to Jewish history, but to the series of Gentile mo- narchies, and is an enlargement of the vision, already recorded in Chaldee, which was given to the king. Ne- buchadnezzar. But the other prophecies, since they all refer to the later history of the Jews, and the times of their restoration, are in Hebrew only. In all these de- licate and complex relations we have a distinct harmonv with the character and position of the true Daniel, a Hebrew of the royal stock, but an exile from his child- hood, who remained in Babylon through the whole course of the seventy years. Instead of these secret liarmonies of Divine wisdom, the sceptical theory ofters us the blind chance-medley of a Jewish forger, who chose, in the time of Antiochus, to indite his own in- ventions in the shape of history, and then to garble real liistory by turning it into pretended propliecy; Avho adopted a false name in two different ways, and C(jn- o 194 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. striictecl his forgery in two different languages, both of them distinct from the vernacular of his own days, and one of them without precedent in a canonical book of prophecy. (7.) The objection from the alleged presence of Greek words, or late forms of expression, has been abundantly refuted in Germany itself by scholars of accuracy and learning. In fact, our own earlier writers against the deists of last century, Samuel and Bishop Chandler, has already done it with substantial force of reasoning. Hengstenberg and Havernick, and others, have treated it more fully. It is enough to observe here that of the two Macedonian words, st/mphonia audpsmiterion, referred to (Essays, p. 76) as decisive proofs of a late composi- tion, the second is neither a Macedonian word nor occurs in the Book of Daniel, while the other occurs in two forms, sumponya and syponya, neither of which cor- responds exactly with the Greek word ; that only one known instance occurs, in Polybius, where this Greek word is used for a musical instrument ; and that in the case of a third musical instrument, the samhuca, equally relied on by earlier opponents of the authenticity, both Strabo and Athenceus expressly refer the instrument itself and its name to an eastern source. Besides, it is highly probable that some intercourse of Greece with uj^jDer Asia dates from the time even of Sennacherib, as we may infer from Polyhistor and Abydenus. The whole objection, once held to be so formidable, after reducing itself to three names of musical instruments alone, has at length been abandoned by some of the latest op^DO- nents, in Germany, as untenable and worthless. On the other hand, the broad fact, already noticed, of the two- fold language in which the book is written, agrees perfectly with the supposition that it is the genuine work of the prophet Daniel, and with no other view. THE PROPHECIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 195 (8.) It has been urged, as a further objection, that the prophecies are clear and full to the time of An- tiochus Epiphanes, about B.C. 169, and then suddenly cease, or become vague and ambiguous. No assertion, however, could be more grossly untrue. There is no pretence whatever for making three out of the five pro- jDliecies close with Antiochus ; and a comparison with the New Testament will prove that we can only accept that view, in a fourth prediction, by directly con- tradicting and rejecting the authority of an insjiired apostle. The reference of the fourth part of the image, and of the fourth beast (chap, vii.), to the Roman empire, is confirmed by an immense preponderance of external authority and internal evidence ; and the contrary hypotheses of the negative critics are not only mutually destructive, but each of them is loaded with some pal- pable absurdity. Such is the view which makes the Medes and Persians to be two of the four empires, in direct opposition to the book itself (chap, viii.), where they form conjointly the Ram, or one empire only ; and that which makes Alexander and his successors two distinct empires, in equal contradiction to common sense and the language of the prophecy. But the prophecy of the seventy weeks offers a shorter and more distinct proof of the entire falsehood of this confident assertion. It is quite impossible, without a critical torture like that of the Inquisition, to make it agree in any way with the asserted date under Antiochus. For, not to insist on the total period, sixty-two weeks of years are four hundred and thirty-four years. The earliest decree to rebuild Jerusalem was that of Cyrus, B.C. 530. Hence this shortened and imperfect period, applied to the earliest possible date, would bring the close to B.C. 102, or nearly seventy years after the Dedication under tlie Maccabees, when the persecution of E[>iphancs reached its close;' o 2 196 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. On the other hand, the Christian apphcation of the propliecy, in its main outHnes, is simjole, easy, and con- sistent. Tlie seventy weeks are broken into three com- ponents, of seven, sixty-two, and one single week, or forty-nine, four hundred and thirty-four, and seven years. The close of the first is not distinctly defined, but it seems implied that the street and the wall were to be rebuilded during its progress. In B.C. 458 was the decree of Artaxerxes, which formally reconstructed or rebuilt Jerusalem as a civic corporation, or a provincial metropolis under the Persian empire. Within forty- nine years, or before B.C. 409, the Book of Nehemiah was complete, the street and the wall were rebuilt, and the canon of Scripture apparently closed. Sixty-two weeks from this limit, or four hundred and thirty-four years, four hundred and eighty-three from the first decree, bring us to a.d. 26-27, the exact year and date, it is almost certain, of the Baptist's ministry, and of those words of our Lord which allude probably to this very passage, " The time is fulfilled, and the kingdom of heaven is at hand : repent and believe the gospel." Then follow three and a half years of the Baptist's and our Lord's ministry till His crucifixion, when Messiah was cut off, and none were on His side ; the confirmation of the new covenant with many disciples ; and lastly, the prediction repeated and applied by our Lord himself, when Jerusalem was compassed with armies, and the desolating abomination stood on holy ground, and the city and the sanctuary were both de- stroyed. To those sceptical critics, who resist so plain and consistent an application, and strive to wrest the prediction to the times of Antiochus, the words of nnother prophet may well be applied, " We grope for the wall like the blind, and we gro^^e as if we had no ey£s; we stumble at noonday as in the night." The THE ITvOrHEClKS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 1U7 folly of this fancied learning, which sets itself l)uldly against the clearest authority of Christ and his Apostles, and achieves after all such lame and impotent results, can only deserve profound commiseration. The books of the Old Testament, then, from first to last, contain multiplied and various prophecies, which have been fulfilled in the person and work of the Lord Jesus, and in the later spread of his gospel. The Seed of the woman has been miraculously born, and lia'^ begun to bruise the head of the Serpent, by casting- down heatlien idolatry in the chief nations of the world, and planting the standard of the cross victorious upon its ruins. The race of Japhet have been enlarged, and dwell now in the tents of Shem, by the reception of the nations of the west into the visible church of the God of Israel. The seed of Abraham has been born, and has begun to be a blessing to all the families of the earth. The true Shiloli has appeared, before the sceptre liad departed from Judah ; and his later sentence by a Roman governor proved that it had then departed, or was just passing away. A Prophet like Moses has appeared, rescued in his infancy from the malice of murderous enemies, and rejected, when he first came to them, by the very peojjle whom he sought to deliver. The Virgin has conceived and borne a Son, and he is called Inmianuel, by the consenting worship of one fourth of the world's population. His name is called by these countless millions, in every Christmas celebra- tion,— " Wonderful, Coimsellor, the Mighty God, the Everlasting Father, the Prince of Peace." He has come in the character ascribed to him by the same j^rophet, " a man of sorrows and acquainted with grief." The Jews, his own people, " hid their faces from him ; he was despised and they esteemed him not." That which was written was strictly accomphshed in liini: " He was l'J8 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. numbered with the transgressors," for even tlie suffer- ings of the Son of God, being predicted in Holy Scrip- ture, must bo fulfilled. Less than seventy weeks of years ela23sed after Artaxerxes' decree of restoration to Jerusalem, when " Messiah the Prince appeared." He was cut off, none were on his side, but even his discij^les forsook him and fled ; and the people of the Roman prince, within forty years, destroyed the city and the sanctuary, and their desolatiofi has continued even to the present day. But the unbelief of the Jews has only confirmed the prophecies, and ensured the fulfilment of a further promise made to Messiah in the prospect of their rebellion. " It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant, to raise wp the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel ; I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles ; that thou mayest be my sal- vation to the ends of the earth." He who can compare the history in the Gospel, and the later progress of Christianity, with the series of Old Testament pre- dictions, and still continue blind to their correspondence, and tlie proof it supplies of the Christian revelation, falls under the stern rebuke of that sentence of our Lord himself: " If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead." CHRISTIANITY AND WRITTEN REVELATION. 100 CHAPTER IX. CHRISTIANITY AND WRITTEN REVELATION. Christian faith consists in an acknoAvledgment of tlic Divine mission of our Lord and liis Apostles, and an acceptance of their testimony to the person and work of Christ, as the Son of God, and the Saviour of the world. The natural means in our days for attaining this faith, is an accej^tance of the Gospels, Acts, and Epistles, as credible and trutliful records of the first rise of the Christian reh'gion. But a reception of the whole Bible, as inspired and authoritative, is a corollary of Christian faith. It holds the first place among the subsidiary doctrines of the Gospel. It does not enter distinctly into the creeds of the early Church ; but still it pene- trates the whole range of Christian literature, and is the chief security fn' a steady and firm progress in the knowledge of Divine truth. In the minds of common Christians it is now so closely united, both by habitual association and spiritual instinct, with their faith in the gospel itself, that they find it hard to view the two truths as separable. It is chiefly when we have to deal with unbelievers, or perplexed and doubting inquirers^ tliat it is needful to distinguish clearly two succes- sive stages in the growth of a reasonable faith ; which must rest, first of all, on the person of our Lord, and his supernatural mission and Divine authority ; and will afterwards embrace the inspiration of the written 200 THE BIBLE AND MODEllN THOUGHT. word and tlic Divine authority of all the Scriptures, both of the Old and the New Testament. The previous chapters refer to the evidence of Chris- tianity itself, in contrast to that more open infidelity which rejects the Divine authority of the Lord Jesus. Those which follow relate to the further truth, assailed by a lax and semi-infidel school of professed Chris- tianity, that the Old and New Testaments are, through- out their whole extent, the words of the Holy Ghost, and authoritative messages from the Grod of truth to the children of men. It seems desirable, then, to offer here ti brief outline of the general course of argument, by which our faith in the Gospel and in the Scriptures is sustained ; since a laborious effort has lately been made to involve the whole theory of Christian belief in confu- sion and darkness. " Whoever would take the religious hterature of the present day as a whole, and endeavour to make out clearly on what basis revelation is supposed by it to rest, whether on authority, on the inward light, on reason, on self-evidencing Scripture, or on the combina- tion, of the four, or of some of them, and in what pro- portions, would probably find that he had undertaken a perplexing but not altogether profitless inquiry."^ Such is the contribution to the guidance of young and unsettled minds, which foims the close of nearly eighty pages of disquisition on the " Tendencies of Religious Thought in England," and of a review of the whole series of English works on the evidences of Christianity. But if all past arguments by ilie ablest men, on behalf of Christianity, are inconsistent and almost worthless by the admission of clergymen and Christian divines themselves, the sceptic may well conceive that his cause is gained, and that the Gospel of Christ is worn 1 Ess. vi. p. 329. CUlllSTlANlTY AND WRITTEN REVELATION. 201 out and effete in tlie view of its own official guardians. The idea, also, of sending young students to the rehgious literature of the present day, " as a whole," in order to solve for themselves a difficult problem of theology, which their teachers seem to abandon in despair, is much the same as it would have been, at the beginning, to reconunend a dip into chaos in order to guess out the nature of the coming world. A healthy eye is required for perfect vision. But it is not needful, happily, to know whether our sight depends on the cornea or the crystalline lens, on the aqueous or the vitreous humour, or "on a combination of the four, or of some of them, and in what order and proportion," before we can discern and rejoice in the presence of a beloved friend. A humble heart and a healthy conscience will lead the most unlettered Chris- tian to a firm belief in the Gospel, and in the truth of the sacred Scriptures, though he may never have cared to settle what share each kind of evidence may have had in this result. Such inquiries may be objects of lawful curiosity to spiritual anatomists ; and when humbly and cautiously pursued, like the dissection of the natural eye, may enrich our Christian theology Avitli deeper views of the Divine wisdom ; but they leave the actual processes of spiritual vision wholly unaltered. The simplest cottager and the most subtle metaphysician stand here on the same level ; and those who are quite unable to describe the steps of the mental process may be able to discern with fullest certainty " the light of the knowledge of the glory of God, in the face of Jesus Christ."^ The steps, by which the early disciples were led to Christian faith, stand out before us in clear and full relief in the New Testament. The miracles of our * Note E. Theories of Keligious Belief. 202 THE BIBLE AND MODEEN THOUGHT. Lord and liis Aj^ostles made a first and simple appeal to their senses and to their hearts. The most thought- less who witnessed them were arrested by the sight ; and all who were not withheld by strong Jewish pre- judice, or the debasing power of idolatry, owned at once the finger of God, and the authority of His chosen mes- sengers. But wliere strong Jewish prejudices had to be overcome, the next appeal was to the word of pro- phecy. The Apostles reasoned with their Jewish adver- saries out of their own ScrijDtures, " opening and alleg- ing that it was needful the Christ should suffer, and should rise again from the dead, and that this Jesus " whom they preached " was indeed the Christ." There was thus a striking example of wliat has been aptly termed in physical science, " the Consilience of Induc- tions." The results separately derived from the occur- rence of many miraculous signs, and from the j^lain ful- filment of many predictions, in which the prophets had announced a despised, rejected, and suffering Messiah, led to the same conclusion ; that Jesus of Nazareth, though rejected and despised by his own countrymen, was truly the Christ of God. This truth was further established, to the early believers, by miraculous gifts which many of them received; by their own joyful experience of the pardoning love of God in Christ ; by their consciousness of the sanctifying power of the Gospel in their own hearts ; and by the abundant fruits of it, which they witnessed daily in the lives of their fellow believers. This order, so clear in the case of the first discij^les, is varied a little, and only a little, in the case of modern disciples, born amidst the institutions and traditions of a Christian land, who have the Bible placed in their hands from childhood as the word of God. First of all, they receive the Scriptures with a human faith, on the autho- CHRISTIANITY AND WRITTEN REVELATION. 203 rity of parents and teacliers, and of an almost unani- mous assent of good and wise men, whose conversation and writings are like an atmosphere of Christian thought that surrounds them on every side. When they read the New Testament, they find in every page the signs of its general truth and credibility. They are thus brought at once, face to face, withiji view of the same double evidence of miracles and proj^hecy, which com- pelled the fiiitli of the early discij^les. The miracles of our Lord and his Apostles stand revealed to them with full historical jDroofs of their reality ; and the agreement between Jewish proj^hecies and the life and death of Christ is no less clear, than when appealed to by the apostles themselves in the synagogues of Palestine, and of the Roman world. Distance of time, in the case of the miracles, may have made the impression less vivid, but cannot affect the substantial force of the argument. But there are further confirmations of the gospel, not shared in those early da}^s, from the fulfilled prophecies of the New Testament, in the spread and permanence of the gospel, the overthrow and ruin of the temple, and the long-lasting desolation and dispersion of the Jewish people. When once the truth of Christ has been practically embraced, still fuller evidence dawns upon the heart of believers. They feel the power and comfort of its gracious promises. Their conscience, taught by the Spirit of God, responds with delight to the beauty of its Divine morality. They perceive, with growing clear- ness, the harmony of its doctrines both with the wants of man and with the attributes of God. And thus their experience, while they sulmiit with reverence and hu- mility to the Divine messages, illustrates the truth of their Lord's promise : — " To him that hath shall be given, and he shall have more abundance ;" while bor- 204 THE BIBLE AND MODEEN THOUGHT. derers and theological triflers, who keep the truth at arm's length from their own conscience, for subtle and curious speculation alone, fall too often under the edge of the solemn warning : — " From him that hath not, even that he hath shall be taken away." There may be a stage, however, in the course of serious and thoughtful inquirers, in which their faith in the gospel itself is unshaken, but their traditional trust in the Bible is sorely tried, and in some measure gives way. With growing thought and knowledge, difficulties once overlooked start out into sudden relief, and may seem for a time to be unsurmountable. They have been accustomed from childhood to hear the Bible spoken of as one book, the word of God. They examine it more closely, with the help of classical knowledge since acquired, and see that it consists of many works, in two different languages, written by many diff'erent writers at remote periods of time ; and bears traces, in every part, of its human authorship, — in language, grammar, idiom, style, historical features, and even in some cases, in its doctrinal tone. They have been ac- customed, again, to hear it defined by entire freedom from all error. But they find that errors of translation, errors of transcription, and readings probably defective, though comparatively slight in amount, are admitted almost universally by w^ell-informed scholars to exist within its pages, so that the ideal perfection, once ascribed to it, seems to disappear. They find numbers, here and there, wliicli seem plainly to need emendation ; and details, which appear more or less contradictory, in different accounts of the same event. Quotations from the Old Testament in the New do not seem always strictly to correspond, even in words ; and the meaning- assigned, in some cases, does not appear on the first glance to be the natural and genuine interpretation. CHRISTIANITY AND WRITTEN REVELATION. 205 Again, large portions in some of the books of the Old Testament seem to be useless details, that bear no stamp of Divinity, and are difficult to reconcile with the theory of a direct, miraculous, and all-perfect inspiration. These perplexities, and a few others of the same kind, when they first dawn upon the young Christian student, without destroying or perhaps sensibly weakening his f\iith in the Gos|)el itself, may easily induce him to imitate the Alexandrian mariners, when they cast out the wheat into the sea with their own hands, to lessen or avert the danger of total shipwreck. The plenary inspiration of the Scriptures may then be regarded as a superstitious accessary, a needless incumbrance of the Christian faith ; which, in an hour of peril, out of love to that ftiith itself, it may be needful to sacrifice and cast away. A looser faith in the inspiration of the whole Bible, when it arises from such causes, ought not to be con- founded with a settled spirit of unbelief. It may be only like froth and scum on the surface in a process of fermentation, by which a passive and merely traditional belief is passing into a more powerful, active, and living faith, the new wine of the kingdom of God. Men may profess to believe the whole Bible without an effort, when they have never appropriated or applied one single truth. But when some doctrines, or some books, begin to live intensely in their hearts, others may seem by contrast to be like dead branches, which it would be a gain, rather than a loss to prune away. Faith in Christianity, and a belief in the inspiration of the whole Bible, may either be confounded together and identified, or too widely dissevered. One error involves some degree of superstition. The other pro- duces a dim and misty faith, with some tendency to a dangerous rejection of the truth of God. 206 Till-; BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. The words of Christ in the gospels, the facts of His death and resurrection, and the great truths and doc- trines derived from tliem, might have been transmitted by oral tradition alone, or by honest writers under no especial guidance and control of the Spirit of God. The truth, in this case, would have been earlier and more largely mingled with partial error. It must have been liable, in a few generations, to a more rapid de- generacy and corruption, and the means of later refor- mation and recovery would be almost wholly removed. Still, facts have shown that even the presence of in- spired writings has been no full safeguard, either to Jews or Christians, against the entrance of wide and mischievous corruptions of the faith. They simply exclude one inlet of error, but many others still remain. Humble and earnest hearts, in all ages of the church, have often found the way of salvation by oral teach- ing alone ; and those discourses of Christ, or words of his Apostles, which have formed the chief nourishment of Christian faith and piety, might plainly have been recorded and preserved by honest witnesses, even though the rest of the works in which they were pre- served bore many traces of infirmity and error. The relation between the writings of the New Tes- tament and the Gospel they reveal resembles closely that of the Apostles to the Lord who sent them forth. All of them bore the stamp of His authority and com- mission. Two or three of them are rather prominent in the course of the history. But of the greater part little more is recorded than their names alone. All seem to delight to veil themselves in obscurity, that the name of their Lord and Master may stand out in fuller reHef, Now the same remark applies to the separate books of the New Testament. All are full of one great CHIUSTIANITY AND WIUTTEN KEVELATIOX. 207 subject, Jesus Christ. But tliey speak almost nothing of themselves, and of each other. The three earlier gospels were all composed before many of the epistles, and yet these contain only two or three allusions to one of them only. No mention is made of the name of their authoi's, and there is no quotation from any of them, except one very brief clause. St. Paul himself, in his last epistle, gives no list of those he had pre- viously written, which were to be included in the canon. The four other a^^ostles give no list of the written gospels. Only one clear allusion occin-s in their letters even to St. Paul's epistles ; where St. Peter gives a highly important testimony to these writings of his brother apostle, and places them in the same rank with the earlier Scriptures, but supplies us with no catalogue of their names (2 Pet. iii. IG). Thus the New Testa- ment contains no hint that a correct knowledge of the limits of its own canon, without excess or defect, was a leading essential of the Christian faith. Such an article could not enter the creed while the canon was still unfinished, and has not been added in later times. Even the warning at the close of the Apocalypse (Rev. xxii. 18, 19), while it enforces the guilt and danger of wilfully corrupting the word of God, either by subtrac- tion or addition, directly applies to that book alone ; and it is accompanied by no list of the completed canon, so as to enrol tliis knowledge among the essentials of Christian faith. On the contrary, every church was left to acquire it, slowly and gradually, by receiving those books or epistles which were proved to be written by apostles, or had received distinct apostolic attesta- tion ; and the actual canon had its birth out of the agreement of these results in different churches. An error on this point would sim})ly leave the Christian with a less pure or less complete medium for acquiiing 208 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. Divine knowledge, but would not affect the main out- line of tlie facts of the g'ospel, or the grand and essential doctrines of Christianity. Again, the inspiration and authority of the Bible are not synonymous with entire freedom from the intrusion of the shghtest error. We cannot conceive, indeed, that messages from the God of truth should contain the least error, flaw, or contradiction, at the moment when they issue from their heavenly Source, and before their actual transmission to mankind. It seems the simplest view, therefore, to ascribe absolute perfection and freedom from error to each autograph, as it pro- ceeded at first from its inspired penman ; and this simplest view may be the truest also. But it is unwise to place the essence of the doctrine in a circumstance which is nowhere distinctly revealed, and which does not apply to the chief practical difficulty. For the autographs of the Bible have never existed together : the earliest had doubtless perished long before the later ones were written. A Bible, then, gifted with this ideal and mathematical perfection, has never been in the hands of a single human being. The Bible, which alone has been accessible to the great body of the church from the earliest times until now, is, either in whole or in part, a translation from copies of the first originals ; and possible, and even actual errors, both of copyists and translators, must be allowed to exist in its pages. The narrow limit of such mistakes is, practically, of the highest importance ; but questions of degree dis- appear, and one slight or solitary corruption of the text becomes as fatal as the most extensive or the most numerous, when once we define Bible inspiration by the negative character of entire freedom from all error. The only true and safe definition of Bible inspiration must be of a positive kind. These books are written CHRISTIANITY AND WRITTEN REVELATION. 209 by accredited messengers of God, for a special purpose, ill order to be a standing- record of Divine trutb for the use of mankind. Tliey are thus stamped throughout witli a Divine authority. And this authority belongs to every part, even in that form in which the message reaches every one of us ; until clear reasons can be shewn for excepting any portion from the high sanction which belongs naturally to the whole. There are two ways in which such an exception may arise. It may be shewn by historical evidence that such a verse, or clause, or construction, is due to wrong translation, or a defective reading, and is disproved by exact criticism, or by earlier or more numerous manuscrij^ts. Or else, the mere f\xct of a discrepancy may prove in itself the pre- sence of a slight error, though we may be unable to jDoint out, historically, when or how it first entered into the text. Such flaws, however, few in number, and chiefly in numerical readings or lists of names, cannot affect in the least the direct evidence, which affixes a Divine sanction to all the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments. But when errors are asserted to exist whicli cannot be referred, with any show of reason, to changes due merely to the transmission of the message, as when the narrative of Genesis i. is 23ronounced to be scientifically fiilse in every part, or the genealogies of the patriarchs are affirmed to be a mere disguise of national migrations, then a blow is aimed at the very root of the authority of the Scrip- tures. They are plainly degraded, from being faithful messages of God, to the level of erroneous and decep- tive writings of fallible men. Let us now turn to the other aspect of the inquiry, and see what arc the conchisions we may fairly gather from the simple fact that God has been pleased to em- body his own messages in a written form. P 210 THE BIBLE AND MODEIW THOUaHT. First of all, there is nothing accidental in the gift of written revelation. It marks the entrance of a new and remarkable era in the history of the world. Nearly three thousand years had passed, before we have any proof or sign that any Divine message was embodied in a permanent record. But when the chosen people were brought out of Egypt, the gift of a written law was plainly designed, from the first, to be one especial feature of the new dispensation. The old Mosaic economy centred in' the revelation of the Law on Mount Sinai. And this law was not only proclaimed miraculously by the voice of God out of the clouds and thick dark- ness, but it was miraculously placed on record by the hand of God himself. " The tables were the work of God, and the writing was the writing of God, graven on the tables." These tables of stone, engraven a second time by the finger of the Almighty, were afterwards enclosed in "the ark of testimony" under the mercy seat, in the most sacred recess of the tabernacle of God. But the whole series of Divine laws, enshrined in the facts of sacred history, was also from the first committed to writing at the command of God. This is taught in the ordinance of the Passover, and the later directions concerning it, which imply that a permament record was to be made for use after entrance into Canaan. It is implied, again, at the watei's of Marah, and after the gift of the manna ; and is distinctly affirmed at the time of the conflict with Amalek. " And the Lord said unto Moses, Write this for a memorial in the book, and rehearse it in the ears of Joshua, for I will utterly put out the name of Amalek from under heaven." When the sacred code was complete, just as the two tables, miraculously graven, were already placed within the ark, so this book of the law, the national code of Israel, was given to the Levites, and placed " in the side of CHRISTIANITY AND WRITTEN REVELATION. 211 the ark of the covenant of the Lord." (Dent. xxxi. 2G.) After twenty-five centuries, during which the world liad been without a written revelation, ever since the miraculous gift of the Law in flames of fire on Mount Sinai, and onward through more than three thousand years to the present day, such revelations have formed one main feature in the history of the moral government of mankind. Now if we ask the reasons of this great, change, they seem at once to suggest themselves to a reflective mind. While laws are very few and simple, and the facts which it is desired to register are also few, mere oral tradition may well suffice without any written record. Such a tradition, in early times, when confined to a small number of particulars, might be preserved and handed down with great tenacity, and even appear doubly sacred to those who were its depositaries, be- cause it was entrusted to the fidelity of their memory alone. But when facts and laws are multiplied, a written record is necessary, or the truth will rapidly be obscured and lost. There are millions who could remember twenty or thirty lines of verse, but only a few here and there who could recollect and repeat twenty or thirty thousand. Now with the lapse of time those facts of Divine providence, which it was desirable to keep before the minds of men, were con- tinually multiplied ; and, with the entrance of the legal economy, the great moral precepts were unfolded into a large variety of personal and national duties, and increased by a system of typical ordinances and cere- monial commands. These reasons, while they account for the transition from merely oral to written revela- tion, would lead us to infer that this new and higher mode of revelation, after being once introduced, would never cease to the end of time. For the facts of p 2 212 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. Providence worthy of memorial, and the precepts and promises, the doctrines and examples, based npon them, must naturally go on increasing in later genei'ations of mankind. Revelations from God to man, when reduced to writing, secure plainly a double object. They are more definite and more permanent. They are less liable to be varied, and thus gradually corrupted, by erroneous additions ; and they are also less liable to die out and be forgotten. After a season of decay and apostasy their power may be revived anew by a fresh appeal to the original documents. Such was eminently the case with the Jews in the reigns of Jehoshaphat and of Josiah, and still more remarkably on their return from Babylon. It was a feature equally conspicuous in the Protestant Reformation. This double purpose is seen in the Divine message, when the Law was rejDeated. " Ye shall not add unto the word which I command you, neither shall ye diminish aught from it, that ye may keep the commandments of the Lord your God Avliich I command you." Now it is plain that the first of these two objects, instead of being secured, would be frustrated and re- versed, if these written messages, from the very first, were loaded and disfigured by any sensible incrustation of human error. We may assume that, if God conveyed his messages through human agents, all the charac- teristics of those agents, except moral defect and false- hood, would be permitted to apjoear in the record, and thus become a further joledge of its reality and historical truth. But if tliis condescension were to extend still furtlier, so as to allow their mistakes and ignorances, their sins and follies, to stain and disfigure commu- nications which claimed to be Divine ; then the means devised to secure the permanence of God's truth CHRISTIANITY AND WRITTEN REVELATION. 213 would, SO far, exactly reverse its office, and would give permanence to error and falsehood, under the apjDarent sanction of tlie God of truth. Snch a view of the Scriptures is therefore exposed to an objection, on a jvioii grounds, which it would require no slight amount of direct evidence to overcome. A means devised by the wisdom of God to give pemianence, through all later ages, to his own truth, would be strangely diverted, so as to produce a result precisely opposite, and stereotype historical misconceptions and religious falsehood. These reasons, which apply with great force to the first gift of a Divine revelation in a written form, do not warrant any exj^ectation of a series of miracles to preserve its later transmission from every trace of care- lessness and error. Even where documents are of no special importance, the usual mistakes, in a single transcription, are comparatively few ; and the compari- son of several copies, at first hand, will enable us, almost without a shade of doubt, to restore the exact original. In the course of many successive copyings the risk of error will be slightly increased ; and it may be im- possible, after some lapse of time, to be quite certain with regard to every letter and word of the original document. But still these variations, at the worst, are of a very limited and subordinate nature. They are like straws or specks upon the surface of the writing, and do not penetrate its inner and vital texture. The same would be true, if the prophet, as a projohet, were secured from all error ; but, as a simple amanuensis, were left, like later copyists, to the natural results of his own care in recording a message felt to be of high and sacred importance. The case, however, is widely different, if errors are interwoven into the message itself. There are, then, 214 THE ]5IBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. no means by which it can be ehminated, without tear- ing the wliole to pieces, and destroying its authority. There is also, in this case, no assignable limit to the amount of error which may have entered in. The whole edifice of revealed religion would only rest upon a quicksand. No one would be able to say how much was true, how much was false ; where human corrup- tion reached its limit, and gave place to the tones of Divine truth and wisdom. Instead of stooping to the actual ignorance and blindness of man, to raise him once more into the light of heaven, such mingled messages would require almost a superhuman sagacity, to discern good from evil, and light from darkness, even in words apparently sealed with Grod's own signet. We may, therefore, well apply the question of Luther to such a view of Scripture and its inspiration, " Are we not ambiguous and uncertain enough already, without having our ambiguity and uncertainty increased to us from heaven ?" The great end, for which the messages of God are conveyed to mankind in a written fonn, seems of itself to be a pledge of their Divine perfection, and echoes back to thoughtful Christians the sayings of their Lord, that " the Scripture cannot be broken," and that " till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled." THE INSPIRATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 215 CHAPTER X. THE IXSPIRATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. The great change in the pubHc relation between God and man, inipHed in the gift of wi'itten revelation, marked the opening of a new and nobler era in the history of the world. It was attended with signal displays of the Divine power, in the plagues of Egypt and tlie thunders of Sinai, and in great and terrible works of the God of Israel. Revealed religion was now to out- grow the narrow hmits of human memory, and required a firmer and fuller record than oral tradition alone. The special acts of Divine power and wisdom, in former generations, were to be noted down, and faith- fully preserved for the instruction of every succeeding age. The great truths of religion and morality were to receive a larger development, and to be embodied in laws, and statutes, and ordinances, which required the study of a lifetime, rather than the recollection of a moment, and were to be handed down, in all their width and fulness, to many generations. All the circumstances which attended this change were such as to attest its high importance. The ten commandments, the sum and centre of the whole legal economy, were uttered first, amidst thunder, lightning, smoke, and fire, from the sacred top of Sinai, by the lips of Jehovah himself. They were twice miraculously graven on tables of stone by the finger of God, de^DOsited 216 THE 13113LE AND MODERN THOUGHT. wi til ill the ark of the covenant, in the most lioly place of the tabernacle ; and again transferred, after five hundred years, to the most holy place in the temple of Solomon. Every reason, which prompted this new form of revela- tion, seems to require us to believe that the written word of God, when first bestowed on His people, was free from all sensible intermixture of human infirmity, moral imperfection, or historical falsehood. Such, accordingly, is the view of the law of Moses, which meets us continually in the later writings of the Old Testament. All their testimonies agree in tone with the words of the Psalmist — " The law of the Lord is perfect, converting the soul : the testimonies of the Lord are sure, making wise the simple : the statutes of the Lord are right, rejoicing the heart : the commandment of the Lord is pure, enlightening the eyes : more to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much fine gold, sweeter also than honey, and the honeycomb." " Thy word is true from the beginning : every one of thy righteous judgments endureth for ever." It is needless, however, to multiply quotations from the Old Testament, to prove the high veneration in which the written Law was held by Jewish believers, and by the prophets who were also commissioned to speak the words of God to his people. The testimony of our Lord himself ought alone to be decisive with every Christian. We may apply his own words to the Jews with regard to the authority of Moses and the prophets, and say with truth, of j^rofessing Christians — If they believe not Christ and his Apostles, in their testimony to the earlier Scriptures, " neither will they be persuaded, though one rose from the dead." Let us examine some of the chief j^assages in which this deci- sive evidence is given. 1. The history of our Lord's ministry begms, in two THE INSPIRATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 217 of tlic gospels, with liis temptation in the wilderness. The event, it is plain, unless the narrative were a gross imposture, must either have heen personally reported by our Lord himself to his disciples, or made known by a sujiernatnral revelation of the Spirit of God. In either case, its details come plainly to iis with a divine sanction, even if the other parts of the gospels were nninsj^ired history. Now the main feature of this narrative is the signal honour paid by the Son of God himself to the written word. By this sword of the Spirit every onset of the mighty and subtle Tempter is repelled. " It is written," is the one reply, thrice repeated, which has power to quench in a moment " all the fiery darts of the wicked one." Even when Scripture, shortened and garbled, is used in the temptation, still Scripture is the only reply. The kingdoms of the world, and all their glory, are weighed by our Lord and Saviour against one single sentence of Scripture, one word of the law of Moses ; and they are only like dust in the balance in the eyes of him who was filled with " the Spirit of wisdom and understanding, the Spirit of counsel and might, the Spirit of knowledge and of the fear of the Lord." It is a startling lesson, which fallen sinners are slow to learn, but which stands out in clear relief in this wonderful narrative, sealed by the testimony of the Son of God — that obedience to one sentence of the law of Moses is a treasure more to be desired than all the riches and glories of the outward universe. 2. After the temptation our Lord began his jDublic ministry, and soon transferred it from Judea to Galilee, and from Nazareth to Cai)ernaum, by the Lake of Ti- berias. One main and striking feature of this whole ministry was its GaHlean theatre. This gives a tinge and colouring to almost every later allusion in the Book 218 THE BIBLE AND MODERN TIIOUGm\ of Acts. " Ye men of Gralilee, why stand ye gazing up into heaven ?" " Behold, are not all these which speak, Galileans ?" " That word ye know, which began from Galilee, after the baptism which John preached." " He was seen many days of them which came up with him from Galilee to Jerusalem, who are his witnesses unto the people." What now, by the testimony of the Evangelist, was one chief motive which led our Saviour to transfer his ministry from Judea to Galilee ? A distinct reply is given : " That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Esaias the prophet, saying, 'The land of Zebulon, . . . Galilee of the Gentiles, the people that sat in darkness saw a great light ; and to them which sat in the region and shadow of death, light is sprung up." The force of the prediction lies in the simple apposition between the especial scene of sorrow and desolation in the early stages of the captivity, and the first ajDpearance of the light and joy of Messiah's presence. Still, the link was so real and powerful, that, to fulfil this prophecy, the Lord of glory forsook Judea, and chose the shores of the sea of Galilee for the chief and most favoured scene of all his earthl}' ministry. A single sentence of the prophet, being a Divine message, had thus power to impress its distinctive character on the whole public life of the Son of God. 3. Our Lord, in the Sermon on the Mount, assumes liis appointed character as the great Lawgiver. And first, near its opening, he defines his relation to the Scriptures of tlie Old Testament in these words : " Think not that I am come to destroy the law and the prophets : I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you. Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one THE INSPIRATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 219 of these least commandments, and sliall teach men so, sliall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven : but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven." Several tilings require careful notice in this passage. And first, our Lord ratifies the trutli and sacredness of the law of Moses by the same emphatic phrase, which he applies elsewhere to his own weightiest sayings — " Heaven and earth shall pass away, but my words shall not pass away." Secondly, he extends his full sanction to every " jot and tittle " of the written law of God. Thirdly, since he addressed a Jewish audience, there can be no doubt that his hearers understood, by this " law," tlie whole Pentateuch at least, or the five Books of Moses. Fourthly, the words were spoken to remove a probable misconception, arising from a certain per- ceptible contrast of tone between that law and our Lord's own sayings. He assures his disciples that the seeming contrast was no real contradiction. His teach- ing was an expansion and su^^plement of that contained in the law of Moses, but did not abrogate it, or set it aside. Fifthly, the statement seems plainly inconsistent with the notion, that this law, as first given, in one jot or tittle, contained any real error ; or that it had con- tracted any error in its actual form, which a sincere and liimi1)le learner might not easily separate from the law itself, so as to leave the latter in its real purity. Sixthly, the prophets are included along with the Law itself in a common recognition. The tone of the whole statement, so solemnly made, is wholly adverse to the theory of an intermittent, mongrel, and imjDerfect in- spiration, which leaves part of the contents of the Old Testament to be Divine, and other parts to be the mis- taken words of fallible men. Towards the close of the discourse, a similar allusion 220 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. recurs. " Tli ere fore all things whatsoever ye would that men should do inito you, even so do unto them : for this is the law and the prophets." Here the reason given by our Lord for this simple aphorism of moral duty is dee^Dly instructive. He does not point out its agreement with instincts of natural equity. He does not rest it simply on his own Divine authority. The reason which enforces it is of another kind. It is the sum of " the law and the prophets." It concentrates the various lessons of social duty, which God had given in such various forms and j^ortions throughout the range of the Old Testament. No state- ment could more plainly imply the binding authority of the written word, of the Law and the Prophets, over the disciples of Christ as true messages from heaven. 4. The charge is given to the leper, after his cure — *' Go thy way, show thyself to the priest, and offer the gift that Moses commanded, for a testimony unto them." The quotations in the narrative of the temptation are all from Deuteronomy. But here our Lord refers to the Book of Leviticus, and to a chapter full of ceremonial details. He enforces their authority by his own command to the leper, and at the same time gives direct testimony to their Mosaic authorship. No statement could prove more clearly that, in the view of our Lord, the Pen- tateuch was of Divine origin, and still binding in its precepts on the Jewish people. Again, in his reply to the Pharisees, he says — " Go and learn what that meaneth, I will have mercy, and not sacrifice." Here he quotes a brief clause from Hosea, one of the minor prophets, appeals to it as a message of God, and ascribes the sin and folly of his opposers to their neglect of its true meaning. THE INSPIRATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 221 5. After the message of the Baptist, our Lord speaks to his discii^les as follows : — " But what went ye out to see ? A prophet ? yea, I say unto you, and more than a prophet. For this is he of whom it is written, Behold, I send my messenger before thy face, who shall prepare thy way before thee .... For all the prophets and the law prophesied until John. And if ye will receive it, this is Elias, which was for to come." This jDassage is full of attestations by our Lord to the authority of the Old Testament, as composed, from first to last, of the true sayings of God. First, he quotes from Malachi, the very latest of the prophets, and affirms that, in the coming of the Baptist, one of that prophet's predictions was fulfilled. Next, he declares that, in a certain sense, another jDrediction of the same prophet about Elias also applied to the Ba^^tist, and had a fulfilment in him. Thirdly, he implies that all the prophets were God's messengers, but that John was honoured above them, because of his nearness to Messiah, who was the great object of hope in all their messages. Fourthly, he arranges the course of Providence, not by a reference to worldly empires, but to the series of these Divine revelations, as if they formed the true key to all history. First came the Law, then the Prophets, the sequel of the Law ; and, last and greatest of these, the Baptist ; then the first days of the Kingdom of Heaven. The words imply a series of Divine messen- gers, completed by Christ himself, the great Messenger of the Covenant, with whom a new era of light and mercy was to begin. The close of the same chapter alludes to the history, in Genesis, of the overthrow of Sodom, and bears a solenm testimony to its historical truth. 0. Matt. xii. 3, 7. " Have ye never read what David 222 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUCtHT. did when he was an hungered, and they that were with him ? . . . But if ye had known what this meaneth, I will have mercy and not sacrifice, ye would not have condemned the guiltless." The appeal is here made to a simple history in the First Book of Samuel ; from which, compared with the words of Hosea, an inference is drawn that the act of his disciples was quite lawful. But there is also a reference to the law of Moses with regard to the tabernacle or temple service of the priests. Thus we have, in this one passage, a threefold testimony of Christ, that the Old Testament history is trustworthy in its facts, and a Divine record from which moral inferences may be safely and certainly drawn ; that the minor prophets are inspired Scripture, in which the separate clauses are the words of God ; and that the Law, as a whole, including evidently the whole Penta- teuch, was worthy of full confidence, so that an appeal might be safely made to its implied facts, no less than to its direct statements, as a basis for moral and re- hgious reasoning. 7. In Matt. xiii. 13 — 17, our Lord explains to his disciples the reason why he spoke to the multitude in parables, because of their spiritual blindness and indifference to the truth. He proceeds to say that the prophecy of Esaias was fulfilled in them — •" By hearing ye shall hear, and not understand, and seeing ye shall see, and not perceive." The same prophecy is after- wards applied by St. Paul, at Rome, to the same unbehef of the Jews, at the very close of the sacred history, and is there styled the voice of the Holy Ghost, It is quoted a third time by St. John in the fourth gospel, with the same reference. No testimony could be more complete, on the part of our Lord and his two apostles, that the Book of Isaiah contains the words of the Holy THE INSPIRATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 223 Ghost ; and that tlie prophecy in Isaiah vi. is a true prediction of that Jewish bhndness, wliich found its chniax in the rejection of the gospel dining the apostoHc age. 8. In Matt. xv. 1 — 9, we have another testimony to the Divine authority of the law of Moses, and of the prophecies of Isaiah. " Why do ye also transgress the commandment of God by your tradition ? For God commanded, saying, Honour thy father and mother : and, He that curseth father or mother, let him die the death." Here the commands in the Decalogue, and in the twentieth of Leviticus, are equally quoted as Divine. A broad moral contrast is also drawn between the written word, of which the binding authority is affirmed, and those Pharisaic traditions which had obscured its meaning, and practically destroyed its authority. The words of Isaiah, chap, xxix., are also quoted as being an undoubted voice of the Spirit of God. But if the Old Testament Scriptures, in any part, were purely human writings, and not Divine messages, then our Lord, by his constant appeal to them, without making any dis- tinction between them, would be guilty of the very sin he condemns so strongly in the Pliarisees, and would be included under his own censure — " In vain do they worship me, teaching for doctrines the coimnandments of men." 9. The history of the transfiguration, as recorded by St. Mark, offers another explicit testimony of the same kind. " And he answered and told them, Elias verily cometh first, and restoreth all things ; and how it is written of the Son of man, that he must suffer many things, and be set at nought. But I say luito you that Elias is indeed come, and they have done unto him wdiatsoever they listed, as it is written of him." The exact reference of these last words is not per- 224 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. fectly clear. But tliis makes the appeal of our Lord to the written word, not only with reference to his own sufferings, but those of the Baptist, doubly striking. His deeper wisdom, when contrasted with the knowledge of his early disciples, or modern half-disciples, instead of leading him to discern errors and imj)erfections in the Old Testament, only revealed to him in its pages definite predictions of specific events in distant ages, where only a dim haze might be visible to common eyes. His own sufferings were all " as it was written," and those of his forerunner wlio came " in the spirit and power of Elias," were also " as it was written of him." His words teach us distinctly to rest upon the truth of Scripture, and the certainty of its prophetic intima- tions, even where we see through a glass, dimly, and its meaning by no means stands out to us in clear and full relief. 10. The reply to the question of the Pharisees on divorce is of peculiar interest. Our Lord bears witness in it to the Divine authority of that early part of Genesis, which has been assailed of late by so many unbelieving doubts and criticisms. " Have ye not read, that he which made them at the beginning made them male and female, and said, For this cause shall a man leave father and mother, and cleave to his wife, and they two shall be one flesh ? Wherefore they are no more twain, but one flesh. What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." Now here, first of all, the very form of the appeal shows that what the Pharisees read in their own Scrip- tures, in Moses, the Psalms, and the Prophets, tliey were bound to receive as the words of God. " Have ye not read ?" This implies evidently — whatever you read in those Scriptures which you habitually receive, you are bound to regard as Divine truth, and of decisive THE INSPIRATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 225 aiitliority in all moral questions. Next, our Lord does not fall back on his own authority. He rests his answer on a decision already given. A single verse in the second of Genesis, which critical anatomists would transfer from Moses, the insj^ired jDrophet, to some unknown patcher-up of ancient documents hundreds of years later, is, in the view of Christ, a Divine statute, of binding authority to all mankind. " What therefore God hath joined together, let not man put asunder." He proceeds to adopt the statement of the Pharisees, that Moses gave the precept about the bill of divorcement ; and explains that its nature was simply permissive, and designed to lessen and restrain evils, which had their source in the hardness of their ov/n hearts. The design of the law was not to sanction capricious divorce, but to exclude a further and still more aggravated sin. 11. The actions and the teachings of our Lord during the earlier days of Passion week abound in evidence of the same truth. He sends his disciples for the colt, with the message, " The Lord hath need of him," because it was needful that a prediction of Zechariah should be fulfilled. He condemns the sin of the Jews by a double reference to Isaiah and Jeremiah : " It it written. My house shall be called a house of jjrayer; but ye have made it a den of thieves." He silences their censure of the children by a still more pointed appeal to the Psalms. " Yea : have ye never read. Out of the mouth of babes and sucklings thou hast perfected praise ? " In his answer to the question about his own authority, he accepts the principle that authority from God was required in such a message, and implies that John, like all the prophets, liad this authority. After tlie parable of the vineyard, lie makes his appeal to the written word once more. " Did ye Q 220 THP: bible and MODERN THOUGHT. . never read in the Scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected, the same is become the head of the corner : this is the Lord's doing, and it is marvellous in our eyes ? " He then reasons out the consequences of this Scriptural prophecy in the Psalm, and confirms them by a reference to two others in Isaiah and Daniel. "And whosoever shall fall on this stone shall be broken ; but on whomsoever it shall fall, it will grind him to powder." The double allusion to two prophecies re- specting Messiah is plain. " He shall be for a stone of stumbling, and for a rock of offence, to both the houses of Israel : and many among them shall stumble and fall, and be broken, and snared, and taken." Is. viii. 15. " Thou sawest till that a stone was cut out without hands, which smote the image upon its feet of iron and clay, and brake them in pieces. Then was the iron and clay, the brass, the silver, and the gold, broken in pieces together, and became like the chaff of the summer threshing floors, and the wind carried them away." Dan. ii. 34, 35. We have thus, from the hps of our Lord in this one passage, both a confirmation of the authority of three different books of prophecy, and a striking testimony to the secret unity of Divine wisdom, which runs through the whole range of these various messages of God. One verse in the Psalms is a Divine key, which expounds the mutual relation of two distinct warnings, one in Isaiah to the Jews, and another in Daniel to those Gentiles, who were long afterwards to be called in their room. 12. The answers to the Sadducees and to the lawyers are peculiarly instructive. And first, our Lord ascribes all the religious errors of the Sadducees to one source, ignorance of their own Scriptures. "Ye do err, not knowing the Scriptures, nor the power of God." He appeals to tlie record in Exodus, as being truly a Divine THE INSPIKATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 227 message. " Have ye not read that which was spoken unto you by God ?" He infers confidently the truth of the resurrection of tlie dead from a single title of God on the face of the record. " I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob. God is not the God of the dead, Ijut of tlie living." It may be added that the same reply, which put the Sadducees to silence, ought equally, among professing Christians, to silence and condemn a vast amount of Sadducean criti- cism about Elohistic and Jehovistic documents ; as if either Moses were not the author of the Pentateuch, or else the names of God were introduced by liim hap-hazard, in a strange Mosaic, according to the accidental charac- ter of materials ready made to his hand. The reply to the lawyer (Matt. xxii. 40) is not less instructive. " On these two commandments hang all the law and the prophets." Now these two j^recepts, in the eye of sound reason, are pure, essential, and im- mutable moral truth. And yet all the Law and the Prophets, our Lord assures us, depend upon them. How can falsehood depend upon pure and eternal truth ? or how can imperfect morality be any real corollary from the great commandments of perfect love ? Again, the question which silenced the Pharisees reveals in a striking manner the authority and Divine inspiration of the Psalms of David. One verse of Psalm ex. convicts them of ignorance respecting the true character of the promised Messiah. It is a Divine enigma, our Lord indirectly shews us, of which the only solution is in the great mystery of the gosj^el — the Word made flesh, of the seed of David — "of whom, as. concerning the flesh Christ came, who is over all, God blessed for ever." Thus one title of God in the Law, by our Lord's testimony, is an adequate basis for faith in the resurrection of all the faithful dead ; and another g 2 228 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. clause in the Psalms is also a sufficient evidence for that glorious truth, the Incarnation of the Son of God. 13. The parting discourse against the Pharisees abounds with proofs of the full authority ascribed by our Lord to the written word of God. The Scribes and Pharisees, while sitting in Moses' seat, were to be observed and obeyed, even while their actions were condemned. Unless the law of Moses were truly of Divine authority, such an instruction could never have been given. Their guilt lay in urging its minuter requirements, and omitting " the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, and faith." Yet our Lord does not set aside even its least commandments, but confirms them. " These ought ye to have done, and not to leave the other undone." They witnessed against themselves that they were the children of those who had killed the jDrophets. The aggravation of their guilt clearly lay in the fact that the prophets were truly the messengers of God. " Thou that killest the prophets, and stonest them which are sent unto thee," is the condemning charge against Jerusalem. In the next chapter the words of Daniel the prophet are quoted as a Divine prediction, with the caution, " Whoso readeth, let him understand." The history of the flood of Noah, and of the general destruction of man- kind, is also referred to as a solemn and undoubted reality, a warning for the days of his own return. 14. The allusions to Scripture during the time of the Passion are, if possible, still more impressive. Every step in the pathway of the Man of sorrows seems here to be guided by a chart, which he saw clearly laid down for his own guidance in the word of God. " Ye know tluit after two days is the passover, and the Son of man is betrayed to be crucified." For THE INSPIRATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. Tl'd Pie was the true passover, and the time of his suffer- ings must correspond with the typical service, which liad prefigured them for fifteen hundred years. His betrayal was to be the fidfilment of an inspired pro- phecy. " The Son of man goeth, as it is written of him ; but woe unto that man by whom tlie Son of man is betrayed : it had been good for that man if he had not been born." The type of the Nazarite was now to be fulfilled in him. " I will not drink hence- forth of this fruit of the vine, until the day when I drink it new with you in my Father's kingdom." The fear and dispersion of his disciples would be the fulfil- ment of Zechariah's prophecy. " All ye shall be offended because of me this night, for it is written, I will smite the Shepherd, and the sheep of the flock shall be scattered abroad." The treachery of Judas is referred to the truth of Scripture as its secret explanation. " None of them is lost, but the son of perdition, that the Scripture might be fulfilled." Our Lord's patient submission to his enemies was in reverence to the re- vealed predictions of the written word. " Thinkest thou I cannot now pray to my Father, and he shall pre^ sently give me more than twelve legions of angels ? But how then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be ?" The evangehst adds a brief commentary on the whole course of his betrayal : " All this was done, that the Scriptures of the prophets might be ful- filled." Our Lord's reply to the liigli priest is a quota- tion from one of Daniel's prophecies. " Hereafter shall ye see the Son of man sitting on the right hand of power, and coming in the clouds of heaven." The indignities he received were the fulfihnent of Isaiah's prediction : " I hid not my face from shame and spit- ting." The purchase of the potter's field with the price of treachery was the fulfilment of another prophecy. 260 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. " Tliey parted his garments, casting lots : tliat it might be fulfilled which was siDoken by the prophet, They parted my garments among them, and upon my vesture they cast lots." The exclamation, Eli, Eli, lama sabach- thani, was a plain approj^riation by our Lord, in the hour of his agony, of the twenty-second Psalm, as one connected prediction of his' own sufterings, and of the glory that would follow. 15. The gospel of St. Luke furnishes many other examples of this constant appeal to the Scriptures by our Lord as an authority without appeal. It will be enough to select some of the more striking, first before, and then during, the time of his passion. In Luke x. 25, we read that a lawyer stood up and tempted him, saying, " Master, what shall I do to in- herit eternal life ?" To this weighty inquiry our Lord replies at once by the question — " What is written in the law, how readest thou ?" The second reply is a confirmation of the law's authority, and a virtual quotation — " Thou hast answered right : this do, and thou shalt live." In the next chapter, the truth of the history of Jonah is afiirmed, and its typical character is declared, " For as Jonas was a sign to the Ninevites, so shall also the Son of man be to this generation." The two narratives of the queen of Sheba, and of the Ninevites, are both confirmed, and a moral is deiived from each of them. A further testi- mony follows to the Divine mission of all the prophets of the Old Testament, and a promise that others would soon be sent forth, gifted with the like authority. The words of Micah are presently quoted (Luke xii. 51 — 53 ; Micah viii 6), as a true prophecy of the divisions to be occasioned by the gospel. The prophets are again referred to, Luke xiii. 27 — 34, as the chosen messengers of Grod, and our Lord ranks himself among their number. THE INSPIRATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 231 " It cannot bo tliat a prophet perish out of Jerusalem." In chapter xvi. we have the two emphatic declarations, — " It is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than for one tittle of the law to fail : " — and again, " If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be 23ersuaded, though one rose from the dead." The short and earnest caution, " Remember Lot's wife," puts a seal of truth and inspiration on the histories of Genesis ; for it is founded on a single verse, never alluded to elsewhere in the later Scriptures for fifteen hundred years. The address to the disciples on the approach to Jerusalem is also peculiarly impressive : " Behold we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning the Son of man shall be accomplished. For he shall be delivered to the Grentiles, and shall be mocked, and spitefully entreated, and spitted on, and they shall scourge him and put him to death, and the third day he shall rise again." 