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MOSES AND THE PROPHETS ; 
 
 THEIR UNSHAKEN TESTIMONY 
 
 AS AGAINST THE 'HIGHER CRITICISM' BASED 
 
 ON NATURALISM. 
 
 BY THE 
 
 REV. GAVIN CARLYLE, M.A. 
 
 LONDON : 
 ELLIOT STOCK, 62, PATERNOSTER ROW, EC- 
 
 1890. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 There can be no dispute as to the value of genuine 
 criticism, and as to its great services in recent times. 
 Much light has been thrown by it, on both the Old and 
 New Testaments, in our own day. The increase of know- 
 ledge in all directions, which is a most marked feature of 
 our age, has given new interest to many portions of the 
 Scriptures. Even the assaults of opponents have resulted 
 in advantage in this respect, as when Neander wrote his 
 ' Life of Christ ' in answer to Strauss's book, and Arch- 
 deacon Farrar, Dr. Geikie, and the late Dr. Edersheim 
 made researches and gave new vividness to the minute 
 events of our Lord's history, in consequence partly of the 
 book of Renan and others of similar spirit. Healthy 
 criticism has done much in our days to vivify both the Old 
 and New Testaments. More attention is now paid than 
 formerly to the characteristics of the various writers, and 
 to the special circumstances under which they wrote ; while 
 we have much greater knowledge of the countries and of 
 the manners and customs of the people. Genuine 
 criticism, with its wide researches and investigations, is 
 invaluable. 
 
 But there is a so-called criticism with which the term 
 
iv PREFACE. 
 
 1 higher criticism ' has become generally associated, which 
 is of a very different influence. There are many writers 
 and critics, especially in Germany, who proceed on the 
 understanding that no cognizance even is to be taken of 
 revelation or miracle or prophecy. Everything in the Old 
 Testament and in the New is to be accounted for on natural 
 principles. The alleged miracles were ordinary events 
 magnified intentionally or by tradition, or invented for a 
 purpose. The alleged prophecies were shrewd guesses in 
 a few instances, but generally vague records of events that 
 had happened, put into the form of prophecy, and then 
 imputed falsely to some old writer. There was no revela- 
 tion, for the idea of a living God ruling the earth and com- 
 municating with men is a mere subjective idea evolved by 
 the prophets in the later period. The whole Scriptures are 
 to be tested and accounted for on the principles of 
 naturalism. Whatever the philosophy — Hegelianism, Agnos- 
 ticism, Materialism, Darwinism — or whether there be no 
 professed philosophy at all, those critics we refer to agree 
 in this, that the standpoint of critical inquiry into the Old 
 and New Testaments must be naturalistic — that is, that the 
 truth or otherwise of the narratives must be tested by their 
 being in accordance with the possibilities of ordinary every- 
 day life, that miracles and prophecy and Divine revelation 
 or manifestation of any kind must be ignored or put out of 
 account. We use the wide embracing terms ' naturalism,' 
 ' naturalistic,' because there has been an attempt to mislead, 
 by asserting that such and such leading critics do not deny 
 the possibility of miracles. This is true of some who do 
 not profess to philosophize, but who still rigidly and avowedly 
 apply the naturalistic test. 
 
PREFACE. v 
 
 Graf, Kuenen, and Wellhausen, for instance, recognised 
 leaders in ' the higher criticism ' of the Old Testament, have 
 applied naturalism as an indisputable test. They profess 
 to account for the Old Testament as a record of ordinary 
 human events. All that is extraordinary, viz., miraculous 
 or prophetic or professed revelation, must be explained 
 away. We may note also that they do not believe in the 
 wondrous events that lie at the basis of Christianity — as the 
 Incarnation and the Resurrection. Their principles of 
 criticism apply equally to the New as to the Old Testament 
 miracles. Pfleiderer and others, in treating of the New 
 Testament, use exactly the same methods as those men- 
 tioned in dealing with the Old. It is perfectly foolish to 
 say that we can, on the principles of this 'higher criticism,' 
 give up the Old Testament and retain the New, or even its 
 central facts. Kuenen, in the beginning of his ' History of 
 Israel,' states distinctly as his standpoint, that he puts aside 
 all idea of revelation or miracle, and weighs everything by 
 the merely human and natural possibilities. 
 
 This method of inquiry, with a foregone conclusion of the 
 most sweeping import, by which the non-reality of revela- 
 tion and miracle is taken for granted, must not only change 
 but revolutionize, the Scripture history and literature. The 
 Divine and miraculous, including prophetic, are so inter- 
 woven with the Scriptures — as the web and woof — that 
 any attempt to get rid of them must involve enormous 
 changes. The history as it stands, for the most part, reads 
 quite naturally and easily as a true history, if Israel were 
 indeed chosen, and also directed and guided, by God, 
 from the beginning. But if not — if there were no Divine 
 guidance and no signs and wonders, the growth of the 
 
vi PREFACE. 
 
 wondrous literature must be accounted for — and the narra- 
 tives of great miracles must have been written many centuries 
 after the events they profess to describe are alleged to have 
 occurred ; the elaborate code of laws must have been intro- 
 duced at a later period in the history of the nation, when it 
 had had time to advance in civilization ; the lofty poetry of 
 the Psalms must have been the product of an age succeeding 
 centuries of culture. It is easily seen how the whole of this 
 criticism hangs together, and how all depends on the grant- 
 ing of the premises. 
 
 But are these premises to be granted ? And are there 
 not insuperable difficulties on the other side? Have men 
 any right to take for granted that there was no direct revela- 
 tion or special providence of God, and no miracles or 
 prophecy ? The evidences, for instance, of many prophecies 
 being true predictions are overwhelming. 
 
 We can well understand the position of the acknowledged 
 heads of the school of Old Testament l higher criticism.' 
 They have, like Baur, made a tremendous effort to make 
 good an untenable position, that of treating the sacred his- 
 tory apart from a Divine Being and special Divine action. 
 
 But we cannot by any means understand the position of 
 many in this country who accept the results and deny the 
 premises — who, for instance, acknowledge the inspiration 
 of the Scriptures, and yet adopt theories which involve, in 
 the preparation of the books, every kind of deception. 
 There is something most mysterious in their position which 
 requires explanation. They even tell us of the great com- 
 fort they have derived from theories which charge the 
 writers of many portions of the Old Testament, as Hilkiah 
 and Ezra, with literary frauds of the basest type. They 
 
PREFACE. vii 
 
 ought to enlighten us a little more as to the means by which 
 they get such comfort. They might, as far as we can under- 
 stand, just as intelligently say that Strauss's or Baur's or 
 Pfleiderer's criticisms of the Gospels and explaining away of 
 the Resurrection gave them much consolation. We are 
 not afraid of the influence of the naturalists when they 
 appear candidly as such, but we dread a kind of insidious 
 Jesuitical influence from those who profess to maintain 
 contradictories. The very representations they give of the 
 acts of men, always reputed as holy, and attested as such by 
 their writings, are fitted to destroy reverence and to under- 
 mine truth. There is not the smallest indication in their 
 history that the ancient Jews considered, as many assert, 
 1 pious frauds ' to be lawful — that they had loose ideas on 
 this subject. The indications of history are that they were 
 most particular in guarding authorship; and the writings 
 themselves everywhere attest that the writers regarded lying 
 and fraud of every kind as the very basest of vices. 
 
 We seek to point out the indissoluble connection between 
 the naturalistic basis and the revolutionary results of the 
 1 higher criticism ' — to show, further, the moral and other 
 impossibilities in the way of such results being true, and 
 to exhibit how these results, if accepted, undermine the 
 authority of our Lord and His Apostles, who built up the 
 Church on the Scriptures, as testifying of the Christ and 
 shadowing forth His person and His kingdom. If we deny 
 or ignore a personal God and the supernatural, there is no 
 need of critical inquiry at all. We may, without further dis- 
 cussion, give up the Scriptures and give up Christianity. 
 
 There is practically much danger. The faith of numbers 
 has been rudely shaken. The callous and careless are 
 
viii PREFACE, 
 
 encouraged. The pulpits in very many places are giving 
 forth an uncertain sound. Scepticism raises its head in 
 triumph. We have such tales as 'Robert Elsmere' read 
 eagerly by the millions, in which the statements of this 
 sweeping criticism are assumed as proved, and those who 
 adhere to it are regarded as intellectual giants. Many, like 
 Robert Elsmere, whose honesty we admire, though we do 
 not respect his intelligence, are driven almost to despair. It 
 is no wonder that pessimism makes such advances. Goethe, 
 the greatest poet or genius of the century, who was per- 
 meated with the sceptical spirit, said to Eckermann : ' People 
 have always considered me as a spoiled child of fortune. It 
 is true I have not had anything to complain of; and yet my 
 life has been only a tissue of pains and chagrins, and out of 
 seventy-five years I cannot count four weeks of pure enjoy- 
 ment.' How many a humble Christian with strong faith in 
 the word of God and no genius has had a continual happi- 
 ness for many years, even in the midst of bufferings and 
 trials ! 
 
 It is most important to spiritual life, and also to the 
 awakening of the careless, that the faith be held clearly and 
 distinctly. Haziness in religion seems to be greatly ad- 
 mired by many at present. But what is always the result of 
 haziness in business ? — bankruptcy and ruin ; or of hazi- 
 ness in knowledge and science ? — utter confusion ; or of 
 haziness in government ? — anarchy. In religion we must 
 have a clear and distinct faith. There are great mysteries, 
 but we must know what the mysteries are, and have an in- 
 telligent reason for holding them. Religion centres in love ; 
 but we must know of God and of His love to us — and 
 especially of redeeming love — before the affections of the 
 
PREFACE. ix 
 
 heart can be drawn out towards Him. The source of such 
 knowledge is in the Scriptures, regarded as the message of 
 God, and realized to us personally by the indwelling of the 
 Spirit. Low views of the authority of the Scriptures must, 
 therefore, undermine religion and the Churches — as has been 
 amply proved in recent times in Germany, Switzerland, and 
 Holland. 
 
 The ' higher criticism ' as applied to the Old Testament 
 may be said to have culminated in Professor Kuenen's 
 ' Hexateuch,' a book of remarkable ability of its kind. In 
 it he brings together the whole results which he thinks 
 have been attained. We may state them briefly. There 
 was nothing of the Old Testament till the beginning of 
 the prophetic period— eight or nine centuries before Christ. 
 1 The chief consideration that forbids us to assign a higher 
 antiquity is based on the contents. The sagas about the 
 patriarchs, the exodus, and the conquest, presuppose the 
 unity of the people (which only came into existence with 
 and by means of the monarchy) as a long-accomplished fact, 
 which had come to dominate the whole conception of the 
 past completely.' The first document written was the 
 Yahwistic or Jehovistic document, in the North Israelite 
 kingdom, within the ninth or quite at the beginning of the 
 eighth century B.C. This document is referred to as J. The 
 Elohistic document— referred to as E— came next, about 
 750 B.C. Both were expanded and recast in the second 
 half of the seventh century b.c. At some period later than 
 650 b.c. these documents (J and E) were supplemented 
 and worked over as a whole. It does not appear that 
 the writer of Deuteronomy (referred to as D), which was 
 
x PREFACE. 
 
 written by Hilkiah, had J and E before him as a whole. 
 The Sinaitic legislation in these early documents (J and 
 E) embraced nothing but the decalogue. Then there 
 are two priestly documents, composed by priests and in 
 the priestly interest. The first, referred to as P 1 , appeared 
 near the close of the Babylonish captivity. The second 
 priestly document, referred to as P 2 , was post-exilian. It 
 begins with the creation of heaven and earth, and passes 
 on, after a rapid survey of the history of the primitive world 
 and the patriarchs, to the narrative of Israel's release from 
 Egypt and the legislation of Moses, and ends with the 
 settlement of Israel in Canaan. The reason for assigning it 
 these important elements is thus given : ' Not till the period 
 we have named could any system of legislation treat the 
 people as a religious community or congregation rather than 
 as an independent body politic ; assign the foremost place 
 to the high priest ; make the centralization of worship, as 
 an accomplished fact, its point of departure ; explain the 
 difference between priests and Levites genealogically, and 
 enforce it with utmost rigour ; make such provision as we 
 find in P 2 for the support of priests and Levites alike ; and, 
 finally, regulate the whole worship after the pattern observed 
 in these laws.' The date of this second priestly document 
 (P 2 ) was within the sixth or the first half of the fifth century 
 B.C. He now notes that it is not merely the priestly legisla- 
 tion that appears in P 2 , but its historical framework. ' It is 
 incorrect to assert that the date we have arrived at for the 
 laws is inapplicable to the priestly narrative. Not only the 
 historical sections of P 2 in Exodus, Numbers, and Joshua, 
 but those sections in Genesis i. to Exodus vi. which belong 
 to P 2 are post-exilian.' The priestly author builds upon 
 
PREFACE. xi 
 
 J and E, but alters freely to suit his purposes. The whole 
 was revised and put together in its present form by an 
 editor at a later period. 
 
 Such is a brief outline of the results of the 'higher criti- 
 cism ' as completed, and we have reason to be glad that 
 Professor Kuenen has so clearly denned it, because we 
 know what we are dealing with, whereas mere vague state- 
 ments cannot be grappled with. We see here that it is not 
 only the priestly legislation but the historical framework which 
 is post-exilian. In these lectures we have shown how, if 
 this test be applied, the whole theory is exploded. The 
 difficulties also of introducing after the exile a whole system 
 of priests and Levites, with forged genealogies, as an inno- 
 vation among those who had surely some traditions of a not 
 distant past, must have been insuperable. And where pos- 
 sibly could the materials have been got for inventing the 
 grand history of creation, as given in Genesis i., in the post- 
 exilian period. And remember that it was after this P 2 that 
 the great mass of the Psalms and of the prophetic supposed 
 interpolations had to be written. How was the great out- 
 burst of Jewish post-exilian genius not recorded ? or why 
 should the authors have wished to impute all done by 
 themselves to past ages ? 
 
 Professor Kuenen, who has the merit of being clear, 
 defines in his ' Prophets and Prophecy of Israel ' very dis- 
 tinctly the position of himself and the Old Testament ' higher 
 critics ' to the New Testament : ' It is the common convic- 
 tion of all the writers of the New Testament that the Old 
 Testament is inspired by God, and is thus invested with 
 Divine authority. The remark made, as it were, in a 
 passage of the fourth gospel, that " the Scripture cannot be 
 
xii PREFACE. 
 
 broken," is assented to by all the writers without distinction. 
 In accordance with this they ascribe Divine foreknowledge 
 to the Israelitish prophets. And far, indeed, from limiting 
 this foreknowledge to generalities, and thus depriving it of 
 all its importance, they refer us repeatedly to the agreement 
 between specific prophetical utterances and single historical 
 facts, and have no hesitation in declaring their convic- 
 tions, both that the prophet spoke of these specific facts, 
 and that they, under God's direction, occurred, ' in order 
 that the word of the prophet might be fulfilled. . . .' ' Its ' 
 (the New Testament) 'judgment concerning the origin and 
 nature of the prophetical expectations and concerning their 
 relations to the historical reality may be regarded as 
 diametrically opposed to ours.' 
 
 It is interesting to notice in contrast that the greatest per- 
 haps of genuine critics (Niebuhr) wrote as follows : 
 
 'In my opinion he is not a Protestant Christian who does 
 not receive the historical facts of Christ's earthly life in 
 their literal acceptation, with all their miracles, as equally 
 authentic with any event recorded in history. ... A Chris- 
 tianity after the fashion of the modern philosophers and 
 pantheists, without a personal God, without immortality, 
 without human individuality, without historic faith, is no 
 Christianity at all to me. I have often said that I do not 
 know what to do with a metaphysical God, and that I will 
 have none but the God of the Bible, who is heart to heart 
 with us.' 
 
 The Reverend Dr. Stanley Leathes, Professor of Hebrew 
 in King's College, London, has kindly sent at my request a 
 note for publication in this volume. It is as follows : 
 
PREFACE. xiii 
 
 ' It is a mistake to suppose that the traditional view of 
 the Old Testament as an historical record of the revelation 
 of the Divine will must vanish before an increased critical 
 knowledge of Hebrew. Nothing can be more untrue, 
 though we are frequently bidden to believe this upon high 
 authority. 
 
 ' The fact is, there are two ways of studying the records of 
 the Old Testament : one is in a believing spirit, and the 
 other is in a sceptical spirit. It is possible to study the 
 most unimpeachable history — that, for instance, of Thucy- 
 dides — sceptically. 
 
 ' The real question is : Are we willing to concede miracle 
 and prophecy in the Old Testament, or not ? If we are not, 
 then we must begin by rejecting the Gospels and the Acts. 
 If we are honestly willing to accept these narratives as 
 bo?ia-fide narratives of fact, then I am bold to say that the 
 profoundest knowledge of Hebrew and its cognate languages 
 will discover to us nothing that will make it more difficult 
 to recognise the like phenomena in the history and literature 
 of the Old Testament.' 
 
 I have had also by request the following note from the 
 Reverend Dr. Adolph Saphir, so well-known and highly 
 esteemed, and a Hebrew of the Hebrews : 
 
 ' The modern hypothesis, which regards the Pentateuch not 
 as the work of Moses, but the production of unknown authors 
 in the time of Ezra and subsequent periods, is brought 
 forward with so much erudition, ingenuity, and confidence, 
 that many minds are disturbed and confused, especially as 
 the vital principles and important results of the new theory 
 are more or less kept in the background. It is natural that 
 a profound knowledge of Hebrew and cognate languages 
 should be regarded as an element of great importance in 
 this inquiry. But when Hebrew scholars of equal eminence 
 
xiv PREFACE. 
 
 can attribute the same sections of Genesis to the period 
 before Moses and to the period after the exile — thus differ- 
 ing to the utmost possible extent — it is evident that Hebrew 
 scholarship by itself cannot furnish cogent arguments in this 
 inquiry. 
 
 These Lectures were delivered in connection with the 
 Glasgow Working Men's a?id West of Scot/and Sabbath 
 Protection Association, in August last. At the close of the 
 course, it was moved by the Rev. Dr. Kerr, and unanimously 
 agreed to, that the lecturer be requested to publish them. 
 
