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 JUL 10 19],<] 
 
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 THE 
 
 EDWARD ROBINSON CHAIR 
 
 OF 
 
 BIBLICAL THEOLOGY 
 
 UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 PRINTED FOR 
 
 ®b* Union (Ideological Seminars 
 
 NEW YORK: MDCCCXCI 
 
THE 
 
 EDWARD ROBINSON CHAIR 
 
 BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 
 
JUL 10 1919 
 
 the ^ipoim st^ 
 
 EDWARD ROBINSON CHAIR 
 
 OF 
 
 BIBLICAL THEOLOGY 
 
 IN THE 
 
 V UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY 
 
 NEW YORK 
 
 PRINTED FOR 
 
 ®l)e Union geological Seminarn 
 
 NEW YORK : MDCCCXCI 
 
Copyright, 1S91, by 
 THE UNION THEOLOGICAL SEMINARY. 
 
I. The Establishment of the Chair by the Directors of 
 the Seminary in accordance with the endowment of 
 Charles Butler, LL.D. ; and the choice of the incum- 
 bent, Prof. Charles A. Briggs, D.D. 
 
 II. The Inauguration Services, January 20, 1891 ; with the 
 Charge delivered by the Rev. David R. Frazer, D.D. 
 
 III. The Inaugural Address, on The Authority of Holy 
 
 Scripture. 
 
 IV. The Position and Importance of Biblical Theology. 
 
I. 
 
 THE ESTABLISHMENT OF THE EDWARD 
 
 ROBINSON CHAIR OF BIBLICAL 
 
 THEOLOGY 
 
 At the regular meeting of the Board of Directors of 
 the Union Theological Seminary in the city of New 
 York, held November n, 1890, the following pream- 
 ble and resolution were adopted by a unanimous vote : 
 
 Whereas, The Honorable Charles Butler, LL.D., President 
 of the Board of Directors of this Seminary, has made provision 
 for a permanent fund for the purpose of establishing and en- 
 dowing a Chair in this Seminary, to be called the Edward Rob- 
 inson Chair of Biblical Theology ; 
 
 Now therefore, Resolved, That a new professorship shall be 
 and is hereby created, which shall be called the " Edward Rob- 
 inson Chair of Biblical Theology "; that the income of the 
 endowment of one hundred thousand dollars given to this 
 -Seminary by the said Charles Butler in the manner mentioned 
 in his bond, dated April 25, 1890, shall be applied solely to the 
 support of said Chair, according to the provisions of said bond. 
 
 The President of the Faculty suggested that the 
 Board, in courtesy, should ask Dr. Butler to express 
 to us freely his wishes with reference to the action just 
 taken. 
 
2 EDWARD ROBINSON CHAIR 
 
 Thereupon President Butler addressed the Board of 
 Directors as follows : 
 
 " The formal establishment by the Board of ' The 
 Edward Robinson Chair of Biblical Theology' fulfils 
 the object desired in the provision which I have made 
 for its endowment. I beg to express my satisfaction 
 and gratitude for this action. It is in accord with the 
 views of the distinguished Christian scholar in whose 
 memory the Chair is founded. In a letter to the Board, 
 dated January 20, 1837, accepting the Professorship of 
 Sacred Literature, he said : ' The Constitution prop- 
 erly requires every Professor to declare that he believes 
 the Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments to be 
 the Word of God, the only infallible rule of faith and 
 practice. This is placing the Bible in its true position 
 as the only foundation of Christian theology. It fol- 
 lows as a necessary consequence that the study of the 
 Bible, as taught in the department of Biblical Litera- 
 ture, must be the foundation of all right theological 
 education.' This new Chair of Biblical Theology seems 
 to me to realize the sentiment embodied in this quota- 
 tion, in a form which, if he were now present with us, 
 would receive his benediction. It embalms his memory 
 indissolubly with the life of this Seminary, and will 
 ever be an inspiration to its students in their ' search 
 of the Scriptures.' 
 
 " In regard to the incumbent of this Chair, I avail of 
 the courtesy of the Board to express my wish that it 
 may be one who sat as a pupil at the feet of that emi- 
 nent teacher, and I regard it as a felicity to the Semi- 
 nary that there is one here who has been trained within 
 its walls, and who, by his ripe scholarship and purity of 
 character in Christian faith and practice, has won the 
 confidence and affection of his associate Professors, of 
 
OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 3 
 
 this Board of Directors, and of the students who have 
 come under his teaching during these years of faithful 
 and devoted service. 
 
 " From what I have said, you will anticipate that my 
 wishes will be fully gratified in the appointment of the 
 Rev. Charles A. Briggs, D.D., as eminently qualified to 
 fill this Chair. In this expression of preference, it gives 
 me the greatest pleasure to say that I do but voice the 
 views and wishes of our late revered President of the 
 Faculty, Roswell D. Hitchcock. Dr. Briggs was his 
 choice for this Chair. 
 
 " I cannot doubt that the highest interests of this 
 Seminary, and, what is more, those of the Redeemer's 
 kingdom on earth, will be promoted by this realization 
 of the plans of these two Christian scholars, both as re- 
 gards the foundation of the Chair and the selection of 
 the suggested incumbent." 
 
 THE APPOINTMENT OF THE INCUMBENT. 
 
 At the conclusion of President Butler's address, 
 Henry Day, Esq., offered the following resolution, 
 which was unanimously adopted : 
 
 Resolved, That Professor Charles A. Briggs, D.D., be trans- 
 ferred from the Davenport Professorship of Hebrew and the 
 Cognate Languages to the Edward Robinson Chair of Biblical 
 Theology. 
 
 Professor Briggs, having been duly advised of the 
 action above recorded, addressed a communication to 
 the Board, under date of January 7, 1891, accepting the 
 new Chair to which he had been transferred. 
 
4 EDWARD ROBINSON CHAIR 
 
 120 West 93D St., New York, 
 January 7, 1891. 
 
 Gentlemen of the Board of Directors of the Union 
 Theological Seminary, New York : 
 
 I thank you for the mark of confidence expressed in 
 your choice of me to fill the Edward Robinson Profes- 
 sorship of Biblical Theology. There is no Chair that 
 so well suits my tastes and my studies for the past 
 twenty-five years. Under the advice of the Faculty, I 
 have been building up the department of Biblical The- 
 ology for some years past. But I had reached the 
 limit of new work. I could not advance further until 
 relieved of the Hebrew work. In accepting the new 
 Chair, I propose to push the work of the depart- 
 ment rapidly forward, and to cover the whole ground 
 of the Chair at as early a date as possible. I give over 
 the work of the Hebrew Chair to my pupil, colleague, 
 and friend, Dr. Brown, with confidence, that building 
 on the foundations I have laid, he will make marked 
 improvement upon my work. 
 
 Biblical Theology is, at the present time, the vantage 
 ground for the solution of those important problems in 
 religion, doctrine, and morals that are compelling the 
 attention of the men of our times. The Bible is the 
 Word of God, and its authority is divine authority that 
 determines the faith and life of men. Biblical scholars 
 have been long held in bondage to ecclesiasticism and 
 dogmatism. But modern Biblical criticism has won the 
 battle of freedom. The accumulations of long periods of 
 traditional speculation and dogmatism have been in large 
 measure removed, and the Bible itself stands before the 
 men of our time in a commanding position, such as it 
 never has enjoyed before. On all sides it is asked, not 
 
OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 5 
 
 what do the creeds teach, what do the theologians say, 
 what is the authority of the Church, but what does the 
 Bible itself teach us ? It is the office of Biblical Theology 
 to answer this question. It is the culmination of the work 
 of Exegesis. It rises on a complete induction through 
 all the departments of Biblical study to a comprehen- 
 sive grasp of the Bible as a whole, in the unity and 
 variety of the sum of its teaching. It draws the line 
 with the teaching of the Bible. It fences off from the 
 Scriptures all the speculations, all the dogmatic elabo- 
 rations, all the doctrinal adaptations that have been made 
 in the history of doctrine in the Church. It does not 
 deny their propriety and importance, but it insists up- 
 on the three-fold distinction as necessary to truth and 
 theological honesty, that the theology of the Bible is 
 one thing, the only infallible authority ; the theology 
 of the creeds is another thing, having simply ecclesias- 
 tical authority ; and the theology of the theologians, 
 or Dogmatic Theology, is a third thing, which has no 
 more authority than any other system of human con- 
 struction. It is well known that until quite recent times, 
 and even at present in some quarters, the creeds have 
 lorded it over the Scriptures, and the dogmaticians 
 have lorded it over the creeds, so that in its last analy- 
 sis the authority in the Church has been, too often, the 
 authority of certain theologians. Now, Biblical Theol- 
 ogy aims to limit itself strictly to the theology of the 
 Bible itself. Biblical theologians are fallible men, and 
 doubtless it is true, that they err in their interpretation 
 of the Scriptures, as have others ; but it is the aim of 
 the discipline to give the theology of the Bible pure 
 and simple ; and the inductive and historical methods 
 that determine the working of the department are 
 certainly favorable to an objective presentation of the 
 
Q EDWARD ROBINSON CHAIR 
 
 subject, and are unfavorable to the intrusion of subject- 
 ive fancies and circumstantial considerations. It will 
 be my aim, so long as I remain in the chair, to accom- 
 plish this ideal as far as possible. Without fear or 
 favor I shall teach the truth of God's Word as I find it. 
 The theology of the Bible is much simpler, richer, and 
 grander than any of the creeds or dogmatic systems. 
 These have been built upon select portions of the Bible, 
 and there is a capriciousness of selection in them all. 
 But Biblical Theology makes no selection of texts — it 
 uses the entire Bible in all its passages, and in every 
 single passage, giving each its place and importance in 
 the unfolding of divine revelation. To Biblical Theol- 
 ogy the Bible is a mine of untold wealth ; treasures, 
 new and old, are in its storehouses ; all its avenues 
 lead, in one way or another, to tj$e presence of the 
 living God and the divine Saviour. 
 
 The work of Biblical Theology is conducted on such 
 a comprehensive study of the Bible, that while the Pro- 
 fessor builds upon a thorough study of the original 
 texts, his class must use their English Bibles. A 
 thorough study of the English Bible is necessarily in- 
 cluded in the course. If the plan of the work is carried 
 out, the student will accompany his Professor through 
 the entire English Bible during his Seminary course, 
 and will be taught to expound a large number of the 
 most important passages in the light of all the passages 
 leading up to them. 
 
 In conclusion, allow me to express my gratitude to 
 the venerable President of the Board of Directors for 
 the interest he has ever taken in my work, for the 
 honor he has shown me in nominating me for the Chair 
 he so generously founded, and for attaching to the 
 Chair, with such modesty and consideration, the name 
 
OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 7 
 
 of Edward Robinson, my honored teacher, the greatest 
 name on the roll of Biblical scholars of America, and 
 the most widely known and honored of her professors. 
 I shall regard it as my high calling and privilege to 
 build on his foundations, and to advance the work that 
 he carried on as far as it can be advanced in the cir- 
 cumstances of our time. The names of Edward Rob- 
 inson and Charles Butler will be entwined into a bond 
 of double strength to sustain me in the delicate and 
 difficult work that I now undertake to do. 
 
 Faithfully, 
 
 C. A. BRIGGS. 
 
 Arrangements were made for the inauguration of Dr. 
 Briggs on Tuesday evening, the 20th of January. The 
 Reverend David R. Frazer, D.D., was appointed to de- 
 liver the charge on behalf of the Board of Directors. 
 
II. 
 
 THE INAUGURATION. 
 
 Tuesday Evening, Jan. 20, 1891. 
 
 President Charles Butler, LL.D., presided. After 
 devotional exercises, at the request of Mr. Butler, the 
 President of the Faculty made a brief preliminary 
 statement, as follows : 
 
 " As has been announced, last May the President of 
 the Board of Directors of the Union Theological Semi- 
 nary, Charles Butler, LL.D., provided for the endow- 
 ment of a new Chair in the sum of $100,000. 
 
 " On the basis of this munificent gift, at the recent 
 meeting of the Board, the new Professorship was for- 
 mally established, to be known, in accordance with the 
 request of President Butler, as The Edward Robinson 
 Professorship of Biblical Theology. This was designed 
 by Mr. Butler to be a memorial of his long-time friend, 
 the late Edward Robinson, D.D., LL.D., the first Pro- 
 fessor of Sacred Literature in this institution, who hon- 
 ored that Chair and this Seminary by his long and dis- 
 tinguished service from 1837 to 1863. 
 
 " The President of the Board suggested that it would 
 be in accord with his own wishes and with those of his 
 friend, the late President Roswell D. Hitchcock, D.D., 
 LL.D., if the Board should transfer the Rev. Professor 
 Charles A. Briggs, D.D., to the new Chair just estab- 
 lished. By a unanimous vote the Board at once adopt- 
 ed the suggestion of their President, and transferred 
 
 (9) 
 
10 EDWARD ROBINSON CHAIR 
 
 Professor Briggs from the ' Davenport Chair of Hebrew 
 and the Cognate Languages ' to the ' Edward Robinson 
 Chair of Biblical Theology! Dr. Briggs, having signi- 
 fied his acceptance of this transfer, his inauguration will 
 now take place." 
 
 President Butler addressed Professor Briggs as fol- 
 lows : 
 
 " On behalf of the Board of Directors, and in accord- 
 ance with the constitution of the ' Union Theological 
 Seminary in the city of New York,' I call upon you to 
 ' make and subscribe ' the ' declaration ' required of each 
 member of the Faculty of this institution." 
 
 Thereupon Professor Briggs made the ' declaration ' 
 as follows : 
 
 " / believe the Scriptures of the Old and New Testa- 
 ments to be the Word of God, the only infallible ride of 
 faith and practice ; and I do now, in the presence of God 
 and the Directors of this Seminary, solemnly and sin- 
 cerely receive and adopt the Westminster Confession of 
 Faith, as containing the system of doctrine taught in the 
 Holy Scriptures. I do also, in like manner, approve of 
 the Presbyterian Forjti of Government ; and I do sol- 
 emnly promise that I will not teach or inculcate anything 
 which shall appear to me to be subversive of the said sys- 
 tem of doctrines, or of the principles of said Form of Gov- 
 ernment, so long as I shall continue to be a Professor in 
 the Seminary" 
 
 Thereupon, President Butler said : 
 
 " In the name of the Board of Directors, I declare 
 that Professor Charles A. Briggs, D.D., is inaugurated 
 as the Incumbent of the Edward Robinson Chair of 
 Biblical Theology. 
 
 " On behalf of the Board of Directors, the Charge to 
 Professor Briggs will now be delivered by the member 
 
OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. Xi 
 
 of the Board duly appointed for this service, — the Rev. 
 David R. Frazer, D.D., the pastor of the First Presby- 
 terian Church of Newark, N. J." 
 
 the charge. 
 
 My dear Brother Briggs: 
 
 Before attempting to discharge the duty which, by 
 your kind consideration, has been devolved upon me, 
 permit me to tender my heartfelt congratulations : 
 First, upon the establishment of the Edward Robinson 
 Chair of Biblical Theology ; a consummation so devout- 
 ly wished for alike by yourself and by our revered 
 Hitchcock. We all share in your joy and recognize 
 the new departure as a long and a right step in ad- 
 vance in the history of our Institution. 
 
 In the orderings of God's providence every age has 
 its own peculiar problem to solve, the solution being 
 wrought out from the standpoint of its own pressing 
 needs. It is a marked characteristic of our day that 
 the Bible is now studied as never before in the world's 
 history, and the establishment of this new department 
 is in the line of this development and is answerable to 
 this modern demand. For, if I understand aright the 
 function of Biblical Theology, it does not conduct a 
 simple, grammatical exercise ; it does not discuss the 
 various textual readings ; it does not study the opin- 
 ions of the Fathers or the deliverances of the Church ; 
 it does not formulate a body of systematic divinity 
 grouped about some chosen central principle. These 
 are important and legitimate topics of study, hence are 
 properly cared for in our curriculum. They will doubt- 
 less be very helpful as external aids in the prosecution 
 of the work of this Chair, but the peculiar province of 
 
\ 
 
 12 EDWAKD ROBINSON CHAIR 
 
 Biblical Theology is to study the Word ; to determine 
 what God intends to say in His Word, and then to 
 formulate these hallowed teachings. 
 
 Such being its province, I need not pause to show 
 that Biblical Theology is the normal response to that 
 modern critical spirit which refuses to accept anything 
 upon the basis of authority and insists upon tracing 
 everything back to its genetic principle and its efficient 
 cause. Neither need I tarry to discriminate sharply 
 and accurately between the functions of Biblical and 
 Systematic Theology. If you, my dear brother, have 
 any especial interest in, or desire for information on this 
 general subject, I would respectfully refer you to a work 
 on " Biblical Study," which is published by the Scrib- 
 ners, and was written by one who has served long and 
 well in, and has just been transferred from " the Da- 
 venport Professorship of Hebrew and the Cognate Lan- 
 guages " in this Institution ; and, if you are not ac- 
 quainted with the work, I can assure you that the time 
 spent in its perusal will not be wasted, for you will 
 find therein an admirable and exhaustive discussion of 
 the subject. 
 