16. The words of St. Luke, xxii. 37, deserve especial notice. " For I say unto you that this which is written must yet be accomplished in me, And he was num- bered among the transgressors : for even the things concerning me have their fulfilment {kuI yap ra Trept t/JLOV reAo? eX^V* Here our Lord not only applies to himself the words of Isaiah liii. 12, but gives this prediction the foremost place among the reasons why lie was content to sufier. The word of God must not fail. It would fail unless the Messiah were reckoned aijQong the transgressors^ It might seem strange and unseemly that the Son of God should submit to so deep an indignity, but the truth of God's word must be maintained at any sacri- fice— " for even the things which relate to me," the promised Messiah, the Son of God, " have their fulfil* 232 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. ment." The incarnate Son of Grod himself, by liis own testimony, must be subject to the authority of the written word, and its announcements of his own sufler- ings were laws which even He must obey. The conversation with the two disciples, after the resurrection, repeats the same lesson. " 0 fools, and slow of heart to believe all that the projohets have spoken. Were not these the things it behoved the Christ to suffer, and to enter into his glory ? And beginning from Moses and from all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the Scriptures the things concerning himself." No statement can be more clear and exj^ress than that which our Lord has here made in the first bright dawn of his resurrection glory. He tells his disciples, that Moses and all the jDrophets contained predictions of his own sufferings ; that it was the dulness of their hearts alone which hindered them from perceiving the true application ; and that this reference was so real, as to create a moral necessity, beforehand, for the Messiah to suffer the very things which he himself had suffered. In other words, by refusing to suffer, and thus to fulfil these inspired predictions, he would have forfeited his claim to be the true Messiah of God. The truth of Scripture, in its prophecies, is thus made the moral basis of the whole work of redemj^tion ; and a refusal to see the reference to our Lord and his deep humiliation in these predictions of the Law and the Prophets, is declared to be a sure proof of folly and bhndness of heart. The same doctrine forms the substance of his parting- address to his disciples in the same gosjDcl, and is rendered still more striking by its connection with the gift, then bestowed upon them, of a clearer spiritual vision. " And he said unto them, These are the words THE INSPIRATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 233 which I spake unto you, while I was yet with you, that all things nnist be fulfilled, which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the Psalms, concerning me. Then opened he their understandings, that they might understand the Scriptures, and said unto them. Thus it is written, and thus it behoved the Christ to suffer, and to rise from the dead the third day ; and that rejDcntance and remission of sins should be preached in his name among all nations, beginning at Jerusalem." Here our Lord gives his sanction to each of the three main divisions of the Jewish canon, the Law, the Prophets, and the Hagiographa ; affinns that each contained prophecies concerning him, which the Divine veracity made it needful for him to fulfil ; that these predictions included not only his sufferings which were now past, but that preaching of the Gosj^el which was shortly to begin ; and in short, that the whole Christian dispensation rests upon a moral and imperative necessity, that the w^ord of Grod in the pro- phecies of the Old Testament must inevitably be fulfilled. It is needless to quote in detail the passages to the same effect in the fourth Grospel — John i. 17, 21-23 ,• ver. 29 ; (comp. Gen. xxii. 8) ; ver. 45 ; ii. 17, 22 ; iii. 14, 15; iv. 5; v. 37-39, 45-47; vi. 14, 31-35, 45; vii. 19, 22, 23, 37-3^, 40-42; viii. 17, 18, 44, 52 ; x. 34-36; xii. 14-16, 37-41 ; xv. 25 ; xvii. 12 ; xviii. 4; xix. 24, 28-30, 35-37 ; xx. 9 — or the numerous references to the authority of the Old Testament in the apostolic writings. In the Book of Acts we have ten quotations from the Psalms, five from Isaiah, and others from Genesis, Exodus, Deuteronomy, Joel, Amos, Habakkuk, 1 Kings. In St. Paul, thirty-seven from the Psalms, fifteen from Genesis, ten from Exodus, one from Numbers, thirteen from Deuteronomy, one from Joshua, one from 2 Samuel, 234 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. two from 1 Kings, one from Job, three from Proverbs, twenty-seven from Isaiah, tln^ee from Jeremiah, from Hosea, and Habakkuk, and one from Joel, Haggai, and Malachi. In every instance the appeal to the Scriptures is made by the Apostle as to the sure fountain of heavenly truth. Their titles are. Scripture, the oracles of God, the words of the Holy Ghost. Both in the Gospels and the Epistles, " It is written," is the deci- sion for every doubt, and " Have ye not read in the Scri23tures ?" is the rebuke for every form of ignorance and error. The conclusion which every sincere disciple of Christ must draw from these sayings of his Lord and Master, confirmed by those of his Apostles, is clear and self- evident. It is summed up for us in three general declarations of our Lord himself, and two of his chief Apostles. " The Scripture cannot be broken." " All Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is pro- fitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for in- struction in righteousness." " Prophecy came not at any time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were borne along by the Holy Ghost." The flaws which have been contracted in the transmis- sion of these messages, we may infer safely from these multiplied quotations, are so few and slight, that for every practical purpose they disappear fron\ view. They may be detected here and there by a strong microscojDe of minute criticism ; but our Lord and his Apostles, in hundreds of quotations, bearing on the most vital points of doctrine, and on the most weighty facts of Old Testa- ment history, never find it needful once to allude to their existence, or to utter one caution against undue confidence in the sacred text. No contrast can be more total than between the unbelieving, flipi^ant criticisms on the Old Testament, practised in our days by some THE INSPIRATION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 235 learned men, who still profess and call tliemselves Christians, and the tone of their Divine Lord and Master, before whose judgment seat they will stand, when deep reverence for their authority led him to re- nounce all angelic aid in the hour of his sorest conflict and deepest sorrow. " Thinkest thou that I cannot now pray to my Father, and he will presently give me more than twelve legions of angels. But how then shall the Scriptures be fulfilled, that thus it must be ?" '^m THE BIBLE AND MUDEKN THOUGHT. ' CHAPTER XI. THE INSPIRATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. The Scriptures of the New Testament, from their later origin, are not capable of receiving that direct proof of their Divine inspiration and authority from the lips of Christ himself, which the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms have received in such ample measure. Since they began to be composed several years after the Ascen- sion, and the latest of them were not written till near the death of the oldest apostle at the close of the first century, they could scarcely receive a collective attesta- tion even from the apostles themselves. There is also, in the historical Scriptures of both Testaments, a remark- able reticence on the part of the writers with regard to their own especial claims. The Lord of the prophets, when on earth, amidst the wonder caused by his miracles, " withdrew into the wilderness." The sacred historians, in like manner, seem to withdraw their own personality from our view, and are content to be simple witnesses of the facts they record ; and seldom reveal their own names, or speak of any special guidance and direction of the Spirit they have received. In the case of the Old Testament histories, this silence is amply compensated by the full testimony borne to their authority by our Lord himself. But in the parallel case of the Gospels and the Book of Acts no such com- pensation could occur. We are thrown, for the proof of THE INSPIRATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 237 their Divine inspiration, upon tlie combination of three different kinds of indirect evidence — the analogy of earher Scripture, the j^romises of Christ, and scattered intimations in the later books of the New Testament. I. First, the inspiration and Divine authority of the Old Testament, established so firmly by the words and actions of our Lord himself, are a strong and almost irresistible presumption that the writings of the New Testament have the same especial character, and share the same authority. All the reasons which explain the first gift of written revelation at the time of the Exodus, in the growing number and importance of the facts of God's providence, which called for lasting memorial, and in the increasing fulness of the precepts, promises, and doctrines revealed, apply with equal or even superior force to the times of the Gospel. They form a most weighty presumjDtion, from the precedent already given, that the facts of the gospel history, and the new and higher doctrinal teaching of our Lord and his Apostles, would not be left to chance and human error for their transmission to later times, but would also be embodied in writings of Divine authority, stamped, like those of the older covenant, with the signet of heaven. The teaching to be preserved was equally complex and various. The importance of keeping it free from adulteration was at least as great as in the earlier messages of the Law and the Prophets. A written revelation was no doubtful innovation, but was now become a kind of standing law of the providence of God. The higher dignity of Christ compared with Moses, and of the Gospel compared with the Law, made its careful transmission, pure from human error, still more plaiidy expedient and desirable. So tliat every reason, drawn from the existence of the Old Testament, would seem to make it certain that inspired writings, of 238 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. similar authority, would be given to embody in a per- manent form, for the use of later ages, the oral teaching of Christ and his Apostles, and the wonderful truths of the incarnation, atonement, resurrection, and ascen- sion of the Son of God. II. This general reason, from the precedent of the Old Testament Scriptures, becomes doubly powerful from the special character of the new dispensation of the Gospel. The authority of the Law and the Prophets is continually referred to one cause — that the writers were guided and actuated by the Spirit of God. Thus we read of Moses : " I will take of the Spirit that is in thee, and will put it upon them. . . . And the Lord took of the Spirit that was upon him, and gave it to the seventy elders ; and it came to pass, when the Spirit rested on them, they prophesied and did not cease." '• And Moses said to Joshua, Enviest thou for my sake ? Would God that all the Lord's people were prophets, and the Lord would put his Spirit upon them." So David, as the sweet psalmist of Israel, describes his own messages, — " The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and his word was on my tongue." So, more generally, all the jDrophetic writings are called " the words which the Lord of Hosts sent in his Spirit by the former prophets" (Zech. vii. 12). One of the most usual forms of quotation from the Old Testament in the New is under the title, " the words " or " utterance " of " the Holy Ghost." The gift, then, of written revelation in the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms, is distinctly and exjDressly referred to the Spirit of God. But the Gospel is eminently the dispensation of the Spirit. His presence after our Lord's ascension was to be so much more fully manifested, that by comparison it is said to be vouch- safed for the first time. " For the Holy Ghost was not THE INSPIRATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 239 yet, l^ecause that Jesus was not yet glorified," John vii. 39. The Apostles were ministers " of the new cove- nant, not of the letter, but of the Spirit, for the letter killeth, but the Spirit giveth life." " How shall not the dispensation of the Spirit be rather glorious ?" Now since one main work of the Spirit, even before the coming of Christ, was the gift to the Jewish church of the written revelations in the Law of Moses, the Psalms, and the Prophets, and a much fuller manifesta- tion of his presence was distinctly promised under the Gospel, it seems inconceivable that the writers of the New Testament should not have enjoyed at least an equal measure of his Divine teaching and guidance, have been equally joreserved from error, and their mes- sages have an equal claim to be called " the words of the Holy Ghost." We must else allow that the new dispensation, while in other respects an advance on the old, in this most important and vital element underwent a strange retrocession, from the Divine to the simply human, from the teaching of the Spirit to the words of men ; from pure truth, sealed with God's authority, to a mixed and imperfect record, subject to innumerable doubts, uncertainties, and abatements. This double presumption, though it rests in part on a jyriori grounds, and our natural sense of consistency and hannony in the ways of God, is still so simple and powerful, that very few thoughtful minds can resist its force, or view it as less than decisive. It does not help us to decide what books of the New Testament sliould be reckoned canonical. But it makes it almost impossible to resist the conclusion that some inspired records would be given under the Gospel, unless we reject the truth of our Lord's own repeated testimonies to the authority and inspiration of the Jewish Scriptures. In point of fact, scarcely an example can be found among Christians 240 THE BIBLi: AND MODERN THOUGHT. of a full admission of the Divine inspiration of the Old Testament, and of a denial that the same character is shared by the Gospels and other writings of the New Testament. III. A third presumption may be drawn from the same comparison with the earlier Scriptures, to confirm, not only the authority of New Testament writings in the abstract, but the general outline of our actual canon. For the Old Testament, both by the Jews in general and by our Lord himself, is ranked under three divisions — the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms. Or, viewing the whole in the order of time, it consists of a series of histories, forming three-fifths of the whole ; of devotional and didactic books, belonging chiefly to the later part of the middle period of the history ; and of prophecies, growing out of its latest portions. The his- tories reach from Creation to the Keturn from Babylon. The Psalms and Proverbs, the chief books of the Hagio- graplia, belong to the reigns of David and Solomon. The written prophecies range from Isaiah to Malachi, or in time from Jonah to Nehemiah, through the latest portion of the history. Now the New Testament canon, as it now stands, exhibits the same threefold division, and in the same order of time. We have, first, an historical j)ortion in the Gospels and Acts, reaching from the Incarnation, the beginning of the new creation of God, to the plant- ing of the gospel in Rome, the capital of the Gentile world. We have, secondly, a doctrinal and practical portion, in the twenty-one Apostolic Epistles, all of them parallel in time with the later half of the Book of Acts. We have, last of all, one book of prophecy, the Apocalypse, dating from a little beyond the close of the sacred history, but within the limits and on the extreme verge of the apostolic age. The proportion of the THE INSPIRATION OF THE KEW TESTAMENT. 241 history to the other portions is also precisely the same in the two Testaments. This close analogy of structure is a further presumption, not only that the Gospel has its own inspired writings, but that these are represented faithfully, with no serious excess or defect, in the actual canon. I Y. The promises of our Lord to his Apostles form a second branch of evidence, which serves, in a more direct way, to prove the inspiration and authority of nearly the whole of the New Testament. Out of the twenty-seven writings of wdiich it is composed, all, with three important exceptions, have sufficient and full liistorical evidence of an Apostohc authorship. They are the writings of those divinely commissioned mes- sengei's of the gospel, one of whom has described their credentials in these words : " Truly the signs of an apostle were wrought among you, in all patience, in signs and wonders, and mighty deeds." They were fully as- tested ambassadors of the words of Christ. And this evidence must confirm their written as well as their spoken messages, and even, if possible, in a higher mea- sure. For speech is sudden and momentary, and far more liable to the intrusion of error through haste or negligence. But a written message is deliberate ; it is open to revision, if the messenger w^ere conscious of any negligence on his part, any intermission of the guidance of the Spirit of God, or any failure to abide in the light of his high commission. St. Barnabas, at least, and perhaps St. Paul, too, may have erred in feeling or judg- ment, when the contention was so sharp between them, and hasty words may have been spoken on either side ; and St. Peter erred in act, if not in speech also, at Antioch, when his brother apostle " withstood him to the ftice, because he was to be blamed," Gal. ii. 11. Two, if not three, of these chief apostles, were thus R 242 THE BIBLE AND MODEEN THOUGPIT. liable to error in act, and probably in speech, even in practical questions, closely linked with the due fulfil- ment of their message. Even in their case the consent of two or three witnesses, or the absence of protest or correction from a brother apostle, seems required for the full assurance that, in special cases, their own infirmities had not mingled with their oral teaching, and impaired the practical fulfilment of their great commission. But in these very cases no trace of human weakness appears in their writings. St. Paul's allusions to Barnabas and Mark are as full and cordial as if no dissension had ever arisen ; and St. Peter stamps with a title of Divine authority those very letters of St. Paul, which contain the mention of his own error, and of the rebuke he had justly received. So that, while a general promise of Divine guidance would apply to all the oral teaching of the Apostles of Christ, it must be conceived, from the nature of the case, to be doubly emphatic and full, when applied to writings deliberately composed by them in the fulfilment of their solemn trust. Now the promises of our Lord to the Apostles are very full and strong, both in their first commission, and in its later renewal at the time of his own death and resurrection. First, he says to them in allusion to their testimony before rulers : " It shall be given you in that same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh in you." It is true that the promise has direct reference to one kind of special emergency. But if this guidance of the Spirit was promised so strongly for a personal and temjDorary purpose, how much more must we con- ceive it to apply to an occasion still more important, when they were making provision for the lasting trans- mission of their message, and for the guidance and comfort of the whole Church in every succeeding age ! THE INSPIRATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 243 At the close of the same discourse we have the emphatic words : " He that receiveth you, receiveth me ; and he tliat receiveth me, receiveth liim that sent me. He that receiveth a prophet in the name of a prophet, shall receive a prophet's reward." By the use of this title our Lord places their authority on a level with that of the earlier prophets. And since these writings are called " the oracles of God " and " words of the Holy Grliost," we may infer that the writings of the Apostles, in the fulfilment of their commission, would claim to be re- ceived with the same submission and reverence by all the true disciples of Christ. It would not be they who should speak their own words, but " the Spirit of their Father would speak in them." The words at the last suj^per rejDeat the same promise, and include in it the gift of prophetic illumination : " When he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all truth ; for he will not speak from himself, but what- soever he shall hear that will he speak, and he will shew you things to come." This solemn declaration, that the Spirit would teach the Apostles truth only, because he would not speak from himself, but by com- mission from the Father and the Son, would lose all its practical meaning, if the Spirit left them in tlieir writings to " speak from themselves," and thus to mix an indefinite amount of human error with the messages of God. V. The higher rank of the Apostles, compared with tlie Prophets, both of the Old and New Testaments, is a further evidence of the same truth. The writings of the Old Testament prophets, our Lord himself bears witness, were the words of the Holy Spirit speaking by their mouths. He affirms, also, that a greater pro- phet than the Baptist had not appeared, and still, he that was " less " or " inferior " in the kingdom of heaven R 2 244 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. would be greater tlian he. The natural meaning seems to he, that even those prophets who held quite a secon- dary place under the Gosj^el were really higher than the Baptist in spiritual honour and dignity. So we read that " God hath set in the church, first apostles, se- condarily, prophets ; " and that Christ gave " some apostles, and some prophets," when he ascended on high, and received gifts for men. We find in the Book of Acts, Agabus, Judas, Silas, Simeon, Lucius, and probably Stephen, Philip, and others, companions of the Apostles, who belonged to this second class or order in the church of Christ. The higher authority and dignity of the Apostles, by whose hands alone the gifts of the Spirit were conveyed, is implied in the whole history. The conclusion from this comparison is simple and clear. The writings of the Prophets of the Old Testa- ment were under the guidance of the Spirit, and of Divine authority. Much more must we believe that, under the dispensation of the Spirit, the same guidance would be vouchsafed to the Apostles in their writings, since they rank still higher than the others in spiritual dignity and honour. If we receive, then, as histoiically true, the statements of our Lord with regard to the apostolic office, confirmed by the mutual testimony of the apostles themselves, then the inspiration of the New Testament, three books alone excepted, seems a clear and unavoidable inference. Accordingly, it seems that the early churches were guided mainly by this princijjle in the formation of the canon ; since the relation of Mark to Peter, and of St. Luke to St. Paul, gave their writings an indirect sanction, equivalent to iimnediate authorship by one of the apostles. A'l. In the Historical Books the character of simple testimony is most_^ prominent, and a direct assertion by THE INSPIRATION OF TIIP: NEW TESTAMENT. Ii45 t]ie writers of their own inspiration niiglit seem out of ])lace. The direct evidence cliiefly a})phes, tlien, to the two other main portions of the New Testament, the l]pistles and the Apocalyj^se. The Apostles, in the E])istles, bear witness to their own inspiration, along with that of the Evangelists, and of the Old Testament; while the Apocalypse, besides claiming Divine autho- rity for itself, puts a parting seal upon all the prophetic writing's of the word of God. In the earliest epistle of St. Paul, the first to the Thessalonians, he makes this remarkable statement. " For this cause thank we God without ceasing, because, when ye received the word of God, which ye heard of us, ye received it, not as the word of men, but as it is in truth, the word of God, which effectually worketh in you that believe." He enforces his commands to them by the declaration : " He that despiseth, despiseth not man, but God, who hath also given unto us his Holy S2;)irit." His written and spoken messages l^ear the same title, the word of God. " For this we say imto you by the word of the Lord, that we which are alive and remain to the coming of the Lord, shall not 2)revent them which are asleep." He adds, at the close, the sanction of an oath to enforce the public reading of his message. " I charge you (with an oath) by the Lord, that this epistle be read unto all the holy brethren." The same tone of Divine authority runs tlirougli the second epistle to the same church; and I1T3 adds a token at the close by which his genuine epistles might be discerned from every counterfeit that might falsely assume his name. " The salutation of Paul with mine own hand, which is the token in every epistle ; so I write." He joins together his oral teach- ing when among them, and his former letter, in the same rank and description, as " not the word of man, 'JiC THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. lilt the word of Gocl." (1 Thess. ii. 13; 2 Thess. :\ 15.) In the churches of G-alatia his authority had been .questioned by the Judaizing teachers. He is thus led to affirm it strongly in the opening verse, and indeed llirough two whole chapters. The same tone of autho- jity continues througliout the letter to the close. In 1 Corinthians we have a distinct ajopeal to the teacliers of that church, who ranked highest in their spiritual gifts. " If any man think himself to be a ]")rophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the tilings I write unto you are the commandment of the Lord." In the Second Epistle to the same church, he directly compares himself with Moses, as one who had received like authority, with a still higher message, styles himself an ambassador of Christ, reminds them, that Christ spoke by him, and that both in his letters and when present, he was entrusted with direct au- thority from the Lord for the edification of his people. In Romans he speaks of " the grace given to him that he should be the minister of Christ to the Gentiles, ministering the gospel of Grod," and of the " mighty signs and wonders " with which, in the fulfilment of the same commission, he had preached the Grospel of Christ. Both at the opening and close of the letter he associates himself with the prophets and their writings, as now fulfilling the like office, and completing and unfolding tkeir earlier messages, while no less than fifty quotations from Old Testament Scri^Dture are embodied in this one epistle alone. In Ephesians he refers them to his own letter as a proof of his " knowledge of tlie myster}^ of Christ, which in other ages was not made known, as it was now revealed unto his holy apostles and prophets Ijy the SjDirit." He sjoeaks throughout as God's mes- senger, filled with the Si^irit, and armed with complete THE INSrillATlUN OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 247 authority to utter precepts, doctrines, and promises, in the name of tlie Lord. Tlie same claim of full authority runs through the Pastoral Epistles. The glorious gospel of the blessed Jesus was committed to liis trust. ITymeneus and Alexander were delivered unto Satan, that they might learn not to blaspheme. He was " ordained a preacher and an aj^ostle (I speak the truth in Christ, I lie not) a teacher of the Gentiles in faith and verity." In the fulfihnent of this office he gave commands to the men, to the women, to the bishops and deacons, and to Timothy himself. He predicts coming evils under an express voice from the Spirit (iv. 1). He gives in succession tliirty distinct commands, referring to a large variety of ministerial duties and arrangements within the churches. He enforces these commands by an apjoeal to God and Clirist, and the elect angels, and calls liis own teaching " wholesome words, the words of the Lord Jesus Christ, and doctrine that is according to godliness." He re- peats a most solemn admonition to Timothy, " before God and the Lord Jesus Christ," to keep tlie command- ment in his epistle " without spot, unrebukeable, until tlie appearing of our Lord Jesus Christ." In the Second Epistle, the last which he wrote, he declares solemnly, in the prospect of death, that " he was appointed a preacher and an apostle, and a teacher of the Gentiles ;" and even associates his own teaching with the Old Testa- ment Scriptures, as of equal authority. " Continue thou ill the things thou hast learned and been assured of, knowing of whom thou hast learned them ; and that from a child thou hast known the Holy Scriptures, which are able to make thee wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus." YII. These testimonies in St. Paul's EjDistles are not confined to this part of the New Testament alone • 248 THE BIBLE AND MODEKN THOUGHT. They include tliree fiirtlier statements, which apply directly to tlioso books which have not apostles for their authors. 1. First, in 1 Cor. viii. 18, 19, we have a direct allu- sion to St. Luke as the writer of the gospel we possess under his name, and already honoured by the use of it amongst the churches. This early view of the text, held by Origen, and embodied in the prayers of the church for many ages (coll. St. Luke's Day) has been disputed by several modern critics, from Grotius onward, on very weak and insufficient grounds. A comparison with the Book of Acts j^roves clearly that St. Luke is the person designed. But the words " whose praise in the gospel is in all the churches," are used by way of definition, or as a distinctive title, equivalent to a personal name. There were, however, scores of prophets and teachers, whose names must have been widely known as oral teachers of the gospel. But St. Luke and St. Mark alone, amongst those inferior to the Apostles, were honoured to compose a written gospel; and of these St. Luke alone was well known to have accompanied St. Paul in his first entrance to Macedonia, from which country the letter was written. On this view the whole passage is clear and consistent, and the gospel of St. Luke receives here a direct sanction from the great Apostle of the Gentiles, as an honourable 2:>ortiou of the writings of the New Covenant. 2. The second passage (1 Tim. v. 18.) in a later epistle completes and confirms the evidence derived from the first. " For the Scripture saith. Thou shalt not muzzle the ox that treadeth out the corn. And, The labourer is worthy of his reward." The former clause is a quotation from Deuteronomy, or the Law of Moses ; the second is written verbatim in St. Luke's gospel (x. 7). Both of these alike are called by the TPIE INSPIRATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 249 name of " Scripture," and a^^pealcd to as decisive authority. This is more remarka))le in the second case, because they are the words of Cln-ist liiniself. Yet they are referred to by the Apostle simply as Scripture, or a saying of the written gospel, and not in tlieir dis- tinctive character as words spoken by tiie Lord himself. No fuller testimony could be given, in few words, to the inspired authority of the third gospel ; the very same which some might imagine, from tlie words of its own preface, to be more open than any other part of the New Testament to doubt and reasonable contradiction. The words are further noticeable, because they furnish a proof how early tin's gospel had acquired currency and full authority within the Church of Christ. 3. The third jDassage (2 Tim. iii. IG) affirms directly the inspired authority of the Scriptures of the Old Testament, which had been familiar to the beloved Timothy from his childhood. But there is no warrant for confining their testimony to these alone. On the contrary the expression " all Scripture," following the more general phrase " the holy wiitings," requires us to take these words in tlieir widest sense. Now this was the last of St. Paul's epistles, and all the others were written earlier ; and Timothy was present when most of them were composed, and shared in the superscri^^tion of more than one of them. Again, in the previous epistle to the same beloved companion, the gospel of St. Luke has been already ({uoted imder this very name of Scripture ; and tlieir internal relations are a strong- proof that the two others, of St. Matthew and St. Mark, had been written still earlier. St. Paul had visited Jerusalem thirty years after the ascension, and the gospel of St. Matthew must therefore, without ques- tion, have been actually known to him. He had been still later at C^esarea, the Roman seaport of Judeea, 2r)0 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. for whoso converts internal evidence wonld lead us to believe that the second gospel was written ; and he was writing from Rome, to which place tradition has often referred it, and hence it is almost l^eyond a doubt that it must also have l)een known to him. If St. Matthew's gospel claimed the title of Scripture, it is plain that St. Mark's, from its close resemblance of contents and style, must have done the same. So that these words of St. Paul, addressed to Timothy, would naturally, in the view of the latter, include these three gospels, and the earlier letters of St. Paul himself. They are thus a direct association of the greater part of the New Testament with the Law, the Psalms, and the Prophets, under the common title of " Scripture given by inspi- ration of God." The testimony includes, not only the three earlier Gospels, and the other Epistles of St. Paul, but the Book of Acts also. For St. Luke was now with the Apostle, as he had been during the voyage, and at the beginning of the first imprisonment. The book closes with the mention of that imprisonment, and of its two years' continuance, but says nothing of St. Paul's re- lease. St. Luke was still present with the AjDostle when he wrote to Colosse (CoL iv. 14), but not when he wrote, still later, to Philippi, to which place he had probably returned (Phil. ii. 19, 20 ; iv. 3). It is thus highly probable, and almost certain, that the Book of Acts was written before the date of the Second Epistle to Timothy. But since it professes to be a continuation of the Gospel, which St. Paul has twice commended, and once referred to under the name of Scripture, it must evidently have been known to him, writing with St. Luke at his side, or in daily intercourse, and be therefore included in his declaration, that " all Scrip- ture is given by insjDiration of God, and is profitable for THE INSPIRATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 251 doctrine, for reproof, for correction, and for instruction in righteousness." The testimony, therefore, really applies to the whole of the New Testament, except the General Epistles, and the Gospel and Apocalypse of St. John. A^III. The two Epistles of St. Peter supply further testimonies of the same kind. First of all, the inspira- tion of the Old Testament prophets is clearly and fully affirmed. The Spirit of Christ, St. Peter tells us, " was in them, and testified beforehand of the suiferings of Christ, and the glories that should follow." Twelve or thirteen quotations from the Old Testament, or direct allusions to it as the " oracles of God," occur in the course of this short letter. But he proceeds at once to make a similar statement concerning his fellow apostles, that they had preached the gospel " with the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven," and that their gospel message was " the word of the Lord which en- duretli for ever." The mention, also, of St. Mark at the close, as the Apostle's son in the faith, if the second gospel were already written, for which we have strong internal evidence, would be an implied attestation of its character, and would agree with tlie tradition that it was written by St. Mark chiefly from materials with which St. Peter had supplied him. The' Second Epistle contains three most important passages on the authority both of the Old and the New Testaments. First, the Apostle lays down a funda- mental law for the study of the Old Testament, based on the doctrine that all was Divine. " No j^rophecy of Scripture is of self-interpretation : for })rophecy came not ever by the will of man ; but holy men of God spake, as they were moved (or borne along) by the Holy Ghost." Since all proceeded from the same Spirit, to regard them as independent human composi- 252 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. tioiis, wliicli some of late would propound foi' a first principle of true interpretation, is, according to St. Peter, a niiscliievous error. They must, on the con- trary, be compared with each other, as parts of a greater whole, if we would understand their true and full meaning. In the second passage, these inspired words of the Old Testament prophets, and the commandments of himself and his fellow apostles, are joined together, as equally binding on the conscience of Christians. The common object of botli epistles was this — " that ye may be mindful of the words spoken before by the holy pro- phets, and of the commandment of us, the apostles of our Lord and Saviour." The earlier message of the Prophets, and the later one of the Apostles, is thus equally sealed with full authority from God. The third passage is more specific, and refers directly to St. Paul's writings. " Account that the longsuffer- ins: of our Lord is salvation ; even as our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given unto him, hath written unto you. As also in all his epistles, speaking in them of these things ; which they that are unlearned and unstable wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, to their own destruction." There are here two distinct assertions, both of them highly important. First, there is a reference lo one Epistle of St. Paul, written to these Christians, and in which the doctrine that the longsuffering of the Lord was salvation was set before them. Now as Galatia is mentioned in the opening of the first epistle, and St. Peter was the apostle of the circumcision, either the Epistle to the Galatians, or that to the Hebrews, must naturally be intended by this reference. The former contains, however, no such statement as that to which St. Peter alludes ; but the latter does in several THE INSPIRATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 253 places (Heb. ii. 1-3 ; iv. 1-3; iii. 14; vi. 9-12 ; x. 23- 25, 35-39). The conclusion seems evident, that St. Peter ratifies, as the work of St. Paul, the only one of his epistles which does not bear his name, and of which the authorship has been consequently disputed, even down to our own days. Secondly, the Apostle in- cludes all the epistles of St. Paul under the sacred name of Scripture — " which they that are unlearned and un- stable wrest, as they do also the other Scriptures, to their own destruction." This testimony is the more striking and weighty, when we remember that one of these letters contains the only mention of St. Peter's fault at Antioch, and of the reproof which he received from his brother Apostle. There seems no good reason to doubt that the three first Gospels, no less than the Old Testament, are meant by the other Scriptures, with which the Epistles of St. Paul are here united ; as sharing tlic same title, and fonning along with them one harmonious body of Divine truth, perfect in its own nature, though liable to be perverted by the ignorance and rashness of sinful men. The short epistle of St. Jude, besides six or seven allusions to leading facts of the Old Testament, and one supernatural revelation, and the revival of an ancient and long-forgotten prophecy of Enoch, the seventh from Adam, seems distinctly to ratify the Second Epistle of St. Peter, as this had confirmed and ratified all the ejoistles of St. Paul. ^' But, beloved remember the words which were spoken before bv the ajDostles of our Lord Jesus Cln-ist : how that tliey told you there would l)e scoffers in the last time, who would walk after their own imgodly lusts." There seems here a distinct allusion to the words of St. Peter (2 Pet. iii. 3), with this difference, that tlie evil is predicted as near in one case, and described as present 254 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. in the otlier. And this view is confirmed by the other resemblances (Jude 6 ; 2 Pet. ii. 4 ; Judo 7 ; 2 Pet. ii. G-9 ; Jude 8 ; 2 Pet. ii. 10 ; Jude 9 ; 2 Pet. ii. 11). There is thus a series of testimonies, by which St. Paul bears witness to the canonical authority of St. Luke's writings and the two earlier Gospels, St. Peter to all St. Paul's Epistles, and St. Jude to the Epistles of St. Peter in their turn. IX. The writings of St. John form confessedly the latest part of the New Testament, and they belong to all its three divisions. They complete the historical and epistolary, and constitute alone the prophetic portion, thus binding the whole into one complete system of Divinely revealed truth. Now, first, the Gospel, besides witnessing directly to its own apostolic authorship, as the work of that chosen and beloved disciple, who leaned on the bosom of the Lord, and thus claiming, in the highest degree, the faith and reverence of Christians, bears strong indirect testi- mony to the three earlier Evangelists. For the more closely it is examined, the clearer are the signs that it is, in its outline and conception, a supplemental nar- rative ; designed to record, not merely a distinct asjoect of our Lord's character, but portions of his ministry, and especially his visits to Judasa, which had been purposely omitted in their works. These gospels, it is evident from history alone, must have been well known to St. John ; and a tacit reference to them, though an opposite statement has sometimes been para- doxically made, may be easily traced through the whole narrative. Thus i. G, refers plainly to Matt, iii., Luke iii., and its abruptness is best ex23lained by the fact that a fuller account of the Baptist's ministry was already on record. Again, i. 15 refers to Matt, iii. 11, and then expounds it by a brief and noble THE INSPIRATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 255 commentary. Joliri i. 32, 33, has a like reference to Matt. iii. 16, 17. The mention of Andrew, Simon, two other brothers, namely, James and John, Phili^D and Nathaniel, implies that the list of the twelve apostles had been already put on record ; since the Twelve are afterwards mentioned in this gospel, but their names are not given, and no account appears of their ordina- tion to their office. In iii. 19, there seems a reference to the account in St. Mark of the false witnesses. In iii. 24, is a direct reference to Matt. iv. 12, and in iv. 44, to Matt. xiii. 57 and Luke iv. 24. In xviii. 11, we have a similar reference to Matt. xxvi. 38-44 and Luke xxii. 42, and there are several others. The visits to Jerusalem, and the notice of the Passover about the time of the miracle of the loaves, dovetail remarkably with the other gospels, and serve at the same time to fix the chronology of our Lord's ministry. Thus the Fourth Gospel not only, by the mention of its author, attests its own inspiration, but confirms by an apostolic sanction those which were already in being. The Epistles of St. John supply no direct materials for the confirmation of the other New Testament Scrip- tures ; ])ut two ideas pervade them in every part, that they are the teaching of the Holy Spirit, and the truth of God. The Apocalypse, as it forms the latest portion of the New Testament, and its only book of prophecy, is pecu- harly full both in the statement of its own inspiration, and in its testimony to all previous Scripture. It opens with its high title — " the Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave unto him, to shew his servants the things which must shortly come to pass." It pro- nounces a blessing on those who read and hear " the words of this prophecy." The beloved St. John names himself as the messenger of Christ. He says that he 256 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. " was in the Spirit on the Lord's day," and that he wrote l)y the express command of the risen Saviour. " I lieard behind me a voice, as of a trumpet, saying, "What thou seest, write in a book." There was thus the same voice of authority in its pubHcation, as when the Ten Commandments, tlie earhest written message of God, were proclaimed with " the voice of a trumj^et exceeding loud," from the top of Sinai. Seven commands to write attend the seven epistles to the churches, besides the double command already given. What is not to be written is enjoined (x. 4), as well as what is to be written (xiv. 13). Twice at the close the seal is put upon the message, " Write, for these are the true sayings of God." " Write, for these words are true and faith- ful." Lastly, the truth of this message is joined with a Divine title, which is like a seal on the authority of all the earlier Scriptures. " These sayings are faithful and true, and the Lord God of the holy prophets hath sent his angel to show unto his servants the things which must shortly be done. Behold, I come quickty : blessed is he that keej^eth the sayings of the prophecy of this book." At the very close a double curse is j^ro- nounced on those who shall add to, or take away from " the words of the book of this prophecy." The Pen- tateuch and the A^DOcalypse, in this respect, stand alone. As the earliest and the latest j)ortion of written revelation, they alike contain a solemn caution against adding to them or taking away ; and stronger internal declarations, than in any other Scriptures, of their own Divine authorit}^ Nine or ten times tlie writing of the Law by Moses is affirmed in Deutero- nomy ; and twelve times, or upwards, the ApocalyjDse is declared to be written b}' the command of Christ, and to consist, throughout, of the true sayings of God. Thus the inspiration and authority of the New Testa- THE INSPIRATION OF THE NEW TESTAMENT. 257 ment, thoiigli not capable of the direct evidence given to the earher Scriptures by the hps of our Lord himseh' upon earth, has other evidence, from plain analogy with the Old Testament, from the character of the Gospel dispensation, from the revealed rank of the Apostles as even higher than the Prophets, from the direct aver- ments of St, Paul concerning his own Epistles, and his indirect testimony to St. Luke's writings and the earlier Gospels, from the cumulative testimonies of St. Peter and St. Jude, from the statements of the Fourth Gospel, and the full and emphatic declarations of the Apocalypse, like a keystone to the whole — which leaves those Christians without excuse who treat it as mingled and imperfect utterances of fallible men, and refuse to own that it is, in reahty, " the true sayings of God," the last and highest portion of that word which will assuredly judge them at the last day. 238 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. CHAPTER XII. ox THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. The Bible has been received by the Church of Christ from the first ages, as the word of God, the great foun- tain of rehgious trutli. It has thus been the object of wider, deeper, more earnest, and more assiduous medi- tation and study, than any other book whatever, and even more than all other books combined. Thousands on thousands of works have been written to unfold its truths, and apply them to the hearts of men. The amount of Biblical literature, during the three centuries since the Reformation, is prodigious. The labour of a lifetime would not suflSce for a bare perusal, much less for a careful study, of all its manifold varieties, in criticism, history, doctrine, ethics, and practical appli- cations to the religious life. It has been translated, also, into near two hundred languages, and circulated in more than fifty millions of copies ; and hence has arisen a still further amount of critical labour and learned industry, altogether unique in the history of the world. Now this immense accumulation of Biblical literature, although its source is the reverence the Bible has re- ceived for so many ages from the whole Christian world, may supply a sceptical spirit with large materials for casting doubt and suspicion on the Divine message. For this end it is only needful to view it from without, instead of within ; and to trace the multiplied diver- ox THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 259 gence and contradiction at the circumference of this mighty world of thought, instead of discerning its central unity, and its growing fulness from age to age. Man touches nothing which he does not defile. The gift of revelation to a fallen world implies that men are prone to go astray, and lose themselves in thick mists of religious error. The world was full of Gentile idolatry wlien the Gospel appeared. Its presence brought light into this thick darkness ; but it did not seal up the sources of delusion in the human heart. The course of Divine truth, in every age, has been a constant warfare, and not a triumj^hal progress ; and its fullest victories are still to come. The interjoretation of the Bible, then, has had a chequered course. Much precious truth has been unfolded ; but no slight amount of human error, in various and divergent forms, has mingled with these expositions. The stream, however pure the fountain, has become turbid in its progress, and stained by the soil from the river bed in which it had to flow. It is easy to dwell on this human side of the literature of the Bible, till the real excellency of the w^ord of God is quite obscured from our view. The trifling of mere verbal critics and grammarians, the strifes of interpreters, the dreams of mystics, the subtleties of schoolmen, the confusing influence of the menial parallax in ten thousand minds of different ages, countries, and modes of thought, may produce a feeling of almost hopeless perplexity. We may then be urged to cast the whole aside, as mere heaps of misdirected and useless learning ; and to commence the study anew on a simpler principle, which sees nothing more, in these inspired oracles of God, than curious and interesting specimens of religious feeling, and valuable productions of human genius, in the early vouth or earlier infancy of mankind. P 2 2r.O THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. The time is not distant, when a loud warning was raised witliin the Enghsh church against the dangers of private judgment, and the maxim of Yincentius on Cathohc consent was praised as the guardian angel of Christian orthodoxy. No private Christian was reckoned able to interpret, with safety, even the simplest messages of the Bible, unless sustained and protected by a catena of authorities, and some approach to "an unanimous consent of the fathers." The pendulum seems now to have swung violently the other way. The latest voice from the same cloisters assures the youthful and in- genuous student that all the past labours of Christian divines are a hindrance, and not a help, to the attain- ment of Scriptural knowledge ; that they are stumbling blocks in his path, and not way-marks, to guide his steps in the pathway of Divine truth. He has only to renounce them, and study the Bible for himself like any other book, and he will enter more fully into its meaning than all the controversial writers of former ages put together. Now there can be no doubt that much evil has arisen from reading the Bible with preconceived opinions, and through the coloured spectacles of human systems. Christians kave thus often robbed their souls of the rich diversity of doctrine, precept, example, and all spiritual wisdom, which is found in the unforced and genuine teaching of the word of God. But there may be an equal danger on the opposite side. To despise human aids is no less dangerous than to exaggerate their value. If young students, with unfurnished minds and unprepared hearts, rush to the study of the Bible, as to that of Sophocles or Coesar, in the conviction that by their solitary research, and dealing with it as the mere work of human authors, they will outstrip at once all the divines of past ages, they will soon illus- ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 2(U trate one of its most elementary truths, that " pride goeth before destruction, and a haughty spirit before a fall." The maxim lately propounded as the master key of theology, to interpret the Bible like any other book, is one of those half truths, which have often the mis- chievous effect of entire falsehood. For the Bible is like other books, and it is unlike them. It resembles them in being the work of various human authors, whose circumstances, tastes, and habits of thought and language, tinge and colour each separate portion. But it differs from them, because it is the word of the Hoh^ Ghost, and a Divine unity of supernatural truth and wisdom animates the whole, and makes it instinct throughout with the mind of that Spirit, who " searcheth all things, yea, even the deep things of God." To insist on the former truth, and to deny the second, which is higher and more weighty, is not to simplify, but to falsify its interpretation. Unbelief is the starting point of such a mode of study, and therefore unbelief is its natural and necessary consummation. There are four main principles which form the key to the right study of the Scriptures. Two of these depend on the character of the Bible, and two others on the circumstances of those to whom it is given. We must study it intellvjenth/ and •natuvalhj^ as composed of works written by hun\{in authors, and moulded, in each part, by the circumstances which occasioned its composition. "VVe must study it reverenth/, as the in- spired word of God, endued with a fuller meaning and a deeper unity of truth and wisdom than the sepa- rate writers could supply. In the words of St. Paul, we must receive it " not as the word of man, but as the word of God, which effectually worketh in those who believe." We must read it, icitJi a direct, honest 262 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT, exercise of our own judgment on its contents, joined with prayer for the promised teaching of the Spirit. But that teacliing is nowhere promised to mere selfwill and presumption. We must read it, therefore, in the diligent use of all those helps which the providence of God may put within our reach, through the labours of the servants of Christ, the written or spoken ministry of the word of God. It is mainly by these " joints and bands " that the mystical body of Christ is nourished with Divine truth, as its heavenly food, and " being knit together, increaseth with the increase of God." Lastly, the recognition of the Bible as Divine, and full of deeper meaning than the earlier writers of it attained to know, is far from leading, as some have untruly affirmed, to endless doubt and uncertainty. On the contrary, it is the only way by which the soul can ever gain a footing on the solid rock of eternal truth. Even if we could revive, in all their first freshness and youth, which is im- possible, the thoughts and feelings of certain good but imperfect and ignorant Jewish patriots, who lived long ago, this would still leave us as far as ever from any sure knowledge of the truth of God. It is only when we read the Bible as " the lively oracles of God " and the " words of the Holy Ghost," and thus discern the outlines of redemption by an incarnate and atoning Saviour reaching through all its messages from Genesis to Revelation, from Paradj^e to the Last Judgment, that our feet are truly planted upon firm ground. We know what, and we know also in Whom we believe ; and instead of being carried to and fro with every wind of false doctrine, we grow up, with steady and continual progress, into the full unity of the faith, and of the knowledge of Jesus Christ our Lord. L The first maxim of sound interpretation is to read and study the Bible in the truth of its human character. ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 203 It is a book composed of many books, each having its own distinct author, and wearing tlie marks of its human authorship in every page. This maxim, in one of tlie recent Essays, is a nucleus of truth, around which liave crystaHized many and dangerous errors. But the trutli itself is not the less important, and needful for the Christian student to bear in mind. There is a mechanical view of Bible inspiration, which shuts out, and practically denies, the human element in its composition. It reduces the whole pro- cess, so mysterious, and possibly so various in its nature, by which the Spirit of God overruled and guided the sacred penmen, to one dull monotony of mere verbal dictation. In its rigour this has seldom been held by theological writers, at least of late years ; but whenever stress is laid simply on the result of the inspiration in writing, irrespective of the thoughts and feelings of the sacred writers, there is a close approach to this view. An element, which is made unimportant, and quite superfluous, is in reality set aside. But in popular Christianity, this is the view entertained, wherever traditional orthodoxy and spiritual idleness make a league together. To realize the human features of the books of Scripture, and through them to reach the full sense of its Divine unity, requires patient diligence and persevering thought. It is much easier and simpler to receive all simply as tlie word of God, and then to expound it by our own preconceived tastes, feelings, and habits of thought ; without caring to inquire into its original meaning, or to realize those aspects of it, which carry us out of ourselves, and place us amidst the wonders of Providence in distant ages. The simple truth is, that in reading the Bible we cannot get rid of a human element. We may fail to apprehend those which properly belong to it from the 264 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. character and circumstances of the sacred writers them- selves ; but we are sure, in this case, to replace them with others, borrowed from our own circumstances and mental associations. To travel out of ourselves, and to rise above ourselves, are the first steps in attaining the mind of God. We cannot know God in his absolute Being, but only as revealed, and revealed in his word. Even in his word, we cannot apprehend the Divine elements, except through the human. We must pass out of ourselves, first of all, into sympathy with the " holy men of God," by whom the Scriptures were written ; and, through communion with their testimonies, thoughts, and feelings, must rise into fellowship with that Spirit by whom they spoke, and that Lord to whom they all bear witness. All systematic theology, all conventional phraseology, and all limited and local forms of Christian experience, tend to contract an element of unreality in their use of Scripture, which can only be remedied by a perpetual return to the living fountains. The student, who would retain the sim- plicity of faith, must so far obey the advice to " transfer himself to another age, imagine that he is a disciple of Christ or of Paul, and disengage himself from all that follows." He must have no theological " theory of in- terpretation, but a few rules guarding against common errors," His object must be " to read the Scripture with a real and not merely a conventional interest ; to open his eyes, and see and imagine things as they truly were," For just as it was through the human actions of our Lord, his hunger and thirst, his fasting in the wilderness, his sleep on the pillow, his tears over Jerusalem, that his Divine glory slowly revealed itself to his first disciples, till they saw it to be " the glory of the Only Begotten of the Father ;" so it is through a more vivid sense of tlie human elements of the Bible, ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 265 that we rise most safely and surely to the sense of its Divine unity, its wondrous fertility of goodness, wisdom, and love. When we lose sight of these elements, it runs the risk of being mechanized and degraded into a mere school-book, or a string of texts without order or cohesion. It is only as they are restored and come fully into view, that we realize it as one vast scheme of revelation, overarching, like the bow of heaven, all the six thousand years of the history of the world. ^ II. The Bible, then, must be read and studied, first of all, as a collection of authentic human writings, through fifteen centuries, from Moses to the beloved St. John. This will add new life and freshness to the fulfilment of the Cliristian duties of Scripture reading and meditation. But must we read it as a merely human work? Must we forget or deny, because it had various human writers, that the whole is due to one higher Author, the revealing Spirit of God ? This is the great question really at issue between the Christian Church in all ages, and a limited number of modern critics, who aspire to represent the progress, and really herald the predicted unbelief, of these last days. Must we, with " Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit," condemn the practice of bringing together texts, " a whole millen- nium apart," in illustration of doctrinal or practical lessons; though justified by the clear example of St. Paul, and of our Lord himself ? Or shall we not allow that, amidst the human diversity, a Divine unity reigns in these sacred Scriptures ; because every part is the word of that God, to whom all his works are known from the beginning, and with whom a thousand years are as one day ? This, in brief, is the main question at ^ Note D. The Human Element in Scripture. 266 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. issue, and one to which it becomes every Christian to give a clear and distinct reply. In the first place, the principle which an unbeliev- ing criticism would cast aside is laid down in the New Testament itself, as the first and most essential law of Bible interpretation. St. Peter, in that Second Epistle, which would-be critics reject as spurious, but one sentence of which far outweighs, in solid worth, all their disquisitions, propounds this doctrine in the plainest and most emphatic terms. " Knowing this Jirst, that no prophecy of Scripture is of self-interpretation ; for prophecy came not at any time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." The reasoning here is simple and easy tcT under- stand. TJie liia tTTcXvai^, or " private interpretation," denotes the construction of each separate jDortion of Scripture by itself alone, as if it formed a complete whole, j)roceeding from some human author. This is a false view of its nature. It is one out of many messages of the Holy Ghost. It is one component in a great series of utterances of Divine truth, from Adam and Enoch down to the last of the Apostles. To attain its full meaning and purpose, therefore, it is absolutely needful to bear in mind its true chaiacter. Read it merely as an independent voice of man, and you will fail to interpret it aright. Read it as one out of many messages, given by the same Holy Spirit, though under -special circumstances, and with features due to the character of the messenger he has chosen, and you have a key to its true and just interpretation. We must, therefore, exactly reverse the false maxim which has been lately propounded, and affirm, on the authority of the inspired Apostle, that " illustration of one part of Scripture by another must ?iot be confined to writings ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 267 of the same age and the same authors, far less to the same author in the same period of his hfe." It is not true, in spiritual any more than in natural astronomy, that the planets move in orbits wholly independent, that they exercise no mutual influence, and have no common law of relation to that central Sun of righteous- ness on whom they absolutely depend. But this great truth, which rests firmly on the au- thority of the inspired Apostle, is confirmed still more fully by the sayings of our Lord himself, and the constant practice of all the writers of the New Tes- tament, We have been told that " the new truth in- troduced into the Old Testament, rather than the old truth found there, was the conversion and salvation of the world." ^ This is a corollary which follows un- avoidably from a purely human view, in which we interpret the Scripture " like any other book ;" that is, with a stedfast refusal to own in it the presence of a Divine element, or the real voice of the Spirit of Grod. But this view, however gentle the phrase in which it may be conveyed, really gives the lie direct to our Lord and his Apostles. Their constant, em- phatic testimony is, not that they were putting new truths into the Old Testament, or palming on it a new sense foreign from its genuine significance ; but that they simply imfolded its true meaning and reference, when the Spirit of Christ in the prophets " testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glories that should follow." Those who reject this constant doctrine of our Lord, and of the whole New Tes- tament, may be learned and ingenious speculators in Christian literature ; but it is hard to see in what sense they can be disciples of Christ, while they con- tradict the Lord of glory in one main and conspicuous ' Essay vii. p. 406. 