 G C. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 Criticism true and false — Naturalism the basis of the false 
 
 Applied to the New Testament as well as the Old— The pre- 
 sent centre of the battle, the Old Testament— Attempt to take 
 the Old Testament to pieces— The books cut into fragments- 
 Insuperable difficulties not considered — Literary and moral 
 impossibilities — Testimony of tradition — Josephus— The whole 
 a desperate connected effort to reconcile the existence of the 
 Old Testament with naturalism— Statement of Henry Rogers 
 as to the Pentateuch ... j 2 o 
 
 LECTURE II. 
 The attacks on special books— Genesis— The account of Creation 
 — The patriarchal histories — Internal evidence of their truth- 
 fulness—The accuracy of the narratives of Exodus established 
 strikingly by recent observations and discoveries in Egypt and 
 the desert— Not only a priestly code, but many alleged facts, 
 connected with the existence of the priesthood and sacri- 
 fice, interwoven with the attested history— Dr. Lansing's 
 testimony to the accuracy of Exodus as to Egypt— The late 
 incorporation of the priestly facts inexplicable— If it fail here, 
 the whole of the so-called ' higher criticism ' breaks down— 
 This the crucial point — Deuteronomy's own witness to the 
 period and method of its preparation— All the scenes vividly 
 presented— Moses seen and heard— Evidences of truthfulness 
 in the narrative of David especially in the thorough exposure of 
 his great sin— The Psalms— No reason at all for upsetting the 
 ideas of time and authorship, except the connected system of 
 the naturalists granted— The Prophets— The spirit of all their 
 writings — Denunciation of fraud— Yet supposed to be en- 
 gaged in the basest frauds— The style of each prophet dis- 
 cernible—The Dean of Canterbury's testimony— The fierce 
 attack on Daniel— Dr. Pusey's vindication— Its position un- 
 shaken—Why so bitterly assailed - - . 21—43 
 
 LECTURE III. 
 The historic position as to the Scriptures— The Jewish Church— 
 The Apostles— The human characteristics and surroundings of 
 the writers clearly apparent as in any other writings— But the 
 Divine direction and unity also apparent— Unity of teaching 
 from Genesis to Revelation— as to God — as to man— as to 
 evil agents— Universal characteristics— brevity with marvellous 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 fulness in all the histories both of Old and New Testaments — 
 contrast of Jewish traditions and spurious Gospels — undeni- 
 able fulfilled predictions — their imaging of Christ before He 
 appeared — The whole Scripture inspired — This the position of 
 the Jewish Church — Accepted by our Lord and testified to by 
 Him with all clearness — He did not conform to the prejudices of 
 the age — He opposed the false teaching as to tradition and eccle- 
 siasticism, but maintained the absolute authority of Scripture 
 — The blasphemy of supposing Jesus mistaken — The Apostles 
 built up the Church on the Old Testament as the word of God 
 — The Messianic prophecies — Kuenen's unfounded statement 
 as to ' pious frauds ' — The Old and New Testaments bound 
 together as a living organism — Weak concessions of those 
 ignorant of the drift of the controversy — The battle really 
 against all supernatural religion — The alleged opposition of 
 science unfounded — The argument for God from design still 
 as clear as ever — The presumption that all miracles are to 
 be set aside as not true an unintelligent assumption — Evolu- 
 tion as a philosophy of the universe not even made likely — If 
 it were, it would not necessarily destroy miracles - 44 — 74 
 
 LECTURE IV. 
 The practical effect of this so-called ' higher criticism '—Desolation 
 of Christianity — Cuts down all miracles, including that of the 
 Resurrection — Deadening influence on religion and Churches 
 — Proved in Germany, Switzerland and Holland — Influence 
 among ourselves — It leads either to materialism or superstition 
 — Cardinal Newman and the Church of Rome — The struggle 
 one of vital moment — Reading and preaching of the Scriptures 
 as the word of God the only means of reviving the Church 
 at the Reformation and in every age — In the Scriptures we 
 behold Christ — And through them, under the Spirit's influence, 
 we grow into His image — The present a battle for the very 
 existence of Christianity — The result not doubtful - 75 — 86 
 
 Conclusion ...... 87—90 
 
 APPENDIX A. 
 The poet Burns, by a higher critic of a future century - 91 — 98 
 
 APPENDIX B. 
 What the Scriptures would have been had the miracles been in- 
 vented by men, as seen in Jewish Talmud and spurious 
 Gospels ...... 99 — 102 
 
 APPENDIX C. 
 The Dean of Canterbury (Dr. Payne Smith) on the absurdities of 
 the 'higher critics,' and the marked styles of the different 
 prophets ...... 102 — 104 
 
MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 LECTURE I. 
 
 THE HIGHER CRITICISM : ITS BASIS. 
 
 There are two kinds of professed criticism, which are 
 essentially distinct in their methods. A criticism founded 
 on historic investigation, or satisfactory linguistic evidence, 
 all must accept — so far as its facts are established. Everything 
 that tends to throw light upon the place and time at which 
 books were written, and the surrounding circumstances, is of 
 value. Much interest has been added to the Scriptures in 
 our own days by the increased information of all kinds 
 now accessible. We can realize much more clearly than 
 formerly the circumstances under which many of the writers 
 wrote. The events of the Gospels, for instance, are more 
 real and more impressive, as we now understand better the 
 whole surroundings. 
 
 But there is a criticism of another hind, which is entirely 
 different^ which must be separated altogether from it. This 
 criticism is based on a foregone conclusion. Many 
 Biblical critics, especially in Germany, deny that there is 
 
 i 
 
2 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 a living personal God ; or if Agnostics that, if there is, 
 He can possibly make Himself known. They therefore 
 proceed in their criticisms on the huge assu?nptio?i that all 
 references to the sayings or doings of God in the Old and 
 New Testaments are imaginations, or hallucinations, or 
 designed deceptions ; all professed miracles and prophecies 
 are untrue; all representations of God's intercourse with 
 men are imaginary ; all asserted messages from God are 
 either self-delusions on the part of the writers, or ' pious,' 
 as they are termed — really impious — frauds. We have 
 no hesitation in saying that a large proportion of the pro- 
 fessed critical results which have excited alarm in recent 
 times is based on these tremetidous assumptions. The 
 criticisms referred to treat the Scriptures as, without ques- 
 tion, the product of mere human genius ; they regard all 
 references to a living God communicating with men in any 
 way as inventions ; they deal with professed miracles and 
 prophecies as delusions or lies ; and they attempt to account 
 for the narratives of them on naturalistic principles. Such 
 criticism of books which are full professedly of the actions of 
 a personal God, and of the supernatural, must, logically, lead 
 to a change of all former ideas in regard to them. But 
 what we have to urge, and what is forgotten and perhaps 
 often unknown, is, that this revolutionary criticism at present 
 in vogue is based on such assumptions ; and that if these 
 assumptions are without reason, as we believe them to be, 
 it has, except in a few small details, no value. 
 
 The well-known Baur, of Tubingen, was a man of vast 
 erudition and great shrewdness— the trainer of David Strauss. 
 His aim was to account for the origin of the New Testament 
 on purely natural principles — that is, on the basis of its 
 
THE HIGHER CRITICISM : ITS BASIS. 3 
 
 being a merely human production — anything supernatural 
 being impossible. Its account of Christ's wondrous birth, 
 miracles, resurrection, ascension, etc., and of the extra- 
 ordinary powers of the early Church, were necessarily fables. 
 How, then, did these books originate? He set himself 
 with great learning, and acuteness, and ingenuity, and high 
 intellectual power, to account for them. He was a man of 
 great sagacity, whose countenance cannot be forgotten by 
 those who have seen him, as I did. The result is well known, 
 and may be thus generally stated : Paul was really the 
 founder of Christianity. His fervid imagination led him to 
 believe in an extraordinary vision of Jesus. Be gave that 
 impulse to the new Jewish sect which made it of world-wide 
 importance. Four of his Epistles laid the basis. There 
 arose gradually around them the Gospel narratives and other 
 books. A great conflict between the Petrine and Pauline 
 schools accounted for the special characteristics of many of 
 the writings of the New Testament. Jesus being the centre 
 of the new religion, there grew up around His person the 
 wondrous events recorded of Him. In a century or two, 
 when the conflicts had passed away, books were collected 
 and recognised as the authoritative books of Christianity. 
 
 This system of Baur, by which he attempted with rare 
 ingenuity and intellectual power to account for the inspired 
 writings of the New Testament on purely natural principles, 
 has broken down at all points. There are abundant historic 
 evidences that the books — not only those four Epistles of 
 Paul, but his other Epistles and all the Gospels— belong 
 to the first century, and appeared in an age when there 
 must have been still many eye and ear witnesses of 
 the professed miracles. Professor Charteris has, in his 
 
4 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 ' Canonicity ' and in his ' Croall Lectures,' collected perfectly 
 conclusive evidence on this subject. A master-mind has 
 done his very best to account for Christianity apart from 
 revelation and miracles, and has failed. Thus, indirect 
 evidence is given of the impossibility of accounting for 
 Christianity apart from God and the supernatural. The 
 position is seen to be all the stronger after the futile attack. 
 But though Baur's ingeniously-constructed fabric has fallen 
 to pieces, the attacks on the New Testament have not 
 ceased. Professor Pfleiderer, of Berlin, represents numbers 
 of German theologians who still deny the supernatural 
 mission of Jesus, and who try to account for the New Testa- 
 ment — its description of the origin and person of Christ and 
 its miracles — on natural principles. The most able and 
 intelligent of the attacks has been defeated ; but there are 
 many who are so inveterately bound to naturalism that 
 nothing will convince them. They still cling to childish 
 explanations of the resurrection, as well as of the miracles 
 generally of our Lord and His Apostles. 
 
 In a pamphlet on ' The Methods of the Higher Criticism,'* 
 by Professor Dickson, of Glasgow University, recently pub- 
 lished, he shows how Dr. Pfleiderer, in his ' Urchristenthum,' 
 deals with the question of the resurrection. At the close of 
 a searching analysis, which reveals the unbounded liberties 
 that Dr. Pfleiderer takes with books and professed recorded 
 facts, he says : ' We have thus passed in review the details 
 of the singular process by which the history of the resurrec- 
 tion, upon which the Church has built its faith in a " Risen 
 
 * • The Methods of the " Higher Criticism " illustrated in an Exami- 
 nation of Dr. Pfleiderer's Theory as to the Resurrection,' by William 
 Dickson, D.D. LL.D., Professor of Divinity, University of Glasgow. 
 
THE HIGHER CRITICISM: ITS BASIS. 5 
 
 Lord," is "remodelled" in the light of the latest philosophic 
 criticism, and reduced ultimately to a visionary experience 
 on the part of Peter. The scene and the character of the 
 great event are wholly changed ; the alleged appearances at 
 Jerusalem are blotted out as legendary accretions ; the faith of 
 the Church is made to rest, not on the testimony of witnesses 
 to what they had seen as objective and real, but on a 
 psychological process in the mind of Peter, which presented 
 its subjective results to him in the form of a vision, and im- 
 pressed him with a conviction of their truth. We have seen 
 by what an unprecedented combination of arbitrary processes 
 — of omission, addition, substitution, inversion, transposition, 
 invention of hypotheses, suggestion of motives, assumption 
 of tendencies, and free play throughout of speculative 
 imagination, transforming at pleasure the historically pre- 
 sented data into shapes that may suit the postulates of a 
 philosophical theory — the so-called result is reached. Under 
 such a method of procedure there are no limits to conjecture 
 and caprice; and the "higher" critic, who wields his 
 weapons at will, may make anything out of anything.' He 
 concludes thus : ' The illustration which I have thus ventured 
 to give of the working of "higher" criticism, in its most 
 crucial application by one of its most eminent exponents, 
 may perhaps at least suffice to show that the certainty, which 
 in the judgment of some belongs to its results, can hardly be 
 equally, or indeed at all, affirmed of the process by which 
 they are reached.' 
 
 It may be noted that the attempt — now that Baur's attack 
 has been disposed of — is to criticize the Gospel records, 
 treating the writers as if they wrote uncertainly. It is 
 strange that Pfleiderer, who denies the resurrection and all 
 
6 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 miracles, has been commended, and followed in details, by 
 many belonging to professed orthodox Churches in this 
 country. 
 
 Still, the centre of the battle is now not around the New, 
 but around the Old Testament. The basis of attacks is the 
 same. The ablest of the critics, as Graf, Kuenen, Wellhausen 
 — those who are the central pillars of the new critical system, 
 have been determined naturalists. Whatever the basis of 
 their opinions, they are at one in the foregone conclusion 
 that a known God, and miracles and prophecy, are not even 
 to be considered, and they proceed to attempt to recon- 
 struct the Old Testament on this understanding. They do 
 not argue about it, but take their great assumption for 
 granted. 
 
 It is singular that Professor Cheyne should venture to 
 imply, in a letter to the Guardian, that Kuenen and Well- 
 hausen do not start from a naturalistic basis. They may 
 not propound a philosophy on the subject ; but Kuenen, in 
 the beginning of his ' History of Israel,' lays down his stand- 
 point with perfect clearness, and Wellhausen takes naturalism 
 for granted all through his writings. 
 
 But as the Old Testament is bound up, so to speak, with 
 the supernatural ; as the living God is everywhere and every- 
 thing from the beginning to the close ; as His words and 
 actions are constantly recorded ; as numbers of miracles are 
 described and afterwards referred to ; as predictions, dis- 
 tinctly announced as such, appear again and again, occupying 
 a great part of many books — it is evident to common-sense that 
 it requires revolutio?iary changes as to the authorship of books, 
 and the times at which they were written, to account for the 
 sacred writings, on the understanding that there is no acting 
 
THE HIGHER CRITICISM : ITS BASIS. 7 
 
 God and no miracle nor prediction. It requires a vast amount 
 of ingenuity — and this has certainly been exhibited. Narratives 
 which fit in perfectly naturally and easily if there be a living 
 God, and miracles and prophecy — as, for instance, the passage 
 through the wilderness — cannot be explained but by the most 
 ingenious and far-fetched theories if there is nothing super- 
 natural. How did they arise or grow up ? Many ages must 
 be allowed for the traditions of such miracles as the passage 
 through the Red Sea, the wilderness journey, etc., to develop, 
 before they could be written down. Therefore the books 
 must be of a much later period than represented. This 
 really is the grand problem which these critics are attempt- 
 ing to solve. They wish to account for Judaism, with its 
 extraordinary history, apart from God and miracle. They 
 assert that the Jews were polytheists, as other nations, and 
 that the idea of a personal God was developed only in the 
 prophetic period. But the books of the Old Testament are 
 full of the idea of God, therefore could not have been 
 written till after this period. Therefore these books of the 
 Old Testament were all written, even the earliest, at a com- 
 paratively late date. And as the idea of God was not 
 developed, there could not have been the priesthood as it 
 is described in the Pentateuch. The priesthood and the 
 whole sacrificial system is consequently of comparatively 
 late date. Therefore the priestly part of the Pentateuch 
 must be the invention of a later age. Deuteronomy was 
 written at an earlier period, in the reign of Josiah ; it 
 was the book not found, but invented, by Hilkiah. The 
 Psalms, of course, as Professor Cheyne has laboured to 
 show, in his recent Bampton Lecture, are all of a later 
 period, because they refer to God and to the priests and the 
 
8 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 sacrifices. They were none of them composed by David, 
 who lived before the one God was worshipped. The pro- 
 fessed predictions were none of them written till after the 
 events described, because prediction is impossible. Daniel, 
 of course, appeared only after the period of Antiochus 
 Epiphanes, as it describes events in his reign, or, as asserted 
 recently, after the spread of Roman power, because it so 
 clearly describes the Roman empire. 
 
 All this would be ingenious and valuable if the premises 
 were true. It would indeed be wonderful if an intellectual 
 people like the Jews could have been at any period so 
 very easily imposed on. Books were invented, and repre- 
 sented as ancient, which reflected much on themselves as a 
 nation ; but they quietly accepted them as of Divine origin 
 and absolute authority without inquiry. The prophets of 
 Israel, men who wrote with the highest moral and spiritual aim, 
 invented a history of the past and palmed it off as genuine — 
 the basest literary fraud that can be perpetrated, and this 
 not once, but, again and again, at successive periods. They 
 imposed on the people as ancient, and, what is worse, as of 
 Divine authority, a mass of writings which were inventions 
 of their own — inventions intended to deceive. 
 
 But is this criticism ? Is it not mere dogmatism attempting 
 to force its foregone conclusions by indirect methods ? If, 
 indeed, these men are right in their idea that God cannot 
 be known or revealed, and that there can be no interference 
 with the laws of the material universe of a miraculous kind 
 — that is, of a nature beyond our comprehension, viz., 
 which we cannot explain or understand — for what appear 
 miracles to us may be accomplished by God controlling 
 certain forces by higher forces, as we constantly do our- 
 
THE HIGHER CRITICISM : ITS BASIS. 9 
 
 selves ; if there can be no God controlling the affairs of the 
 world, or known to control them, which is really atheism, 
 disguise it as they may — if they are right in their basis, then 
 their criticism is a praiseworthy effort to solve what appears 
 an insoluble problem. If God never appeared to men, never 
 spoke to men or through men, never sent His Son into the 
 world, never put into the mouths of prophets messages as 
 to the future — if all related miracles are either myths or 
 fabrications — if the whole idea of that which is popularly 
 called ' the supernatural ' is a delusion — if the world is ruled 
 by material laws alone, which no Supreme Intelligence 
 controls or overrules — then the criticism of these strange 
 Old Testament books, which are interwoven with the super- 
 natural throughout, may be welcomed as throwing light upon 
 the most extraordinary literature that has appeared in the 
 history of the world. But if, on the other hand, there be 
 nothing certain in the basis — if Agnosticism be not proved — 
 if it be a mere theory — if the unity of nature be not a mere 
 material unity, but an intelligent adaptation of means to 
 ends — if the universe have not grown up of itself — if all its 
 varieties of creatures have not been developed out of some 
 unknown atoms — if all this be false, and if there is a 
 Supreme Ruler to control all — if there can be the super- 
 human, and the, to us, miraculous, the method of the 
 criticism by which they would revolutionize the Old Testa- 
 ment is simply worthless, and the whole fabric they are 
 attempting to rear is a building of cards which must fall 
 to pieces. It will be found that even earlier critics of 
 the school proceed quietly on the assumption that ipso 
 facto the action of God is to be eliminated as invention or 
 myth. They proceed in their reconstruction of the Old 
 
io MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 Testament books on the idea that the supernatural is to be 
 eliminated as invention — as fairy or hobgoblin stories are 
 eliminated by the critics of English or Scottish history. 
 They not only deny, but they do not regard as worth consider- 
 ing, the narratives of the communion of God with men, of 
 the revelations to the patriarchs, of the marvellous delivery 
 from Egypt, of the passage of the Red Sea, of the sojourn 
 in the wilderness, of the host of Joshua advancing with 
 Divine aid, of the giving of the Law amidst thunderings 
 and lightnings from Sinai, of the acts of Deborah and 
 Barak, of Jephthah, and Gideon, and Samson, of David, 
 and Elijah, and Elisha, and Daniel, of God's speaking with 
 the prophets, and giving to them revelations of the future — 
 they take for granted that all these things are frauds or 
 myths — not worth inquiring into as possible facts. Science, 
 it is vaguely said, has condemned them, though science has 
 never said one single word about them. 
 
 Thus they go on attempting to account for the origin of 
 these narratives, interwoven with the whole method and 
 structure of the books, by taking the books to pieces and 
 making them a kind of patchwork — a piece put in here and 
 a piece there, for a purpose — in some remotely later age ; 
 a passage inserted, for instance, about Abel and his sacrifice, 
 after the Babylonian captivity, by priestly fraud, for the 
 purpose of making it appear that the sacrificial laws existed 
 from the beginning; then others about the sacrifices 
 of Abraham and the patriarchs ; then a whole priestly 
 system invented and put into the mouth of an aged chief 
 of renown called Moses ; then the passage through the 
 wilderness, described as a kind of background to the sacer- 
 dotal invention ; then the history made to fit in afterwards — 
 
THE HIGHER CRITICISM : ITS BASIS. n 
 
 all its parts freely tampered with to make way for the 
 delusion, and to give it plausibility ; then wondrous psalms, 
 denouncing lies in unmeasured terms, imputed falsely to a 
 great king of renown — a mere savage warrior who gave 
 unity to the nation, but never wrote one of them, and could 
 not write at all ; then pretended prophecies written down in 
 glowing prophetic language after the events had taken place, 
 for the most pious, or, rather, impious, purpose of convincing 
 the nation that men, that had never imagined them, had 
 written them under God's direction ages before— and these 
 prophecies denouncing lying in terms of unmeasured repro- 
 bation and of stern indignation — while those writing them 
 were imposing the basest falsehoods on the people. They 
 thus turn the books upside down, cut them into fragments, 
 imagine not only two, but twenty, writers of Isaiah, explain 
 how one piece was put in here and another there, all under 
 false pretences to suit a purpose, which purpose it is very 
 difficult indeed to understand. All the prophecies are ipso 
 facto, when they plainly refer to events of history, professing 
 to foretell them, written after the events to which they 
 refer. 
 