 But I want to congratulate you, secondly, upon the 
 fact that you are to be the incumbent of the new Chair, 
 a position for which you are pre-eminently qualified by 
 reason of the peculiar character of your past studies. I 
 am very well aware, that you would much prefer to 
 have me discuss the general topic of Biblical Theology, 
 and to dwell upon the claims it has to a place in our 
 curriculum, rather than to hint the name of, or make 
 any reference to the Professor who is to occupy the 
 new Chair. But if anything of a personal character 
 should be said, please remember, my brother, you have 
 no one to blame save yourself, since, passing by abler 
 
OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 13 
 
 men, you have kindly insisted that your old friend and 
 classmate should deliver the Charge, as you enter upon 
 the awful responsibilities of your new position. And 
 as the class spirit asserts itself, I will say, despite your 
 unspoken protest, that the class of '64 is proud of its 
 representative ; that it rejoices in your well-deserved suc- 
 cess, and that it appropriates to itself a peculiar glory 
 by virtue of the events of this hour. Little did we dream, 
 when we sat at the feet of that honored man whose name 
 gives dignity to your new Chair, as also at the feet of 
 those other scholarly and godly men, Henry B. Smith, 
 Thomas H. Skinner, Roswell D. Hitchcock, and Henry 
 H. Hadley, men whose presence was a benediction, 
 whose instruction was an inspiration, whose memories 
 are revered and hallowed, that there was among us, 
 going in and out just as we went in and out, one who 
 was destined to sit in Gamaliel's seat and to honor the 
 exalted position by his scholarly attainments. Yet 
 such was the fact, and although you wish I would not 
 say it, still, as your classmate and on behalf of the 
 class thus signally honored, I tender you our warmest 
 and heartiest congratulations. 
 
 And I propose saying still further, since I betray no 
 confidence by the declaration, that it would have greatly 
 rejoiced your heart and would have wonderfully inspir- 
 ited you for your work could you have heard the cor- 
 dial, tender, and appreciative words with which our 
 venerable and venerated President of the Board of 
 Directors (who is also the kind and generous patron, 
 through whose munificence the new Chair has been en- 
 dowed, " Serus in coelum redeas "), placed your name, 
 the only name placed in nomination for the position. 
 
 And I am sure you would have been more than 
 pleased could you have witnessed the unanimity with 
 
14 EDWARD ROBINSON CHAIR 
 
 which the Directors ratified the nomination and trans- 
 ferred you from the Davenport Chair of Hebrew, to 
 the Edward Robinson Chair of Biblical Theology. I 
 congratulate you that the honored and revered Founder 
 of the department wanted you in the department which 
 he founded, and also upon the fact that you enter 
 upon your new work in the enjoyment of the fullest 
 confidence, respect, and love of the Directors of this 
 Seminary. 
 
 But I may not forget that this is your hour. Inas- 
 much as I cannot hope to impart any instruction re- 
 specting the peculiar and practical duties of your new 
 position, I would be content to let these congratulatory 
 words take the place of the more formal charge. In 
 order, however, to meet the requirements of my ap- 
 pointment, and to stir up your pure mind by way of 
 remembrance, I charge you : 
 
 First. To have clear, well-settled, and accurately de- 
 fined views of the nature, the scope, and the design of 
 the Holy Scriptures. 
 
 The Bible is to be your text-book, and the Bible 
 claims to be the book of God. If this high claim 
 cannot be maintained ; if the Bible be not the book of 
 God, as verily as Jesus Christ is the Son of God, then 
 is it unworthy of our confidence. That Word which 
 was in the beginning with God and was God, and which 
 in the fulness of time began to be flesh, was, as the In- 
 carnate Word, the God-man, very God and very Man. 
 We do not understand this " great mystery of godli- 
 ness, God manifest in the flesh." We do not attempt 
 to explain it, but we accept it, we believe it, we rest 
 our hopes of life, here and hereafter, upon it. And 
 upon this same basis we can accept the Word written. 
 It also is an incarnation. Great is the mystery of 
 
OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 15 
 
 Revelation, God manifesting His thought in the forms 
 of human speech. Since holy men of old spake as 
 they were moved by the Holy Ghost, the Divine and 
 human elements are co-ordinated in the Word written 
 as well as in the Word Incarnated. We must recognize 
 the Divine and human factors in the Scriptures, and 
 assign a legitimate place to each and to both, but I 
 need not charge you, my dear brother, to bear in cease- 
 less remembrance the fact, that just in the proportion 
 that the Divine element is eliminated or is abnormally 
 subordinated to the human, is the authority of the 
 Bible circumscribed and the power of the Bible abridged. 
 You will never forget that you have God's Word for 
 your text-book, and you will never fail to teach it as 
 the very Word of God. 
 
 The scope of Biblical instruction is clearly set forth 
 on the sacred page. Great mischief is often wrought 
 by the notion that the Bible aims to cover the whole 
 sphere of human knowledge, and that its authority is 
 lessened by the concession that there are some things 
 which can be comprehended without its aid. We surely 
 do not need the Bible to teach us that two and two make 
 four, or that the whole is greater than any of its parts. 
 The Holy Word has a distinct mission and a definite 
 aim. It does not come to us as a teacher of physics or 
 of metaphysics, but as a revelation : as a revelation of 
 God : as a revelation of God to man : as a revelation 
 of God to man concerning the highest and the dearest 
 moral interests of man, alike for time and for eternity. 
 It comes to man, not primarily to reason, but to reveal, 
 and to reveal those high themes, which, by necessity 
 of being, transcend the ordinary processes of human 
 thought. While pervaded with an air of simplicity 
 and honesty and truthfulness, it comes not primarily 
 
16 EDWARD ROBINSON CHAIR 
 
 to persuade, but to command, and to command, not in 
 view of the deductions of human reason or in the light 
 of conclusions reached by the processes of a specula- 
 tive philosophy, but upon that simple, yet sublime, 
 basis, " Thus saith the Lord God." 
 
 The design of Revelation is summed up essentially 
 in the Johannean statement, " these things 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." As all roads led to Rome, so all Scripture 
 leads to Christ. The poetry, the prophecy, the pre- 
 cepts, the biography, the history of the Bible, find their 
 true centrality in Him who was at once dust and Divin- 
 ity, the Workman of Nazareth, the Prophet of Galilee, 
 ' The Lamb of God which taketh away the sin of the 
 world.' The final end and ultimate design of the Holy 
 Scriptures are " to make wise unto salvation, through 
 faith which is in Christ Jesus "; hence it is your busi- 
 ness, my dear brother, from the Word written to educe 
 the Word Incarnate, and I beg you to so present Jesus 
 Christ to all who come to you for instruction, that 
 they may go from your class-room to their great life- 
 work, not only impressed with an abiding sense of the 
 matchless beauty and the mighty power of that Divine 
 Saviour concerning whom the Scriptures so abundantly 
 testify, but also, and as the normal outcome of your 
 teachings, with a fixed determination " to know noth- 
 ing among men save Jesus Christ and Him crucified." 
 
 But Paul forewarns " of things hard to be under- 
 stood," of problems which must perplex the most acute 
 mind and defy the grasp of the most profound intel- 
 lect. Furthermore, in the interpretation of the Word, 
 conflicting views respecting the exact significance of 
 the revelation will arise. Who shall decide when 
 
OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. j_f 
 
 learned doctors disagree? To whom shall the ultimate 
 appeal be taken ? Manifestly to the Spirit of the Liv- 
 ing God by whom the declaration was prompted, and 
 to whom the meaning is clear ; hence, I charge you, 
 
 Secondly, Seek the aid of the Holy Ghost in your 
 arduous and responsible work. 
 
 I attempt no solution of the mooted question as to 
 whether our Lord's promise that the Holy Ghost 
 should lead believers in " the way of all truth," was re- 
 stricted to the Apostolic College and was literally ful- 
 filled in the written revelation, or whether it pertains 
 to believers in all time. 
 
 But the Scriptures most clearly require that all be- 
 lievers should " live in the Spirit," "walk in the Spirit," 
 " be filled with the Spirit." Christian consciousness 
 bears witness that the abiding presence of the Spirit 
 begets deep and vital spirituality, and Christian expe- 
 rience abundantly confirms the assertion that vital 
 spirituality ensures a large insight of that truth which 
 must be spiritually discerned. A willingness to do 
 God's will must precede the knowledge of the doctrine, 
 and this willingness of mind and heart must be begot- 
 ten by the Holy Ghost. Put peculiar honor upon the 
 Divine Spirit and He will put peculiar honor upon you 
 and your work. He will open your eyes to behold the 
 wondrous things in God's law ; He will give you the 
 witness of His presence in your own soul, and will en- 
 able you, in all meekness and humility, yet with the 
 highest Christian positiveness, to say : I know whom 
 and what and why I have believed, and am persuaded 
 that my confidence rests not upon the wisdom of man, 
 but upon the wisdom of God. 
 
 And as you thus teach the Word of God under the 
 guidance of the Spirit of God ; as day by day you pre- 
 
18 EDWARD ROBINSON CHAIR 
 
 sent the truth as it is in Jesus to those who are to 
 preach a crucified Redeemer to dying men, may the 
 Lord bless you and keep you ; may He equip you for 
 duty, help you in the discharge of it, and when your 
 great work is finished may His " Well done " be pro- 
 nounced upon His " good and faithful servant." 
 
 response of professor briggs. 
 
 Ladies and Gentlemen : 
 
 I thank you one and all for your presence here to- 
 night to do honor to the venerable President of the 
 Board of Directors of this Seminary, who has been 
 identified with this institution from its foundation, and 
 who has crowned a life of Christian philanthropy by 
 the endowment of a Chair of Biblical Theology in mem- 
 ory of the greatest Biblical scholar our country has 
 produced. 
 
 Our Saviour tells us that it is more blessed to give 
 than to receive, and we know that your heart, honored 
 Sir, is the happiest on this occasion. You have en- 
 shrined your name with the name of Edward Robinson 
 in a Professor's Chair which in all time to come will 
 teach the theology of the Bible, and train thousands of 
 students in that Word of God, which is to be the joy of 
 their own hearts and the glad tidings of redemption to 
 the world. You have so fully endowed this Chair that 
 you alone will sustain it in time to come, and have the 
 entire credit with every successive professor and stu- 
 dent for that financial support without which the work 
 of grace cannot be conducted in this world. Your in- 
 fluence will go with these heralds of salvation to the 
 ends of the earth, and as each in his turn shall tread the 
 highway to the heavenly city, he will fill your heart 
 with joy in recounting what God has wrought through 
 
OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 19 
 
 him and through you. You have laid up a treasure in 
 heaven that is secured to you through all the ages of 
 eternity. You have not waited, as so many do, for the 
 dying hour to make your bequest. You make it in 
 your lifetime, while you may rejoice in its accomplish- 
 ment. 
 
 I thank you for the great kindness you have done 
 me in naming me as your choice for the Chair of your 
 foundation. No one could have done me more honor. 
 You could not have bestowed upon me a greater bene- 
 faction than in making me the first Professor in a Chair 
 whose work so exactly corresponds with my ideals of 
 christian service, and which bears the name of a 
 teacher whose memory is one of my most sacred asso- 
 ciations. 
 
 Edward Robinson was the pupil of Moses Stuart, the 
 father of Biblical learning in America. 
 
 He carried on the work of Biblical scholarship and laid 
 the foundations upon which all recent scholars are 
 building. His Lexicons of the languages of the Old 
 Testament and the New Testament are in the hands of 
 most theological students and ministers, and in new edi- 
 tions, that are in course of preparation, will be the help 
 of future generations. His " Harmony of the Gospels," 
 in revised editions, still holds its place as the best of 
 Harmonies. His exploration of Palestine made him the 
 father of modern Biblical Geography. His mind was 
 sound and clear, his judgment firm and solid, his per- 
 ceptions keen and searching. If he had a fault it was in 
 his dislike of traditionalism. He was a man of truth 
 and deeds. He could not endure shams of any kind. 
 He was an explorer and a builder. He rose on the 
 heights of the best Biblical learning, and he taught his 
 students to go forward. He appropriated the best treas- 
 

 20 EDWARD ROBINSON CHAIR 
 
 ures of German learning, and held his ground against 
 every suspicion of rationalism. As a professor in Union 
 Theological Seminary he was a great teacher. As the 
 Secretary of its Faculty for many years he was a great 
 disciplinarian. He was the first librarian, to whom we 
 owe the organization of our great library. It has been 
 my honor to be one of his successors as Librarian, as 
 Secretary and in the Hebrew Chair, and everywhere I 
 have been under the spell of his influence. Edward 
 Robinson knew and appreciated the discipline of Bib- 
 lical Theology, which in his day was getting a foothold 
 in the German universities — but he was obliged, by the 
 poverty of Union Seminary, to do all the work of the 
 Biblical department, with a single tutor. Like a wise 
 master, he gave his strength to the foundations. Owing 
 to the benefaction of James Brown, the Biblical depart- 
 ment was organized in two chairs; but long after Rob- 
 inson's death. Then to this was added a temporary 
 Professor in the department of Biblical Philology. 
 Now the chair of Biblical Theology has been estab- 
 lished, and the Biblical department of Union Theolog- 
 ical Seminary rises to the height of Edward Robinson's 
 ideal. Can we doubt — to use your own words, Mr. Presi- 
 dent — that his benediction is upon us on this occasion ? 
 
 It was my privilege, as a student of Union Seminary, 
 to have as teachers the best Faculty in the world : 
 Thomas H. Skinner, Edward Robinson, Henry B. 
 Smith, Roswell D. Hitchcock, and Henry Hadley. I 
 think that I know these men and that their hearts are 
 with us, their successors. 
 
 It is proper that I should briefly allude to our late 
 President, Roswell D. Hitchcock, my teacher and then 
 my friend. He knew the value of Biblical Theology. 
 In his lectures on Biblical History he introduced it into 
 
OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 21 
 
 his course so far as possible as one of its sections, but 
 he saw that the field was too vast, and longed for the 
 time when this Chair should be endowed. Dr. Hitch- 
 cock was one of the prophets of his time. He had 
 marvellous foresight and insight. He saw that the revi- 
 sion movement was coming, and that a transformation 
 of theology was necessary. He prepared his students 
 for the day and the work. He has left us little in book 
 form, but his volume of Sermons is worth a hundred 
 books of other men, and his influence and name will 
 endure as long as the sun and the moon, to all genera- 
 tions. 
 
 It is a happy feature of this occasion that my dear 
 brother Frazer, whom I learned to value and to love, in 
 the class rooms of the Seminary, represents the Board 
 of Directors in giving me their Charge. I could be sure 
 of his confidence as entwined in the memory of youth- 
 ful study and affection. I thank him for the expression 
 of it again to-night. To you, gentlemen of the Board 
 of Directors, I wish to express my heartfelt thanks. 
 Your unanimous choice of me to this position in all the 
 circumstances of the case is a renewed token of those 
 pleasant relations that have never been disturbed since 
 first you welcomed me, a young and inexperienced 
 teacher, into the ranks of the faculty. I can only say 
 that, so far as I know myself, I am loyal to you, to the 
 faculty, to my teachers, and to the founders and the 
 benefactors of this institution. 
 
 In advancing into the fields of Biblical Theology it is 
 a great comfort to me that you have chosen as my suc- 
 cessor in the Hebrew Chair one, a pupil, who knows 
 my work, and will carry it on — a friend, who has been 
 for many years as my right arm, who will do the work 
 better than I have done it, and who has the courage 
 
22 EDWARD ROBINSON CHAIR. 
 
 to go forward and build higher. The only difficulty 
 I had in the way of accepting the chair, was lest too 
 much work would be imposed upon him by the as- 
 sumption of new work in addition to the old. I can- 
 not refrain from expressing my thanks to my dear 
 friend, David H. McAlpin, that he has removed this 
 difficulty out of our way, and in addition to numerous 
 acts of kindness, which seem as natural to him as life 
 and breath, he has furnished the means to sustain a 
 tutorial assistant to Dr. Brown for two years in the 
 hope that ere that time shall elapse some kind friend 
 may be glad to add another name to the benefactors of 
 this institution, and follow the example set by our hon- 
 ored President. 
 
 It may not be out of place for me to say that Union 
 Theological Seminary is not a wealthy institution. We 
 need at least half a million dollars to make us comfort- 
 able. 
 
 It is impossible for the gentlemen of our Board of 
 Directors to do all that the Seminary requires. They 
 are one and all doing nobly. Some of them are strain- 
 ing their resources to sustain this institution and ex- 
 alt it. 
 
 God has blessed us in the past ; we are rejoicing in 
 His blessing to-night. I doubt not there are in this 
 audience and in this city numerous friends, who will 
 bless us and bless themselves in the eternities with the 
 ample supply that they will furnish for all the needs of 
 this institution, that it may be a centre of evangelism 
 for this metropolis, for the nation, and for the world. 
 
III. 
 
 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 The Authority of Holy Scripture. 
 
 The theme for my discourse to-night has sprung out 
 of the necessities of the situation. It seems to be my 
 duty to set forth my views fully and frankly with refer- 
 ence to those fundamental questions of our times that 
 underlie the discipline of Biblical Theology. Accord- 
 ingly, I have chosen that upon which everything de- 
 pends — the Authority of Holy Scripture. 
 
 Human nature is so constituted that, when self-con- 
 sciousness and reflection rise into activity, there is an 
 irresistible impulse to seek authority for the relations 
 in which we find ourselves, the knowledge that is taught 
 us and the conduct prescribed for us in life. We may 
 be content as children with the authority of our par- 
 ents, as young men and maidens with the authority of 
 masters and teachers, but, sooner or later, the responsi- 
 bility is thrown upon ourselves, and we alone must bear 
 the strain of life, incur its obligations, and earn its 
 rewards and penalties for time and for eternity. What 
 authority shall be our guide and comfort in life is a 
 fundamental question for man at all times, but never 
 has it been so urged upon our race as in the closing 
 years of the nineteenth century. 
 