263 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT, part of his teaching, on which his claim to submis- sion and reverence is made, by his own hps, to depend. *' Had ye beheved Moses, ye would have believ^ed me ; for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words ?" " 0 fools and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets have spoken ! Ought not the Christ to have suffered these things, and to enter into glory ? And beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded to them in all the Scrip- tures the things concerning himself." He, whose name is the Truth, did not, in the hour of his resurrection, enact the part of a spiritual juggler, and foist a reference to himself into texts, of which the true meaning was wholly different ; in order, by this pious lie of repre- senting the " new truth introduced " as "the old truth of the New Testament," to effect the conversion and salvation of the world. The supposition is little short of a monstrous blasphemy. No, he rebuked the blindness of his disciples ; who, like many modern critics, could not see, and were too foolish to believe, what those Scriptures really contained. He opened their understanding, to see the landscape which was there already, but which the scales of their spiritual ignorance had previously concealed from their view. Then all was plain to their opened eyes and quickened hearts; and through reproach, affliction, and martyr- dom, they bore witness to Christ in the midst of malicious adversaries, — " saying none other things than those which the Prophets and Moses did say should come ; that Christ should suffer, and that he should be the first that should rise from the dead, and should show light unto the people and to the Gentiles." (Acts xxvi. 22, 23.) The same great truth, which is confirmed by the uniform consent of all the writers of the New Testa- ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 2G9 ment, and by the plainest sayings of our Lord himself, lias also a negative proof in the confusion and perplexity of those critics, who venture to contradict it, and cast it aside. If the Old Testament be in truth the word of God, it must be clear that no consistent explanation of it can be given on the contrary hypothesis, that it is a series of purely human writings. Our Lord was a Jewish peasant ; but whoever strove to account for his words and works, on the hypothesis that he was a Jewish peasant only, must have plunged himself at every step into contradiction and absurdity. Even the officers of the Pharisees were forced to own, " Never man spoke like this man ;" and unbelievers, under the momentary impression of his miracles, were led to con- fess— " This is of a truth that Prophet that should come into the world." Now the case is j^i'ecisely similar with the Scriptures of the Old Testament. A learned school of naturalist critics have laboured to expound and analyse them on the negative view of their character. And what is the result of labours, conducted on such principles ? The authenticity and integrity of the Books of Moses, of the Prophecies of Isaiah and Daniel, of Joshua and Judges, in short, of all the main portions of the Canon, in spite of the full external evidence in their favour, melt away and disappear. The facts, as they stand, will not agree with the hypothesis, and must be tortured and transformed, in order to obtain some decent show of consistency. That holy and perfect Law, honoured both by our Lord and his apostles, and all the prophets, as the gift of God by his servant Moses, and placed from the hour of its completion beside the ark of the cove- nant in the holy of holies, has to be dissolved into a cento of fragments, a patchwork of imaginary documents, which the names of the Most High God are profaned in 270 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. order to describe, due to some unknown and obscure compilers in the time of tlie kings. The very first chapter of Genesis must be degraded into a piece of un- scrupulous guess-work by some " Hebrew Descartes or Newton," who aflfinned in tlie dark w^hat he had no means of knowing, because he had not been trained in the modesty of modern science ! The blessing of Jacob on his sons is turned, from a sacred prophecy, into a legendary fiction of the time of Samson — in other words, into a manifest lie. The blessing of Moses, in Hke manner, is transferred to some mendacious author in the times of David or Solomon. The Book of Judges is turned from plain history into a new and singular Epos, of which the only poetical feature consists in the substi- tution of false dates for true ones. One half of Isaiah's prophecies are wrested from the author to whom all antiquity, and the words of our Lord and his Apostles assign them, and are referred to Baruch or some apocry- phal hand, to make the task rather less unmanageable of stripping them of all their prophetic character. In the same way the writings of the beloved Daniel, re- ferred to by our Lord as the words of " Daniel the pro- phet," and a23propriated and applied to Himself in the most solemn act of his public testimony before the high priest, are turned into a base imposture of the time of the Maccabees ; that prophecies plainly Divine, if genuine, may be expounded as meagre summaries of past history, which have been impiously disguised by a preface of angelic visions, in order to make the imposture more complete. Now these results, however hateful and abominable in the eyes of the devout Christian, are only the natural fruits of that negative criticism, which labours to expound the Old Testament as a series of merely human writings. The Divine element in them, ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 271 wherever it comes plainly to light, must then he got rid of by some critical violence or other. And this violence reveals itself by endless inconsistency and vacillation. The false witnesses against the authority and divinity of the written word frame successively plausible hypotheses, in which charges of untruth are expressed or implied, " but neither so doth their witness agree together." Mythicism and naturalism, supple- mentary hypotheses, crystallization hypotheses, docu- mentary hypotheses, a two-fold, a three-fold, a four-fold, a five-fold authorship, have all been applied to the Pen- tateuch alone, but still the witness does not, and will not agree. Many picklocks have been tried in turn, but tlie wards are obstinate. Those who refuse to see in the word of God a Divine authorship, are compelled to set aside Moses, Isaiah, and Daniel ; but they cannot tell liow to replace them, or frame any consistent view of tlie human authorship, which will enable them to ex- punge the miracles and prophecies, and thus to reduce tlie whole to the level of common history. Let us take one or two examples, in detail, of the general truth. The Bible begins with a professed nar- rative of the creation of the world, and the first forma- tion of man on the sixth day. Interpret like any other ])Ook, and one of two conclusions must follow. We liave here either an open imposture, or a supernatural revelation. A " Hebrew Descartes or Newton," who, in total ignorance, should guess for himself what might have happened before the first man was in being, and then publish it as part of a Divine message, would simply prove himself a profane and dishonest liar. Thus, at the outset, every middle hypothesis is swept away. AVe must either interpret the Bible by moral rules, un- like those applied to any other work, or choose at once between branding it as a vile imposition, and accepting 272 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. it as Divine. But when once accepted as a Divine message, the attempt, by a series of critical artifices, to weed out of it all supernatural elements, is a course no less irrational and senseless than profane. Let us take one other instance — the three verses in Genesis, Psalms, and Hebrews, which refer to Mel- chizedec. On the humanist view, the first of these was a mere accident in the contents of some " Elohistic document," an early " monogram" on Chedarlaomer, which happened to get inserted by the last compiler of the Pentateuch. The verse in Psa. ex. 4, which in- troduces the name of Melchizedec in an oath ascribed to Jehovah, must have been a mere poetical fiction of David or some unknown writer, who ventured to take the name of God in vain, and ascribe to him a solemn oath of which the writer knew nothing. The whole chapter, again, in Hebrews, must be a piece of laborious trifling, in which the weightiest conclusions are based on the premise of an accidental omission of names in Genesis, and a mere fiction of the Psalmist ; while the forms of reasoning are abused to give an appearance of argument, where there is nothing more than the wildest caprice of fanciful interpretation. And still the upshot of this accident in Genesis, this profane fiction in the Psalmist, and this capricious folly in the Apostle, is to bring out one of the noblest utterances of Christian doctrine, and one of the most cheering messages of comfort and promise to the weary heart. " Wherefore he is able to save them to the uttermost that come to God by him, seeing he ever liveth to make intercession for them. For such a high priest became us, who is holy, harmless, undefiled, separate from sinners, and made higher than the heavens For the law maketh men high priests which have infirmity ; but the word of that oath, which ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 273 was since the law, maketli the Son who is perfected for evermore." Is such au hypothesis credible ? Can we believe that such glorious issues of truth and hohness, such beautiful and lovely forms of comfort, hope, and promise, are the results of chance and caprice, of profane fiction, and childish folly ? Now let us reverse the picture, and contemplate the same passages in their true light. " All Scripture" from Genesis to Revelation, " is given by inspiration of God." In every part " holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." To this revealing Spirit the remotely past and the remotely future are equally open, for " known unto God are all his works from the beginning," and " the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, even the deep things of God." It was the Holy Spirit, who, more than three thousand years ago, guided Moses, in his inspired narrative, to make this brief mention of Melchizedec and his blessing on Abraham, to omit purposely all mention of his father, mother, or genealogy ; and to introduce him suddenly into the scene as a mysterious person, a priest of the Most High God, standing above the father of the faithful in dignity and honour, aloof and alone. It was the Spirit, nearly three thousand years ago, who taught David to give the title of Lord to his own son, as a pledge of Messiah's Divine glory ; and revealed to him that oath of God concerning this unborn son of David, which could never else have been known — " The Lord sware and will not repent. Thou art a priest for ever after the order of Melchizedec." It was the same Holy Sj^irit, who, eighteen hundred years ago, taught the Apostle to expound to the church the significance of the original history, two thousand years after it had occurred, in which the silence concerning Melchizedec's parentage and genealogy rendered him a type of the T 274 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. heavenly priesthood of the risen Son of God ; to unfold the meaning of the oath in the Psalm, as the prophecy of a higher priesthood than that of Aaron, which the true Messiah would fulfil, and over which mortality had no power ; and, last of all, to apply the whole in a glorious message of comfort to the Church of Christ. And it is the same Spirit who now, in these our own days, has caused these his own words, by his wonderful Pro- vidence, to be diffused in millions of copies, and in countless languages, throughout the tribes of the earth ; and then applies them, by his secret j^ower and grace, to quicken the faith, and cheer the hearts, of millions of believers, by the vision of their Great High Priest, who intercedes for them perpetually before the throne in heaven. III. Another question must now be answered. Pri- vate judgment, there can be no doubt, must be exercised, with prayer and humility, by every real student of the word of God. A mere blind reception of the dicta of human authority, without thought or personal in- quiry, is a superstitious counterfeit, and widely different from real Christian faith. But is it the wisest and safest course, in the acquirement of true Scriptural knowledge, for every novice to start anew ? Ought he to approach the Bible, like Sophocles or Plato, as a human work, to be mastered by " the plain meaning of words and tlieir context alone," and to discard all the Christian writings of the last eighteen hundred years, and all the criticism and theology to which they have given birth, as a mere incubus and troublesome burden, which must be wholly cast aside, in order to gain insiffht into the true meanino' ? Such a view involves a strange inversion of the lessons of humility and true wisdom. The contempt for human helps in the knowledge of ON THE INTERrRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 275 Scripture may assume two opposite forms, one of intel- lectual pride, and the other of fanatical presumption. It is hard to say which is the more dangerous. The former neglects or denies the promise of the Spirit, and pro- fesses to rely on human industry alone. The latter abuses the promise of the Holy Ghost, in order to justify a neglect of helps which he himself has graciously pro- vided for the people of Christ, and to disguise a rash confidence in the hasty and unripe conclusions of one's own private understanding. The Bible is a rich treasury of Divine truth. But the nature and purpose of this record, as designed for the instruction of the Church in every age, requires the truth to be given in its most condensed form. It is perfect for the object for which it was really given, but not for other objects for which distinct and collateral provision was also made. One of the chief of these is the expansion of the truth contained in the Scriptures, and its application to the varying circumstances and characters of individuals, and to the multiplied changes and experience of tlie whole Church of Christ. For this end a living ministry was expressly ordained, both under the Law and the Gospel, and its importance for the instruction and guidance of believers is commended in the strongest terms. A nursery full of seeds does not exclude, but requires, the labour and care of many gardeners, if its own purpose is to be really fulfilled, and countless landscapes are to be adorned with the fruits of autumn and the flowers of spring. The Bible is such a spiritual nursery ; and the answer of the Ethiopian eunuch to Philip's inquiry, — " How can I understand, except some man shall guide me " — expresses the usual law of God's Providence in the use of human agents and ministers, to convey the clear knowledge of its truths to their fellowmen. T 2 27G THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. It would be most unwise, it is true, for the youthful student to begin his course by collecting a cumbrous apparatus of human authors, instead of coming directly and simply to the words of Scripture, with the honest desire to learn from them their true meaning. Such a plan would hedge up |^his way with thorns, and render very difficult any real access to the truth of God. But it is hardly less unwise to imagine that he will advance most safely and rapidly by rejecting all the labours of critics and theologians, and relying on his own skill and industry alone. Theology is the first and noblest of the sciences. The Bible supplies the materials, in rich variety, by which alone that science can be at- tained. But it needs much patient thought, much meditation on Divine things, the comparison of spiritual things with spiritual in prayer and humility, in order to " wax ripe and strong " in the knowledge of Christ, and to pass out of spiritual infancy into the firm in- telligence of full manhood, or the ripened wisdom of the " fathers in Christ." Where, in the providence of God, other helps are denied, it may be hard to assign a limit to the Christian light and wisdom, which may be attained by solitary meditation on the Scriptures alone. But such circumstances, and such a Baptist- like calling, are exceptional and rare. In most cases it is either laziness or pride, which leads a young Chris- tian to dispense with the aid derivable from human teachers and writings, and either heresy or great spiritual barrenness is the only result which can be expected to follow. Direct meditation on the word of God ought ever to take precedence of the study even of the best liuman critics or commentators. Direct comparison of truth with truth, and Scripture with Scripture, far more than a perusal of the soundest system of divinity, must be the basis of a living and ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRirTURE. 277 real theology. But contempt for tlie aid of tlieological writings is always an iinliealtliy sign, whether it arises from the mere self-conceit of intellectual pride, or dis- guises itself under a veil of spiritual phrases, and a claim to a simple dependence on the joromised guidance of the Spirit of God. It is not tlie lazy or the self-con- ceited, but the humble and diligent, to whom tlie pro- mise belongs of being guided by teaching of that blessed Spirit into all truth. ly. The question with regard to the single and douljle or triple sense of Scrijoture, its types and sym- bolisms, and real or supposed hidden meanings, is far too wide to enter upon at the close of this chapter. But a few remarks seem required, on that charge of total uncertainty, which has been brought against the whole mass of received biblical interpretation. " The book," it is asserted, " in which we believe all religious truth to be contained, is the most uncertain of all books, because interpreted by arbitrary and uncertain methods." Is this a true and just accusation ? The heart and conscience of every devout and intelligent Christian will answer, at once, that it is a monstrous inversion of the truth. No doubt if we collect in one mass all that has been written on the Bible, in criticism, commentary, and controversy, for eighteen hundred years, and seek to winnow out all the chaff of error, ignorance, heresy, and folly, we may be almost choked and stifled by its vast amount. But tliis is due to the immense variety of the Biblical literature, reaching through so many ages and countries of the world, and encountering a thousand tendencies to delusion and error in the hearts of men. If we take, on the one hand, those views of Christian doctrine and duty which tens of thousands of humble and earnest disciples are receiving daily from their study of the word of God, tliougli tinged and 278 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. coloured, here and there, by the influences of education, jDcrsonal feeKng, and local or ecclesiastical tradition ; or single out those works of theology which have formed and moulded the main current of our Christian Htera- ture, there will be found a great and even marvellous unity, both in the simpler outlines of Divine truth, and in its fuller and more scientific development. The im- pression of complexity, disorder, and confusion, of which such comjolaints are made, and which are used to terrify the young students into a total rejection of Christian theology, is like the result which would be produced, if we were to collect all the mistakes of astronomical theories and calculations, from the time of the Chaldeans downwards, mingling them with all the dreams of astrology, and then should advise the young astronomer to reject all instruments, and all mathematical theories of the solar and starry systems, with the copious accumulation of facts in so many ob- servatories, and to betake himself, with the naked eye alone, to the direct study of the heavens. This would be no progress into clearer light, but a backward plunge into childish ignorance again. Astronomy is the most certain of all the sciences. But this certainty is not gained by resting in the first impressions of the senses on the motions of the stars ; but by using them and mul- tiplying them by assiduous observation, increasing their accuracy by instrumental aids, and thus rising through them, and beyond them, to a knowledge of the true system of the starry universe. The same law applies to Christian theology. It cannot be gained by neglecting the letter of the Scrip- tures ; but it will never be reached by a superficial, self-confident approach to them, in the neglect of all aid from Christian teachers and guides, as human writings to be scanned by critical industry alone. The ON THE INTERPRETATION OF SCRIPTURE. 279 Bible is the most certain of all books, and its theology the surest and highest of all sciences, when it is read with prayer, with humility, with perseverance, in de- pendence on the promised teaching of the Spirit of God, and in the use of all the varied helps which He has provided for his Church, comparing spiritual things with spiritual, and searching for heavenly wisdom as for hidden treasure. And this certainty rests upon the firmest ground, the direct promise of God himself given to every humble and sincere inquirer — " If thou criest after knowledge, and liftest up thy voice for under- standing ; if thou seekest her as silver, and searchcst for her as for hid treasures, then shalt thou understand the fear of the Lord, and find the knowledge of God." 280 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. CHAPTER XIII. *" ON ALLEGED DISCREPANCIES OP THE BIBLE. The apparent discordance between different statements in the histories of the Bible has often been made a powerful objection to the doctrine of its inspiration. The subject is one which naturally branches out into many details, impossible to compress within narrow limits. I shall, therefore, in the present chapter, con- fine myself chiefly to a few general remarks on some of the main difficulties which have perjDlexed the minds of many inquirers, and obscured their faith in the Divine authority of the word of God. 1. Every word of God is pure, and, when it proceeds from its Divine source, must be free from all error. Such is the instinctive conviction of every devout and intelligent mind. On the other hand, the Bible is not strictly and absolutely free from all error, in the shape in which it actually reaches the great majority of its readers. Translations, however trustworthy, are not completely perfect. The transmission of the text, by copyists, may introduce a small amount of deviation from the first original. In so large a work, numbers and names in the genealogies are peculiarly liable to suffer from successive transcriptions. It is thus ad- mitted fully, by all well-informed critics and divines, that the inspiration of the Bible does not require or secure theoretic and mathematical freedom from error, ON ALLEGED DISCREPANCIES OF THE BIBLE. 281 wlicu it readies the great bulk of its readers, and fulfils its great practical object as a revelation to mankind at large. Slight errors of transmission and translation may intrude, and have intruded, without destroying its authority and inspiration, or detracting in any per- ceptible degree from its practical worth. 2. Some writers, starting from this admission, have been disposed to proceed a step further. While ad- mitting, perhaps, an ideal perfection of the Divine messages, before they are clothed in words, they sup- pose them to contract a degree of error and imperfec- tion, as soon as they are embodied in human language. The substance of the thought or doctrine is owned to be Divine, but all the details, the phrases, the form, the historical circumstances, are supposed to be liable to mistake and partial falsehood. In this way all diffi- culties, arising from apparent contradictions and his- torical discrepancies, are, in their judgment, easily and entirely removed. In the Gospels, for example, har- monists are rebuked for striving to establish an agree- ment which does not exist, and for refusing to see numerous contradictions between the different narra- tives ; when they ought rather to have owned freely this human imperfection in the evangelists, and only to have seen in it a proof of their honesty, and of the sub- stantial truth of the message so variously given. This view, however simple and plausible it may appear at the first glance, is open to two grave and insurmountable difficulties. First, it evacuates the force of all those passages in which our Lord and his Apostles appeal to the written word, not only in the mass, but even in separate clauses, reason ujion the force of single words, and affirm that "it is easier for heaven and earth to pass, than for one tittle of the law to fail." And next, it seems to annul, to a great extent, 282 THE BIBLE AND MODERN TIIOUGJIT. the main purpose for which the messages of God were recorded in a written form. This purpose was evidently to secure at once the purity and the j^ermanence of revealed truth, which, in mere oral tradition, is liable either to be corrupted by false additions, or to fade away into gradual oblivion. Now, so far as human error was permitted to intrude into the original writing, this object would be precisely reversed. As far as this intrusion extends, error would be imposed with the sanction of truth on every later age, would receive a wider currency, and acquire a greater permanence than it could otherwise have attained. This view, then, of an intermittent, imperfect in- spiration, which would leave room for an undefined amount of historical error, and maintain a substantial truth of doctrine alone, removes seeming difficulties by abandoning the double evidence, a priori and a posteriori, from reason, and from the express testimony of our Lord, on which the doctrine itself depends. It must therefore be, in almost every instance, a mere landing-place, either in the departure from traditional faith into an entire rejection of the Bible, or in the upward progress to a fuller and firmer accejDtance of its truth, and of its entire authority over the consciences of men. 3. Let us inquire, then, whether the difficulties which have seemed so formidable to some critics and divines, retain their force on a closer examination ; or whether they are not really phantoms which disappear before a rigid and exact inquiry. Here, first of all, it is needful to get rid of an am- biguity, by which the true question has often been obscured. Discrepancy may be used in the sense either of simple divergence or of positive contradiction. Differences of the former kind can create no real diffi- ON ALLEGED DISCREPANCIES OF THE BIBLE. 283 ciilty. When two or tliree inspired accounts are given of the same general series of events, tliere is no reason, but quite the reverse, why one should simply repeat the other without any variation. By this means, in reality, nearly the whole benefit of a double and triple testimony would be lost. It was a maxim of the law that " in the mouth of two or tliree witnesses every word should be established." But to fulfil this law, it is needful that the testimonies should be really distinct. Some partial divergence in the details recorded, or in the moulding of the narrative, is plainly desirable, and almost essential, that this main object of a plural testi- mony may be fully attained. It is only such divergence as implies a direct and real contradiction, or the partial falsehood of one statement, which can furnish a real argument against plenary and complete inspiration. 4. Again, one statement of the true doctrine of inspiration is found in those words of the Apostle, that " Grod at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past to the fathers by the prophets." Here three truths are contained, with a gradation in their im- portance, which complete the true and full idea of Divine inspiration. First, it was God himself who spake by the pro2)hets. The messages are truly and properly the words of Grod. Next, " he spake by the proi^hets/' not by copying machines, but by living men, who were also " holy men of God." (2 Pet. i. 21.) This teaches us that the human Acuities of the messengers were not superseded, but fully employed. St. Luke wrote after having gained " perfect information of the facts from the beginning ;" and St. Paul's epistles were written " ac- cording to tlic wisdom given unto him." The first phrase excludes a lax and partial inspiration ; and the second, a mechanical dictation, in whicli the natural and spiritual endowments of the messengers, instead of being per- 284 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. fected, are set aside. Thirdly, it was " in many parts and many modes or forms." One feature in the Scrip- tures, thus prominently stated, is the freedom and variety of the types or moulds in which various portions of it are cast. There is here implied the retention, in each case, of special and individual characters arising from the form of the communication — as history, psalm, proverb, or prophecy, — and also from the distinct position of every writer. The diversity arising from the human authorship is recognised as one part of the truth, side by side with the unity of their common character as being alike the messages of God. But this principle will clearly have the fullest application to parallel histories ; since here the distinctness of concurring tes- timonies must be one chief object implied in the very form of the revelation. Sameness would defeat one main purpose for which the parallel histories were given. In these cases, of which the chief instances are Kings and Chronicles in the Old Testament, and the four Gospels in the New, it is most reasonable, even on the view of their plenary inspiration, to expect the fullest measure of diversity, consistent with the general sameness of the narrative, and with the avoidance of positive con- tradiction. 5. The Scriptures, again, are a selection of truth in its most condensed form, in order to suit their purpose as a comprehensive and permanent record, which, if it became too voluminous, would fail of its main object, and cease to be generally accessible. This character runs throughout the whole of the Bible. Within one volume of moderate size we have a sacred history, ranging through four thousand years, copious patterns of devotion, proverbs of wisdom, sacred dramas, medi- tations on human hfe and its vanity, prophecies of the events of distant ages, four biographies of our Lord, ON ALLEGED DISCREPANCIES OF THE BIBLE. 285 a brief and full history of the apostolic churcli, and various letters containing an ample outline of Christian doctrine, duty, and experience. The contrast between the brevity of Scripture and the ample material out of which the selection is made, is expressed at the close of the fourth Gospel. " And there are many other things which Jesus did, which, if they should be written every one, I suppose that even the world itself could not contain the books that should be written." So, in the last book of Scripture, the prophet, in one case, is expressly restrained from writing what he has seen and heard, while in other cases a repeated com- mand to write is given him. Now this remark sets aside at once a frequent source of false reasoning and critical illusion. The silence of a sacred historian about certain facts is no proof, and even no presumption, that they were unknown to him. It is quite enough to account for their absence, if they did not fall within the special scope of his message. To take one instance, it has often been said that St. Mat- thew knows nothing of Joseph's original home being Nazareth, and that St. Luke knows nothing of the flight into Egypt, or of the visit of the wise men. There is no warrant whatever for either statement. Silence is here no proof of ignorance ; and the range of the narrative of each writer is no reasonable measure of the extent of his knowledge. None of them professes to write all that he knew. The last of them affirms the exact opposite in the strongest terms. It is clear, from the fourth gospel, that St. Matthew must have been present at the resurrection of Lazarus, and still the name never occurs in the first gospel. A similar remark aj)plies to the two others. Tin's great miracle belonged to the visits to Judtea, which are systematically left out in the earlier accounts of the 286 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT.' Galilean ministry. So, again, the mission of the Seventy must have been well known both to St. Matthew, St. Mark, and St. John, who make no allusion to it whatever. In like manner, St. Matthew's special object, wMch was to show the fulfilment of the prophecies in the person of Christ, made Bethlehem, his predicted birthplace, the natural starting-point in his statement ; while the historical character of St. Luke made it equally natural to record the place where Mary received the promise of the incarnation, and to explain how a decree of the Roman emperor led to the temporary removal to Bethlehem, and thus was the means of securing the fulfilment of Micah's prophecy. 6. Once more, the truth of history does not preclude, in its own nature, all variety in the order of arrange- ment. Events, it is true, can only happen in one suc- cession ; but all history implies a grouping of actions and discourses by a reference to other links than those of sequence alone. The two main laws of history are these, that events shall be grouped together according to the intimacy of their connection, and that each group shall be placed as nearly as possible in the order of time. The larger and fuller the groups that are formed, the wider will be the deviation from a single chronological series. And thus histories often become less strictly chronological, as the historian dis- cerns more clearly the causes of events, and has the skill to arrange them by a deeper law than that of mere sequence in time. All discrepancies, then, in the gospels, which consist only in differences of arrange- ment, are of no force to imply contradiction or false- hood, unless the true order of occurrence has, in both cases, been plainly affirmed. 7. Historical statements, again, have something which they assert, and something else which is merely pro- ON ALLEGED DISCREPANCIES OF THE BIBLE. 287 bable inference, but will commonly be infeiTecl in tlie absence of fuller evidence. Eticli of them is like a planet, with its soHd nucleus of fact, and an attached atmosphere of probable conclusions. Let two planets come into contact, and the mass will be unaltered, but their atmospheres will be completely changed, and melt into one. So, when two testimonies concur, though equally true, each will usually modify the conclusions that would have been drawn from the other, while it stood alone. We might conclude, for instance, from Num. xvi., that Korah, Dathan, and Abiram all perished with their families ; but Num. xxvi. 1 1 corrects this hasty inference, for it tells us plainly that " the chil- dren of Korah died not." From Matt. xxi. 18, 21, we might easily suppose that the fig-tree cursed by our Lord withered at once under the eyes of the disciples ; but from St. Clark's account it is plain tliat a day and night intervened before the result was noticed, and led to that impressive conversation. Again, from Luke ii. 39, we might infer that the return to Nazareth was immediately after the legal rites had been performed ; but we find from St. Matthew that the flight into Egypt came between. In each case there is no real contra- diction. We have only to correct, by fuller evidence, natural but improved inferences from the original statement. There is contact, but no collision. The atmospheres only are altered, and two sets of mere in- ferences, that were incompatible, have been harmonized together. When these truths are borne in mind, there will be left only a few discrepancies, comparatively, in the pages of the Bible, which bear any signs of involving a real con- tradiction. It would be needless to trouble ourselves, in these cases, to discover probable or possible modes of reconciliation, from any inherent importance of these 288 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. variations. They aiFect the practical worth of the Bible as little as floating specks in the air can lessen the brightness of the sun at noonday. It is simply the proneness of men to find excuses for escaping from the authority of God's messages, and the reverence due to the clear and full statements of Him whose name is the Truth, which give importance to the inquiry. It should ever be remembered that the authority of the Scriptures over the conscience of the Christian does not dej)end on their reaching us in a form abso- lutely free from the least trace of error, or on our ability to decide the exact point in the course of trans- mission, where any slight error, if proved to exist, has found entrance. It depends on the fact that these are the words of prophets and apostles and evangelists, messengers whose commission has been ratified by the voice of Christ himself, or by signs and wonders, and supernatural gifts of the Spirit of God. This authority attaches directly to their whole contents, and must belong to every part, till we have some direct and positive reason to except it from the rest ; whether because it can be shown to deviate from the original text, or because it involves some form of provable inaccuracy and contradiction. This negative evidence, also, can only serve to j^nme off the particular text or passage, where such a contradiction is found ; unless the cases were so numerous, and so inwrought into the texture of the work, as to make it unreasonable to refer them to a corruption of the copies, or to some momen- tary negligence, at the first, in recording a perfect Divine message. It would require a volume to enter in detail into the various cases in which a charge of inconsistency has been brought against the Bible histories. I will con- fine myself to a brief notice of those which have been ON ALLEGED mSCREPANCIES OF THE BIBLE. 289 alleged by two very different authorities, and different schools of thought ; first, in the Seventh Essay, whicli seems almost entirely to set aside all the authority of the Bible as the word of God, and a fountain of certain truth ; and secondly, in Dean Alford's able work on the New Testament, where a lax and lowered view of in- spiration is joined with a firm and full maintenance of all the great outlines and doctrines of the Christian Faith. I. The following are the chief grounds alleged, in the Seventh Essay, for refusing to the evangelists the cha* racter of " perfect accuracy or agreement." 1. First, one supposes the original dwelling-place of our Lord's parents to have been Bethlehem, another Nazareth (Matt. ii. 1, 22; Luke ii. 4). Eleven or twelve pages in Strauss's " Leben Jesu " are occupied with a laborious development of this objection. This difficulty arises solely from a neglect of the fifth previous remark. St. Matthew says nothing about Bethlehem as " the original dwelling place " of Joseph and Mary, but introduces it simply as the place where Jesus was born. Nay, on looking closely, we have a clear sign that he did not regard it as the original dwelhng-place. Why else should the mention of it be delayed till the visit of the magi, and not given at once on the first mention of Joseph and his vision ? Why not have said, " When his mother Mary was es- poused to Joseph at Bethlehem," if Bethlehem, in the first passage as well as the second, were supposed to be the true scene of the occurrence ? The argument from Matt. ii. 22 is equally destitute of real force. For tlie natural conclusion that Joseph and Mary would draw from the signal wonders at Bethlehem, and from their own views of the expected Messiah, would make them infer that Judea, and the city of David, were the proper u 290 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. place for the education of the infant Jesus. This is confirmed by John vii. 42, which shews the popular impression to have been precisely what Matt. ii. 22 implies in the mind of Joseph, that Bethlehem was not only to be the birth-place of Messiah, but also the scene of his life before his public work began. 2. " They trace his genealogy in two different ways." This is the old difficulty, which has been so often answered. When we remember that our Lord's birth was supernatural ; that he had a real mother and a reputed father; that the genealogy by his reputed father, which would naturally be assigned to him, though his in a legal and improper sense, was not that by which he really took on him our nature, but that he was " man of the substance of his mother," and of her alone ; the presence of two distinct genealogies, one improperly his, but properly of Joseph, and the other improperly Joseph's, but his in strictest pro- priety, instead of a real difficulty, is in direct harmony with the great doctrine of the Incarnation. 3. " One mentions the thieves' blasphemy ; the other has preserved the record of the penitent thief." Two steps are here wanting, to form a real contra- diction. First, if St. Matthew had distinctly affirmed that each of the two malefactors had blasphemed our Lord, this could not prove an after-repentance on the part of one of them to be impossible and untrue. We might then have expected some allusion to his own more recent offence ; but it would not be essential for St. Luke to mention every word of his penitent con- fession. In the next place, St. Matthew does not make the statement separately concerning each of the two thieves, any more than each of the passers-by, or each of the chief priests, the scribes, and elders. He describes the conduct of three classes, using in each ON ALLEGED DISCREPANCIES OF THE BIBLE. 291 case the same plural tenn. In the two former cases, where tlie individuals are many, no one infers that the general statement belongs separately to each individual. Of thousands who passed by, there might be only a few who nsed the words, " Thou that destroyest the temple, and buildest it in three days, save thyself." The same is probably true of the chief priests, scribes, and elders. The rest of the class, even by their silence, were involved in a common guilt, and included in a common description. The case of the two thieves may have been, and probably was, exactly similar. The malignant conduct of three classes, the multitudes, the chief priests and scribes, and the malefactors, are given in St. Matthew ; and the exceptions of remorse and pity, the wailing of the women, the people who beheld and smote their breasts, the confession of the penitent thief, the half hidden under-currents of natural or godly sorrow, are recorded by St. Luke. There is thus unity of character in each account, and a real consistency between them. 4. " They appear to differ about the day and houV of the crucifixion." This objection may be answered in the words of another essayist, that " if it be merely one of appearances, and not of realities, it can teach us nothing." An objector, who states his difficulty in this manner, cannot be very sure of his own ground. In what sense do they " appear to differ " as to the day ? No event could be more deeply graven on their memories. In none could a mistake of the day be, in itself, more incredible. They all refer it to the Friday in the week of the Passover. The supposed difference is not in the day of the Crucifixion, for the weekly cycle is fixed and certain, but in the week-date, that year, of the Jewish Passover. Even this diversity, I believe, is an " appearance " and not a reality. The u 2 292 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. misunderstanding of one text in the fourth gospel is the only reason for supposing that it contradicts the consenting evidence of the three others, which all re- present Thursday as the evening of the Paschal supper, and Friday as the holiday or great festal day. The difficulty about the hour is equally an appearance. For a comparison of John xviii. 28 ; xix. 14, with the few incidents between them, seems decisive in favour of Townson's view, that the hours in St. John date from midnight, like our own ; and on this supposition all the statements agree fully with each other. 5. " The narrative of the woman who anointed the Lord is told in all four, but each has more or less con- siderable variations." It is here assumed that the event, in all the four Grospels, is the same. But the account in St. Luke differs in every particular, except the anointing only. It was in a city of Galilee, while the other was in Judsea, in the village of Bethany. It was before that circuit of Galilee, at the close of which our Lord began to speak in parables ; and the other was a few days before the crucifixion. The woman, in one case, was a notorious sinner ; in the other, the sister of the mistress who entertained our Lord, and of one of the guests who sat by his side. The motive, in one case, was gratitude for special sins forgiven ; and in the other, for loving intimacy, and a brother raised from the dead. The objector, the objection, the reply, the promise, are all entirely distinct, and even plainly incompatible. Even the parting words alone, " go in 23eace," which prove the woman to have been a stranger in the party, and could never have been applied to Mary in her sister's house with Lazarus at the table, are enough to prove that the two events are wholly different. When the blunder of confounding them has been rectified, the three accounts of the later anointing at Bethany have ON ALLEGED DISCREPANCIES OF THE BIBLE. 293 no contradiction whatever. There is only some uncer- tainty, whether St. John has placed it a little earlier, or the two others a little later, than its exact time. The latter opinion seems rather more probable, since it forms a parenthesis in both Gospels ; but either view implies no real contradiction. These are the selected examples of inaccuracy in the Gospels ; and there is not one of them, when fairly examined, which justifies the least charge of real con- tradiction. But we are instructed to make a catalogue " with the view of estimating their cumulative weight ; since it is obvious that the answer, which might be admitted in the case of a single discrepancy, will not be the true answer, if there are many." Here there is a neglect of the principle in the third of the previous remarks. Discrepancies, in the wider sense of tlue word, are not contradictions. On the contrary, a real diversity to the full . extent that truth will allow is one essential feature of the gospel narratives. It is the only way by which they could fulfil the main purpose for Avliich the history was given in this form, so as to satisfy the legal requirement — " In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established." For auto- mata, however high the influence that directs their movements, are not, and cannot be, witnesses. This supposes an intelligent person, who uses his own senses, consults his own memory, and describes or narrates occurrences which he has seen, or which have been told him by others, from a point of sight peculiarly his own. We have just seen six or seven discrepancies, involving no single case of contradiction. Multiply such cases a hundredfold, and the truth of the Scrip- tures will remain unimpaired by their " cumulative evidence." II. The same general hypothesis, of partial inaccuracy 294 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. and contradiction in the gospels, has obtained of late a wider currency through Dean Alford's valuable work, in connection with a reverent and Christian tone of thought, and critical labours worthy of high esteem. The high reputation of the author, and the extensive use of the work among theological students, appear to justify a few remarks in this place. If the view be supported by strong evidence, there would be a sinful want of candour in refusing to accept it through any fear of consequences, since truth alone is safe, and error of all kinds is dangerous. But if the reasoning is misty and obscure, and the view a groundless con- cession, without evidence, to superficial criticism, it must be like a dead fly in precious ointment ; and some caution against its acceptance, even on such authority, belongs clearly to the object of the present work. 1. The real discrepancies, according to this able writer, " are very few, and nearly all of one kind. They are simply the results of the entire independence of the accounts. They consist merely in different chronological arrangements." 'Such are the transposi- tions of the passage to the Gadarenes, Matt. viii. 28 ; Mark v. i. ; Luke viii. 26 ; and the difference of position of the incidents in Matt. viii. 19 — 22 ; Luke ix. 57 — 61. The way of dealing with such discrepancies has been twofold. Enemies of the faith have recognised them, and pushed them to the utmost, often attempting to create them where they do not exist. Equally un- worthy of the evangelists has been the course of tliose who are called the orthodox harmonists. They have usually taken upon them to state that such narratives do not refer to the same incidents, and so to save, as they imagine, tlie credit of tlie evangelists, at the expense of common fairness and candour. " The fair Chris- tian critic, with no desire to create discrepancies, will ON ALLEGED DlSCRErANCIES OF THE BIBLE. 295 candidly recognise them where they unquestionably exist. ... If the arrangement itself were matter of Divine inspiration, then we have no right to vary it in the slightest degree." (Prol. pp. 12, 13, 19.) There is here, I think, no little confusion of thought. First, accounts written under the common guidance and especial control of the Spirit of God, cannot possibly be " entirely independent." Such a description, rigor- ously taken, excludes inspiration altogether. It makes them of self-interjDretation, because they have come solely by the will of man ; and would set aside their higher character, as parts in one harmonious and Divine scheme of revelation, in which " holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." Next, differences of arrangement involve contradic- tion and error, only in cases where every event is fixed by clear notes of time, or where the writer has pro- fessed his purpose to adhere throughout to the exact chronological succession. But this does not apjDly to the case of the Gospels. St. Luke is the only one who expressly states his purpose to write h-aOe^i]^, or " in order," and we have clear proof that in the whole Book of Acts, and at least one half of the Gospel, the design has been fulfilled. The inversions that have probable evidence belong mainly to St. Matthew, and except perhaps in one or two instances, wherever there is like- lihood of such an inversion, there is no direct note of the true sequence in time. Thus in Matt. ix. 2, the words, " And behold," may very well introduce a new incident, though its true date, as we learn from the two other gospels, was before the return from Gadara. The idea that inspiration would forbid an historian to arrange his materials, except by mere sequence, like the writer of an almanac or annual register, has no show of reason .or common sense in its favour. Events 296 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. have other laws of connection than simj)le sequence, and narratives, whether inspired or uninspired, have other ohjects to fulfil than those of a table of chronology. In the First Gospel there seems a plain reason for a partial departure from the strict order of time, in order to bring together, early in its course, two or three cardinal discourses of our Lord, the Sermon on the Mount, and the commission of the Apostles. No one has a right to alter the arrangement of the Gospels as inspired narratives ; but no one has a right to assume, invariably, that the order of mention was conceived by the writer to be the order of time, and then to impute falsehood and error to the words of inspiration, because of an assumption destitute of all reason. The censure which has been freely thrown, here and elsewhere, on the orthodox harmonists, is due mainly to some mistiness and confusion of thought. If these harmonists advanced their own conclusions as abso- lutely certain, and not merely as the most probable view at which they were able to arrive of the true succession of the events, they would be worthy of real blame. But this the best and wisest of them have not done. On the other hand, it is no slight inconsistency, into which some critics who censure them have fallen, to maintain that distinct narratives are not really incon- sistent, and still to decry, one by one, every possible alternative of their harmony, as strained, improbable, and incredible. This clamour against harmonies is, in reality, a slight infusion of the mythical theory, which has tainted unconsciously the views of some critics, otherwise orthodox and sound. If our Lord's life be a reality and not a fiction, then all the events in the four gospels must have had a real sequence in time. The four narratives, if they furnish materials, on the one hand, for a full conception of our Lord's spiritual ON ALLEGED DISCREPANCIES OF THE BIBLE. 297 character, furnish tlicm, also, for a definite biographical outline in the true order of succession. It may not he easy to attain the full ideal conception, or the precise historical reality, but we may approach to each of them. The limit, on either side, is a perfect doctrinal Christ- ology, and a j^erfect chronological harmony. But if we aim at one, and proscribe and defame all attempts to reach the other, then we sacrifice the historical reality of our Lord's life to the spiritual idea, and are taking the first step towards the Straussian or mythical pole of infidel delusion. 2. "It is more consistent with the fair interpretation of the text, to suppose that Matthew himself was not aware of the events Luke i. ii., and wrote under the impression that Bethlehem was the original dwelling place ; certainly, had we only his gospel, this inference would be universally made." Now, since it is owned that his narrative contains " nothing inconsistent" with St. Luke, this supposition implies no contradiction. It would rather j^rove a special control of the Spirit of God, whereby the writers, though in partial ignorance, were still kept from all real inconsistency. But the inference has really no warrant but a superficial view of the history. Once let us realize the natural effect of the special revelations on the minds of Joseph and Mary, and compare them with the popular view of Micah's prophecy, as including the education of Messiah, no less than his birth (John vii. 46), and the need of a fresh message to induce a removal to GaHlee will appear perfectly natural. In fact, the opposite view really implies that St. Matthew invented the incident in ii. 22. For if the foct of Joseph's original residence at Nazareth is consistent with his need of such a message from God, then the Evangelist's knowledge of the fact must be equally 298 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. consistent with his statement, that such a message was given. 3. "As the two accounts now stand it is wholly impossible to suggest any satisfactory method of uniting them : whoever has attempted it has violated probability and common sense. On the other hand, it is im- possible to say that they could not be reconciled by a thorough knowledge of the facts themselves. If St. Luke had seen St. Matthew's gospel, or vice versa, the variations are utterly inexplicable ; and the greatest absurdities are involved in the writings of those who assume this, and then proceed to harmonize. Of the presentation, etc., Matthew's account knows nothing : of the visit of the Magi, the murder of the Innocents, and the flight to Egypt, Luke is unaware." These remarks are more difficult by far to reconcile with each other, and with the inspiration of both gospels, than the two accounts themselves. First, if it were impossible for St. Luke to have written as he has done, if he had seen St. Matthew's account, how is it possible for the Holy Spirit, by whom his writing was controlled,, and who certainly must have known the precise nature of the other record, to have allowed him to dispose it in such a form, or to make such omissions ? Why should the very same fact, the exist- ence of St. Matthew's account, be a decisive reason, with the Holy Spirit, for directing the second narrative of the infancy into this particular form, and a decisive reason to the evangelist, if it were known, rendering that form impossible ? Is it essential to the character of a sacred historian, that his views on the choice and right disposition of his materials should be directly the reverse of those, which the facts themselves require us to ascribe to the Spirit of God ? Next, it is a plain contradiction to suppose that ox ALLEGED DISCRErANCIES OF THE BIBLE. 299 every attempted union of the two accounts is a violation of common sense and jDiobability, and still to imagine that they may be reconciled by facts now unknown. The flight to Egypt, if a real fact, must have occurred after the Presentation, since the interval before it is plainly too short for the journey. It must either, then, come before the return to Nazareth in Luke ii, 39; or there must have been a later return to Bethlehem, and a later return to Nazareth again. The first is the simple and natural view, adoj)ted by most harmonists. The latter a possible, but much less probable alternative. To style them both violations of common sense, and still to hold that the two accounts are true and reconcilable, if other facts were known, is to overlook and contradict the very nature of the problem. The converse reason- ing is clearly irresistible. If both accounts are true, the flight to Egypt must have occurred, either before the Presentation, or after it, and before the return to Nazareth in St. Luke, or else after that return. But the first is impossible from the limits of time, and the third is improbable. Therefore the second must be highly probable ; and either the second or third, instead of violating probability, must be certainly true. 4. " The reconciliation of the two genealogies has never been accomplished ; and every attempt to do it has violated either ingenuousness or common sense. The two genealogies are both the line of Joseph, and not of Mary." Now since almost every conceivable variety has been 2)roposed, if both genealogies are inspired, some one of these solutions must not only be possible, but the very truth, designed by the Holy Spirit when both were given. The above remark is thus harder to reconcile with common sense than the harmonies it condemns. It is even in direct contradiction with the remark which 300 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. follows it. For if both the genealogies are Joseph's since he could not have two real fathers, either the main princij)le of Grotius, that Heli was his natural and Jacob his legal father, or the opposite view, that Jacob was the real, and Heli his legal father, must plainly be true. But if one of two alternatives is clearly true, they cannot, both of them, be violations of common sense and probability. In fact, the usual view, that St. Luke has given the true genealogy, and that Heli was the father-in-law of Joseph, may be established alike by external and internal evidence ; and the relapse from it into a different solution has created artificial difficulties, where simple-minded be- lievers find only a deep harmony of Divine wisdom. 5. " A comparison of Luke iv. 16 — 24 with Matt, xiii. 53 — 58, Mark vi. 1 — 6, entered on without bias, can scarcely fail to convince us of their identity. That he should have been thus treated at his first visit, and then marvelled at their unbelief on his second, is utterly impossible. That the same question should have been twice asked, and answered with the same proverb, is highly improbable. The words ' whatever we have heard,' must refer to more than one miracle. Here the order of St. Luke begins to be confused." Now since St. Luke openly professes his ]3urpose to write " in order," and with perfect knowledge of all things from the very first, the view in this extract does imply a real inaccuracy and contradiction in the Grospels. For the visit to Nazareth in St. Matthew and St. Mark is plainly made "to follow the parables, and the raising of the ruler's daughter, and comes shortly before the mission of the TavcIvc. Hence, if St. Luke speaks of the same visit, the very first event he names in our Lord's ministry is wholly out of its true order, is trans- ferred from the later half of the period to its first ox ALLEGED DISCREPANCIES OF THE BIBLE. 301 beginning, and even fastened to a wrong place by the words at the close. For St. Luke plainly describes the course of teaching at Capernaum, and the cure of the demoniac, as results which followed our Lord's escaj)e from the Nazarenes. When we read the accounts, however, without bias, it seems impossible to avoid the conclusion that two different visits are described. The first, in St. Luke, instead of answering to Matt. xiii. 53-58, answers plainly to the brief notice in Matt. iv. 13 — " and leaving Nazareth, he came and dwelt in Capernaum." A visit to his own city, at the opening of his ministry, is there evidently implied ; and St. Luke simply gives us the full particulars of that conduct, which led our Saviour to leave Nazareth, and choose another centre for his Gralilean ministry. The passage read, and the brief comment, evidently suit the public opening of his message in Galilee, and lose much of their force, if they are placed eighteen months or two years later. The words " as his custom was," agree with the same view. For he must have been accustomed, up to the opening of his ministry, to have frequented this very synagogue on each sabbath-day, which custom was now broken off by the conduct of the Nazarenes. But if referred to a later time, all the special force of the words is lost, and they would apply less to this synagogue than to almost any other. In the visit in St. Mark he wrought some miracles, even in Nazareth, on a few sick folks, but the account in St. Luke makes such a result of that visit clearly impossible. In fact the whole tone of the two narratives, their beginning, middle, and close, are quite different. Two reasons alone are urged for confounding the visits in one. First, tliat our Lord could not j^ossibly have marvelled at their unbelief, if they had rejected 302 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. hiin with violence already. But even viewing the facts in a purely human light, there is no force in this objection. Undeserved violence, and open wrong done to those whom it is a duty to honour, often produce a strong reaction. By comparing Mark iii. 31-35, it is probable that the second visit was at the request of some of the Nazarenes, who had become ashamed of their violence, when the miracles and fame of Jesus were past dispute. In this case their sullen persistence in unbelief would be more surprising, even to a human view, because the force of his miracles had made them ashamed of their brutal violence. But the true force of the words lies still deeper. They do not mean that our Lord was taken by surprise ; but simply teach how strange a madness unbelief in its more aggravated forms must be reckoned, in the eyes of One who is per- fectly holy. The other reason, from the repeated use of the same proverb, becomes a strong proof, on a closer view, of the distinctness of the visits, and not of their sameness. For when our Lord's ministry was hardly begun, and his name scarcely known in Galilee, he quotes it in the negative form : " No prophet is accepted in his own country." But when, after eighteen months of preach- ing, with constant miracles of Divine power, his fame was widely spread, and all Galilee looked up to him as a " great prophet," in whom " God had visited his people ;" the proverb is quoted in an op23osite way, and exhibits the Nazarenes as the solitary exception in the midst of the general acknowledgment of his claims. " A prophet is not without honour, save in his own country, and kindred, and father's house." Thus every circumstance really conspires to prove the visits distinct, and the alleged inaccuracy of the gospels resolves itself into a new example of perfect consistency ox ALLEGED DISCREPANCIES OF THE BIBLE. 303 and truth. "We have merely an instance where the wise rule has been neg-lectecl, which the learned writer him- self has laid down, " that similar incidents must not be too hastily assumed to be the same." (Prol. p. 13.) 6. " In the last apology of St. Stephen, which he spake being full of the Holy Ghost, we have at least two demonstrable historical inaccuracies." (Prol. p. 19.) The first of these is thus explained, in Acts vii. 4. — " The Jewish chronology, which Stephen follows, was at fault here, owing to the circumstance of Terah's death being mentioned. Gen. xi. 32, before the command to Abraham to leave Haran, it not having been observed that the mention is anticipatory." The real error, however, is that of the critic alone, who entirely over- looks the true explanation, adopted by Usher, Clinton, and most of the best chronologers, and which is con- firmed by Gen. xi. 29,. and the age of Sarah; that Abraham was not the oldest, but the youngest son of Terah. For Sarah, we are clearly taught, was the sister of Milcah and daughter of Haran, and was only ten years younger than Abraham, Gen. xi. 29, xvii. 17. The words of St. Stephen, then, instead of contradicting Genesis, fix its meaning, and establish the harmony of its separate statements ; and the opposite view, while it charges him with error, is itself " a demonstrable historical inaccuracy." The second asserted error is in Acts vii. 15, IG. " So Jacob went down into Egypt and died, he and our fathers, and were carried over into Sychem, and laid in the sepulchre that Abraham bought for a sum of money, of the sons of Emnior, the father of Sychem." Here there is, no doubt, an apparent confusion of two purchases and two burials. Abraham bought a burial- place at Hebron, from Ephron, in which Jacob and Leah were buried. Jacob, again, bought a piece of 304 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. ground at Sychem from the sons of Hamor the father of Shechem, where the bones of Joseph were buried. We liave no account of the burial-place of the other patriarchs. Now here it is important to remember when and where, and before whom, the words were spoken. It was at Jerusalem, where the study of the law was at its height, before the hostile Sanhedrim, and the high priest, and all the scribes, men accustomed to count the very letters of the law of Moses, that St. Stephen, full of the Holy Spirit, was making his formal defence against a charge of contempt of the law, after a con- troversy upon that law in the synagogues for many days, in which no adversaries " were able to resist the wisdom and the spirit with which he spake." Is it consistent with reason or common sense, to impute to such a man, at such a time, and in the presence of such judges and adversaries, the double mistake of supposing that Jacob was buried in Sychem, in con- tradiction to the full narrative in the close of Genesis ; and that Abraham lived in the time of Shechem, though his death and burial in Hebron are recorded in Gen. XXV., before mention of Jacob's birth ; and the pur- chase of the ground in Shechem, is stated in Gen. xxxiii. shortly before the death of Isaac, and eighty years after Abraham's death ? Is it rational to expound this verse, so as to make Stephen, a learned Jew, full of the Holy Spirit, more ignorant of the sacred history, of which he is giving a rapid outline, than a well-informed Sunday school child in these days ? On the other hand, the explanation of Flacius and Bengcl is simple and complete. St. Stephen, as being thoroughly familiar with the details of the two histories, and speaking to tlio Sanhedrim, who were equally fami- liar with them, compresses the two into one by a series ON ALLEGED DLSCRErANCIES OF THE BIBLE. 305 of mental ellipses, which his audience would at once supply for themselves. The two incidents are referred to by a regular alternation. Jacob is named, and not Joseph, of those avIio were buried ; Sychem, and not Hebron, of the two burial-places ; Abraham, and not Jacob, of the two purchasers ; and the sons of Emmor, the father of Sychem, and not Ephron the Hittite, of the two parties from whom the purchase was made. There is here too much method in the seeming inaccuracy, to leave any reasonable doubt of its real source. Bengel has remarked, with his usual judgment : — " In writing, omissions of this kind are usually marked by the pen ; but they may be admitted in discourse, when, in a matter fully known, and jDresent equally to the mind of the speaker and the hearers, merely what is enough is spoken, and the other words, which would hinder the flow of the discourse, are to be reckoned as if they were spoken also." It would occupy too much space to enter here upon other alleged discrepancies, and especially those two main subjects, the last Passover, and the order of events on the resurrection-day. I believe that they both admit of an adequate solution, which changes them from stumbling-blocks to the faith into powerful confirma- tions of tlie gospel narrative. To conclude, the presence of a few slight inaccuracies in the Gospels, or in other histories of Scripture, would be no decisive argument for a lowered theory of their inspiration, consistent witli the entrance of human error ; unless these were clearly inwrought into tlie texture of the narrative, and were more than solitary specks on the surface, easily accounted for by defective transmission, and as easily removed. But while there is ample proof, in the Gospels, of the diversity of the testimonies, and the independent- authority of the four witnesses, X 306' THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT, tlic attempt to establisli a contradiction, wLetlier Ly Christian critics, or sceptical adversaries of the faitli, when submitted to a close examination, invariably fails. Its usual result will be to bring to light some un- designed coincidence, some delicate harmony of truth, which escapes the careless reader, and only reveals itself to a patient, humble, and reverent study of these oracles of God. THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 307 CHAPTER XIY. THE BIBLE ANP MODERN SCIENCE. The discoveries of modern science have often been sup- posed to form a strong disproof of the inspiration nnd Divine authority of the Sci-iptnres. Mucli has been written on botli sides in tliis important controversy. 'J'he hues of argument Jiave also been various, ahke in the defenders and assailants, till the whole subject is involved, to many nn'nds, in no slight perplexity and confusion. Tlie chief topics in the controversy are the Bible Astronomy, the History of Creation, the History of the Flood, and the Unity and Antiquity of Mankind. In all these the main question to be answered is of this nature : Does the Bible, in its allusions to scientific truth, agree with the doctrine that its messages are the words of God, or betray itself to be the production of fallible Jewish writers, tinged throughout with undeni- able and manifest error ? The contrast, arising from these opposite views of the Bible, may easily be exaggerated in their probable effect on its scientific allusions. Unins2:)ired writers, who are content to adhere modestly to the teaching of the senses, and do not pretend to make discoveries, or to speculate on secret causes, may escape, almost en- tirely, the fault of propounding scientific error. On the other hand, the great end of Divine revelation is not the diffusion of natural knowledge, but the moral X 2 308 tup: bible and modern thought. renovation of mankind. Facts of a scientific character are plainly collateral, and not the main object of the work. Such messages would diverge from their true purpose, if they anticipated the discoveries of science in some distant age. A summary of modern astronomy, geology, chemistry, or electricity, we feel instinctively, would be quite out of place in such an early revelation of the will of God to men. It would, in fact, be a supernatural prophecy of a very peculiar kind, less in- structive to mankind in general than those which have actually been given, and far more useless and per- plexing to the readers of every intermediate age. A just view of the subject will therefore produce great caution in our acceptance either of objections to Scripture, or supposed confirmations of its truth, drawn from the scientific or physical allusions scattered through its pages. If its purpose were scientific, we might expect to find in it wonderful scientific discoveries, assuming that it is a true revelation from God. On the other hand, if its writers were not only uninspired, but rash, presumptuous impostors, who sought the credit of knowledge beyond their fellows, then scientific errors would be almost sure to abound. But the contrast, in this one feature, between good and fallible men, who write with modesty and reverence, and true revelations in which the Almighty suits his message to the actual wants and state of mankind, would be far less striking and conspicuous than many seem to assume. It is only on a few points that we may exjijcct some intimation to be given, that the God of the Bible is also the Lord of nature, " in whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge." There is, however, one point of view in which the negative presumption for the inspiration of the Scrip- tures has, even at first sight, no little force. For they THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 309 do evidently claim to be a revelation from God. The account of creation itself, on any other view, is a mani- fest absurdity. If this claim be groundless, the writers cannot be classed among modest and cautious men. Presumption in that which is the greatest must lead us to expect presumption in that which ranks far lower in importance. He who invents messages from the Creator, is not likely to be scrupulous in his claims to special acquaintance with the works of God. Hence false revelations, almost invariably, involve some flagrant contradiction of true science. Hinduism, at this moment, is melting away under a system of secular education, which undermines and destroys the authority of its Shasters and Yedas, because of the false geogra- phy and physics interwoven with their theology. False religion and false science are there so inseparably united, that any scheme of instruction, in which the truths of science are taught, and the truths of God's word are withheld, becomes really equivalent, in practice, to a direct propagation of irreligion and unbelief. And hence, conversely, the mere absence of false science, in a professed revelation from heaven, is no slight pre- sumption in favour of its truth. The claim of Divine authority, on questions relating to man's moral state and future destiny, is only confirmed by the absence of pretended discoveries with regard to the constitution and laws of the natural world, which have been com- mitted to the slow and laborious decipherment of man's native intelligence. I. The Astronomy of the Bible is the first and earliest of those topics, from which scientific assaults on its inspiration have been raised. It had nearly passed, indeed, into oblivion, when kindred questions in geo- logy and physiology liave revived it once more. The levival of science, we have been told, displaced the 310 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. Ptolemaic by the Copernican theory. But the Hebrew records, the basis of our faith, manifestly countenance the opinion of the earth's immobility. Gralileo was compelled by the inquisition to sign the statement, that " the proposition that the sun is the centre of the world, and immovable, is absurd, philosophically false, and formally heretical." But the brilliant progress of science subdued the minds of men. The controversy between faith and knowledge slumbered, and the limited views of the universe in the Old Testament ceased to be felt as religious difficulties. The progress of geology, a new science, has forced attention to the subject once more. The primd-facie view of the Bible narrative reverses, to a great extent, our present astronomical, as well as geological views of the universe. This astronomical objection, now revived from a long sleep, has never had much weight with candid and thoughtful men. It is true that the Romish inquisitors, who condemned Galileo, have lent the whole weight of their scientific and theological eminence to the cause of infidelity, and their names naturally stand foremost in the proof that the Bible and modern astronomy con- tradict each other. But the authority of Newton himself, which many may be disposed to rank higher on such a question, is thrown decisively into the opposite scale. The immortal writer of the Principia, it is clear from his later works, did not share the j)erplexity which some smatterers in astronomy profess to feel, when they observe that the Bible speaks on these subjects in the common language of all mankind. When we are told, for instance, that " the sun was risen upon the earth, when Lot entered Zoar," it is not Newton who com- ])lains that we do not read, in its place, a scientific statement such as this, — " that Palestine had revolved, when Lot entered the city, until its tangent plane THE BIBLE AXD MODEllN SCIENCE. 