 Such are the ignoble methods to which this so-called 
 1 higher criticism ' is driven in order to account for the books 
 of the Old Testament, on the theory that there is no God that 
 can be known or revealed, and that there are no possible super- 
 natural events or revelations. The extraordinary difficulty 
 of doing so is shown in the strangeness of many of the 
 suggestions made. There are first the difficulties of the 
 history. The events described historically, which these 
 critics pass over as worthless, fit in, in the most marvellous 
 way, to the times and places in which they are said to have 
 
12 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 occurred. They are told in the simplest manner, not at 
 all in the style either of myth or invention, which is 
 always sensational and bombastic. The earlier history of 
 the patriarchs, and Joseph, for instance, fits in remarkably 
 to the period when the events are represented to have 
 occurred, as shown by the most recent discoveries as to the 
 then state of Egypt and surrounding countries. The extra- 
 ordinary passage through the desert has been accurately 
 traced from the narratives by most intelligent explorers of 
 recent times, as the late Professor Palmer — the very position 
 found suitable for the gathering of the vast multitude, as 
 described, at the base of Sinai. Then there is accuracy in 
 the references of the Books of Moses to Egypt, showing 
 beyond doubt that the writer, whenever he wrote, had not 
 only visited the country, but been brought up in it. Then 
 there are plain evidences in the monuments of the know- 
 ledge of sacrifices at the time and before the time when the 
 books of Moses were professedly written. The recent dis- 
 coveries as to the Hittites point to the accuracy and truth 
 of the early history as it appears in the Book of Judges,* etc. 
 These critics have nothing at all to prove their position, or 
 even make it probable, that the Jews were not consolidated 
 as a nation till about the age of David. It is a mere asser- 
 tion to which they are obliged to resort to give likelihood to 
 their theory. They cannot give a single reason why David 
 may not have been a great poet as well as a great king. It 
 is a fact in history that one man has often written more 
 genuine poetry than whole generations either before or after 
 him, as Dante, and Chaucer, and Shakespeare, and Milton, 
 
 * Dr. Wright's book on the Hittites is invaluable, as indicating 
 historic accuracy where it had been much impugned. 
 
THE HIGHER CRITICISM: ITS BASIS. 13 
 
 and Burns, in their respective countries. The psalms imputed 
 to David have a literary affinity which points to unity of 
 origin. Then as to the Prophets — down to the Book of 
 Daniel, who is a special object of attack, because he pro- 
 phesied so clearly — the genuineness and authenticity of which 
 book have been vindicated unanswerably by Dr. Pusey and 
 others — their theory is that the writings imputed to the 
 prophets were full of paltry trickery, foretelling in sublime 
 strains as future what had already happened, therefore 
 plainly intending to deceive, and adopting the very basest 
 kind of literary fraud. 
 
 There is nothing at all to sustain these views, but every- 
 thing against them. Can anyone with the slightest power 
 of judging character or literature peruse the writings of 
 Isaiah, or Jeremiah, or Ezekiel, or Daniel, with their 
 sublime moral aim, and imagine that those who wrote a?iy 
 part of these books were deliberate swindlers, imposing on 
 the people as old prophecy what was history, committing the 
 double offence of writing in the prophetic method, in order 
 to deceive, and of palming off as ancient what was com- 
 posed by themselves? It is a moral impossibility. Yet 
 such is the criticism which these critics are compelled by 
 circumstances to propound and defend in harmony with their 
 theory that there is no possibility of God being known or 
 revealed — or of the supernatural. They prove indirectly the 
 falsity of the basis of criticism, quietly assumed, by the 
 reckless shifts to which they are driven. The historic basis 
 of the Old Testament is supported by strong evidence — 
 evidence not shaken, but much strengthened, by recent dis- 
 coveries, and there is really nothing in their attempt to 
 overthrow it — apart from the anti-supernatural basis. 
 
i 4 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 The Jewish history and psalms and prophecies have been 
 accepted by the nation as sacred from the remotest known 
 period. We know the opinion held in the time of our Lord, 
 as recorded shortly after by Josephus. There were other 
 writings — the Apocrypha — which they did not regard as on 
 the same level. But their sacred writings they believed to be 
 inspired of God, and they looked with deepest reverence upon 
 them. This Josephus refers to as not a new, but as an old 
 idea. How did these writings ever get that position in the 
 Jewish national mind? They were anything but favourable 
 to their national pride. We may imagine a nation receiving 
 with enthusiasm, and supporting to the death, writings that 
 praised in glowing language their heroic deeds or the 
 prowess of their forefathers. But these writings described 
 the weakness and follies of the Jewish people. They showed 
 them in the worst light, as receiving wonderful favours and 
 showing base ingratitude. They reproached them again 
 and again with their cowardice and meanness. How, then, 
 if they were imposed on them at a later age, did they not 
 only receive them, but pay them such immense reverence ? 
 Or what could have even put it into the mind of those pre- 
 tended historians who wrote them to write with such severity 
 of their own ancestors ? If they had been composing a 
 fictitious history, as the critics suppose, would they not rather 
 have praised the virtues of their ancestors, that the people 
 might be stirred up to similar acts ? And how, in the nature 
 of things, could they possibly have imposed on a nation a 
 burdensome ritual and an expensive priesthood, which it 
 had never heard of before ? And how could they have 
 persuaded them that writings descriptive of recent events 
 were old prophecies ? And how could they have given such 
 
THE HIGHER CRITICISM : ITS BASIS. 15 
 
 unity of style to the great prophets, so that the many frag- 
 ments seem to be the production of one mind? Whether there 
 were one or two Isaiahs, there were surely not twenty, for 
 the writings bear the stamp of rarest genius, being poems 
 of the sublimest character ever written in any language. 
 There is a striking unity in Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and 
 the minor prophets, which cannot fail to impress anyone of 
 literary discernment. 
 
 The more that this criticism is examined in its general 
 outlines, the more untenable it appears. It is a desperate 
 effort to reconcile the existence of the Old Testament, in its 
 present form, with naturalism. We speak of it in its general 
 outlines. We are quite aware that there are points of 
 interest that have been elucidated by the researches of 
 the naturalistic school. But, on the whole, there is exceed- 
 ingly little of value, as judged by genuine criticism. They 
 are on the wrong track for making discoveries. If one who 
 regarded the world as the centre of the universe were to 
 make observations on the heavens, these observations would 
 lead to nothing, however careful or painstaking the explorer. 
 And so, if men proceed to deal with a history in which the 
 direct action of God is frequently traceable, with the idea 
 that it is entirely human, they cannot possibly interpret or 
 understand it. 
 
 We close this lecture with the following extract from 
 an article on Colenso, in Good Words, by the well-known 
 Henry Rogers, author of 'The Eclipse of Faith,' written 
 many years ago. It applies well, especially in the latter 
 portion, to the present state of the controversy : 
 
 ' The problems we are called on to solve on the theory of 
 the unhistoric character of the Pentateuch are far more 
 
16 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 difficult than any of those which, by packing his evidence 
 and begging his premises, this writer urges against it. Let 
 me briefly point out two or three only, all of which must 
 be confronted as a necessary condition of coming to a true 
 decision. How, then, shall we account for the intense, 
 obstinate, and unanimous belief of the Jews for so many 
 ages, and afterwards of their enemies, the Samaritans, in the 
 historic character — nay, in the Mosaic authorship and inspira- 
 tion — of the Pentateuch? A belief never troubled by a 
 shadow of doubt or suspicion, or contradicted by one echo 
 of opposing testimony j a belief which, as we shall see by- 
 and-by, they were ever palpably interested in throwing off 
 if erroneous, and yet which they would sooner die than sur- 
 render. 
 
 ' This fact is in itself equally incomprehensible, if the 
 Pentateuch be indeed unhistoric or (whatever date we fix 
 for its composition) whether we regard the document as 
 preceding or contemporaneous with their national life and 
 institutions, or (as some wise critics, but all of yesterday, 
 pretend) composed very late in their history, or even after 
 the return from the Babylonish captivity. If the former be 
 supposed, and these monstrous fables were from the 
 beginning foisted on the nation as the true history of the 
 events in which it originated, how can we account for its 
 unanimously accepting them, and proceeding to mould the 
 national life, law, and manners upon them? Above all, 
 how shall we account for this people's affirming they had 
 seen marvels, which everybody was appealed to as having 
 seen, but which they knew T had never been wrought, and on 
 that egregious faith — or rather lie — proceeding to bend their 
 necks to a burdensome yoke of laws and ceremonies, which, 
 
THE HIGHER CRITICISM : ITS BASIS. 17 
 
 in the language of Peter, " neither they nor their fathers 
 had been able to bear ;" and then, to complete the thing, 
 handing down through all corning ages, without one mis- 
 giving of heart, one faltering of doubt, one protesting 
 whisper of conscience, this unanimous and stupendous lie ? 
 At the very least, how can we imagine a nation moulding its 
 life, forming its institutions and manners, on what that 
 whole nation knows, by the very appeal to it, to be a pure 
 romance ? 
 
 1 It is these very difficulties that principally inclined our 
 modern critics to contend for the late composition of the 
 Pentateuch. But if that theory be adopted, we are soon 
 led to some similar difficulties, and equally insurmountable. 
 For if this book were really a late composition — long after 
 the nation had a history of its own, and had got (no one 
 can tell how) its institutions and its laws — how came the 
 Jews unanimously to endorse books in which that history is 
 throughout so egregiously caricatured, in which common 
 facts are everywhere exaggerated into the most monstrous 
 fables ? Five thousand at the Exodus, as this critic sup- 
 poses, are turned into six hundred thousand, and everything 
 else in similar proportion — that is, five parts out of about 
 six hundred may be supposed true ! Above all, how came 
 the Jews at that time of day to vouch for supernatural 
 fictions of the most monstrous character so freely supervised 
 over the whole book ? How came the nation, at so late a 
 period of their annals, to accept without a dissentient voice 
 this document as their true history ? How came they to be 
 universally hoodwinked, so as not to perceive the juggle that 
 was being passed upon them ; or so universally wicked as 
 to join without a murmur, that has ever reached their 
 
 2 
 
i8 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 posterity, in adapting, consecrating, and handing down the 
 cheat ? Not one of them even for a moment relenting, in a 
 momentary treason to this conspiracy of wickedness, so far 
 as to express doubt or detestation of this prodigious and 
 unanimous lie? How could they do it, if they would? or 
 how would they do it, if they could ? I say lie ; for, how- 
 ever this writer and many modern infidels may politely 
 endeavour to show that they by no means charge deliberate 
 fraud on the compilers of the Pentateuch, it is utterly 
 impossible, if the main facts of the Pentateuch have as little 
 truth in them as this author supposes, and the miracles, 
 a fortiori, no truth at all, to free either the writers of these 
 documents, or the nation who accepted and vouched for 
 them, from the most deliberate and enormous falsehood. 
 But, lying or no lying, the thing itself is infinitely more 
 incredible than that Englishmen should all accept and 
 unanimously hand down to posterity, without a trace of any 
 disagreement, "Ivanhoe" and "Kenilworth" as true episodes 
 in our own history, and, what is more, get all future ages to 
 believe it ! This would be a bagatelle compared with the 
 supposition of the whole Jewish nation — and even their 
 bitter enemies, the Samaritans — receiving as no less than 
 inspired truth these impudent contradictions of their true 
 history, and, when first published, of their very senses and 
 consciousness to boot ! Again, how came this singular people 
 to receive — not only as historically true, but as worthy of 
 suffering martyrdom for, if called to it — records which, if not 
 history, are but one long libel upon themselves ? Would 
 this make them more willing to toil to procure credit for 
 that enduring and unanimous lie, by which alone these 
 records could be effectually consigned to the veneration of 
 
THE HIGHER CRITICISM : ITS BASIS. 19 
 
 posterity ? Would not all patriotism, as well as everything 
 else, lead them to denounce chronicles which are little else 
 than chronicles of their shame ? As well may we suppose 
 Englishmen enamoured of the worst libels of the present 
 New York press, adopting them as faithful — nay, inspired — 
 portraits of our national character, and handing them down 
 to posterity as worthy of the profoundest veneration ! It 
 may be said, perhaps, that the assumed privilege of being 
 "the favourites of heaven," no matter how they used or 
 abused it, might reconcile the Jews to being thus pilloried 
 to all ages. I answer, first, that it is sadly evident that it 
 was a privilege, which throughout their history the Jews were 
 only too willing to forfeit ; and, secondly, that though it 
 might tickle national vanity to represent themselves as under 
 God's immediate guidance, the pleasure would be more than 
 balanced by the necessity of also saying that they ever 
 spurned that guidance, and repaid the Divine beneficence 
 with the most flagitious ingratitude and wickedness. Such 
 traits, had these records been either fraudulent or fictitious, 
 or anything but truth, it is certain that patriotism would 
 have softened or obliterated before the nation would have 
 received them. It might perhaps humour a man's vanity to 
 tell how his father and grandfather had been prime ministers 
 to some great monarch ; but if he had to say at the same 
 time that the one had embezzled the public property, and 
 the other had been hanged for treason, he would be apt, I 
 fancy, to exercise a wise silence about his pedigree. But, 
 again, how shall we account, upon such a hypothesis as that 
 of this pseudo-Colenso, for the inimitable marks of sincerity, 
 truth, nature, artlessness, honesty, which everywhere abound 
 in the Pentateuch, and which have in all ages made not 
 
 2—2 
 
20 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 only Jews, but Christians, believe it to be history, and neither 
 fiction nor forgery ? How shall we account for those " un- 
 designed coincidences," many of which are as striking as 
 those which Paley has so ingeniously insisted on in his 
 Hone Paulina^ and of which Blunt has given us but a 
 small spicilegium in his little work on this subject ? How, 
 above all, shall we account for the profound religious tone, 
 the elevated morality, in these documents, which, if not 
 history, are a contexture of the most shameless and 
 conscious violations of truth? How came the sublime 
 doctrines of Monotheism, and a purer and loftier moral 
 code than the world had ever seen, to be given to the 
 world in records, every page of which is stamped — 
 if this theory be true — with the most enormous mis- 
 representations and the most extravagant fictions? How 
 shall we account for the union of so much moral elevation 
 and such unique hypocrisy, such pervading sense of the 
 Divine presence and protestations of speaking by God's 
 authority, with such abandoned and unblushing wickedness ? 
 For, I repeat, there is no medium in the nature of the thing 
 between supposing the documents historically true and 
 allowing that those who palmed them upon the world as 
 such, and those who connived at and perpetuated the cheat, 
 were among, not only the most stupendously gifted, but the 
 most deliberately wicked of mankind.' 
 
LECTURE II. 
 
 THE LEADING POSITIONS OF THE NATURALISTIC CRITICS 
 CONSIDERED AS TO THE PENTATEUCH, AS TO THE 
 PSALMS, AND AS TO THE PROPHETS. 
 
 In beginning this second lecture I would refer again, in a few 
 words, to the leading positions of this school of criticism in 
 regard to the Jewish Scriptures. The theory and assertion is 
 that the Jews had been polytheists, as other nations, up to 
 the time of the prophets ; that the idea of God as the one 
 God, and the God of the universe, had been developed or 
 evolved by the eighth-century prophets — that is, the eighth 
 century before Christ. This, of course, undermined the 
 whole early history — swept it clean away. The Israelites, 
 it was represented, had been composed of different tribes, 
 which gradually became a nation in the course of ages,* and 
 had looked on their God, as the Moabites and others, as a 
 tribal God long after the days of even David and Solomon. 
 Thus the whole history in Genesis of the early world and 
 the patriarchs, which implied the knowledge and the worship 
 
 * ' In short, the tribes were regarded and treated as individuals, and 
 were transferred to the house of their common father in the same mutual 
 relation in which they actually stood to each other.' — Kuenen's ' History 
 of Israel.' 
 
22 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 of the one God, was written at a late period, and was 
 intentionally false, though founded possibly on a few very 
 vague traditions worked up to suit a purpose. The passage 
 of the wilderness might have some insignificant basis, but 
 was, in the main, quite unhistorical. The miracles 
 condemned it. The whole priestly system, with its 
 ceremonial law, was a later development, worked up into its 
 present form probably by Ezra. David was a barbarous 
 chieftain, who did much to give unity to the tribes, which 
 were gradually becoming a nation ; but in his days there 
 was no culture and no knowledge of God as the one living 
 God. This idea was not developed till centuries later. The 
 Psalms, therefore, were not written by David. The professed 
 prophecies, where distinct in their predictions, were written 
 after the events they professed to foretell, and put into the 
 mouth of some old prophet or preacher of renown by a 
 system of ' pious ' frauds. The so - called Messianic 
 prophecies were hallucinations, for all prediction was out of 
 the question. Such is a general outline of the ideas of the 
 revolutionary criticism, which varies in details in different 
 writers, but in the main lines agrees. Such are the bold 
 assertions by which, in accordance with their preconceived 
 system — that there is no supernatural — the books of the 
 Old Testament are to be tested. They must be swept down 
 by the ' higher criticism ' to this dead-level, whatever the 
 difficulties. Anything more far-fetched and inconsequential 
 has never been attempted in literature. It is well established 
 that at a very early period, thousands of years before Christ, 
 there were traces among different nations of the knowledge 
 and worship of the one God. All the facts corroborative of 
 the histories are ruthlessly tossed aside without examination. 
 
HIGHER CRITICISM ON THE PENTATEUCH, ETC. 23 
 
 The Jews are supposed to have been the weakest and most 
 gullible of nations, ready, without question, to accept as 
 prophetic, and as of Divine authority, forged writings which 
 threw contempt on their ancestors and nation. The men 
 who wrote with utter abhorrence of all lying, denouncing it 
 as the curse of any people, and whose tone was that of 
 highest righteousness and truthfulness, are represented as 
 themselves engaged in concocting falsehoods, forging names 
 and genealogies — for it is asserted that the long genealogies 
 of Genesis were forgeries — imposing baseless authorities, 
 inventing laws and ceremonies and passing them off as 
 old, giving forth as prophecies written ages before, and, 
 put into the form of prophecy, in order to deceive, records 
 of events already past. Such are the shifts to which this so- 
 called ■ higher criticism ' is forced, in accordance with the 
 standpoint that there were no miracles and no Divine inter- 
 course with men. 
 
 I shall now glance briefly at some of the books as they 
 stand in order, considering the representations made in 
 regard to them. The Book of Genesis stands alone in the 
 Old Testament "as a record of the early ages of the world. 
 Its account of the creation is not only most sublime, but, 
 when contrasted with heathen accounts, is seen to be entirely 
 different. In some respects it agrees with them, as might 
 be expected if they were handed down by tradition ; but it 
 rises infinitely above them. It is a most thrilling and 
 sublime narrative of the preparation of the earth by God for 
 the habitation of man,* not referring to its earlier period, 
 
 * ' If a man cannot feel the simple majesty, the unapproachable 
 grandeur of this first chapter of Genesis, if he cannot discern God there 
 of a truth, and take his shoes from off his feet, because the place on 
 
24 
 
 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 except in the first verse, where God is said to have created 
 the heavens and the earth, but describing the events that took 
 place in its preparation for the advent of the human race. 
 It speaks of the sun and moon and stars as they appear, and 
 in relation to their action towards the earth. To have 
 described scientifically the universe and all the progress of 
 the past infinite would have made it utterly unintelligible. 
 Man would, in fact, need the infinite intelligence of God to 
 understand the fabric of the universe. Even now, science 
 is but skirting the surface — picking up pebbles on the sea- 
 shore. Whether the six days meant days or longer periods, 
 they described the order of the processes by which the 
 earth was renovated for man. They agree very much with 
 the order as it is discerned in the rocks. All heathen 
 records, including that of the Greeks, bring themselves into 
 immediate and direct conflict with astronomical science, in 
 even a ridiculous manner. Not so the narative of Genesis. 
 And in various parts of the Old Testament there are sublime 
 views of the heavens. Some of the references adapt them- 
 selves easily to the vastly-extended knowledge we have now 
 of the universe. They could not be surpassed in sublimity. 
 We might refer to the last chapters of Job, the 8th Psalm, 
 the 19th Psalm, the 40th of Isaiah, and many other passages. 
 The record in the first chapter of Genesis is most heart- 
 
 which he stands is holy ground — no amount of theories of reconciliation 
 will ever convince him of its divinity. On the other hand, a broad, 
 general correspondence between the record in Genesis and the results of 
 scientific investigation there assuredly is.' — Dean Perowne in Expositor 
 for October. He adds that Haeckel, the extreme German materialist, 
 says that, ' From Moses, who was born about 1480 b.c, to Linnaeus, 
 who was born 1 707 A.D., there has been no history of creation to 
 be compared with it.' 
 