 If we undertake to search the forms of authority that 
 exist about us, they all alike disclose themselves as human 
 and imperfect, and we feel at times as if we were upon 
 
 (23) 
 
24 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 an unknown sea, with pilots and officers in whom we 
 have no confidence. The earnest spirit presses back 
 of all these human authorities in quest of an infallible 
 guide and of an eternal and immutable certainty. Prob- 
 ability might be the guide of life in the superficial 
 eighteenth century, and for those who have inherited 
 its traditions, but the men of the present times are in 
 quest of certainty. Divine authority is the only author- 
 ity to which man can yield implicit obedience, on 
 which he can rest in loving certainty and build with 
 joyous confidence. 
 
 The progress of criticism in our day has so under- 
 mined and destroyed the pillars of authority upon 
 which former generations were wont to rest that agnos- 
 ticism seems to many minds the inevitable result of 
 scientific investigation. We cannot know God, we can- 
 not be certain with regard to ultimate realities. Man 
 cannot rise to the throne of the Deity. He cannot see 
 the Invisible or know the transcendent. Unless God 
 in some way enter within the region of human knowl- 
 edge, we cannot know Him. But if God be God, if He 
 be the Creator and Sovereign of the universe, if He has 
 made it and governs it with a holy purpose, He may 
 not only transcend universal nature by reigning over 
 it, but He may enter into it, inhabit it, and pervade it 
 with His immanence. He may disclose His presence 
 in forms that men may be able to discern. 
 
 I. — THE SOURCES OF DIVINE AUTHORITY. 
 
 It is the testimony of human experience in all ages ( 
 that God manifests Himself to men and gives certainty 
 of His presence and authority. There are historically 
 three great fountains of divine authority — the Bible, 
 the Church, and the Reason. 
 
THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 25 
 
 (i.) The Authority of the Church. — The majority of 
 Christians from the apostolic age have found God 
 through the Church. Martyrs and saints, fathers and 
 schoolmen, the profoundest intellects, the saintliest 
 lives, have had this experience. Institutional Chris- 
 tianity has been to them the presence-chamber of God. 
 They have therein and thereby entered into commun- 
 ion with all saints. It is difficult for many Protestants 
 to regard this experience as any other than pious illu- 
 sion and delusion. But what shall we say of a modern 
 like Newman, who could not reach certainty, striving 
 never so hard, through the Bible or the Reason, but 
 who did find divine authority in the institutions of the 
 Church ?* Shall we deny it because it may be beyond 
 our experience? If we have not seen God in institu- 
 tional Christianity, it is because the Church and its 
 institutions have so enveloped themselves to us with 
 human conceits and follies. Divine authority has been 
 so encased in the authority of popes and councils, prel- 
 ates and priests, ecclesiastics and theologians, that 
 multitudes have been unable to discern it ; and these 
 mediators of redemption have so obtruded themselves 
 in the way of devout seekers after God that they could 
 not find God. Plain, common people have not been 
 offended so much by this state of things, because they 
 
 * " From the time that I became a Catholic, of course I have no further 
 history of my religious opinions to narrate. In saying this, I do not mean to 
 say that my mind has been idle, or that I have given up thinking on theological 
 subjects ; but that I have had no changes to record, and have had no anxiety 
 of heart whatever. I have been in perfect peace and contentment. I never 
 have had one doubt. I was not conscious to myself, on my conversion, of any 
 difference of thought or of temper from what I had before. I was not conscious 
 of firmer faith in the fundamental truths of revelation or of more self-command ; 
 I had not more fervor ; but it was like coming into port after a rough sea ; and y y' 
 my happiness on that score remains to this day without interruption." — New- 
 man's Apologia Pro Vita Sua, p. 264. 
 
26 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 are accustomed in all denominations to identify the 
 authority of God with the authority of priest and 
 pastor, as a child identifies the authority of the parent 
 with the authority of God ; and men of deep spiritual 
 insight may be able to force their way through these v 
 obstructions, and find God in spite of them. But to men 
 of the temperament and environment of the average 
 educated Protestant such an experience is difficult, if 
 not impossible. Nevertheless, the Church is a seat of 
 divine authority, and the multitudes of pious souls in 
 the present and the past have not been mistaken in 
 their experience when they have found God in the 
 Church. 
 
 (2.) The Authority of the Reason. — Another means 
 used by God to make Himself known is the forms of the 
 Reason, using Reason in a broad sense to embrace the 
 metaphysical categories, the conscience and the religi- 
 ous feeling. Here, in the Holy of Holies of human 
 nature, God presents Himself to those who seek Him. 
 The vast multitude of men are guided by God through 
 the forms of the Reason, without their having any con- 
 sciousness of His presence or guidance. There are few 
 who are able to rise by reflection into the higher con- 
 sciousness of God. These few are of the mystic type 
 of religion ; the men who have been the prophets of 
 mankind, the founders of religions, the leaders of Re- 
 vivals and Reformations, who, conscious of the divine 
 presence within them, and certain of His guidance, lead 
 on confidently in the paths of divine Providence. Such 
 men have appeared in all ages of the world. Some of 
 them have been the leaders of thought in modern times 
 in Great Britain, Germany, and America. We ought 
 not to be surprised that they should depreciate the 
 Bible and the Church as merely external modes of find- 
 
THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 27 
 
 ing God, for even the prophets of the Bible attach little 
 importance to the institutions of Israel, and seldom 
 mention them, except to warn against their misuse.* 
 
 It may be that these modern thinkers have a divine 
 calling to withdraw men from mere priestcraft, cere- 
 monialism, dead orthodoxy and ecclesiasticism, and 
 concentrate their attention on the essentials of the 
 Christian religion. 
 
 Martineau could not find divine authority in the 
 Church or the Bible, but he did find God enthroned in 
 his own soul.f There are those who would refuse these 
 Rationalists a place in the company of the faithful. 
 But they forget that the essential thing is to find God 
 and divine certainty, and if these men have found God 
 without the mediation of Church and Bible, Church 
 and Bible are means and not ends ; they are avenues to 
 God, but are not God. We regret that these Rational- 
 ists depreciate the means of grace so essential to most 
 of us, but we are warned lest we commit a similar 
 error, and depreciate the Reason and the Christian con- 
 sciousness. 
 
 s/ 
 
 * i Sam. xv. 22-23; Is- i. IO_I 7; Jer. vii. 22-26; Mic. vi. 6-8. 
 
 t " Divine guidance has never and nowhere failed to men ; nor has it ever, 
 in the most essential things, largely differed amongst them ; but it has not 
 always been recognized as divine, much less as the living contact of Spirit with 
 spirit — the communion of affection between God and man. While conscience 
 remained an impersonal law, stern and silent, with only a jealous Nemesis be- 
 hind, man had to stand up alone, and work out for himself his independent 
 magnanimity ; and he could only be the pagan hero. When conscience was 
 found to be inseparably blended with the Holy Spirit, and to speak in tones 
 immediately divine, it became the very shrine of worship — its strife, its repent- 
 ance, its aspirations, passed into the incidents of a living drama, with its crises 
 of alienation and reconcilement ; and the cold obedience to a mysterious neces- 
 sity was exchanged for the allegiance of personal affection. And this is the 
 true emergence from the darkness of ethical law to the tender light of the life 
 divine. The veil falls from the shadowed face of moral authority, and the 
 directing love of the all-holy God shines forth." — Martineau's Seat of 
 Authority in Religion, p. 75. 
 
 V 
 
28 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 (3.) The Authority of Holy Scripture. — We have ex- 
 amined the Church and the Reason as seats of divine 
 authority in an introduction to our theme, the Author- 
 ity of the Scriptures, because they open our eyes to 
 see mistakes that are common to the three depart- 
 ments. Protestant Christianity builds its faith and life 
 on the divine authority contained in the Scriptures, 
 and too often depreciates the Church and the Reason. 
 Spurgeon is an example of the average modern Evan- 
 gelical, who holds the Protestant position, and assails 
 the Church and Reason in the interest of the authority 
 of Scripture. But the average opinion of the Christian 
 world would not assign him a higher place in the 
 kingdom of God than Martineau or Newman. May we 
 not conclude, on the whole, that these three represent- 
 ative Christians of our time, living in or near the 
 world's metropolis, have, each in his way, found God 
 and rested on divine authority ? May we not learn from 
 them not to depreciate any of the means whereby God 
 makes Himself known to men ? Men are influenced by 
 their temperaments and environments which of the 
 three ways of access to God they may pursue. There 
 are obstructions thrown up by the folly of men in each 
 one of these avenues, and it is our duty as servants of 
 the living God, to remove the stumbling-block out of 
 the way of all earnest seekers after God, in the avenues 
 most familiar to us. 
 
 No one of these ways has been so obstructed as the Y 
 Holy Bible. The ancient Jews made a fence about the 
 law, and enclosed it with circle upon circle of tra- 
 ditional interpretation, so that the law itself was hid- 
 den out of sight, the external circle of interpretation 
 having taken its place, and the authority of God was 
 obscured by the authority of man. The Christian 
 
THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 29 
 
 Church pursued the same method, and concealed the 
 Word of God behind the authority of popes and coun- 
 cils, fathers and schoolmen. The Reformers brought 
 the Bible from its obscurity for a season, but their suc- 
 cessors, the scholastics and ecclesiastics of Protestant- 
 ism, pursued the old error and enveloped the Bible with 
 creeds and ecclesiastical decisions, and dogmatic sys- 
 tems, and substituted for the authority of God the 
 authority of a Protestant rule of faith. The Bible has 
 been treated as if it were a baby, to be wrapped in 
 swaddling-clothes, nursed, and carefully guarded, lest it 
 should be injured by heretics and skeptics. It has 
 been shut up in a fortress, and surrounded by breast- 
 works and fortifications as extensive as those that 
 envelope Cologne and Strasburg. No one can get at 
 the Bible unless he force his way through these breast- 
 works of traditional dogmatism, and storm the barriers 
 of ecclesiasticism. 
 
 II. — THE BARRIERS OF DIVINE AUTHORITY IN HOLY 
 SCRIPTURE. 
 
 The Bible is the book of God, the greatest treasure 
 of the Church. Its ministry are messengers to preach 
 the Word of God, and to invite men to His presence 
 and government. It is pharisaic to obstruct their way 
 by any fences or stumbling-blocks whatever. It is a 
 sin against the divine majesty to prop up divine author- 
 ity by human authority, however great or extensive. 
 The sun is shining in noontide splendor. Lest men, 
 by looking at it, should quench the light of the great 
 luminary, let us build walls so high that they cannot 
 see the sun, and let us guard its light by reflecting mir- 
 rors. The grace of God is the true elixir of life to all 
 mankind. Lest indiscriminate use of it should vitiate 
 
30 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 its powers, let us dilute it in several degrees, so that it 
 may not come to men directly, but only through a suc- 
 cession of safe hands. How absurd, you say. And 
 yet this is the way men have been dealing with the 
 Bible, shutting out the light of God, obstructing the 
 life of God, and fencing in the authority of God. 
 
 (i.) Superstition. — The first barrier that obstructs the 
 way to the Bible is superstition. V/e are accustomed to 
 attach superstition to the Roman Catholic Mariolatry, 
 Hagiolatry, and the use of images and pictures and 
 other external things in worship. But superstition is 
 no less superstition if it take the form of Bibliolatry. 
 It may be all the worse if it concentrate itself on this 
 one thing. But the Bible has no magical virtue in it, 
 and there is no halo enclosing it. It will not stop a 
 bullet any better than a mass-book. It will not keep 
 off evil spirits any better than a cross. It will not guard 
 a home from fire half so well as holy water. If you de- </ 
 sire to know when and how you should take a journey, 
 you will find a safer guide in an almanac or a daily 
 newspaper. The Bible is no better than hydromancy 
 or witchcraft, if we seek for divine guidance by the 
 chance opening of the Book.* The Bible, as a book, is 
 paper, print, and binding, — nothing more. It is enti- 
 
 * I am far from any disposition to treat with disrespect the religious convic- 
 tions of pious Roman Catholics or Protestants. Roman Catholic divines rec- 
 ognize that there are superstitious uses of the mass-book, the cross, and holy 
 water that are not justified by Roman Catholic doctrine and usage. My argu- 
 ment is against those Protestants who exhibit the same superstition toward the 
 Bible as some Roman Catholics show in the ceremonies of their religion. Su- 
 perstition is just as bad in the one as in the other. The only difference is : n 
 the forms of its manifestation. In my experience, those who make the loudest 
 outcry against Roman Catholic superstition are the very ones who are most 
 guilty of the superstition I am condemning in Protestantism. The criticisms 
 that have been made upon this address, especially in religious journals noted 
 for their hostility to Roman Catholicism, show that Bibliolatry is more preva- 
 lent in Protestantism than I had supposed. 
 
THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 32 
 
 tied to reverent handling for the sake of its holy con- 
 tents, because it contains the divine word of redemp- 
 tion for man, and not for any other reason whatever. 
 
 (2.) Verbal Inspiration. — The second barrier, keeping 
 men from the Bible, is the dogma of verbal inspiration. 
 The Bible in use in our churches and homes is an Eng- 
 lish Bible. Upon the English Bible our religious life is 
 founded. But the English Bible is a translation from' 
 Hebrew, Aramaic, and Greek originals. It is claimed 
 for these originals by modern dogmaticians that they 
 are verbally inspired. No such claim is found in the 
 Bible itself, or in any of the creeds of Christendom. 
 And yet it has been urged by the common opinion of 
 modern evangelicalism that there can be no inspiration 
 without verbal inspiration.* But a study of the origi- 
 nal languages of the Bible finds that they are languages 
 admirably fitted by divine Providence for their pur- 
 pose^ but still, languages developing in the same way 
 essentially as other human languages. The text of the 
 Bible, in which these languages have been handed down, 
 has shared the fortunes of other texts of other literature. 
 
 We find there are errors of transmission. There is 
 nothing divine in the text, — in its letters, words, or 
 clauses.;}: There are those who hold that thought and 
 language are as inseparable as body and soul. But lan- 
 guage is rather the dress of thought. A master of 
 many languages readily clothes the same thought in 
 half a dozen different languages. The same thought 
 in the Bible itself is dressed in different literary styles, 
 and the thought of the one is as authoritative as the 
 other. The divine authority is not in the style or in 
 
 ^ 
 
 * Briggs' Whither, pp. 64 seq. Charles Scribner's Sons. 
 
 + Briggs' Biblical Study, pp. 42 seq. Charles Scribner's Sons. 
 
 \ Biblical Study, pp. 156 seq. 
 
32 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 the words, but in the concept, and so the divine power 
 of the Bible may be transferred into any human lan- 
 guage.* The divine authority contained in the Scrip- 
 tures speaks as powerfully in English as in Greek, in 
 Choctaw as in Aramaic, in Chinese as in Hebrew. We 
 force our way through the language and the letter, the 
 grammar and the style, to the inner substance of the 
 thought, for there, if at all, we shall find God. 
 
 (3.) Authenticity. — The third barrier is the authentic- 
 ity of the Scriptures. The only authenticity we are con- 
 cerned about in seeking for the divine authority of the 
 Scriptures is divine authenticity, \ and yet many theolo- 
 gians have insisted that we must prove that the Scrip- 
 tures were written by or under the superintendence of 
 prophets and apostles.;}: Refusing to build on the au- 
 thority of the living Church, they have sought an au- 
 thority in the dead Church ; abandoning the authority 
 of institutional Christianity, they have sought a prop 
 in floating traditions. These traditions assign authors 
 to all the books of the Bible, and on the authority of 
 these human authors, it is claimed that the Bible is di- 
 vine. These theologians seem altogether unconscious 
 of the circle of reasoning they are making. They prove 
 the authority of the Bible from the authority of its au- 
 thors. But what do we know of the authors apart from 
 the Bible itself? Apart from the sacred writings, — 
 Moses and David, Paul and Peter, would be no more 
 to us than Confucius or Sakya Muni. They were lead- 
 ers of men, but how do we know that they were called 
 of God to speak divine words to us? The only way in 
 which we can prove their authority is from their writ- 
 ings, and yet we are asked to accept the authority of 
 the writings on the authority of these authors. When 
 
 * Whither, p. 66. + Biblical Study, pp. 220 seq. \ Whither, pp. 81 seq. 
 
THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 33 
 
 such fallacies are thrust in the faces of men seeking di- 
 vine authority in the Bible, is it strange that so many- 
 turn away in disgust? It is just here that the Higher 
 Criticism has proved such a terror in our times. Tradi- 
 tionalists are crying out that it is destroying the Bible, 
 because it is exposing their fallacies and follies. It may 
 be regarded as the certain result of the science of the 
 Higher Criticism that Moses did not write the Penta- 
 teuch or Job ; Ezra did not write the Chronicles, Ezra, 
 or Nehemiah ; Jeremiah did not write the Kings or 
 Lamentations ; David did not write the Psalter, but 
 only a few of the Psalms ; Solomon did not write the 
 Song of Songs or Ecclesiastes, and only a portion of the 
 Proverbs ; Isaiah did not write half of the book that 
 bears his name. The great mass of the Old Testament 
 was written by authors whose names or connection with 
 their writings are lost in oblivion.* If this is destroy- 
 ing the Bible, the Bible is destroyed already. But who 
 tells us that these traditional names were the authors 
 of the Bible? The Bible itself? The creeds of the 
 Church? Any reliable historical testimony? None of 
 these! Pure, conjectural tradition! Nothing more! 
 We are not prepared to build our faith for time and 
 eternity upon such uncertainties as these. We desire 
 to know whether the Bible came from God, and it is 
 not of any great importance that we should know the 
 names of those worthies chosen by God to mediate His 
 revelation. It is possible that there is a providential 
 purpose in the withholding of these names, in order 
 that men might have no excuse for building on human 
 authority, and so should be forced to resort to divine 
 authority. It will ere long become clear to the Chris- 
 tian people that the Higher Criticism has rendered an 
 
 * Biblical Study, pp. 222 seq. 
 
 
34: THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 inestimable service to this generation and to the gen- 
 erations to come. What has been destroyed has been 
 the fallacies and conceits of theologians ; the obstruc- 
 tions that have barred the way of literary men from the 
 Bible. Higher Criticism has forced its way into the Bi- 
 ble itself and brought us face to face with the holy con- 
 tents, so that we may see and know whether they are di- 
 vine or not. Higher Criticism has not contravened any 
 decision of any Christian council, or any creed of any 
 Church, or any statement of Scripture itself. It has 
 rather brought the long-neglected statement of the 
 Westminster Confession into prominence: 
 
 " The authority of the Holy Scripture, for which it 
 ought to be believed and obeyed, dependeth not upon 
 the testimony of any man or church, but wholly upon 
 God (who is truth itself), the author thereof; and 
 therefore it is to be received, because it is the word of 
 God." * 
 
 Luther, with keen spiritual insight, once said : 
 
 " What does not teach Christ, that is not apostolic, 
 even if St. Peter or St. Paul taught it : again, what 
 preaches Christ that would be apostolic, even if Judas, 
 Annas, Pilate, and Herod did it."f 
 
 It used to be the fashion to apologize for this word 
 of Luther ; but here, as elsewhere, Luther was truer to 
 the Gospel than modern theologians. 
 
 (4.) Inerrancy. — The fourth barrier set up by theolo- 
 gians to keep men away from the Bible is the dogma of 
 the inerrancy of Scripture. This barrier confronts His- 
 torical Criticism. It is not a pleasant task to point out 
 errors in the sacred Scriptures. Nevertheless Histori- 
 cal Criticism finds them, and we must meet the issue 
 
 * Confess, of Faith, I. 4. 
 
 f Kostlin, Luther's Theologie, II. 256 ; Walch. xiv., p. 149. 
 
THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 35 
 
 whether they destroy the authority of the Bible or 
 not. It has been taught in recent years, and is still 
 taught by some theologians, that one proved error de- 
 stroys the authority of Scripture.* I shall venture to 
 affirm that, so far as I can see, there are errors in the Scrip- 
 tures that no one has been able to explain away ; and the 
 theory that they were not in the original text is sheer 
 assumption, upon which no mind can rest with cer- 
 tainty.f If such errors destroy the authority of the Bible, 
 it is already destroyed for historians. Men cannot shut 
 their eyes to truth and fact. But on what authority 
 do these theologians drive men from the Bible by this 
 theory of inerrancy? The Bible itself nowhere makes 
 this claim. The creeds of the Church nowhere sanction 
 it. It is a ghost of modern evangelicalism to frighten 
 children. The Bible has maintained its authority with 
 the best scholars of our time, who with open minds 
 have been willing to recognize any error that might be 
 pointed out by Historical Criticism ; J for these errors 
 are all in the circumstantials and not in the essentials ; 
 they are in the human setting, not in the precious jewel 
 itself ; they are found in that section of the Bible that 
 theologians commonly account for from the providen- 
 tial superintendence of the mind of the author, as distin- 
 guished from divine revelation itself. It may be that 
 this providential superintendence gives infallible guid- 
 ance in every particular ; and it may be that it differs 
 but little, if at all, from the providential superintend- 
 ence of the fathers and schoolmen and theologians of 
 the Christian Church. It is not important for our pur- 
 pose that we should decide this question. If we should 
 
 * Biblical Study, pp. 240 seq. ; Whither, pp. 68 seq. \ Whither, p. 72. 
 
 X G. P. Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation, p. 206 seq. ; Charles 
 Gore, in Lux Mundi, pp. 354 seq. ; W. Sanday, Oracles of God, pp. 15 seq. 
 
36 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 abandon the whole field of providential superintendence 
 so far as inspiration and divine authority are concerned 
 and limit divine inspiration and authority to the essen- 
 tial contents of the Bible, to its religion, faith, and mor- 
 als, we would still have ample room to seek divine au- 
 thority where alone it is essential, or even important, in 
 the teaching that guides our devotions, our thinking, and 
 our conduct. Whether divine authority extends to the 
 circumstantials of this divine teaching or not, it is un- 
 wise and it is unchristian to force men to accept the 
 divine authority of the Bible or reject it, on the ques- 
 tion of its inerrancy in the circumstantials and the 
 details of every passage.* 
 
 (5.) Violation of the Laws of Nature. — The fifth ob- 
 struction to the Bible has been thrown up in front of mod- 
 ern science. It is the claim that the miracles disturb, or 
 violate, the laws of nature and the harmony of the uni- 
 verse ; and so the miracles of the Bible have become to 
 men of science sufficient evidence that the Bible is no 
 more than other sacred books of other religions, f But 
 the theories of miracles that have been taught in the 
 Christian Church are human inventions for which the 
 Scriptures and the Church have no responsibility what- 
 ever. 
 
 The miracles of the Bible are confined to the 
 life of Christ and His apostles and to the ministry of 
 Moses, Elijah, and Elisha, with very few exceptions. 
 The Biblical writers do not lay so much stress upon 
 them as modern apologists. Moses and Jesus both 
 warn their disciples against miracles that would be 
 wrought in the interest of false prophets and false mes 
 siahs4 The tests that they gave to discriminate the 
 
 * Whither, p. 73. \ Whit her, pp. 279 seq. 
 
 % Deut. xiii. 1-5 ; Matth. xxiv. 24-28 ; 2 Thess. ii. 8-12. 
 
THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 37 
 
 true from the false were not their marvellous charac- 
 ter, their violation of the laws of nature, their suspen- 
 sion of the uniformity of law, or the comprehension of 
 extraordinary laws with ordinary laws in higher laws 
 — nothing of the kind ; but the simple test whether 
 they set forth the holy character and the gracious 
 teaching of God and His Messiah. The miracles of the 
 Bible are miracles of redemption. They exhibit the 
 love of God and the compassion of the Messiah for the 
 needy, the suffering and the lost.* These divine fea- 
 tures of Biblical miracles have been obscured by the 
 apologists, who have unduly emphasized their mate- 
 rial forms. The miracles of the Bible were the work 
 of God either by direct divine energy or mediately 
 through holy men, energized to perform them ; but there 
 is no reason why we should claim that they in any way 
 violate the laws of nature or disturb its harmonies. We 
 ought not to be disturbed by the efforts of scholars to 
 explain them under the forms of divine law, in accord- 
 ance with the order of nature. If it were possible to 
 resolve all the miracles of the Old Testament into ex- 
 traordinary acts of Divine Providence, using the forces 
 and forms of nature in accordance with the laws of na- 
 ture ; and if we could explain all the miracles of Jesus, 
 His unique authority over man and over nature, from 
 His use of mind cure, or hypnotism, or any other occult 
 power, — still I claim that nothing essential would be lost 
 from the miracles of the Bible ; they would still remain 
 the most wonderful exhibition of loving purpose and 
 redemptive acts of God and of the tenderness and grace 
 of the Messiah's heart. Christian men may construct 
 their theories about the miracles of the Bible with en- 
 tire freedom so long as they do not deny the reality of 
 
 * A. B. Bruce, The Miraculous Element in the Gospels, pp. 25S seq. 
 
38 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 the events themselves as recorded in Holy Scripture. 
 The study of the miracles of the Bible has convinced me 
 that they may be explained from the presence of God 
 in nature, in varied forms of Theophany and Chris- 
 tophany, for where God is present we may expect mani- 
 festations of divine authority and power. As my friend, 
 Dr. Bruce, recently said : 
 
 " Miracles are not the effects of partially or wholly unknown 
 physical causes ; they are produced by immediate divine caus- 
 ality. But they are not on that account lawless or unnatural. 
 They are wrought for a worthy end, and in accordance with a 
 wise plan. They are natural in the sense that they are congru- 
 ous to the nature of God, falling within the compass of His 
 power and subject to the direction of His wise, holy, loving 
 will. They are natural further, I may add, in the sense that 
 they do not wantonly interrupt or upset the order of nature, 
 but rather put it to higher uses, which from the first it has 
 been fitted and destined to subserve." — Bruce 's The Miraculous 
 Element in the Gospels, p. 66. 
 
 (6.) Minute Prediction. — Another barrier to the Bible 
 has been the interpretation put upon Predictive Prophecy, 
 making it a sort of history before the time, and looking 
 anxiously for the fulfilment of the details of Biblical 
 prediction. Kuenen has shown that if we insist upon 
 the fulfilment of the details of the predictive prophecy 
 of the Old Testament, many of these predictions have 
 been reversed by history ; and the great body of the 
 Messianic prediction has not only never been fulfilled, 
 but cannot now be fulfilled, for the reason that its own 
 time has passed forever.* 
 
 The Book of Jonah gives valuable suggestion here. 
 See Jonah going to Nineveh with a prediction that in 
 forty days Nineveh will be destroyed, and then going 
 
 * Briggs' Messianic Prophecy, pp. 43 seq. Charles Scribner's Sons. 
 
THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 39 
 
 to a safe place outside the city, waiting with impatience 
 for the grand sight, the destruction of the metropolis 
 of the world. But Nineveh repents and God recalls His 
 decree, and the city is spared. The prophet is so dis- 
 tressed and humiliated at the failure of his prediction 
 that he longs for death.* Doubtless God has not ful- 
 filled His prediction. He has recalled it. The messen- 
 ger has been discredited as a predictor, but he has been 
 accredited as the channel of the redemption from God. 
 It may be that Nineveh will presume upon the weak- 
 ness of God, His fickleness and changeableness. But at 
 all events, God Himself takes the risk. This is not the 
 only unfulfilled prediction in the Old Testament. God 
 has recalled more than one of His messages of woe.f 
 He postpones the dies irce until men count Him slack 
 in the fulfilment of His promises, and mock and jeer at 
 His justice.:}: 
 
 They know not that their salvation is involved in 
 these recalls and postponement. God is not willing 
 that any should perish. He rules over the world to re- 
 deem as many as possible. This makes it difficult for 
 a hard and fast system of dogma. It troubles the 
 apologist and disarranges his lines of defence, but it 
 presents God Himself as the God of man, the very 
 God that humanity craves. Jonah represents only too 
 well the general attitude of Jew and Christian alike to 
 the heathen world. Embedded in Jonah, unnoticed 
 save by Zwingli and a few Anabaptists and heretics, is 
 the gospel of infant salvation and of heathen salvation. 
 
 " Should not I have pity on Nineveh, that great city ; 
 wherein are more than six-score thousand persons that 
 
 * Jonah iii.-iv. 
 
 t Is. xxxviii. ; Briggs' Messianic Prophecy, pp. 58 seq. 
 
 X 2 Peter iii. 3-9. 
 
40 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 cannot discern between their right hand and their left 
 hand; and also much cattle?"* 
 
 We need no evidence that this is a divine utterance ; 
 it speaks for itself. It is clearer than a thousand de- 
 tailed predictions and their fulfilment. 
 
 We have passed through these barriers that men 
 have thrown up in front of the Word of God, the breast- 
 works against Philosophy, History, and Science. It is 
 not surprising that multitudes of the best men of our 
 age have rejected a Bible thus guarded and defended, 
 as if it could not sustain the light of day. Doubtless 
 there are many who are thinking that the critics are 
 destroying the Bible. They have so identified these 
 outworks with the Bible itself that their Bible vanishes 
 with these barriers. I feel deeply for them. But we 
 have a right to assume that if these apologists are 
 within the camp of God, they ought to have such con- 
 
 * Jonah iv. u. I recently came upon a passage in one of the early Baptists, 
 using this verse of Jonah in a way that was unknown to orthodox circles : 
 
 "And our Saviour Christ Luke XVIII: 16. in commendation of the condi- 
 tion and qualitie of Babes, saith, Suffer the Babes to come unto me : for of 
 such is the kingdome of Heaven. And Matth. XVIII: 3. Except ye be con- 
 verted and become as little children ye shal not enter into the kingdome of 
 heaven. <&» Ver. 4 whosoever therefore shal humble himself as this little child, 
 the same is the greatest in the Kingdome of heaven. In all this shewing, that 
 the children of Christ's Kingdome must be off such humble qualities and con- 
 ditions as infants, & 1 hope none will deny, but al infants are off one quality 
 & condition, even the infants of the Turks, our Saviour speakes off al infants 
 generally : & evil men yet judge some infants condemned. 
 
 " And of such infants the Lord sheweth his great compasion, when he saith 
 to the Prophet Jonah— Jonah IV: 11 ... . whereby the Lord sheweth that they 
 had not sinned, neither were giltie off their Fathers sinnes. And wil you yet 
 charge the Lord to condemne so manie infants and al for Adams sinne ? are 
 not your waies unequall thus to say and teach me to hold & think off God ? "— 
 Tho. Helwys. A Short and Flaine Proof by the Word, and workes off God 
 that Gods decree is not the cause ofanne Mans sinne or condemnation. And 
 that all men are redeemed by Christ. As also that no Infants are condemned. 
 161 1, sine loco. 
 
THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 41 
 
 fidence in divine authority that nothing from without 
 could shake them. If they have been relying on the 
 defenses and too little upon the Bible itself, it is high 
 time that they were forced back to the Bible. But I 
 feel more deeply for those many men, honest and true, 
 whom they have been keeping away from the Bible.* I 
 would say to all such : We have undermined the breast- 
 works of traditionalism ; let us blow them to atoms. We 
 have forced our way through the obstructions ; let us 
 remove them from the face of the earth, that no man 
 hereafter may be kept from the Bible, but that all may 
 freely enter in, search it through and through, and find 
 God enthroned in its very centre. 
 
 Here in the citadel of the Bible two hosts confront 
 the most sacred things of our religion — the one, the 
 defenders of traditionalism, trembling for the ark of 
 God ; the other, the critics, a victorious army, deter- 
 mined to capture all its sacred treasures and to enjoy 
 all its heavenly glories. 
 
 The self-constituted defenders can no longer retain a 
 monopoly of the Word of God and exact conditions of 
 all who would use it. It has already been taken from 
 them by Biblical criticism, and it is open to all man- 
 kind, without conditions. Is it not their heritage? 
 Did not Jesus and His apostles offer it to them as glad 
 tidings of redemption to the world? Are there not 
 treasures of grace in Holy Scripture amply sufficient 
 for all mankind ? It is the teaching of God that men 
 
 * Dr. A. B. Bruce, one of the keenest observers of the religious life of our 
 times, says : "I certainly believe that there are many more unpolished dia- 
 monds hidden in the churchless mass of humanity than the respectable church- 
 going part of the community has any idea of. I am even disposed to think 
 that a great and steadily increasing portion of the moral worth of society lies 
 outside the Church, separated from it not by godlessness, but rather by excep- 
 tionally moral earnestness. Many, in fact, have left the Church in order to be 
 Christians." — Kingdom of God, p. 144. 
 
42 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 are anxious to know ; the theology of the Bible itself 
 is what they are craving. The teaching of men and 
 the theology of creeds and theologians no longer con- 
 tent them. These all have their place and importance, 
 but they cannot take the place of the theology of the 
 Bible and the authority of God. 
 
 III. — THE THEOLOGY OF THE BIBLE. 
 
 We are now face to face with Biblical Theology. Here, 
 if anywhere, the divine authority will be found. It is 
 my habit to divide Biblical Theology into three sec- 
 tions — Religion, Doctrines of Faith, and Morals. Let 
 us look at the God of the Bible as He discloses Him- 
 self in some of these forms. 
 
 A. — THE RELIGION OF THE BIBLE. 
 
 (i.) Theophanies. — The most prominent feature of the 
 religion of the Bible is Theophany. Theophanies are 
 the bases of every advance, the fountain of prophecy, 
 the source of miracle. They guide the heroic leaders 
 and reformers of the Old Testament religion. A per- 
 manent Theophany guides Israel from Egypt to the 
 Holy Land, and takes possession of the Holy Taber- 
 nacle and temple as its permanent abode.* 
 
 Theophanies cluster about the Messiah at His advent, 
 until these give place to the Christophanies, which are 
 the great feature of the New Testament religion. 
 
 It is conceded that these Theophanies have features 
 in common with the mythological conceptions of the 
 ancient religions of the world, which have been rejected 
 as mythical by historical criticism. But so soon as we 
 compare the Theophanies of the Bible with heathen 
 mythology, we observe striking differences. 
 
 * Briggs' Biblical History, pp. 16 seq. Charles Scribner's Sons. 
 
 
THE INAUGURAL ADDKESS. 43 
 
 (a) There is nothing of a polytheistic character about 
 the Theophanies of the Bible. The one God manifests 
 Himself to chosen men and a chosen people. 
 