311 coincided once more with a radius vector from the sun." True science is cautious and modest, and is not easily betrayed into such absurdities. In reahty, the whole objection to the language of Scripture on this subject arises from the influence of thi'ee errors — that scientific statements of the earth's motion are absolute, and not relative truth ; that popular language is simply false, and not relatively true ; and that the relation of matter to matter, in connection with the laws of force and motion, is of higher importance than its relation to the senses and universal experience of mankind. First, the statements of modern science, after all, embody relative, and not absolute truth. All motion, and all action, so far as science can reveal it, is simply correlative. We cannot conceive of a fixed ^^osition in absolutely empty space. Viewing first our own system as a whole, the planets do not, in strictness of speech, revolve round the sun, but the sun and the planets move alike around the common centre of gravity. The doctrine that " the sun is immovable from its ^^lace " may not be " formally heretical " as the inquisitors affirmed, but there can be no doubt that it is " philo- sophically false." If popular language, then^ were replaced by that of the Copernican theory, the result would be only, on the principles of the objection, to sub- stitute one scientific mistake for another. But it is now ascertained, also, that the whole solar system is in move- ment towards a point not very far, in direction, from the ])riglit star of Lyra. The true nature, therefore, of the earth's pathway through space, is not a circle or ellipse in a fixed plane around the sun as its centre, but a complex s])iral, tliirty degrees aslant from tlio vortical, in which the interval of the successive rounds is four- lifths of their cUameter. And we have no assurance 312 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. that this result is absokite and final. For most of the stars from which the motion of the sun is deduced belong to the great system of the milky way, and it is by no means impossible that these may partake of a common motion with regard to other sidereal systems. There are thus four or five modes of conception, all equally relative, as the observer is on the earth, on the sun, in a fixed position with regard to the centre of the solar system, a fixed position in the sidereal system, or one still more remote and independent. Again, it is a great mistake to conceive that the language of common life, adopted also in Scripture, is the expression of simple falsehood, and not of a most important variety of scientific truth. Thus w^e have been told that the account in Genesis " does not describe physical realities, but only outward appearances ; that is, it gives a description false in fact, and one which can teach us no scientific truth whatever." There is, however, no ground at all for this fancied contrast between facts and appearances. Appearances are simply those facts, in relation to the senses of men, by which alone we come to the knowledge of other fact« not im- mediately observed, and in some cases not observable. Every sunrise and sunset, and every meridian transit of a star, is as much an astronomical fact as the New- tonian theory, the rotation of the earth, or the elliptic shape of its annual orbit. In reality, it is facts of this kind which form the whole material of modern astronomy in its most advanced form. Practical astronomers have been compelled to introduce a large variety of technical terms, all framed on precisely the same principles, and moulded by the same laws of thought, as the phrases of Scripture and of common life. Such, for instance, are the transits of Yenus and Mercury, the occultation of stars behind the moon, the contact of the sun and moon THE BIBLE AND. MODERN SCIENCE. 313 •in an eclipse, the immersion and emersion of Jupiter's satellites, the transit instrument for observing the transit of stars across the meridian, their elevation by refraction and depression by parallax, the preceding and following side of the heavens, right and oblique as- cension, the entrance of stars into the field of the tele- scope, and the upper and lower culmination of circum- polar stars, when they either pass the zenith, or graze the horizon. These are a few conspicuous examjoles of a fixed and constant law of scientific language, which runs through the whole range, of practical and instru- mental astronomy. The maxim which charges the Bible with scientific falsehood because of its astronomical phrases, fastens the same charge on the ' Nautical Al- manac,' and the ' Connaissance des Temps,' and indeed on every record whatever of the materials or the results of modern astronomy. Still further, the relations of matter to matter, or to an observer perched in the ideal centre of our solar system, are far less important, in a practical sense, than its relations to the experience and daily observa- tion of mankind. Bulk, mass, and lifeless magnitude are not things of supreme importance, especially in a moral message designed for the spiritual recovery of a fallen world. The double j^^^i'P^^® ^^ ^^^ revealed truth is to restore man to his dominion over nature, and his allegiance to God. Whenever one is renounced, the other is lost, and the rebel against Divine autho- rity becomes the victim of some form of conscious or unconscious idolatry. But if the earth be held quite subordinate to the sun, simply because of its inferior bulk and weight, then man must be immensely inferior to the ground on which he treads, and the rhinoceros and hippopotamus, the oaks and cedars, the volcanoes and their streams of lava, must rank far above him 314 THE BIBLE AND MODEBN THOUGHT, in the scale of being. Pride tempts man, in the con- sciousness of mental power, to forget both his moral weakness and physical insignificance. Pantheistic fa- talism sets aside all moral distinctions, and degrades him into a mere passive atom in the vast machine of the universe. The Bible alone reconciles and har- monizes the contrasted truths of his actual condition; his physical insignificance, his moral frailty and corrup- tion, and the dignity of a nature framed in the miage of God, and made to have dominion over all the works of his hands. The motions of the heavenly bodies depend on laws of force, which relate to quantity of matter and distance alone. Men of science have thus to make abstraction of their other qualities and relations, however important, to place themselves in thought somewhere in empty space, and to contemplate their motions, either from that fixed point, or with reference to that body which has the greatest mass, so that complex relations may be more simply conceived. Yet, even in abstract science, the same motive requires them sometimes to forsake these foreign points of view, and return to the earth again. In the lunar theory, the earth, and not the sun, is the centre to which the motions have to be referred. The sun is treated as revolving round it, only more slowly than the moon, and at a greater distance, and as deranging the lunar ellipse by this revolution. By no other means can the complex inquiry be duly sim- plified, and the lunar perturbations clearly ascertained. How much more, when the message relates entirely to the present duty and future hopes of mankind, must all the outward works of God be viewed in relation to this great object, and not with relation to mass and me- chanical force alone ! One soul is far nobler than millions on millions of cubic leagues of empty space ; and even THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 315 if these are filled with nebulous mist, or this mist con- densed into a vast globe of fire, it can never rival the dignity of one rational and .immortal creature, formed in the image of God, capable of knowing its Creator, and of enjoying his love for ever. The Bible, therefore, in describing physical changes with direct reference to the constant experience of mankind, or terrestrial observers, adopts the only course which agrees with the scope and purpose of a moral revelation. For it would violate its own character, and one of its own chief doctrines, unless the material works of God were treated as subordinate to the life, happi- ness, and moral welfare of mankind. The lesson, which it teaches on its first page, is the only sure antidote to every form of degrading idolatry — that man is the lord of nature, because he is the subject and child of the living God. II. The history of Creation, in Genesis, has given rise to more serious difficulty, from its alleged contrast with the lessons of geology. The discordant nature of the expositions offered by various Christian writers has been turned into an argument that no satisfactory solu- tion can be found. The spectacle, we are told, of able and conscientious writers employed on this impossible task, is painful and humiliating. They shufHe and stumble over their difficulties in a piteous manner, and do not breathe freely, till they return to the pure and open fields of science again. Now what is really painful and humiliating is that men, who still call themselves Christians, should venture to compare the first of God's messages, confirmed as Divine by Christ and his Apostles, to a stifling and mephitic cavern, from which we must escape with all speed, and take refuge with mammoths, mastodons, and the skeletons of extinct monsters, in order to breathe 316 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. more freely, and avoid the risk of suffocation. It may be unwise to affirm that " geological investigations all prove the perfect hannony between Scripture and geology in reference to the history of creation." But the opposite assertion, that they are plainly irreconcil- able, is still more unreasonable on the side of science alone ; and adds the guilt of degrading the word of God into the presumptuous guesswork of some Ilebrew im- postor, who dared to propound his own ignorant fancies as revelations from the Almighty. The statement in Genesis is to this effect ; that man was created, and placed on the earth, in Asia, in the garden of Eden, six or seven thousand years ago ; that his creation took place on the last of six successive days, during which the earth was changed from a dark, waste, and unformed condition, to a well-furnished habitation, by signal acts of creative energy; and that a seventh day followed, or a sabbath of rest, which God appointed for a lasting ordinance, because on this first seventh day he rested from all his work which he created and made. Now geological science discloses a long series of changes, through which our earth had passed before any traces are found of man's presence, and a distinct fauna and flora in each of these eras, amounting to many thousand extinct species. The question is, how these two statements are to be reconciled, or whether they are wholly incompatible. Some writers, as Hugh Miller, MacCausland, and Macdonald, expound the days of Genesis to be long periods, in the order of whicli they trace some resemblance to the main outlines of geological discovery. A few others, as Dr. Pye Smith, restrict the whole narrative to local and limited changes in Central Asia alone ; which must strike every one, at once, as falling very short of the natural scope and force THE BIBLE AND MODEEN SCIENCE. 317 of the description. But many writers of eminence, as Chalmers, Biickland, Sedgwick, Dr. Kurtz, and Arch- deacon Pratt in his able pamphlet on Scripture and Science, hold that the days of Genesis are Hteral days ; that the ages of geology are passed over silently in the second verse ; and that the passage describes a great work of God, at the close of the Tertiary Period, by wdiicli our planet, after long ages, was finally prepared to be the habitation of man. This, I have no doubt, is the true and simple explanation. I shall now en- deavour to show that the objections brought against it in the Fifth Essay are entirely worthless, and that it is the assailant, and not the eminent writers assailed, who exhibits a strange confusion of thought, along with a lamentable determination to disparage the truth of Scripture, and set aside its Divine authority. 1. The first and main question relates to the mode of representation employed in the sacred narrative. The Christian interpreters, who hold the day-periods or the literal days, agree in the view that the events are optically described, that is, as they would appear to a specttitor placed on the surface of the earth. This is a principle common to their two expositions, which afterwards diverge from each other. And this, accord- ingly, is the first object of assault in the recent Essay. The objection runs as follows : — " Both these theories divest the Mosaic narrative of real accordance with fact ; both assume that appear- ances only, not facts, are described ; and that in riddles, which would never have been suspected to be such, had we not arrived at the truth from other sources. It would be difficult for controversialists to cede more completely the point in dispute, or to admit more explicitly that the Mosaic narrative does not represent correctly the history of the universe up to the time of 318 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. man. At the same time the upholders of each theory see insuperable objections in detail to that of their allies, and do not pretend to any firm faith in their own. How can it be otherwise, when the task pro- posed is to evade the plain meaning of language, and to introduce obscurity into one of the simplest stories ever told, for the sake of making it accord with the comi^lex system of the universe which modern science has unfolded ?" This whole objection, urged in so contemptuous a tone, rests plainly on that gross and fundamental error which has been already exposed. Appearances and facts are no real antithesis. Appearances are them- selves facts. They are precisely the facts, on which all science depends, as the materials from which it is derived, and to which it must return, in order to con- firm its discoveries, or yield any practical benefit to mankind. What is an eclipse but an appearance ? And yet what is the proof, above all others, by which modern astronomy has established its claim to be a real science, but the marvellous accuracy with which echpses are foretold, even in their minutest details? Scientific speculation is like 'the balloon, which carries the observer into the upper sky, and enlarges the sphere of his vision. Phenomena are like the ground, from which it must ascend, and to which, after a short journey, it must soon return ; though with a knowledge enlarged beyond the limits of its first horizon, or per- haps alighting in a country never visited before. The Mosaic narrative, then, if it be a faithful record of appearances, is also a record of facts, and stands on a level, in scientific truthfulness, with the daily register of any modern observatory. For these consist entirely of appearances, whether of stars in the field of a tele- scope, or of the mercury in a barometer or a thermo- THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 319 meter, or of tlie index in the anemometer or galvano- meter, or of the clouds in the sky, only noted down with mathematical precision. They are appearances from first to last. The flippant censure, aimed against the first chapter of the Bible, would sweep away in a moment the records of all our scientific observatories as equally false and faithless, and with them would destroy all the materials on which science itself depends. The second falsehood in this objection is the asser- tion that the optical view of the Mosaic narrative turns a simple story into a riddle, the true meaning of which could never be suspected unless we gained it from other sources. This, it will be plain on a little reflec- tion, exactly reverses the real truth. Any other view of the passage would turn it into a riddle to the readers of all early ages of mankind ; and even to the great majority in our own days, who have not abused the discoveries of science so as to falsify the daily and hourly experiences of human life. There are four plain reasons why the narrative in the first of Genesis should be optically given, or describe changes as they would appear to a terres- trial observer. First, it is the constant and habitual language of daily life. Secondly, it is the equally inva- riable style of all our 'scientific observations. Thirdly, it is the constant usage of all historians, without ex- ception, ancient and modern. Fourthly and lastly, it is the idiom of the Bible itself, in every other part of tlie sacred narrative. The claim of modern sciolists, that this chapter alone should be put in masquerade, and describe changes as they would appear from Sirius, or the centre of gravity of the sun and the planets, is just as reasonable as to require that it should have been written in some language used by angels, instead of being given, like all the rest of the Bible, 320 THP: bible and modern TflOUGHT. in the language of men. Tlie passage just quoted is more than a simple error. It is a direct and total inversion of the real truth. If it were wished to turn the first page of Scripture into a riddle, unin- telligible to all former ages, and hardly to be under- stood, except by one person in a thousand, even in our own days, we might frame it according to the recipe of these assailants of its truth. It would then run pretty nearly as follows : — " In the beginning Grod created the heavens and the earth. And first, God said. Let there be immense oceans of nebulous matter, scattered throughout all space ; and it was so. And God said, Let the nebulous matter condense slowly, under the law of universal gravitation ; and it was so. And God said. Let the central portion of each heap of mist condense into a sun, and the smaller portions condense into planets, and let the planets revolve each around its own sun ; and it was so. And God said. Let one planet of one sun condense into solid matter, and become liquid with intense heat ; and it was so. And God called the planet earth, and the central body it revolved around he called the sun ; and it was so. And God said. Let the earth, after long- ages, cool down, till solid strata can be formed upon its surface ; and it was so. And God said. Let plants and living creatures grow upon the earth, and be de- stroyed again ; and it was so. And the period of their birth and destruction was a second day. And God said, Let ferns and other plants grow in great abundance, and then be buried, and reduced to coal in the crust of the earth ; and it was so. And the period of these plants was a third day. And God said. Let oolite and sandstone strata be formed, and other races of plants and animals be buried in them ; and it was so. And the period of these strata and the animals entombed in THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 321 them was the fourth day. And God said, Let mighty lizards be created, and then destroyed and buried ; and it was so : and the lizard period was a fifth day, &c." Such an account of creation, whatever might be its measure of scientific accuracy, would have been an inimeaning riddle to all past generations of mankind. We should have a meagre summary of physical changes, wholly unintelligible to common readers, in- stead of the simplicity, beauty, and grandeur of a Divine message. It is urged, however, that if the descrij^tion be one of appearances, it can teach us no truth whatever. If this remark were correct, the late expedition to Spain, to observe the total echpse of the sun, though planned with so much care by astronomers of eminence, must have been an unmingled folly. They could only de- scribe appearances, not realities ; and what could science gain by all their observations ? Why, then, may not the Bible narrative be equally instructive, equally de- finite in its teaching, though it be a record of appear- ances alone ? Appearances are, in truth, the only materials from which every science is derived, and the medium by which alone it is applicable to the use of mankind. The objection, then, to the optical construction of the sacred narrative, that it deprives it of all definite meaning, and gives it a nonnatural sense, exactly reverses the real truth. The record of visible appearances is quite as definite, in its own nature, as a statement of physical causes, and is far easier to understand ; and no simple reader, in the age when Moses wrote, could attach any other meaning to the words than that which is so rashly condemned. " The difficulties arise," it is said, " for the first time, when we seek to import a meaning into language, which Y 322 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. it certainly never could have conveyed to those to whom it was originally addressed. Unless we go the length of supposing the simple account of the Hebrew cosmogonist to be a series of awkward equivocations, in which he attempted to give a representation widely different from the facts, without trespassing against literal truth, we can find no difficulty in interpreting his words." This remark is strictly true. But it justifies the inter- pretation it is supposed to condemn, and condemns that which it is supposed to justify. The meaning of light, to the early Hebrew, could not be the undulations of a subtle ether, diffused through infinite space, but simply a state of the earth, air, and sky, in which objects were clearly visible to the senses of men. . The sun, moon, and stars, to the same readers, could never be supposed to mean immense balls of solid matter, Imninous, or non- luminous, floating at large in the depths of space, but visible discs of light, seen daily revolving through the sky. The whole force, then, of this first objection to the sacred narrative, is due simjDly to a denatu- rahzation of some minds, through dwelling amidst the mechanical relations of physical astronomy, till they reverse the laws of criticism and the facts of history, and put light for darkness, and darkness for light, in their attempt to fasten error and contradiction on the word of God. 2. The second maxim, implied in that view of the narrative, which retains the literal days, and accepts also the facts of geology, is the distinctness of the absolute creation in the first verse from the six days of creation that follow. The result, indeed, is much the same, if we suppose the Hebrew word hara to be taken in a looser sense, and that the first verse is merely a summary of the whole account that is afterwards given. On this view nothing whatever would be said of the absolute THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 323 formation of matter, but tlic whole would begin with the chaos or confusion before the first day. Assuming, however, that the first verse relates to the absolute beginning of creation, or the first origin of things, an objection is started from the mention of the heavens on the second day. It is inferred that " during those indefinite ages there was no sky, no local habitation for the sun, moon, and stars, even supposing them to have been included in the original material." This difficulty would be real, if the heavens in Scrip- ture meant always the lower firmament alone. But this is quite untrue. The apostle speaks of being- caught up into " the third heaven," which certainly was not the region of the clouds. Hence, although the lowest heavens were made on the second day, the first verse may still retain a very clear and definite meaning. The first heaven is that of sense, or the visible fir- mament. The second heaven is that of science and philosophy, or the depths of the starry universe. The tliird heaven is that of faith and spiritual vision, or that immediate unveiling of the Divine presence to pure and sinless spirits, which answers to the holy of holies in the Jewish temple. The opening words of the Bible, then, may refer immediately to the third heavens of glory, and the heavens of sidereal astronomy ; while the mention .of the lower heavens, or visible arch of the sky, comes in its natural place, in connection with terrestrial and atmospheric changes, among the steps by which our earth was prepared to be the dwelling of man. 3. A third principle, involved in this view of the passage, when compared with the facts of geology, is that the darkness and confusion in the second verse refers to a state which intervened between the Tertiary Y 2 824 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. and Human period. And here a double oLjection is nrg*ed. First, on the authority of Hugh Miller, it is affirmed that such a break " is by no means supported by geological phenomena, and is now rejected by all geologists whose authority is valuable." And next, it is said that such a construction falls short of the natural meaning of the text, and reduces the third verse from a noble description, the admiration of ages, to a pitiful caput mortuum of empty verbiage. The course of thought pursued in the Fifth Essay, in its laboured assault on the truth of Scripture, is here singularly perplexed and illogical. Dr. Chalmers and Hugh Miller, and all others who accept either the view of literal days or day-periods, agree in affirming that the optical construction of the narrative, with reference to a human observer, is the only one historically natural, or critically possible. This their imanimous consent is cast aside on the strength of naked assertions, which directly reverse the manifest truth, the experience of every observatory, and the constant usage of the whole Bible. Both these classes of writers agree in the firm conviction that the narrative in Genesis and the facts of science do agree, though they vary in their concep- tion of the precise nature of their agreement. This their consent is equally cast aside, as the effect of scientific ignorance or of theological prejudice, and no scruples either of modesty or of piety lessen. the con- fidence with which their consenting judgment is de- nounced and condemned. But Hugh Miller, after holding once the view of literal days, renounced it for that of day-periods, on the ground that geology allows of no gap or break between the Tertiary and Human periods. His argument is founded on eight animals, and two kinds of shells, which he believed to be common •to the two eras. On the other hand M. D'Orbigny, in THE BIBLE AND MODEIIN SCIENCE. 323 a work on fossil geology, of which a summary is given in two volmncs of ' Lardner's Museum of Science/ and which includes an examination of eighteen thousand species of radiata and mollusca alone, has deduced con- clusions diametrically opposite. He shews that there are twenty-nine eras, in each of which the genera are partly the same as in the preceding one, and partly different ; but that the species, except only one or two per cent, in a few cases, are all distinct, and imply a new creation. Even in respect of genera, the contrast between the Human and Tertiary periods is the widest of the whole (these two forming, in Hugh Miller's theory, part of the same day), since only five hundred and forty are old genera, or common to the Tertiary, and one thousand three hundred and twenty-seven are new. But according to the same writer the species are entirely new, and " the entire fauna and flora of the last Tertiary period were destroyed." In the ' Christian Observer,' Jan. 1858, this argu- ment has been developed, in disproof of the funda- mental assertion on which Hugh Miller's theory depends. The essayist quotes a reference to it in Archdeacon Pratt's able pamphlet on Scripture and Science, in which he speaks of it as conclusive, and gives a summary of the facts and the necessary infer- ence to which they lead. He does this, however, merely to shew " the trenchant manner in which theo- logical geologists overthrow one another's theories," and carefully abstains from touching either the facts or the argument. On the contrary, he proceeds to observe that " Hugh Miller was perfectly aware of the difficulty involved in his view of the question," and proceeds to give the details of his theory ; when those details have nothing whatever to do with the argument tlius dis- missed ; and, instead of Mr. Miller being aware of the 326 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. difficulty, his theory is based on a conckision drawn from the supposed sameness of eight species, in direct opposition to this large induction of M. D'Orbigny from twenty-nine successive eras, and nearly twenty thou- sand sjDCcies ; and from eighteen hundred genera in the Human and Tertiary periods alone. What is still more strange in the presence of such an extract, Hugh Miller's assertion, thus largely disproved, is accepted for a sufficient proof of the untenability of the theory of Chalmers, and that its abandonment was " not without the compulsion of irresistible evidence ;" and that the view which results from the large induction of M. D'Orbigny, after cataloguing twenty thousand species, and which is summed up in two volumes of the ' Museum of Science,' as the latest and ripest conclusion of geology " is now rejected by all geologists whose authority is valuable." Such a style of argument, where the truth of Scrip- ture is in question, can hardly be too strongly con- demned. It betrays, if not a settled purpose to damage the authority of the Bible by any artifice of special pleading, at least a total incapacity to discern the really vital points of the controversy, the true limits of autho- rity, and the results of a wide and genuine induction of geological evidence. All that is true and beautiful in Hugh Miller's writings is cast aside ; and a solitary error, since disproved by the evidence of thirty eras and twenty thousand species, is stolen from him, and dipped in poison, that it may inflict a deadly wound on the faith which was dearest to his heart. Let us now inquire whether the other objection has more weight. Does this view reduce a noble and sub- lime descrij)tion to a " a pitiful caput mortuum of empty verbiage ?" It supposes that, after the Tertiary period, and by the convulsion which gave birth to the moun- THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. ?27 tain-cliains of tlie Alps and Andes, onr planet was wrapped in a sea of vapour, and buried for a long period in midnight and impenetrable gloom. This chaos, optically and physically complete, it assumes to be the starting-point of the inspired description. After an unknown period of total darkness " upon the face of the deep," light broke out suddenly, on this first day, at God's command, over the whole surface of the globe. Now it is self-evident that such a fact is all that Moses and his contemporaries, and all readers of the Penta- teuch down to our own days, could naturally or reason- ably understand by the words. They could never suppose it to mean the creation of a luminiferous ether, filling infinite space, nor the commencement of certain undulations, regulated by unknown mechanical laws. The light has distinct reference to the previous dark- ness. The darkness was " upon the face of the deep," and the deep is no synonym for infinite space, but for the earth's surface, while mainly covered with water, before the dry land appeared. The instantaneous breaking forth of light over our world, where all before had been wrajDj^ed in utter gloom, is one of the noblest images which can enter the human mind; and those who can call it empty verbiage seem to need themselves a similar process of mental illumination. 4. The omission of the long eras of geology, which the same view of the passage implies, can furnish no real objection to its truth. On the conti-ary, it seems to result inevitably from the character of this Divine message. It describes a brief work of God's almighty power, by which our planet was fitted to be the abode of man. All the objects which man sees around him are referred in it to their Divine Author. His power is shown in the swift completion of so great a work, his wisdom in its orderly progress ; and a moral character 328 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. is infused into the whole, when six days of creative energy are seen to be followed by the Divine sabbath of rest, a precedent for the use of mankind in every later age. Nothing is wanting, nothing superfluous. A description of the earth's fluid nucleus, of primary rocks, of the flora of the coal measures, or of the extinct animals of the Secondary and Tertiary periods, would have been only a strange and unnatural excrescence in such an early message from God to man. 5. The objection to this view, from the break which it requires, has been thus stated. " The hypothesis was first promulgated at a time when the gradual and regular formation of the earth's strata was not seen or admitted so clearly as it is now. Geologists were more disposed to believe in great catastrophes, Buckland's theory supposes that previous to the appearance of the present races of animals and vegetables there was a great gap in the globe's history ; that the earth was completely depopulated, as well of marine as land animals, and that the creation of all existing plants and animals was coeval with that of man. This theory is by no means supported by geolo- gical phenomena, and is now, we suppose, rejected by all geologists, whose authority is valuable." Now let us compare with this positive assertion the statement of Dr. Lardner (' Museum of Science,' xi. 71. 1856), based on the labours of Murchison and D'Or- bigny. " The anticipations of Sir R. Murchison have been more than realized by the subsequent researches of M. D'Orbigny, founded on his own observations, which extended over a large portion of the New as well as Old World ; and upon the entire mass of ftxcts con- nected with the analyses of the crust of the earth, col- lected by thf^ observations of the most eminent geolo- THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. ii20 gists in all parts of the world. It appears from these researches that, during the long periods of geological time, from the first appearance of organized life on the globe to the period when the human race and its con- temporaneous tribes were called into existence, the world was peopled by a series of animal and vegetable kingdoms, which were successively destroyed by" violent convulsions of the crust, which produced as many devastating deluges. The remains of each of these ancient creatures are deposited in a series of layers ; and it has been found that each successive animal kingdom was composed of its own peculiar species, which did not appear in any posterior or succeeding creation, but that genera once created were frequently revived in succeeding periods ; that many of these genera, however, became extinct long before the human period. " By careful analyses of the strata and the animal remains, geologists have ascertained with a liigh degree of probability, if not with absolute moral certainty, that subsequently to the first appearance of the forms of animal life, which took place after the fourth great convulsion of our globe, there were at least twenty- eight successive convulsions of a like nature, each of which was attended with the complete destruction of the animals and plants which existed on the globe. In fine, after the latest of these catastrophes, when the last strata of the Tertiary period were deposited, the most recent exertion of Creative Power took place, and the globe was peopled with the tribes which now inhabit itj including the human race. " The disruption of the earth's crust, through which the chain of the great Alps was forced up to its present elevation, which, according to M. D'Orbigny was simul- taneous with that wliich forced up the Cliilian Andes, S30 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT, • a chain which extends over three thousand miles of the western continent, terminated the Tertiary age, and preceded immediately the creation of the human race and its concomitant tribes. The waters of the seas and oceans, lifted from their beds by this immense per- turbation, swept over the continents with irresistible force, destroying the entire fauna and flora of the last Tertiary period, and burying its ruins in the deposits that ensued. By this dislocation, Europe underwent a complete change of form. Secondary effects followed, which have left their traces on every part of the earth's surface. When the seas had settled into their new beds, and the outlines of the land were permanently defined, the latest and greatest act of creation was ac- complished, by clothing the earth with the vegetation that now covers it, peopling the land and water with the animal tribes which now exist, and calling* 'into being the human race." (xii. p. 552.) It is clear, from this comparison, that the statement in the objection exactly reverses the real truth with regard to the latest conclusions of geology. With the failure of its foundation, the whole fabric of sceptical inference reared upon it falls at once into ruins. 6. But another objection has been drawn from the events of the fourth day ; though in reality it is only the first difficulty with regard to the optical style of the narrative, in one special application. " What," it is asked, " were the new relations which the heavenly bodies assumed to the newly modified earth, and to the human race ? They had marked out seasons, days, and years, and given light for ages before to the earth, and to the animals which preceded man as its inha- bitants." The reply is evident. With those previous ages and their condition, and the plants and animals that THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 331 lived in them, man and his contemporaries had no more to do than if their theatre had been some wliolly different world. It was out of the ruins of these former creations that the present arose. To man him- self, or any of the creatures living on tlie earth, and which have enjoyed tlie sunshine to the present hour, that fourth day was the first on which sun, or moon, or stars appeared. It was the earliest of those appearances to the eyes of the present creation, which have lasted to this day's sunrise, or to the shining of the stars this night in the firmament of heaven. If any doubt could remain of the adequacy of this explanation, it will be removed at once by the com- parison of other passages in the word of God. Thus we read in St. Peter of the world before the flood, that " tlie heavens and earth, which were of old, being overflowed with water, perished ; but the heavens and eartli which are now, are kept in store, reserved unto fire." Here it is plain that the present heavens and earth are described as distinct from those before the flood, and succeeding in their room. This plainly cannot refer to the substance of the earth, or of the heavenly bodies, but to their relations to the senses of man ; so that the vault of the «ky, and the surface of the earth, are constantly compared to a robe or vesture which may be rolled away. The interpreta- tion, then, which refers Genesis i. 14-19 to the sohd globes of the sun, the moon, and the stars, as they exist in space, and hence infers a contradiction between the Bible and modern science, does no less violence to tlie rules of sound criticism than to the reverence due to the word of God. 7. Another supposed contradiction to the truths of science has been found in the mention of the firma- ment. The word, in Hebrew, means simply an ex- 332 THE BIBLE AKD MODERN THOUGHT. panse. But it is urged that the context requires us to admit that the writer viewed this expanse as a sohd vault, since it is said elsewhere to have pillars, founda- tions, doors, and windows ; and here separates waters which are above from those which are below. To insist on the derivation, it is said, is mere quibbling, in the face of these clear proofs that the Bible ascribes to it a real solidity. There is something really amazing in the self-con- fidence with which such charges of ignorance and folly are brought against the sacred writers. A little modesty and common sense would have shown that an argu- ment which proves too much proves nothing, and that the sacred writers could never have thought that rain came down, literally, through square openings in a solid vault of the sky ; nor that the sun, moon, and stars, if set in a solid vault, supported by pillars, could revolve daily from east to west, and reappear in the east again. The same passage of noble poetry which tells us, in mag- nifying the power of God, that " the pillars of heaven tremble and are astonished at his reproof;" also tells us that " He stretcheth out the north over the empty space, and hangeth the earth upon nothing." If one phrase, taken alone, seems to imply solid supports, the other seems just as plainly to anticipate the views of modern science, and represents our world as self-sup- ported in empty space. If windows are ascribed to heaven in one place, as a figure to represent the descent of rain from above, their existence seems just as strongly denied in another. " If the Lord would make windows in heaven, might this thing be ?" Once admit the principle that all these phrases are vivid metaphors, to express great truths which were evident to the senses of mankind, and all is consistent, easy, and natural. The foundations of the earth, the THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 333 pillars of the sky, denote simply the firmness and stead- fastness of these two main objects of the knowledge of man, the wide landscape spread around him, and the blue vault everywhere above his head. The opening of the windows of heaven denotes the descent of rain from that upper sky, wdiere no water could before be seen to exist, and is a metaphor plainly drawn from the skylights of some human building. The placing of the sun, moon, and stars in the firmament has no reference to a solid structure, in which case they would be fixed and immoveable, but to their permanent mani- festation, as moving daily through the azure vault of the heaven. The only phrase which gives the least countenance to the gross, material view of the firmament, a view which plainly is refuted, rather than confirmed, by the etymo- logy, is the mention of the waters above and below it, which it separates from each other. But a very little patient thought will suggest at once the true meaning. The blue vault or expanse is a result relative to human vision. Its existence depends on the mutual relation of the eyes of men and animals, and the optical pro- perties of the earth's atmosphere, through which alone we obtain a knowledge of objects beyond the reach of our other senses. It is, in short, the sensible limit between the visible and the invisible. All water, then, which is visible to the senses, either in the seas or in the clouds, is described as being under the firmament ; and all which is invisible and concealed from the senses, with equal propriety of phrase, is described as above the firmament. It is out of this state of invisibiHty that it reappears continually in rain, to fertilize the earth. This change from the invisible to the visible, is the open- ing of the windows of heaven, by which the waters above the firmament descend and mingle with those below. 334 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. The relation, then, between the latest conclusions of modern science, and the Bible history of creation, is one of independent truth, but of perfect harmony. Science reveals a long series of changes, once unsus- pected, by which the strata of our planet were formed, and a succession of nearly thirty vegetable and animal creations, which were suited, no doubt, to the state of the earth in which they appeared, but were suc- cessively destroyed by volcanic convulsions on the largest scale, by which new mountain chains rose into being. The most . complete separation of species, an immense preponderance of new genera, and the rise of the most stupendous mountains — the Alps and Andes, separate the last of these from the present human creation. Science proves that, before man appeared, the earth must have been waste and desolate ; all pre- vious forms of life destroyed and entombed ; and though its strata might be completed, its whole surface was covered with mighty inundations, and its atmosphere loaded with the vapour from the seas and oceans, which such a vast volcanic eruption could not fail to send up in immense and enormous volumes, wrapping the whole surface of the planet, perhaps for years or centuries, in thick impenetrable darkness. But science, while it may reveal the fact that man and existing plants and animals are contemporary in the geological sense, is far too dim-sighted to disclose the times, the order, and the details, of that last creation in which all these had their birth. For anything which its most skilful interpreters can tell us, this work might have lasted through thousands of years, or Almighty Power might have compressed it into a single day. It is here that the word of God steps in, and beginning its narrative with that creation which now exists, and with which alone man has anything to do, at least until these THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 335 recent discoveries were disentombed, reveals to ns the order, the swift fulfilment, and the moral grandeur of this great work of God. The fourth commandment pronounced on Sinai by the lips of Jehovah himself, gives us the sublime fact, and its application to the instruction and guidance of mankind. " Six days shalt thou labour and do all thy work, but the seventh day is the Sabbath of the Lord thy God. For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea and all thai in them is, and rested the seventh day ; wherefore the Lord blessed the seventh day, and hallowed it." ^ * Note E. Genesis and Geologj-. . 338 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. CHAPTER XY. THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE, CONTINUED. In the previous chapter a brief reply has been ofiered to modern arguments against the inspiration and autho- rity of the Bible, from its supposed contradiction to the truths of astronomy and geology. The other topics, the History of the Flood, the Unity of the Human Race, and the conclusions of Ethnology, have not been so prominent in the most recent attacks, and their treatment would lead too far from the main purpose of the present work. But it seems desirable to clear up some difficulties of a more general kind ; and to point out the line of truth and wisdom, between that superstitious abuse of Scripture, which leads to " a phantastical science," and that undue confidence in im- perfect science, and contempt for the authority of the Divine oracles, which tends inevitably to "an heretical religion." The Bible, in the view of the Christian Church, con- sists of a series of inspired records, or messages from God to mankind, " All Scripture is given by inspira- tion of God." It " cannot be broken." It is God himself who " spake in time past to the fathers by the prophets." It is the Holy Ghost, who spake by Moses, by David, by Isaiah. " Prophecy came not at any time by the will of man ; but holy men of God spake, being moved or borne along by the Holy Ghost." It is " the THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 337 Lord God of tlie lioly prophets" by wliom these various messages of Divine truth were given to men. The Son of God himself suffered on the cross " that tlie Scriptures of the prophets might be fulfilled." And he has told us himself that "it is easier for heaven and earth to pass away, than for one tittle of the law to fail." Such statements as these, from the lips of the Saviour and his Apostles, might be expected to secure the Scriptures from imputations of contradiction, error, and falsehood, at least on the part of those who profess to be disciples of Christ. They do not require us to believe that these messages are absolutely perfect, without tlie least speck or flaw, in the form in which they reach the hands of every individual, after translation and transcription have been at work for thousands of years. They do not, perhaps, require us to decide how near to the fountain-head some minute, microscojoical faults, from the infirmity of copyists or amanuenses, may have been permitted to come. But they do seem clearly to imply that the gift was perfect, and free from all error, as first communicated from the God of truth to His chosen messengers, or curiously and wisely fashioned, by the use of their faculties, within their minds, whether in history, precept, doctrine, devotion, or spiritual medita- tion. The whole, therefore, comes to us, plainly stamped with a Divine authority. And this authority must ex- tend to every jot and tittle of its contents, until some adequate evidence, external or internal, shews it to be a fault of translation or transmission ; a slight flaw, in whatever way occasioned, wliich has become attached to the original and Divinely perfect message. The Bible, again, is marked throughout by the unity of a great moral purpose. Its design is not to interfere with the slow and silent progress of natural science, but z 338 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. to make sinners wise unto salvation. It was written for the use of" every age from the time when its earhest messages were given, and not to gratify the scientific curiosity of our own busy generation. A treatise on astronomy, geology, chemistry, electricity, or botany, would evidently be quite out of place in these lively oracles of God. They would, by such an excrescence, renounce in part their own true character, and descend from their sacred height into a lower sphere. We have no right to expect in them a premature revelation of the law of gravitation, and the Newtonian theory of the heavens, or of the undulatory theory of light, or of the chemical constitution of matter, or a thousand other natural truths, which the progress of science may perhaps, in future ages, make known to men. The allusions in Scripture to all these subjects, we might reasonably infer, would be incidental, secondary, and collateral. On the other hand, the Bible is not a message to pure, disembodied spirits ; but is addressed to man in his actual character, as a being composed of body and soul, born in the weakness of infancy, placed in the midst of this lower, visible creation, and trained through his senses to the knowledge of himself, of nature and of God. A revelation designed for such a being must inevitably include within it many facts, that belong to almost every field of scientific inquiry. All nature must be laid under contribution, like the treasures of Eoypt for the tabernacle, to form this marvellous and complicated structure of heavenly wisdom. Facts which belong to geography, chronology, botany, zoology, astronomy, civil legislation, and political history, meet us, and must be expected to meet us, in almost every page of the sacred narrative. These simple remarks are enough to clear away two THE BIBLE AND MODEBN SCIENCE. 339 £!,'rcat errors, on opposite sides, by which Christian faith has been clouded with a dangerous scepticism, or loaded with a superstitious excrescence. They shew at once how vain must be the attempt to maintain a doctrinal authority in Scripture, and still to impute to it a merely human character, wherever it touches on questions of natural science. For the two elements are blended throughout no less intimately, than body and soul are united in man himself. Let us take for instance, the leading truth of Christianity, the resur- rection of our Lord. No truth can be more central to the revelation, or more intensely spiritual in its true significance. Yet it contains points of intimate con- nection with a dozen different sciences. It is a geo- graphical truth ; for he rose from the tomb at Calvary, and ascended from Olivet. It is a chronological truth ; for he rose the third day, during the procuratorship of Pontius Pilate, and on that first day of the week, which begins the long, unbroken series of Christian sabbaths. It is a physiological truth ; for the body which was laid in the grave, was raised on the third day, before it had seen corruption. It is connected with a truth of botany ; for that sacred body had been embalmed with myrrh and aloes, a hundred pounds in weight. It is a truth of j^olitical history ; for cruci- fixion was a Roman and not a Jewish jDunishment, and a Jewish watch, by permission of a Roman governor, had been set over the tomb. It is connected with im- portant facts of mental philosophy ; for the disciples believed not for joy, and wondered.- It is connected equally with the science of jurisprudence, and the laws of evidence ; for he appeared openly, " not to all the people, but t(.) witnesses chosen before of God, who did eat and drink with him after he rose from the dead." And hence the idea of retaining the authority ol the z 2 340 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. Bible, as in any sense Divine, and. making an exception for parts into which there enters some scientific element, is utterly delusive and impracticable. The doctrines and the facts, the precepts and the histories, are joined inseparably by the Spirit of God himself; and man, with his most laborious efforts, cannot put them asunder. Deny the authority of the facts, and you destroy the whole revelation. But the same truths will serve equally to shut out an opposite error, which would make the Bible, because of its Divine origin, a substitute for the researches of human science, and would strive to extract a complete system of natural philosophy from its pages. The Bible, from its nature as a true and Divine history, must contain valuable materials for many branches of science, but not the sciences themselves. In speaking of natural objects, it deals with facts, patent to the senses of men, and not with secret causes that lie hidden from general view. It speaks of earthquakes, but not of the volcanic heavings of a fluid nucleus, or of the internal combustion out of which they may arise. It speaks of sunrise and sunset, of the waxing and waning of the moon, but not of the earth's revolution, or the laws that guide the motion of our satellite, and deter- mine its phases. It speaks of hail mingled with fire, sent from heaven, but propounds no theory of elec- tricity to account for the violence of the thunderstorm, and the strange contrast of heat and cold in the same phenomenon. It alludes to trees and plants, from the cedar of Lebanon to the hyssop on the wall ; but no formal classification of them, as endogens and exogens, or in any other way, is found in its pages. Thus, while it furnishes rich materials, in various ways, to men of science, it speaks a language intelligible to all mankind. It is mere folly and ignorance to tax the Scriptures THE BIBLE AND MuDEKN SCIENCE. 341 with falsehood because of this popular character, whicli is one mark of their Divine wisdom. The contrast between scientific and popular statements is not a contrast between truth and falsehood ; but between truth in its simpler and alphabetic forms, which lie within the reach of a child, and in those deeper com- binations which lie remote from the surface, and are gradually disclosed by a patient induction from mul- tiplied observations and experiments. Every sunrise and sunset, observed in every spot on the earth's surface, is a separate truth of astronomical science, no less than material for poetical description. But the re- volution of the earth on its axis is a wider and more com- prehensive truth, which sums up and explains thousands of sunsets in ten thousand spots on the surfiice of the earth, and reveals, with scientific accuracy, the order and interval of their succession from day to day. It is thus equally an error to deny that the Scriptures furnish, on Divine authority, facts which constitute the partial materials for various branches of natural science ; or to suppose that their statements embody and define any scientific theory, and supersede the labours of jjatient induction by a physical theory of nature re- vealed from heaven. Another form, in which the attempt has been made to restrict the authority of Scripture, is by exempting from the range of Divine revelation all those depart- ments of truth " for the discovery of which he has faculties specially provided by his Creator." A general charge of ignorance or negligence has been brought against the whole body of Christian divines, because they have overlooked this great axiom, or adopted it with such limitations as destroy its value. This doctrine is the startiijg-point of the Essay on the Mosaic Cos- mogony, and the goal to which it returns. Under its 342 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. friendly guidance, the Divine record of creation, to which the Son of God appealed with holy reverence, is to resume the dignity and value which it had lost while esteemed to be the word of God, by ranking as the speculation of some Hebrew sciolist, who had never learned the modesty of modern science, and made a bold, but mistaken guess at the origin of the world. Men have regarded it, for ages, as the inspired truth of God ; but it is cheering to be assured, that their respect for it need not be in the least diminished, when they come to regard it as the blind and ignorant conjecture of some unknown pretender to Divine communications. Let us see, first, how far this maxim will carry us on the road of unbelief. We have the faculty of memory, specially pro^dded to teach us the facts of history, or of human testimony. Therefore no facts of history can be included in a Divine message. We have the faculty of imagination, specially provided to make us capable of poetic feeling and thought. Therefore poetry and its high imagery must be excluded also. We have a conscience, designed and adapted to teach us moral truths. Therefore a Divine revelation must pretend to teach no morality. We have reason and judgment, specially designed and adapted to combine facts and truths together, and derive inferences from their union. Therefore all reason and argument, and all appeals to the understanding, must be banished from the messages of God. By the moral sense, combined with the faculty of reason, we can gain some general conceptions of the First Cause and his moral attributes, Thei-efore the knowledge of God himself, his nature, attributes, and will, must form no part of Divine revelation. The principle, so highly praised, is thus a simple and effec- tual expedient for getting rid of all revelation whatever, by leaving i-t no single subject, within the range and THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 3-13 compass of the human fiiculties, whicli it is permitted to reveal. The maxim, tlien, whicli theologians are blamed for being slow to receive, is grossly and manifestly absurd. No truth can possibly be revealed, unless there be a faculty fitted to receive the revelation. A landscape can be unveiled only to the seeing eye, and melodies of music only made known to the hearing ear. Where the faculties have been obscured by sin, the work of revelation may be twofold, and include the opening of blind eyes, and the unstopping of deaf ears, as well as the exhibition of visions of heavenly truth, or melo- dious utterances of Divine love. But a faculty which is fitted to receive, and if to receive, then by diligence and care to discover, moral and spiritual truth, is not a substitute which excludes Divine revelation, but the previous condition on which its possibility depends. But the context in which this maxim appears, and the purpose to which it has been applied, makes its error doubly conspicuous. It is used to justify the degrada- tion of the first chapter of Genesis from a Divine message into a mere human speculation. Now if there be one part of the Bible history which is beyond the reach of a merely human knowledge, it must be a record of the steps of creation before the first existence of man. All later events named in the Bible might have been handed down, without a Divine inspiration, by tlie ordinary processes of human tradition. Here alone such a tradition was plainly impossible. Even modern science must here be completely at fault. Astronomers might sooner be able to give us a chart of the bays and islands of the lost Pleiad, or of a planet of Sirius, than geologists, by their own researches, to recount in detail the events of the six natural days which iunnediately preceded the first appearance of man on the face of the globe. Yet 344 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. this is tlie chapter out of the whole Bible, which it has been laboured to deprive of a Divine origin, on tlie plea that what man can learn by his unaided faculties can never be the object of supernatural revelation. Let us examine the maxim more closely. It is not uncommon, with Cln-istian writers, to assume a wide contrast between truths which man might learn without Divine communication, and those for which it is indis- pensably required. They do not restrict the authority of the Bible to truths of the second class alone ; but still, it is their presence on which the value of the gift is supposed mainly to depend. The same contrast, however, has been borrowed by sceptical writers, and worked out on its negative side. It then becomes a powerful engine to destroy the authority of revealed religion. Every fact of history and every moral truth, since it might be learned by the right use of our natural powers, is exempted from the province of revelation. Nothing is left to revealed religion but a few mysterious doctrines, which are to be blindly received, because it is impossible to understand them, and they are unfit, in their own nature, for any exercise of the human con- science or reason. It will be found, I think, on closer reflection, that there is no ground for this line of rigid demarcation. All truth is mutually related and harmonious. In the mind of Omniscient Wisdom, all things past, present, and future, and all truths of every kind, must be united in one vast scheme of Providence, in which there is no flaw. " He is the Rock, his work is perfect." Every reasonable creature, whose powers are not impaired by sin, has some partial knowledge of this mighty scheme, though it is only like a drop in an immeasurable ocean. But he has also a capacity of progress. He can observe more and more, himself; and he can learu more and THE BIBLE AND MODERN SCIENCE. 345^- more from the testimony of other observers. He can coml)ine, more and more fully, these elements of know- ledge, and tlius discover slowly the laws of Providence, both in the natural and spiritual world. There seems to be no essential separation between truths attainable in course of time by the use of our natural faculties, and others quite unattainable. But the contrast is almost infinite, in the degree of facility with which par- ticular truths may be learned by observation alone, by the help of human testimony, or by direct revelations from the Fountain of all truth and wisdom. Let us take, for example, the science of astronomy. A single student, if his life were indefinitely prolonged, might multiply his observations, perfect his instruments, and enlarge his attainments in analysis, till the dis- coveries of thousands had all been equalled and sur- passed by himself alone. He might thus amass larger and more exact materials than we now possess, and combine them by a profound analysis which should throw the Principia and Mecanique Celeste, and the labours of Plana, Struve, Airy, Herschel, Adams, and Leverrier, completely into the shade. But before this pinnacle could possibly be reached, long, interminable ages must have rolled away. Facts, which he might have learned in a moment from the simple testimony of another observer, would have become immensely remote, before he could re-discover them, if at all, as inferences iVom his own discoveries and observations. Now this, which is true of astronomy, must be still more true of our human knowledge of the character, works, and ways of God. Even npuvi from the effects of sin, our lifetime is far too short for any large advance, by our own unaided wisdom, in a science so glorious. This knowledge is too wonderful for us; it is high, and we cannot attain unto it. The discoveries of a lifetime 316 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. would be the merest atom in this boundless ocean of truth. Even the help of our fellow-men could do only a very little to facilitate our progress in this pathway towards clearer light. But if our Maker himself were to condescend to become our Teacher, and out of the stores of his infinite wisdom to select the truths most helpful to our progress, and still within the range of our actual capacity, then would our progress be far more rapid and easy. In the humble use of this Divine aid, we might soon leave far behind us, in the low and misty valley, those who had never received, or who had neglected and despised it, and travel, with swift and hopeful steps, up the mountain side towards the summit of the everlasting hills. But the debasing influence of sin on the human faculties renders this contrast between attainments possible in the use of natural powers alone, and by the aid of Divine revelation, far more complete. Men need not only to be taught, but to be made willing to learn. It is not enough that a wide landscape of heavenly truth is spread out before them. The eye of the soul must undergo a healing process, before they can gaze upon it undazzled, and without confusion. When the last glorious vision was revealed to the beloved Daniel, its brightness overwhelmed him, and he fell senseless to the earth. The same Person, who was the great object of prophecy, and the Revealer of what was noted in the Scripture of truth, needed also to act the part of a Divine Physician, and to strengthen the faculties of the pro- phet, as well as to provide a glorious vision on which his eyes might rest. He touched him once, and the swoon passed away, and he stood trembling, but mute with deep astonishment. He touched him again, and the dumbness was removed, and he was able to utter a confession of his weakness, and to plead for further THE BIBLE AND MODEIIN SCIENCE. 347 succour and grace. He touched him a tliird time, and strength was given, and tlie prophet could hearken to tlie message, and gaze, even to the last, upon that glorious vision. We have here a picture of the constant law of all Divine revelations to a world of sinners. The Revealer must also himself become the Physician ; or else the most glorious revelations of unseen things, and the. largest disclosures of the ways of Providence, will be offered in vain, while a death-like stupor settles down upon the souls of men. Again, tliere are truths in the spiritual, just as in the natural world, which from our actual position must become known to us as facts, long before we could attain, by any process of reasoning, to deduce them from other truths, or to discover their secret laws. It is possible, for instance, that the luminosity of the sun, in contrast with the planets, may result in some way, now unknown to us, from its immensely superior mass. In this case, the solar mass would be a physical cause, and the solar light a scientific corollary. But every inhabit- ant of the earth must experience the light of the sun, long before they could deduce the mass of the sun and planets from their observations, or obtain any glimpse of a scientific relation between two facts apparently so independent. In like manner, unfallen spirits must have distinct communion witli the pei"sons of the God- head, long before they could possibly obtain any glimpse of the Trinity as an essential corollary from the per- fection of the Divine Being; and follen sinners must have learned the atonement, and felt its recovering power, long before they can be expected to gain any deep insight into its mystery, as reconciling the attri- butes of the Godhead in the infinitely wise counsel of redeeming love. These truths, duly weighed, will fully explain the S48 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. use and need of Divine revelation, without resorting to any broad separation of truth into two kinds, of which the first may be attained by human faculties alone, and the others need a miraculous interference. The ques- tion is not what men might possibly learn, supj)osing no moral averseness from Divine truth, and that their lives were prolonged indefinitely, to give them space for growing discoveries. This is the real question, how, within the hmits. of a very short probation, unwilling hearts may be bowed into the attitude of willing disciples ; and dull and backward scholars may, within a few years or days, become wise to salvation, and gain a firm hold on those great doctrines of God's holiness, their own corruption and guilt, and that way of accept- ance through a Divine atonement, on which all light, peace, holiness, and comfort depend. Every child, who consults an almanac to learn the time of a coming eclipse of the sun, has faculties, which might, perhaps, in the course of some thousands or myriads of years, enable him to discover for himself the laws of the heavenly motions, to reproduce the Newtonian theory, and cal- culate tlie eclipse from his own observations. But an abstract capacity, loaded with such conditions, cannot in the least diminish the worth of the almanac to such a child, as a ready and sufficient source of the information which he requires. Nay, the same is true of the most advanced astronomer. He may add, by his own labours, to the domain of science ; but still he needs, both in his daily life and for the wants of his own observatory, to depend on the ready-made ephemeris, no less than the merest peasant or the youngest child. The maxim, then, that Divine revelation must be restricted to those subjects w^hich lie entirely beyond the reach of human faculties, and which man could never possibly learn without some direct aid from THE BIRLR AND MODERN SCIENCE. 349 above, is no less opposedto sound pliilosopliy than to the actual features of tlic Cln-istian religion. If tlie Bible teaches little, comparatively, on matters of phy- sical science, it is because it moves on a higher level, and refers to spiritual objects ; and still more because, in the secondary use which it makes of tlie works of nature, its purpose is best fulfilled by dwelling on those aspects of them which lie nearer the surface, and are open to the observation of all mankind. On the other hand, we have plainly faculties by whicli we can observe or acquire historical fiicts ; and more than one half of the Bible consists of history. We have a conscience by which we can discern right and wrong. Our Lord himself appeals to the unbelieving Jews — " Yea, and why even of yourselves, judge ye not what is right ?" The faculty was present, and, if used aright, there may have been no absolute limit to its possible attainments. And yet the largest portion of the Bible, next to simple narrative, consists of moral precepts, examples, and exhortations. It is not to supply the absence of a missing faculty, but rather to heal the sickness of a faculty that is diseased by sin, and to quicken its slow and halting progress in the pathway of truth and wisdom, that Divine revelation is really given. Its authority, then, is stamped alike on every part of the truth which lies within the compass of its actual message. It is not a map of the world ; but its statements of the places where sacred events occurred are accurate and true. It is not a system of optics or astro- nomy ; but its mention of the visible work of the fourtli day, of the sunset when Abraham received his vision, or the sunrise when Sodom was destroyed, or the dark- ness at the crucifixion, is accurate and true. It is not a system of chronology ; but the ages and the dates it records, when its true text has been ascertained, are, 350 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. like the gospel itself, worthy of all acceptation. It has a holy anointing from the Sj^irit of truth, which runs down to the very skirts of its gannent. Its sayings, whatever their subject, when cleared from specks and flaws that may have been contracted here and there in the transmission of the message, are " faithful and true ;" for it is " the Lord God of the holy prophets " by whom these lively oracles have been given to man- kind, " to give light to them that sit in darkness and in the shadow of death, and to guide our feet into the way of peace." THE BIBLE AND NATUIIAL CONSCIENCE. 