HIGHER CRITICISM ON THE PENTATEUCH, ETC. 25 
 
 stirring and beautiful, giving the sublimest ideas of the 
 renewal of the earth for man, and culminating in his 
 creation. It is not science, but it does not clash with 
 science. And there was evidently a mysterious controlling 
 power of One, who opened up, as in successive visions, the 
 scenes of renovation. As to the alleged contradiction, 
 so persisted in, between the first and second chapters, 
 it is imaginary. The first chapter is a grand picture of 
 the renovation of the earth for man up to man's creation, 
 introductory not only to the whole Book of Genesis, but to 
 the whole Bible, the preparation of the books of which in the 
 future ages was foreseen by God. The second chapter is 
 a more special account of man as he appeared on the earth 
 in connection with the fall afterwards, picturing him as 
 in fact the lord of creation. It has a distinct aim, and 
 does not contradict the first. The third chapter describes 
 the catastrophe which overtook him, God having created 
 him with a free will, which is essential to a pure intelli- 
 gence. There is then the brief view of the progress of the 
 early races, culminating in the falling away of the whole 
 race, except the one family, from the worship of God and 
 true morality, till they were destroyed by the flood. Then 
 rapidly we pass on to the history of Abraham, the chosen 
 agent of God for the preservation of light and truth in the 
 world. The rest of the book is occupied with the history 
 of the patriarch and his immediate descendants. There is 
 a clear purpose in the book from its beginning to its close. 
 The. object is to introduce the great work of redemption —to 
 be unfolded as the ages passed on — to show the actual 
 position of man as fallen, and the means devised by God 
 from the world's early ages for his restoration. The book 
 
26 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 was doubtless, we think, compiled from different documents, 
 but by Moses, who, from his great knowledge was well-fitted 
 for the task, by his previous training in the learning of 
 Egypt, even as the Apostle Paul was fitted by his early 
 training and preparation to write his Epistles. Its early 
 parts, including the chronologies, must have been known 
 in their substance in the first patriarchal ages ; and the 
 histories of the patriarchs Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob may 
 have been written near their own time, much of them 
 very possibly by Joseph, who may also have told his own 
 tale. These records may have existed, being carefully 
 preserved by the Jews in Egypt. Moses during his long 
 residence in Midian, or even earlier in Egypt itself, or later 
 in the wilderness, may have put them together in that form 
 in which we now have them in the Book of Genesis. If we 
 look attentively to the intelligent connection of the book, 
 we find no evidences of incongruity in the uses of the 
 names by which God is described. Elohim is the name of 
 God in connection with His supreme creative power, point- 
 ing, certainly, to more than one Person in the Godhead ; 
 Jehovah is the name of God in connection with the covenant 
 of grace, exhibiting His special relations to men as covenant 
 God, associated, as we believe, with the Second Person of 
 the Godhead. These names are used in Genesis and else- 
 where with perfect discrimination, and do not clash, as if 
 one referred to one kind of Deity, and another to another, 
 nor point to opposing documents. They describe God 
 as the Creator and Centre of all power, and God as the 
 covenant God under the work of the redemption. The 
 confusion has arisen in the minds of those who ignore all 
 redemptive work, and do not, and cannot, consequently, 
 
HIGHER CRITICISM ON THE PENTATEUCH, ETC. 27 
 
 understand the spiritual relations implied in the name 
 Jehovah. There is in the Book of Genesis a distinct connec- 
 tion of the parts — the evidence of its preparation, under a 
 higher guidance, by one of clear intellect, who, comparing the 
 different documents, put together the whole narrative. The 
 stories of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, and of Joseph,, are told 
 with that simplicity which characterizes all the Bible narratives 
 in both the Old Testament and the New, and with none of 
 that bombast and high-flown expression which always 
 appear in myths and mere human narratives of heroic 
 deeds. This can be seen easily by comparing these simple, 
 plain narratives with the traditions of the Jews about 
 Abraham, Moses, etc., as given in the Talmud.* The 
 Scriptures have throughout certain characteristics which it 
 is impossible for the dispassionate mind not to discern. 
 There is quietness ; there is strength ; there is transparent 
 truthfulness, despite all the assertions of the critics of the 
 naturalistic school, who, of course, can see only confusion 
 in books of which the presence and action of God 
 constitute the main features — which presence and action 
 they are pleased to treat as impossible. The play of Hamlet 
 without Hamlet is nothing in comparison. That the 
 other books of the Pentateuch were not only edited, 
 but written, by Moses, as alleged, is not disproved, but is as 
 likely as ever. Those who have lived long in Egypt, and 
 are acquainted minutely with its climate, as well as those 
 who know the desert, attest that no man could have written 
 the Book of Exodus who was a mere visitor or passing 
 traveller, but only one who had lived long in the regions, 
 understood minutely their characteristics, and was perfectly 
 * See Appendix B. 
 
28 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 familiar with them. There are no mistakes in the references 
 of Moses. The greatest Egyptian scholar, Professor Ebers, 
 has written a novel — ' An Egyptian Princess ' — illustrative of 
 old Egyptian life, remarkably well done, but with many 
 little mistakes, which strikes at once the resident. But there 
 are no mistakes of Moses as regards Egypt. Everything 
 manifests long and thorough knowledge of the country. 
 And as to the desert, the route of the Israelites, according to 
 the Mosaic records, can still be clearly traced, as it was by the 
 late Professor Palmer — the greatest colloquial Arabic scholar. 
 There is a large space under Sinai exactly agreeing with the 
 position where the vast congregation was represented to have 
 heard the law. To have supposed some visitor to Egypt 
 and the desert to have written the book, with all the 
 pictorial descriptions of the camp and of events which never 
 happened, is to suppose an absurdity. The narrative is plain 
 and unaffected, describing the most marvellous events without 
 the slightest aiming at effect ; but in calm, life-like language 
 — and in all its references to country, climate, winds, animals, 
 routes, etc., able to stand the most sifting examinations. 
 
 The truth is, these naturalistic critics, who start with 
 the idea of accounting for the Old Testament apart from 
 the existence of a living God, have to invent or suppose far 
 greater marvels than they deny. Their credulity, in attempt- 
 ing to force through their own theories, is unbounded. 
 
 The following is a quotation from a remarkable article of 
 Dr. Lansing, a well-known American missionary, who has 
 lived many years in Egypt, taken from The Christian 
 Church, of which I was editor. After noting a number of 
 mistakes of Ebers, which anyone born and brought up in 
 Egypt would at once detect, he proceeds : 
 
HIGHER CRITICISM ON THE PENTATEUCH, ETC. 29 
 
 1 No author, or company of authors, who had not spent 
 their lives, or a great portion of their lives, in Egypt, could 
 have written the Pentateuch. 
 
 ' In this I do not intend to assert that Moses, in the parts 
 of his history which preceded his own times, did not avail 
 himself of already existing documents ; nor yet that during 
 his lifetime others of his cojitemporaries may not have 
 written parts of the Pentateuch, as we have the four Gospels 
 written by the hands of the four Evangelists ; nor yet that a 
 few sentences may not have been added by a later and an 
 inspired hand, or crept in from the margin ; nor yet that 
 there are not in the Pentateuch certain expressions upon 
 which we are yet needing " more light " (though they are 
 daily becoming less). What I do assert is, that to suppose 
 the Pentateuch (its middle books as well as those at its two 
 ends) was written in Palestine four, six, or eight centuries 
 after the Exodus, and by men who had not resided for long 
 years in Egypt, is as preposterous as it would be to suppose 
 that "Holy Willie's Prayer," or the "Cotter's Saturday Night" 
 were written by a Parisian Frenchman, or " Hiawatha " by an 
 Ashantee chief. The proof of this thesis thus strongly 
 stated might be sought by different authors from standpoints 
 as various as their different modes of thought and lines of 
 study. Some would take the line of good old John Owen, 
 in his " Self-Evidencing Light of the Scriptures "; but I fear 
 they would avail little with the German " higher critics " 
 and the Anglo-Saxon retailers of their crudely assimilated 
 materials. Others would view it from the standpoint of the 
 historical coincidences, such as those so ably set forth in 
 Blunt's work on the " Veracity of the Books of Moses." 
 The standpoint from which I have studied the subject 
 
30 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 is the double one of linguistic and /oca/, and with me the 
 general thesis given above resolves itself into two, as 
 follows : 
 
 1 i st. The Egyptian words adopted in the Pentateuch, 
 and afterwards incorporated in the Hebrew language, prove 
 the Egyptian origin of the Pentateuch. 
 
 1 2nd. The local allusions of the most minute character 
 to Egyptian matters prove that the writer or writers of the 
 Pentateuch had spent the greater portion of their lives in 
 Egypt.' 
 
 These two statements, Dr. Lansing established at length 
 in a number of interesting details. 
 
 It is to be further noticed that the references to the priest- 
 hood and sacrifices, and which are said to be post-exile, are 
 mixed up in the most inextricable way with these accurate 
 descriptions of the desert and of Egypt. The action of the 
 priests and Levites is described in the desert — their 
 functions as to the tabernacle, which Wellhausen says never 
 existed, and their precise conduct in special circumstances 
 — the rebellion and destruction of portions of them, etc. ; 
 all is pictorially before us. The surroundings in the desert, 
 so far as can be tested, are correctly given. The accompany- 
 ing narratives as to Egypt and the desert can bear closest 
 examination. How then have these been interwoven with 
 post-exile inventions ! The writers must not only have been 
 apt deceivers, thus adroitly binding in the false with the 
 true, but men of wondrous skill, who could do it so perfectly 
 that for many ages the trick remained undiscovered — not 
 even surmised. We are forced to imagine this, if we accept 
 the central idea of the school of criticism by which the 
 priesthood and sacrifices, and separation of priests and 
 
HIGHER CRITICISM ON THE PENTATEUCH, ETC. 31 
 
 Levites, are brought down to a late date. This can be 
 done only by the supposition, monstrous from a literary 
 point of view, that into a narrative which can stand all tests 
 of accuracy as to Egypt, and as to the desert, there have 
 been skilfully interwoven at a late age not only copies of 
 ordinances that did not exist for many ages after, but pictorial 
 descriptions of a tabernacle, and of many actions of priests 
 and Levites, which had not the slightest foundation in 
 fact. Credit it who may, it is an impossible conception 
 from a literary point of view. Fiction has its limits, and 
 such baseless fiction woven beautifully into narratives 
 that will stand every searching test is a literary impossi- 
 bility — an absurd conception which would never have 
 been dreamt of except for the purpose of reconciling 
 the existence of the books with that which is utterly 
 antagonistic to them, viz., abnegation of God and of the 
 supernatural. 
 
 It is passing strange that this assertion of the late origin 
 of the priesthood and of the division of priests and 
 Levites has been accepted by many who are believers in 
 God and in inspiration. It is very difficult to under- 
 stand the position of such, for how could men writing 
 by inspiration of God incorporate inventions which had 
 not the slightest foundation as facts, saying, 'And the 
 Lord spake to Moses,' etc. ? Here there is a moral as 
 well as a spiritual impossibility. The truth is that many 
 have been carried away by the mere boldness of the utter- 
 ances of the naturalistic school. If those who deny God 
 cannot intelligently maintain their position in this matter, 
 as they cannot, much less can those who believe in God 
 and inspiration and the supernatural. Their position is 
 
32 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 vwrally and spiritually impossible. The omission at certain 
 periods of references to the priesthood, and the departure 
 from the one-altar law, in certain states of society, can be 
 easily accounted for. The ceremonial law, as well as the 
 Sabbath, was made for man, and not man for the law, 
 and there were many times of convulsion when the nation 
 was so divided and split up by enemies separating its 
 parts that sacrifices would have been impossible on the one- 
 altar system, and the idea of the one altar was always 
 subordinate to the essential idea of sacrifice. That 
 Gideon or Jephthah, in a disorganized society, not only sur- 
 rounded, but actually divided in the heart of the country by 
 enemies, or Elijah after the kingdoms were separated, should 
 have set up altars, and offered sacrifices, even when not 
 priests, is easily accounted for under the circumstances, and 
 does not militate at all against the existence, even from the 
 time of Moses, of a law which was given for a settled state 
 of society. The apparent difficulties arise from a pedantic 
 representation of the ceremonial law as not intended to be 
 accommodated to adverse circumstances, even at times when 
 it could not possibly, in this one matter, be carried out 
 without the abolition of that which was essential, viz., the 
 offering of sacrifices. 
 
 The more the subject is considered, the more clearly is it 
 seen that the idea of the late introduction of sacrifices and 
 the priesthood, and of the insertion, not only of the cere- 
 monial laws, but of the alleged facts regarding the existence 
 of the tabernacle and the altars of sacrifice in the wilderness, 
 is one that cannot be maintained. But if this fail, the fabric 
 of this revolutionary criticism falls to pieces. On this theory 
 is based the method of judging the history throughout and 
 
HIGHER CRITICISM ON THE PENTATEUCH, ETC. 33 
 
 the books that record it. For if the priests and the Levites 
 existed in the early times, as described, with the special 
 duties assigned to them, Israel did not develop gradually 
 from a state of barbarism, but were established under the 
 guidance of God by His servant Moses, as a special people, 
 with their own fixed laws and order, from the period alleged 
 in the Pentateuch, when they came out of Egypt and lived 
 in the wilderness — and the wilderness journey and all the 
 events connected with it were literally true. Of course, 
 the higher critics, and all mere naturalists, treat this as 
 impossible, because their standpoint is that there is no reve- 
 lation or supernatural ; but their attempt to account for the 
 history otherwise than as stated has led them to inextricable 
 confusion, and to suppositions which are perfectly impos- 
 sible. Even if we put aside moral considerations, the diffi- 
 culties of introducing into books seen to be ancient and 
 accurate in their references to Egypt and the wilderness, 
 statements not only as to priestly ordinances, but as to 
 priestly actions, made with all the vividness of the ear-witness 
 and eye-witness, are such as cannot be surmounted. The 
 priestly ordinances are given, intermingled with ceremonial 
 and civil laws, and, here and there, with history necessary 
 to explain them, in the last part of Exodus and in Leviticus. 
 In Numbers there is a return to the history, after the 
 Israelites had forsaken Sinai, where God gave them the 
 ordinances, and, later on, an account of their approach to 
 the borders of Canaan. Here again, as in the earlier history, 
 everything is described calmly and with the stamp of truth- 
 fulness, and also in perfect harmony with the aspects of the 
 regions through which they passed, and the then condition, 
 so far as known, of the neighbouring nations. 
 
 3 
 
34 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 The Book of Deuteronomy, which has been so much 
 assailed, bears the strongest internal evidence of its Mosaic 
 authorship. It is evidently, as seen at a glance, uttered by 
 one recording to a multitude the vivid experiences of many 
 years of scenes witnessed together, in a way which makes the 
 scenes to live before us. It bears the literary marks of this. 
 It is anything but fragmentary. It is continuous and closely 
 connected, passing intelligently from one theme to another, 
 and concluding with fatherly exhortations and warnings as to 
 the future, followed by the magnificent song of praise and by 
 the blessings pronounced on the tribes. It is a thrilling 
 book, with the aspect of dignity, and truth, and holiness 
 inscribed on every part of it — a record and a warning by 
 the father of the people, whose whole spirit is bound to 
 them by the tenderest ties. To say that it was written in 
 Jerusalem many hundred years later by Hilkiah, who had 
 never seen anything that is described, is preposterous. There 
 is the clear impress of the eye-witness — of the leader bound 
 to the people heart and soul by the long memories of the 
 past. There is the dignity of his counsel ; there is the 
 earnestness, of his purpose ; there is the natural and easy refer- 
 ence to the ordinances which the Israelites had received, not 
 going over them minutely, but referring to them as known. 
 There are references also to the marvellous events of the 
 delivery from Egypt and the wilderness journey, and there 
 is fatherly counsel as to the future. If any book ever written 
 bears on it the stamp of historic accuracy, it is this book. 
 As to the laws of the kingdom in Deuteronomy, the objec- 
 tions raised are futile. A kingdom certainly was a possibility 
 when all other nations were governed by kings, and it was 
 wise to give warning as to perils to be avoided in such an 
 
HIGHER CRITICISM ON THE PENTATEUCH, ETC. 35 
 
 event. Besides, by prophetic inspiration, God, through His 
 servant, could give insight into the real events of a future 
 age and prepare for it. As to the last chapter, it was 
 probably written by Joshua — a fitting termination to the 
 Pentateuch of Moses — and let me note that indirectly it 
 implied that the Pentateuch was written by Moses. 
 
 The Book of Joshua relates the conquest of Canaan in a 
 strictly historic method. It is full of marvels, but told with 
 no straining at effect, but easily and naturally, as by those 
 who had witnessed them without wonder, because God was 
 recognised as present and giving power. The book pro- 
 ceeds, after the history of the conquest, to give necessary 
 and important minute details as to the division of the 
 country among the tribes in the most matter-of-fact method, 
 and concludes with the death of Joshua. The history pro- 
 ceeds perfectly naturally, in the circumstances, to describe 
 the wars that arose afterwards and the difficulties that beset 
 the people, and though in Judges there is not much said of 
 the priests and Levites, there is plain reference to them, 
 as in the account of Micah the Levite. And then in 
 the Books of Samuel the priesthood and the one sanctuary 
 appear till after the great victory of the Philistines, when 
 the priests were scattered, and Samuel had to offer sacrifices 
 where he could — though principally at Shiloh. 
 
 The desire for a king is fully accounted for in the circum- 
 stances, as described, of the people, when the enemies of the 
 Israelites within Canaan had become so strong as to be 
 almost masters of the country. There was a want of faith 
 in God in the impatient way in which the people j ressed 
 this matter on Samuel, forgetting the many deliverers that 
 had been raised up by God in the past. It was this that 
 
 3—2 
 
36 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 was rebuked, and not the mere desire of a king, for God 
 intended the kingdom, and made the kingdom to be a 
 blessing. There is nothing at all difficult to explain in this 
 part of the history, and it requires much less credence to 
 consider it true, unless we deny the existence of God, than 
 to imagine it recorded fictitiously for a purpose in a later 
 age. 
 
 In regard to the history of David, there are special 
 evidences of truthfulness in the narratives. David was the 
 great hero of the Jewish nation, associated not only with 
 kingly power, but with inspired song. Whether rightly or 
 wrongly, a large portion of the magnificent Psalms were 
 imputed to him. How can we imagine Jews of a later 
 period, when the halo of David's name had become so great, 
 inventing horrid tales as to David, which were fitted so 
 seriously to injure his reputation ? If such an event as that 
 connected with Uriah and Bathsheba had been reported by 
 mere tradition, would not later writers have omitted it or 
 toned it down ? What a relief, many people would say now, 
 if we had not this sad catastrophe in David's life ! Surely 
 later writers would never have invented such things of the 
 national hero. Is there not literary evidence that a narra- 
 tive which hides or smooths over nothing that can make the 
 sin repulsive, but describes it in all its moral hideousness — 
 though it was the sin of one praised and celebrated as a 
 great king and true servant of God — was not only a true 
 narrative, recording literally most painful circumstances that 
 occurred, but was also directed by the inspiration of the 
 Spirit, for no mere human writer, not overruled by God, would 
 have spoken so plainly ? The sins and errors of David are re- 
 corded with all plainness, and yet he is called the man after 
 
HIGHER CRITICISM ON DAVID AND THE PSALMS. 37 
 
 God's own heart, and praised as one of the most noble and 
 true servants of God that ever lived. Does not this plain- 
 ness, which is characteristic of the Scriptures throughout, 
 impress upon us absolute truthfulness and Divine guidance? 
 
 And here it is fitting to refer to the Psalms. Our faith 
 is not bound up with the authorship of the Psalms. But 
 there is really no ground for upsetting the general Jewish 
 ideas and historic testimony as to the authorship of the 
 Psalms, and the composing of a large portion of them by 
 David, except we accept the theories as to the early history. 
 Of course, if the events recorded in the Pentateuch did not 
 occur, and the ordinances professed to be given there were 
 given for the first time many centuries later, the Psalms 
 must generally have belonged to a later date, for they refer 
 constantly to those events and ordinances, and if, further, 
 God were only known, or evolved, as Kuenen would say, 
 as a living God by the prophets, all the Psalms must belong 
 to a period later than the prophets who evolved the idea of 
 God. ' If,' indeed, but on this 'if centres the whole posi- 
 tion. We have Professor Cheyne, in his recent Bampton 
 Lecture, asserting that almost all the Psalms are of late 
 date, and scarcely one of them a Psalm of David. It is the 
 merest assertion, unless the author adopts the naturalistic 
 theory of Kuenen and others. 
 