 (b) The Theophanies of the Bible are not confined to 
 ancient times, the legendary basis of the history ; they 
 pervade and control the entire history of the Bible. 
 
 (c) The mythological conceptions of the divine pres- 
 ence are connected with gross conceptions, in which 
 the gods are of like passion with ourselves ; but the 
 Theophanies of the Bible are pure and holy, and ever 
 have in view the redemption of men. God assumes 
 the forms of light or fire, or of angel or man, in order 
 that He may be manifest to the human senses, and as- 
 sure mankind of His presence and favour.* 
 
 (d) When the doctrine of the divine transcendence 
 was unduly emphasized, the Theophanies remained in 
 obscurity behind the miracle and the prediction which 
 might be wrought by the power of God from a distance, 
 outside His universe. But now that the Immanence 
 of God is rising into prominence, the Theophany casts 
 the miracle and the prediction into its shadow. We 
 now know that God is not only over all, but through 
 all and in all. He is not far from any one of us. If 
 we feel after Him, we may find Him. We cannot 
 escape from His presence. If God is really present in 
 the world, pervading it, inhabiting it, was it not a part 
 of the divine instruction that men should be taught 
 by visible signs to see it and know it? When He 
 appeared to the ancients in human form, they were 
 assured by their senses of His ability to be with them 
 in every hour of need, and they were prepared for 
 the conception of the great prophet of the exile : 
 " I dwell in the high and holy place, with him also 
 
 * Briggs' Biblical History, p. 21. 
 
44 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 that is of a contrite and humble spirit." * When God 
 guided Israel by a pillar of cloud and fire, He taught 
 them in sensible signs the sublime truth of His govern- 
 ance of mankind. When He took up His abode in the 
 temple, He was training them for the conception of the 
 universal religion, that He inhabits the whole earth. 
 If God is really present in His world, and has an inter- 
 est in the bearers of redemption to a chosen people, 
 the kingdom of priests for mankind, is it not reason- 
 able that He should show His form in the midst of the 
 elements of nature, and His countenance in the faces of 
 intelligent beings ? 
 
 The Theophanies of the Old Testament lead on to 
 the Christophanies of the New Testament — the incar- 
 nation, resurrection, ascension, and advent in glory, 
 whereby the Messiah taught mankind the»great lessons 
 of redemption. And the Theophany of the Divine 
 Spirit at Pentecost was a visible and audible pledge of 
 His permanent residence in the Church during the era 
 of grace. If mankind needed additional theophanies, 
 doubtless they would be given by the God of all grace; 
 but those recorded in the Bible, from Genesis to the 
 Apocalypse, make a royal highway of light and glory 
 throughout Biblical history, and give sufficient assur- 
 ance of the presence of the Triune God with the people 
 of God until the end of the age, and the accomplish- 
 ment of the destinies of the world and man. 
 
 (2.) The Institutions of the Old Testament. — The insti- 
 tutions of the Old Testament religion are of a most 
 elaborate character. Whatever theory we may hold 
 as to their origin and development, whether given by 
 Moses at the basis of the history, or from a long series 
 of prophets and priests during the history, they present 
 
 * Is. lvii. 6. 
 
THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 45 
 
 a majestic system. About the throne-room of God, 
 where the theophanic presence dwelt, were gathered 
 sacred places, sacred furniture, sacred times, sacred 
 orders of priesthood, rites of sacrifice and purification, 
 and holy rules for life and conduct. These doubtless 
 belong to the region of external religion, and to a 
 lower stage in the religious training of man. The Old 
 Testament prophets knew as well as we that they were 
 mere forms, invalid without holy contents of grace, that< 
 God dwells not in temples made by hands, the heavens 
 cannot contain Him in all their wondrous heights and 
 breadths ; * obedience was ever more sacred than 
 sacrifice^ and all the beasts of the forests were God's ; 
 the cattle gathered in thousands upon the hills, how 
 could men satisfy Him with one of the flock or herd?:}: 
 Pure hearts were vastly more important than clean 
 hands.§ The universal priesthood of Israel | was older 
 and more important than the Levitical and Aaronic 
 orders. 
 
 This magnificent religious system is pure and holy 
 throughout. A holy God can be worshipped only by a 
 holy people, and in ceremonies of holiness. Hence, 
 there was not, and could not be, any of the cruelty, 
 licentiousness, intemperance, and manifold vices that 
 were inseparably entwined in the institutions of the 
 other great religions of the world. Divine institutions 
 are forms of grace, dignity, and beauty, to set forth 
 the wonders of redemption. They point forward, as 
 by myriad flames of light, to the Messiah, who absorbs 
 them in the sunshine of His presence. They then pass 
 away as the shades of the night, when first they see 
 the eyelids of the dawn.^f They become, for all ages 
 
 * 1 Kings viii. 27. + 1 Sam. xv. 22, 23. % Ps. 1. 8-14. 
 
 § Is. i. 10-17 ; Ps. xxvi. 6. | Ex. xix. 5-6. Tf Col. ii. 17. 
 
46 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 and all men, the appropriate symbols of the universal 
 religion. They evince by their history and their real- 
 ization that God had for a season clothed Himself with 
 these forms and ceremonies for the enlightenment and 
 guidance of mankind. 
 
 B. — THE FAITH OF THE BIBLE. 
 
 The Faith of the Bible embraces the three topics : 
 God, Man, and Redemption. 
 
 (i.) The Doctrine of God. — The God of the Bible is 
 one God, not merely the God of a family, a tribe, a 
 land, a nation, but the God of all the earth. It is true, 
 Israel learned this only by degrees — but nowhere in 
 the Bible do we find any recognition of other gods as 
 having a place in a pantheon. God is sovereign of 
 angels, seraphim and cherubim, of the hosts of heaven, 
 as well as of Israel and mankind. The God of the Bible 
 is spirit — He transcends the universe that He created, 
 governs and directs to its appointed end, but He is im- 
 manent in His universe, inhabiting it and by His energy 
 shaping all its forces. The God of the Bible is a. per- 
 son, bearing proper names, the most significant of which, 
 Jahveh, indicates His personal interest in and guid- 
 ance of His people, a person who may be approached 
 in prayer and praise, and who recognizes His worship- 
 pers, bestowing upon them blessings of every kind. 
 The God of the Bible is a living God, the fountain 
 of every life and activity, living in all life, moving in 
 all motion. 
 
 The Being of God in the Bible is still high above the 
 best attainments of philosophical theism, and the most 
 skilful constructions of the systematic theologian. 
 When we turn from the best of them to the God of 
 the Bible, it is like rising from earth to heaven. A 
 
THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 47 
 
 new doctrine of God is one of the greatest needs of 
 our time.* The Bible gives it to us if we will only look 
 at it and embrace it. 
 
 How was it possible for any ancient writer to have 
 conceived or imagined such a God, unless God had 
 presented Himself to him in the forms of the Reason, 
 and he had seen and known Him as the only living and 
 true God ? 
 
 The attributes of God as set forth in the evolutions 
 of Biblical Theology have none of those faults that 
 appear more or less in the best systems of Theology, f 
 That God is just, righteous, a God of equity and judg- 
 ment, is as clear as the day. The great sovereign of the 
 earth must do justice ; we need no Bible to tell us that. 
 But the favorite attribute of the Old Testament and 
 the New is the attribute of mercy, because this attri- 
 bute man needs most to know, and it is not so evident 
 in the light of nature. The mercy of God is the theme 
 upon which the histories and the prophets, the singers 
 and the sages alike delight to dwell. The greatest of 
 the theophanies granted to Moses was in order to reveal 
 God as the gracious, compassionate, the long-suffering, 
 abounding in mercy and faithfulness.^ The love of 
 God rises to its heights in the fatherly love of Deu- 
 teronomy,! and the earlier Isaiah || and Jeremiah ;^[ in 
 the marital love of Hosea,** Zephaniah, and the second 
 Isaiah+f — a love to an unfaithful wife, who has dis- 
 graced her husband and herself by many adulteries ; fy 
 and a child who rewards the faithful father with such 
 persistent disobedience, that he must be beaten to 
 
 * Briggs' Whither, pp. 93 seq. \ Briggs' Whither, pp. 95 seq. 
 
 \ Ex. xxxiv. 6-7. § Deut. iv. 37 ; vii. 13 ; x. 15 ; xxxii. 6 seq. 
 
 \ Is. i. 2 seq. If chap, xxx.-xxxi. ** Chap, i.-iii. 
 
 tt Is. liv. 1-17 ; Ixii. \% Hos. i.-ii. 
 
48 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 death and raised from the dead in order to be saved.* 
 The love of God as taught in the Old Testament is hard 
 for the Jew or the Christian to understand. It trans- 
 cends human experience. It seems so impossible even 
 for God, that men must be explaining it away. These 
 wonderful chapters of the Old Testament are neglected 
 in all of our creeds and systems of divinity — because 
 these all exaggerate the divine justice and veracity, 
 and fear lest God should be too merciful. Like Jonah, 
 they have not been able to conceive how it is possible 
 for God to redeem the great cities of heathendom. 
 They have not seen that He could have any compas- 
 sion on the Samaritans and the Moabites, who do not 
 belong to the Israel of God, but are the enemies of the 
 historic faith.f They have seen the throne of God 
 and its pillars of righteousness and justice, and have 
 supposed that sovereignty was enthroned there. They 
 have not seen the love that was seated on the throne, 
 and its messengers of mercy and faithfulness going 
 forth with salvation to the children of men.:}: 
 
 The love of God as taught in the Old Testament 
 transcends human powers of conception. None could 
 have taught such love who had not seen the loving 
 countenance of God, and experienced the pulsation of 
 that love in their own hearts. The love of God in the 
 Bible is an invincible, a triumphant authority that in- 
 vokes the loving obedience of men. 
 
 It is not necessary to depreciate the love of God in 
 the Old Testament in order to exalt the love of the 
 Messiah. The love of God in the Old Testament is 
 the preparation to understand the love of God in the 
 
 * Jer. xxxi. 18-20 ; Hos. xi. 8, 9 ; xiii. 14. 
 
 \ How shall we revise the Westminster Confession 0/ Faith f pp. 98 seq. 
 Charles Scribner's Sons. 
 % Ps. lxxxix. 14. 
 
THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 4.9 
 
 New Testament, who so loved the world, as to give His 
 only begotten Son for its salvation.* O, when will 
 men learn that the Bible means exactly what it says ! 
 It may destroy our logic and our syllogism, our systems 
 and our methods. These we have too long regarded as 
 authorities. Logic and syllogism, system and method, 
 need constant criticism, verification, and revision ; for 
 too often they omit the essential thing. Their induc- 
 tions are too narrow, their comprehension is too lim- 
 ited ; they beg their premises and jump to their con- 
 clusions. The love of God to the world is more 
 important than all the systems devised by men. It 
 will shine forever as the central sun of the universe, 
 when all the creeds and theologies have been buried in 
 the oblivion of the eternities. It will go on through 
 the centuries of the world, darting its rays of heavenly 
 light, its beams of divine fire, and its regenerating and 
 transforming movements, until the world knows that 
 God loves the world, and the world adores Him with 
 loving worship. 
 
 (2.) Doctrine of Man. — The doctrine of Man in the 
 Bible is divine doctrine. A twin mirror shows man 
 what he is in sin and misery, and what he is to be in 
 holiness and happiness. 
 
 The Word of God is a revelation of the sin of man. 
 Sin is exposed in the interests of redemption, that it 
 may be brought to the consciousness of every reader of 
 the Bible. The conscience approves the voice of the 
 Spirit saying, " Thou art the man/'f when our sins 
 disclose themselves in the picture gallery of the Bible, 
 and we are convicted before the internal tribunal by a 
 divine voice speaking with an authority that cannot be 
 
 * John iii. 16. t 2 Sam. xii. 7. 
 
50 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 questioned, bringing us to temporal judgment, that we 
 may escape the ultimate doom. 
 
 The Bible presents sinful man in the midst of an 
 original innocency and an ultimate perfection. Sin is 
 only a temporary condition. Jew and Christian alike 
 exaggerate the original innocency and depreciate the 
 ultimate perfection.* The exaggeration of the original 
 innocency is in the interest of an original righteous- 
 ness, which, like a dress, might be removed as a punish- 
 ment of sin and then put on again by grace. 
 
 Protestant theologians have exaggerated the original 
 righteousness in order to magnify the guilt of our first 
 parents. They thus come in conflict with ethical and 
 religious philosophy. The Bible is not responsible for 
 these exaggerations. The original man was innocent 
 and sinless, but not possessed of that righteous and 
 moral excellence that comes only by discipline and 
 heavenly training. The temptation was a necessary 
 means of grace. Man did not make his religious prog- 
 ress in the straight line of faith and obedience, but in 
 the curved line of sin and redemption. 
 
 But the most important thing in Biblical Anthropol- 
 ogy is the ideal of mankind. Man was created to be 
 the lord of nature, the culmination of its evolutions. 
 Man was made to be God-like ; and though he sought 
 it in the paths of disobedience, he is sure to gain it on 
 the highway of redemption. Man was one in origin, 
 and cannot be any other than one in the plan of God.f 
 The processes of redemption ever keep the race in 
 mind. The Bible tells us of a race origin, a race sin, a 
 race ideal, a race redeemer, and a race redemption.^ 
 
 * Briggs' Whither, pp. 107 seq. 
 t Briggs' Messianic Prophecy, pp. 69 seq., 476 seq. 
 
 % No one can understand the doctrine of the Incarnation who does not con- 
 ceive of a relation of the Messiah to the race. My revered teacher, Henry B. 
 
THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 51 
 
 These ideals of the Bible are high above reality. They 
 are so grand and glorious that they have been persist- 
 ently misunderstood and perverted by men. None of 
 us rise to their transcendent glories. 
 
 God holds these twin mirrors before us to drive us 
 from sin and to compel us to holiness. Divine author- 
 ity in the Bible calls to every one of us : Forsake sin 
 and live a perfect life ; come unto Me and be My son, 
 My holy one, the child of My good pleasure. 
 
 (3.) Redemption. — Redemption is born of the love of 
 God ; it aims at the transformation of the sinful and 
 suffering race of man into the image of God. It com- 
 prehends the whole nature of man, his whole life, and 
 the entire race. The history of the world is the divine 
 discipline of mankind. 
 
 (a) The Old Testament doctrine of Redemption is 
 chiefly concerned in the material interests of man. In 
 the vast majority of cases it has to do with salvation 
 from enemies, from afflictions and sorrows, from pov- 
 erty and from death. Our Saviour's ministry was 
 chiefly to the poor and the outcasts in Israel, the pub- 
 licans and the harlots ; and the redemption that He 
 gave them was not merely the forgiveness of sins, but 
 redemption from physical sufferings. The Christianity 
 of Christ is to heal the sick, to feed the hungry, to give 
 
 Smith, says : " The destiny of man in Christ is to come to the measure of the 
 stature of his fulness. Christ is the very ideal of humanity realized. Even 
 in a human point of view, He is the consummate flower of the human race, a 
 character unique, in wisdom, love, and holiness. Not only in the individual 
 life and individual perfection does the relation subsist between man and Christ, 
 but it also holds of man as a whole, of the collective race, of man in history. 
 We are all to come into the unity of the faith and knowledge of the Son of 
 
 God He who gives the law to history is the law-giver of the race. 
 
 In Him, and in Him alone, the secrets of humanity are hid, its enigmas re- 
 solved, its salvation insured. He who redeems the race must be the Head and 
 Lord of the race. The whole human family finds its centre, its crown, its 
 peace, in Him." — System of Christian Theology, pp. 383-4. 
 
52 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 drink to the thirsty, to comfort all that mourn. Such 
 are the tests that the Messiah applies in His royal 
 judgment, whether His servants have followed His ex- 
 ample in doing just these things in their ministry.* 
 
 The Redemption taught in the Bible aims to remove 
 all the ills that flesh is heir to. There can be no Dark- 
 est Africa or Darkest London which the light of Re- 
 demption may not illuminate with heavenly influences. 
 Poverty, vice, and crime are inconsistent with Chris- 
 tianity. Christianity has undertaken to remove them 
 from the world. The Bible gives us the principles, the 
 examples, and the divine authority for their extirpa- 
 tion. Christianity is inconsistent with the present 
 social condition of New York, and the other great 
 cities of the world. We have no right to the name 
 of Christians ; we bring reproach on the name of Jesus 
 Christ ; we dishonor the God of the Bible, and are 
 stumbling-blocks in the way of the suffering multitudes, 
 obstructing their way to God, and their entrance into 
 the kingdom of heaven, if we do not, with all our 
 souls, strive to relieve their misery and want. The 
 Bible, through and through, insists upon the redemp- 
 tion of the bodies of men, as well as their souls, and 
 of the whole framework of human society. This heav- 
 enly teaching is so against the prejudices and the 
 attainments of mankind, that it is an unmistakable 
 evidence of the divine authority of the Scriptures that 
 so strongly urge it upon us. 
 
 {b) The Redemption of the Bible comprehends the 
 whole process of grace. Modern Protestants have un- 
 duly emphasized the beginning of redemption, justi- 
 fication by faith alone.f The slight put upon Christian 
 love prevented many a devout soul, like Staupitz,. 
 
 * Matth. xxv. 31-46. t Briggs' Whither, pp. 142 seq. 
 
THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 53 
 
 from joining in the Reformation. One of the disciples 
 of Luther taught that good works were hurtful to sal- 
 vation ; and a practical, if not a theoretical, Antinomi- 
 anism has too often been one of the Adam's apples of 
 Protestantism. 
 
 James has a word for the men of this generation — 
 Faith without works is dead. * A justification that 
 does not lead on to sanctification gives no credentials 
 of genuineness. A faith that does not result in a life 
 of repentance discredits itself. 
 
 The movement called Methodism laid too much 
 stress upon the experience of regeneration at the be- 
 ginning of the Christian's life.f But a regeneration 
 that does not exhibit a real, earnest Christian life, 
 fruitful in good works, is not a regeneration into the 
 kingdom of God, whatever else it may be. 
 
 The Bible rises high above the faults of modern 
 theology, and comprehends in its redemption of man 
 his justification, sanctification, and glorification ; his re- 
 generation, his renovation, and his transformation ; his 
 faith, his repentance, and his holy love. No one who is 
 not entirely saved can sustain the judgment of the day of 
 doom4 If this Biblical doctrine could be impressed upon 
 the men of our day, the authority of God would disclose 
 itself in a transformation of the world, and the intro- 
 duction of an era in which holiness would be the aim 
 of mankind. 
 
 (c) Another fault of Protestant theology is in its lim- 
 itation of the process of redemption to this world,§ and 
 its neglect of those vast periods of time which have 
 
 * James ii. 26. t Briggs' Whither, pp. 118 seq. 
 
 X 1 Thess. iii. 13 ; 1 Cor. i. 8 ; Rom. viii. 29-30 ; Eph. iv. 13-26. 
 § Briggs' article, Redemption after Death, in Mag. of Christian Literature, 
 Dec, 1889. See also Whither, pp. 206 seq. 
 
54 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 elapsed for most men in the Middle State between death 
 and the resurrection. The Roman Catholic Church is 
 firmer here, though it smears the Biblical doctrine with 
 not a few hurtful errors. The reaction against this limi- 
 tation, as seen in the theory of second probation, is not 
 surprising. I do not find this doctrine in the Bible,* 
 but I do find in the Bible the doctrine of a Middle 
 State of conscious higher life in the communion with 
 Christ and the multitude of the departed of all ages;f 
 and of the necessity of entire sanctification, in order 
 that the work of redemption may be completed.;}: 
 There is no authority in the Scriptures, or in the 
 creeds of Christendom, for the doctrine of immediate 
 sanctification at death. The only sanctification known 
 to experience, to Christian orthodoxy, and to the 
 Bible, is progressive sanctification.§ Progressive sanc- 
 tification after death, is the doctrine of the Bible and 
 the Church ; and it is of vast importance in our times 
 that we should understand it, and live in accordance 
 with it. The bugbear of a judgment immediately after 
 death, and the illusion of a magical transformation 
 in the dying hour | should be banished from the 
 world. They are conceits derived from the Ethnic 
 religions, and without basis in the Bible or Christian 
 experience as expressed in the symbols of the Church. 
 The former makes death a terror to the best of men, 
 the latter makes human life and experience of no 
 effect ; and both cut the nerves of Christian activity 
 and striving after sanctification. Renouncing them as 
 hurtful, unchristian errors, we look with hope and joy 
 for the continuation of the processes of grace, and the 
 
 * Whither, pp. 217 seq. t 2 Cor. v. 1-9; Heb. xii. 22-24, etc. 
 
 X Matth. v. 48 ; John xvii. 17 ; Rom. viii. 29-30 ; 1 John iii. 2. 
 § West. Confession, chap. xiii. fl Whither, p. 195. 
 
THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 55 
 
 wonders of redemption in the company of the blessed, 
 to which the faithful are all hastening ; and through 
 these blessed hopes we enter into the communion of 
 all saints, and have a happy consciousness of the one 
 holy catholic Church, whose centre and majestic frame 
 are chiefly in the skies, the one body of the one Christ. 
 (d) The Biblical redemption is a redemption of our 
 race and of universal nature. The Bible teaches that 
 the material universe shares in the destiny of man, and 
 is in throes of birth for this blessed hope.* As the 
 ancient Jews limited redemption to Israel and over- 
 looked the nations, so the Church limited redemption 
 to those who were baptized, and excluded the heathen 
 and the unbaptized ; and Presbyterians have too often 
 limited redemption by their doctrine of Election. The 
 Bible knows no such limitations. The Bible teaches 
 election, but an election of love.f Loving only the 
 elect is earthly, human teaching. Electing men to sal- 
 vation by the touch of divine love — that is heavenly 
 doctrine. The one drives men away in despair, the 
 other unites men with joy to the love of God.J The 
 Bible does not teach universal salvation, but it does 
 teach the salvation of the world, of the race of man, 
 and that cannot be accomplished by the selection of a 
 limited number of individuals from the mass. The 
 holy arm that worketh salvation does not contract its 
 hand in grasping only a few ; it stretches its loving fin- 
 gers so as to comprehend as many as possible — a defi- 
 nite number, but multitudes that no one can number. 
 The salvation of the world can only mean the world 
 
 * Rom. viii. 18-25. t Whither, pp. 95 seq. 
 
 % " Election is the expression of God's infinite love towards the human race, 
 redeeming man from sin through Christ, and by the Holy Spirit bringing him 
 into this state of redemption, so far as it is consistent with the interests of God's 
 great and final kingdom." — H. B. Smith, System of Christian Theology, p. 505. 
 
56 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 as a whole, compared with which the unredeemed will 
 be so few and insignificant, and evidently beyond the 
 reach of redemption by their own act of rejecting it and 
 hardening themselves against it, and by descending into 
 such depths of demoniacal depravity in the Middle 
 State, that they will vanish from the sight of the re- 
 deemed as altogether and irredeemably evil, and never 
 more disturb the harmonies of the saints. 
 
 C. — BIBLICAL ETHICS. 
 
 We are now prepared for the Ethics of the Bible, the 
 fruitage of Theology, the test of all the rest. Biblical 
 Ethics presents us an advancing system of morals — God 
 showing His holy face and character and the sublime 
 precepts of morality as men were able to bear them. 
 
 In the field of Biblical Ethics there is considerable 
 criticism at the present time. Biblical Ethics have not 
 been so carefully studied as Biblical Religion and Bibli- 
 cal Faith ; therefore the principles that determine their 
 development are not so clearly understood. There is 
 ample room for criticism in the ethical precepts and in 
 the conduct of the holy men of the Bible. 
 
 The ancient worthies, Noah and Abraham, Jacob 
 and Judah, David and Solomon, were in a low stage 
 of moral advancement. Doubtless it is true, that we 
 would not receive such men into our families, if they 
 lived among us and did such things now as they did 
 then. We might be obliged to send them to prison, 
 lest they should defile the community with their exam- 
 ple. But they do not live now ; they lived in an early 
 age of the world, when the divine exposition of sin was 
 not so searching, and the divine law of righteousness 
 was not so evident. They were not great sinners to 
 their age ; they were the saints of God. 
 
THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 57 
 
 Abraham was the father of the faithful,* the great 
 hero of faith for all time, and it is an honor for a Chris- 
 tian to count him as father. When he went into the 
 abode of the dead, he held his pre-eminence among the 
 departed. He made up for his defects in this life by 
 advancing in the school of sanctification there open to 
 him. Let us not suppose that we have passed beyond 
 him in sinlessness or ethical elevation. Our blessed 
 Lord sees the poor Lazarus in Abraham's bosom, the 
 synonym of Paradise itself.f 
 
 Jacob was crafty and treacherous, but he was a pil- 
 grim to the Holy Land, one whose whole ambition 
 was set upon the holy places, one who is the father of 
 all pilgrims, one who, therefore, gave his name to the 
 Holy Land and to the entire Israel of God. 
 
 We should look more at their saintly characters that 
 have given them their place among the heroes of the 
 faithful. Thus we would trace the moral development 
 of Israel, and see it advancing through the centuries 
 until it reaches its height in the holy Messiah. 
 
 It has been too much the custom to use the ancient 
 heroes of the faith as examples to rebuke modern sin- 
 ners. They ought to be held up as examples to make 
 modern heroes. And so it has been thought that Israel 
 was a nation chiefly remarkable for its stiff neck and 
 stubborn heart, for its unfaithfulness and its apostasy. 
 Not so do we read in the Old Testament. Israel was 
 the people of God, dearly beloved, and faithful in the 
 main, ever advancing, never attaining the ideal. I fear 
 that the Christian Church does not present so good a 
 history as the people of Israel in the olden time. If 
 Israel did not live up to the ethical principles of Moses 
 and the prophets, have we lived up to the ethics of 
 
 * Rom. iv. 16-17. t Luke xvi. 23. 
 
58 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 Jesus and His apostles? It is just this feature of Bib- 
 lical Ethics that assures us that divine authority is in it. 
 It presents an ideal ever far above historical reality. 
 
 The Ten Words rise before us in majesty as the guide 
 of morality for the Christian Church, and are as au- 
 thoritative as when first uttered by a divine voice from 
 Sinai. 
 
 Most of the ethical provisions of the Pentateuchal 
 codes were of local and temporal validity, but there are 
 many principles in them that are invaluable hints for 
 the solution of the social problems of our day. There 
 are ethical precepts in the Psalter and the Prophets, 
 and, above all, in the Wisdom Literature of the Old 
 Testament that we need to study and to know. It is a 
 very significant fact that this Wisdom Literature of the 
 Old Testament, which is essentially ethical, has been so 
 neglected by theologians. The Book of Proverbs, 
 the Book of Job, the Song of Songs, and Ecclesiastes 
 are the masterpieces of Old Testament ethics. No por- 
 tion of the Old Testament is likely to prove more 
 useful in the ethical age upon which we are now enter- 
 ing. The holy God calls holy men into His service : 
 
 " Who of us can abide with devouring fire ? 
 Who of us can abide with everlasting burnings ? 
 One walking in perfect righteousness, and speaking uprightly, 
 Refusing the spoil of oppression, 
 Shaking his palms from holding a bribe, 
 Shutting his ears from hearing of bloodshed, 
 And closing his eyes from seeing evil."* 
 
 If the ethical parts of the Old Testament have been 
 neglected, this is still more the case with the ethical 
 parts of the New Testament. It has been said that 
 Calvinists come to a halt in a certain chapter of the 
 
 * Is. xxxiii. 15 seq. 
 
THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 59 
 
 Epistle to the Romans, but it may also be said that the 
 Arminians come to a halt but a short distance further 
 on. Neither Calvinist nor Arminian has risen to the 
 ethical heights of the closing chapters of the epistles 
 to the Romans and the Ephesians. The Epistle of 
 James is ethical throughout ; it has not been a favorite 
 epistle for Protestants. The epistles of John have been 
 too high in their mystic elevation for the modern world. 
 
 But the greatest sin against the Bible has been 
 the neglect of the ethics of Jesus. If one studies 
 the theology of Jesus he is impressed by the fact 
 that it is profoundly ethical, not only in the Ser- 
 mon on the Mount, but also throughout His discourses. 
 The holy man, living such a holy life, how could it be 
 otherwise than that holy words were ever on His lips? 
 Those who question the historicity of the life of Jesus 
 and regard many of His teachings as misunderstood by 
 the evangelists who report them, stand in awe and bow 
 in adoration when they consider His ethical precepts 
 and recognize their divinity. 
 
 Tolstoi says Christians think that Jesus did not mean 
 what He said. Tolstoi's criticism is severe, but is it 
 not just ? If we really believed that Jesus meant what 
 He said, how could we live such selfish lives ? 
 The words of Jesus are so high above us that it 
 seems impossible to realize them in actual life, and 
 so we strive to get a meaning out of them that will 
 be useful to us, and we bury the sublime ideal in a 
 fictitious and temporary explanation.* It is my opinion 
 
 * " The ecclesiastical Christ is to a large extent not the Christ of the Gospels, 
 but a creation of scholastic theology. Notwithstanding all our preaching, 
 Jesus Christ is not well known. That He is not well known is partly the fault 
 of our preaching. Men are not permitted to see Jesus with open face, but only 
 through the thick veil of a dogmatic system. The religious spirit of Jesus, 
 His attitude towards the religion in vogue in J udasa in His time, and its grounds, 
 
£0 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 that if the grace of God should so impel a man that he 
 could be transformed into the image of the holy Jesus, 
 and, like Jesus, rebuke sin in high places and trouble 
 the people with his unapproachable holiness, he would 
 earn the reward of Jesus even in this generation — at the 
 hands of Christian theologians and ecclesiastics. The 
 cry would resound through the streets of New York, 
 " Crucify him ! crucify him ! " 
 
 The words of Jesus, like the life of Jesus, are the 
 ideals of perfection, that men thus far have been unable 
 to understand and realize ; but they will be realized when 
 the world has been so trained and disciplined in the 
 progress of sanctification that it shall become like Him. 
 
 D— THE MESSIAH. 
 
 Thus far we have spoken of the Messiah only indi- 
 rectly ; but every line of religion, doctrine, and morals 
 has brought us unto Him. The Messiah is the culmi- 
 nation of the Old Testament. He is the pivot of His- 
 tory. All through these nineteen centuries Christians 
 have been learning from their Lord, and yet how little 
 do we know of Him. Each period in the history of the 
 Church has been so deeply impressed with some small 
 portion of what the Scriptures have revealed about 
 Him, that it has devoted itself exclusively to that, has 
 exaggerated that, and left other equally important 
 phases of the doctrine unexplored. 
 
 Sometimes the deity of Christ has been so exalted 
 
 His humane sympathies, His thoughts of God, His ethical ideal, have been 
 allowed to fall into the background. Hence types of piety have sprung up 
 within the Church, which, whatever virtues they may possess, are not charac- 
 teristically Christian. It has become possible to be very religious and yet be 
 very unchristian, not only largely ignorant of Christ, but antagonistic to Him 
 in spirit ; to be, in short, a modern reproduction of the Pharisee, imagining 
 one's self to be one of the most faithful friends of Jesus, while hostile to all the 
 true Christian interests of the time." — A. B. Bruce, Kingdom of God, p. 330. 
 
THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. Ql 
 
 that men have forgotten His humanity. Then others 
 have been so absorbed in the wonders of His humanity 
 that they have not seen His divinity. Then the com- 
 plex nature, the union of the human and divine in the 
 Theanthropos, — the profoundest minds of the Christian 
 centuries have thought upon it and unfolded some of 
 its glories, but it is still like the very heavens for heights 
 of mystery and glory. The Messiah's state of humilia- 
 tion has so absorbed men that they have neglected His 
 state of exaltation and glory. In His state of humilia- 
 tion modern Protestants have absorbed themselves 
 in the crucifixion and death, and the doctrine of the 
 Atonement involved therein. The wondrous doctrine 
 of the Incarnation has been neglected until recent 
 times.* It was the merit of my beloved teacher, Henry 
 B. Smith, that he made Incarnation in order to Redemp- 
 tion\ the structural principle of his theology. The 
 holy life of Jesus, long neglected, has in recent years 
 been studied as never before. But the Messiah's de- 
 scent into the abode of the dead — a doctrine of great 
 importance to the ancient Church % — of His resurrec- 
 tion — His enthronement — His reign of grace — His 
 second advent — O, how these have been neglected ! 
 
 The Messianic idea of the Old Testament and the 
 Christology of the New Testament are vastly fuller and 
 richer and grander than any one has imagined. The 
 Christ of the Bible will exert a much greater power 
 upon the coming generations when they grasp the full 
 Biblical doctrine and cease expending their strength 
 and exhausting their energies in the speculative elabo- 
 ration of some few of its phases. § 
 
 * Whit tier, pp. 112 seq. 
 
 t Henry B. Smith's System of Christian Theology. 
 
 X See Redemption after Death. Mag. Christ. Lit., Dec, 1889. 
 
 § How shall we Revise ? pp. 20 seq. 
 
62 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. | 
 
 In all departments of Biblical Theology there is new 
 life and new doctrine and new morals for the Church of 
 God. More light is about to break forth from the Ho- 
 ly Scriptures upon the Christian world, — light for all the 
 churches, for all men, for all nations. The old methods 
 of building on selected texts and isolated passages, 
 which you will find in all the creeds and in all the dog- 
 matic systems,* is about to pass away. The inductive 
 study of the Bible forces us to study every word, sen- 
 tence, and clause, and rise in the inductive process un- 
 til the whole organism of the Bible is presented to us. 
 Such study of the Bible, so far as I have been able to 
 pursue it, has made it to me the freshest, the newest, 
 the most wonderful of Books; has brought about in my 
 mind a different conception in every department of 
 Theology. And many of those things that once seemed 
 to be probabilities on the basis of speculative theology 
 and confessional theology have, in the light of God's 
 Word and in the conviction of divine authority, come 
 to be certainties — the verities of God. 
 
 I have not departed in any respect from the ortho- 
 dox teaching of the Christian Church as set forth in its 
 official creeds. I have had the inestimable privilege of 
 learning, as a student and a friend, from two of the great- 
 est Systematic Theologians of our century — Henry B. 
 Smith and Isaac A. Dorner. These built upon the 
 Bible and the Creeds, the History of Doctrine and the 
 highest attainments of the Human Reason. Such Sys- 
 tematic Theologians the Church greatly needs at the 
 present time, and no one can value them and their 
 work more than I do. These never set up their systems 
 as tests of orthodoxy. They renounce scholasticism 
 
 * How shall we Revise ? pp. 137 seq. 
 
THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. Q$ 
 
 and dogmatism. For the dogmatism of mere traditional 
 opinion and of the dogmaticians, I have no respect. 
 Their speculations are worthy of no more consideration 
 than the speculations of other scholars. But for the 
 creeds of Christ's Church I have the greatest respect, 
 for I am one of those who believes that God inhabits 
 His Church and guides it in its official decisions, not 
 inerrantly in every utterance, but in the essential doc- 
 trines in which the universal Church is in concord. 
 But the theology of the creeds marks only the con- 
 sensus of attainment of the Church in the several stages 
 of advance in the history of doctrine. They are far be- 
 low the Biblical ideal, and, therefore, the best of them 
 seems to give us such a small theology when set in the 
 length and breadth, the heights and depths of the the- 
 ology of the Bible. 
 
 As I have recently said, " Christian churches should 
 go right on in the lines drawn by their own history and 
 their own symbols ; this will in the end lead to greater 
 heights, in which there will be concord. Imperfect 
 statements will be corrected by progress. All forms of 
 error will disappear before the breath of truth. We are 
 not to tear down what has cost our fathers so much. 
 We are rather to strengthen the foundations and but- 
 tress the buildings as we build higher. Let the light 
 shine higher and higher, the clear, bright light of day. 
 Truth fears no light. Light chases error away. True 
 orthodoxy seeks the full blaze of the noontide sun. 
 In the light of such a day the unity of Christendom 
 will be gained." * 
 
 * Whither, pp. 297-8. 
 
64 THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 IV. — THE HARMONY OF THE SOURCES OF DIVINE 
 AUTHORITY. 
 
 I have endeavored to lead you through the obstruc- 
 tions that confront the student of the Bible into the 
 Holy Word itself, that you might recognize the au- 
 thority of God in the Religion, Faith, and Morals of 
 the Bible. I must now ask you to go back with me 
 and use the advantages we have gained for a brief re- 
 view of those other seats of divine authority — the 
 Church and the Reason. 
 
 If God really speaks to men in these three centres, 
 there ought to be no contradiction between them. 
 They ought to be complementary, and they should 
 combine in a higher unity for the guidance and the 
 comfort of men. It is my profound conviction that we 
 are on the threshold of just such a happy reconciliation. 
 The discrepancies that men have found have not been 
 in the authority of God Himself, or in the essential 
 principles that have enveloped it, but in those formal 
 and circumstantial things upon which human nature in 
 its weakness and its depravity ever lays so much stress. 
 Removing these human conceits and follies and these 
 obstructions erected by well-meaning but misguided 
 men from the Bible, the Church, and the Reason, it 
 will be manifest that they are, they always have been, 
 and they always will be harmonious. 
 
 It is human folly to set the Bible against the Church, 
 or either or both of them against the Reason. When- 
 ever this is done, the opposition is only in the human 
 forms and settings. It is clear to me that the Bible 
 needs the Church and the Reason ere it can exert its 
 full power upon the life of men. 
 
 Institutional Christianity was established by Christ 
 
THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. (35 
 
 and His apostles, and no one can safely ignore it. It is 
 the need of our time in that advance toward Church 
 Unity that we are about to make, and to make with so 
 much energy and decision. It is necessary that we 
 should know what Institutional Christianity really is, 
 that we should be members of the visible Church and 
 share in the sacrifices and triumphs of the kingdom of 
 God. The Bible, from the very nature of the case, leads 
 us through its forms into the presence-chamber of God, 
 but our minds are filled at the same time with the his- 
 toric forms of the ancient world. It is the office of the 
 Church, in the use of its institutions, to bring us into 
 communion with the Triune God in the forms of the 
 modern world, and give us the assurance of His pres- 
 ence with the Church through its history, and with us 
 in the hour and moment of our use of its institutions. 
 The Church unites with the Bible in giving us the as- 
 surance of God's presence and authority throughout 
 History, Christian as well as Hebrew, and of His gra- 
 cious help in the present. It gives us the blessed ex- 
 perience of the communion of saints. It opens the 
 eyes to see that we are in the outer ranks of innumer- 
 able lines of the host of the living God, ever on the 
 marcn through the life in this world into the gates of 
 Paradise and onward on the highway of holiness to 
 the throne of God and the Lamb which ever bounds 
 the horizon of the beatific vision. The neglect of the 
 Church as a means of grace retards the use of the 
 Bible itself as a means of grace and dulls our sensitive- 
 ness to the presence of God. 
 
 The Reason also has its rights, its place and import- 
 ance in the economy of Redemption. I rejoice at the 
 age of Rationalism, with all its wonderful achieve- 
 ments in philosophy. I look upon it as preparing men 
 
QQ THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. 
 
 to use their reasons in the last great age of the world. 
 Criticism will go on with its destruction of errors, and 
 its verification of truth and fact. The human mind 
 will learn to know its powers and to use them. The 
 forms of the reason, the conscience, the religious feel- 
 ing, the aesthetic taste — all the highest energies of our 
 nature, will exert themselves as never before. God 
 will appear in their forms, and give an inward assur- 
 ance and certainty greater than that given in former 
 ages. These increased powers of the human soul will 
 enable men to search those higher mysteries of Biblical 
 Theology that no theologian has yet mastered, and 
 those mysteries that are wrapt up in the institutions of 
 the Church, to all who really know them. It is im- 
 possible that the Bible and the Church should ever ex- 
 ert their full power until the human Reason, trained 
 and strained to the uttermost, rise to the heights of 
 its energies, and reach forth after God and His Christ 
 with absolute devotion and self-renouncing love. Then 
 we may expect on the heights of theological specula- 
 tion, and from the peaks of Christian experience, that 
 those profound doctrines that now divide Christendom 
 by their antinomies will appear as the two sides of the 
 same law, or the foci of a divine ellipse, which is itself 
 but one of the curves in that conic section of God's 
 dominion, in which, in loving wisdom, He has appointed 
 the lines of our destiny. 
 
 Go out into the country in the late winter or early 
 spring, and you will see, everywhere, great activity. 
 The farmers are at work with axe, and saw, and knives, 
 the instruments of destruction, cutting off the limbs of 
 trees, and pruning vines and bushes, and rooting out 
 weeds ; fires are running over the fields and meadows, 
 the air is filled with smoke, and it seems as if every- 
 
THE INAUGURAL ADDRESS. QJ 
 
 thing were going to destruction. But they are de- 
 stroying the dead wood, dry and brittle stubble, and 
 noxious weeds. They are removing them out of the 
 way of the life that is beating beneath the surface of 
 the ground, and throbbing in tree and bush. In a few 
 days the fields will be mantled in living green, the 
 trees and bushes will wave their leaves joyously, and 
 deck themselves with blossoms of every variety of 
 beauteous form and color, and the world will rejoice in 
 a new spring-time. Thus is it at the present time in 
 the higher world of religion and morals. Criticism is 
 at work with knife and fire. Let us cut down every- 
 thing that is dead and harmful, every kind of dead 
 orthodoxy, every species of effete ecclesiasticism, 
 all merely formal morality, all those dry and brittle 
 fences that constitute denominationalism, and are the 
 barriers of Church Unity. Let us burn up every form 
 of false doctrine, false religion, and false practice. Let 
 us remove every incumbrance out of the way for a new 
 life ; the life of God is moving throughout Christen- 
 dom, and the spring-time of a new age is about to come 
 upon us : 
 
 " Let the wilderness and the solitary places be glad, 
 And let the desert rejoice, and let it blossom as the rose ; 
 Let it blossom abundantly, and let it rejoice, 
 Even with joy and singing ; 
 The glory of Lebanon has been given unto it, 
 The excellency of Carmel and Sharon ; 
 They see the glory of Jahveh, 
 The excellency of our God. 
 Strengthen ye the weak hands, 
 And confirm the feeble knees. 
 Say to the fearful of heart, Be strong, 
 Fear not : behold your God, 
 
 He cometh with vengeance, with a divine recompense ; 
 He cometh to save you.'' — (Isai. xxxv. 1-4.) 
 
[It has been thought best to give the following extract from Dr. 
 Briggs' "Biblical Study" pp. 390 seq., which presents his views 
 of the idea, place, methods, and divisions of Biblical Theology. ] 
 
 IV. 
 
 THE POSITION AND IMPORTANCE OF 
 BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 
 
 Having considered the origin and history of Biblical 
 Theology, we are now prepared to show its position and 
 importance, and define it as to its idea, method, and sys- 
 tem. (1) The idea of Biblical Theology. — Biblical The- 
 ology is that theological discipline which presents the 
 theology of the Bible in its historical formation within 
 the canonical writings. The discipline limits itself 
 strictly to the theology of the Bible, and thus excludes 
 from its range the theology of the Apocryphal and Pseu- 
 depigraphical writings of the Jewish and Christian sects, 
 the ideas of the various external religious parties, and 
 the religions of the world brought in contact with the 
 people of God at different periods in their history. It 
 is true that these must come into consideration for com- 
 parative purposes in order to show their influence posi- 
 tively and negatively upon the development of Biblical 
 doctrine ; for the Biblical religion is a religion in the 
 midst of a great variety of religions of the world, and 
 its distinctive features can be shown only after the elim- 
 ination of the features that are common with other re- 
 ligions. We must show from the historical circumstances, 
 the psychological preparations, and all the conditioning 
 
 (69) 
 
70 BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 
 
 influences, how far the origin and development of the 
 particular type and the particular stage of religious de- 
 velopment of Israel and the Church were influenced by 
 these external forces. We must find the supernatural 
 influence that originated and maintained the Biblical 
 types and the Biblical religion as distinct and separate 
 from all other religions. And then these other religious 
 forces will not be employed as co-ordinate factors with 
 the Biblical material, as is done by Reuss, Schwegler, 
 and Kuenen, who make Biblical Theology simply a his- 
 tory of religion, or of doctrine in the times of the Bible 
 and in the Jewish nation. Rather these theological con- 
 ceptions of other religions will be seen to be subordinate 
 factors as influencing Biblical Theology from without, 
 and not from within, as presenting the external occa- 
 sions and conditions of its growth, and not its normal 
 and regulative principles. The Biblical limit will be 
 maintained ; for the Biblical material stands apart by 
 itself, in that the theology therein contained is the 
 theology of a divine Revelation, and thus distinguished 
 from all other theologies, both as to its origin and its 
 development ; for they give us either the products of 
 natural religion in various normal and abnormal sys- 
 tems, originating and developing under the influence of 
 unguided or partially guided human religious strivings, 
 or else are apostasies or deflections from the religion of 
 revelation in its various stages of development. 
 
 The discipline we have defined as presenting the The- 
 ology of the Bible. It is true that the term Biblical The- 
 ology is ambiguous as being too broad, having been em- 
 ployed as a general term including Biblical Introduction, 
 Hermeneutics, and so on. And yet we must have a broad 
 term, for we cannot limit our discipline to Dogmatics, for 
 Biblical Dogmatics, as rightly conceived, is a part of Sys- 
 
THE IDEA OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 71 
 
 tematic Theology, beingapriori and deductive in method. 
 Biblical Dogmatics deduces the dogmas from the Bibli- 
 cal material and arranges them in an a priori dogmatic 
 system, presenting not so much the doctrines of the 
 Bible in their simplicity and in their concrete form as 
 they are given in the Scriptures themselves, but such 
 doctrines as may be fairly derived from the Biblical ma- 
 terial by the logical process, or can be gained by setting 
 the Bible in the midst of philosophy and church tradition. 
 We cannot deny to this department the propriety of using 
 the name Biblical Dogmatics or even Biblical Theology. 
 For where a Dogmatic system derives its chief or only 
 material from the Scriptures, there is force in its claim 
 to be Biblical Theology. We do not, therefore, use the 
 term Biblical Theology as applied to our discipline with 
 the implication that a dogmatic system derived from the 
 Bible is 7Z0«-Biblical or not sufficiently Biblical, but as a 
 term which has come to be applied to the discipline 
 which we are now distinguishing from Biblical Dogmat- 
 ics. Biblical Theology, in the sense of our discipline, 
 and as distinguished from Biblical Dogmatics, cannot 
 take a step beyond the Bible itself, or, indeed, beyond 
 the particular writing or author under consideration at 
 the time. Biblical Theology has to do only with the 
 sacred author's conceptions, and has nothing whatever 
 to do with the legitimate logical consequences. It is 
 not to be assumed that either the author or his genera- 
 tion argued out the consequences of their statements, 
 still less discerned them by intuition ; although, on the 
 other hand, we must always recognize that the religion 
 and, indeed, the entire theology of a period or an au- 
 thor may be far wider and more comprehensive than the 
 record or records that have been left of it ; and that, in 
 all cases, Biblical Theology will give us the minimum 
 
72 BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 
 
 rather than the maximum of the theology of a period or 
 author. But, on the other hand, we must also estimate 
 the fact that this minimum is the inspired authority to 
 which alone we can appeal. The only consequences 
 with which Biblical Theology has to do are those his- 
 torical ones that later Biblical writers gained in their ad- 
 vanced knowledge of divine revelation, those conclusions 
 that are true historically — whatever our subjective con- 
 clusions may be as to the legitimate logical results of 
 their statements. And even here the interpretation and 
 use of later writers are not to be assigned to the authors 
 themselves or the theology of their times. We would 
 therefore urge that the term Biblical Dogmatics should 
 be applied to that part of Dogmatics which rests upon 
 the Bible and derives its material from the Bible by the 
 legitimate use of its principles. Dogmatics as a theo- 
 logical discipline, in our judgment, is far wider than the 
 Biblical material that is employed by the dogmatician. 
 The Biblical material should be the normal and regula- 
 tive material, but the dogmatician will make use of the 
 deductions from the Bible and other authorities that the 
 Church has made in the history of doctrine and incor- 
 porated in her creeds or preserved in the doctrinal treat- 
 ises of the theologians. He will also make use of right 
 reason, and of philosophy, and science, and the religious 
 consciousness as manifest in the history of the Church 
 and in the Christian life of the day. It is all-important 
 that the various sources should be carefully discrimina- 
 ted, and the Biblical material set apart by itself in Biblical 
 Dogmatics, lest in the commingling of material, that 
 should be regarded as Biblical which is non-BibUca.1, or 
 extra Biblical, or contra Biblical, as has so often hap- 
 pened in the working of ecclesiastical tradition. And, 
 even then, when Biblical Dogmatics has been distin- 
 
THE IDEA OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 73 
 
 guished in Systematic Theology, it should be held apart 
 from Biblical Theology, for Biblical Dogmatics is the 
 point of contact of Systematic Theology with Exegeti- 
 cal Theology, and Biblical Theology is the point of con- 
 tact of Exegetical Theology with Systematic Theology, 
 each belonging to its own distinctive branch of theolo- 
 gy with its characteristic methods and principles. That 
 system of theology which would anxiously confine it- 
 self to supposed Biblical material, to the neglect of the 
 material presented by philosophy, science, literature, 
 art, comparative religion, the history of doctrine, the 
 symbols, the liturgies, and the life of the Church, and 
 the pious religious consciousness of the individual or of 
 Christian society, must be extremely defective, unscien- 
 tific, and cannot make up for its defects by an appeal to 
 the Scriptures and a claim to be Biblical. None of the 
 great systematic theologians, from the most ancient 
 times, have ever proposed any such course. It has been 
 the resort of the feebler Pietists in Germany, and of the 
 narrower Evangelicalism of Great Britain and America, 
 doomed to defeat and destruction, for working in such 
 contracted lines. 
 
 We do not, therefore, present Biblical Theology as a 
 substitute for Systematic Theology. Systematic Theol- 
 ogy is more comprehensive than Biblical Theology can 
 ever be. But we urge the importance of Biblical Theol- 
 ogy in order to the important distinction that should be 
 made, in the first place, between the Biblical sources and 
 all other sources of Theology, and then, in the second 
 place, to distinguish between the Biblical Theology as 
 presented in the Scriptures themselves, and Biblical 
 Dogmatics which makes legitimate deductions and appli- 
 cations of the Biblical material. 
 