351 CHAPTER XVI. THE BIBLE AND NATURAL CONSCIENCE. The relation between the authority of the Bible and the claims of conscience is one of the most fundamental questions in the whole range of practical theology. Any serious mistake on this point strikes at the founda- tions of Christianity. If conscience be silenced, and external commands, through human interpreters, are blindly imposed on the whole church, the way is open for the fatal inroad of all kinds of superstition. If private conscience be made the supreme authority, and the word of God be allowed no other force than it borrows from the choice or caprice of the individual, we accept a principle which is the root of all infidelity, and anarchy will be enthroned under the imj^osing titles of a spiritual religion and a reasonable faith. Statements, which have lately been made, seem clearly to present this later view as characteristic of the full manhood of the individual Christian, and of the whole race of mankind. With the age of reflection, the spirit or conscience comes to full strength, and assumes the throne. As an accredited judge, invested with full powers, he sits on the tribunal of our inner kingdom, decides on the past, and legislates on the future, without appeal except to himself. He is the third great Teacher, and the last. lie frames his code of laws, rcvisinc:, addiiiir, abrogating, as a wider and deeper experience gives him 352 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. clearer liglit. The law of the child or the youth may be an external law, in making, enforcing, and applying which we have no share ; which governs from tlie out- side, compelling our will to how, though our under- standing be unconvinced and unenlightened, and cares little whether you reluctantly submit or willingly agree. But the law which governs and educates the man is internal ; a voice which speaks within the conscience, and carries the understanding along with it ; which treats us not as slaves, but as friends ; which is not imposed by another power, but by our own en- lightened will. This law of conscience marks the last stage in the education of the human race. We are now within the boundaries of this third period. The church is left to herself, to work out by her natural faculties the principles of her own action. In learning this lesson she needed a firm spot, and has found it in the Bible. Had this contained precise statements of faith, or detailed precepts of conduct, we must either have become subject to an outer law, or have lost the highest instrument of self-education. But the Bible, from its form, is exactly suited to our wants, for even its doc- trinal parts are best studied by viewing them as records of the highest and greatest religious life of the times. Hence it is to be used not to override, but to evoke, the voice of conscience. When the two appear to difter, the pious Christian immediately concludes that he has not really understood the Bible. Its interpretation varies always in one direction, and tends to identify itself with the voice of conscience. From its form it cannot exercise a desj^otism over the human spirit. If so, it would become an outer law at once, and throw back the world into the stage of childhood. But its form is such that it wins from us all the reverence of a supreme authority, and yet imposes on us no yoke of THE BIBLE AND NATURAL CONSCIENCE. So3 subjection. The principle of private judgment puts conscience between us and the Bible, and makes it the supreme interpreter, whom it may be a duty to enlighten, but never to disobey.^ These statements, by a large amount of friendly violence, may perhaps be explained away into the simple truism, that the Gospel, in contrast to the Law of Moses, is a dispensation of liberty, and includes very few external ordinances. But in their natural meaning they go much further, and involve three principles, which evacuate and destroy the whole authority of the word of God. They teach, first, that the Scrip- tures have no authority, and impose no obligation, unless they have been endorsed and accepted by the individual conscience ; and then only in that particular construction which each one puts ujDon them in his own mind. Secondly, that private, individual conscience is a supreme judge, whom, however faulty or imperfect his decisions may be, it is always a duty to obey. And thirdly, that in the present manhood of the world, when- ever public opinion, or the prevailing impressions of educated men, and the apparent teaching of Scrip- ture, diverge from each other, the voice of Scripture must be fitted to the independent conclusions of man's natural conscience, and not the general conscience rec- tified, purified, and enlightened, by submission to the authority of the word of God. I. The first main question which needs decision is the nature and limit of the authority due to the Scrip- tures. Are they a revelation from God, which claims obedience and submission in virtue of its Divine origin ? Or, are they simply a rich treasury of materials, which our conscience, the supreme law, may employ in formnig its own conclusions, and which impose no obli- ' Essays and Reviews, pp. 31, 34, 44. 2 A 3o4 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOITGHT. gation, until each particular person adopts and applies them in the exercise of his private judgment ? On the answer to this inquiry it must depend whether the church and the world are still under moral govern- ment ; or, under the plea of magnifying the rights of conscience, we are given up to a state of spiritual anarchy, Avliere no law is binding on any Christian, but just whatever he chooses to receive and obey. Let us first consider what are the express statements, on this subject, of the Scriptures themselves. We find, in the very front of our Lord's teaching, the impressive sentence — " Think not that I am come to destroy the law and the prophets ; I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you. Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in nowise pass from the law, till all be fulfilled. Whosoever therefore shall break one of these least commandments, and shall teach men so, he shall be called the least in the kingdom of heaven ; but whosoever shall do and teach them, the same shall be called great in the kingdom of heaven." It seems plain that our Lord speaks here as the great Lawgiver. He denies that he has come to set aside the authority of commands already given. On the contrary, he had come to clear them from pernicious glosses, and to develop their full meaning. L[is purpose was not to abrogate, but to enlarge and complete the code of Divine morality ; and those who taught the exemption of his disciples from even the secondary and inferior precepts would lose all claim to spiritual eminence, and be called " least in the kingdom of heaven." At the close of the discourse we have a renewed warning of the guilt and danger of disobedience, and the most prominent feature in the whole sermon is declared to be its tone of Divine authority. If we pass from one of the earliest of our Lord's dis- THE BIBLE AND NATURAL CONSCIENCE. 355 courses to one of the last, the same feature stands out in clear relief, amidst all the rich fulness of its grace and compassion : " Ye call me blaster and Lord, and ye say well, for so I am." " I have given you an examjDle, that ye should do as I have done to you." " If ye know tliese things, happy are ye if ye do them." " If ye love me, keep my commandments." " He that hath my commandments, and keepeth them, he it is that loveth me." " He that loveth me not, keepeth not my say- ings." " If a man love me, he will keep my words." " If ye keep my commandments, ye shall abide in my love, even as I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in his love." " This is my commandment, that ye love one another, as I have loved you." The lesson of the Epistles is j^recisely the same. More than three chapters of the Epistle to the Romans are composed of distinct apostolic commands, addressed with authority to the Roman Christians. The laws of the second table are all reimposed, with a gospel com- mentary on their mutual relation (xiii. 8-14.) The Apostle declares, at the close, that the aim of his whole ministry was " to make the Gentiles obedient by word and deed ;" and that the Gospel he preached was the commandment of God, and made known to the nations for the obedience of fjiith. In 1 Cor. xiv. 37, we have the im2)ressive caution, — '' If any man think himself to Ije a prophet, or spiritual, let liim acknowledge that the tilings which I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord." In the Second Epistle he tells them, " To this end did I write, that I might know the proof of you, whether ye be obedient in all things," and he distinguishes in one case between simple advice and direct apostolic precept (2 Cor. viii. 8 — 10). One half of the Epistle to the Ephesians is made up of such l)recepts, given in the most dii'cct and imperative form, 2 A 2 356 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. while the fifth commandment is recognised as still binding on Christians — " Honour thy father and mother, which is the first commandment with promise ; that it may be well with thee, and thou mayest live long on the earth." In the Epistle to the Philippians, the same truth is taught in plain terms, that Christian disciples were bound by the authority of apostolic commands : *' Wherefore, my beloved, as ye have always obeyed, not in my presence only, but now much more in my absence, work out your own salvation with fear and trembling." In every other epistle of St. Paul the same truth appears. St. James is even more explicit, and says to the Christian believers, " Whosoever shall keep the whole law, and yet offend in one point, he is guilty of all. For he that said. Do not commit adultery, said also, Do not kill. Now if thou commit no adultery, yet if thou kill, thou art become a transgressor of the law." And again, " Speak not evil one of another. He that speaketh evil of his brother, and judgeth his brother, speaketh evil of the law, and judgeth the law ; but if thou judge the law, thou art not a doer of the law, but a judge. There is one Lawgiver, who is able to save and to destroy." St. Peter fills his First Epistle with precepts of the most pointed and authori- tative kind ; while in his Second he states the object of both his letters in these words : " That ye may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets, and of the commandment of us,_ the apostles of the Lord and Saviour." St. John's Epistle abounds in declarations of the same kind : " Hereby we do know that we know him, if we keep his command- ments." " I write no new commandment unto you, but an old commandment, which ye had from the begin- ning. Again a new commandment I write unto you." *' Whosoever committeth sin, transgresseth also the law THE BIBLE AND NATURAL CONSCIENCE. ?,o7 for sin is the transgression of tlie law." " Wliatsoever we ask we receive of liini, because we keep his com- mandments." " Tliis is his commandment, that we should believe on the name of his Son, Jesus Christ, and love one another, as he gave us commandment." " This is the love of God, that we keep his command- ments, and his commandments are not grievous." " This is love, that we walk after his commandments." In the last book of the canon, though mainly prophetic, this same truth enters into the repeated description of the faithful, that " they keep the commandments of God, and have the testimony of Jesus Christ." Now in all these passages, which are only specimens out of a large number, we are taught that every Chris- tian is distinctly placed under the authority of God's commands, given by Christ and his AjDostles, and re- corded in the New Testament ; and the duty of obedi- ence is made to depend simply on the fact that such commands have been given. They cannot be rightly obeyed, unless they are first understood, and their Divine authority recognised. But these are conditions of actual obedience, and not of the obligation to obey. So far is this from being true, that neglect of the message is itself ranked amongst the most dangerous and deadly sins. This great truth, that the commands of Scripture are binding by their own authority as the words of God, and not simply when endorsed by the private con- science, results further from the distinct mention, in the Bible, of sins of ignorance, and of presumption. Now if no command were obligatory on the Christian but such as his o\A^n conscience has previously recognised, this distinction must be set aside. Sins of ignorance would then be impossible, and all sins would be those of presumption, or committed with the present knowledge 358 THE BIBLE AND MODEBxN THOUGHT. tliat tliey were sins. But this contradicts equally the Old Testament and the New. The Law made distinct and full provision for the pardon of sins of ignorance, and of those alone (Numb. xv. 22-31). The Psalmist offers the petition, " Keep back thy servant from pre- sumptuous sins, lest they get the dominion over me." But it is only after the confession and prayer, " "Who can understand his errors ? cleanse thou me from secret faults." And the prayer of our Lord upon the cross for his murderers places the contrast in the clearest light : " Father, forgive them ; for they know not what they do." On the principle now examined, these sinners must have been guiltless, because their own conscience had never pronounced sentence against them for their great and aggravated crime. But this notion, that moral obligations depend simply on the impressions of the individual conscience, and not on the true relations between each person and his fellow-creatures, and the glorious Creator, is no less opposed to the lessons of a sound philosophy than to the plain and repeated statements of the word of God. Moral commands are in their own nature as unchange- able as the being of God, the relations of sovereignty and dominion which He bears towards his intelligent creatures, and their own capacities for receiving and imparting happiness. Add to these relations a power of choice, and nothing more is required to create moral obhgation. The office of conscience is not to create new duties, but to discern those which do exist, and bring home to us their imperative claim on our 'obedi- ence. The atheist is bound to love his Maker with all his heart and mind, no less really than the most devout Christian. The man steeped in selfishness, till he has come to reckon worldly prudence his sole duty, is bound to love his neighbour as himself, no less than a Howard TUE BIBLE AND NATURAL CONSCIENCE. 359 or a Wilberforce, a St. Paul or a St. John. The most ignorant idolater, wlio bows down with sincere reve- rence to his idol, and says, " Deliver me, for thou art my God," is bound by the second commandment, no less than Moses, or Isaiah, or Daniel. For tlie command is based on a Divine attribute, which is unchangeable, and not on the slip2)ery and uncertain impressions or fancies of sinful men. No doctrine can be more dangerous to society than one which exempts from the laws of the second table the disobedient child, the revengeful duellist or assassin, the abandoned sensualist, the thief and slanderer, whenever they have seared their own conscience, and lost the feeling of their own obligation. And none can be more fatal to true religion than one which pronounces atheism and idolatry to be blameless, whenever the fool has really said in his heart, " There is no God ;" or a deceived heart has turned the idolater aside, " that he cannot deliver his soul, or say. Is there not a lie in my right hand ?" II. Again, is Conscience a supreme judge, invested with full powers, who legislates without any appeal but to himself, and whom it may be a duty to enhghten, but can never be a duty to disobey ? Are the Scriptures merely an exciting cause to awaken the independent voice of this judge, and must their teaching be accom- modated to it, whenever they seem to diverge from each other ? The answer to this question is partly implied in the reply to the former. If the laws of God are of binding authority in their own right, then a mistaken conscience can never reverse the true law of duty. It may render acts relatively sinful which are lawful in themselves, because a person would thereby run counter to his own sense of what is right ; but it cannot make that lawful which in itself is wrong. The law of God does not 360 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. prescribe meclianical acts, irrespective of the temper and spirit in which they are done. " He that doubteth is condemned, if he eat ; because he doeth it not in faith ; for whatsoever is not of faith is sin." A diseased conscience introduces a moral discord, so that actions against the conscience, even when materially right, become morally wrong. But this, far from proving that conscience is a supreme judge without ajDpeal, proves exactly the reverse. It shews the moral dis- cernment of right and wrong to be so essential a part of the moral being that, when this is perverted, sin is inevitable, whether we obey its lessons, or disobey them. Men cannot render God a fit and acceptable service, when " their own heart and conscience are defiled." The true question is not, whether a mistaken con- science can render acts sinful to the individual which are lawful in themselves, but whether it can render actions lawful, which, apart from its erroneous decision, are morally wrong. Such a doctrine is a direct procla- mation of moral anarchy. It strikes at the very foundation of the dominion of God. Let us test it, first, by one or two statements in the Scriptures themselves. Our Lord gave the warning to his disciples : " The time will come when he that killeth you will think that he doeth God service." Were these persecutors of the first disciples innocent, when they carried out their sincere convictions of duty by mur- dering the saints of God ? If private conscience be a supreme judge, and without appeal, they were innocent. But the Scriptures pronounce them deeply criminal, and their voice is confirmed by the deepest instincts of every Christian heart. Again, was Saul of Tarsus innocent when he " verily thought with himself that he ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Naza- reth ?" Was his conduct blameless when he consented THE BIBLE AND NATURAL CONSCIENCE. 36l to tlie murder of Stephen, and lield the raiment of thera that slew liim ? Was he a pattern of moral uprightness when he "made havoc of the church, entering into every house, and haling men and women committed them to prison," when he " punished them oft in every synagogue, and compelled them to blaspheme ?" What is his own sentence, when recovered to a sounder mind ? He declares himself, on account of these conscientious acts, to have been " the chief of sinners." He proclaims himself a marvellous example of the riches of God's long-sufiering, that the most guilty, in later ages, might not despair of the Divine mercy because of the great- ness of their crimes. He alludes to the ignorance under which he then laboured, but never dreams that it had poAver to turn his sins into virtues, and to free them from blame. Its only effect, in his view, was to avert a still deeper measure of guilt, so as to leave his case just within the extreme limit of Divine forbearance. " Who before was a blasphemer, and a persecutor, and injurious ; but I obtained mercy, because I did it igno- rantly, in unbelief." " Howbeit for this cause I ob- tained mercy, that in me first Jesus Christ might shew forth all longsuffering." Nothing can be more decisive and clear than this judgment of the great Apostle in the deliberate review of his own liistory. A perverted conscience cannot alter the nature of sin, and make it lawful. It merely frees it from that deeper aggra- vation, in which men sin presumptuously against the light, and their own convictions, and thus load them- selves with a more dangerous, and almost hopeless condemnation. The same conclusion results equally from a direct consideration of the nature of conscience. It may be allowable, as a figure of rhetoric, to speak of it as a judge which holds its court within the soul, and pro- ^62 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. nounces its judgment on all the lower faculties. But such metaphors, when constantly used, are liable to create a serious delusion. When it is said that con- science comes in between the Bible and ourselves, as a mediator and interpreter, the metaphor has been mis- taken for a fact, and leads to dangerous consequences.' For conscience is simply the mind itself, exercising its judgment on the moral relations of right and wrong in its own actions, and the actions of others. Its supre- macy over other faculties is merely a varied expression for the truth, that the relations the mind contemplates, when its acts receive this name, are in their own nature of binding authority, and claim allegiance and sub- mission. In its other actings, the mind contemplates things equal or inferior to itself, or superior beings, irrespective of any claim to actual dominion and supre- macy. But the laws of moral duty are royal laws in their own nature, and speak with a voice of a king ; and the judgments of the mind, in which it recognises them, partake of the same character. Thus the supremacy of conscience depends entirely on the distinctive nature of moral truth ; but its defects, weakness, and error are due to the mind itself, and are one form of its moral guilt and infirmity. Its dictates are binding, there- fore, so far as they are the true reflection of eternal truths, or of real moral relations perceived by the soul. But the mistakes of conscience have no more real authority than any other kind of error. They have this peculiar feature, that they make sin inevitable. In obeying them the man sins against laws of God ; and, in disobeying them, against his own convictions of duty, and the internal harmony of his own moral being. Conscience, then, is no mediator, which j)rivate judg- ment can interpose between the mind of the Christian and the word of God, so as to shield him from the THE BIBLE AMD NATURAL CONSCIENCE. 363 weio'ht of the direct authority of the Scriptures. It is simply the mind itself, recog'iiisiiig the control of moral obhgations, whether dimly taught by the light of Nature, or more clearly by the voice of Divine revelation. If the Bible be the word of God, then its moral precepts must be received by the conscience at once, so far as they are understood, and owned to be obhgatory. If it be viewed as a human production, a double process will be required : first, to discover what it enjoins ; and next, to discern how far . its precepts are confirmed by the moral judgment, which may be formed on other grounds. In this case, natural conscience may be said to come between the soul and the Bible, because its revealed commands are not held to be binding of themselves, and require to be ratified by some further and more decisive authority. But this plainly involves an entire denial of its Divine character. On the other hand, when its authority is allowed, there can be no middle party re- quired, to render its precepts of direct and immediate obligation. They bind, because they exist, and are the voice of God. They can be felt to be binding, and guide the practice, only so far as their authority is accepted, and their true meaning is discerned. A personal conviction with regard to our own duty must accompany the acting of the mind upon tlie moral lessons iu the word of God ; but it neither adds to their authority, nor creates the obligation to obey ; just as an image on the retina does not really intervene between the eye and the landscape, and is only a necessary result, from the optical structure of the eye, during the act of vision. III. A third question remains to be examined. Is it one feature of the present advanced age of the world, that whenever Scripture and private conscience appear to diverge, we must suit our construction of Scripture. 364 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. to tlie supposed lessons of conscience, instead of mould- ing the conscience into submission to the truth of God ? This is a very momentous inquiry. It has been affirmed that " when conscience and the Bible appear to differ, the pious Christian immediately concludes that he has not really understood the Bible." In other words, his conscience may be assumed to be infallible, but his inter- pretation may be wrong, and the latter must be revised and varied, till the discrepancy is removed. Now such statements as these involve a doable error. They assume that conscience, in the case of the pious Christian, can give decisions independent of the moral teaching of the Scriptures, and unaffected by it ; and also, that its decisions are less fallible, and more trust- worthy, than the conclusions drawn with regard to the true meaning of the words of God. First, it is untrue that the conscience of the pious Christian can give decisive judgments, while he is still uncertain whether they agree with the word of God, and even suspects some contradiction between them. For since he believes that the Bible is a Divine revela- tion, he must believe that what God really commands in his word is just, right, and true, and that moral judgments contradicting that word must be deceptive and erroneous. An infidel, of course, may form moral judgments in entire independence of the Scriptures, and when they differ from his impression of the Bible precepts, he will at once impute the difference to the moral immaturity of the sacred writers. But with the Christian this is impossible. So long as he remains uncertain what the Scriptures really teach on a question of morals, so long the voice of conscience must remain in suspense, because he dare not pretend to set up his own guesses above the express revelations of the living God. The mere assertion, then, of the power and right of the THE BIBLE AND NATURAL CONSCIENCE. 365 natural conscience to form a fixed moral judgment on cases mentioned in the Scriptures, before the voice of Scripture itself has been heard, is a virtual rejection of Christianity. Such a claim is consistent and natural in the lips of the unbehever alone. It is plain, however, that the natural conscience may form impressions on laws of moral duty, or the charac- ter of particular actions, of a provisional kind, which diverge from the first impressions left on the mind by the teaching of Scripture, without any formal rejection of its authority. And the second question which arises must be, how these are to be reconciled together. Must our interpretation of Scripture always give way to the supposed voice of natural conscience ? Or must conscience always submit to the apparent meaning of Scripture ? Or again, must each, in turn, be modified and revised by the help of the other ? The true answer is here very evident to a thoughtful mind. Our interpretations of the Bible are liable to error, especially with regard to its indirect moral teach- ing, by examples, or in exceptional circumstances ; and so also are the first impressions of natural conscience. The disciples needed their eyes to be opened, that they might understand the Scriptures ; and they, whose heart and conscience are defiled, will be sure to form erroneous conclusions on moral right and wrong, till they have been cleansed and renewed by the Spirit of Grod. To claim infallibility for crude and hasty inferences from Scripture, so as to quench deep moral instincts of the soul, is the high road to all superstition. To set up natural conscience for an infallible rule, and either to reject the voice of Scripture, or violently to distort it, in order to get rid of a felt discordance from that rule, is the very essence of infidehty. The path of true wisdom Hes between these extremes. It will use the 366 THE BIBLE AND MODEBN THOUGHT. plainer lessons of conscience to correct and remove gross and careless misconstructions of the lesson con- veyed in isolated narratives of Scripture. But it will also use the voice of Scripture, especially when derived from the comparison of many passng-es, to correct tlie superficial and erroneous teachings of natural conscience ; and thus to raise it, from the low level of a spurious charity, a mere counterfeit of true benevolence, into communion with the Divine holiness, and the solemn, as well as the tender and gentle features, of heavenly love. IV. Is there no difference then, it may still be asked, between the liberty of the Christian, and the rigour of the Jewish dispensation? Are we now, in the times of the Gospel, no less under the dominion of an external law, than the disciples of Moses mider the elder cove- nant ? Are we not taught by the Apostle, in most emphatic language, that Christians are " not under the law, but under grace ?" Are we not charged to " stand fast in the liberty of Christ, and not to be entangled with a yoke of bondage ?" Do not these and similar passages lend some countenance to the idea, that in former ages there were commands binding on the con- science simply in virtue of their publication ; but that now, under the Gospel, no command is of authority till received and digested by the conscience itself, as a kind of spiritual moderator, and thus engraven on the tablets of the heart ? Perhaps the simplest and clearest reply to these questions will be found in a brief review of those foundations of Christian morality and Christian faith, on which their right solution must depend. First Qf all, moral truth is not a mutable and variable thing. It is no chance product of human opinion, no capricious and arbitrary creation of the Divine will. It is the reflection of God's own moral perfection, in its THE BIBLE AND NATURAL CONSCIENCE. 367 relation to tlie responsible creatures He has made, anrl is thus unchangeable in its principles and grand out- lines, like the attributes of the Most High. Moral perfection is in reality the Divine image retained in the spirit of angels, and restored in the^ soids of men. " Grod is love," and the full reseml^lance of that love is the perfection of the rational creature, the great and supreme law of moral duty. But since all being is twofold, the Creator and his creatures, this law parts at once into two great commandments, the love of God, the Supreme Goodness, and the love of God's creatures. Thus it forms the double precept, in its wide and full meaning, " Thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart," and " Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thy- self." p]acli of these admits of further divisions, accord- ing to the attributes or states of the object loved, and the capacity or state of the moral agent himself. To dwell on the second only — love to our fellow-creatures may assume three fundamental varieties. They may be viewed simply as creatures capable of happiness ; and love to them under this character is simple benevolence, which extends even to lower forms of irrational life. They* may be viewed, next, as moral creatures, loving or selfish, holy or unholy. Love towards them in this second aspect assumes two opposite forms — the love of the good, and the hatred or abhorrence of the evil.; and this constitutes moral righteousness or holiness. Again, sinful and unholy creatures may be viewed as still capable of moral recovery. Love to them, under this character, constitutes tli« last and highest element of true Christian morality, or that " grace " which is the distinguishing lesson of the Gospel of Christ. Still further, the complex nature of man, as composed of body and soul, and his own condition, as a dying crea- ture under moral probation, and a sinner encompassed, 368 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT, by acts and messages of Divine grace, vary these funda- mental outlines, and multiply them into an immense diversity of moral obligations. Conscience is simply the mind itself, viewed in its capacity for discerning the truth and authority of these obligations, and for passing judgment, by the aid of this knowledge, upon all the various actions of men. It is an enlightened conscience, when these relations are seen clearly, and felt in all their real power. It is a dark and ignorant conscience, when they are ill under- stood, and the mind seldom awakens to the sense of their surpassing and supreme importance. It is a perverse and defiled conscience, when the love of sin in the heart warps and falsifies the judgment, so that men call evil good, and good evil, put light for darkness, and darkness for light, bitter for sweet, and sweet for bitter. It is a seared conscience, when the soul be- comes reckless and wilfully desperate in sin, and refuses altogether to own the unchanging authority of the eternal laws of right and wrong. The conscience of man, since the fall, is darkened and defiled, but neither wholly seared and insensible, nor totally blind. His sense of his duty towards God is the most grievously obscured, and in a lower degree, but far less completely, his sense of obligation towards his fellow-men. By the mere light of nature, in favour- able circumstances, he attains some partial knowledge of the duties of truth, justice, and benevolence. But, without the teaching of revelation, all the higher lessons of moral obligation, the holiness of the law, and the grace of the Gospel, remain almost or altogether un- known. Now, in using the higher help, and fuller teaching, which Divine revelation supplies, men are exposed, from a double cause, to the risk of serious error. Mere TUE BIBLE AND NATURAL CONSCIENCE. 369 intellectual diilness, or haste and rashness, form one source of misinterpretation ; and moral disease and darkness are another, still more dangerous. Through dulness or haste, men may mistake beacons of warning for moral examples, or the absence of express con- demnation of wrong actions for a virtual approval ; or the praise of mixed actions, because of some element of faith and piety, for a sanction to all the accessories of human infirmity and sin ; or duties, resulting from rare and exceptional circumstances, may be taken for normal examples, given for general imitation. In all these cases a conscience, moderately enlightened, may serve to correct the too hasty inferences of a superficial judgment. But the other source of error is wider in its opera- tion, and far more dangerous. The sinful heart shrinks from the holiness of the Divine law, and seeks by a natural instinct to elude its authority. The severity of God's anger against sin grates painfully upon ears that are in love with worldly pleasure ; and it is striven to set the truth aside, as a contradiction to tlie Divine benevolence. The laws of the first table, as most obnoxious to the f^xllen heart, are wholly rejected, or robbed of all the fulness of their meaning ; and those of the second table are pruned and lowered, till grace is turned into moral indifference, and holiness defamed as a Jewish superstition. All that remains is then a wretched caput moriuum of sickly, sentimental, unreal benevolence, degenerating by degrees into selfish pru- dence alone. Thus, instead of conscience being an infallible guide, to whose independent decisions our interpretations of Scripture must be compelled to bow, the exact reverse is true. The diseases and obliquities of conscience, in sinful men, are the most fruitful cause of laborious perversions of the word of God. Men love '2 i{ 370 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. darkness rather than h'ght, because their deeds are evil They shrink, with instinctive shuddering, from the holy severity, and stern authority of the Divine Law ; and too readily corrupt and pervert the grace of the Gospel itself, by confounding it with the doctrine of indiscriminate mercy, and a message of universal impunity to sin. The authority, however, of the commands of God does not and cannot dejDend on the willing submission of men. A diseased conscience may shrink from the light, and close the eyes against it. A sinful heart may send up thick vapours, like the smoke from the abyss, to obscure this upper firmament. But the stars abide in their everlasting courses, and never cease to shine, nor to rule over this night-season of moral dark- ness, until the full Day-spring shall arise. Whether known or unknown, whether obeyed or disobeyed, the great law of love, along with all the corollaries that flow from it, is always binding upon the souls of men. They cannot, by any wilful darkness, escape from its power. They can hide themselves in no cavern, where its presence does not overtake them, and pronounce them guilty, so long as they refuse, or even neglect to obey. This law of duty, in its higher and nobler aspects, applies to man simply as an immortal spirit, and re- quires the obedience of the heart alone. But in its lower and more practical forms, it applies to man both in soul and body, and requires the obedience of the outward act, as well as in the affections of the heart. Under the earlier dispensation of the Law, these outward requirements were greatly multiplied, and were needed to train and discipline the inner man to the free ser- vice of love. Out of the corruption of this system arose the self-righteousness of the Pharisees, which THE BIBLE AND NATURAL CONSCIENCE. 371 worsliipped the outward fonn, and stifled or denied tlie inner meaning of the Divine commands, and in whicli tlie weightier matters of the law — judgment, mercy, and faith — were completely set aside. The contrast, then, of the Gospel of Christ with the Law of Moses does not consist in the abrogation of the Divine commands, or in making them dependent, for their authority, on the previous endorsement of man's natural conscience. That would indeed be a fatal error, and pave the way for the great Antichristian apostasy of the last days. In this nobler astronomy, the earth must revolve around the sun, not the sun around the earth. The conscience of man, a dependent and subordinate gift of the Creator, must submit to the firm and eternal laws of his moral government. It is a planet wdiich derives all its light, and order, and beauty, not only from the enlightening beams, but from the controlling authority, of the Sun of righteous- ness. Once let that control be withdrawn, and it becomes indeed a " wandering star," which must travel farther and farther into the depths of error and delusion, till it loses itself in the outer darkness. Such was the state of those Jewish persecutors, in early days, of whom our Lord warned his disciples — " The time will come, when he that killeth you will think he doeth God service." Such was the state, in later times, of those importers of ascetic superstition into the Church of Christ " speaking lies in hypocrisy, seared in their own conscience as with a hot iron, forbidding to marry, and commanding to abstain from meats, whicli God hath created to be received with thanksgiving." Such is the inspired description of those selfish apostates of the last days, who " walk after the flesh in the lust of micleanness, and despise government," and " w^hose own heart and conscience are defiled " with the love 2 15 2 372 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT.' and practice of sensual sin. It is only when the con- science bows with reverence and full submission to the authority of God's written word, that, like a planet obeying the central law of gravitation, it abides in the liglit which streams from Him whose w^ord it obeys. It then receives and reflects the pure light of Divine truth, in its innumerable applications to every field of moral duty, and to all the varied relations of human life, and the hills and valleys of earth are bathed with the bright- ness and the sunshine of heaven. T^E HISTORICAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 373 CHAPTER XVII. THE HISTORICAL UNITY OP THE BIBLE. The Bible combines within itself various characters. It is a Sacred History, a Code of Religious Doctrine and Morality, and a Message of Peace and Hope, or a Pro- phecy, to successive generations, of a Redemption to come. If truly inspired, it will bear, in every one of these characters, some impress of its Divine Author. It will be pure, for God is pure ; and holy, for God is holy. It will be marked by historical unity, for " known unto God are all his works from the begin- ning ;" by doctrinal consistency, and fulness, for " the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, even the deep things of God ;" by practical power over the hearts of men, for the word of God is a word of power, and " effectually worketh in them that believe ;" by harmony in its pro- phetic announcements, for its Author is that Spirit to whom all the secrets of the future are disclosed, whose messages are of no private interpretation, but a consistent revelation of the good things to come. Let us examine the Bible, first, as a Sacred History, and see whether, in this aspect, it does not yield abundant evidence of its Divine authority and inspiration. The historical books of Scripture form three-fifths of the whole. They are composed by nearly twenty writers, in two different languages, during a space of more than fifteen hundred years. If merely the works 374 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. of men, it would therefore be vain to expect in them any marked miity of plan, outhne, and moral purpose, running through the whole. Such a unity, if it be found to exist, must evince the presence of a higher author, the Spirit of God. I. Now, first, the historical character of the Bible is in itself a mark of the Divine wisdom, by which it has been suited to its professed office, as a public revela- tion from God to man. By this alone it is widely dis- tinguished from nearly every case of pretended revela- tion. Facts and imposture do not agree together. There is no history, properly so called, in the Koran ; none in the Shasters and Yedas of Hinduism ; none in the Zendavesta ; none in the sacred books of Egypt, so far as they are recovered, or their contents are known. But the Bible is, first of all, a sacred history. It professes to be God's own record of the leading facts in the course and progress of the moral government of our world through successive ages. It mounts upward to a period so remote, that no parallel testi- monies exist, with which to compare it. But it reaches onward through all the later periods of ancient history ; while it closes, in the first century of the Christian era, amidst the fullest blaze of Greek and Roman civili- zation. Three-fifths of each Testament are purely his- torical. In either case the histories take precedence of all the other sacred books, and form the basis on whicli they rest, and out of which they evidently spring. This historical form of the message fulfils many im- portant objects. It is, in the first place, a convincing pledge for the reality of the whole. Men are prone, by nature, to flee from their Maker's presence, and hide themselves in the dark caverns of their own un- belief. Purely doctrinal messages, or spiritual truths THE IlISTOrJCAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 375 presented in an abstract form, would have little power to meet and overcome this great evil. Men need to be taught that the Almighty is a God nigh at hand, a real, living Governor, whose authority, like the blue sky, bends over all, and whether they choose or refuse, embraces them continually on every side. A revelation, couched in a history of mankind from the creation downward, meets this temptation of the fallen heart, desirous to escape, if possible, from the sense of the Divine presence. Men cannot escape from the history of the Bible. Its facts encounter tliem on every side. If tliey go back to creation, the Bible is there, and if they trace out the dispersed families of mankind, the Bible is there also. If they take the wings of the morning, to visit the lands of the East ; there, in the land of Egypt, or the plains of Chaldea, amidst Arabian deserts, or the hills and valleys of Canaan, the ever- present hand of God, revealed in these histories, holds tliem in on every side. The obelisks of Nineveh are brouglit suddenly to light, after a burial of two thousand five hundred years, and Bible facts are found engraven upon them. The monuments of Egypt are deciphered, and Shishak, So, Tirhakah, Necho, and Hophra, all the Pharaohs whose names meet us in the Bible, meet us there also, and dovetail at once into their places in the sacred history. In later times the remains of antiquity bring before us, in the coins of Herod the Great, and Herod Antipas, in the guild of dyers at Thyatira, the corn ships of Alexandria, the title of the Roman chief of Melita, and inscriptions by the " temple- keepiijg Ephesians" to the great Artemis, and her heaven-descended image, ever multiplying coincidences with the New Testament history. The plains east of Jordan are explored ; and in Bashan, the Bible " land of giants," after thousands of years, buildings worthy 376 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. of a race of giants are brought to light once more. The voices from the half-deciphered tombs of the old Pharaohs, even though fulsome adulation, royal pride, and foul idolatry, have left on them a triple stamp of falsehood, seem still, in many parts, like dim and muffled echoes of the true sayings of God. Their diver- gence from the Bible, where they seem to diverge the most, resembles the difference between the same land- scape seen dimly through a sea of mist, and in clear sunlight. In proportion as we emerge out of obscure antiquity into an historical age, their harmony with the Bible becomes apparent. Where the divergence seems wide in the view of some investigators, amidst the twilight of the world's infancy, there are still such important points of agreement with Genesis and Exodus, as to force the suspicion, even on the least religious minds, that after all, the defect may belong to the blunders of interpreters, or to the falsehoods of pride and flattery in the heathen sculptures themselves, and leave the truth of the Bible unshaken and unimpaired. But there is a further benefit in the historical form of the Bible, besides the evidence which it forces, even on reluctant hearts, of the reality of God's moral govern- ment. The Divine message is brought into greater harmony with the weakness of mankind. The view has been lately advanced, that precept, example, and internal conscience, form three successive stages, both in the training of the individual, and of the world. But the hypothesis, even apart from the con- clusions which have been rested upon it, seems very questionable. Example comes even earlier, perhaps, than precept, in the real order of moral training. The child imitates out of mere instinct, even before it has learned to obey. It seems a truer description, that example is the means by which mere instinct is gradu- THE HISTORICAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 377 ally transformed into conscious and intelligent submis- sion to moral law. Its influence is not by any means delayed until childhood is passing into youth. It begins with the first hours of infancy, and is then, perhaps, relatively the most powerful ; though its absolute power may increase with the growth of thought and reason, and become still more conspicuous, when the years of childhood are passing away. Moral tales have a mighty power over children, long before a code of ethics would have any great influence. Even with the majority of educated men, biographies and travels are more attractive, and do more in moulding the heart, than didactic treatises of a moral kind. Now the Bible, by the large proportion of direct narrative it contains, and the precedence of these his- torical books over the rest, is wisely adapted to this instinct of our nature. It deals with men, as truly children in the sight of God, who need training by examples and simple narratives, before direct precejDts can exercise their due power, or mysterious truths and doctrines be usefully revealed. The sacred histories form thus the larger portion of each Testament. They are the stem on which all the other parts depend. Plain, real fact, blossoming out into high and holy truth, is the character, throughout, of the word of God. It stoops, first of all, by its narratives, to the condition of men, as dwelling in the outward world of time and sense, that it may raise them to the knowledge of their Maker, and the vision of unseen and eternal things. II. The Unity of Purpose, in all the sacred histories, is a further token of their Divine origin. The Bible is a history of redemption. It begins with a brief account of the Creation. But after its mention of the Temptation and the F'all, it announces the coming of a Redeemer, who would subdue the deceiver and adver- 378 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. sary of mankind. The expansion of this hope is the one object of all the later histories. They reveal the main steps of Divine Providence, by which this first great promise was to be at length fulfilled. Amidst the rank and luxurious growth of lust and violence, of unbelief and idolatry, truth and righteousness are kept alive in the earth by ceaseless acts of Divine power and wisdom ; till at length the Seed of the Woman is born, and a new and brighter era of gospel hope dawns upon the benighted nations, which had long been sitting in darkness, and the shadow of death. All the main features of the Bible history are simply explained by a reference to this great object of the whole message. It determines what is said, and what is left in silence ; what is briefly touched upon, and what is unfolded more at large. A few chapters are the sole record of two thousand years from Adam to Abraham. The work of redemption was then in its first infancy. The Spirit of God, like the dove when it first returned to the ark of Noah, seems to flee away from those ages of dim light, and abounding wickedness ; and to await, in silence and hope, the abating of the floods of ungodliness, and the arrival of brighter days. With the call of Abraham a new era in the scheme of Divine mercy plainly began. Here, also, the history evidently begins to expand, and becomes far more copious. Still, it passes by in silence the rise of idolatrous empires, and confines its narrative, almost entirely, to the lives of the three chosen patriarchs, whose names were to be linked inseparably, through all later ages, with the name of the true and only God. Two hundred years from tlie death of Jacob to the Exodus, are dismissed in three chapters only. But with the Exodus itself began a fre^ stage of Divine revelation, and two whole books, mainly historical, arc occupied with the great subject, THE HISTOKICAL UmiY OF THE BIBLE. 379 accompanied by two others, filled with the Divine laws, which were given to the people of Israel. Another whole book is given to the narrative of the conquest, the historical basis of the Jewish polity for fifteen hundred years, and itself the type of a greater deliverance. But three centuries that follow, in which there was no fresh revelation, are compressed into a single book, with one short episode in the history of Ruth. The line of in- spired prophets began with Samuel, and that of kings with Saul and David ; and the history expands once more, and is on a larger scale. It attains its greatest fulness in the reign of David, the centre of a new era of Divine promise ; and then contracts into a more rapid sketch of the later reigns. Three short books, after the Captivity, are marked by the entire absence of miracles, by the continuation of the history of Judah alone, by a remarkable preservation of the chosen people, and by a definite prediction of the time when Messiah would appear. The history is then suspended, until the time of the Incarnation. It resumes with a short account of our Lord's infancy, and a fuller record of his public ministry, death, and resurrection, by four difierent witnesses. One of these continues his earlier narrative of our Lord's lifetime by a history of the early church, until the Gospel is firmly planted by St. Paul himself in the metropolis of the heathen world. Now in all these histories one great purpose is con- spicuous. Hope in a Saviour still to come is the leading- feature of the Old Testament ; and faith in a Saviour who has actually appeared is the animating principle of the New. Facts are omitted, which have only a remote bearing on this great hope of the church ; and those are unfolded most fully, into which it enters with the greatest clearness. The Bible history, from first to last, is instinct with life and hope. Everywhere it reveals 380 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. the Spirit of God, brooding over the dark and troubled waters of a sinful world, and preparing the way for a great and blessed regeneration still to come. III. Continuity of Outline is another main feature of the Bible history. It does not resemble, in the least, the independent workmanship of twenty writers, the earliest separated from the latest by fifteen hundred years. It wears the marks of one continued narrative, carried on uniformly through four thousand years, from the days of Paradise to the preaching of St. Paul to the Jews at Rome, with one single break, where the Law and the Prophets are parted from the higher message of the Gospel of Christ. This continuity is seen in the whole series of the Old Testament histories. The Book of Genesis reaches from the Creation, in one unbroken descent, to the death of Joseph. Exodus begins with the death of Joseph and his brethren, and carries us through the deliverance itself, till the tabernacle is finished, at the opening of the second year, and filled with the cloud of glory. Numbers resumes from the same time, or rather earlier, before the second Passover, and reaches to the conquest of the land on the east of Jordan. Deuteronomy, besides a review of the journeys in the wilderness, closes with an account of the death of Moses. The Book of Joshua reaches from the death of Moses to that of Joshua and of Eleazar. The Book of Judges resumes with some details of the conquest, and reaches to the death of Samson, after the long strife witli the Philis- tines had begun. The First Book of Samuel begins with the birth of the prophet, in the days of Samson, and extends through the reign of Saul to his overthrow and death. The Second begins with tlie accession of David, and reaches nearly to the close of his reign. The two Books of Kings continue the history, in THE HISTORICAL UXITY OF THE BIBLE. 381 unbroken order, to the fall of the Temple. Three short books recount the restoration after the Captivity. The Books of Chronicles contain simply genealogies from Adam to David, and a fuller narrative of the reigns of the kings of Judaii only, from David to Zedekiah. The New Testament resumes the history, after a pause of four centuries, and continues it from the Incarnation, until the Gospel was planted in Rome, the great centre and metropolis of the heathen world. A series of histories, so continuous through four thousand years, from the Creation to Nero, could not be the chance work of twenty writers, fifteen centuries removed at the two extremes. A higher wisdom must surely have been present, and moulded every portion into harmony with the common design of the whole. The single break between Malachi and the Incarnation, only strengthens the proof of design. Stars- wane before the sunrise. The gift of prophecy was sus- pended, and sacred history was withheld for a season, before that dawn of the Sun of righteousness, after which both of them were to reappear in richer splendour and beauty than before. The words of the heathen poet in reference to the works of creation, must apply here with equal force, " Mens agitat iiiolem, et magno se corpore miscet." One mind, the mind of the Holy Spirit, must have brooded over this wide range of history, evolving deep harmonies of truth and wisdom out of the seeming chaos of confusion and spiritual darkness, through the long and weary course of these four thousand years. TV. Simplicity of Style is another feature of the sacred histories, by which they are distinguished from common narratives. There is no comment, and no rhetorical amplification. Where genealogies are given, there is no attempt to relieve their bareness by digres- 382 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. sions, and arts of composition. The most startling miracles are mentioned in the same quiet tone as the most commonplace occurrence. The writer seldom pauses, even for a moment, to direct the attention of his readers to the wonders he has to record. A calm, quiet, solemn, earnest tone marks the whole narrative. The writers never turn aside to deprecate suspicion, never pause to amplify what is marvellous, and seldom allude for a moment to collateral testimony. However ricli in materials for reflection their narrative may be, they abstain from all moral commentary. The history is left to supply its own key. There is no condemnation of Lot, in his ready acceptance of Abraham's offer_, but the results of his choice, too selfishly made, speak for them- selves. There is no direct censure of Jacob's deceit in the case of the blessing, but his whole life is one tale of silent retribution. He is deceived, in turn, in all that is dearest, his flocks, his wife, and his best-beloved son. Thus the histories of the Bible, while they are simple beyond all others, are also the most profound. The youngest child reads them with lively interest ; and the most experienced Christian, the moralist, and the divine, return to them continually, and find them rich with unsuspected treasures of moral truth and heavenly wisdom. What can be more simple than the history of Joseph ? Its truth and pathos find their way irresistibly to every heart. But what can be more profound than the lessons it conveys on the laws of duty, the ways of Divine Providence, and the character and work of the promised Redeemer? It follows abruptly after a dry, unadorned genealogy of the sons of Esau, and is closed by a list, almost equally dry in appearance, of the sons and grandsons of Jacob. It bursts upon us at once with the completeness of a perfect drama, where THE HISTORICAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 383 every part conspires, simply and naturally, to tlie issue desi<2;ned from the first. The dreams of Joseph are fulfilled through the envy of his brethren, in spite of their settled purpose to falsify them ; and the deep reality of human character and feeling, in every step of the narrative, renders doubly conspicuous the unfail- ing truth of God's jDromises, and the sureness of his counsel, who sees the end from the beginning. Amidst tlie darkness of heathenism, and the sinful perverseness of the chosen seed, there dawns a bright earnest of the promised redemption ; and the Christian, who compares it with the New Testament, is compelled to feel, in all the main steps of the narrative — Behold, a greater than Joseph is here ! This simplicity of the Bible history is one, out of many marks, which strongly attest its Divine inspira- tion. We feel, even when we are not able to explain, the stamp of divinity which rests upon it. Sceptical critics may strive to persuade themselves, or their readers, that the early narratives of the Bible are epic poems or mere legends. We read them once more, and the illusion disappears. In every sentence we hear the tones of truth and reality. The impression they leave on the mind, and have left on every candid and thought- ful reader since the hour when they were written, is like that made on our senses, when we gaze on the blue vault of heaven. They are inimitably simple, and still they are unfi^thomably profound. Y. The Condensation of the Bible histories is not less striking than their simplicity. This was required, indeed, by the practical object for which they are given. A history of tlie world througli four thousand years, in which the main steps of God's moral government should be recorded for the lasting guidance of His people, required the utmost condensation, or it would 384 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. fail to be accessible to the vast majority of believers. The structure of the Bible fulfils this necessary con- dition in the highest degree. It is full, everywhere, of the seeds of things. Its minutest incidents, on close examination, are found to be rich with a large variety of spiritual truth. They are like the images on the human retina ; and every speck contains, in miniature, a condensed landscape of heavenly wisdom. This condensation of the Bible narratives is doubly striking, if we compare them with the earliest heathen records, the lately deciphered monuments of Egypt. Let us hear the description of these, which Baron Bunsen has given, who still regarded them as a lever which must overturn our faith in the truthfulness of the early histories of the Bible. " Where," he asks, "is there an instance of so many and such magnificent monuments, which sometimes tell us little, frequently nothing at all ? ... The written character is prolix : the repetition of fixed phrases makes it still more so. Little is lost by occa- sional lacunce, but comparatively little advance is made by what is preserved. There are few words in a line ; and what is still worse, little is said in a great many lines. Inscriptions on public buildings were not intended to convey historical information. They consist of panegyrics on the king, and praises of the gods, to each of whom all imaginable titles of honour are given. Historical facts are thrown into the shade, as something paltry, casual, incidental, by the side of such pompous phraseology as — Lords of the World, Con- querors of the North, Tamers of the South, Destroyers of all the Unclean, and all their enemies. The case of the papyri is certainly different. But written history, such as the historical books of the Old Testament, so far as our knowledge of their writings goes, was cer- tainly unknown to the old Egyptians." THE HISTORICAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 385 The early books of tlie Bible are a total contrast, in tliis respect, to the previous description of the most ancient heathen records. The object seems to be, in every part, to compress into a small compass the largest possible amount of real information. Simple facts, condensed and multiplied, are the basis on Avliich the whole superstructure of moral, prophetic, nnd doctrinal messages, has been reared. And this feature, which marks the earliest Bible histories, remains equally striking to their close. The Book of Acts stands pre-eminent above all classic histories, for the variety, the condensation, and the fulness of its narra- tive. It links itself with the whole range of the Old Testament Scripture, with all the facts of the Gospels, the" contemporary messages of the Epistles, and an immense variety of the facts of classical antiquity ; while it records the successive ste23s by which the Gospel was transferred from Jerusalem to Rome, and the way thus prepared for long ages of Gentile privi- lege, and Jewish desolation. VI. The Pentateuch, or the Law of Moses, forms the first of four main divisions of the Bible history. Its historical unity is a most conspicuous feature of the Avhole. Instead of joermitting us to resolve it, as some modern sceptics have laboured to do, into a clumsy and imperfect patchwork of three or four dijBferent authors, it requires us to see in it the work of a higher mind and a deeper wisdom than even that of Moses, by which the course of the whole narrative must have been secretly and powerfully controlled. First of all, in its general character it stands alone, and has no counterpart in any human production what- ever. It is a code of national law, inwrought into the ti'xture of a regular history. Again, it is a history of mankind from the earliest times, briefly and compre- 2 c 336 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. liensively given, and blossoming into lessons of moral duty, and institutes of national wisdom. It roots itself in the soil by innumerable details, in its earlier portion ; and rises, at its close, into a most earnest and impressive series of Divine commands and exhortations. Thus it stoops to man, as to a little child, takes him by the hand, teaches him to look upward, and leads his foot- steps, gently, along the steep hill-side of eternal truth. Through a simple record of facts it rises gradually into the region of moral duty, of precepts, doctrines, and promises. It begins with the loss of Paradise through man's transgression ; and ends with a description of God's own prophet, from the height of Pisgali, looking out upon a glorious vision of an inheritance, like Para- dise, still to come. This double character, of facts passing into doctrine, command, and promise, runs through the whole Penta- teuch, but with a manifest progress and gradation. The first book is almost wholly historical, since it ends before Moses, the great prophet and lawgiver, was born. But it is not mere history. Its leading facts are made the basis of distinct commands and ordinances, which form essential parts of the law of the Lord. The history of the creation, in the first chapter, is closed by the institution of the sabbath, the first, in order, of all the revealed commands of God ; and its repetition, with details, in the second chapter, closes with the law of marriage, the grand basis of all social and domestic obligations. The third chapter, again, closes with a double appointment of human labour and conjugal obedience. The fourth chapter implies the institution of animal sacrifice. The ninth puts a seal upon the sacredness of man's life, by a public appointment of death to be the penalty of muixler. The rite of circum- cision is enjoiued to Abraham by a distinct covenant, THE HISTORICAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 387 while a law of titlies, and another ceremonial obser- vance, are indirectly imposed, in the later course of the patriarchal history, on the people of Israel. The laws, however, in Genesis, though of high im- portance, are comparatively few in number. In Exodus they form rather less than one half of the whole book. In Leviticus there is only a very slight intermixture of narrative : it consists almost entirely of the ordinances of the tabernacle worship, and of other national institutes. The first and last chapters of Numbers have the same character, but the middle is chiefly historical. Deutero- nomy, on the other hand, is mainly a rehearsal and repetition of Divine laws ; but its first chapters are a review of the history in the wilderness, and it closes with an account of the parting words, and of the death of Moses. There is thus a plain organic unity from first to last. The two elements of facts and laws are present throughout the Pentateuch : but the facts, in Genesis, are the main substance of the work, with only a few laws interposed ; while Deuteronomy is a book of laws and Divine ordinances ; but it is firmly anchored, both at its opening and its close, upon the great series of events which compose the sacred history. Again, the Book of Genesis, in its first chapters, must either be a supernatural revelation, or a mere legendary fiction. But every feature of legendary com- position is here precisely reversed. There is no trace of a desire to amplify doubtful and marvellous narra- tives, because the account goes back to the most distant ages, the birthday of the world. On the contrary, one short chapter alone is given to a general history of the creation, a second to the state of man before the fall, a third to the fall itself, a fourth to the first example of God's moral government over a world of sinners, a fifth to the genealogy of sixteen hundred years, from Adam 0 n 9 ^^ \j ^ 388 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. to Noali ; and three others to the flood, when a new covenant of grace began. Three chapters more com- plete the whole account to the call of Abraham ; so that eight chapters travel rapidly over more than two thousand years. With the call of Abraham a new dispensation of mercy began. Here, therefore, the history expands at once into larger proportions. Forty chapters unfold rather less than three centuries of the patriarchal history. A further expansion ensues after the call of Moses, and fifty historical chapters are occupied with an interval of forty years only, till his death. There is thus an evident harmony and proportion of historical development in the whole Pentateuch, which severs it widely from all the heathen legends ; and is a clear sign that it " came not by the will of man," but that Moses composed it under the guidance of a higher w^isdom, and " spake as he was moved by the Holy Ghost." Let us contrast it, for example, with Manetho and the Egyptian monuments. The history of that famous Egyptian priest has perished, except two or three short fragments in Josephus. But we learn, from an extract in Eusebius, that it professed to begin with reigns of the gods, occupying 13,900 years, and four dj-nasties of Manes, or souls of the dead, and Heroes, who reigned over Egypt for 11,000 years more, and were followed by Menes, the first mortal or human king. All these are described as Egyptian reigns. They were designed evidently to flatter the national vanity and pride. There is no trace of any message in the history, to remind the Egyptians of their brotherhood with the foreign races they were accustomed to hate or despise. What a total contrast to the simple record in the first chapter of Genesis ! Tlie very first lesson taught to THE HISTORICAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 389 tlie Jews in tlicir national law, the immediate gift of the God of Israel, was their brotherhood with the whole race of mankind ; with whom they shared, in Adam, a common sentence of guilt and shame ; and, both in Adam and Noah, a common message of hope and coming redemption. The historical interweaving of the whole narrative is another feature, which shows the Divine wisdom by which it was framed. Every device of scepticism is baffled, when it strives to rendj asunder the seamless robe of this fundamental record of patriarchal history. In the latter half of Genesis, for example, from the birth of Isaac onward, we find not less than a hundred retrospective allusions to the previous portion of the narrative, and most of them of a distinct and specific kind. Some are direct, others indirect and compara- tively latent. Some refer to a single passage, and others to the combined result of several statements. The same character of retrospective allusion runs through the four later books, and compacts the wdiole Pentateuch so firmly together, that no critical artifice can succeed in parting it asunder. It would need little more, to disprove every variety of the document hypothesis, than to print separately the different alleged documents ; when it would be seen at once that they were merely torn and broken fragments of the Pen- tateuch, and could have no claim to form a complete and independent whole. The firmness of structure, in tliese early books of Scripture, is like that which the skilful architect gives to the lowest courses of the hghthouse, which has to resist the incessant surging of the waves of the ocean, and to bear aloft, on its summit, the beacon -light, by which ten thousand mariners may be rescued from fatal shipwreck, and find it a star of hope and peace amidst the darkness and the storm. 