 There is nothing to show that the Jews were wrong in 
 their traditions as to the authorship of most of the Psalms 
 — traditions, for the most part, seeming to date from the 
 time at which the Psalms were written, and which fit in 
 marvellously with the chequered events as recorded of 
 David's life. Unless we accept the position as to the whole 
 history, there is nothing to interfere with the belief that the 
 
38 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 Psalms were written at the periods supposed, and that large 
 portions of them were written by King David. As to one 
 man writing so many Psalms, this is quite in harmony with 
 the history of poetry. One great poet has often written 
 more songs of highest poetic power than had been produced 
 among a whole people for centuries, and the Psalms imputed 
 to David have special characteristics which point to a unity 
 of authorship. They are songs such as the world has never 
 known, revealing the power of spiritual life, but still with the 
 special characteristics of the writers, and most strikingly of 
 one great writer who was full to overflowing of heartfelt 
 devotion to the living and true God — who felt God's mighty 
 loving arm around him in all the varied circumstances of a 
 most chequered life — just such a life as that of David 
 described to us in the history. It is certainly marvellous 
 how many of these Psalms fit into the very periods of 
 David's history with which they are associated in the titles. 
 And David's whole career, more varied than that of any 
 other, eminently fitted him to write hymns adapted to all 
 the most varied circumstances of life. 
 
 The different parts of this far-reaching criticism stand or 
 fall together, and it is well to note that the doubts thrown 
 on David's authorship of many of the Psalms are associated 
 with a theory of the history of Israel based on the denial of 
 their knowledge of the one God till the eighth century. 
 
 When we consider the prophets, what utter impossibili- 
 ties, moral and literary, does this criticism create ! We 
 surely can judge of the moral tone of writers, to some extent, 
 by their writings. If anything is clear in the character of 
 literature, it is that those who wrote the prophetic books 
 imputed to Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and the 
 
HIGHER CRITICISM ON THE PROPHETS. 39 
 
 minor prophets, whoever they were, were men of highest 
 integrity, abhorring lies as the essence of all wickedness, as 
 ruining their own nation in their day ; warning against lies 
 of all kinds, declaring God to be a God of absolute truth 
 and righteousness, showing that He contended against and 
 destroyed that which was false and deceptive. There are 
 no such denunciations of lies of every species, and especially 
 of so-called pious frauds, except in the language of Jesus 
 Christ, as in the writings associated with the names of 
 Isaiah, Jeremiah, Ezekiel, Daniel, and other prophets. 
 They speak with indignation and reprobation of the 
 falsehoods practised both politically and religiously, and 
 show that these were the cause of the judgments which 
 threatened or had actually arrived. A religion based on 
 falsehood was, in the words of these prophets, the vilest 
 thing on the face of the earth, as it was afterwards in the 
 words of Jesus. We might quote passage after passage to 
 show this, and we can quote nothing at all to show the con- 
 trary — n ot one single word or expression to defend or ex- 
 tenuate frauds. And yet what is the conclusion to which the 
 so-called higher critics are driven ? That these writers, who- 
 ever they were, were often acting a false part ; that the writings 
 belonged frequently to later dates ; that the professed pre- 
 dictions were histories of events that had taken place j that 
 the references to ordinances, which did not exist at the dates 
 given to the books, were put in to bolster up a fraudulent 
 pretence, viz., that these ordinances had come down from 
 earlier times ; that the books were full of lies, describing 
 events as of a past age that never occurred ; and, further, 
 that those who wrote these books were inventing baseless 
 stories, and palming them off on the people as records and 
 
40 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 ordinances of Moses, and very often forging the names of 
 former prophets. The writers of these prophecies impress us 
 clearly with the idea that they were men of righteousness and 
 truth — men ready to suffer and die rather than deceive the 
 people. And yet they are to be supposed to be the greatest 
 deceivers, outvying diabolical Jesuitism itself in the manu- 
 facture of frauds. The position requires only to be stated 
 to convince one of its worthlessness. 
 
 Then as to style. There is apparent in these prophetic 
 writings the individuality of the writers. Fragments are 
 supposed to be put in here and there and everywhere — in 
 Isaiah, for instance. This is necessary to give plausibility to 
 the theories. Some of the critics make ten or twenty Isaiahs. 
 But the writings of Isaiah are most marked for their sub- 
 limity of thought, surpassing in this all other writings known. 
 The style is unique and inimitable. This uniqueness and 
 yet identity of style — the same sublime flights of thought and 
 imagination — are to be seen both in the former and latter 
 sections of the prophecy, militating against the idea of even 
 two Isaiahs ; but as to the book being a collection of frag- 
 ments, no one with any literary discernment can maintain 
 it for a moment. In all the prophets, as Jeremiah, Ezekiel, 
 Hosea, Micah, Amos, and others, there is marked unity and 
 individuality. This has been conclusively shown by the 
 Dean of Canterbury, one of our ablest Hebraists.* 
 
 But if it is so, they are in many parts distinctly prophetic. 
 To get rid of this we are to suppose that all these prophetic 
 parts were put in after the events had occurred, and then 
 palmed off as ancient. We see to what straits these 
 writers are driven to maintain their theories. They are 
 * See Appendix C. 
 
HIGHER CRITICISM ON THE PROPHETS. 41 
 
 unconsciously proving, in their far - fetched explanations, 
 the reality of God and of miracles, which, with efforts so 
 strenuous, in vain they try to get rid of. We have referred 
 to the Book of Daniel, but would note it here again, as it is 
 a central object of attack. Daniel gives most distinct 
 prophecies of the great empires of the world. No one can 
 deny the fitness of his descriptions of the four successive 
 empires, concluding with that of Rome. The words of 
 Daniel descriptive of the Roman Empire, in two distinct 
 prophecies, could not be excelled for accuracy of general 
 delineation. It has long been held by this school of 
 criticism that Daniel must have been written after the period 
 of Antiochus Epiphanes, as he describes so clearly the empire 
 of Alexander the Great, and its divisions on his death, and 
 then the events of Antiochus's reign. But now they are 
 going farther. The description of the Roman power is so 
 clear that the book must have been written after that power 
 was well known — that is, a century or so before Christ. And 
 to this period some late critics impute the book. Now, 
 it happens that Daniel was translated in the Septuagint as 
 a book of the period indicated ; but the Septuagint was all 
 completed about two centuries before Christ, and there 
 fore the translators must have used it as a well-authen- 
 ticated, comparatively ancient book, just after it had issued 
 from the pen of the writer, or, rather, before it had done 
 so. The Jews must have been the most simple and easily 
 deceived people that ever appeared on the face of the 
 earth, in striking contrast to the character they bore, even 
 in the time of their ancestor Jacob, and have borne ever 
 since. The genuineness and authenticity of Daniel have 
 been vindicated by Dr. Pusey in one of the ablest critical 
 
42 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 books in our language, which has never been answered. 
 There is strongest evidence that it was written by the 
 prophet and statesman Daniel at the periods indicated. 
 The evidences are manifold, and the language is entirely 
 confirmatory, portions being in Chaldee, and portions in 
 Hebrew. Had it been of a late date, it would have been 
 written in Greek, as the books of the Apocrypha. The 
 internal characteristics of the book plainly point to its 
 genuineness and authenticity. It is written in the sublime 
 language of prophecy — written in the highest strain of 
 moral righteousness and truth. It contains also in language 
 of the same prophetic sublimity unmistakable prophecy of 
 the period of the Christ, and of His being condemned to die 
 as a criminal. It is a most genuine book, against which every 
 weapon has been turned, because, unless its testimony can be 
 destroyed, God \% proved to be the Ruler of all nations at all 
 periods, and consequently, if the book contain true prophecy, 
 the whole fabric of fatalism, and of Agnosticism, and anti- 
 supernaturalism falls to pieces. This book must be destroyed 
 if the destructive criticism is to stand, therefore the strong 
 language used to sweep it away — the assertions again and 
 again made, that its historic position has been overthrown. 
 It has been asserted, and is asserted and re-asserted, that its 
 historic position as the Book of Daniel is now untenable. 
 But the wish is father to the thought. The Book of Daniel 
 stands as firmly at this day as at the moment of the first 
 attack. Its plain prophetic evidence of God being the 
 living Ruler of all nations has not been shaken, and its 
 historic position is immovable. We may note that it is a 
 habit of this naturalistic school to take for granted that 
 positions of especial importance have been destroyed or are 
 
HIGHER CRITICISM ON THE PROPHETS. 43 
 
 about to be destroyed, and thus to alarm people into false 
 concessions, as when an enemy feigns to a garrison that a 
 post has been given up by the main army, in the hope of 
 getting the garrison to surrender. We have constantly to 
 be on the alert against this kind of tactics in dealing with 
 the so-called higher critics. 
 
 We have gone thus rapidly through the main positions of 
 attack on the Old Testament. The more we examine, the 
 more clearly do we discern that the theories of the extreme 
 school of critics, by which the Old Testament is turned 
 upside down, are theories which cannot bear examination, 
 which crumble to pieces when put to the test. The shifts to 
 which they are driven in breaking up books, plainly the 
 works of one author, into many fragments, in imputing to 
 men of the loftiest ideas of truth and righteousness, as seen 
 in their writings, the basest and meanest deceptions, in sup- 
 posing the Jewish nation to have been so simple in matters, 
 in regard to which they were most sensitive, as to be easily 
 imposed on by any frauds ; these makeshifts clearly show 
 how difficult, yea, how impossible, it is to account for the 
 books of the Old Testament on any naturalistic basis, and 
 thus indirectly strengthen the position always held in the 
 past, that these books were the productions of the ages to 
 which they professed to belong, were true and honest in 
 their histories, were genuine in their professed prophecies ; 
 that they described by a higher influence, breathed upon the 
 writers, the events of future ages, and especially the corning, 
 in the fulness of time, of the great Deliverer. 
 
LECTURE III. 
 
 THE HISTORICAL POSITION. THE DIVINE AND HUMAN IN 
 
 THE SCRIPTURES I TESTIMONY OF CHRIST TO THEIR 
 FULL INSPIRATION. — MESSIANIC PROPHECIES. — CLOSE 
 
 CONNECTION OF THE OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS. 
 
 SCIENCE AND MIRACLES. 
 
 The Scriptures of the Old and New Testaments have ever 
 been regarded by the Christian Church as of Divine inspira- 
 tion, as a revelation made by God to man, and therefore as 
 the infallible rule of faith. All know the position of Judaism, 
 ancient and modern. In ancient Judaism, at the time of 
 our Lord, as shown in the works of Josephus, every portion 
 of the Old Testament Scriptures was regarded as of Divine 
 authority. Enormous pains were taken to secure the accu- 
 racy of the copies. The very numbers of words and letters 
 were counted. Our Lord condemned the traditions of the 
 Jews in terms which excited the bitter hatred of the rulers, 
 but the Scriptures He always treated as of absolute authority. 
 And the Apostles established from the Old Testament 
 the claims of Christianity. They not only quoted certain 
 passages, but they regarded it throughout as an unerring 
 guide. This authority was also imputed to the New Testa- 
 ment as it appeared. From the earliest period there was no 
 dispute as to inspiration, but only as to the claim of the 
 
THE HISTORICAL POSITION. 45 
 
 various books to be considered as Scripture. Not only the 
 Fathers of the Church, but also the heretics, professed to 
 bow before the authority of the Apostolic writings, seeking 
 to prove their positions from them. And so it continued 
 through the Middle Ages. The Jews regarded their Scripture 
 as a Divine revelation, and the Christians, east and west, 
 looked on the Old and New Testaments as throughout a 
 message from God. And thus at the Reformation, when 
 the Reformers assailed as unscriptural many of the dogmas 
 of the Papacy, both sides recognised the authority of the 
 Scriptures. The Roman Catholics also tried to defend 
 their position from it, quoting such passages as ' Thou art 
 Peter, and upon this rock I will build My Church.' The 
 whole Reformation was built up on the idea of the Scripture 
 being throughout a revelation from God, and its testimony 
 on every subject indisputable. The theology of the Re- 
 formation was constructed on this basis. This position 
 was maintained very generally, though there were a few 
 exceptions, till about fifty years ago. Even the Unitarians 
 of this country did not dispute the authority of the 
 Scripture, but tried, by a new translation, to minimize the 
 effect of passages which seemed to tell against themselves. 
 
 Such has been the historical position. The Jewish Church 
 always maintained the inspiration throughout of the Old 
 Testament. Jesus and His Apostles most clearly confirmed 
 this. And the Christian Church accepted from the begin- 
 ning this position as to the Old Testament, and adopted it 
 as to the New Testament as its books became known, 
 regarding it also as throughout of Divine authority. This 
 continued to be the belief of all branches of the Christian 
 Church till within a comparatively recent period. 
 
46 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 It is impossible for man to understand fully the method of 
 the Divine inspiration. The living Word, Jesus Christ, was 
 God and Man, but how? We do not know, and the 
 written word was of Divine and human origin, but how it 
 is not for us to explain. Jesus was truly man — identified 
 with humanity — and yet He was truly God, possessed of 
 Divine power and majesty. ' Great is the mystery of godli- 
 ness,' ' God was manifest in the flesh ' — and it will ever be a 
 mystery. We should need Divine power to comprehend it 
 fully. And so with the Scriptures. They are Divine, and 
 yet they are human, written by men under the influence of 
 the events of the time, with their whole faculties engaged. 
 The characteristics of the different writers are as apparent 
 as those of other authors, and also the circumstances under 
 which they wrote. This was often too much forgotten in 
 the past. The Scriptures were sometimes treated as a mere 
 collection of texts, isolated from each other. Passages were 
 reasoned upon altogether apart from the places in which 
 they occurred, and the connection in which they were 
 found. A great deal of the bitterness of controversy arose 
 from this artificial method of dealing with the Scriptures. 
 Verses were taken out of their connection and pitted 
 against each other. Modern criticism has done a very 
 great service in tracing out clearly the specialities of the 
 writers, and the circumstances connected with the writing of 
 the books. This human element is plainly apparent. The 
 prophets have each their special characteristics — Isaiah was 
 the sublimest poet that ever wrote in any language ; David, 
 the most touching lyric-poet that any age has produced. 
 The four Gospels exhibit different orders of minds, each dis- 
 tinct, but St. John, of course, the most marked of all. The 
 
THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN SCRIPTURE. 47 
 
 personality of St. Paul appears strongly in all his Epistles. 
 The writings, in fact, of the Old and New Testaments bear 
 throughout the distinct marks of their human origin. There 
 is an immense variety in the style of the writers and the 
 order of literature. But though this fact was too often in 
 past ages neglected in searching for the true meaning of 
 passages, it is absurd to suppose that it was not always 
 recognised by men of ability. Luther refers with great clear- 
 ness and force to the characteristics of different writers, and 
 so does Calvin. All really great commentators make this an 
 important element in guiding them to their interpretations. 
 There is a mistaken tendency in the present day to imagine 
 that so apparent a fact was overlooked, and that we have 
 now entirely new ideas in regard to it. This human element 
 cannot be hidden, and there is no reason for its being 
 hidden. We would say, without any fear of lowering their 
 authority, that the distinctive characteristics of the writers 
 are generally as marked as in any other writings. It is 
 evident that the whole minds of the writers were engaged, 
 that what they wrote proceeded from thought, and know- 
 ledge, and inquiry, and feeling. There was a fu// y but not 
 certainly a mechanical, inspiration by which the authors are 
 regarded as mere penmen — a position that is untenable, and 
 that very few have held. The Spirit in directing them used 
 all their faculties and circumstances in accordance with that 
 higher nature to which He had restored them. Nor is this 
 position at all inconsistent nor illogical. The Spirit acts in 
 those whom He quickens, not apart from their faculties, but 
 through them. He brings the intellect, and heart, and 
 emotions into accordance with the will of God, so that 
 while guided by the Spirit they direct their steps with a 
 
48 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 freedom and elasticity far beyond that of other men, because 
 they have the power as well as the will. If this be the case 
 with the renewed man, why should it not also have been 
 the case, in a more special method, adapted to the work to 
 be done for the Church universal, with the writers of the 
 Divine revelation who were fitted by the Spirit to convey 
 the very message of God ? 
 
 But, on the other side, the fact of the inspiration or 
 Divine direction is forced upon us even by reason, for while 
 the Scriptures (Old Testament and New) have their human 
 side by which they are specially adapted to influence men — 
 for God speaks to men as men — they have also their Divine 
 aspect, which separates them throughout from all other 
 books ever written. We can easily note proofs of this. 
 
 There is a unity, for instance, in their teaching which is 
 perfectly marvellous — truly miraculous — considering the 
 great variety of circumstances under which they were written 
 in so many successive centuries. There is from Genesis to 
 Revelation the same idea of God, as holy, just, and true, 
 and yet merciful, gracious, long-suffering, and kind. There 
 are seldom, even in the New Testament, more touching 
 evidences of the tender love of God than in the history of 
 the patriarchs. This love appears all through the Old Testa- 
 ment. How gracious and long-suffering is God's dealing with 
 the Israelites ; how full of the love of God are the Psalms 
 and the prophecies ! There is indeed the severity of God 
 against the hardened ; but this severity appears with as ?nuch 
 strength in the language of Jesus, when on earth, as in the Old 
 Testament. Holiness, justice, truth, love, above all are the 
 characteristics of God throughout the whole of these writings, 
 extending, as to their origin, over a period of many centuries. 
 
THE DI I r INE INSPIR. 1 1 ION. 49 
 
 Then again, as to man, their teaching is the same from 
 first to last. Man is regarded as fallen, as wholly and help- 
 lessly sinful, unless he be restored by supernatural influence. 
 For this restoration there needs forgiveness, and therefore 
 sacrifice, which is taught from the beginning, and completed 
 in the sacrifice of Christ on the cross. 
 
 Then again, as to Satan and his agents, the books are at 
 one throughout when the subject is referred to — Genesis 
 showing the beginning of the Satanic power among men, 
 and Revelation the close of it. 
 
 Thus when we consider the great variety of writers and 
 of circumstances, we have the most evident proof of a 
 guidance in all these writings, which makes them thus 
 harmonious throughout as to the great doctrines they teach. 
 
 And again, in all the varied characteristics of the times 
 and the writers, there are certain literary marks in these 
 books which differentiate them from all others. For instance, 
 there is a brevity combined with a wondrous fulness. Some 
 people imagine that there could be no necessity for a Divine 
 guidance in the writing of history — but no idea could be 
 more mistaken. To describe facts truly and tersely is the 
 most remarkable of powers. Now, it is a characteristic of 
 both the Old Testament and the New — that is, short 
 passages, they describe the facts of history, not in the 
 method of abstracts, but with most vivid pictorial power. 
 This is strikingly apparent in the Old Testament histories, 
 where men are portrayed as living men with perfect dis- 
 tinctness, often in a few sentences. The greatest historians 
 could not, in many volumes, give such vivid ideas of the 
 the times and the men. We have a clearer view of the 
 character of Ahab and of the kings of Judah and Israel, often 
 
 4 
 
50 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 in a few sentences, than of Frederick the Great in all 
 Carlyle's volumes, or William III. in all Macaulay's. This 
 could be done only by the guidance of that Spirit who sees 
 into the hearts of all men, and into the deepest currents of 
 all events. The same characteristics appear in historical 
 books of the New Testament. With what brevity, and yet 
 fulness, the four Gospels bring before us sayings and acts of 
 Jesus, avoiding all that is unimportant — not even mentioning 
 once the personal appearance of Jesus — and concentrating 
 attention on that which is important and essential ! No men 
 could possibly have done this except imder Divine influence. 
 The Acts of the Apostles give in the compass of an 
 ordinary tract the most vivid pictures of years of the 
 Church's career in her starting on the great voyage of life. 
 There is thus clear evidence, in both Old Testament and 
 New, of minute Divine guidance even in the historical 
 department, which would seem to need it least of all. No 
 men have ever written, or could of themselves only have 
 written, such histories so brief and yet so full — written with 
 perfect clearness, and with human tenderness and attractive- 
 ness — the Spirit acting through the whole souls of the 
 writers, not destroying their individuality, but leading them 
 to express truth with such vividness. What a contrast 
 between their writings and the Jewish traditions, on the one 
 hand, as regards the Old Testament, and the spurious gospels 
 and epistles, on the other, as regards the New Testament !* 
 But if this higher guidance is plainly seen even in the his- 
 toric writings, how clear is it in the prophetic, and psalmodic, 
 and epistolary ! The prophetic rising often to a great 
 breadth of view and sublimity of conception far above all 
 
 * See Appendix B. 
 