 But Biblical Theology is wider than the doctrines of 
 
74 BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 
 
 the Bible. It includes Ethics also. Here the school of 
 Baur, and even Weiss and Van Oosterzee, would stop. 
 But Schmid, Schultz, and Oehler are correct in taking 
 Biblical Theology to include religion as well as doc- 
 trines and morals, that is, those historic persons, facts, 
 and relations which embody religious, dogmatical, and 
 ethical ideas. This discrimination is important in System- 
 atic Theology, but it is indispensable in Biblical Theol- 
 ogy, where everything is still in the concrete. Thus, a 
 fundamental question in the theology of the New Testa- 
 ment, is what to do with the life of Jesus. The life of 
 Jesus is, as Schmid shows, the fruitful source of His 
 doctrine, and a theology which does not estimate it, 
 lacks foundation and vital power. The life of Jesus may 
 indeed be regarded from two distinct points of view, as 
 a biographical, or a doctrinal and religious subject. The 
 birth of Jesus may be regarded as a pure historical fact 
 or as an incarnation. His suffering and death may be 
 historical subjects, or as expressing atonement. His life 
 may afford biographical matter or be considered as re- 
 ligious, doctrinal, and ethical, in that His life was a new 
 religious force, a redemptive influence and an ethical 
 example. Biblical Theology will have to consider, there- 
 fore, what the life of Jesus presents for its various de- 
 partments. And so the great fact of Pentecost, the 
 Christophanies to Peter, Paul, and John, and the apos- 
 tolic council at Jerusalem must all be brought into 
 consideration. And in the Old Testament we must 
 consider the various covenants and the religious insti- 
 tutions and laws that were grouped about them. With- 
 out religion, with its persons, events, and institutions, 
 Biblical Theology would lose its foundations, and with- 
 out ethical results it would fail of its rich fruitage. 
 We state, furthermore, that the discipline presents 
 
THE PLACE OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. ?& 
 
 the theology of the Bible in its historical formation. 
 This does not imply that it limits itself to the consider- 
 ation of the various particular conceptions of the various 
 authors, writings, and periods, as Weiss and even Oehler 
 maintain, but with Schmid, Messner, Van Oosterzee 
 after Neander it seeks the unity in the variety ; ascertains 
 the roots of the divergencies, traces them each in their 
 separate historical development, shows them co-operat- 
 ing in the formation of one organic system. For Biblical 
 Theology would not present a mere conglomerate of 
 heterogeneous material in a bundle of miscellaneous 
 Hebrew literature, but would ascertain whether there is 
 not some principle of organization ; and it finds that 
 principle in a supernatural divine revelation and com- 
 munication of redemption in the successive covenants 
 of grace extending through many centuries, operating 
 through many minds, and in a great variety of literary 
 styles, employing all the faculties of man, and all the 
 types of human nature, in order to the accomplishment 
 of one massive, all-embracing, and everlasting Divine 
 Word adapted to every age, every nation, every type of 
 character, every temperament of mankind ; the whole 
 world. 
 
 (2) The Place of Biblical Theology. — Biblical Theology 
 belongs to the department of Exegetical Theology as a 
 higher exegesis completing the exegetical process, and 
 presenting the essential material and principles of the 
 other departments of theology. 
 
 The boundaries between Exegetical and Historical 
 Theology are not so sharply defined as those between 
 either of them and Systematic Theology. All Histori- 
 cal Theology has to deal with sources, and in this re- 
 spect must consider them in their variety and unity as 
 well as development ; and hence many theologians com- 
 
76 BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 
 
 bine Exegetical Theology and Historical Theology un- 
 der one head — Historical Theology. It is important, 
 however, to draw the distinction, for this reason. The 
 sources of Biblical Theology are in different relation 
 from the sources of a history of doctrine, inasmuch as 
 they constitute a body of divine revelation, and in this 
 respect to be kept distinct from all other sources, even 
 cotemporary and of the same nation. They have an 
 absolute authority which no other sources can have. 
 The stress is to be laid less upon their historical devel- 
 opment than upon them as an organic body of revela- 
 tion, and this stress upon their importance as sources 
 not only for historical development, but also for dog- 
 matic reconstruction and practical application, requires 
 that the special study of them should be exalted to a 
 separate discipline and a distinct branch of theology. 
 
 Now in the department of Exegetical Theology, Bib- 
 lical Theology occupies the highest place, the latest and 
 crowning achievement. It is a higher exegesis com- 
 pleting the Exegetical Process. All other branches of 
 Exegetical Theology are presupposed by it. The Bib- 
 lical Literature must first be studied as sacred litera- 
 ture. All questions of date of writing, integrity, con- 
 struction, style, and authorship must be determined by 
 the principles of the Higher Criticism. Biblical Can- 
 onics determines the extent and authority of the vari- 
 ous writings that are to be regarded as composing the 
 sacred canon, and discriminates them from all other 
 writings by the criticism of the believing spirit enlight- 
 ened and guided by the Holy Spirit in the Church. 
 Biblical Textual Criticism ascertains the true text of 
 the writings in the study of MSS. and versions and 
 citations, and seeks to present it in its pure primitive 
 forms. Biblical Hermeneutics lays down the rules of 
 
THE PLACE OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 77 
 
 Biblical Interpretation, and Biblical Exegesis applies 
 these rules to the various particular passages of the sa- 
 cred Scriptures. Now Biblical Theology accepts all 
 these rules and results thus determined and applied. 
 It is not its office to go into the detailed examination 
 of the verse and the section, but it must accept the re- 
 sults of a thorough exegesis and criticism in order to 
 advance thereon and thereby to its own proper work of 
 higher exegesis ; namely, rising from the comparison of 
 verse with verse, and paragraph with paragraph, where 
 simple exegesis is employed, to the still more difficult 
 and instructive comparison of writing with writing, au- 
 thor with author, period with period, until by generaliz- 
 ation and synthesis the theology of the Bible is at- 
 tained as an organic whole. 
 
 Biblical Theology is thus the culmination of Exeget- 
 ical Theology, and must be in an important relation to 
 all other branches of theology. For Historical Theol- 
 ogy it presents the great principles of the various periods 
 of history, the fundamental and controlling tendencies 
 which, springing from human nature and operating in 
 all the religions of the world, find their proper expres- 
 sion and satisfaction in the normal development of 
 Divine Revelation, but which, breaking loose from these 
 salutary bonds, become perverted and distorted into 
 abnormal forms, producing false and heretical principles 
 and radical errors. And so in the Biblical unity of these 
 tendencies Biblical Theology presents the ideal unity 
 for the Church and the Christian in all times of the 
 world's history. For Systematic Theology, Biblical 
 Theology affords the holy material to be used in Bib- 
 lical Apologetics, Dogmatics, and Ethics, the funda- 
 mental and controlling material out of which that 
 systematic structure must be built which will express 
 
78 BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 
 
 the intellectual and moral needs of the particular age, 
 fortify the Church for offence and defence in the strug- 
 gles with the anti-Christian world, and give unity to its 
 life, its efforts, and its dogmas in all ages. For Practi- 
 cal Theology it presents the various types of religious 
 experience and of doctrinal and ethical ideas which must 
 be skilfully applied to the corresponding differences of 
 type which exist in all times, in all churches, in all 
 lands, and indeed in all religions and races of mankind. 
 Biblical Theology is indeed the Irenic force which will 
 do much to harmonize the antagonistic forces and va- 
 rious departments of theology, and bring about that 
 reconciliation within the church, which is the greatest 
 requisite of our times. 
 
 (3) Method of Biblical Theology. — The method em- 
 ployed by Biblical Theology is a blending of the genetic 
 and the inductive methods. The method of Biblical 
 Theology arises out of the nature of the discipline and 
 its place in Theological Encyclopaedia. As it must 
 show the Theology of the Bible in its historic formation, 
 ascertain its genesis, the laws of its development from 
 germinal principles, the order of its progress in every 
 individual writer, and from writer to writer and age to 
 age in the successive periods and in the whole Bible, it 
 must employ the genetic method. It is this genesis 
 which is becoming more and more important in our 
 discipline, and is indeed the chief point of discussion in 
 our day. Can all be explained by a natural genesis, or 
 must the supernatural be called in ? The various Ra- 
 tionalistic efforts to explain the genesis of the Biblical 
 types of doctrine in their variety and their combination 
 in a unity in the Scriptures are extremely unsatisfactory 
 and unscientific. With all the resemblances to other 
 religions, the Biblical religion is so different that its 
 
METHOD OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 79 
 
 differences must be explained, and these can only be 
 explained by the claims of the sacred writers themselves, 
 that God Himself in various forms of Theophany and 
 Christophany revealed Himself to initiate and to guide 
 the religion of the Bible in its various movements and 
 stages. Mosaism centres about the great Theophany of 
 Sinai, as Christianity centres about the Resurrection of 
 Jesus Christ, and the life, death, ascension, and second 
 advent therein involved. It is now the problem of 
 Biblical Theology, as it has traced the Theology of the 
 Jewish Christian type to the Theophany of Pentecost, 
 and of the Pauline to the Christophany on the way to 
 Damascus, so to trace the Johannean type and the vari- 
 ous Old Testament types to corresponding supernatural 
 initiation. The Johannean type may be traced to the 
 Christophanies of Patmos.* The Old Testament is full 
 of Theophanies which originate particular Covenants 
 and initiate all the great movements in the history of 
 Israel. 
 
 As it has to exhibit the unity in the variety of the 
 various conceptions and statements of the writings and 
 authors of every different type, style, and character, and 
 by comparison generalize to its results, Biblical Theol- 
 ogy must employ the inductive method and the synthet- 
 ic process. This inductive method is the true method 
 of Exegetical Theology. The details of Exegesis have 
 been greatly enriched by this method during the pres- 
 ent century, especially by the labors of German divines, 
 and in most recent times by numerous laborers in Great 
 Britain and America. But the majority of the laborers 
 
 * We regard the Apocalypse as the earliest of the Johannean writings. The 
 Christophanies therein described had been granted to the apostle prior to the 
 composition of the Gospel, so that the Gospel was written under their influence 
 still more even than under the recollection of the association with Jesus during 
 His earthly ministry. 
 
gQ BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 
 
 in Biblical Theology have devoted their strength to 
 the working out of the historical principle of our disci- 
 pline. Yet within the various types and special doc- 
 trines a large amount of higher exegesis has been 
 accomplished by Weiss, Riehm, Schultz, Diestel, Weif- 
 fenbach, and others. But the highest exegesis in the 
 comparison of types and their arrangement in an or- 
 ganic system with a unity and determining principle out 
 of which all originate, and to which they return their 
 fruitage, remains comparatively undeveloped. Indeed 
 the study of the particular types, especially in the Old 
 Testament, must be conducted still further and to more 
 substantial results ere the highest exegesis can fulfil its 
 task. 
 
 The genetic and the inductive methods must indeed 
 combine in order to the best results. They must co- 
 operate in every writing, in the treatment of every 
 author, of every period and of the whole. They must 
 blend in harmony throughout. On their proper combi- 
 nation the excellence of a system of Biblical Theology 
 depends. An undue emphasis of either will make the 
 system defective and inharmonious. 
 
 (4) The system and divisions of Biblical TJieology. — 
 These are determined partly by the material itself, but 
 chiefly by the methods of dealing with it. We must make 
 the divisions so simple that they may be adapted to the 
 most elementary conceptions, and yet comprehensive 
 enough to embrace the most fully developed conceptions, 
 and also so as to be capable of a simple and natural 
 subdivision in the advancing periods. In order to this 
 we must find the dominant principle of the entire revela- 
 tion and make our historical and our inductive divisions 
 in accordance with it. The Divine revelation itself 
 might seem to be this determining factor, so that we 
 
THE SYSTEM AND DIVISIONS OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY, gl 
 
 should divide historically by the historical development 
 of that revelation, and synthetically by its most charac- 
 teristic features. But this divine revelation was made 
 to intelligent man and involved thereby an active appro- 
 priation of it on his part, both as to its form and sub- 
 stance, so that from this point of view we might divide 
 historically in accordance with the great epochs of the 
 appropriation of divine revelation, and synthetically by 
 the characteristic features of that appropriation. From 
 either of these points of view, however, there might be 
 — there naturally would be, an undue emphasis of the 
 one over against the other at the expense of a complete 
 and harmonious representation. We need some princi- 
 ple that will enable us to combine the subject and the 
 object — God and man — in the unity of its conception. 
 Such a principle is happily afforded us in the Revelation 
 itself, so distinctly brought out that it has been histori- 
 cally recognized in the names given to the two great sec- 
 tions of the Scriptures, the Old and the New Testa- 
 ments or Covenants. The Covenant is the fundamental 
 principle of the divine revelation, to which the divine 
 revelation commits its treasures and from which man 
 continually draws upon them. The Covenant has a great 
 variety of forms in the sacred Scriptures, but the most 
 essential and comprehensive form is that assumed in the 
 Mosaic Covenant at Sinai which becomes the Old Cove- 
 nant, pre-eminently, and over against that is placed the 
 New Covenant of the Messiah Jesus Christ, so that the 
 great historical division becomes the Theology of the Old 
 Covenant and the Theology of the New Covenant. 
 
 The Covenant must also determine the synthetic di- 
 visions. The Covenant is a union and communion ef- 
 fected between God and Man. It involves a personal 
 relationship which it originates and maintains by cer- 
 
82 BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. 
 
 tain events and institutions. This is Religion. The 
 Covenant and its relations, man apprehends as an intel- 
 ligent being with meditation, reflection, and reasoning. 
 All this he comprehends in doctrines, which he appre- 
 hends and believes and maintains as his faith. These 
 doctrines will embrace the three general topics of God, 
 of Man, and of Redemption. The Covenant still further 
 has to do with man as a moral being, imposing moral 
 obligations upon him with reference to God and man 
 and the creatures of God. All these are comprehended 
 under the general term Ethics. These distinctions ap- 
 ply equally well to all the periods of divine revelation ; 
 they are simple, they are comprehensive, they are all- 
 pervading. Indeed they interpenetrate one another, so 
 that many prefer to combine the three under the one 
 term Theology, and then treat of God and Man and the 
 union of God and Man in redemption, in each division 
 by itself with reference to religious, ethical, and doc- 
 trinal questions ; but it is easier and more thorough- 
 going to keep them apart, even at the expense of look- 
 ing at the same thing at times successively from three 
 different points of view. 
 
 From these more general divisions we may advance 
 to such subdivisions, as may be justified in the suc- 
 cessive periods of Biblical Theology, both on the his- 
 toric and synthetic sides, and, indeed, without anticipa- 
 tion. 
 
 The relation between the historical and the synthetic 
 divisions maybe variously viewed. Thus Ewald, in his 
 Biblical Theology, makes the historical divisions so en- 
 tirely subordinate as to treat of each topic of theology 
 by itself in its history. The difficulty of this method 
 is, that it does not sufficiently show the relative devel- 
 opment of doctrines, and their constant action and re- 
 
THE SYSTEM AND DIVISIONS OF BIBLICAL THEOLOGY. §3 
 
 action upon one another in the successive periods. It 
 may be of advantage for thoroughness in anyone depart- 
 ment to take that topic by itself and work it out in its 
 historical development ; but in a comprehensive course 
 of Biblical Theology the interests of the whole cannot 
 be sacrificed for the particular sections. They must be 
 adjusted to one another in their historical development 
 in the particular periods. Hence it will be necessary to 
 determine in each period : (i) the development of each 
 particular doctrine by itself, as it starts from the gen- 
 eral principle, and then (2) to sum up the general re- 
 sults before passing over into another period. 
 
 It will also be found that Theology does not unfold 
 in one single line, but in several, from several different 
 points of view, and in accordance with several different 
 types. It will therefore be necessary on the one side 
 ever to keep these types distinct, and yet to show their 
 unity as one organism. Thus in the Pentateuch the 
 great types of the Jahvist, the two Elohists, and the 
 Deuteronomist, will be distinctly traced until they com- 
 bine in the one organism of our Pentateuch, presenting 
 the fundamental TJwrah of Israel. In the historical 
 books the Prophetic and Levitical historians will be 
 distinguished and compared for a higher unity. The 
 three great types — the psalmists, wise men, and proph- 
 ets — will be discriminated, the variations within the 
 types carefully studied and compared, and then the 
 types themselves brought into harmony, and at last the 
 whole Old Testament presented as an organic whole. 
 The New Testament will then be considered in the 
 forerunners of Christ ; then the four types in which the 
 evangelists present the Theology of Jesus, each by it- 
 self, in comparison with the others, and as a whole. 
 The Apostolic Theology will be traced from its origin 
 
84 BIBLICAL THEOLOGF. 
 
 at Pentecost in its subsequent division into the three 
 great types, the Jewish Christian of Peter, James, and 
 Jude; the Gentile Christian of Paul, Luke, and the 
 epistle to the Hebrews; and, finally, the Johannean of 
 the gospels, epistle, and apocalypse of John ; and the 
 whole considered in the unity of the New Testament ; 
 and then, as the last thing, the whole Bible will be consid 
 ered, showing not only the unity of the theology of 
 Christ and His apostles, but also the unity of the the- 
 ology of Moses and David and all the prophets, with 
 the theology of Jesus and His apostles, as each distinct 
 theology takes its place in the advancing system of di- 
 vine revelation, all conspiring to the completion of a 
 perfect, harmonious, symmetrical organism, the infal- 
 lible expression of God's will, character, and being to 
 His favored children. At the same time, the religion 
 of each period and of the whole Bible will be set in the 
 midst of the other religions of the world, so that it will 
 appear as the divine grace ever working in humanity, 
 and its sacred records as the true lamp of the world, 
 holding forth the light of life to all the nations of the 
 world. 
 
DR. BRIGGS' WORKS. 
 
 American Presbyterianism. Its Origin 
 and Early History, together with an Appendix 
 of Letters and Documents, many of which have 
 recently been discovered. Crown 8vo, with 
 maps, $3.00 
 
 Messianic Prophecy. The Prediction of 
 the Fulfilment of Redemption through the Mes- 
 siah. A critical study of the Messianic passages 
 of the Old Testament in the order of their de- 
 velopment. Crown 8vo, .... $2.50 
 
 Biblical Study. Its Principles, Methods, and 
 History of its Branches. Crown 8vo, . $2.50 
 
 Whither ? A Theological Question for the Times. 
 Crown 8vo, . . . . . . $1.75 
 
 How Shall we Revise the Westminster 
 
 Confession of Faith? A Bundle of Papers. 
 By Drs. Briggs, Evans, White, Vincent, Park- 
 hurst, Hamilton, and Thompson. i2mo, paper, 
 50 cents ; cloth, ..... $1.00 
 
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