390 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. yil. In tlie later books of the Old Testament^ from Joshua to JSTehemiah, the historical unity, though rather less conspicuous than in the Pentateuch, is not less real. The diversity of the writers, and the interval of more than a thousand years from the first to the last, make this feature, in some respects, even more striking than in the books of Moses, and compels us to read in it the result of a higher wisdom. The Book of Joshua is a history of the conquest, the fulfilment of the prophecies in the law, and the basis of all the later history of the chosen people. It con- tains everything essential to such a record, and nothing superfluous. First, we have the passage of Jordan, and the renewal of the national covenant. This is followed by four main steps in the conquest, the fall of Jericho and of Ai, and the defeat of a great southern and a great northern confederacy of the Canaanites. There is, next, a formal catalogue of the kings and districts that were subdued. The record of the conquest is followed by the division of the land. And first, there is a repeated summary of the allotment by Moses to the trans-Jordanic tribes. Then we have the fulfilment of the promise to Caleb, and the allotments to the two leading tribes of Judah and Joseph. Next follows the supplementary allotment to the seven remaining tribes, with a list of the towns and villages in each portion, closed by Joshua's own private inheritance. The eccle- siastical arrangements follow, the ap23ointment of the cities of refuge, and those of the Levites. The eastern tribes are then dismissed to their inheritance beyond Jordan. Last of all, Joshua, before his death, solemnly recounts to the peoj^le the mercies of God, and twice renews with them the national covenant. The last chapter illustrates, in a striking manner, the way in which the whole series of sacred history is THE HISTORICAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 301 bound together. It goes back, in its review of" tlie past, to the days of Tcral], tlie father of Abraham, and mentions his idolatry, which is only implied in Genesis, - in the land of Chaldca. It mentions next, in succession, the call of Abraham, the birth of Isaac, and of the sons of Isaac, Esau and Jacob, the inheritance of Iilsau in Mount Seir, and the descent of Jacob and his sons into Egypt, forming a brief summary of four-fifths of the Book of Genesis. In three verses more it gives an abridgment of Exodus, and in the last clause, of the book of Num- bers. In the eighth verse we have a brief repetition of the twenty-first of Numbers, and in verses 9, 10, of the striking episode of Balak and Balaam. Three other verses describe the conquest itself, and the fulfilment of the promises in Deuteronomy. The mention of the oak or pillar, and of the sanctuary in Shechem, refers us to the history, in Gen. xxxiii., of Jacob's purchase from the Shechemites ; the burial of Joshua, to the pre- vious mention of his inheritance in the middle of the book ; and that of the bones of Joseph, to three passages in Genesis and Exodus (Gen. xxxiii. 18-20, 24-2 G ; Exod. xiii. 19), so as to bind together, by these retro- spective allusions, the whole series of the sacred history. The Book of Judges, which reaches from the death of Joshua to the Book of Samuel, when a new era of the theocracy began, has a distinct unity of its o^^'n. The successive relapses into idolatry, and the captivities to the heathen, shewed the need of a righteous king, and that the true rest was not yet come. The book begins with a review of those failures in obedience to the Divine commands, which contained the seeds of later degeneracy and rebelhon. Then follows a general summary of the whole period, in its double aspect of repeated apostasy, and renewed help and deliverance. The separate periods are then briefly recorded in tlie 392 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. order of time, from the first captivity under a king of Mesopotamia to the partial deliverance wrought hy Sam- son at his death. The history then reverts to two main illustrations of the national sins of Israel in the next generation after Joshua and the elders, and closes them with a remark which contains the intended moral of the whole history, and made it a virtual prophecy of the national revolution which was soon to follow — " In those days there was no king in Israel : every man did that which was right in his own eyes." The First and Second Books of Samuel have a similar unity of design. They contain the steps of the great transition from the earlier form of theocracy, under judges, to the permanent choice and establishment of the royal line of David. The former contains the suc- cessive changes, by which their judicial honour was taken from Eli and his priestly house, and transferred, first to Samuel, then to Saul, and finally to David, the centre of a new era of promise and blessing. The Second Book is occupied with the forty years of his reign, just as that of Numbers with the forty years in the wilder- ness. The kingdom was settled by covenant in David's line ; the ark, which the sin of Eli's sons had betrayed to the Philistines, was brought to Jerusalem ; and pre- paration was made, on the site where the pestilence was arrested, for building the temple of God. The Books of Kings continue the history through the reign of Solomon, and the division of the two kingdoms, down to the reign of Zedekiah, and the fall of the temple. In their opening chapters we have the build- ing of the temple, and the reign of Solomon, when the queen of the South came from the ends of the earth to hear his wisdom. The theocracy, or typical kingdom of God, then reached its climax of strength and beauty, and began quickly to reveal its imperfection, and hasten THE HISTORICAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 393 into decay. The rest of these books contains the history of the scliism, wliicli rent Israel from Judah, and continued till the ten tribes were led away captive to Assyria, and Jndah to Babylon. There is a clear unity of style in this portion of the history. It is also the stem which supports the greater part of the pro- phecies of the Old Testament. Three of the greater, and nine of the minor prophets, belong to tliis period. To make the connection still more intimate, three chapters of the Second Book of Kings are repeated, with very slight change, in the midst of Isaiah's prophecies, and two others are repeated in the book of Jeremiah's prophecies, at its very close. The history is continued still further, in a second series, on the return from the captivity. The Books of Chronicles begin from the Creation, and., reach to the Captivity of Babylon. They are then continued by the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah, the last two verses of Chronicles, and the first two of Ezra, being the same. The nine chapters of genealogy from Adam to David, though they contain no history, supply copious materials to confirm the Mosaic narrative, and the actual truth of the later records. The remainder of the First Book gives fuller details than tlie Books of Samuel with regard to the last,years of David, and the whole priestly economy. The Second Book confines itself, almost entirely, to the kingdom of Judah. In the first and leading series of sacred history, tlic prominent feature is the course of national sin, by which the kingdom of David sank into ruin. But in Chronicles the main subject is the mercy of God to the people of Israel, and to the chosen line of David, issuing at length in tliat decree of Cyrus, by wliich the propliecies of Isaiah and Jeremiah were fulfilled. The three short Books of Ezra, Nehemiah, and Esther, 394 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. which continue this supj^lementary history, and bring it down tlirougli a whole century after the Return, have a character of their own. The grandeur of the old covenant has ceased. It has decayed, and grown old, and is ready to vanish away. No miracle is recorded in this last period of the sacred history. The un- finished air of the Books of Ezra and Nehemiah must strike every thoughtful reader. They are a little pro- montory, jutting out from the earlier times of the law and the prophets, and nearly severed from them by the Captivity — where hope might plant its foot more firmly, and look forward, across generations of delay, to the promised coming of Messiah. The prophetic books, which belong to the same period, contain some of the clearest predictions of his Advent. Side by side with Ezra and Nehemiah, as if to show that their un- finished character is the result of design, we have a history, in the Book of Esther, which has never been surpassed, in dramatic unity and power, by any fiction which human fancy has devised. It has a marked resemblance of character to the history of Joseph at the close of the Book of Genesis. In each of them the inspired narrative rises into a sacred drama, comjolete and harmonious in every part, of which the main pur- pose is the deliverance and ]3i"eservation of the chosen people. In the Book of Nehemiah, again, we have a summary of the whole course of Jewish history through fifteen hundred years, from the call of Abraham to the time wlien the covenant was renewed after the return from captivity. Thus, in two contemporary books, wholly different in character, and in two opposite ways, a signal unity is impressed on the whole series of Old Testament histories, from the times of Abraham and Joseph, and the old Pharaohs, to those of Nehemiah, Esther, and Mordecai, under the Persian kings. THE HISTOEICAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 395 Tlie break in the history, after Neliemiah, only com- pletes the proof of this all-pervading unity of design. The waning of the elder dispensation, and the with- drawal, through four hundred years, of sacred history and prophecy, was adapted, in the highest degree, to render the dawn of the Gospel more impressive. VIII. The Four Gospels are the next main division of the sacred history. And here the marks of Divine wisdom are still more conspicuous than in the narratives of the Old Testament. The Life, Death, and Resurrection of our Lord, are the central object of Old Testament prophecy, the sum and substance of the Christian Faith. The great end for which all written revelation is given required that these should be placed in clear and full relief. Here, therefore, and here only, in the whole range of inspired messages, we have four parallel and collateral histories. In the Old Testament two is the highest number of such parallel series, or a bare sufficiency under that rule of the law — " In the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established." But here, in the Gospels, the legal provision is exceeded. Four testimo- nies have been provided, and not two or three only ; so that they fulfil the description of our Lord, and give to us " good measure, pressed down, shaken together, and running over." But the same rule of the Law, when compared with the Gospels, yields a further sign of the deep wisdom which presided secretly in their composition. Two witnesses are barely sufficient, but three are ample, for confirmation alone. When a first record, then, has been made, and one testimony given, a second would naturally have, for its chief purpose, to confirm, and not to amplify and extend it. A third would be less needful, though still desirable, for mere confinnation of 396 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. the others, and might reasonably be expected to ratify and to supplement their statements, almost in equal measure. A fourth, if given at all, plainly exceeds the Hmit named in the law. Its main object, we may infer, would be to supplement and enlarge the previous narra- tives, since it would be almost superfluous for mere con- firmation of them alone. Now if we take the Gospels in the order in which they now stand, and in which they have been placed from the first, such is precisely the relation which exists between them. St. Mark, the second, has only two or three incidents not recorded by St. Matthew, though the different arrangement in one large portion, and the far greater fulness of the details, preserve it from all suspicion of being a mere summary. Its aim, through- out, is to confirm St. Matthew, and not to supply facts wholly new. The Grospel of St. Luke combines both objects in almost an equal proportion. In the account of our Lord's infancy, it supplements the narrative of St. MattheW, and hardly one incident is the same. In seven chapters that follow, it confirms the evidence of its two predecessors, and agrees further with St. Mark in the arrangement. Ten chapters after these are mainly a supplement to the previous narratives ; six others are in the main confirmatory, and the last chapter, again, is supplementary, and consists mainly of new matter. The Gospel of St. John, on the contrary, is supplemen- tary from first to last. Except in the account of the miracle of the loaves, and some leading events in Passion Week, it contains information wholly new, which is not to be found in any of the three earlier Gospels. This gradation of character, in fulfilling the double object of confirming earlier testimonies, and of giving further information, is a secret, biit powerful evidence, of the deep wisdom which moulded the separate narratives, so THE HISTORICAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 397 as to fulfil most effectually the end for which they were given. The silence of the Gospels with regard to our Lord's infancy, and the interval before his ministry began, is another mark of that secret wisdom of the Holy Spirit, which controlled the evangelists. Apocryphal writings have many legends of this obscure period ; but the Gospels themselves pass it .over in reverent and ex- pressive silence. They seem thus to echo the words of that prophecy, which Isaiah had given concerning our blessed Lord — " He sharll not strive, nor cry, nor hft up his voice in the streets." A lesson of quietness, humil- ity, and reverence, most alien from the tone of religious forgeries, is hereby inwrought into the whole texture of the sacred history. The harmony and apparent discrepancies of the Gospels are another jiroof, when rightly viewed, of their common inspiration. Two things are plainly required, in order that they might fulfil in the highest degree the great object for which a Divine revelation is made. There must be, on the one hand, such a sub- stantial and manifest unity, as to give them the force of concurrent evidence. On the other hand, there needed such a measure of distinctness in each testi- mony, as to clear their general consent from all sus- picion of being artificial and collusive. Now the four Gospels satisfy this double condition in a singular manner. The history of criticism, and of the theories of their origin, which have divided the opinions of the most learned and diligent students, is alone a sufficient proof of the fact. One large class of critics, induced by the features of close resemblance, have laboured to complete a theory of the formation of the three first Gospels from a mechanical combination of six or seven earlier documents. Others, again, from the 308 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. multiplied diversities between them, have strongly main- tained a view diametrically opposite, that they grew, quite independently, out of oral tradition, and that no one Evangelist had seen the work of any other. The zealous maintenance, by many learned writers, of both of these opposite views, is a clear sign that the Gospels combine, in the fullest measure, the marks of a plural, and of a concurrent testimony. Had they differed more widely, they would have failed to confirm each other's evidence, and their authority would have been weak- ened and destroyed by the presence of undeniable contradictions. Had their agreement been more com- plete, and free from all divergence, they would have lost their character of a fourfold testimony, and have failed to satisfy one main purpose for which the history was conveyed to the church in this peculiar form. Again, the unity of the whole Bible history may be seen in the frequent allusions made in the Gospels to the facts of the Old Testament. Among those which are referred to, and incidentally confirmed by their testimony, are the creation of Adam and Eve, (Matt, xix. 4,) the first institution of the Sabbath, the ordinance of marriage, the guilt and crime of the first Tempter, the murder of Abel, the wickedness in the days of Noah, the Flood, the law of retribution for murder, after the Flood; the genealogy of the patriarchs, the destruction of Sodom, the history of Lot's wife, the covenant of circumcision, the expulsion of Ishmael, the oath of God to Abraham, the vision of Jacob, his purchase of ground at Sliechem, the birth of Pharez and Zarah, all within the Book of Genesis. In Exodus, the words to Moses at the bush, the appointment of the Passover, the gift of manna from heaven, the Divine communication of the Law by Moses, the ordinance of THE HISTORICAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 399 cleansing for tlic leper, the sacrifices in tlic tabernacle on the sabbath-day, are all the objects of direct men- tion, or plain allusion. We have also two genealogies, one of which reaches liack to Abraham, and the other even to Adam, and nearly a hundred distinct quotations from the Old Testament. But while the Gospels are thus linked, retrospec- tively with all the earlier histories, they are united in the closest manner with the later narrative in the Book of Acts, and with the Apostolic Epistles, and the Book of Revelation. St. Matthew is especially the means of securing an intimate relation between the Old and the New Testament. St. Mark unites together St. Matthew and St. Luke ; since the incidents, with three slight exceptions, are entirely those of St. Matthew, and the order, with hardly an exception, the same as in St. Luke. The third Gosj^el, again, is continued by St. Luke himself in the Book of Acts, and thus forms a link with the later history ; while St. John's Gospel unites the evangelical history with the Eioistles and the Prophecies, because three ej)istles, and the only 2)ro- phetical book of the New Testament have this Apostle for their author. Besides these more technical characters of the Gospels, in which they may be seen clearly to carry on one great, consistent scheme of sacred history, there are others of a still deeper kind, which never fail to impress the liumble and reverent reader. There is a calmness and quietness of tone, a transparent, unadorned simplicity, which makes us forget the writer in the contemplation of the glorious o])ject he sets before us. Like Moses and Elias on the mount of transfiguration, the evan- gelists themselves disappear from view, and are lost, that Jesus ilicii' \jn\{] may 1>(> seen alone. Nowhere can we see more plaiiily tiie force of those words, which 400 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. belong to all tlie inspired messages of Grod, that " tlie testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy." Every chapter, and every verse, converges here on one great object, and seems to repeat the words of the Baptist to his disciples : " Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world." IX. The Book of Acts, the last of the fom- main divisions of sacred history, and by far the shortest in extent, retains the same character, and exhibits no less clearly the historical unity which pervades the whole. And first, the book has a remarkable unity in its general outline, from its beginning to its close. Its subject is the planting of the Grospel in the heathen world. It opens, accordingly, with the promise of Christ to his Apostles — " Ye shall be witnesses unto me, both in Jerusalem, and in all Judaea, and in Samaria, and unto the uttermost part of the earth." And it closes with the most definite point in the completion of this great work, when the apostle of the Gentiles arrived at Rome, the uietropolis of heathenism, and after summoning the Jews to a conference, denounced their national unbelief, and proclaimed the transfer of the rejected blessing to the heathen — " Be it known there- fore, unto you, that the salvation of God is sent unto the Gentiles, and that they will hear it." Every part concurs in describing the steps by which this great change was fulfilled. We see the GosjdcI spreading, first, from the Hebrews to the Hellenists at Jerusalem ; then, on the murder of Stephen, from Judaea to Samaria, while the first step was taken towards a national con- version from heathenism by the baptism of the Ethioj^ian eunuch. Then follows the conversion of Saul, the des- tined Apostle of the Gentiles, and that of Cornelius at Cajsarea, the first Gentile Roman convert, in whose case THE HISTORICAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 401 the partition wall began to be broken down. There is mention of the reverent submission of the Jewish believers to this unexpected change, and the formation of the first Gentile church at Antioch. After the murder of the Apostle James by the Jews, there follows at once the first missionary journey of Paul and Barnabas to Cyprus and Asia Minor. After their return, and the decree of the council, affirming the freedom of Gentile believers from the law of Moses, the transition is complete. The church of the Jews, and the other Apostles, pass entirely out of sight. We have the regular course of St. Paul's ministry, in Asia, in Macedonia and Achaia, and at Ephesus ; till the per- secuting malice of the Jews completes the work his zeal had begun, and transfers him, a prisoner for the Gentiles, from Jerusalem and Ccesarea to the imperial city, which was to form the centre of the church's history, for good and for evil, through the whole course of the Gentile dispensation. The book is called familiarly the Acts of the Apostles. But the mention of the apostles is kept subordinate in every part to the one design of the whole. After the list in the first chapter, no mention occurs, in its whole course, of any other among the Twelve than Peter, John, and the elder and younger James. The foremost of them, St. Peter, disappears silently from view after his miraculous rescue from the malice of Herod. No liffht whatever is thrown upon his later journeys ; and the last sentence concerning his travels and labours is merely this : " He departed, and went' to another place." He appears again in the council at Jerusalem ; but after its decision, a veil is drawn over his life, and that of the other eleven ; and St. Paul alone, the Apostle of tlie Gentiles, becomes the subject of the whole narrative. This marked exclusion of events 2 D 402 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. wliicli were not essential to tlie main object, is a proof of the Divine wisdom wliicli controlled the sacred pen- man in the composition of the work, and rendered it, by its simplicity, condensation, and unity, a worthy com- pletion of the long series of inspired history. But this unity of design is no less perceptible in the connection between this book, and the rest of the New and the Old Testaments. And here we may notice, first, its subordination to the Gospels. We have four distinct narratives of the life and death of our Lord, but one only, little more than one-fourth of their combined length, to record the later history of the church for more than thirty years. The three years of our Lord's minis- try occupy more than three times the space, in the New Testament narrative, of the thirty years which follow. For Christ himself, his life, death, and resurrection, are the great sum of the whole Gospel message, and the history of the Church is kept in strict and beautiful subordination to the histoiy of the heavenly Bride- groom. Again, the book divides naturally into two main portions of nearly equal length, the second of which begins with the first council at Jerusalem. The first of these abounds in references to the earlier portions of Scripture. In the four first chapters alone, there are eight or ten quotations from the Old Testament, or allusions to its statements, in direct confirmation of their truth. The words of two Psalms are declared to be the words of the Holy. Ghost. The ordinance of the first fruits, on the day of Pentecost, receives its figura- tive fulfilment ; and the confusion of tongues at Babel finds its New Testament contrast, and Divine antidote, in the gift of tongues at Jerusalem. Four difterent prophecies are quoted in the first sermon of St. Peter, and declared to be then receiving their fulfilment. His THE HISTORICAL UNITY OF THP] BIBLE. 403 next discourse appeals generally to " all tlie prophets, wliicli have been since the world began," and again to the words of Samuel and the later prophets ; but more distinctly to the covenant with Abraham after the sacrifice of Isaac, and to the prediction of Moses in Deuteronomy, shortly before his death. In the next chapter we have a quotation from Psalm cxviii., an allusion to the first record of creation, and a further quotation from the second Psalm. Besides these, two distinct summaries of the Old Testament are embodied in the narrative, the first in the apology of St. Stephen at Jerusalem, and the second in St Paul's discourse at Antioch in Pisidia. The truth of the Old Testament is the common basis, on which the first martyr, full of the Holy Spirit, and the greatest of the Apostles, equally rest their appeal, when contending earnestly for the truth of the Gospel. Thus the Book of Acts, by the whole character of its earlier history, is dovetailed inseparably with all the previous histories in the word of God. The second or later division has an entirely different character. Only two quotations from the Old Testa- nent are found in it, one of them from Amos, quoted by St. James in the council at Jerusalem, and the other from Isaiah, quoted by St. Paul to the Jews at Rome, like a mournful keynote at the close of the sacred history. But on the other hand, the points of com- parison with general and classical history are here greatly multiplied ; and the coincidences with the historical, allusions in the writings of St. Paul are so abundant, as to form a most convincing and irresistible proof of the genuineness of the epistles, and the truth and fidelity of the sacred narrative. These chapters form thus the outmost boughs of the inspired history, and bear upon them most abimdantly the golden 2 D 2 404 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. fruitage of heavenly truth, unfolded in the didactic and doctrinal portions of the New Testament. The facts, thus briefly examined, point clearly to one conclusion. This connected series of history, with one single break, constructed on one uniform plan, and almost on the same scale, from the creation onward through four thousand years ; confirmed by all foreign evidence in its later portions, where alone heathen records yield any clear light, and self-sustained in all the rest by its own truthfulness and transparent sim- plicity of style ; expanding itself in that generation when the law was given, and in a less degree when the forefather and type of Messiah came to the throne, and most of all, during the three years of our Lord's ministry ; but in all the other parts moving calmly, swiftly along, indulging in no comments, recording the minutest details, and the most startling wonders in the same tone of simple dignity, and unadorned plainness of speech, and interwoven, from jSrst to last, with innu- merable mutual references, — is a fact wholly unique in the literature of mankind. The Bible, in its historical unity, stands alone, and without a rival. One Mind may be clearly seen in its whole course, by whose wisdom its various writers were guided and controlled, so as to furnish, at the long interval of fifteen hundred years, a simple and connected outline of the moral government of the world — a scheme of mercy which began in Paradise, but first blossomed out, and began to yield more abundant fruit, in the resurrection and ascen- sion of our Lord, the Pentecostal gift of the Spirit, and the spread of the Gospel throughout the moral wilder- nesses of the heathen world. THE DOCTRINAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 405 CHAPTER XVIII. THE DOCTRINAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. The doctrinal, even still more than tlic historical unity of the Bible, bears evidence to its inspiration and Divine authorship. Thirty-nine books in the Old Testament, and twenty-seven in the New, the work of forty diflferent writers, are here collected into one volume, though their first composition is spread over the long interval of fifteen hundred years. They were all composed in times of heathen darkness, when the most civilized people and mightiest empires of the world were bowing down to stocks and stones, or offer- ing polluted worship to " gods many, and lords many," the impersonations of passion, strife, jealousy, and every impure and hateful lust. The language, the style, the character, the special object, no less than the date of these books, are all widely diff'erent. But the great outlines of truth are everywhere the same. There is development, but no discrepancy. There are partial contrasts, adding life to the whole by the diversity of the parts, but no contradiction. A manifest and un- deniable harmony of thought, tone, and doctrine, animates and pervades the whole. The view of man is everywhere the same ; that he is the creature of the living God, accountable to his Maker ; fallen, but not hopeless ; guilty, but not left in despair ; the subject of a present curse, but still within reach of the richest 406 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. blessing ; corrupt and impure, but capable of restora- tion to the Divine favour and image ; placed under a penal sentence of death, but capable of attaining a blessed immortality. The doctrine concerning God is everywhere the same ; that He is one, and there is no other than He ; that all the gods of the heathen are idols, but the Lord made the heavens ; . tliat He is almighty, all-wise, good, perfect, holy, merciful, ever- lasting, the Maker of all things, and the Judge of all men ; a pure, invisible Spirit, who must be worshipped in spirit and in truth. The revealed way of salvation is everywhere the same, by faith in God, and in the promise of a great and powerful Redeemer, atonement by sacrifice, and the substitution of the guiltless for the guilty, forgiveness procured by the shedding of blood, and inward renewal of heart, the fruit of that forgive- ness, by which the soul is renewed after the image of God, in righteousness, holiness, and truth. The practical lessons of duty are also the same in every part, faith in the promises of God's mercy through an atoning Saviour, working by love — the love of God supremely, and the love of all mankind. It would require a large volume to unfold thoroughly this unity of the Bible, from Genesis, through the Psalms, the Prophets, the Gospels, and Epistles, to the Apocalypse, in all the main doctrines of the Christian faith. It is only by means of a diligent and prolonged study of the Scrij^tures, that the full impression of this deep and real harmony can be received into the mind. I shall merely endeavour to show, by the selection of a few passages, how each main doctrine runs, like a golden woof, through the whole series of these Divine messages ; and tlicn illustrate the real harmony, amidst partial contrast, or fancied contradiction, between the teaching of the Old and New Testament. THE DOCTRINAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 407 I. Tlie doctrinal harmony of the Bible, from first to last, may be traced clearly in its explicit statements on all the main toj^ics of religious faith. 1. The first revealed truth is tlie fact of creation, or that all things were formed by the will and power of one true and living God. The Bible opens its message with these words : " In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth." This great truth had been entirely lost from view in the reign of polytheism and fable ; and chaos, night and Erebus, replaced the conception of the creative will of the Almighty. It is equally lost in the speculations of a pantheistic philosophy, of which there are too many specimens in modern times. But the testimony of the Scriptures to this great truth is consistent, uniform, and unvaried, from first to last. First, when the judgment of the Flood was sent u23on the world, it is announced in these words — " I will destroy man whom I have created from the face of the earth, both man and beast, and the creeping tiling, and the fowls of the air ; for it repenteth me that 1 have made them." And again " In the image of God made he man." In the first mission of Moses, the truth is indirectly taught, in the Divine expostulation : — " Who hath made man's mouth, or who maketh- the dumb or deaf, or the seeing or the l»lind ? have not I the Lord ?" When the Law was given on Mount Sinai, this doctrine was publicly embodied in the fourth commandment. " For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in tliem is, and rested the scventli day: wherefore the Lord blessed the sabbath day and liallowed it." The statement is repeated in Exodus xxxi. — " For in six days the Lord made heaven and earth," and again ill Deuteronomy, in two or llnee varied iorms. It is 408 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. found in twenty different Psalms, gives its tone to the Book of Job, and runs through all the Proverbs. It appears, in the most various associations, in the pro- phecies of Isaiah. " At that day shall a man look to his Maker." (xvii. 7.) " Ye have not looked unto the Maker thereof, nor had respect unto Him that fashioned it long ago." (xxii. 11.) " Shall the work say of him that made it, He made me not ? or shall the thing formed say of him that formed it, He had no understanding?" (xxix. 16.) " Lift up your eyes on high, and behold who hath created these things, that bringeth out their host by number ?" " The everlasting Grod, the Lord, the Creator of the ends of the earth, fainteth not, neither is weary : there is no searching of his understanding." (Isa. xl. 28.) " Thus saith Grod the Lord, he that created the heavens, and stretched them out ; he that spread forth the earth, and that which cometli out of it ; he that giveth breath unto the people upon it, and spirit to them that walk thereon." (xlii. 5.) The voice of Jeremiah is the same in his earnest prayer : " Ah, Lord God, thou hast made heaven and earth by thy great power and stretched-out arm, and there is nothing too hard for thee !" And that of Zechariah : " The burden of the word of the Lord, which stretcheth forth the heavens, and layeth the foun- dation of the earth, and formeth the spirit of man with- in him." The same great doctrine runs through the New Testa- ment. We find it in the opening of the fourth Gospel, applied to the Word, the only begotten Son of the Father : " All things were made by him, and without him was not anything made that was made." It appears in our Lord's thanksgiving, in the first and third Gospels : " I thank thee, 0 Father, Lord of heaven and earth !" and in his reply to the Pharisees : " Have ye not read that he which made them in the THE DOCTRINAL UNITY OF TPIE BIBLE. 409 beginning, made them male and female ?" In the Book of Acts it appears in every part. In the thanksgiving and prayer of the early church : " Lord, thou art God, wliich hast made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all that in them is." (iv. 24.) In the words of the apostles at Lystra : " Sirs, why do ye such things ? We are men of like passions with you, and preach that ye should turn from these vanities unto the living God, who made heaven and earth, and the sea, and all things therein." (xiv. 15.) And again, in St. Paul's discourse at Athens : " God that made the world and all things therein, seeing he is Lord of heaven and earth, dwelleth not in temples made with hands." And, not to mul- tiply quotations from the Epistles, it meets us repeatedly in the closing book of the canon, in the song of the heavenly elders, in the oath of the mighty Angel, and in the proclamatiofi of the everlasting Gospel by another angel to the idolaters of the last days : " Fear God and give glory to him, for the hour of his judgment is come, and worship him which made the heaven and the earth, and the sea, and the fountains of water." 2. The unity of God is another doctrine, which stands out in full relief in every part of the Bible. In the earlier books it is doubly conspicuous, when we contrast the word of God with the monuments and remains of Egypt, and the wild and dark fancies of polytheism throughout the ancient world. " I am the Lord thy God, thou shalt have no other gods but me." " Thou shalt worship no other god, for Jehovah, whose name is Jealous, is a jealous God." " Unto thee it was showed, that thou mightest know that the Lord he is- God, there is none else beside him." " Hear, 0 Israel, the Lord our God is one Lord." The same truth runs through the Psalms and the Prophets, and fonns a prominent character of their 410 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. teacliing. " All tlie gods of the nations are idols, but the Lord made the heavens." " Confounded be all they that serve graven images, that boast themselves of idols : worship him, all ye gods." " I am the Lord ; that is my name ; and my glory will I not give to another, neither my praise to graven images." " Before me there was no god formed, neither shall there be after me. I, even I, am the Lord, and beside me there is no Saviour." " Is there a god beside me ? Yea, there is no God, 1 know not any." " The Lord is the true God, he is the living God and an everlasting King : at his wrath the earth shall tremble, and the nations shall not be able to abide his indignation. Thus shall ye say unto them, The gods that have not made the heavens and earth, shall perish from the earth, and from under these heavens." In the New Testament, while the doctrine of three Persons in the Godhead is taught, the Divine unity, in contrast to the many gods of heathenism, is maintained with equal clearness. So the Apostle writes to the Corinthians : " For though there be that are called gods, whether in heaven or in earth, as there be gods many and lords many, yet to us there is but one God, the Father, of whom are all things, and we in him ; and one Lord Jesus Christ, by whom are all things, and we by him." And again, to Timothy : " For there is one God, and one Mediator between God and men, the man Christ Jesus." 3. The fall and corruption of man is another truth, which meets us equally in every part of Scripture. It 4s seen in the account of the world before the flood. " And God saw that the wickedness of man was great in the earth, and that every imagination of man's heart was only evil, and that continually." It reappears in the blessing after the flood : " I will not curse the THE DOCTRINAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 411 ground any more lor man's sake, for tlie imagination of man's heart is evil from his youth." We read it, further, in the growth of idolatry after the flood, in the guilt of the cities of the plain, and their destruction, and the sentence pronounced upon the Amorites, Gen. XV., with the reason assigned for delaying the judgment. The history of the Exodus is one ceaseless illustration of its truth. Moses sums up his review of the conduct of Israel in the words : " Ye have been rebellious against the Lord since the day that I knew you." David makes the penitent confession : " Behold, I was sliapen in iniquity, and in sin did my mother con- ceive me." Ezra exclaims in the same spirit : " 0 my God, I am ashamed and blush to lift up my face to thee, my God ; for our iniquities are increased over our heads, and our trespass is grown U]3 to the heavens." The last prophecy of the Old Testament is one ceaseless expostulation with the sin and stubbornness of the chosen people. The Gospels open with the warning of the Baptist : "0 generation of vipers, who hath warned you to flee from the wrath to come ?" and towards their close they re-echo the description in those solemn words of the Saviour : " Ye serpents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell ?" The open- ing cliapters of the Epistle to the Romans are full of the same truth. The Apostle quotes evidence to con- finn it from six different Psalms, and from Isaiah's pro- phecies, and then draws the universal inference, — " Now we know that whatsoever the law saith, it saith to them who are under tlie law, that every mouth may be stopped, and all the world Ijccome guilty before God." 4. The doctrine of a Redeemer, by whom deliverance from the curse of sin would be given to men, is another tnilli, wliicli runs through the whole of Scripture. " 'J'lic testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy." It 412 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. meets us in the first account of the fall, where the Seed of the woman is announced, who should bruise the head of the serpent. It reappears in the promise to Abraham of that Seed, who should possess the gate of his enemies, and in whom all the nations of the earth would be blessed. It is announced by the dying Jacob, in the words — " The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor the lawgiver from between his feet, until Shiloh come, and to him shall the gathering of the people be." It is implied in the types of Isaac's sacrifice, and of Joseph's exile, sufferings, and exaltation. It is seen in the pro- mise of the prophet like unto Moses, and in the types of the paschal lamb, the smitten rock, from which there flowed living water, the scapegoat, and the brazen serpent. It meets us in the Psalms and Prophets with growing clearness, and the titles. King, Immanuel, the Prince of Peace, the Man of sorrows, the Branch, Messiah the Prince, the Son of Man, the King of Zion, the Shepherd, Jehovah's Fellow, the Messenger of the Covenant, the Sun of righteousness, reveal the various attributes of grace and holiness, which were to be manifested in the person and work of the Incarnate Son of God. 5. The way of salvation by faith is another doctrine in which all the sacred writers consj^ire with a striking unity. " By faith Abel offered imto God a more ac- ceptable sacrifice than Cain" (Heb. xi. 3). Abraham " believed God, and it was counted to him for righteous- ness" (Gen. XV. 6). This fundamental doctrine, though specially unfolded by St. Paul, runs through all the intermediate books of Scripture. Trust in God, in the Old Testament, and faith in Christ, its equivalent in the New, is everywhere proclaimed to be the pathway of life and salvation. ]\Ian fell through unbelief, and by faith alone he can be recovered. This great truth THE DOCTRINAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 413 appears equally in the books of Moses, in the later Pro- phets, and in the Gospels, the writings of St. Paul, and the Epistles of St. Peter and St. John. The eleventh of Hebrews is a divine commentary on the Old Testament histories, in which this aspect of them is brought into full relief; and the whole message of the Bible is summed up in the solemn contrast, " He that believeth on the Son of God hath everlasting life ; and he that believeth not the Son shall not see life, but the wrath of God abideth on him." 6. The need of sacrifice and atonement is another truth, in which we may trace the all-pervading unity of Scripture. Abel's sacrifice was accepted, when he brought the firstlings of his flock ; and Cain's was rejected, who brought a bloodless offering, the fruits of the earth. When Noah had slain the victims in sacri- fice after the flood, " the Lord smelled a sweet savour," and a renewed covenant of mercy and promise was given. It was in the midst of such sacrifices that the covenant was again renewed to Abraliam with special promises. After the sacrifice of Isaac, in a figure, and of the ram caught in the thicket in his stead, a still fuller blessing was given by a new covenant, and confirmed with the oath of God. The law of Moses was full of sacrificial ordinances, from the passover on tlie night of the Exodus to the latest ordinance of purification, in Numbers, by the spotless heifer that was to be slain, and whose ashes were to sprinkle the unclean. Isaiah trans- fers the types of the law to their antitype, the coming Messiah : " All we, like sheep, have gone astray : we have turned every one to his own way ; and the Lord hath laid on him the iniquity of us all." " When thou shalt make his soul an oftering for sin, he shall see his seed, he shall prolong his days. . . . By his know- ledge shall my righteous servant justify many, for he 414 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. shall bear their iniquities." The New Testament repeats the same truth in still clearer accents, and refers all the types in the legal sacrifices to their great Antitype : " The Son of man came, not to be ministered unto, but to minister ; and to give his life a ransom for many." " Behold the Lamb of God, who taketh away the sin of the world." " Without shedding of blood there is no remission." " God hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him." " These are they which have come out of great tribulation, and have washed their robes, and made them white in the blood of the Lamb." " Who his own self bare our sins in his own body on the tree, that we, being dead to sin, might live to righteousness ; by whose stripes ye were healed." 7. The need of regeneration and holiness of heart in order to salvation is another truth which runs through the whole Bible. The contrast is drawn broadly, throughout, between the righteous and unrighteous, the believer and the unbeliever, the obedient and the dis- obedient. In the Flood, and the deliverance of Noah ; in the destruction of Sodom and Gomorrah, the rescue of Lot, the intercession of Abraham, and the promise that the city should have been sj)ared for the sake of ten righteous ; and in the repeated contrasts of the Psalms, the Proverbs, and all the Prophets, the same doctrine everywhere appears. " The Lord loveth the righteous, but the wicked, and him that loveth violence, his soul hateth." " The Lord preserveth all them that love him, but all the wicked will he destroy." " The Lord taketh pleasure in liis people ; he will beautify the meek with salvation." The prayers of the Psalmist teach the same lesson : " Create in me a clean heart, 0 God ; and renew a right spirit within me." The Old Testament closes with a strong assertion of this moral THE DOCTRINAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 415 contrast, and the opposite issue to winch it loads : " Then shall ye return, and discern between the righteous an^ the wicked, between hun that serveth God, and him that serveth him not." The same truth is revealed with equal clearness in the New Testament, and the great change ascribed more plainly to its secret cause, the work of the Holy Spirit on the hearts of men. " A good tree," our Lord tells his disciples, " cannot bring forth evil fruit, neither can a corrupt tree bring forth good fruit. Do men gather grapes of thorns, or figs of thistles ?" Again to Ni- codemus : " That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit." " Except a man be born again, he cannot see the kingdom of God." The apostles dwell much on the same truth : " They that are in the flesh cannot please God." "To be carnally minded is death, but to be spiritually minded is Hfe and peace." " If any man be in Christ, he is a new creature ; old things are passed away : behold, all things are become new." " For if ye live after the flesh, ye sliall die ; but if ye through the Spirit do mortify the deeds of the body, ye shall hve." " Follow after holiness, without which no man shall see the Lord." " Faith without works is dead, being alone." " As he which hath called you is holy, so be ye holy in all manner of conversation : because it is written. Be ye holy, for I am holy." " He that doetli righteous- ness is righteous, even as He is righteous ; he that com- mitteth sin is of the devil." " Here is the patience of the saints : here are they that keep the commandments of God, and the faith of Jesus." All these, and many similar passages, teach the same lesson. They separate all mankind, morally and spiritually, into two opposite classes, believers and unbelievers ; those who live after the flesh, and after the spirit ; those who serve God, 416 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. and those who serve him not ; and teach that a well- grounded hope of salvation belongs to the former class, and to them alone. Repentance and conversion is the bridge by which the soul passes from one side to the other of this gulf of moral separation ; and the message of our Lord is solemn and weighty, and sums up the voice of all Scripture : " Excej^t ye repent, ye shall all likewise perish." " Except ye be converted, and be- come as little children, ye shall not enter into the king- dom of heaven." II. This doctrinal unity of the Bible might easily be traced in many other particulars, and under every diversified topic of religious truth. But it may be well to confine our view to one aspect in which it has been controverted and denied, from the contrast between the Old and the New Testament. If it can be shewn that, even where the apparent divergence is widest, the real harmony is complete ; no further proof will be needed of that Divine Authorship which belongs to the whole, and which has provided for men, by prophets and apostles, a perfect and harmonious treasury of Divine truth. The contrast in question has been stated by a modern sceptic in these terms : — " Here are two forms of religion which differ widely, set forth and enforced by miracles ; the one ritual and formal, the other actual and spiritual ; the one the religion of Fear, the other of Love ; one finite, and resting altogether on the special revelation made to Moses ; the other absolute, and based on the universal revelation of God, who enlightens all that come into the world. One offers only an earthly recompense, the other makes immortality a motive to a divine life. One compels men, the other invites them. One half the Bible refutes the other half; the Gospel annihilates the Law ; the Apostles take the place of the Prophets, and THE DOCTRINAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 417 go higher up. If Cliristianity and Judaism be not tlie same thing, tliere must be hostility between the Old and the New Testament, for the Jewish form claims to be eternal. To an unprejudiced man this hostility is very obvious. It may indeed be said, Christianity came not to destroy the Law and the Prophets, but to fulfil them ; and the answer is plain, their fulfilment was their destruction." The self-confident and irreverent tone of this objec- tion, in which the lie is directly given to our blessed Lord's own declaration, does not speak well for the practical power of that " absolute religion " by which the writer strives to replace and supersede historical Christianity. And first, this objection, instead of being the result of intellectual progress, is merely a relapse into an error which appeared very early, and from which it was one of our Lord's first lessons to deliver his own disciples. The difference of tone between liis own teaching and that of the law of Moses, or rather of the scribes and Pharisees who expounded it to the people, was soon observed ; and led many hearers to suspect that his pur- pose was to set aside the authority of these earlier messages of God. But our Lord asserts the falsehood of this notion in the strongest and plainest terms : " Think not that I am come to destroy the law and the prophets : I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil. For verily I say unto you. Till heaven and earth pass, one jot or one tittle shall in nowise pass from the law, till all be ful- filled." The objection affirms that the fulfilment of the Law and the Prophets, imdcr the Gospel, is their destruction. Our Lord affirms the exact reverse, that the fulfilment of them which it was his object to secure was the contrast and antithesis of their destruction : " I am not come to 2 E 418 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. ■ destroy, but to fulfil." It is no slight presumption in this reckless advocate of " absolute religion " to give the lie direct to the Son of God in one of his most solemn and deliberate statements. But while the alleged contradiction between the Law and the Gospel is thus disproved by the highest autho- rity, that of our Lord himself, so that no one can be his true disciple who affirms them to be hopelessly at vari- ance, a partial and real contrast between them is clearly recognised in the New Testament. In the opening of the fourth Gospel we find it distinctly announced. " For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." So again, after the Baptist's message, — " The law and the projohets were untilJohn : since then the kingdom of heaven is preached, and every one is pressed into it." The Epistles of St. Paul have this for their main subject. " The law made nothing perfect, but the bringing in of a better hope did, by which we draw nigh to God." " Therefore by the deeds of the law shall no flesh be justified, for by the law is the knowledge of sin." " Before faith came, we were kept under the law, shut up to the faith that should be revealed." " For if they which are of the law be heirs, faith is made void, and the promise made of no effect. Because the law worketh wrath ; for where there is no law there is no transgression." " For if the ministration of death, written and engraven on stones, was glorious, how shall not the ministration of the Spirit 'be rather glorious ?" In these and many other passages a strong contrast is plainly allowed and affirmed between the earlier messages of the Law, with their holiness and severity, and the grace, tenderness, and freedom, of the Gospel of Christ. The contrast, then, between the Law and the Gospel is no modern discovery of unbelievers. So far as it is THE DOCTRINAL UNITY OF TUE BIBLE. 419 real, it is recognised fully and openly in the New Tes- tament, and forms the basis of some of its most earnest appeals to the hearts and consciences of Christian men. On the other hand, the falsehood which exaggerates this partial contrast into a total contradiction is detected by our Lord, when it first began to arise in the hearts of his own disciples, and receives his earnest and indignant reprobation. He who maintains it must first claim to be wiser than Christ himself, and thereby forfeits at once the name and character of a Christian. But let us examine the statement more closely. And first, is the religion of Moses and of the Old Testament ritual and formal only ? Let Moses himself answer, in his earnest appeal before his death : " And now, Israel, what doth the Lord thy God require of thee, but to fear tlie Lord thy God, to walk in all his ways, and to love him, and to serve the Lord thy God with all thy heart and with all thy soul. . . . Love ye therefore the stranger, for ye were .strangers in the land of Egypt. Thou shalt fear the Lord thy God ; him shalt thou serve, and to him thou shalt cleave, and swear by his name. He is thy praise, and he is thy God." And our Lord himself, who alone, of all mankind, ever ful- filled the law of Moses, assures us that its weightiest matters were not the tithe of mint, anise, and cummin, but lessons of a far higher kind, even " judgment, mercy, and faith." Again, is the teaching of the Law a religion of fear alone? Is it finite, making no appeal to the unchange- able moral attributes of the Most High ? Every religion must take its impress from the character of the object of worship. Cruel gods must create a fierce and cruel leligion, and licentious divinities one of impurity and sensual lust. Now one part of the Law is plainly designed to reveal 2 k 2 420 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. tlie true character of tlie God of Israel, in contrast to the superficial and hasty impressions which might be formed from a less thoughtful observation. When Moses offered the prayer in a time of distress and fear, " I beseech thee, shew me thy glory," the answer was given — " I will cause all my goodness to pass before thee, and I will proclaim the name of the Lord before thee." After special preparation, and with peculiar solemnity, the desired revelation was given. " And the Lord passed by and proclaimed. The Lord, the Lord God, merciful and gracious, longsuffering, and abundant in goodness and truth, keeping mercy for thousands, forgiving iniquity, and transgression, and sin, and that will by no means clear the guilty ; visiting the iniquity of the fathers upon the children, and upon children's children, unto the third and fourth generation." What was the effect of this message, this crowning revelation of the " religion of fear " upon him who received it ? " And Moses made haste, and bowed his head toward the earth, and worshipped, and said, If now I have found grace in thy sight, 0 Lord, let my Lord, I beseech thee, go among us, for it is a stiff- necked people ; and pardon our iniquity and sin, and take us for thine inheritance." Nor was this a transient impression on the mind of Moses alone. The Psalmist, four hundred years later, learned from the same passage a religion of hope and love ; " He made known his ways unto Moses, his acts unto the children of Israel. The Lord is merciful and gracious, slow to anger, and plen- teous in mercy. . . He will not always chide, neither will he keep his anger for ever. For as the heaven is high above the earth, so great is his mercy toward them that fear him." Does the Law, again, offer only an earthly recom- pense ? Its fundamental promise is in the words to THE DOCTRINAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 421 Abraham, " I will Lless thee, and make thy name great, and thou shalt be a blessing." " Fear not, Abraham, I am thy shield, and thy exceeding great reward." " I will be a God unto thee, and to thy seed after thee." Since God himself is " the everlasting God," these }3romises clearly partake of the same character. The patriarchs desired " a better and a heavenly country." God was not " ashamed to be called their God, for he had prepared for them a city." In the hope of a better jiortion, they " confessed themselves strangers and pilgrims on the earth." The dying Jacob exclaimed, " I have waited for thy salvation, 0 Lord," Moses " had respect unto the recompense of reward," and there- fore made mention of a book of life, in which his name w^as written. The Divine law enjoined the Israelites : " The land shall not be sold for ever; for the land is mine, and ye are strangers and sojourners with me." The commandment set before them " life and good," and promised, on their obedience, that the everlasting God would be " their life, and the length of their days." The eternal God was to be their refuge, and under- neath them were to be his " everlasting arms." They were to dwell in safety, as a people saved by the Lord ; and their days to be multiplied as the days of heaven. To the Levites the further promise was given, when excluded from a distinct territory, that " the Lord God of Israel was their inheritance." In all these promises there was a direct reference to God himself, as their God by especial covenant ; and to those who read them with faith they would be a sure pledge, not merely of temporal, but of eternal blessings. Again, does the Law merely compel by force, and not invite by the power of moral suasion ? No statement could be more opposed to the truth. The whole Book of Deuteronomy is one continued, earnest appeal to the 422 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. conscience, tlie feelings, and the heart of the people of Israel. It is perhaps the longest, the most sustained moral invitation to he found in the compass of the word of God. The voice also of the prophets is a perpetual expostulation, a series of earnest aj^peals to the con- science and heart of later generations. Has the Gospel, on the other hand, no solemn mes- sages, no appeals to fear, to temper the grace and tenderness of its invitations ? Far from it, the warnings it contains are more severe than those of the law itself, borrow from them their sharpest accents of rebuke, and infuse into them a tone of still deeper meaning. " I will forewarn you whom ye shall fear : fear him, which after he hath killed hath power to cast into hell : yea, I say unto you, Fear him." " Ye ser- pents, ye generation of vipers, how can ye escape the damnation of hell ?" " If the word spoken by angels was stedfast, and every transgression and disobedience received a just recomj^ense of reward, how shall we escape, if we neglect so great salvation ?" "Of how much sorer punishment shall he be thought worthy, who hath trodden under foot the Son of God, and counted the blood of the covenant, wherewith he was sanctified, an unholy thing, and done despite to the Spirit of grace ?" " It is a fearful thing to fall into the hands of the living God." "For even our God is a consuming fire." In the face of these and similar passages, it is indeed strange how the most superficial could venture to set up the imaginary contrast, that the Gospel is a religion of love only, without fear, and the Law one of fear only, without love. In each message both of the Divine attributes are distinctly revealed, though not in the same proportion. The righteousness and holy severity of the law is tempered by rich reve- lations of Divine grace ; while the fuller and clearer ' THE DOCTRINAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 423 grace of the Gospel is guarded by warnings still more solemn than the penal sanctions of the elder covenant ; and a still sorer punishment is denounced upon those who despise and disobey. Again, the promises of the Gospel, while they relate mainly to tlie future, include the present also. It retains the lower promises of the law, and only tempers them, by the knowledge of the cross, with a new ele- ment of patience and mingled sorrow. Our Lord lays down this law of hope clearly to his followers : " There is no man that hath left house, or brethren, or sisters, or father, or mother, or wife, or children, or lands, for my sake and the gospel's, but he shall receive a hun- dredfold now in this time, with persecutions ; and in the world to come, eternal life." The Apostle repeats and confirms his Master's promise, and declares that " godhness is profitable for all things, and hath the promise of the life that now is, as well as that which is to come," The two dispensations, even where the seem- ing contrast is the greatest, interlace and overlap, like the folds of the curtains of the tabernacle, with a mar- vellous unity ; and reveal, amidst their partial contrast, the one mind of the Divine SjDirit, penetrating, mould- ing, pervading, and harmonizing the whole. But this deep unity between the Law and the Gospel may be seen more clearly, when we look below the sur- face, and refer them to those Divine attributes which they are especially designed to reveal. There are three successive forms of Divine goodness, ascending by a climax to its fullest and highest exhibi- tion. The first is simple bounty, or love to creatures, as creatures, irrespective of every moral difference. This is the basis of natural religion in its simplest and most elementary form. It is imphed and assumed in the Bible, and blends with its messages ; but is like the court 424 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. of the Gentiles, when compared with the higher lessons of written revelation. The second is righteousness and holiness, or the love of moral good, and the hatred of moral evil. This is the fundamental truth of the legal covenant. It reveals God in his holiness, in that hatred of sin, as well as delight in goodness, which finds its reflection in the double precept, " Thou shalt love thy neighbour, and hate thine enemy." It is this character of the Old Testament, which makes it wear so forbidding and repulsive an aspect to all hearts that are still under the power of sin, and have attained no real sympathy with the Divine holiness. It is an aspect of perfect goodness, higher than simple, indis- criminate bounty, but less excellent than the grace of the Gospel. This is the third and highest form of Divine goodness — kindness to the unthankful and the unworthy ; a love which does not flatter or indulge them in their sin, but uses all patience and wisdom to raise them from the depth of moral evil into the image of God, the recovered possession of purity, uprightness, and love. There is nothing, then, arbitrary or capricious in this mutual relation of the Law of Nature, or the earlier stage of unwritten revelation, the Law of Moses, and the Gospel of Christ. They are three steps in the same series, an outer court, a holy place, and a most holy ; and are all required in a complete and harmonious revelation of the Divine goodness to sinful men. The partial con- trast between the Law and the Gospel is just as essential to the wisdom of the mesage, as their secret har- mony. It is only the severity of holiness which can prepare us for a just and full apprehension of Divine grace. Remove these preparatory teachings, and grace ceases to be grace. It soon degenerates into mere indif- ference to moral good and evil, the darkest form of a THE DOCTRINAL UNITY OF THE BIBLE. 425 perverse fatalism, instead of the best and noblest form of goodness, tender compassion to the guilty, and re- deeming love. Contrast, however, is not contradiction. It is one element in the most complete and perfect unity. The hues of light in the rainbow are contrasted with each other, and still they are only pure light analysed and separated into its varying elements. And so it is with the truths of the Law and the Gospel. In one we have types, in the other antitypes. In one, holy severity is more apparent ; in the other, tender compassion and grace. But the contrasted truths interpenetrate the whole. The Gospel, with its richest grace, is virtually contained in the Law ; and holiness, in its deepest and most solemn tones of warning, blends everywhere with the rich har- monies of the Gospel promises. The God revealed in the Law is One who " caretli for the strangers, and re- lieveth the fatherless and the widow ;" who " giveth good to all flesh, because his mercy endureth for ever." He is One who promises that he will hear the cry of the poor in his distress, " for I am gracious ;" and commands his people : " Thou shalt not oppress a stranger, for ye know the heart of a stranger, for ye were strangers in tlie land of Egypt." He is One who forbids every grudge, and enjoins a perfect love ; who cares for the safety of the poor, the deaf, the blind ; and teaches lessons of kindness even to the child in liis play, from the lost ox or ass, and tlie gleanings of the harvest field. On the other hand, the Gospel fences round its most gracious promises with terrors borrowed from the language of the law, and the prospect of coming judg- ment. Its most gracious invitations follow close upon a warning to unbelievers : " It sliall be more tolerable for Sodom and Gomorrah in the day of judgment than for you ;" and its noblest descriptions of the future 426 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. blessedness are linked with the solemn declaration, " For without are dogs, and sorcerers, and whoremongers, and idolaters, and murderers, and whosoever loveth and maketh a lie." Righteousness in the Law prepares the way for grace ; and grace, in the Gospel, reigns "through righteousness unto eternal life." They are attributes of perfect goodness, contrasted, but still harmonious ; revealed successively, that their true force and meaning may be more clearly seen by dull and earthly minds, and still blending ever with each other in their partial separation. Mercy is veiled, yet everywhere present in the Law, but is revealed in the Gospel ; and the grace of the Gospel, centering in the cross of Christ and his Divine atonement, is the highest, noblest, and most wonderful exhibition of the righteousness of God. Thus " mercy and truth meet together, and righteousness and peace embrace each other." " Truth springs out of the earth " in the person of the incarnate Redeemer, and " righteousness looks down from heaven," while the Spirit, the reward of his suffering and agony, is poured out upon a sinful world. REDEMPTION A PROGRESSIVE SCHEME. 