THE DIVINE INSPIRATION. 51 
 
 power of human genius ; the psalmodic abounding in 
 appeals most real to the tender love of God and in rhap- 
 sodic praise — no mere sentimental expressions, but deep 
 and heartfelt, touching the very springs of life, and exciting 
 devotion intense in all ages since. And then there is the most 
 clear picturing of the future — hundreds or thousands of years 
 before. The attempts made to dispute this are vain and 
 futile. It can be proved with perfect clearness over and 
 over again, both as to the person of the Messiah and the 
 events of His life and death, and as to the events which were 
 to befall different cities and nations. In regard to these 
 predictions it may be said very specially that the prophets 
 desired to look into those things, foretold by themselves. 
 Then as to the Epistles. How different are they from all 
 similar writings, impressing so clearly the great doctrines of 
 the faith with such tenderness and yet such intellectual 
 power ! Everywhere in Scripture there is the evidence of a 
 superintending power guiding throughout, by inspiring the 
 whole soul of each writer, and enabling him not only to 
 state that which was necessary, but also to abstain from 
 stating the unnecessary. 
 
 There is thus evidence of both the Divine and the 
 human elements, but the Divine not separate from the 
 human, but interpenetrating it, so that every part of the 
 revelation is from God — the idea always recognised in the 
 Jewish and Christian Churches — the writers filled with the 
 Holy Spirit, acting upon all their faculties and bringing 
 forth from them a Divine music suited to their character 
 and circumstances. We hear the voice of St. Peter in his 
 Epistles in distinct harmony with his character and order of 
 mind, and yet there is a higher voice — the voice of God — 
 
 4—2 
 
52 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 using him, with his specialities, as an instrument ; and so in 
 the case of all the writers. What more marked than the 
 character of St. John in his Gospels and Epistles, or of St. 
 Paul, in his great grasp of thought, vigorous reasoning, and 
 burning affection ? But withal they are under the guidance 
 of a higher Power. Compare the writings of the Fathers, 
 or the Reformers, or any theologians. These take volumes 
 to describe that which is given in sentences. 
 
 The position held by the Jewish and Christian Churches 
 — the latter certainly from the beginning, as taught by Jesus 
 and His Apostles — is that the whole Scripture was given by 
 inspiration — a revelation from God — given in a human 
 method by human agents, with all their powers in action 
 and their faculties at work, and therefore with personal 
 characteristics as distinct as those of other writings. It is 
 difficult to understand this. But it is not more difficult 
 than to understand how the perfectly Divine and human 
 acted in harmony in the person of Jesus, and yet this is the 
 centre of our Christian faith. Such problems are beyond 
 our power of explanation — above, not co?itrary to reason. 
 If God gives us a revelation at all, it must surely be given as 
 a whole, and not in isolated sections, left to be discovered 
 by ourselves. What God declares must have authority ; but 
 the authority is gone if we do not know whether it is from 
 God or not. Then supremacy is given not to God, but 
 to our own understanding, which is to find out for itself 
 what is of Divine origin, and what not. How can it find 
 out if not itself supreme? It seems impossible to sup- 
 pose God giving a revelation in such a method — there- 
 fore without authority — leaving men to find out what is 
 agreeable to their own ideas, and what not. Imagine a 
 
THE WHOLE SCRIPTURE INSPIRED. 53 
 
 father giving his child directions in such a method or a 
 State its laws. It would be utterly confusing, and would 
 destroy all authority. And surely the great and infinite 
 God cannot, if He reveal Himself at all, but let us know 
 clearly that the message is His. It will consequently be 
 found that men are very soon driven logically to deny a 
 revelation when they deny the authority throughout of the 
 Scriptures. It is a complete arid full inspiration that we 
 desiderate — and this was the representation and the idea of 
 the Jewish Church beyond all doubt, and of the Christian 
 Church universally till a recent period. But what is of 
 supreme importance is that it received the imprimatur of 
 Jesus in the planting of the Christian Church. 
 
 The testimony of Jesus as to the Scriptures is very clear — 
 seen to be the more clear, the more comprehensively we 
 look to His sayings and actions. In the age of our Lord 
 there were three things asserted by the Jewish ecclesiastics : 
 the absolute authority of Scripture ; the authority of tradi- 
 tion ; and the authority of the Church as the interpreter of 
 both. Both of the latter Jesus condemned as false, and 
 thereby roused that bitter antipathy of the rulers which made 
 them to persecute Him to death. They felt that He was a 
 formidable rival — as a worker of the most wondrous miracles, 
 and as a speaker of words which attracted the attention of all. 
 If He succeeded in gaining the ear of the people generally 
 their power would be gone. The conflict was as bitter on 
 their part as that of the Romish Church in the sixteenth 
 century against the Reformers. The very centre of the 
 conflict consisted in Jesus' utter rejection of the authority of 
 tradition and denial of the claims of the Jewish Church to 
 be the infallible, or even a safe, interpreter of Scripture. 
 
54 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 And it appears amazing how, except by mere blindness, men 
 professing to be followers of Jesus can maintain the 
 authority of tradition, and the ri^ht of the Church, as such, 
 to be the only interpreter of the Scriptures. These were the 
 very points raised at the time of the mission of Christ on 
 earth, and He declared Himself as to them with all clearness. 
 The Jewish Church had a much better claim to be the infallible 
 interpreter of the Old Testament Scriptures than any one of 
 the many sections of Christendom can have to interpret the 
 whole Bible. The claim was condemned by Jesus, cast 
 aside as unholy and unworthy — 'Ye make void the law.' 
 The Scriptures were not written for the few, but for the 
 many. They were addressed to the understandings and 
 hearts of men, to be studied indeed with care and diligence, 
 but to be treated intelligibly and clearly, not as mystic signs or 
 hieroglyphs. Our Lord opened the understanding of the 
 Apostles on the day of His resurrection, and showed clearly 
 and intelligently the references to His own mission. And 
 the Apostles did the same in spreading abroad Christianity. 
 They showed not blindly nor superstitiously, but clearly and 
 vigorously, by intelligent reasoning, how the Old Testament 
 led up to Jesus — the promised Messiah. Interpretations as 
 of mere blind authority were never put forward. We see this 
 in a perusal of the Epistles. Such despotic ecclesiasticism 
 Jesus had condemned in the strongest terms, and certainly 
 did not purpose to establish in His Church. He also spoke 
 with withering scorn of the authority of traditions, even the 
 most ancient. He would not wash His hands before meat, 
 because by a tradition it had been made a superstitious 
 observance. Popular superstition He strenuously opposed. 
 Yet in the face of this action of our Lord, both as regards 
 
TESTIMONY OF JESUS CHRIST. 55 
 
 a blind ecclesiasticism and the authority of tradition — action 
 which led the rulers resolutely to plot His death — we have 
 the astonishing assertion that Jesus' language about Scripture 
 was in accordance with popular prejudice — that He accom- 
 modated His teaching to the weaknesses of the people. Nothing 
 could be more contrary to the facts — as well as derogatory 
 to His character and work : He did not do so, but went in 
 direct opposition to the teaching of His age. He opposed 
 and condemned, plainly and clearly, traditionalism and a 
 false ecclesiasticism. Therefore there is no ground whatever 
 for the statement that, in speaking of the Scriptures as He 
 did, He accommodated Himself to the mistaken ideas and 
 prejudices of the age. Had Jesus considered the Jewish 
 idea of the Scriptures, as possessed throughout of Divine 
 authority, to be false, He would, undoubtedly, in harmony 
 with His other action as to tradition and ecclesiasticism, 
 have shown to the people their error, have condemned what 
 has been termed in modern times bibliolatry. But He never 
 did so. He confirmed the people in their reverence for 
 Scripture. He treated it always as of absolute authority. 
 He spoke so strongly as to say that if they believed not 
 Moses and the prophets, neither would they believe though 
 one rose from the dead. He showed in the inner circle of 
 His disciples how the various facts of His life were foretold 
 in the Scriptures. He said that not one jot or tittle should 
 fail. He set up the Scriptures against tradition and against 
 ecclesiasticism. And no sooner had He risen from the 
 dead than, without a day's delay, He expounded to them 
 intelligently the Scriptures, opening their understanding, and 
 sending them forth to convert the world with the testimony 
 of Scripture in their hands. As instructed by Jesus, the 
 
56 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 Apostles, from the beginning, even in the Gentile Church, 
 introduced the reading of the Old Testament Scriptures as 
 the authoritative word of God. Thus, on the one hand, Jesus 
 did not ever speak in the language of the mistaken ideas of 
 His age, for He denounced in unmeasured terms the great 
 popular delusions of the day of the Jewish Church ; and, on 
 the other, He clearly accepted the authority of the writings of 
 the Old Testament in all their parts, so that si?7iply to quote 
 from them was sufficient to establish a position as Divinely 
 true ; and He sent forth His messengers to found on them 
 His claims to be recognised as the Saviour of men, both of 
 Jews and of Gentiles. The vague statements of many 
 writers on the subject need only to be sifted to show their 
 groundlessness.* 
 
 Many have attempted further to say that Jesus may Him- 
 self have been mistaken. No idea can be more repulsive 
 or subversive of faith. If Jesus — filled with the Holy Ghost 
 — as the messenger of God, Himself the Son of God, was 
 mistaken, where is there any security for any part of 
 Christianity? 'If I have told you earthly things, and ye 
 believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you heavenly things?' 
 If He were mistaken as to the great question of the authority 
 of the Scriptures, how can we rely on His statements as to 
 the future — ' the many mansions ' which He has gone to 
 prepare for His redeemed ? Such statements are contrary 
 to all ideas of Jesus as the Son of God, and the ideas of 
 every age and place where that doctrine has been accepted, 
 
 * The question as to the recognition of the Scriptures by our Lord 
 is concerned not with mere details, but with His whole method of treat- 
 ing them. He regarded them, without doubt, as of Divine authority 
 throughout, so that to quote the Scriptures intelligently was sufficient 
 to establish any posiiion. Could He have so treated them if many parts 
 of them had been lies and inventions? 
 
PREDICTIONS OF THE MESSIAH. 57 
 
 and cannot but lead logically to Socinianism, or worse. The 
 idea that Jesus did not know exactly the position in relation 
 to God of the Old Testament and its writers is destructive 
 of His claims as the Divine Messenger of heaven, who 
 Himself spake through the prophets, and gave forth through 
 the Spirit the word of God to men. 
 
 There can be no doubt that the Jews, in consequence of the 
 prophecies, were expecting a Messiah about the time that Jesus 
 appeared. This is not only stated in the New Testament, 
 but in Josephus, and in the traditions which were reduced 
 to writing at a later period in the Talmud. The Jews 
 never doubted that the ancient prophets were enabled by 
 God to foretell many events of the future as regarded both 
 themselves and other nations. The whole country of Judaea 
 and of Galilee was in eager expectation of the promised 
 Deliverer. When the rumour came of the wise men from 
 the East, and Herod gathered together the scribes and men 
 of learning of the Jews, they had no doubt of the coming 
 of the Messiah, and knew accurately the place where He was 
 to be born. We can trace with perfect ease the grounds of this 
 belief. The Old Testament was, fortunately, translated into 
 Greek hundreds of years before the time of our Lord, so that 
 there can be no question of the genuineness of the text where 
 it is supported both by the Hebrew and the Greek versions, as 
 these were independent documents in the hands of the Jews — 
 the bitter enemies of Christ and Christianity. Many of these 
 books speak so plainly on this subject of the Messiah that, 
 if there had been a possibility, these modern critics would, 
 unquestionably, have imputed passages to Christian interpo- 
 lations. There is no possibility of this, so they attempt to 
 explain them away altogether. But there they are — most 
 plainly written — interspersed through many books of the 
 
58 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 Old Testament. There was Moses' prophecy of that 
 'prophet,' which was universally believed by the Jews to 
 point to the Messiah. There were the promises to David, 
 and the numerous references to the family of David, even 
 long after that family had ceased to reign. These references 
 to a wondrous Successor of that family appear in later 
 prophecies as well as in earlier. There was the clear 
 statement that One of great power and majesty should arise 
 as the Prince of the people— one descended from David. 
 The place of His birth was pointed out. The time was 
 approximately given, especially in the Book of Daniel. 
 The sufferings of the Christ were described in different parts, 
 in passages considered by the Jews themselves as Messianic, 
 though, after the spread of Christianity, they attempted to 
 explain them otherwise. Most of the portions of the Old 
 Testament regarded as Messianic in the Christian Church 
 were so regarded by the Jews before, and during, the age in 
 which Christ lived. Thus the Old Testament was, and is, 
 intimately bound up with the New. It is a book which, in 
 innumerable places, refers to the Christ. That this is no 
 imagination is proved by the undoubted fact that the Jewish 
 nation, founding on such prophecies, universally expected a 
 Messiah. Whence this expectation ? It came from the 
 predictions of the Old Testament. This they avowed, and 
 they were ready to state the reasons for their expectation. 
 
 While Jesus rejected traditions and ecclesiastical pre- 
 tences, He accepted most fully the idea of numerous 
 prophecies applying to Himself. After the resurrection, 
 He expounded, on the evening of the day, with great fulness, 
 the things written in the prophecies concerning Himself. 
 To the two whom He met on the way to Emmaus He said: 
 
TESTIMONY OF JESUS CHRIST. 59 
 
 1 O foolish and slow of heart to believe all that the prophets 
 have spoken ! Behoved it not the Christ to suffer these 
 things, and to enter into glory. And, beginning from 
 Moses and all the prophets, He interpreted to them in all 
 the Scriptures the things concerning Himself.' And on the 
 same evening as the eleven and others were gathered 
 together, He said unto them : ' These are My words which 
 I spake unto you while I was yet with you, how that all 
 things must needs be fulfilled which are written in the law of 
 Moses and the prophets and the Psalms concerning Me. 
 Then opened He their understanding, that they might 
 understand the Scriptures ; and He said unto them, Thus 
 it is written, that the Christ should suffer, and rise again from 
 the dead the third day, and that repentance and remission of 
 sins should be preached in His name unto all the nations, 
 beginning at Jerusalem.' 
 
 And as Jesus directed them, His Apostles sought to 
 establish everywhere His claim to the Messiahship from the 
 Old Testament. Christianity was not a superstition. It 
 was, and is, a reasonable, intelligent religion, resting on 
 evidence — and no evidence more important than the clear 
 announcements and preparations for it in the Old Testa- 
 ment. This was the method of attesting its claims to the 
 Jews always, and of seeking to win them over intelligently 
 to it. St. Peter, on the Day of Pentecost, quoted the prophecy 
 of Joel as indicating the events that had taken place on that 
 day ; and then, referring to Jesus as well known to them by 
 mighty works and wondrous signs, spoke of His resurrec- 
 tion, and quoted the reference to it in the 16th Psalm, 
 showing clearly that the words of that psalm could not refer to 
 David himself. When St. Paul entered on his great mission, 
 
60 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 though his mission was specially to the Gentiles, he went 
 always first to the Jews, and he brought many of them over 
 to Christianity. How ? By showing intelligently from the 
 prophecies of the Old Testament that Jesus was the Christ, 
 foretold ages before. And so with all the Apostles and 
 preachers this was the method adopted throughout to 
 convince the Jews. And even in the Gentile Church the 
 reading of the Old Testament was at once introduced as 
 a part of the service. It was read, we know, regularly in the 
 early Christian gatherings, not only of Jews, but of Gentiles; 
 and it was esteemed by the whole Christian Church as of 
 absolute authority. The Psalms and prophecies especially 
 were much dwelt upon as indicating to the Gentiles, as well 
 as to the Jews, that God had prepared the world for the 
 coming of Jesus by announcing His advent, and sufferings, 
 and deatii and resurrection, and ascension, through His 
 prophets — ages before He appeared. Those who would 
 undermine the Old Testament as a trustworthy, not to speak 
 of inspired, record, would remove that by which the claims 
 of Christ and Christianity were established at first. They 
 would destroy the sources from which Jesus Himself and the 
 Apostles and the Church in its first age derived the evidence 
 of His mission. 
 
 The word of God is bound together from the beginning, 
 to the end, and it is a revelation of Christ. The Scripture, 
 though composed of many books of many periods, is one 
 whole. At the very beginning it describes the position 
 of man as having become abnormal by sin, and points to 
 the need of sacrifice and redemption. The whole system of 
 sacrifice had a meaning even before the special ceremonial 
 laws were given to the Jews. This appears in the sacrifice 
 
TESTIMONY TO JESUS CHRIST. 61 
 
 of Abel. It appears in various sacrifices in Genesis. But 
 it appears also in many of the sacrificial systems of other 
 nations, plainly indicating the early origin, not only of 
 sacrifice, but of its significant lessons. The whole system 
 of sacrifice had a meaning from the beginning ; but the 
 detailed ceremonial laws of the Jews were full of meaning, 
 which spiritual Jews saw — as indicated and stated indeed, in 
 many of the Psalms and prophecies. The Old Testament 
 system is in harmony with that of the New Testament, 
 which was its completion or fulfilment. This is shown with 
 great clearness in the Epistle to the Hebrews, which begins 
 by proving from varied passages of the Old Testament the 
 foretelling of the Divine, and also the human, nature of 
 Christ, and then goes on to show how the sacrificial system 
 symbolized the work He was to accomplish for forgiveness 
 of sin, and also His heavenly priesthood. We may say that 
 the ceremonial law of the Jews was one great prophecy 
 throughout, as shown in the well-known book of Dr. Andrew 
 Bonar on Leviticus — in ' Notes on Exodus,' and ' Leviticus,' 
 and other works. The ordinances of the Jews were a 
 preparation for the coming of Christ, and were fulfilled 
 in Him, in His sacrifice and death, and in His heavenly 
 glory. Thus Christianity itself is closely bound up with the 
 truth of the Old Testament, which many speak of as of 
 little importance to it. The assault is not only against the 
 Old Testament, but against the great Divine and super- 
 natural system with which it is associated, and which 
 culminated in the appearance and acts and victories of 
 Jesus of Nazareth. If the authority of the Old Testament 
 could be destroyed, Christianity would be shaken to its 
 foundations. 
 
62 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy 
 Ghost. This is now inverted by the critics, who declare 
 that unholy men devised, under a pretentious sanctity, all 
 kinds of forgeries by which to deceive the people j that 
 they interpolated designedly false statements here and there 
 to throw them off the scent ; and that they palmed off on 
 the people historic narratives as old predictions— a most 
 base offence. Kuenen says : ' The Israelitish priest- 
 hood, to maintain its authority and heighten its prestige, 
 employed the same means which priests used elsewhere in 
 the old world, and of which the Bishops of Rome made use 
 in the middle ages in the forged decretals. This fact must 
 be acknowledged in its full scope and significance. But 
 while we do this, we wish, at the same time, to bear in mind 
 that such "pious frauds" were considered lawful. It 
 appears therefore that the Jews, upon the whole, had other 
 notions of literary good faith than we have. They saw nothing 
 reprehensible in the use of borrowed means ; the only ques- 
 tion was whether they used them to a good purpose.' This 
 statement of Kuenen is an utterly baseless assumption, of 
 which the documents or history give not the slightest 
 indications. 
 
 We can understand such a position taken up by naturalists, 
 who, in their desperation to establish an untenable position, 
 cannot otherwise get rid of the supernatural, but how any- 
 one can profess to say that the Old Testament is inspired 
 and is full of all kinds of deception passes comprehension. 
 There must surely be some secret meaning in their use 
 of the word ' inspiration.' A story is told of Kuenen, which, 
 if not true, as we believe it is, is well invented. He is said 
 to have expressed himself as to a certain well-known critic 
 
THE MESSIANIC PROPHECIES. 63 
 
 in this country : ' It is quite true that I impute forgeries, 
 but I never charge them on the Almighty.' The position 
 of those who accept these tricks and forgeries, and yet 
 say they believe the writers to have been inspired, passes 
 comprehension. Surely they ought to explain themselves 
 more clearly. 
 