427 CHAPTER XIX. REDEMPTION A PROGRESSIVE SCHEME. The Bible, if composed of true revelations from God to man, reaching through a space of fifteen hundred years, may be expected to throw some light on the scheme of Divine providence. Its first object may be to promote personal religion, to reclaim prodigals from their sin, to provide a firm ground of hope for sincere penitents, and instruct them in their present duty to God and their fellow-men. But since its professed aim is to renew the souls of men in the image of God, it must, in its higher lessons, give its disciples some real ^insight into the plans and purposes of the Most High. For its object is not only to convert rebels and slaves into servants, but to exalt servants themselves into the friends and sons of God. The Scriptures satisfy this reasonable expectation. A unity of living hope runs through the whole course of their messages. The histories, the doctrines, and the prophecies, all harmonize with each other ; and reveal, under varied aspects, one consistent scheme of Divine wisdom, which moves on continually towards the redemption of a sinful world. All scepticism, however unconsciously, has its root in the heart. Man must feel and own that he is a sinner, before he can feel his need of a Redeemer. He must own his guilt, before he can sue for pardon, or welcome 428 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. the Divine atonement by whicli pardon is secured. > He must learn liis weakness in the inward conflict with selfishness and sin, before he will rest on a higher strength than his own, or seek the promised help of the Spirit of God. So long as he thinks that he needs education alone, without conversion or renewal of heart, the Gospel of Christ will remain to him a sealed mystery. If he attempts, in this state of mind, to interpret the scheme of Providence, he will be almost sure to lose himself in a labyrinth of error. God's providence is not a course of education for a world of teachable, happy, sinless disciples of truth. It is a hospital for souls labouring under a sore disease, a scheme of redemption for the lost and guilty, procured through the dying agony of the Son of God. Whenever this idea of redemption is lost, then the key of knowledge is taken away, and Providence becomes a hopeless enigma. The facts of history, and the testimonies of Scripture, have then to be set aside, or garbled and falsified, in order to reconcile them with the demands of some false and deceptive theory, some philosophical counterfeit of Christianity, from which all its distinctive features have passed away. That view of Providence, which sees in it simply a scheme for the world's education, denies the fall of man, and, by consequence, his need of a Divine redemption. It diverges, then from the Bible at tlie outset, and this divergence increases, as we travel along the stream of time. The darker features of the world's history have to be explained away, in order to reconcile them with a sinless progress of humanity from infancy to perfect wisdom. The foulest abominations of heathenism, for thousands of years, have then to be softened down into the harmless and natural delusions of infancy, before human reason had ripened by the due exercise of its REDEMPTION A PROGRESSIVE SCHEME. 429 own powers. The later idolatries and sensual vices of Greece and Rome, and the self-righteousness of the Jewish Pharisees, to suit the same theory, must be taken for the generous and attractive impulses of opening youth ; and the apostasies of the middle ages, or the feverish worldliness and intellectual pride of later times, must be termed the growth of manly strength, or the calm and mature "wisdom of ripened and ex- perienced age. Thus the testimony of the Bible has to be reversed and falsified in every point, both in its historical statements, and its prophetical warnings ; and the heady and high-minded are beguiled with the flattering notion that they are wiser than the wisest of former generations, from the happy accident of their being born in a later and more enlightened age of the world. The comparison of the times of the Law to childhood, and of the Gospel to a riper age, has a direct warrant in the Scriptures themselves. But it belongs to the true disciples of the Law and the Gospel alone. When ex- tended to the whole world, with its multitude of unbelievers, the comparison fails. Where there is no life, there can be no real growth. There must be repentance and conversion from sin to God, before the true education of the soul can begin. Unbelief may re- volve in cycles of error from age to age ; but only those who enter in at the strait gate can walk in the way of hfe, and thus advance nearer and nearer to that moral perfection, the recovered image of God, after which their souls continually aspire. The Bible, alike in its histories and prophecies, is flatly opposed to those theories of mankind's gradual and universal progress in moral and religious truth, which have been propounded by unbelieving philo- sophy, and which sometimes labour, however vainly,, to 430 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. support tliemselves by an appeal to its own statements. The pictures it sets before us are widely different — a series of rebellions and apostasies, resisted, and partially overcome, by mighty acts of Divine grace ; but contin- ually repeated in new forms, till they issue, in the last times, in a solemn and fearful controversy between light and darkness, and in judgment on abounding ungodli- ness, as well as in rich mercy and grace to those who know God and obey the Gospel of Christ. We are told, in the New Testament, that " in the last days perilous times shall come," and that " evil men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being deceived." And, however the views of Christians may vary with regard to the future course of Providence, and the final victories of truth — one thing must be plain, to all who read the Scriptures with reverence, that they are nowhere ascribed to a natural law of human progress, but to gracious acts of the Holy Spirit, or direct judgments of Christ, which will overcome and reverse the downward tendency of the human heart, and bind a reluctant and rebellious race, by mercy and judgment, to the footstool of the Most High. But while the Bible is thus opposed to those spurious theories of progress, which are based . on human pride and contradict the facts of history, it exhibits a progress of a different kind, in the ceaseless unfolding of a scheme of Divine mercy for the redemption and recovery of sinful man. God, in his own nature, is unsearchable : he can be known only as he is revealed. A revelation of moral attributes, since it must consist of the suc- cessive acts of God's moral government, must plainly be progressive. Salvation, or the recovery of the soul from the power of sin, is by faith alone. The object of faith is Divine trutli. It is by the knowledge of the itruth that the souls of men are actually redeemed and REDEMPTION A PROGRESSIVE SCHEME. 431 renewed. And since the providence of God unfolds itself, from age to age, in new acts of judgment and of mercy, the materials of moral influence are thus increased and multiplied, which the Holy Spirit, the Lord and Giver of life, employs in his gracious work upon the hearts of men, both in their first conversion, and in their later advances in heavenly wisdom. There is thus a double progress, which the Scriptures reveal to us. The first is that of the Divine counsel itself, or the acts of mercy and judgment, which constitute the moral government of the world, and the messages of revela- tion. This is unintermitted, ceaseless, and unfailing. It admits of no arrest, and no reverse. However dark the moral state of the world may be in special crises of Providence, the stars, even at midnight, move on in their everlasting courses, and prej^are the way for a brighter sunrise to follow. The second kind of pro- gress is that of the actual fruits of redemption in each successive age. And this resembles the apparent move- ments of the planets. There is a general progress, subject to temporary retrocession and decline. Seasons of Divine forbearance, through man's perverseness, lead to spiritual decay. " Because sentence against an evil work is not executed speedily, the hearts of the sons of men is fully set in them to do evil." That evil is per- mitted to reach a certain height, and is then broken to pieces by new acts of judgment, followed by fresh and higher revelations of mercy. And thus, although by a chequered and seemingly irregular course, the work of grace moves on continually, and truth prevails, by a slow but sure advance, from age to age. Even when it seems to decay, and " the faithful are minishcd from the children of men " — the time of fear and sorrow is only the season of travail before a joyful birth. Each fresh exhibition of the stubbornness and inveteracy of 432 THE BIBLE AND MODEEN THOUGHT. evil illustrates more brightly, in the result, the victo- rious energy of redeeming love. Let us begin with the Book of Genesis. No sooner has man fallen from his original uprightness, and become the prey of death, than hope dawns upon him in the first promise. ^Jlie Seed of the Woman, it is revealed, shall bruise the head of the serpent. The message, however dim at first, implied clearly a Deli- verer to come, by whom the miseries of the fall should be repaired, and the power of the deceiver be over- come. This same promise runs, like a golden thread, through all the later Scriptures. In the very first chapter of the New Testament, the miraculous birth of Messiah answers strictly to this his earliest title in the Old Testament. The words of our Lord himself announce the promised triumph as already begun. " I beheld Satan, as lightning, fall from heaven." " Now is the judgment of this world : now is the prince of this world cast out." The apostle renews the promise to the Christians of Rome, where Satan's seat was so long to be established : " The God of peace shall bruise Satan under your feet shortly." And its completion is one main subject of the last and crowning prophecy of the word of God, where the old serpent is revealed in vision, first in the height of his power and fiercest malice, and then in his downfall, and final judgment. The history of the world, before the flood, is one of Divine forbearance carried to its extreme limit, until one righteous family alone was found on the earth. A darker and more gloomy season can hardly be con- ceived, than that which the sacred historian sets before us. " The earth was corrupt and filled with violence," and " all flesh had corrupted their way upon earth." Then followed a most solemn judgment, and a signal dehverance. Amidst the desolation, a new covenant REDEMPTION A PROGRESSIVE SCHEME. 433 of mercy was sealed witli the future race of mankind, which imj)Hed that no judgment, so total, should ever be repeated, and no season of such utter darkness settle down again upon our sinful world. When idolatry began to j)revail once more, after the Flood, and threatened to renew the former calamities, a new course of redeeming mercy began. One people were set apart in the person of their forefather, by a series of miraculous visions, to be the special depo- sitories of the truth of God, until the promised Re- deemer should appear. The covenant with Abraham marks evidently a new era in God's providence. Special mercy and electing grace were to minister to the larger object of a world-wide redemption. " In thy seed shall all the nations of the earth be blessed." This further promise, like the earlier one in Paradise, is repeated through the whole course of Scripture to its close. It is the ground of the promise made to Moses at the bush : " I will bring you into the land, concern- ing which I did swear to give it to Abraham, to Isaac, and to Jacob, and I will give it to you for a heritage : I am the Lord." It occurs continually, as the warrant of faith and hope, in the Psalms and the Prophets : " Thou wilt perform the mercy unto Abraham, and the truth unto Jacob, which thou hast sworn unto our fiithers from the days of old." It meets our eyes in the very first verse of the New Testament : " The book of the generations of Jesus Clirist, tlie son of David, the son of Al>raham." It is repeated again in the song of Zacharias. After the day of Pentecost, St. Peter appeals to it once more : " Ye are the children of the proj)hets, and of the covenant which God made with our fatliers, saying unto Abraham, And in thy seed shall all the families of the earth be blessed. Unto you first, God, having raised up liis Son Jesus, sent him to bless 2 F 434 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. you, in turning away every one of you from his iniquities." Before the grace of God, however, could be clearly made known to men, there was needed a full revelation of his holiness. This was the great office of the Old Covenant. " By the law is the knowledge of sin ;" and the knowledge of sin can alone awaken the desire for mercy, or discover to men the true meaning of the grace of the Gospel. During the times of the Old Testament this revelation became fuller and fuller, with every new display of the sin and perverseness of the chosen people. Truth stood on the defensive amidst the gloomy reign of heathen idolatry, and the state of actual piety was often lamentably low, as in the days of Gibeah, or- the reign of Ahab ; but the materials were preparing slowly and patiently, which the Spirit of God would employ, in all later ages, to help forward the promised victories of truth and righteousness. Every generation yielded its fresh contribution to the growing temple of revealed truth, until the last of the prophets announced the approaching advent of Messiah, and the rising of the Sun of righteousness, with healing in his wings. The birth of our Lord, and still more his death and resurrection, marked a new and nobler era in the de- velopment of this scheme of Divine mercy. The whole range of earlier prophecy, from the sentence on the serpent in Paradise to the parting words of Malachi, began to be fulfilled. Three great wants of mankind were supplied, — a perfect Example, a Divine Atonement for sin, and a living Fountain-head of heavenly grace. In the new dispensation of the Spirit, after the great sacrifice of the cross was complete, grace was to be as conspicuous as righteousness had been before ; and the message of the law to one favoured race alone was replaced by a free proclamation of pardon, life, and REDEMPTION A PROGRESSIVE SCHEME. 435 immortality, through tlie atoning- death and resurrection of Christ, to all the nations of the earth. The New Testament, however, in proclaiming the sure triumphs of the Gospel, and the final establishment of the kingdom of God in the age to come, nowhere aimounced a smooth and easy progress of truth to its full victory. On the contrary, it foretold, under the Gospel, conflicts, reverses, and apostasy from the faith, like those which formed the history of the Old Testa- ment. The earlier record of the sins of Israel was to supply descriptions for new forms of evil within the church of Christ. Strong and repeated cautions are given against the superstitions of the latter times, and against the selfishness and open unbelief that would prevail in the last days. The sacred history teaches liow the Law had been perverted into Pharisaic self- righteousness, when the grace of the Gospel was re- vealed. The prophecies of the New Testament forewarn the churches that the grace of the Gospel, in its turn, would be extensively abused, and turned into a plea for sensuality and imbelief, before that fuller display of righteous judgment, which would break in pieces all the power of evil, and introduce a lasting reign of righteous- ness and peace. The Bible reveals, then, a continual progress, in the ceaseless unfolding of the Divine attributes through successive ages, from the Patriarchs to the Law, from the Law to the Prophets, from these to the times of the Gospel, and from these again to a glorious triumph and reign of righteousness still to come. But while this objective progress is without intermission, it is not so with the actual prevalence of truth and holiness amongst mankind. This has its seasons of marked revival and juogress, and its intervals of apostasy and decay. I'Ik- abuse of earlier messages or degrees of 2 F 2 436 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. light, when it has reached its cHmax, brings down the judgments of God, and these judgments are followed by new displays of mercy. All the analogies of Scrip- ture, and its direct prophecies, confirm the hope that the next thousand years of the world's history will surpass the times of the Gospel, as far as these have surpassed the times of the Law and the early Patriarchs. But this hope is quite consistent with warnings of wide-spread apostasy from the faith, through intellec- tual j^i'ide, and a strong current of unbelieving world- liness in the last days. All theories of progress, which lead men to rely on their natural powers in dealing with the truth of God, and to look down on the Bible as a secondary and uncertain guide, in comparison with their own conscience and reason, instead of being the heralds of real advance, are ominous precursors of spiritual delusion and open apostasy from the faith. Men, without the guidance of the Holy Spirit, are just as liable to deadly and fatal error in our times as in any previous age. The louder their boasts of intellectual advancement and superior intelligence, the more plainly tlie snares of that great deceiver, who is " king over all the children of pride," are weaving around their path. It is only by returning to sit, with the docility of little children, at the feet of Christ, that they can avoid the danger which the prophet has described in such vivid terms : " Give glory to the Lord your God, before he cause darkness, and your feet stumble on the dark mountains ; and while ye look for light he turn it into the shadow of death, and make it gross darkness." The Bible is a history of redemption, but of a redemp- tion still incomj)lete, and of which the full and open tnumph is reserved for days to come. Viewed in the light of tin's great truth, a singular unity of prophetic hope runs througli tlie whole, and becomes doubly TIEDEMPTION A PROGRESSIVE SCHEME. 43T striking, wlien we compare its earliest and latest mes- sages. No books of the Bible are more contrasted in tlieir general character than Genesis and Revelation, The interval of time which separates them is more than fifteen hundred years. The first is a simple, unadorned history ; the second, a series of highly poetical visions. The first is the earliest variety of Hebrew prose ; the second, in a language then unborn, embodies the main features of Hebrew poetry. The Book of Genesis records common events upon earth ; the Apocalypse, to a great extent, is the description of heavenly wonders. One is a preface to the Law, the other a supplement to tlie Gospel. One was written by the adopted son of Pharaoh's daughter, learned in all the wisdom of Egypt ; the other, by an unlearned fisherman of de- spised Galilee. The first abounds with innumerable details, names of persons, places, and domestic annals of the most minute and various kind ; while the other scarcely stoops to set its foot upon earth, but dwells apart as on a mount of transfiguration. When the former was composed, Israel had scarcely begun to be a nation ; but when the exile received his visions in Patmos, their national history was closed for ages, and they were already outcasts and wanderers through tlie earth. All things on earth were changed in this long interval — Egypt, Canaan, and Babylon ; only God and his redeeming grace remained unchangeable. Yet the latest book corresponds to the earliest, as tiie loops and curtains of the tabernacle, or the various parts of the temple, with multiplied harmonies, partly of the most obvious, but in part of the most deliciite and unobtrusive kind. Creation has its counterpart in the promise, " Behold, I make all things new." The uncreated light which fills the heavenly city ; the successive revelation of the beast fiom the sea, the beast from the earth, and 438 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. one like to the Son of man ; the sabbatic rest of a thou- sand years ; the river from the throne, watering the heavenly Paradise ; the great river Euphrates, the gold and precious stones of the New Jerusalem, the tree of life in the Paradise of God ; the marriage of the Lamb, the Second Adam, and the clothing in which the Bride is arrayed ; the Old Serpent, the deceiver of the nations, the Woman and her mystic Seed, and sore travail ; the removal of the curse, and the angel guards at the open gates of the heavenly Paradise ; the cry of the martyrs from beneath the altar of burnt offering, and the rainbow around the throne ; — are all so many distinct allusions, in this closing prophecy, to the earliest chapters of the sacred history. The Old Testament here conspires with the New, and the history of the world's first infancy is seen to be stored with lessons of Divine wisdom, which were to be fully unveiled, after six or seven thousand years, in the final close of the mystery of God. The Bible, then, amidst the large variety of its con- tents, which embrace an interval of fifteen centuries in their composition, and seven thousand years in the times to which they refer — in its histories, psalms, proverbs, prophecies, and epistles, earthly facts and heavenly re- velations— exhibits, from first to last, the clear signs of a Divine unity which pervades and animates the whole. Its distinct parts are not of separate interpretation. Be- hind the human authors stood the Divine Spirit, con- trolling, guiding, and suggesting every part of their different messages. Their words " came not at any time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake, borne along by the Holy Ghost." As the Jordan flows underground in part of its course, so this Divine unity may be obscured from hasty observers by the multitude of intervening w^orks of which the whole message is REDEMPTION A TROGRESSIVE SCHEME. 439 composed, by the variety of historical details, the diver- sity of manner and style, of age and local circumstance, in the sixty-six books which constitute the Bible. But its sunrise and sunset are equally glorious, and reveal clearly the hidden harmony of the whole revelation. It traces the course of Providence from that creation, in which our earth was prepared for the habitation of men, to the complete accomplishment of that new creation, in which it will be the habitation of righteousness for ever. It begins with the first bridal of Adam and Eve, the parents of all mankind, and closes with the heavenly bridal of the Second Adam, the Lord from heaven, and tlie Church of the Firstborn, in whom the great mystery of that ordinance is fulfilled. It begins with a vision of the earthly Paradise forfeited by sin, and the taste of the forbidden tree of knowledge. It closes with the revelation of a better and heavenly Paradise, where no tree of knowledge is seen, but the tree of life alone, and even its leaves are for the healing of the nations. It begins with the success of the Old Serpent in deceiving Adam and Eve ; and ends with the vision of his over- throw by the Seed of the Woman, when he can deceive the nations no more, but sinks imder the righteous judgment of God. It begins with man's exclusion from Paradise by the watching cherubim and the flaming sword; and ends with the revelation of the heavenly Jerusalem, whose gates are open continually, while an angel at every gate invites the nations of the saved to bring their honour and glory into the city of God. The more closely, then, we examine the Bible, the more plainly it will appear to be indeed " tlie true sayings of God," " the word of God which liveth and abideth for ever." In its width, its freedom, and its grandeur, it reflects the largeness of God's universal Providence. Like tliat Providence, it lias its seeming 440 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. discrepancies, and its real perplexities, much to exercise faith, as well as much by which it is nourished, parts which may appear trivial and superfluous, and depths which repel the frivolous with a sense of impenetrable gloom. Even those who sincerely embrace the Gospel may rest satisfied with a dim and imperfect measure of knowledge, and thus have their faith in it exposed to sore trial, whenever new temptations assail the church of Christ. But in proportion as we search it with humble diligence and earnest prayer, fresh harmonies of Divine truth, new wonders of Divine grace and love, will dis- close themselves to our view. One difficulty after another will slowly melt away, and resolve itself into a halo of heavenly beauty. Sixty generations of the church have studied it unceasingly ; but this incor- ruptible manna neither wastes nor corrupts, and they liave never exhausted its stores of Divine wisdom. Sixty generations of unbelievers have assailed it on every side with winds of false doctrine, but it has only rooted itself the more firmly in the hearts of Christians, and in the history of the world. And still, after all these ages, there are deep mines of truth in it which have never been explored, harvests of spiritual food still to be reajDed by coming generations, and healing medicines for count- less evils that are still concealed in the depths of future time. The words of the prophet to Ariel of old will assuredly be fulfilled, soon or late, in all who assail this enduring word of God. " And the multitude of the nations that fight against her and her munition shall be even as the dream of a night vision. It shall be as when a hungry man dreameth, and behold he eateth, but he w^aketh, and his soul is empty ; or a thirsty man dreameth, and behold he drinketh, but he waketli, and is faint, and his soul hath appetite : so shall all the multitude of the nations be that fight REDEMPTIOX A PROGRESSIVE SCHEME. 441 against Zion." But those who draw near with reve- rence, and while they meditate, loose their shoes from their feet on this holy ground, will equally find the pro- mise of the Psalmist fulfilled in their own experience : " They shall be abundantly satisfied with the fatness of thy house, and thou wilt make them drink of the river of thy pleasures : for with thee is the fountain of life, and in thy light we shall see light." The meteors of false philosophy blaze for a moment, and disappear ; but the written word of God is an effluence from the Uncreated Light, and must endure for ever. ( 443 ) NOTES. Note A. The Evidential School of Theology. The Evidential Scliool of Theology, represented by Lardner and Paley, and continued by Archbishop Whateley, has been the object, latterly, of strong disparagement from various quarters. Those who reject Christianity, and those who receive it purely on the warrant of their own intuitions and a verifying faculty within, conspire in the same verdict of condemnation. The Sixth Essay is a notable example of the contemptuous style of criticism. They are accused of an Old Bailey theology, in which the Apostles are tried, once a week, for the capital crime of forgery. Their minds, being occupied with external evidences, know nothing of the spiritual intuition, of which they renounce the difficulties and the consolations. They "had neither the taste nor the knowledge " for an historical investiga- tion of the Origines of Chi'istianity. Paley "dedicated his powers to a factitious thesis." His demonstration, "however perfect, is in unreal matter." The case, as stated by them, " is wholly conventional," and the breadth of their assumptions " is out of all proportion to the narrow dimensions of the point they succeed in proving." " We owe to their influence, at least in part, the unwholesome state of tlicological feeling in our time, which, while it professes that its rchgious belief rests on historical evidence, refuses to allow that evidence to be examined in open court. Thoy went on manufacturing evidence as an ingenious exercise, when attacks by the press •were nearly at an end, and the Deists had ceased to be." They had neither the critical tools to work with, nor the historical materials to work upon, and therefore, " it is no wonder if they failed in their art." They " no longer dared to scrutinize the contents of revelation." (E. and R. pp. 2G0-2G2.) 444 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. Tliis is certainly a very " free handling " of the writers so contemptuously described. Whether it is " a becoming spu-it " which holds up all the adversaries of Deism in the last century to public derision, is not so plain. A friendly and lenient critic in the Replies, while he owns the mischievous effect the Essay may probably have on young and clever students, pleads in its favour that " it was not written with any theological object, good or bad, but mainly with a literary one ; and that it is a libel to accuse it of containing wanton or formal unbelief." But a paper which trifles with a vital subject through seventy pages, with no practical purpose, and holds up to scorn those who defended the truth of God, in perilous times, with no mean ability, reminds us strongly of the sportive madman in Proverbs, who amused himself with " casting firebrands, arrows, and death." For the sake of superficial readers of the Essays, who may be led, by such criticisms, to despise, fi^^rst of all, the writers themselves, and then the cause which they maintained ; it may be well to spend a few pages in a strict analysis of these censures, and an explanation of the source from which they arise. 1. 1. First, these works on the evidences of Christianity are styled contemptuously, " an Old Bailey theology, in which the Apostles are tried once a week for the capital crime of forgery." No doubt it is painful and repulsive to the heart of every sincere Christian, that unbelievers should dare to bring a charge of wilful fraud against our Lord and his Apostles. But that English clergymen should be found, who lay the whole blame of this indignity, not on the blasphemers by whom it is made, but on the Christian writers by wdiom it is repelled, is indeed a moral prodigy. It is too much like traitors in a camp, who accuse the sentinels of having fired their guns in mere wantomiess, when a night attack is being made, and the air is filled wnth the war-cries of a boastful enemy. 2. But their labours, we are told, were unseasonable, and not occasioned by any demands of controversy. " The Deists had ceased to be." Now what are the real facts ? Lardner and Paley are the two names, in the last century, which are singled out for this adverse criticism. The first volume of the " Credibility " w\as published in 1727, in the middle or earlier half of the Deistical controversy, while the works of Woolston and others were NOTES. 445 issuing from the press. The last part of the Supplement was in 3767, forty years later. As Dr. M'Caul and Dr. Fitzgerald have both remarked, the triumph of the Cliristian advocates, in the field of learning, was complete. At the very time when Infidelity was ripening in France and on the Continent, it was reduced in England to comparative silence. By a strange anachronism, the completeness with which they did their work is now turned into a proof that their labours were an idle amusement. The champions of Christianity toiled in vain, because, near the close of their efforts " the attacks through the press were nearly at an end : the Deists had ceased to be." Again, the Horje Paulinre was published in 1790, and the Evidences in 1794. Those five years wore the grand saturnalia of triumphant infidelity. The unbelieving conspiracy of the French Encyclopedists and German Illuminees was crowned with a momentary success. The world was appalled with a spectacle never seen before since the beginning of time, a nation of open Atheists. Unbelief was never so boastful, so sanguine of speedy and universal triumph. In England learned treatises had ceased to appear, because the disease, repelled in one quarter by the Christian apologists, had reappeared in another, and threatened to carry away the unlearned commonalty as with a flood from the serpent's mouth. The writings of Paine, unlearned, vulgar, and scurrilous, were in the height of their popularity. There could never be a time when a brief, lucid, popular exhibition of the historical proof of the Christian revela- tion could be more seasonable. And this is precisely the characteristic feature of Paley's two works. They make no claim, like those of Lardner, to profound and original historical research. Their aim is to simplify the argument, to strip it of needless accessaries, and present it in its briefest and clearest form. They merely oj)en the way to the temple of Divine tnith, and clear away the stumbling blocks which scepticism had placed in the path, and do not profess to introduce us to the inner shrine. This was their special object. The writer kept the nature of his work clearly in view, and has done it well. There can hardly be a stronger contrast than between the Sixth Essay, a jungle of criticisms, which teach nothing, and lead to nothing, where tin/ keenest eye can dise(»vs this passage the fundamental basis of his whole scheme. He de- 460 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. ducts from it the 1076 years of Eratostlienes, wliich he assumes to be those of the Old Empire, and the years of the New Em- pire, adjusted by various conjectures of his own, or 12(S6 years. The remainder, or 1193 years, is a first approximation to the Hyksos period, or Middle Empire. But he proceeds to argue that IManetho had estimated the Old Empire, less correctly than Eratosthenes, at 1347 years, so as to leave 922 years for the true length of the Middle Period, and 3284 years for the cor- rected length from Menes to Alexander. Now this basis of the whole system is a demonstrable and flagrant error. Syncellus, it is plain from his whole work, had not seen the true work of Manetho, and quotes under his name the treatise on the Dogstar — a spurious work, for which Baron Bunsen's contempt is as great as his admiration for the genuine history. The process by which the number is formed can be clearly shewn from Syncellus, with the force of demon- stration. He distinguishes it into two parts — 1190 years of unreal, and 2365 of historical time, from a.m. 2776, in the Alexandrian reckoning, to Nectanebo. But his mistake in con- founding the Egyi^tian with the Macedonian date of Alexander has led to a transfer of seven years, and the periods in his authorities, Panodorus and Anianus, are 1183 and 2372 years. Now the former of these is ten Egyptian cycles, or 14,610 years, reduced, by reckoning mythical years as months, to 1183 solar or Egyptian years, and reaching from a.m. 1058, the supposed year of the descent of the Watchers in the current Christian chronology to a.m. 2241, the Alexandrian date of the Deluge. All the steps of this curious process of Egyptian forgery, and later misconception, can be clearly traced from the statements of Syncellus. And it is these mythical 14,610 months, or 1183 years, of the spurious Manetho, some Egyptian forger of the fom'th or fifth century, Avhich Baron Bunsen accepts for the fulcrum of his whole scheme. After deducting 271 years, to re- concile Manetho with Eratosthenes, he transposes the remainder from the commencement to the middle of the series, and obtains from them his 922 years for the Hyksos period or ]\Iiddle Empire. A detailed proof of these assertions would here be out df place, and few readers be able to follow them without some previous acquaintance? with the subject ; but 1 believe that tliero is scarcely a fact in ancient history, which admits of clearer and NOTES. 401 more decisive confirmation. Even JJarou Bunsen's own admis- sion, that Syncellus, in every other instance, quotes the false Manetho alone, oven whore his statements contradict those of the genuine author, ought to have withheld any careful critic from building a pyramid of conclusions on this sandy foundation of imposture and delusion. II. A leadino: feature of Baron Bunsen's work is a hij^h and extravagant estimate of the historical learning, wisdom, and scrupulous veracity of Manetho, and an equal contempt for the author of the Dogstar treatise, tlie spurious work which deceived Syncellus, and passed cun-eut in the fifth or sixth century under Manetho's name. There is no doubt of the spuriousness of this later work, and also that the summaries of Manetho in Africanus and Eusebius, and the extracts in Josephus, have great historical interest and value. But the reasons assigned by Baron Bunsen for his opposite estimate, from the cyclical or non-cyclical cha- racter of the periods in the two authors, exhaust every variety of contradiction and logical absurdity. First, at vol. i. p. 72, a summary of the fabulous periods of Manetho is followed by the remark, " Neither the numbers for the dominion of the Gods, nor the sum of their periods, or those of the Manes and Heroes, or the sums of the whole, make up an astronomical cycle. ... As regards the purely mythological dynasties, there is no reason to believe that Manetho reduced the period of the Gods, still less the whole period prior to Menes, to Sothiac cycles of 14G1 years, or any class of Egyptian astro- nomical periods." Now, in reality, after one slight correction of xlii. for xiii. in one number, and one c in excess in another, the periods in question run as follows, compared with cyclical periods, or Sothiac cycles of 14G1 years : — Years. Nine ami a half cycles = 13,880 Three and a half cycles = 5,113 Four cycles . . . . = 5,844 Seventeen cycles . . = 24,837 Again, the total of the historical dynasties in Africanus is 5347 years, which, reckoned back from the close, B.C. 342, gives B.C. 5789 for the resulting era of Menes. But three complete Years. Dominion of Gods . . 13,900 Heroes and other kings . 5,112 Manes and Heroes . . 5,842 Total in Eusebius, 13,900 + 11,000 = 24,900 4G2 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. cycles backward from tlie Canicular era, B.C. 1322, gives B.C. 5802 — an almost exact coincidence, the diiference being much less than the variations in the list of Africanus. Thus the statement of Baron Bunsen, by which he would establish the historical character of Manetho's periods, turns out to be the very reverse of the truth. In his Fourth Book (vol. iii. pp. 84 — 90) the discovery has been made, and the critic reverses at once his previous reason- ing. " Manetho," he there admits and even affirms, " computes the ante-historic period by Sothiac cycles (iv. p. 96). But though the mythical periods are arranged by these cycles, and even the historical books have their divisions made to depend on them, we are now assured that "this is no proof of the mythical nature of the Egyptian traditions since Menes, nor of Manetho's mystical treatment of them. On the contrary, it is a direct proof of the historical character of both !" (vol. iv. p. 90.) Thus the numbers of Manetho are proved to be historical, fu'st of all, because they have not, and next because they have, a cyclical character. Those of the spurious Manetho are pre- sently proved to be spurious and unhistorical by the same double process. "We have already seen that the reigns of the Gods and Heroes, according to the book of Sothis {i.e., the spurious Manetho) embraces 11,985 years. If we add to that the number of the genuine Manetho, which, according to Eusebius, = 24,925 years, the total will be 36,910 years, or only 385 years more than 36,525, the great Sothiac cycle (1461 x 25), which it was the impostor's object to make up. It is clear, therefore, that he introduced the cyclical element into the calculation, though wholly foreign to the method of the .genuine Manetho. It were but waste of time to enter into any further proof of the spmiousness of this production." (vol. i. p. 213). Here the Dogstar treatise is proved spmious by the presence of that cyclical character which, in vol. iv. p. 90, proves the numbers of the genuine Manetho to be historical. To make the error and confusion worse, the cyclical character, affirmed to be present, does not exist. It is absurd to add togetlior the numbers of the true and false Manetho, which exclude each other, to form a cyclical total, of which the whole fault may be thrown on the latter. And, besides, the numbers of the ti'ue NOTES. 403 Maiietlio, as is owned afterwards, arc cyclical without the addi- tion, and the total tiius formed is not cyclical, but differs from a cycle by four hundred years ! Next, in the Appendix (vol. i. p. GG.')), this same unhappy Dogstar treatise, which has already been proved spurious by tho presence of a cycle which does not exist, is proved spurious a second time by the absence of a cyclical character where it does conspicuously exist. " The two tables, I think, are from Africa- nus ; one from IJerosus, of the ten mythical dynasties of tho Babylonians, which precedes ; and the other, taken from i\[a- netho, of the fifteen dynasties of Gods, which presently follows." " Tho numbers are easily restored thus : — Vulcan, 9000 = 727|- ; Sol, 990 = 80^- ; Agathod^mon, 710 = 56^^^ ; Saturn, 557 = 401 ; Osiris and Isis, 433 = 35 ; Typhon, 359 = 29. Total of solar years, 12,051 = 968 1- menstrual years. It is plain that the years are feigned, because tho number of solar years assigned to the gods agrees neither with cyclical myriads, nor with the cycle of 146 1 years. But the words which follow shew the source of the figment." Here, first, the extract condemned is referred to Africanus, who only quotes the true ]\[anetlio, and lived before the date of the forgery, instead of Syncellus, who knows only the false work, and not the true. Next, the reduction is wrongly made, so as to form a total of 12,051 instead of 11,985 — the true total in Syncellus. Thirdly, the solar years are called lunar, and the lunar solar — an oversight twice repeated. Fourthly, the 11,985 years which are said to have no cyclical character, and therefore to be spurious, are spurious for the opposite reason, because they are plainly cyclical ; for they denote month-years by the text, or 51 X 235 = 11,985 lunations, being 51 metonic cycles, or 51 X 19 = 969 solar years, the Scripture age of JMethuselah, and are thus shown to be a Christian fabrication, for the interval from the descent of the Watchers, referred to the birth of Methuselah, to the flood at his death. Lastly, there is a plain reference also to the Canicular cycle of 1461 years. For tho periods assigned to tho nine demigods that complete the list, by the Baron's own reduction, amount to 2647 ; but if we take tho nearest round numbers, are 300, 280, 210, 185, 300, 370, 330, 400, 250— a total of 2625; and 11,985 + 2,625 = 14,610. In other words, tho whole series is plainly and punctually 4r,4 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. arranged, so as to form, when unreduced, ten Sothiac cycles. Again, in p. C63, these numbers are those of a Christian im- postor: "Manethonis nomine impudentissime adhibito." In the next page. Baron Bunsen conjectures that the list was borrowed by Syncellus from Africanus, who was dead long before his date of the Sothiac treatise. In the next page it is transferred to the false Manetho once more. We have thus four statements, which form a cycle of contra- diction. Manetho's numbers, in i. 72, are genuine and historical, because they are not cyclical, and in iv. 90, because they are. The numbers of the Dogstar treatise, in i. 213, are spurious, because they are cyclical m a certain way, and in i. 665, they are spurious because they are not cyclical in another way. In these latter cases, the cyclical character affirmed does not exist, and one does exist, and exist doubly, where its jDresence is denied. III. The charge which Baron Bunsen makes against Eusebius is a third illustration of the strange and total want of accuracy and solidity in his historical reasonings. The main object of the work is to prove that the history of Egypt can be restored, from Manetho and the monuments, under three main periods — the Old, Middle, and New Empire, which he reckons at 1076, 922, and 1286 years. The Middle Empire is the famous Hyksos period. Here the monuments confessedly furnish little help. The authority of Herodotus and Diodorus tends strongly to throw doubt on its very existence. Josephus and the Christian fathers all suj)pose it to be a garbled report of the sojom-n of the Israelites — a view abandoned, and often contemptuously, by most modern Egyptologers. Still, their own views on its length, and the nature of the Hyksos or Shepherds, vary immensely from each other. Some reckon the period at two or three centuries, Lepsius at five, Bunsen at nine, and De Rouge at thirteen. It was once the fashion to call them Scythians ; and Assyrians, Arabians, Hittites, and other races, have in turn been proposed. Baron Bunsen is equally certain that they were Shemitic, and that they could not be the Israelites. The chronology of the period rests mainly on an extract of Manetho in Josephus, and on the Shepherd dynasties in the lists of Africanus and Eusebius. Unfortunately, the extract in Josephus does not agree fully with cither list, and the two lists here differ greatly from each other. NOTES. 465 The three dynasties, then, of shepherd kings in Africanus, two of them nameless, and none of them confirmed by Eusebius, are the main foundation on which Baron Bunsen rears two thousand years of Egyptian chronology before Amosis, dismissing the Bibli- cal dates with contempt as childish and absurd. It is therefore doubly provoking to find his two witnesses completely at variance in their testimony, and the result, in the first German edition is the following charge of wilful dishonesty against Eusebius. " It is hard to see how Eusebius can be cleared from the charge of Syncellus, that he has here perverted the text in an arbitrary way. . . The moving cause was the unhappy straining for synchronisms between the Bible and Egyptian tradition. First of all, it was a necessity for him to set the first year of Abraham parallel with the first years of the Theban kings, who stand before the Hyksos in the lists. He could not place him higher, because fourteen dynasties lie in front of him ; nor lower, considering Abraham's early place in universal history. Hence a twofold necessity : first, he must needs follow the earlier Christian chronologers, who place Joseph with the Aphobis of the lists of Manetho. But, according to the Seventy, Jacob's descent was the two hundred and ninetieth year of Abraham ; so that two hundred and ninety years must lie between the first Theban kings and Aphobis. Aphobis, too, was a Hyksos king, so these Theban kings must form a previoiLS dynasty. Again, Moses must stand along with the beginning of the eighteenth dynasty, and between him and Jacob's descent there lie two hundred and fifteen years. Aphobis, then, must be so placed that he may lie two hundred and fifteen years before Amos, and two hundred and ninety after the Theban kings. Amos, however, was the head of the eighteenth, consequently Aphobis was the last Hyksos, and this would be the seventeenth. Those Thebans, then, must form two dynasties, a fifteenth and sixteenth, to fill up the number of ]\[anetlionian dynasties ! . . . Eusebius has only one Shepherd dynasty, the first, pared down to one hundred and three for two hundred and sixty years ; and this after two, called the fifteenth and sixteenth, of two hundred and fifty and a hundred and ninety years, invented to fill up the catalogue. Such destructive arbitrariness can be outdone only by those who accept it, or who even pay it the least regard." This very grave charge of direct dishonesty against a father 2 H 466 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. of tlie Church is a condensation of strange and unaccountable eiTors. First, the testing of chronology by synchronisms, instead of being foolish and absurd, is the plainest dictate of common sense ; and while Eusebius has spent twenty lines on such synchronisms between the Bible and Egyptian records, or a few pages at most, his censor has devoted to them a hundred and thirty pages of his tliii-d volume. Taking his fault at the worst, Eusebius has tortured Manetho, to make him agree with Moses ; and the Baron has tortured, and even murdered the inspired narrative, to make it agree with his own conjectural view of the numbers of Manetho. But this is merely a fault in principle ; the errors that follow are inversions of plain facts, and still more inexcus- able. Every statement, without exception, is ivholly untrue. There was no necessity at all for Eusebius to make the birth of Abraham date with the first year of a Theban dynasty before the Hyksos, for that birth has no direct bearing at all on Egyptian history. There could be no temptation to inter- polate a dynasty for this purpose, since his chief difficulty as a Christian chronologer lay in the number and length of those which were already on the list. The real temptation, in case of mere forgery, would be to replace the two dynasties omitted by others as short as possible, like two in Africanus of only six years each, and not to interpolate four hundred and forty years in lists already perplexing from their length alone. There was no need, either from Egyptian or Bible tradition, for Eusebius to place Joseph under the shepherd king Aphobis. Baron Buusen himself holds that Scripture is decisive for an opposite view, that the Pharaoh of Joseph was a native prince, and not a shepherd. In fact, both in Syncellus and the Armenian copy of Eusebius the descent of Joseph seems to fall under Archies, and not Aphobis. Again, Moses in Eusebius does not " stand along with Amos," but a hundred and eighty years lower. Aphobis is not so placed as to be " two hundred and fifteen years before Amos," but at most only thirty years. , He is not placed two hundred and ninety years below the Theban kings. The real interval to the last of them, to which point alone the alleged necessity could refer, is sixty-two years in Syncellus, and eighty-nine in the Armenian copy. Neither the Bible history nor any other reason requires NOTES. 467 the birth or the visit of Abraham to have been during a Thcban dynasty. If this were so, it could never fix the length of that dynasty before his visit. The motive alleged for Eusebius placing the Hyksos dynasty seventeenth instead of fifteenth, to secure two hundred and fifteen years between Aphobis and Amos, is the plainest reason possible why such a change should not have been made. Lastly, there could be no motive for a Christian synchronist to invent one or two dynasties, of a hun- dred and ninety, and two hundred and fifty years, to fill up the number in Manetho, but a strong reason against the addition ; since it could only increase his main difiSculty, that the collective time of the alleged reigns was already much too long. Before 1854, when the second edition of the work on Egypt appeared, some notice seems to have been taken, by other critics, of tlie strange errors in this passage. The indictment, therefore, against Eusebius, is cast into a new and entirely different form. But instead of any expressions of regret for the hasty and absurd accusation, the Baron merely complains how tiresome it is to be obliged to revise his argument, and to di'css up a new indict- ment, when his ipse dixit ought to have secured a condemnation of the criminal long ago. The new charge runs as follows : — " The system of Eusebius was based throughout on the fol- lowing principle. He placed the Exodus four Imndi-ed and eighty years before the building of Solomon's temple, which event the Jewish and early Christian calculations had made to synchronize witli the eighteenth dynasty. Now, in reckoning the four hun- dred and thirty years of the sojourn of the children of Israel backward from that point, he necessarily made its commence- ment to coincide with the seventy-fifth of Abraham, the year of promise. The arrival of Jacob in Egypt, however, and the power of Joseph, were connected by the early Christian chrono- graphcrs with Ai)hoi)his or Aphobis, one of the shepherd kings. Tliis synchronism, of course, was not derived from Egyptian tradition, and even had it been of Jewish origin, the Bible proves that it was without foundation. Of the Exodus, also, he had no tradition. The Egyptians, right or wrong, had fixed it to the nineteenth dynasty. In Eusebius' time, however, it was necessary that these conjectures, which were nothing but a wrong calculation, sliould be sanctioned by the church. "\Miat was the necessary consequence ? The Hvksos period must '2 11 2 468 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. coincide with the received date of Joseph ; and as Aphobis was specially entered among the kings of the first Shepherd dynasty, Eusebius could only admit one Hyksos dynasty, and was obliged to place it immediately before the eighteenth. This had in- creased so prodigiously that he could not manage to place Joseph earlier than the twelfth year before its commencement. Consequently he was obliged to make Aphobis the last king of his single Hyksos dynasty, instead of the last but three of the first. In addition, he was forced to curtail in a barbarous manner his single Hyksos dynasty ; for according to the Septuagint he had but a very short interval of two hundred and fifteen years between it and the year of promise, which again he could not tlirow further back on account of the computation of the date of the Flood. Hence it is clear that in this interval he was obliged to invent an Egyptian dynasty, to supply the place of a Shepherd dynasty lost by his calculation. For this purpose he made the seventeenth dynasty of JManetho, a Theban, into the sixteenth, and by inventing a Theban for the fifteenth, was enabled to give the first fourteen dynasties a still more respectable position. Africanus had not mentioned the names of the kings of the last Egyptian dynasties, so that it was an easy matter to alter the length as he pleased, to suit his Pro- crustean bed. By this means he had the satisfaction of making the first year of Abraham coincide with the first year of his fifteenth dynasty. " The charge made against him by Syncellus is therefore fully established. It is peculiarly hard upon a critic in the nine- teenth century to be obliged to go through the proof in detail, as it ought long ago to have been a settled point that our present popular and school chronology {i.e., that of the Bible), is a fable strung together by ignorance and fraud, and persisted in out of superstition and want of intellectual energy." This new and revised indictment is an improvement on the first, which was a mass of errors without one grain of truth. The present, on the contrary, contains three or four true state- ments, along with nearly a dozen falsehoods. We have no longer the strange bhinder, w'liich imputes to the despised Eusebius the actual scheme of the favoured Africanus, and, inverting both facts and logic, proves him a forger because of his doing the opposite of what he has really done. It is true NOTES. m that in his canon, he makes tlic promotion of Joseph coincide Avith the reign of Aphobis, and the first of Abraham with the first year of the sixteenth dynasty. His introduction, again, of the two Theban dynasties before the Shepherds, and shorten- ing the time of these last, miglit bear the construction of a designed change, to make the harmonizing of tlie lists less diffi- cult. But the zeal of Baron Bunsen to prove him a forger defeats itself, and betrays him into a series of direct falsehoods. First, it is 7wt true that Egyptian tradition, in the time of Eusebius, fixed the Exodus in the nineteenth dynasty, and thus compelled him to place it lower than Africanus had done. The only pretence for the statement is that one disputed passage alxnit the lepers in Manetho, which Josephus, Africanus, Eusebius, and all the Fathers, believed to be a mere calumny of the heathen, and wholly false in its date. One tradition, we learn from Tacitus, placed the Exodus under Isis ; and another, in Lysiraachus and Apion, brought it down to Bocchoris in the time of the Olym- piads. Manetho himself referred the founding of Jerusalem, the Jewish capital, to the beginning of the eighteenth dynasty. Instead, then, of a fixed tradition compelling Eusebius to bring down the Exodus to the date of the leper legend, there were the strongest reasons why he should reject that view, like all his predecessors — Africanus, Theophilus, Clement, and Tatian. In point of fact he hm rejected it, and places the Exodus in the eighteenth dynasty. Again, there was no compulsion which could make Iiira place Joseph against his own judgment under ^Vphobis, and lead him to garble the lists for that purpose. In fact, his lists make him place the descent of the patriarch, and his first promotion, under Archies, and not Aphobis. He has forsaken his predecessors in his place of the Exodus — a far more conspicuous event ; and there could be no reason, besides his own judgment, which could require a closer adherence to precedent as to the time of Joseph. In fact, he indicates the true reason for his own arrange- ment by his remark, that the Shepherd Kings were probably so named, because Joseph and his brethren were received by them with favour, and rose to power during their reigns. It is erjnally untrue that the eighteenth dynasty had "grown prodigiously " since the time of Josephus and Africanus, so as to compel a new arrangement. The change itself is not true. 470 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. Its total in Eusebius is less than that in Josephus by fifteen years, and exceeds that of Africanus, merely because the latter has transferred the long reign of Rameses to the nineteenth dynasty, which Manetho, according both to Josephus and Euse- bius, placed near the close of the eighteenth. If Eusebius, then, were disposed to curtail the lists in an arbitrary way, it was open to him, just as to Africanus or Baron Bunsen himself, to leave out some of Manetho's duplicate reigns in Josephus ; the veiy change on which his censor rests one of his own chief claims to public approbation. Again, the two hundred and fifteen years from the Call to Joseph created no necessity at all to mutilate the one Hyksos dynasty ; for that contains, in Josephus, only ninety-eight years before Aphobis. The assertion, then, is doubly untrue. If Joseph's promotion were placed by Eusebius under a shepherd king, there could be still less reason, from the Bible, for placing the visit of Abraham under a Theban ruler, since his stay there must naturally be referred to Lower Egypt alone : and if not, ninety-eight years are plainly less than two hundred and fifteen ; and the desii-e to place Abraham's visit conveniently could have no influence on a mutilation, which is after Aphobis, and not before him. The reason, from the date of the Flood, combines an inversion of tlie fact with a contradiction of all sound logic. The Bible date of the Flood is only an inference from that of the Call of Abraham, and instead of serving to fix the latter, plainly depends upon it, so that whatever raised the lower would of course raise equally the higher date. Also the motive for change would lie just the opposite way ; since the dates of Eusebius for both events are three centuries lower than those usual among Christian chronologers, and he is strongly censured by Syncellus on this very ground. The motive, again, ascribed to him for his asserted invention of the fifteenth dynasty, is not only without evidence, but plainly ridiculous. He was thus " enabled to give his first fourteen dynasties a more respectable position." In other words, out of pure caprice he chose to aggravate the main difii- culty which pressed on him as a Christian annalist, which was, how to reconcile the book of Genesis with the large total of Egyptian dynasties before Abraham. The motives assigned for the omission of the two shepherd dynasties after Aphobis, NOTES. 471 and shortening the first, from the relation of Joseph to the Exodus have some plausibility, and however false its details, the charge itself is iutolligible. But the reasons offered for the supposed invention of two previous dynasties are a direct inver- sion of the manifest truth. If fraud were at work, it must have led Eusebius to sliorten, and not to prolong, the interval from Aphobis to the origin of the empire. The appeal to Syncellus, at the close of the extract, completes the folly of the whole indictment. For that inconsistent writer, after blaming Eusebius severely for departing from Africanus, and omitting the two other Hyksos dynasties, adopts precisely the same course in his own canon, and even numbers the Aphobis dynasty as the seventeenth of Manetho, placing it just before Amosis. He even makes the connection still closer than in Eusebius, and afiirms that Asneth, one of the next suc- cessors of Aphobis in Josephus, was the father of Amosis, and the true head of the eighteenth dynasty. After such a specimen of the wisdom, accuracy, and consistency of Baron Bunsen's criticisms, those M'ho still prefer the authority of IMoses to that of Manetho may bear his charges of " ignorance, fraud, and want of intellectual energy " without serious alarm. To secure the credit of his own discoveries, he has set himself to the task of traducing a Christian bishop and Father of the church, and a fatality of blundering seems to have clung to liis argument from its beginning to its close. IV. A fourth example of those depths of criticism, which the plummet of the Essayist cannot sound, is Baron Bunsen's recon- struction of the times of Moses and Joshua. The books of Exodus, Numbers, Deuteronomy, and Joshua, tell us plainly that forty years were spent in the wilderness ; that Moses died at the close of the fortieth year, not long after Aaron and Miriam, on the east of Jordan ; that Joshua then took the lead, and his first public act was the passage of the river ; that the conquest occupied six years, till forty-five had elapsed from the second year of the Exodus ; and that Joshua died <' a long time after," at the age of a hundred and ten years. But the text does not state the exact age of Joshua at the crossing of Jordan, nor the interval from his death to tlie first captivity. Josopluis, either from conjecture or tradition, assigns twenty-five years for the time from the passage of the river to 472 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. the death of Joshua, and eighteen more to the first servitude. The statement is part of a sentence : " Thus Joshua died, having lived a hundred and ten years, of which he spent forty with Moses in learning what was useful, and after his death became leader for twenty-five years." How does Baron Bunsen deal with these statements? When we read, he says, that Joshua led the people over Jordan in the fortieth year, " that is assuredly an historical number, and not a mode of expressing an indefinite number of years. But it is equally certain they could not have reached the countiy east of Jordan only in the fortieth year after the Exodus, but must have done so as early as the third year — an inference resulting from the facts of the journey through the peninsida of Sinai." In the book of Judges all the facts are historical, and the Epos consists in the use of the number forty. Here, on the contrary, in the first canto of the Epos, the number is historical, and it is the facts alone which are fictitious and untrue. The argument proceeds : " The career of Moses closed on the northern point of the Dead Sea, over against Jericho. The larger portion of the thirty-seven years and a half must there- fore be assigned to Joshua. But there are further proofs that his leadership commenced long before they crossed over. In the first place, the name of Moses is never mentioned in any expeditions beyond the northernmost point of the Dead Sea ! (Compare Num. xxi. 32 — 35 ; xxxii. 1 — 19, 33, 34 — 42 ; xxxvi. 1, 2 ; Deut. ii. 26—37 ; iii. 1—17 ; iv. 41—43 ; xxix. 7, 8 ; xxxi. 4 ; Josh. i. 14, 15 ; xiii. 7 — 33.) Joshua's campaigns in Canaan, and the settlement of the other seven (nine ?) tribes and half, according to the testimony of old tradition, lasted only five or six years. Now, as according to the consistent narrative of tlie compiler the journeying of Moses had lasted forty years at his death, five, or rather six, years had elapsed since the second year of the Exodus, in which Caleb was sent out (meaning apparently, " since the cross- ing of Jordan "). From that time forward nothing definite is related of Joshua's acts. The addition to the course of the narrative is doubtless actually true, but these occurrences did not take place dm-ing the life of Joshua, but immediately after his death. If, then, we admit, as we are bound to do, the forty years as a fixed chi'onological date, the greater part of the. NOTES. 473 tliirty-seven yeai-s and a half must be assigned to Joshua. As regards his leadership, notliing is said (/.g. in Josephus !) as to how many j-iears belong to it on this side of Jordan, and how many in Canaan itself. We are justified in concluding that he lived not more than one year in Canaan after the tribes were settled, consequently in all seven years. The only mode of defining the personal leadership of jMoses is to limit it by the tra- ditional notice of the length of that of Joshua. As the latter lasted eighteen years on the east of Jordan, there remain twenty- two for that of Moses. The whole of the first two, and part of the third, belong to the journeyings in the peninsula of Sinai. There remain nineteen years for the gradual conquest and settlement of the country east of Jordan to beyond the northern point of the Dead Sea. We will conclude these allusions by a tabular survey of the forty years, and the leadership of Joshua : — 1320. Nisan 15. Exodus from Egypt. 1319. Second month. Departure from Siuai. 1318. Nisan. Death of Miriam, Akaba. ]\Iiddle. Arrival at Brook Zared. 1317-1315. Advance to north of Dead Sea. 1299. Death of Moses. 1298. First year of Joshua (18 y.) 1281. I>ast year east of Jordan. Conquest and settlement. 1280 Passage over Jordan. 1279-5. Six years war in Canaan. 1274. Death of Joshua, 47th year of Exodus." The main feature of this scheme is very clear. The length of Joshua's leadership beyond Jordan is not stated in the Bible. But since he died at the age of a huuch-ed and ten, was a young man Exod. xxxiii. 11, and was probably as old or slightly older than Caleb, it is fixed within a narrow limit. If he were forty at the Exodus it would be thirty years ; and since he could hardly be more than forty-five, it would be at least twenty-five years. Josephus, either from tradition, or from a reckoning of this kind, calls it twenty-five years. This one number of Josephus, thus obtained. Baron Bunseu makes a lever to over- turn all the datii from which it has been borrowed — the forty years of Moses in the wilderness, the forty years of Joshua's service under him, inferred from Scripture, and aflirmed by Josephus, the " long time " which Joshua survived after the settlement, and his age at his death. This parricidal date does 474 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. not spare one of those from wliich it derives its own birtli. If tlie object had been proposed to falsify as many texts as possible, and introduce the maximum of contradiction into a consistent narrative, the success could not be more complete than in this original scheme. Let us compare its results, as briefly as possible, with the statements of the inspired text. " The children of Israel did eat manna forty years, until they came to a land inhabited ; they did eat manna until they came to the borders of the land of Canaan." (Exod. xvi. 35.) By the new scheme they reached an inhabited land within three years, and began at once to take possession. " Joshua, the son of Nun, a young man, departed not from the tabernacle." (Exod. xxxiii. 11.) By the new scheme he was then sixty-three years old. " Joshua, the son of Nun, a servant of Moses, one of his young men, answered and said. My lord Moses, forbid them." (Num. xi. 28.) The young man was then, by the improved scheme, sixty -four years old. "Your children shall wander in the wilderness forty years." (Num. xiv. 33, 34.) This means a year and a half from the threatening, after which they were to begin to conquer and take possession. "Aaron died on Mount Hor, in the fortieth year, the first day of the fifth month, being a hundred and twenty-tliree years old." (Num. xx. 22 — 29; xxxiii. 38, 39.) This means that he died in the third year, being then eighty-six years old. Aaron and Moses were both forbidden to enter the land for their sin at Meribah, and died six months asunder. (Num. xx. ; xxxiii.; Deut. xxvii. 12—19; i. 37; xxxii. 48—51.) This means that Aaron died a few months after their sin, and Moses went on conquering, and settling the people in their new pos- sessions for nineteen years. " The space until we passed over the brook Zered was thirty-eight years." (Deut. ii. 14.) This means one whole year and part of another. " Moses sent to spy out Jezer." " Og, the king of Bashan, went out to meet them, and the Lord said to Moses, Fear not, for I have delivered him into thy hand, and thou shalt do to him as thou didst to Sihon." (Num. xxi. 9 ; Deut. iii.) " In the fortieth year, in the eleventh month, on the first day, Moses began to declare this law." (Deut. i. 3.) He had been dead, by the new scheme, eighteen years before. " After he had slain Sihon, king of the Amorites, which dwelt in Heshbon, and Og, king of Bashan." By the NOTES. 475 revised scliorae tliey were untouched, and in the height of their power, till his death. " Then Moses severed three cities on this side Jordan, Bezer, Ramothgilcad, and Golan." (Deut. iv.) They were still, when ho died, in the hands of the Amorites. " Thou shalt remember all the way the Lord thy God hath led thee these forty years in the wilderness." (Deut. viii. 1.) The whole time, when Moses spoke, by the new scheme was twenty- two years, and nineteen of them had been spent in conquering and taking possession. " I am a hundred and twenty years old this day." (Deut. xxxi. 2.) A hundred and two at most, but more probably eighty-two or eighty-four (comp. iii. 184). Joshua was still alive " a long time after the Lord had given rest to Israel." (.Josh, xxiii. 1.) lie survived one year, and no longer. It is needless to spend more words on this reconstruction of the sacred history. A simple rejection of the whole, as mere legend, is far more logical and more honest than the pretence of extracting history out of these Divine records, by reversing their plainest declarations, falsifying every single date, and turning their clear and consistent narrative into a mass of hopeless and inextricable confusion. These four examples will perhaps be enough to relieve the fears of some simple-minded readers of the Second Essay, who may have suspected that the truth and authority of the law and the prophets are in real danger of being overthrown by the " mass of solid learning " and depths of searching and profound logic in Baron Bunsen's two thousand four himdred pages on " Egypt's Place in the World's Histoiy." It is written of two learned Egyptians, who set themselves against JMoses in early times, that " their folly was made manifest to all men ;" and possibly some who have succeeded to their employment in these days may be in danger of a similar result from their unhallowed labours. Note D. — The Human Element in Scripture. The importance of recognising fidly the human element in Scripture, as one integral j)art of the true doctrine of inspira- tion, is hardly felt, as it ought to be, by some who are zealous 476 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. for the Divine authority of the Bible. Tliey seem to tliink that, when once we liave got the book itself, and owned it to be the word of God, all reference to the human authorship is com- paratively trivial and superfluous. A simple reference to the analogy between the personal and the written word ought to remove this hasty impression. God is infinitely higher than man. But the doctrine of our Lord's true Godhead is not infinitely more important than the doctrine of his true humanity. On the contrary, the heresy of the Gnostics and the Doceta^ rivals, in its practical danger and evil, the opposite heresy of Cerinthus. Our faith and hope must rest on a true Incarnation and a real Atonement ; and this implies the double truth, that our Lord is " God over all, blessed for ever ;" and that " the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us," and there is " one Mediator of God and man, the man Christ Jesus." When either element of the great truth is withdrawn, its practical power disappears. A due recognition, then, of the human element in the written word is, practically, almost as important as the admission of its Divine authority. The Ten Commandments alone were written miraculously on tables of stone by the finger of God, but the Bible has been communi- cated in a different way. Moses and the Prophets, Apostles and Evangelists, are the human messengers employed by the Spirit of God. A feature so prominent in the plan of revela- tion cannot be trivial or unimj)ortant. To exclude the writer, and include only a written product, in our view of inspiration, contradicts the usual law of Scripture phraseology, and tends to obscure seriously one main feature of Divine wisdom in the gift of these messages to mankind. Inspiration, the inbreathing of the Holy Spirit, in strictness of speech, plainly belongs, not to the written message, but to the messenger alone. It denotes that secret action of the Spirit on the faculties of a living messenger, by which he is enabled faithfully to receive, utter, or record, the Divine message. Speaking strictly, the qualities of the message are truth and Divine authority, and are the results of tlie messenger's in- spiration. Holy men of God speak, as breathed into, or borne along, by the Holy Ghost ; and Scripture is the result of that sacred influence, embodied and recorded in a written form. How do we rise to a true apprehension of the glory of the NOTES. 477 Incarnate Word of God? Clearly not by embracing the Eutychean heresy, which represents the human nature as lost and extinguished by its union with tlie Divine. The lowly birth, the hunger and thirst, the weariness and sorrow, the human words and looks and tears of the Son of man, are the means by which alone we obtain a true knowledge of the Saviour, and are able to discern, in all its fulness, that "love of Christ which passeth knowledge." In like manner we must attend thoughtfully, and with reverence, to the human features of the written word, in order to discern clearly its wisdom and heavenly beauty as a series of messages, clothed with Divine authority, from the living God to the children of men. The first result of this admission is the great canon of natural interpretation. Scripture must be received in the natural sense of the words, as the spoken and written language of men. Inspiration does not create artificial rules of construc- tion, or deter the sacred writer from the usual and inevitable latitude in the truthful conveyance of information from man to man. Metaphors are still metaphors, and round numbers are round numbei-s; and records of discourses have the same liberty of condensation or selection, in contrast to mere verbal facsimiles, which belongs to similar cases in purely human writings. A second result, more minute, but still important, is that due regard should be paid to the place, time, and circumstances ot the sacred writer, in deciding on all the more delicate questions of Bible interpretation. The New Testament must be read and expounded as Hellenistic Greek, and the Old Testament as the work of Hebrew writers. The language, in all doubtful cases, must be understood according to its use in the days when the writer lived, so far as this can be ascertained. The dii'ect bene- fit of this rule, it is true, is limited to secondary shades of thought, hard to perceive in the best translation. The main substance of the message involves those human elements alone, which are common to every age and clime ; and thus no book, perhaps, loses so little as the Bible by translation into other tongues. Still, there are beauties and delicacies of thought, an increased vividness of impression, and a deeper sense of historical reality, reserved to reward the pious student, who resorts to the fountain-head, and studies the Scriptures in the original, striving 478 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. to place himself, in thouglit, by the side of the sacred writers themselves. The soul is thus raised out of its own narrow sphere of thought, comes into closer contact with the words of God, and gains a deeper and firmer hold on the reality and living power of the whole message. The principle affirmed in the text, when practically applied, is the same with the law of interpretation laid down by Pro- fessor Fairburn, in his Ilermeneutical Manual, and quoted with just approval by the author of the Bible and its Critics, p. 385. " The interpreter must endeavour to attain to a sympathy in thought and feeling with the sacred writers, whose meaning he seeks to unfold." Let us apply the rule in succession, to the Histories, Psalms, Proverbs, Prophecies, and Epistles. I. The human element, in the historical books, implies a clear and full perception of the truth that the writers are genuine witnesses, who are bearing a real and intelligent human testimony to the facts they record. In some cases they are eye-witnesses, in others, diligent and honest inquirers ; and in a few others, truthful rejiorters of facts of past history superuaturally revealed. An exact knowledge of the name and circumstances of each writer is not necessary in every case, and has not been always given. But in the Law and the Four Gospels, the historical groundwork of the two Covenants, this definite information has been given, and forms a main element in their authority. Whenever the genuineness of the Books of Moses, or of the Gospels, is denied, the first downward step is taken, which leads almost inevitably, at a later stage, to the entire rejection of the Divine authority of the whole Bible. The words of our Lord are like a key to the whole philosophy of unbehef. " Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me, for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words ?" The Pentateuch is the fii'st main portion of the sacred history, the basement or pedestal on which all the later books repose. The liuman element, in the doctrine of its inspiration, consists in its being the genuine work of Moses ; the Divine, in its being a real gift from the Spirit of God, and composed under his heavenly teaching and guidance. Experience and reason prove alike that these two elements are so closely united, as to ,be virtually inseparable. Once deny the Mosaic authorship. NOTES. 479 and tlie strongest pledge for the Divine authority of the book disappears, and is replaced by a presumption of its merely luinum character ; and indeed that it is nothing better than a skilful and successful forgery. How can we possibly believe that a series of Divine messages have begun with an open fraud on the credulity of mankind? When once the Pen- tateuch is supposed to be a compilation in the days of Solomon or Josiah, ingeniously patched together by two or three unknown hands, and then offered to the Jewish people under the false character of the writing of Moses, all faith in its inspiration must perish, unless we extend the meaning of the phrase, and apply it to the work of seducing spirits of darkness. On the other hand, when once the human element is received, and the genuineness allowed, the presump- tion for its Divine authority becomes firm, clear, and im- pregnable. The fact that Moses was the writer is a pledge for the truth of the main outline of its later liistory. The truth of that outline involves, in every page, the reality of visions and Divine messages which Moses received. The authority of the separate messages, thus placed on record, becomes a further pledge, that the same high privilege of Divine teaching and guidance would be vouchsafed to the Prophet and Lawgiver, when he was called to embody the Law of God, and the acts of his Providence,, in a written and permanent record. The genuineness of the Pentateuch, the human element in its com- position, is thus the logical starting point, by which alone we are guided into the apprehension of its true character, as the word of the living God, the pure and holy fountain-head of all later revelations to mankind. In the Four Gospels the importance of the human element is hardly less conspicuous. It is the sentence of the Law, that " in the mouth of two or three witnesses shall every word be established." But in the history of our blessed Lord four testimonies have been provided, and though each is distinct, tliey have been closely woven together into one seamless robe of historical truth. One evident purpose, fulfilled by this peculiar structure of the narrative, is to secure, by the concurrence of four human witnesses, so strong and clear a proof of reality in the Divine portraitui-e, as to force convic- tion upon every thoughtful and candid mind. To neglect the human authorship, in this case, is thus to run counter to the 480 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. plain design of the Holy Spirit, in choosing this particular form for the message. It turns the pledges of truth and sincerity, in the voice of the four Evangelists, into stumbling-Llocks and paradoxes, and robs the Gospel of one main element in their moral power, by which the truth of the Divine biography is written deep in the heart and consciences of men. The importance of the human element, in the case of the Four Gospels, may perhaps be seen still more plainly in the singular graduation they reveal to us on a closer view. Two of them are written by Apostles, and one of them by that Apostle who was favoured above the rest by especial intimacy with the Lord, " the disciple whom Jesus loved." Another was written by a companion of the two chief Apostles, and the merely human element seems thus to be more prominent by the removal of the writer, one step, from the innermost circle of the Divine influence ; but in all other respects its features are the same. Another is not only written by a companion of an Apostle, but is introduced by a statement of the human research and diligence of its writer, and is followed by a sequel, which resembles closely, in all its main features, a careful human history of the first gene- ration of the Church of Christ. But wliile the human element is thus doubly conspicuous in the writmgs of St. Luke, lest we should on this account deny their inspiration, or assign them a lower degree of Divine authority, tliis Gospel is the only one, which has a distinct and express sanction from the greatest of the Apostles, and one sentence of which is placed by him on a level with the books of Moses, foremost and highest in honour, among the Jews, of the Scriptures of the Old Testa- ment. So marvellously compacted is the written word, in all its parts, by the Divine wisdom ; which never permits us to lose sight of the human authorship, by which it appeals to the general conscience and experience of mankind, while it reveals a unity, sometimes conspicuous, sometimes half-concealed, that bespeaks to every thoughtful Christian the common author- ship of the Spirit of God. IL In the Psalms, the importance of the human authorsliip is even still more apparent than in the histories themselves. Their most conspicuous feature is that they are voices of a liuman heart, in its varied experiences of joy and trial, and its inward communion with God. They cannot be understood without a continual reference to the feelings, emotions, and NOTES. 481 personal history of "the anointed of the God of Jacob, the sweet Psahnist of Israel." One reason why the life of David is recorded at greater lengi;h than any other sacred biography, the Son of David alone excepted, is clearly that a key might thus be supplied for the fuller understanding of the various experi- ences, embodied in these hymns of meditation, prayer, and praise. Nearly twenty of the Psalms refer us, by tlieir heading, to the time and occasion, in the life of the Psalmist, when they were composed. A reference, then, to the circumstances under which they were \vritten, to the feelings and emotions of the Psalmist himself, and the gushing tide of joy or sorrow, of fear or hope, of holy musing or devout adoration in liis heart, far from beiri^ superfluous because of tlieir Divine insj)iration, is the a] (pointed means by which alone we can enter fully into their treasures of spiritual experience. The sacred text itself leads us gently by the hand. The words of fear and complaint, mingled ■with hope and trust in God amidst threatening dangers, are " a Psalm of David, when he fled from Absalom his son." The profession of uprightness and sincerity, the jjrayer against prosperous wickedness, the warning of judgment upon iniquity, and the song of praise in the midst of reproach and trouble, are " Shiggaion of David, which he sang to the Lord concerning the words of Gush the Benjamite," The eighteenth Psalm is a tribute of praise, " when the Lord delivered him from tlie hand of all his enemies, and from the hand of Saul ;" and the fifty- first is " a Psalm of David, when Nathan the prophet came unto him, after he had gone in to Bathsheba." Any view of the inspiration of the Psalms must therefore be fallacious and untrue, which turns them into abstract voices of the Spirit, and neglects the personal element in those last words of the sweet Psalmist of Israel — " The Sjjirit of tlie Lord spake by isiE, and his word was in my tongue." Deny their special inspira- tion, and tlie Psalms of David, however degraded below their tnie dignity, might still retain a high place among the noblest and purest utterances of the human heart, in its breathings of desire and holy adoration. But deny tlieir human reality, and their inspiration itself would become a lifeless and miintelligihle paradox, and their moral power, as the noblest models of devo- tion, pass entirely away. The words of our Lord are a direct attestation to the 2 I 482 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. importance of this human element in the Psalms, even with reference to their doctrinal interpretation. " What think ye of Christ ? whose son is he ? They say unto Him, The son of David. He saith unto them, How then doth David in spirit call him Lord, saying. The Lord said unto my Lord, Sit thou on my right hand, until I make thine enemies thy footstool ? If David then call him Lord, how is he his son ?" This question, which silenced the Pharisees, and was an implied but evident assertion, by our Lord, of his own Divine glory, depends for its Avhole force on the asserted fact, that David himself was the author of the 110th Psalm. Its being a voice of the Spirit taken alone, would lead to a false doctrine, instead of a great and holy truth. It is because David was the writer, though he spake " in spirit " or under prophetic influence, that the title of Messiah "my Lord" received its deep significance and became a proof of his twofold nature, expressed more fully in his own words, " I am the root and the offspring of David, and the briglit and morning star." III. The Book of Proverbs exhibits, almost equally with the Psalms, the importance of a due regard to the human author- ship, if we would enter into the full meaning of the Divine messages. As David was the most deeply experienced, and the most devout of the Old Testament writers, so his son was marked out, by the express promise of God, as the wisest in all earthly wisdom. It is not without a weighty reason that such a messenger was chosen to convey to the church these varied pro- verbs, rich with the lessons of practical experience. If St. Paul wrote his Epistles "according to a wisdom given unto him," the same is true of these Proverbs of Solomon. His part was not that of a mere amanuensis, but of one first made eminently wise, and then commissioned, from the depths of a living experience, to communicate the choicest fruits of that wisdom for the instruction and guidance of every later genera- tion. Even the structure of the work, with its nine opening chapters of direct appeal to the young, and with its supplement in " The proverbs of Solomon, which the men of Hezekiah, king of Judah, copied out," " The works of Agur the son of Jakeh, even the prophecy," and lastly, " The words of king Lemuel (Hezekiah ?) the prophecy that his mother taught him," is a constant admonition to bear in mind the human authorship, NOTES. 483 nnd to see in these proverbs some precious results of God's gift of wisdom, when bestowed ou the noblest and wisest of his servants in the days of old. IV. Prophecy, more plainly than history, hymns or psalms of praise, or proverbs of wisdom, is a supernatural gift. We may expect, therefore, the higher element of Scripture, or the Divine authorship, to be most prominent in the books of prophecy, and the human agency, though still present, to retire comparatively into the shade. Accordingly, we find here a large portion which appears to be given by immediate dictation from " the Ix)rd God of the holy prophets," while the human author is only the instrument by whom the message. Divinely revealed, is conveyed to his fellows. Thus we read of " The vision of Isaiah the son of Amoz," and'again " The word that he saw concerning Judah and Jerusalem." " The Lord spake unto nie again." "The Lord spake thus unto me with a strong hand ;" while "Thus saith the Lord" is the frequent preface of the prophetic visions. The style of Jeremiah is the same. " The word of the Lord came unto me," " Thus said the Lord unto me," and " The word of the Lord came unto me a second time." In Daniel, again, the prophecy of the Scripture of truth, we are plainly taught, was directly dictated to the beloved seer by the revealing angel. From Isaiah to IMalachi, tlie main feature conspicuous is that of a series of direct and immediate messages from God. Even here, however, the human aspect of the prophecy is not permitted wholly to disappear from our view. Besides the differences of style and manner, which indirectly imply that tlie message was modified in form according to the instrument chosen for its conveyance, historical passages or allusions are mingled throughout, which compel us to remember the circum- stances of the prophet, in tracing out the full meaning of his message. Such is the vision in Isa. vi., the history in Isa. vii., whicli introduces the noted prophecy of Immanuel, the record in Isa. viii. 1 — 8. the statement in Isa. xx., and the four chapters of interposed history, which link together the two main series of the prophetic visions. Such, again, are the histories in Jer. i,, xiii., xiv., xviiii-xxii., xxiv., xxv-xxix., xxxii-xxxvi., xxxix-xliv., lii., and Ezek. i., iv., v., viii-xi,, xx., 1, 2; xxiv., xxix., xl., 1-4, and the first half of the Book of Daniel. The time, age, 2 I 2 484r THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. circumstances, and personal history of the prophet, in the greater part of these messages, form one essential feature of tlie Divine gift; and cannot be overlooked or forgotten without serious loss, and the risk of frequent misconception of their true mean- ing. We must place ourselves by the side of the prophet, or we shall distort the prophecies from their true perspective, and the real harmony which pervades the whole series of these revela- tions will be obscured from our view. This truth is confirmed by the phraseology of the New Testa- ment. The name, ScrijJture, applied to parts of the Old Testa- ment, occurs about fifty times ; but the name of Moses occurs about forty times, and the personal mention of the prophet or prophets, about seventy times, when a similar reference is made to their writings. Out ' of the three main passages in the Epistles, which affirm the doctrine of inspiration, two retain the same distinctness of personal allusion to the messengers them- selves. " All Scripture is given by inspiration of God." ' God, who at sundry times and in divers manners, spake in time past to the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last- days spoken unto us by his Son." " Proj^hecy came not ever by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." That aspect of the doctrine must surely be of high practical importance, which the Spirit of God himself keeps so continually in our view. V. The human element, in the Epistles, is quite essential to a just understanding of their nature, and also to secure a deep insight into their historical allusions and secret mysteries of Divine truth. The key is given us by St. Peter, when he de- scribes the letters of his brother Apostle, St. Paul, in those well- known words : " Even as our beloved brother Paul also, accord- ing to the wisdom given unto him, hath written unto you." The statement here made is distinct and decisive. For wisdom is a personal gift, and one of the higliest kind. The "word of wisdom" ranked foremost among the gifts of the Spirit in St. Paul's own enumeration. In the Epistle^ to the Eomans, the handwriting by which it first became Scripture was that of Tertius, but the wisdom from which it flowed was that of St. Paul himself, while the original fountain of that wisdom was the Holy Spirit of God. There was no inspiration in Tertius, more than in any later copyist. The true inspiration was in the NOTES. 98}f heart and mind of the great Apostle, enduing him with all those varied treasures of spiritual wisdom which he pours forth, under the guidance of the Spirit, for the lasting instruction of the Church of Christ. His personality, as the Apostle of the Gentiles, the converted blasphemer and persecutor, never disappears. The truths he i)roclaiins are steeped in the depths of liis own experience, that they may fasten themselves with greater power on the hearts of his readers. The voice does not come to us direct from the Spirit, but refracted through the heart and mind of his chosen messenger, and a human undertone may be heard in every part of the Divine melody. " Unto me who am less than the least of all saints, is this grace given, that I should preach among the Gentiles the unsearchable riches of Christ." " Who before was a blasphemer, and a persecutor and injurious, but I obtained mercy, because I did it ignorantly in unbelief Now unto the King eternal, immortal, invisible, the only wise God, be honour and glory for ever, Amen." Note E. — Genesis and Geology. Since the publication of this work, two Essays have appeared, in the lleplies, and Aids to Faith, by Mr. Korison and Dr. M'Caul, on the Mosaic cosmogony, and the objections to the inspiration of the rentateuch, occasioned by the chscoveries of modern geology. These differ widely from each other, and their views on several main points are diametrically opposite. Both in style and in accuracy of reasoning, the essay of Dr. ]\I'Caul is, in my opinion, very greatly to be preferred ; but still its line of thought is not wholly the same with that I have followed in the text. An objection has also been made on another ground, that it is not wise to rest the defence of Scripture on one alternative alone, when several others are possible. It seems desirable, then, to enter further into the whole argument. First, the attempt to single out any mode of reconciliation between Scripture and geology is held, by some persons, to be needless and unwise. A\'heu om- object is purely defensive, and 486 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. several alternatives are possible, why should oue be selected above the rest, for preference and approbation ? The answer to this inquiry, I think, is very simple and decisive. The price which must be paid for so wide a latitude of choice is very costly. It requires two conditions, that we are content to remain equally in doubt with regard to the dis- coveries of science, and the true meaning of the words of God. Total ignorance admits of many alternatives, perfect know- ledge of none. Just in proportion as our knowledge grows, the latitude of doubtful choice is lessened ; for the truth stands out in clear relief, and suffers no falsehood to share its claims. It is easy, no doubt, for men of science to exaggerate their own dis- coveries, and to confound plausible and uncertain guesses with conclusions established firmly on solid evidence. But the most unsatisfactory way of defending Scripture from the assaults of unbelief, is to practise a double scepticism ourselves as to the real discoveries of science, and the natural force of words in the sacred text. Truth is one, error is manifold. Defences of truth from the assaults of unbelief must gain in moral power, when they are precise and definite. When many doubtful alternatives, most of which must be false, and none of which is held to be certainly true, are put forward to oppose a well-defined and confident error, the moral effect on the mind of an earnest adversary will be slight indeed. If twenty alternatives are j)roposed for recon- ciling the words of Moses with the facts of geology, nineteen of them must be untrue. Their plausibility must be due to our ignorance alone. Their moral efiect is simply to weaken the force of the true explanation, and to degrade it to their own level, as one out of many expedients for escaping from an unwel- come conclusion, rather than a well-grounded and honest con- viction, the fruit of deliberate and conscientious inquiry. In the present question there seem to be only four alterna- tives, apart from secondary details, really distinct from each other. The first is the sceptical hypothesis of the Fifth Essay, that the words of IMoses are an untrue cosmogony, a mistaken guess, contradicted by the discoveries of science. The second is that they are a poem, an ideal narrative, not intended to be taken as strict and literal truth. This is tlie view of Mr. Hughes, ill the Tracts for the l*oople, of Mr. Huxtable, and NOTES. 487 of Mr. Rorison in tlie Eeplies. The third hokls them to be a real narrative, in which the clays are long periods, and in- clude a large portion of geological history. This is the view of Hugh Miller, in the Testimony of the Rocks, and with some important differences, of Dr. M'Caul in his recent Essay. The fourth holds that the account is real narrative, and the days literal, and that the periods oi' geology are implied in the second verse, but passed over in silence. I propose to examine these alteraatives afresh, in connection with the recent essays. I. The Essay in the Replies, on the Creative Week, begins with a true aphorism, "There is no attaining a satisfactory view of the mutual relations of science and ^Scripture, till men make up their minds to do violence to neither, and to deal faith- fully with both." But it is much easier to recognise the justice of this general maxim, than to carry it out in practice, when two authorities, each seeming worthy of full confidence, appear to disagree. Even where there is the most sincere intention to offer no violence to either, that which has the weaker hold on the convictions will almost unconsciously be sacrificed, unless a true reconciliation be found. The further remark, that " we ought to harbour no hankering after so-called reconciliations, or allow them to warp our rendering of the record," is thus wholly deceptive and ambiguous, when we seek to apply it in practice. No one, with his strongest efforts, can believe apparent con- tradictions. K two sets of truths seem to contradict each other, both must be more correctly defined, so that the contradiction may disappear, or else one of them will be tacitly renounced and explained away to secure our foith in the other. The sequel of the Essay now examined, to plain readers of the Bible, will seem a singular contradiction to the maxim with which it opens. Its main doctrine is that Gen. i. is no history at all, but a poem or psalm of creation. After denouncing " quibbles and makeshifts," the writer continues — " The chief wonder is how it ever was possible to exact from the oldest and sublimest poem in the world the attributes of narrative prose." i\Iost readers will wonder, in their turn, how it was possible for any essayist to mistake the least plausible and most desperate of makeshifts for a self-evident truth, in defiance of the universal conviction of Jews and Christians in all ages, the style of the narrative itselij 488 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. and its place in the very opening of a long series of unadorned and simple narratives, wholly distinct in their structure from the psalms and prophecies, which appear far later in the harmo- nious and regular development of Divine revelation. Dr. M'Caul, in the Aids to Faith, has some forcible remarks on this hypothesis, as simple in style as they are powerful in argument, with every word of which I fully agree. " The new theology asserts that the Mosaic cosmogony is con- tradicted by the progress of science, and therefore, that Moses could not have been inspired. This is a straightforward objec- tion, deserves a fair consideration, and ought not to be met with what objectors can only regard as evasions. Such are the asser- tions that Gen. i. 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 (a en. i. 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 employed. The prophet or historian is kept completely out of sight, and the narrative begins at once without any preface. * In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth.' It then goes to the account of Paradise, and the birth of Cain and Abel, without any break or note of transition 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 chaj^ter, as the inseparable beginning of the whole, must be historical also. When the Lord recapitulates its contents in the Fourth Com- mandment, he stamps it as real history. To suppose a moral, or even a ceremonial command, based on a poetic picture, a vision, a mere ideal narrative, would be absurd. The Lord also treats these chapters as authoritative history, when he makes Gen. i. 27, and ii. 23, 24, the foundation of his doctrine concern- ing marriage and divorce. As history, therefore, they must be received, whatever difficulties that reception may involve," p. 198. It is not easy to add to the force of this simple and lucid statement. And I must profess my mingled regret and surprise NOTES. 48& tliat a treatise should be puLlishod by way of reply to the Fiftli Essay, which, under high-tlowii plirases, conceals an entire abandonment of the cause it seems to defend ; and rests its maintenance of the inspiration of Genesis on an hypothesis, which does violence to common sense, the first and sim[)lest conclusion of every honest reader of the sacred narrative, and the consenting judgment of Jews, Christians, and unbelievers in every age. The one reason assigned for reversing the necessaiy inference from style, position, and connection, and converting the first chapter in a long series of sacred histories into a psalm or poem, complete in structure, but devoid of reality, is drawn from the parallelism of the passage, and is expressed as follows : — " He who perceives this (the parallelism) has the true key to the concord which he will search for elsewhere and otherwise in vain. Respect the parallelism, cease to ignore the structure, allow for the mystic significance of the number seven, and all perplexities vanish. The two groups of days are each perfectly regular, when group in its integiity, is collated with group: neither triad, if it is to exhibit its own aspect of creation, can afford to part with, or dislocate, any of its members ; and the second triad, as a whole, is rightly and of necessity second, as the first is rightly and of necessity first. And yet it is self-evident that if, for any reason we insert or break up the groups, the true continuation of the day is not day 2 but day 4, of day 2 not day 3 but day 5, of day 3 not day 4, but day 6. And thus the days are transfigured from registers of time into definitives of strophes or stanzas, lamps and landmarks of a creative sequence, a mystic drapery, a })arabo]ic setting, shadowing by the sacred cycle oT seven, the truths of an ordered progress, a foreknown finality, an achieved perfection, and a Divine repose." The first chapter of Genesis, in the view alike of the Jewish synagogue and the whole Christian church, is a true and inspired history of real facts in the creation of tlie world. According to the Fifth Essay, it is the imperfect guess-work of Bome Hebrew Descartes or Newton, an ingenious conjtM-ture destitute of all Ivistorical truth. According to the author of the Reply, it is the work of some Hebrew Spenser or Drjden, a lyrical poem, elegant in its structure, and equally devoid of liistorical reality. These appear to me to be two varied forms 490 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. of the same unbelief, and the difference of very slight practical importance. Whether it was an ingenious guesser in science, or a skilful poet who had framed two triplets of days to form strophes and antistrophes out of his own fancy, if either of them passed off the result on the whole church as a history divinely revealed, the fraud in substance is just the same, and one variety has scarcely any claim to a preference over the other. The reason assigned for adopting this unreal view of the narrative is of the most shadowy kind. The Greek name of the universe is acoct/ao?, which denotes orderly arrangement. By what right, then, can we assume that the actual order of the Divine architect, in the work of creation, should be less regular and harmonious than the fancies of any lyrical poet, or the work of God himself less orderly than the literary compositions of man? Why should the work of the six days be less real, because the first and fourth days refer to light and its appointed vehicles, the second and fifth to the firmament and seas and their inhabitants, the third and sixth to the dry land, and the plants and animals by which it is filled and peopled ? Surely nothing can be less reasonable than to pronounce a cosmogony unreal, because a Divine koct/llo^;, or order, is appa- rent no less in the revealed steps of the process than in the finished work. A reverent spirit will be disposed to reverse the argument, and gather a proof that the record is historically true, because it unfolds a Divine symmetiy in the steps of crea- tion, such as man instinctively copies in the mimic creations of his fancy from which poetry derives its name. A Divine record of creation, we may reasonably assume, will resemble human poems in their noblest elements of symmetry and order, and form a contrast by its historical truth and reality alone. II. The theory, which sees in the record of Gen. i. a mere poem or psalm, requires it to be separated, as a distinct whole, from the chapters that follow. Accordingly, the essay in the Replies, continues in these words : — " We find at Gen. ii. 4, the clearest marks of a break and a transition, one strain of composition closed, a fresh strain begun. Verse 4 is a bridge or stepping-stone from one monograph to another. How this is to be critically accounted for is no part of, the present inquiry. ... Be the explanation what it may, the record of the creative week is one record, what follows is NOTES. 491 another. Sceptical criticism may deny tliat tlie two monograms are harmonious ; this must not provoke refusal to recognise them as distinct." The remarks of Dr. M'Caul, on this point as on the last, are diametrically opposite. " Independently of all philological criticisms, the unity of the fii*st two chapters may be proved by comparing one with the other. They do not contain two distinct accounts of the crea- tion. The second does not relate the creation of heaven or earth, or light, or firmament, sun, moon or stars, sea or dry land, fish or creeping things. Far from being a cosmogony, it is not even a geogony. The words of ii. 4, cannot therefore be the title or summary of what follows, but are an exact recapitu- lation 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 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 creation, but of particulars of the formation of man and his early history. It is therefore an integral part of a rela- tion contained in the three first chapters, connected with the first by ii. 4, and preparing for the account of the Fall, by telling us beforehand of Paradise, the tree of knowledge, the prohibition to eat of it, and the formation of woman. There are differences to be explained by the different objects. In the first it was to give an outline of the history of the universe ; in the second, to narrate the origin and primitive history of man, so far as necessary to prepare for the history of the Full. In the former, then, all the steps of creation are treated in chronological order. In the latter, only so much is alluded to as is necessary for the author's purpose, and in the order which that purpose required." These remarks I believe to be strictly true. There is distinct- ness between the two portions, just as there is between the third and fourth, or the fourth and tilth chapters, or any two distinct portions of one continuous history. But there is no reason whatever for styling the first chapter a monograph, or supposing that it had ever an independent existence. It is simply the first portion of the sacred history, linked inseparably by Gen. ii. 4, with the second portion that follows ; as this is linked in its turn, with the third chapter by the account of the garden of 492 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. Eden and the tree of knowledge, and the sinless innocence of Adam and Eve. The same historical character is plain from first to last, and the historical unity is no less apparent. III. Another question, on which the Essay in the Replies speaks with great confidence, is the inclusion of the first verse within the six days. " The Mosaic heptameron is a whole in itself ; it is further manifest that it shuts in a whole. Whatever the work-peopled week be, it is meant absolutely to include and enclasp the creation of the All at the will of the One. Ere this M^eek opened, in the conception of the sacred penman, God had not begun to create ; ere this week closed, he had done with creating. Of work prior to the first day the sacred writer knows no more than of work posterior to the sixth. With the first day the series of creative fiats begins ; by the sixth day they have ceased. For in, that is ' ivithin six days the Lord made heaven and earth, the sea, and all that in them is, and rested the seventh day,' rested from all his work. Accordingly, the record articulates into seven strophes or segments, of which five are contained, and two are terminal or containing. The five are defined in the clearest manner by their opening and close. God said. Evening and morning were the second, third, fourth, fifth, sixth day. The initial and final sections are neces- sarily modified, one as supplying an exordium, the other a peroration or climax. Still the only question that can naturally arise is whether the exordium belongs strictly to the first day, or to the six days in common. Within those six days, on either view, all is made that has been made. During six days God works. On the seventh day that rest is resumed which before the first day had not been broken." Here, again, the view of Dr. M'Caul is diametrically opposite, being the same which I have also briefly maintained in the text. But, instead of resting it on a mere ipse dixit, like the other essayist, he supports it by a large induction of authorities from the Chaldce, Syriac, and Septuagint, down to modern times ; all conspiring to show that berashith means " in former dura- tion," or " of old." " How long ago is not said. The Hebrew word is indefinite, and can include millions of years just as easily as thousands. The words of Moses, rightly understood, leave the ' when ' of creation undefined." NOTES. 493 ' Again, lie reasons tlnis in ver. ] : " Some take it for a title or summary of the contents of the chapter. But this view is forbidden by the conjunction with which the second verse begins. This makes that verse a continuation of the nai-rative begun in the first. The first, therefore, is not a summary, but a part of the history of creation. Others suppose that ver. 1 describes the creation of materials out of which heaven and earth were afterwards formed. But this is to jjut into the verses what is not there. Heaven and earth never mean materials ; and if they did, that meaning would not agree with the contents." The conclusion drawn from seven pages of exact and careful criticism is that " the heavens " of the first verse must refer to the higher heavens, in contrast to the lower heavens, or fir- mament, the formation of which is recounted on the second day. This is precisely the view I have advocated more briefly in the text. It stands plainly in direct contradiction to the assertion of the other essayist, that ver. 1 is either a summary of the six days' work, or strictly included within the first day. These are precisely the alternatives, which Dr. M'Caul examines in suc- cession, and shews that by the laws of exact criticism each of them is untenable. The question here at issue is one of high importance, and may be stated thus: Are the six days a poetical matrix or mould, having no historical reality, into which the whole has been cast, to secure an aisthetic symmeti-y of composition ; or are they a foct, later than the creation of the heavens and earth in the first verse — a fact which reveals itself in the regular course of a real narrative ? On the former view they ought to have been named at the very outset. " In six days God created the heavens and the earth." There might then be some plausible excuse for transfiguring them " from registers of time into de- finitives of strophes or stanzas, a mystic drapery, a parabolic setting." But, as the record now stands, the first day is the actual corollary and consequence of that fiat which said, " Let there be light, and there was light." Far from defining the creation of the earth and the deep, and still less of the liigher heavens, it is an historical result, when the darkness on the face of the deep is dispelled. In the view of the sacred writer the word " day," as well as the thing, is a product and conse- 494 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. quence of the especial stage in the Divine work, when the heavens, the earth, and the deep of waters, were already in being. The same conclusion may be reached in another way ; for the heavens of the first verse, by the essayist's admission, include the things invisible, or the third heavens of glory. But if the first day includes this opening verse, then the darkness of that day, its first portion, must also include the upper heavens as well as the earth. Such a view is preposterous and un- natural. The light of ver. 3 stands in plain contrast to the darkness on the face of the deep. The deep is a synonym for the earth, while waste and void, and covered with water or watery vapours. And hence the succession of darkness and light, which constitutes the first day, can have no refer- ence to the heavens of the first verse. It implies the pre- existence of an eartli and a deep, and denotes the first of successive periods, in which their waste and void condition was changed into the beauty of a well-ordered and finished world. It is hard to understand what construction of the sacred nar- rative the essayist wishes his readers actually to receive. He insists strongly that the whole work of creation is strictly included within the six creative days. " On so transparent a gloss," he says, "as the vision scheme, words would only be Masted. Nor will many believe that creation, as an idea, is the thing intended, so long as the plainest of plain language assures them that the thing intended is creation as a fact." On the other hand, "on the hypothesis that we have to do with an ordinary prose narrative, there emerges the great difficulty of the days," and " with this no ingenuity has as yet grappled suc- cessfully." " Enough, then, whether of quibbles or makeshifts." The true key to the concord, which will be sought elsewhere in vain, is to be found in the view that the six days within which the history of creation as a fact is contained, no part being created before the first day, and none after the sixth, are " a mystic drapery, a parabolic setting," no registers of time, but " definitives of strophes, and lamps and landmarks of a creative sequence." So far as any meaning can be attached to these contradictory statements, the Mosaic narrative is to be viewed as an example of the widest poetical license. Its prin- NOTES. . 495 ciples are all true, but its apparent details are all deceptive and false. The real order of cosmic change, through long millions of years, is replaced by two triplets of imaginary works in six imaginary days, perfect in their poetical symmetry, but, in point of fact, wholly untrue. I agree fully with Dr. M'Caul, that " this is not to defend the ark of God, but to abandon it to the enemy." So far my own dissent from the author of The Creative Week, and my agreement with the learned writer of the IMosaic Record, is complete and entire. I must now proceed to other points wliere the view of Dr. M'Caul diverges more or less from my own. We agree fully in receiving the Mosaic record as true history, in the view of the first verse, as prior to the work of the six days, and its heavens distinct from the firmamental heaven of the second day, in the historical sequence of the days themselves, and the close connection between the record of the six days' work, and the following chapters of the history. Dr. M'Caul rejects also the idea of Hugh Miller, who identifies three of the days with three main geological periods. But he holds them to be indefinite periods of time, supposes the creation of light to refer to a distant period, before the sun had received its luminous character, and the work of the fourth day to refer to the constitution of our solar system in its actual form. Here several points of great importance call for renewed and careful examination. IV. The literal meaning of the six days is rejected by both essayists ; by Mr. llorison in these words : " With this great difliculty no ingenuity has as yet grappled successfully. The choice lies between the Chalmerian interpolation of geological ages before the first day begins, and the Cuvierian expansion of the six days into geological periods. For these solutions respectively Dr. Buckland and Hugh Miller have done their best, and more skilful and accomplished advocacy could not be found. But the arguments which compelled Hugh Miller to abandon the older method have not been answered. Nor is his own scheme free from the gravest difficulty. Who can bring himself to believe that, when the sacred writer speaks of trees laden for human use with seed-enclosing fruit, he could have liad in his mind the gymnogenons flora of the coal measures? Certain wz'iters evade embarrassment by declining to elect among 496 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. competing reconciliations : it is enough that some of them may be sound, though it is inconvenient to become responsible for any, or the record was not intended to do what it expressly undertakes and professes to do, or the time is not come for a comparison between Scripture and geology, since there are points on which geologists are not agreed among themselves. All this is but a manifestation of anxiety to snatch a cherished dogma from a dreaded foe. Were the panic well founded, the belief indebted to such expedients would be only screened, not saved." • These last remarks are just in themselves, though they read strangely in connection with the rest of the essay, which recon- ciles Genesis with geology, by the double assertion that it plainly describes creation as a fact, not an idea, and that the account is a poetical idea, not historical truth. But the only reason advanced against the literal view is an appeal, like that of the fifth essay, to Hugh Miller's authority. To this I reply, as in the text, and more fully in the Christian Observer, June, 1858, that the large induction of M. D'Orbigny, given in summary by Dr. Lardner in the Museum of Science, stands in diametrical oj)position to Hugh Miller's assertions. His argu- ment, in the Testimony of the Eocks, for the continuity of the tertiary and human periods, is drawn from eight animals, and two or tliree species of shells alone. M. D'Orbigny, on the contrary, affirms that the tertiary period may be parted into five stages, in which, out of 6,042 species, only 91 were common to two or more successive stages, and all were distinct from the now existing species of the human period. On this subject I have written before. (Clu-istian Observer, Jan. 1858, p. 31.) " In point oi-plan, of which the genera are the test, all the ages of geology dovetail remarkably from first to last. But in point of physical continuity, or the absence of new acts of creation, the question in debate, of which the species are the true criterion, the latest inductions of science prove that the reverse is true. They bring to light thirty distinct and successive worlds of animal life, of which the human Avorld is the last. In j^^f^n all are partly continuous, partly varied ; but while in most of them the continuity is the more conspicuous feature, the change of plan is more apparent in three or four transitions, and most NOTES. 497 marked, beyond comparison, in the transition to our present world. But in species they are each and all of them either per- fectly, or almost perfectly, discontinuous. Between the third and fourth, the fourth and fiftli a^^es, this discontinuity, accord- in<2^ to D'0rbi;2:ny, is almost, between the first and second, the second and third, the fifth and our own, it is quite complete. A new zoolo;^ical creation, contemporary with man, far from being a geological impossibility, thus appears to be the natural conclusion from the most exact and comprehensive inductions of geological science." Dr. M'Caul, again, offers the following reasons against the literal sense of the six days : — " 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.' In this narrative (ii. 4), the wt)rd 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. ... 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. And this is plainly expressed and argued in the epistle to the Hebrews. According to this declaration 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 Mosaic language implies that the six days of which he speaks are six periods of time." The first of these arguments, from the indefinite meaning of the word " day " in other places, is answered by a simple remark. The cases are not parallel, because here only it is joined with oi'diiial nunbers. "These never occur, either in tlie Bible or elsewhere, when words of time are used for indcfiiiito j)oriods. The reason is jdain: two, three, four in- (lefiuite periods make only one indefinite period. In tliis vague sense numeration is impossible, and regular arithmetic can have no })laee. The simple fact that tlie days arc numbered from the first to the seventh is thus a clear i)roof, either that they are literal days, or definite periods of known length, which bear some close analogy to literal days. But there is no i>lea, in this passage, for the latter meaiiing ; and hence the fact tiiat a 2 K 498 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. first, second, third, fourth, fifth, and sixth day are distinctly named, is a clear proof that they are literal days, and not indefinite and immense jjeriods of time." (Christian Observer, July, 1858, p. 553.) " The effect of this construction is really to blot out these six clauses altogether. For it is self-evident that each event recorded must occupy some space of time or other ; and this is all that these words teach on the hyijothesis of day periods. After suggesting a false meaning to nearly every reader for four thousand years, tliis new interpretation dissipates them into thin air, and dispenses with them altogether." The second reason offered for denying the days to be literal is drawn from the mention of the sun only on the fo^u•th day. The first three days, it is inferred, could not be measm-ed from sunset to sunset, and at least in their case the literal meaning must be abandoned. This objection falls to the gi'ound at once, if the view in the text be accepted, that the whole record is optical in its character ; or, in other words, that the sun, moon, and stars of the fourth day refer to the discs or points of light, as seen revolving daily in the blue firmament, and not to solid globes, contemplated by science in the depths of space. Tliis is the only view consistent with the uniform and unvaried pliraseology of Scripture (comp. Gen. XV. 12 ; xix. 23 ; xxxvii. 9 ; Dent. iv. 47 ; xi. 30 ; Josh. X. 12 ; Psa. xix.), and when once accepted, the whole difficulty disappears. The third reason for deserting the literal sense of the days consists in the assertion that the seventh day of the Divine rest continues to this horn- ; and this is alleged to be the direct state- ment of the epistle to the Hebrews, where believers are said to be entering into the rest of God. But this argument, I believe, is based on a total misconception. We are told that on the seventh day God rested from his work, and not that the time of God's continued resting formed a seventh day. The two state- ments are entirely difl'erent in their natural meaning. If num- bered fifth and sixth days had gone before, marked and defined by an evening and a morning, or a successive period of darkness and light — and sucli literal days there must have been when Adam and Eve were now made — then a seventh of the same kind must clearly have followed. When we are told that God NOTES. 499 rested on this seventh day, the cessation or transition from work to rest is clearly intended, and not the mere continuance of the resting time, when once begun. On that day God ceased from his work ; on later days he could not cease from his creative work, because he had ceased from it before. There is no ground, then, in the long continuance of the Divine rest, for setting aside the literal meaning of tlie seventh day. On the contrary, the fourth commandment excludes and forbids such a change of the meaning ; for the appeal is to a ])ivine precedent, complete and finished, and a seventh day of unknown thousands of years, still in progress, would rob the words of all coherence and natm-al significance. It must surely be unnatm-al, in the higliest degree, to interpret the six days to mean all the vast periods of geology, and the seventh day the whole eternity from Adam onward for ever, and then to extract a reason for man's observance of one day in seven from this miequal division of past ages and a future eternity. V. The Darkness on the Deep. The view of verse 2 in the text is that " after the tertiary period our planet was wrapped in a sea of vapour, and buried long in midnight and impenetrable gloom. This chaos, optically and phy- sically complete, is the starting-point of the inspired description." The view of Dr. M'Caul is the same, except that he refers it to some more ancient era of similar confusion and disturbance. " 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 water, and utterly devoid of inhabitants or life. The earth was desola- tion and emptiness, and darkness upon the face of the raging deep, and the Spirit of God brooding upon the face of the waters." So Pfaff says : " We soon perceive that by far tlie greatest part of our oartli was under water, but that to water it owes its origin, and that under water the entire gradual forma- tion of these miglity masses took place. . . . How this state of igneous fluidity or aqueous plasticity arose — whether God created the earth desolate and empty, or it became so in consequence of some mighty catastrophe, Moses has not expressly declared, though the latter appears to some U^ be implied in his words." The general agreement of this verse with the revelations of 2 K 2 noO THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. geology, ia its statements of tlie former condition of our eartli, is very jMain. The only doubt that can well he raised is ■whether the words consist with tlie view of literal days; that is, whether the descrij^tion can be applicable so late in the geological series as the close of the tertiary, and the commence- ment of the human period. But the fact that tlie elevation of the highest mountain-chains, the great Alps and Chilian Andes, cliaracterizcs this transition in the records of geology, removes all difficulty. A physical change so immense could not fail to l)ring tlie whole surface of our globe into the state implied in the sacred text, all life destroyed, all light blotted out, and one immense ocean of watery vapour wrapping its whole surface in dense and impenetrable gloom. YI. The Creation of Light. The objection to the Mosaic narrative of the first day has been traced historically by Dr. M'Caulin these words: "Celsus found it strange that Moses should speak of days before the existence of the sun. How did God create the light before the sun ? asked Voltaire. ]\rodern astronomy, Says D. F. Strauss, found it con- trary to order that the earth should not only have been created before the sun, but should also, besides day and night, have dis- tinction of the elements and vegetation before the sun. " Lijzht and the measurement of time are represented as existing before tlie manifestation of the sun ; and this idea, though repugnant to our modern knowledge, has not in former times appeared absm*d," is the objection of Essays and Reviews ; and. as is evident, is not the result of modern science, having been broached already by Celsus. The author of the Creative Week offers no help to the solution of this difficulty : on the contrary, he seems to associate him- self, on this point, with all the objections from Celsus ouAvard, in a manner hard to reconcile with the purpose of his essay. The remarks of Dr. M'Caul are clear and forcible. Modem science, he observes, " teaches nothing with regard to the relative ages of the earth and the sun. But the nebular theory, received as highly probable by many scientific men, supposes the planets to have been cast off in rings from the central body while in process of condensation. Hence two alternatives. The planets are not self-luminous ; if the rings were opaque when separated, the central mass would be dark also, and the sun did not become NOTES. 501 luminous till some time after tlie planets had been formed. If the rings were luminous, then each planet had at tirst a light of its own, independent of the sun. Again, Moses calls the sun Maor — a place or instrument of light, which is just what science pronounces it to be. Scripture does not say tliat God created the light, or made it, but said, Let it be, and it was. If, then, liglit be not a separate body, but only vibrations of ether, the sacred writer could not have expressed its appearance in words more beautiful or more agreeable to truth. . . . The theory of Laplace may or may not be true, but it is an offspring of modern science, and it im})lies, like the ^Mosaic account, the pre-existcuce of the earth before the sun became the luminary of the system." These remarks are just and true in tliemselves. If the words of verse 3 include the nebular stage of tlie universe, the mention of evening and morning will be strange, but the mere ante- cedence of light to sunlight can be no difficulty. It would rather be a coincidence between the sacred text and the imper- fect guess of science. Modern philosophy, far from identifying light with the sun's mass, shows them to be wholly distinct, and the sun's atmosphere alone to be luminous. The true enigma, on the nebular hypothesis, which science does not even pretend to explain, is how the sun has gained its monopoly of luminous power, while the planets, once parts of the same mass, have lost their own share. On the literal view of tlie six days, however, the explanation is simpler, and less dependent on doubtful questions of science. " Alter an unknown period of total darkness light broke out suddenly at God's command over the whole surface of the globe. It is self-evident that such a liict is all that j^Ioses and liis contemporaries, and all readers of the Pentateuch down to our own days, could naturally understand by the words. They could never suppose it to mean the creation of a luminiferous ether, jilling inlinite space, or the commencement of unknown undula- tions, regulated by unknown mechanical laws. The light has reference to the previous darkness ; the darkness was upon tho face of the deep ; the de('[) is no synonym for infinite space, but for the earth itself, while its surface was covered with water, before the dry land appeared." The IMo.^aic record, then, assumes in its first verse tho creation of the higher heavens and of the earth, and this, too, 502 THE BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. " in the beginning," or the remote antiquity of time. It assumes, in the second verse, that tlie earth existed already, in a state of confusion and darkness. It recounts the steps by which this earth, standing out of the waters and in the waters, just as geology paints it after an era of convulsion, was Divinely pre- pared to be the abode of man, a fit theatre for aU the later wonders of God's providence. Hence the natural and almost necessary starting-point must be the last, not the earliest, of those destructive revolutions of our planet which science has disclosed to its students in modern times. The spirit of unbelief, which says "all things continue as they were from the beginning," may strive hard to force the facts of geology into agreement with some theory of uniform development, undisturbed either by grand catastrophes of nature, or the wonder-working and life-gi^^ng power of God. But reason and common sense protest against the vain effort. A convulsion of our planet, which could raise the Alps and Andes to their enormous height, must have far exceeded all historical examples of volcanic agency, have destroyed 'animal and vegetable life, if it existed before, and wrapped our globe in one immense sea of aqueous vapour, confusion, and darkness. To begin with liistories of buried creations, that would remain hidden from human knowledge, and entombed m the depths of earth for thousands of years, would have been worse than useless for all the great objects of a Divine message to a world of sinners. Their premature disclosure in the first page of the Bible would be as unnatural as an account of Jupiter or Sirius, or the possible inliabitants that may people the stars of the Milky Way. But if this last convulsion were the natural start- ing-point of the record, then the breaking forth of light, when the vast sea of vapour began to return to its proper home, M^ould be the first daybreak of a new and coming world. Such, ac- cordingly, I believe to be the natural and unforced meaning of i. 3, when the words are taken in their context, and compared with the uniform style and language of the sacred history. VII. The First Day. In the Creative Week, where the days are "transfigured into definitions of strophes or stanzas," no light, of course, can be thrown on the phrase, " and the evening and the morning were the first day," etc. Dr. M'Caul adopts a novel view, shared NOTES. 503 also by Kurtz, Delitzch, Hoffman, and Nagelsbach. He takes the evening and morning in their strictest sense, as tlie moments of transition from light to darkness and darkness to light; so that each workday, beginning •with the daybreak, reached to the following dawn. He reasons thus : — " The Hebrew and ancient versions have — And evening hap- l)ened, and morning happened, one day. Now if the first day began with the original darkness, then it consists of that dark- ness, the light, and the evening that followed, ending with the morning, and would have an evening at the beginning and at the end. The mention of morning ought to have guarded against tliis mistake ; evening and morning do not together make a day, but only part of a day ; the whole day is not com- l)lete till the following evening. But that Moses does not reckon from evening to evemng is proved by the account of the first day. The ^vocation of light is the prominent object, and afterwards it is said : And there was evening and there was morning, one day. If 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 ; it must, therefore, be reckoned as beginning at the appearance of light and continuing tlirough the evening to the dawn. With that dawn the second day begins. This mode of reckoning, unique in the Bible, and pecidiar to this first of Genesis, suggests that the days are peculiar also." This innovation, in spite of the learning of its four or five advocates, I believe to be wholly groundless, as it certainly con- tradicts the judgment of Jewish and Chi-istian scholars from the earliest times. Six proper days, or seasons of light and work, plainly appear in the record, preceded, separated, and followed by nights, or seasons of darkness. The question is, wliat is the meanino- of each chronological day ? Is it the time of light, with the previous or with the succeeding time of darkness? Tlie former is the usual and almost universal view, confirmed by tlie fact that from sunset to sunset was the Jewish day. Dr. M'Caul and the four German critics hold that the days before us are from daybreak to daybreak, with an entire omission of tlie previous or original darkness. Their argument rests on the strict mean- ing of evening and morning, as seasons of transition from niHit to day. In this strict sense, the first evening must \m\c followed 501 TIIR BIBLE AND MODERN THOUGHT. the first time of light, and the moriiing after that evening would be the dawn of the second day. The reasons against this view are, in my opinion, quite decisive. First, the words imply that each evening and morn- ing, taken togetlier, are a synonym for the answering day. But this could not be if they are taken for small parts of eacli diurnal period, when light turns to darkness, or darkness to liglit again. Next, it is very unnatural to associate the night with the previous daytime by naming a point of time which begins the night, and another which begins the next day, inferring; the niii'lit from the mention of its two limits, and then inferring its union with the previous daytime, by adding " one day." There is a double violence in such a construction. An evening and a morning, in the narrow sense of the words, are not a synon3nii for the night they inclose. Still less can they be a synonym for that half day, and the half which has gone before it. Further, on this view the original sabbath, the Divine j)attern, must have begun with the daybreak and have lasted till the daybreak following. In this case it is very strange that the Jewish church should have exactly reversed the true tj^e for fifteen hundred years. Again, whether the days are literal or figurative, it is plain that with the end of dayhght on the sixtli day the work Mas completed, and the Divine rest must have be<«;un. This agrees fully with the common view of the days, but is wholly opposed to the new interpretation. Let us return to the text, and see whether it does not fix clearly its own meaning. The word " day " has a double sense : it means either the season of daylight, in which it is the contrast of night, or else a complete diurnal period. AVhen used chro- nologically it must take the latter sense : here, however, in the account of the first day it has abeady been appropriated in its former meaning : " And God called the light Day, and the darkness ho called Night." It would plainly be harsh and unnatural to use the same word ambiguously in the same clause, and to say, " And there was a night and a day, one day." Hence, by a natural synecdoche, evening and morning are named for the two half days of darkness and light, wliich make up the wliole day or dim-nal period. And tliere was an evening ( = a ni<2,ht season), and there was a morning ( = a natural dnytime), = one chronological day. The primitive sense of the Hebrew NOTES. 605 word ereb seems to be mixture or confusion, from the effect of darkness in confounding all objects togetlier. In like manner, tlie ^vord morning denotes tbe time of searcliing out or dis- crimination; and both may therefore be fitly applied to the "Nvhole successive times of light and darkness. The distinct mention, then, of the evening and the morning, six tunes repeated, and witli ordinal numbers, is a jjowerful argument for the meaning of natural or literal days. VIII. The Second Day, and tlie Expanse or Firmament. On the subject of the Expanse, for the first time, the author of the Creative Week and Dr. IM'Caul are in full agreement. Both regard the assertion in the Fifth Essay, that the Hebrew means a solid vault, as wholly and palpably nntrue. Dr. M'Caul bestows on the question a rich profusion of authorities and critical research. He explains, further, that the Septuagint version, a-Tepeco/xa, had really the same meaning. It did not denote " something itself solid, but something that strengthened or made firm the heavenly bodies," the sense of the same word in Ezt'k. iv. 10, Est. ix. 29, Psa. xviii. 3, in the Greek version. The plain, clear sense of the following remarks are a refreshing contrast to some learned follies. " The common people are not so dull as Gesenius and some others think. Who ever met a rustic, accustomed to look at the heavens, who thought it was a solid vault, and the stars fixed in like nails ? The common people are not so silly — they judge by what they see : they see the lark and the eagle soaring aloft in the air, and they think that all beyond is just alike ; they never dream of a solid obstacle in the way. . . . The most uneducated know well the connection between clouds and rain, and in this the Hebrews were not behind other people : indeed, this connection furnished inatorialsforthe proverb — 'Clouds and wind, and no rain.' Such is the man whose promise of a gilt is a lie." On the meaning of the "waters above the firmament" the two esstiyists diverge once more. ''Satire," says j\Ir. Korison, " will not spare writers who trench, however unwittingly, on the hidicrous, when, under the abused aegis of the I'lurality of Worlds, thoy identify the planet Jupiter with the waters that are above the firmament." Dr. ]\rCaul,