 There are, all through the Old Testament, sublime pro- 
 phecies of the coming of the Messiah and the glory of His 
 kingdom. Isaiah celebrates in unmistakable language the 
 going forth through the Messiah of the word of the Lord to 
 the ends of the earth. This is seen in many parts of the 
 prophecy from the beginning onwards, as beautifully in the 
 thirty-fifth chapter : ' The wilderness and the solitary place 
 shall be glad for them, and the desert shall rejoice and 
 blossom as the rose. It shall blossom abundantly, and re- 
 joice even with joy and singing ; the glory of Lebanon shall 
 be given to it, and the excellency of Carmel and Sharon.' 
 And how pointedly in the eleventh chapter ! — ' And it shall 
 come to pass in that day that the Root of Jesse shall stand 
 for an ensign of the peoples ; unto Him shall the gathering 
 of the nations be.' How sublimely in the second chapter ! — 
 1 And it shall come to pass in the last days that the moun- 
 tain of the Lord's house shall be established in the top of 
 the mountains, and shall be exalted above the hills, and all 
 nations shall flow unto it. And many peoples shall go and 
 say, Come ye, and let us go up to the mountain of the Lord, 
 to the house of the God of Jacob, and He will teach us His 
 ways, and we will walk in His paths. And He shall judge 
 between the nations, and shall reprove many peoples ; and 
 they shall beat their swords into plowshares and their spears 
 into pruning-hooks : nation shall not lift up sword against 
 
64 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 nation, neither shall they learn war any more.' There are 
 all through this prophet's writings references to the glorious 
 future of the world under the Messiah. But from the fortieth 
 chapter to the sixty-sixth, which is a prophecy of the Messiah 
 from beginning to end, written at a later period of life, but we 
 believe by the same person, because there is a sublimity of 
 style in both exactly similar, but differing from the style of 
 the other prophets — in this second portion what a view is 
 given of the mission and the majesty of the Deliverer : 
 1 Comfort ye, comfort ye, My people, saith your God.' Then 
 the voice of preparation in the wilderness; then the cer- 
 tainty of the fulfilment of God's promises, not temporary, as 
 the grass and the flower, but eternal ; then the Divine 
 majesty of the Promised One : ' Behold, the Lord God 
 shall come as a mighty One, and His arm shall rule for 
 Him ; behold His reward is with Him, and His recom- 
 pense before Him. He shall feed His flock like a shepherd ; 
 He shall gather the lambs in His arms, and carry them in 
 His bosom, and shall gently lead them that give suck.' 
 Then His almighty power as Creator of all things — told in 
 the sublimest words ever penned ; then the appeal to the 
 fulfilment in the past of God's prophetic utterances ; and 
 then the description of Jesus in His human aspect as He 
 appeared among men : ' Behold My servant whom I uphold, 
 My chosen in whom My soul delighteth ; I have put My 
 spirit upon Him; He shall bring forth judgment to the 
 Gentiles.' Then the commission : ' I the Lord have called 
 Thee in righteousness, and will hold Thine hand, and will 
 keep Thee, and give Thee for a covenant of the people, for 
 a light of the Gentiles ; to open the blind eyes, to bring out 
 the prisoners from the dungeon, and them that sit in dark- 
 
THE MESSIANIC PROPHECIES. 65 
 
 ness out of the prison-house.' And so this sublime pro- 
 phecy goes on, sweeping before it the affairs of the nations, 
 showing the preparation, remote and near, for the advent of 
 the King, bringing Him forth in all His might, but also in 
 His passage through the dark valley — ' Who hath believed 
 our report ?' — as He approaches His humiliation and death. 
 Can it be that the Mighty One is thus to suffer? Yes, 
 because He bare the sins of many. Through His sufferings 
 are men to be delivered. And so the prophecy flows on to 
 the end, describing the messenger and the message, and its 
 effects, until the whole earth shall be filled with His glory — 
 the Jews shall be restored, and all nations shall worship 
 Him. 
 
 Not only is Christ and Christianity prophesied of in the 
 Old Testament in whole sections of prophecy as well as in 
 individual passages, but many parts of His conflict and 
 mission are more fully described there than in the New 
 Testament, which was designed by the Spirit of God to be a 
 completion of the Old Testament, and does not therefore 
 repeat all those things which the Old Testament supplies. 
 Thus many Psalms describe the conflicts and express the 
 feelings of the soul of Christ in the pilgrimage of life, in 
 every variety of circumstance. There are in the prophetic 
 Psalms — as the 2nd, the 22nd, the 45th, the 72nd, the 
 noth, and many others — descriptions of the work, and 
 mission, and power of Christ of the most vivid kind. In 
 the 22nd Psalm we read not only accurately of the events 
 that took place at the cross, but we have a description of 
 the soul-sufferings of Christ, when He became sin for us, 
 such as we have not in any part of the New Testament. 
 In the 72nd Psalm there is the most searching picture of 
 
 5 
 
66 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 the character of His kingdom, of its liberty and its peace, 
 of its happiness and prosperity. Thus the Old Testament 
 does not only prophesy of Him, but it throws great light on 
 His contests, His distresses, His joys, and His victories. 
 In the words of the Old Testament we find often the 
 language best adapted to describe the person of Jesus 
 and the blessedness of His mission. Much of that which 
 fills up the outlines, and gives to the facts life and reality, 
 we find in the Old Testament. There is thus clear internal 
 evidence of the same Spirit speaking in both. And this 
 is the true representation — Christ the Centre of all Scriptural 
 teaching. 
 
 Jesus' mission to the earth was not a passing event. He 
 was and is the Light of the world — the Light of all the ages 
 of the world — of all the nations. His appearance was not 
 an isolated fact. It was that round which the history of the 
 world from beginning to end revolves. The Old Testament, 
 not only in isolated prophecies, nor in symbols, but in men 
 raised up as representatives of Him, in its teaching and con- 
 nection, prepared for and foretold Him. It was the Spirit 
 of Christ Himself that spoke by the prophets. And we 
 have no complete picture of Him, unless we associate the 
 Old Testament with the New. 
 
 Those who view the life of Jesus on earth apart from the 
 light thrown on it by the prophetic spirit of the Old Testa- 
 ment have a most imperfect view. The life of Jesus itself, 
 with His words and deeds as given in the Gospels, is 
 the most interesting of all themes ; but when looked at 
 as isolated we cannot understand it. Thus those 'Lives 
 of Christ' written by unbelievers are so unreal and 
 barren. He lived a truly human life on earth, and every 
 
THE MESSIANIC PROPHECIES. 67 
 
 incident of it is of deepest interest. We never can read it 
 but we see something new ; but there is immense additional 
 light thrown on it by the Psalms and prophecies, which 
 bring out easily and naturally its import and its relation to 
 the history of all ages, and which cast around it the halo of 
 the heavenly glory. Through Jesus' true manhood we see 
 His Godhead ; but when we view His life as that of only a 
 man, we cannot possibly feel its power or perfection. The 
 claims that He made of absolute knowledge, of equality 
 with God, of being the Light of the world, so far from 
 indicating perfection, would indicate mad presumption in 
 anyone who was only one of the countless millions of the 
 human family that have been born and died on earth. 
 The perfection of His nature can be seen only when we 
 associate it with His true Godhead. Then His vast un- 
 bounded claims to knowledge, position and authority, 
 to be the Sun of the human system, are natural and 
 necessary. 
 
 His life was the central event in human history, that around 
 which all other events revolve. Before He came men were 
 waiting for His advent, and the Jewish nation was through 
 the prophets kept in bright expectancy of the future — yea, 
 even the patriarchs were so : ' Your father Abraham 
 rejoiced to see My day, and he saw it and was glad.' 
 And after He appeared, His power, that of the humble 
 Galilean of Nazareth, as He was supposed to be, living in 
 poverty and lowliness, continued to spread abroad through 
 all countries. His kingdom shall yet fill the whole earth, as 
 clearly foretold. His kingdom is an everlasting kingdom, 
 and His dominion that which shall never come to an 
 end. 
 
 5—2 
 
68 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 The Old Testament and the New are bound together as 
 a living organism, and the lowering of the authority of the 
 Old Testament must necessarily lead to the undermining 
 of Christianity. The same kinds of attack have been made 
 against both, and from the same sources. The attempt is made 
 still by many to account for the New Testament apart from 
 the supernatural. Those men who have embraced naturalism 
 in any form — Agnosticism, Materialism, or any other, cannot 
 permit the idea of the supernatural. It is excluded, without 
 saying. Everthing must be toned down and explained away 
 so as to admit of a natural, matter-of-fact, every-day explana- 
 tion. Neither Jesus nor the Apostles ever saw or did a 
 miracle. All that has been written about miracles is un- 
 founded. The resurrection itself, on which the existence of 
 Christianity turns, never took place. This view of the New 
 Testament is still as widespread as the naturalism on which 
 it is founded. It is no doubt at all the view of Kuenen 
 and Wellhausen, and those who are, with the same weapons, 
 undermining the Old Testament. Baurism has failed in its 
 details, though the ablest of all attempts to account for the 
 New Testament on natural principles ; but that which gave 
 rise to Baur's effort is as rampant as ever, and the same men 
 who deny the supernatural in the Old Testament deny the 
 supernatural in the New, and treat with scorn the idea of 
 the resurrection and ascension of our Lord. 
 
 There are some good earnest men in this country of even 
 the revivalist school who do not at all understand the ques- 
 tion, and who are inclined to let the destructive criticism 
 have its way with many parts of the Old Testament if 
 only you leave them the New — in fact, they say they are 
 thus driven more to depend on the person and work of 
 
OLD AND NEW TESTAMENTS EQUALLY ASSS AILED. 69 
 
 Christ. This is an utter delusion, arising from ignorance of 
 the nature of the controversy. The same weapons turned 
 against the Old Testament, and by the use of which 
 alone its position appears to be shaken, with equal power 
 assail the miracles of Jesus and His resurrection and 
 ascension. Those who are at the head of this school 
 of criticism do not believe in the incarnation or the re- 
 surrection of Christ, or in Christianity as anything but 
 a natural outcome of human thought and progress. If the 
 basis of the criticism — that which alone gives it any weight 
 — is correct, Christianity logically disappears as a revealed 
 religion. 
 
 The battle is thus not against the Old Testament only. 
 This is but one phase of it. It is against all supernatural 
 religion. It regards everything as unknowable except what 
 we observe by our own faculties, and would make a clean 
 sweep of all that is above the powers and reason of man. 
 It treats all history alike, and no matter what the evidence 
 for miracles, it regards it as worthless. It takes for granted 
 that all miracles are fabulous. It thus attempts to obliterate 
 the leading features of the Old and New Testaments, and 
 to leave Christianity no foundation. 
 
 Let us now examine the basis of this criticism. Are 
 miracles to be set aside? Has it been proved that the 
 order of the world goes on through mere natural laws, work- 
 ing themselves out by an internal development, and with no 
 possibility of interference by a Higher Power, and, indeed, no 
 higher Power, conscious and intelligent, to control them ? 
 Much folly has been given utterance to on this subject. 
 We are told that science has decided it. Science has not 
 even touched it. The object of science is to trace out the 
 
70 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 physical laws that control phenomena. Science has made 
 vast progress in recent times, and seems to be but at the 
 beginning of discovery. No one can undervalue the great 
 services of science or fail to be struck with its wondrous 
 results. But science does not interfere with religion, nor 
 take the place of religion, nor assert anything 2X all in regard 
 to the great spiritual ivorld. The Bible has not those con- 
 tradictions to the discoveries of science which appear flag- 
 rantly in all heathen representations of the world and 
 creation. There is, even in this, evidence of the controlling 
 Divine power, called inspiration, in the minds of the writers. 
 No sublimer or grander idea could be given of the heavens, 
 with all our modern discoveries, than in the language of 
 certain Psalms and of the prophet Isaiah. There is not 
 a hint of those theories, probably prevalent at the time 
 among the Jews as others, which make the highest cosmo- 
 gony — that of the cultivated Greeks — ridiculous in the light 
 of modern knowledge. But science has its limits, within 
 which its authority, when the facts are proved, is absolute. 
 It is concerned with the material universe, and the active 
 forces, or laws, which control it. This is its chief func- 
 tion. It may also consider the phenomena of mind. 
 But its knowledge of these is acquired only from observa- 
 tion and induction. It does not go into the heart of things 
 or explain anything beyond. Some scientists of extreme 
 views say that there is no knowledge but that acquired from 
 observation, and that therefore science comprehends all 
 knowledge ; but this is to take for granted what is plainly 
 unfounded. The great majority of scientific men believe in 
 a spiritual world, and many of the ablest scientists are firm 
 believers in the revelation of God in His word, and see 
 
SCIENCE AND REVELATION. 71 
 
 nothing whatever in such belief inconsistent with their know- 
 ledge of science. We grant what is untenable if we con- 
 sider that science opposes revelation. It is not so. It 
 opposes superstition. It unfolds the order of the universe. 
 It makes us to see that the same laws that act in our world 
 act in distant space. But it does not deny in any respect 
 an intelligent Creator. Nay ! as has been so ably shown by 
 the Duke of Argyll, in his ' Unity of Nature,' it establishes 
 more strongly than ever the idea of a Divine controlling 
 intelligence. The order of nature is not a material, lifeless 
 order ; it is the most intelligent adaptation of means to ends 
 by thought and contrivance similar in kind to that, but 
 infinitely greater, which is possessed by the human soul. 
 The sphere of inquiry has been enormously enlarged since 
 the time of Paley ; but more clearly and wonderfully than 
 ever has it been seen that the material universe has been 
 planned and arranged by One who accurately adapts means 
 to ends. Even orders of beings, of the animal and vegetable 
 kingdoms, quite distinct — as insects and flowers — are found, 
 to be adapted to each other's purposes, with the most 
 wonderfully accurate- contrivance. The question is, whether 
 there is an intelligent Creator and Ruler of the universe or 
 not. The evidence is strong as ever for the existence of 
 such a Being, and there is not one particle of evidence 
 against it. But if there be a living intelligent Ruler of the 
 universe, why may He not make Himself known, and con- 
 trol the works He has made ? Even men control material 
 things, and shall God not do so ? The Agnostic position 
 has no really intelligent basis, for if God, even possibly, may 
 exist as the Ruler of the universe, how can a creature of 
 limited power assert that He cannot make Himself known 
 
72 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 by a revelation ? It is surely the merest presumption to 
 make such assertion. Man acts upon and moulds the 
 material world to His purposes, and shall not God do so ? 
 His slightest interference by whatever means may be a 
 miracle to us. To the barbarian the power that we have ac- 
 quired by electricity, etc., appears miraculous, and may not 
 God, the Ruler of all, if He exist — and the Agnostics do 
 not deny that He may exist — make Himself known by 
 wonderful acts that may be done possibly by controlling one 
 law through another ? The position, therefore, that miracles 
 are impossible, unless men are atheists and can from their 
 little centres clearly and intelligently prove there is no God, 
 is mere assertion. It is not intelligent, but unintelligent 
 and irrational. It is the part of a weak, and not of a 
 wise man, to make strong statements about things beyond 
 the range of intellect. 
 
 The presumption that all miracles are to be set aside with- 
 out inquiry is an unintelligent assumption, having no basis in 
 reason or in science, or anywhere. It is dogmatism — as 
 much dogmatism as when the Pope asserts his infallibility. 
 Science has made no statement on the subject. It has 
 unfolded, in the most wonderful manner, the universal 
 adaptation intelligently of means to ends all through 
 creation, and has thus impressed, more and more, the idea 
 of a universal Ruler of all things ; but it has given no 
 verdict as to miracles. The science of history, which is 
 connected with intelligent acts of men, has proved, we 
 think, that there is a just Ruler of the world, who punishes 
 the acts of the wicked, as well as rewards those of the 
 righteous. Conscience also asserts the existence of a just 
 Ruler. But science, so far as regards the material universe, 
 
THE ARGUMENT FROM EVOLUTION. 73 
 
 says nothing, except to bring to light the intelligent adapta- 
 tion all through nature of means to ends. 
 
 To assert, then, that science has exploded miracles and 
 prophecy, and to pretend that with its light in their hand 
 men may, without argument, cast aside all professed 
 miracles as false, is sheer dogmatism. Theories of the 
 universe have been put forward to support this position, but 
 these theories have nothing to do with genuine science. 
 Evolution, as a broad, all-embracing philosophy accounting 
 for the universe, has not been even made likely in any one 
 department of knowledge. Even if it were established in 
 large circles of knowledge, how, without intelligence, were 
 those laws fixed at first which have directed and regulated 
 the evolution ever since ? It only removes the difficulty as 
 to causes further back. But evolution, as a. philosophy of the 
 universe, has almost no support at all in science. It is 
 exploded in many departments where it made large asser- 
 tions. It has less apparent likelihood now than ever, and 
 is generally given up, we believe, by scientific specialists. 
 But even if it were proved as a universal principle of action, 
 it would not render miracles impossible. If God created 
 the laws at first, where is He now, and why should He no* 
 act in these ages as He did in a remote past ? and if God 
 acts directly, revelation and miracles and prophecy are all 
 possible. Evolution itself takes for granted, if there be a 
 God, that He understands and knows the most distant 
 future, and if He knows, why should He not declare it 
 by the mouths of prophets, when it suits His purposes to 
 do so? 
 
 On any theory except that of blank atheism, and it must 
 be an intelligently proved atheism, the ignoring of miracles 
 
74 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 and prophecy — the treating of them as false ipso facto — is 
 mere assumption. But these critics proceed avowedly to 
 deal with the Old Testament on this enormous assumption, 
 as if it had been proved, and were unquestionable. They 
 treat the histories of great miracles, told with apparent truth- 
 fulness, and the prophecies of the future, uttered in words 
 of utmost sublimity and moral grandeur, as if they were 
 imaginations or frauds. Bowing down to this baseless 
 theory as a god, they ignore all the historic testimony and 
 all the internal evidence from the spirit and character of 
 the writers. 
 
LECTURE IV. 
 
 EFFECT OF THIS REVOLUTIONARY CRITICISM ON THE 
 CHURCHES. 
 
 The effect of this criticism, based on the denial of the super- 
 natural, if believed in, must be destructive of Christianity. 
 If students are taught in our halls of theology that the Old 
 Testament is unreliable ; that large portions of it are made up 
 of fictions palmed off as truth ; that the professed prophecies 
 are statements of events that had taken place — basely put into 
 the form of prophecy, and imputed by deceit (for there is no 
 other way of explaining it) to a past age ; that the prophecies 
 of the Messiah, recognised as such before they were accom- 
 plished, and always since by the Christian Church, as those 
 of Isaiah — even the wondrous fifty-third chapter — are only 
 fancifully applied to Christ, and have no bearing on His 
 life and mission — if such positions be taught and main- 
 tained, with what message can the preachers go forth to the 
 people ? They may have culture and literary taste, but of 
 what are they to speak ? The same methods can be applied, 
 and have been applied, to the New Testament. The pro- 
 fessed account of miracles — of miracles attested not only in 
 the Gospels, but in the earliest Epistles of St. Paul, as facts of 
 constant occurrence — is, forsooth, a delusion and a deception. 
 
76 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 The New Testament is not to be trusted. It contains 
 also accounts of prophecies in the Epistles, the Gospels, and 
 the Apocalypse, which last is a professed prophecy through- 
 out. St. Paul refers clearly to the gifts of prophets, of which 
 he had been a witness. The New Testament is therefore, 
 tested by this so-called ' higher criticism,' just as mistaken 
 as the Old. And as to the central fact of the resurrection — 
 the most stupendous of all the miracles except the Incarna- 
 tion, on which the truth of Christianity absolutely depends, 
 and which the destructive Old Testament critics of Germany 
 laugh to scorn as much as Huxley does — it is as easily swept 
 away as the rest by the method applied ruthlessly to the 
 Old Testament, and it depends much upon cumulative 
 evidence arising from the whole position given to Jesus as 
 the foretold Messiah and the Son of God. Throw doubts 
 on the Old Testament — cast aside its prophecies — treat its 
 alleged historic facts as inventions — assert or imply that the 
 references of the Apostles to it as bearing witness of Him 
 are delusive — inculcate that the writers of it were guilty of 
 every kind of literary fraud, palming off on the nation, as 
 descending from a remote age, a whole system of priestly 
 ordinances which they had introduced themselves — if these 
 things be true, where is there any certainty in any part of 
 Scripture ? Let preachers be sent forth from our schools of 
 theology with these doubts in their minds, and what must 
 be the consequence ? What have they to declare, and how 
 can they give forth a certain sound on anything ? The 
 whole p&iver of preaching depends on the reality of that 
 which is preached. It is therefore that men will listen with 
 intense earnestness to the sincere statement of things of which 
 they have heard often before, but which fill them with new 
 
DANGER TO THE CHURCHES. 
 
 11 
 
 joy each time that they hear of them again, and for the main- 
 tenance of which they would willingly die, because they are 
 connected by a real love to Christ and the hope of a glorious 
 immortality. When preachers speak with certainty on these 
 things, their words will be listened to with interest. But if 
 taught and convinced that the Old Testament, to which 
 Jesus appealed, and the New, are all uncertain, what have 
 men to preach but dreamy speculations ? In these days, 
 when literary culture is so widespread, and the daily news- 
 paper is in the hands of all, as well as monthly magazines 
 and reviews, it requires no prophet's power to foretell 
 that, as has happened in other countries, our churches will 
 speedily be forsaken, if our preachers have no certainty as to 
 the reality of the facts and truths attested in Scripture. 
 People will come together not to be stirred up to devotion 
 to Christ, but to listen, as critics, to something that may 
 gratify taste or may not. There is nothing so dead as the 
 worship of our Reformed Churches where it is not instinct 
 with spiritual life and reality — nothing so living where it is. 
 But how can it be instinct with life and reality when the 
 preachers are in doubt as to the truth, or otherwise, of the 
 documents from which they derive their message? It is, 
 therefore, quite certain that if these ideas of the Old Testa- 
 ment, founded on a criticism which has for its basis an 
 infidel philosophy, become general among ministers of 
 the Churches, those Churches will rapidly decay, and 
 Christianity itself will be looked upon as a mere human 
 device. This is no mere imagination, for it is startling 
 to find the number of people, in all the Churches, who, 
 through doubting the truth and reality of the Scriptures, 
 have lost faith in Christianity as a revelation of God, 
 
78 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 and in Christ as the Son of God, who became man, 
 who suffered and died, the just for the unjust, and 
 who rose from the dead and ascended on high. There 
 is prevalent, through the spread of such false and mis- 
 taken ideas of the Bible, a latent Socinianism, and often 
 atheism, which classes Jesus with Buddha or Mohammed, 
 and considers Christianity as a mere human religion, having 
 no truth or certainty as to the future and eternal world. 
 This mistrust of the Scriptures becomes in a Church like a 
 dry-rot in a building — gradually eating away all the material 
 till there is nothing left but crumbling dust. It is therefore 
 of essential importance, if our British and American Pro- 
 testant Churches are to retain that life and activity which 
 has given them such vast influence for good in the world, 
 that this destructive criticism should be searched into, and 
 its sources made apparent. It is a matter of life and death 
 to the Christian faith, that our well-founded belief in the 
 Scriptures as the word of God be retained. Thus only can 
 preachers speak with certainty, and it is only when they can 
 speak with certainty of living realities, of which they have no 
 doubt, that they can touch the hearts and consciences of 
 others. If the trumpet give an uncertain sound, who will 
 prepare himself for the battle? If the preachers speak of 
 mere speculations, whose heart will be moved and whose 
 soul will be touched ? Christianity is all-powerful, because 
 it speaks of facts and of truths which are as real as any 
 events in daily life. If it does not do so, it is dead. 
 
 The state of Protestantism in many parts of Germany 
 clearly gives warning of that to which this method of deal- 
 ing with the Scriptures must lead. In large portions of 
 Protestant Germany the Bible has become an almost unread 
 
THE CHURCHES IN GERMANY. 79 
 
 book, and the churches are deserted. In a Protestant town 
 of 7,000 or 8,000 people, where I attended the university for 
 for a time, the only Protestant Church, which might have held 
 about 2,000, was attended by 100 to 200 at the one service in 
 the week — on Sunday morning. On Easter Sunday it might 
 be filled, but on other Sundays it was almost empty, and there 
 was no other church to attend. It is well known that the 
 proportion attending places of worship in Berlin, and most 
 of the other cities and towns of Germany, is infinitesimal in 
 relation to the Protestant population, scarcely above one or 
 two per cent., while the theatres and halls of amusement and 
 entertainment on the Sundays fill to overflowing. It is so, 
 also, in most parts of Protestant Switzerland. Many of the 
 preachers don't believe in the authority of the Scriptures. 
 They treat the miracles and many portions of the sacred 
 narratives as fables — they preach a formal morality. The 
 people vote for them at election of pastors, but they do not 
 go to hear them. There is no interest in such lifeless 
 addresses. The whole mass of the people become sunk in 
 materialism, fighting the battle of life without religion, 
 and going down to the grave in darkness. God has saved 
 our Anglo-Saxon countries from such calamity, because He 
 has raised up among us, one after another, faithful and 
 earnest men who have touched the very souls of the people, 
 and become the means of bringing many to a sense of the 
 reality of heavenly things ; but such preachers have been, 
 without exception, those who have believed with all their 
 hearts in the Bible as the message of God throughout, and 
 who have used it in its various parts as God's designed 
 means for the saving of men. The whole vitality and 
 power of our religion, which has sent forth its great missions 
 
80 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 to the ends of the earth, has arisen from its Scriptural 
 basis — its belief in the reality of those truths brought to 
 light, not only in the New Testament, but foreshadowed 
 and, more or less, clearly seen in the Old. 
 
 There is a very great danger of rapid decline at the 
 present time, in connection with these revolutionary views 
 of Scripture. The faith of many is being sorely tried. 
 Churches which had been much blessed and prospered, 
 even in recent times, are becoming cold and unspiritual. 
 Successors are taking the places of those famed for their 
 spiritual ministry, who unsettle faith, and alarm by throwing 
 doubt upon truths received as such in every past age of the 
 Church. Great is truth, and it must and will prevail. But, 
 in the meantime, what confusion may arise, and how may 
 the people be left as sheep without shepherds ! It is 
 surely necessary that in all the Churches a stand should be 
 made by those who believe in the eternal verities, and whose 
 faith remains unshaken in the Old Testament and the New. 
 Truth must always suffer by being associated with that 
 which is false and perilous. 
 
 There is another aspect of this question, as to the truth 
 and authority of the Old and New Testaments, which is of 
 great importance. Simultaneously with the progress of un- 
 belief, there has been a rapid progress of superstition, a 
 great advance, not only, nor even so much, of Roman 
 Catholicism as of Romish doctrine. Has this simultaneous 
 progress been accidental ? We are certain that it has not. 
 In reading the ' Apologia pro Vita sua ' of the late 
 Cardinal Newman, we can easily see that scepticism, and 
 especially doubt, as to authority of Scripture, led him 
 gradually to the Church of Rome. He had eminently a 
 
EFFECT ON THE CHURCHES. 81 
 
 religious mind, and he could not remain in the desert 
 region of unbelief. He sought for a solid, intelli- 
 gent foundation for his belief. He was influenced by 
 those doubts so prevalent at Oxford, as elsewhere. 
 So he fled at last to the Church of Rome, which 
 solves all doubts by declaring its infallibility, and which 
 professes to make the Scriptures secure as the word of God, 
 by the authority of the Church. Thus Cardinal Newman 
 not merely got an authority, but he had his faith secured in 
 the Scriptures which he loved. The same influences are 
 acting, consciously or unconsciously, on many minds of less 
 power than that of Cardinal Newman. Many persons 
 cannot bear to be without a secure faith. They are alarmed 
 by the doubts thrown on the Divine authority of the 
 Scriptures. They are told that the word of God is in the 
 Scriptures, but that the Scriptures throughout are not the 
 word of God. They must find out the truth, therefore, for 
 themselves as they best can, having no authority any 
 longer. But how can they do so ? Here is one passage or 
 narrative they have built on, but they are suddenly 
 informed by some friend, or from the pulpit, that it is 
 not trustworthy — that it is a forgery or invention. What 
 are they to do ? Are they to make a religion for themselves, 
 by finding out certain passages that suit them, and supposing 
 these to be the word of God ? It is not a satisfactory 
 process. Instead of growing in faith, they find themselves 
 daily losing faith. It appears as if soon nothing would be 
 left. In despair they rush to authority — first, perhaps, to the 
 authority generally of the Church. But, then, what is the 
 Church ? Which section possesses the authority ? There 
 is confusion. So at last they look to that section which, at 
 
 6 
 
82 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 all events, existed before the Reformation, and which 
 professes to be infallible, with an infallible living representa- 
 tive on earth. They accept its claims. Their doubts and 
 restlessness disappear. They can now receive even the Bible 
 with confidence, because the infallible Church has declared 
 it to be the word of God. Thus, by a very simple process, 
 which can easily be discerned, the false criticism of the 
 Scriptures, based on a foregone infidelity, leads to haziness 
 and uncertainty, from which refuge is at last sought in the 
 Church of Rome. If we cannot accept the principles of the 
 Reformation, which centred all authority in the word of 
 God., then we must either have no religion, or flee to the 
 refuge of some authority which professes to be infallible, 
 and to give its imprimatur to the Scriptures — and such 
 authority the Church of Rome claims. The going over to 
 that Church of not a few earnest minds, and the rapid 
 growth of a religion which centres in Church authority, 
 in barren ecclesiasticism, even apart from the Church 
 of Rome, are principally due to attempts, through 
 the channel of a professed criticism — which takes for 
 granted infidel principles as its basis — to destroy belief 
 in the statements of both the Old Testament and the New. 
 The more that these attempts succeed in deceiving men, and 
 causelessly shaking their faith in the word of God, the 
 more rapid will be the progress of Romanism. The 
 Church of Rome is not strongly opposed to the pseudo- 
 criticism. It rather favours it. It knows well how greatly 
 it strengthens its own claims, by leading men to flee to it 
 to find security even for their belief in the Scriptures. This 
 false criticism is thus playing into the hands of the Church 
 of Rome, and, if not checked, there will probably be a very 
 
EFFECT OX THE CHURCHES. 83 
 
 large accession to that Church in England, Scotland, and 
 America. It is among these Anglo-Saxon nations, where 
 there is much religious life, as well as great commercial 
 prosperity, that Rome is now putting forth her strongest 
 efforts ; and nothing helps her so effectively as doubts of the 
 Divine authority and inspiration of the Old and New Testa- 
 ment Scriptures. 
 
 Yet many are playing with this question, and actually 
 treating it as of little importance; and many, even good, 
 earnest people, who do not understand it, are looking on — 
 thinking most blindly that it does not much affect them, so 
 long as it leaves them a crucified and risen Saviour. How 
 long will it do so ? 
 
 'There could not be a greater delusion than to treat lightly 
 the question of inspiration. It is of vital moment. 
 Those who tamper with the Old Testament, and treat many 
 of its statements as of little importance, are fostering un- 
 belief. They may and do often themselves cling to the 
 great principles of the faith, but the logical result, in no long 
 period — in the minds, certainly, of their children — will be the 
 rejection of Christianity as a God-given religion. The Old 
 Testament was regarded by Jesus Himself and the Apostles 
 as of absolute Divine authority, and they rested on it the 
 claims of the Messiahship. The Christian idea, as im- 
 pressed by our Lord and His Apostles, was that from the 
 time of the fall there was preparation for the work of 
 redemption ; that God revealed Himself to man, and that 
 this revelation was, so far as necessary, written down after- 
 wards by men, inspired of the Spirit. It was God's message, 
 and not man's message, though men's faculties were em- 
 ployed in the giving of it, so that it was both human and 
 
 6—2 
 
84 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 Divine. The Spirit acted not on them as dull instruments, 
 but as living men, breathed on them and prepared them to 
 write those things which they did, according to their special 
 circumstances and idiosyncrasies — but still inspired of the 
 Holy Ghost. The Scripture points towards the Messiah 
 from the beginning. It introduces us to the family of 
 Abraham, chosen of God ; created, we may say, of God — 
 for as yet Abraham had no child — for the purpose of pre- 
 serving light in the earth, and especially of preparing the 
 way for the promised Messiah. It describes to us the pre- 
 paration for the occupation of Palestine by the children of 
 Abraham, then the deliverance from Egypt by the mighty 
 hand of God, then the forming of them into a nation under 
 the guidance of Moses, specially directed by God. It points 
 forward through the sacrifices, and especially that of the 
 Paschal Lamb — but through all — to the sacrifice to be made 
 for sin on the cross. It pictures David a king anointed of 
 God to symbolize the great King that was to come to rule 
 over the nations — the son, and yet the Lord of David. It 
 gives us the inspired Psalms suitable to the Church, Jew 
 and Gentile, to the end of time, the most wondrous songs of 
 praise and thanksgiving, and of adoration, and confession, of 
 conflict with evil, and triumphing of good, where every phase 
 of feeling of the renewed heart in its relations to God is not 
 merely described, but is uttered with clearness and power — 
 written therefore evidently for all times and all peoples, and 
 yet, notwithstanding the representations of the critics, we 
 believe chiefly by one man, whose voice sounds clearly through 
 the most, if not all, of those ascribed to him. Many of these 
 Psalms, in the most unmistakable method, make reference 
 to the great Messiah whom the Jews expected, and to whom 
 
EFFECT ON THE CHURCHES. 85 
 
 they applied them, before He came. The Old Testament 
 contains the prophecies which in the sublimest pictures 
 represent the mission of the expected King, the blessings 
 that were to flow forth to Jew and Gentile under His reign ; 
 the new spiritual life that was to appear in the world, break- 
 ing down fiercest passions and converting swords into 
 ploughshares, and spears into pruning-hooks, and filling the 
 earth with peace and gladness, instead of with warfare and 
 misery. These prophecies are full of the Messiah ; they 
 announce, as with trumpet sound, the advent of the great 
 King. They become clearer and clearer as the ages 
 advance and the hope brightens. It is impossible to read 
 the Old Testament with intelligent thought without seeing 
 the approach of a great Deliverer to purify and rescue the 
 earth from slavery and bondage. It gives in the much- 
 maligned Book of Daniel, the power of which the unbelieving 
 critics are determined to destroy, its descriptions of great 
 earthly kingdoms, and in the midst of them the little stone, 
 cut out without hands, which grew to be a great mountain 
 and filled the whole earth. 
 
 In this Book of Daniel there is all the statesmanlike grasp 
 of one accustomed to direct the affairs of empires. It bears 
 the strongest internal evidence of the authorship of one so 
 placed as Daniel is represented to have been. Its object is 
 to show, as the other prophets signified, but this with more 
 distinctness as to the method, that God rules the kingdoms 
 of the world, and that all the events from the beginning 
 to the end are subordinate to the ushering in of that 
 kingdom which shall fill the whole earth. Daniel is very 
 clear in its statement as to the Messiah and His kingdom, 
 and gives also distinct indications as to the time of His 
 
86 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 appearing. Thus all through the Old Testament, from the 
 beginning to the close, there is the sound of the tread of the 
 great Deliverer — the preparation for His coming. There are 
 not merely prophecies here and there, but there is a pro- 
 phecy throughout— in the selection of Abraham, in the 
 promise given to him as to all nations being blessed through 
 him, in the declarations of Moses as to the future of the 
 people, and the coming of the great Prophet in the Psalms 
 which speak much of Him, and are fitted to celebrate His 
 praises in every age of the Church, in the prophecies of 
 Isaiah and of all the prophets, both before the exile and 
 after. 
 
CONCLUSION. 
 
 Jesus Christ is the Light of all the ages, the Centre of all 
 history. Expectations were aroused during many ages 
 before He appeared. There are indications of this in the 
 traditions of a number of nations. At last He appeared in 
 the world as a man of humble position — a man of sorrows — 
 not assuming the kingly power as the Tews expected that 
 their Messiah would do, but going about from village to 
 village healing the diseases of the people and speaking glad 
 tidings to the outcast and sorrowful ; bitterly opposed and 
 denounced by the ecclesiastics of the day, because He con- 
 demned their hypocrisy and would not acknowledge their 
 claims • at length put to death by a criminal sentence after 
 He had been excommunicated amidst the execrations of the 
 most influential and learned doctors of the Jewish Church. 
 So far from assuming earthly kingly power, as was expected 
 of the Messiah, and leading forth Israel to conquest and 
 vast empire, His mission was apparently closed amidst 
 defeat, and clouds, and darkness. Nothing seemed more 
 unlikely, humanly speaking, than that His name should 
 continue to be known in the earth. Yet, speaking to a little 
 company of men of no influence, He claimed the highest 
 power and announced the final universal triumph of His 
 
88 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 cause. Many have made high claims and pretensions, but 
 their names have passed away, unknown and forgotten, in a 
 few years, or been held up to ridicule. But Jesus, the 
 despised, the excommunicated, put to an ignominious death as 
 a criminal, has had His claims verified by history. He walked 
 in humble guise, the Son of the Eternal King. The name 
 of the despised Nazarene, whom the Jews thought that they 
 had destroyed, began to be known, far and wide, from the 
 Day of Pentecost. That name has risen above every name. 
 Thus the prophets were vindicated. The humble Jesus 
 was proved to be mightier far than all the kings of earth. 
 He gave evidences of His heavenly glory and of His kingly 
 power when, according to the promise, He sent down the 
 Holy Spirit to dwell in the hearts of His followers. He 
 won the hearts of multitudes to Himself through the preach- 
 ing of the Gospel, so that men became His willing, loving 
 subjects, and many thought nothing of sacrificing their 
 property and giving their lives for Him. The ages have 
 rolled on. Christianity, which began with triumphs among 
 men of all countries and positions, so that the name of 
 Jesus was known far and wide in the Roman Empire, has 
 continued to hold its position ever since amidst storms and 
 conflicts. The Churches have passed through perils and 
 darkness, but the name of Jesus has not been forgotten. 
 The light has arisen again and again after the darkness. 
 And what has been the instrument used for this purpose ? 
 Surely the Scriptures of the Old and New Testame?it. It 
 was by means of them that many of the struggling, scattered 
 Churches maintained the purity of the faith in ages of much 
 darkness and ignorance, as when the wandering pedlars of 
 the Waldenses committed the Scriptures to memory, and 
 
CONCLUSION. 89 
 
 spread the knowledge of them through many a country 
 which they visited with their wares. It was by means of 
 them that Wycliff gave forth the clear sound of the Gospel 
 to England and other lands at the close of the fourteenth 
 century. It was by the reading of them, under strong 
 mental conflict, that Luther raised his trumpet voice against 
 the heathen corruptions of the Papacy, and that the 
 Reformers brought back many in all countries to Chris- 
 tianity, as first proclaimed by Jesus and His Apostles. It 
 was through diligent study of them, under the guidance 
 of the Spirit, that, when Protestantism had become cold and 
 formal, the great evangelists of last century roused England 
 and Scotland and America from their slumbers, and created 
 that great missionary enterprise which has been the glory 
 and the blessing of the century. The name of Jesus has 
 been honoured, age after age ; it has been recovered from 
 the superstitions and corruptions in which men have often 
 sought to bury it, by the testimony of the Scriptures. What 
 great spiritual revival has ever taken place apart from the 
 earnest, reverent study of the Scriptures, both of the Old 
 and New Testaments, as throughout the Word of God ? 
 These Scriptures were intended to bear witness to Him, as 
 the Light of the world, from the beginning to the end. 
 They foretold, by many methods, as devout men have 
 clearly seen, His appearing in the world. Then when He did 
 come, they gave the narratives of His sayings and deeds, 
 and the doctrines connected with His death, and resurrec- 
 tion, and glory, and coming again. Jesus is, and has been, 
 in all history. His name is far exalted above every name. 
 But it is through the Scriptures of the Old and New Testa- 
 ments, brought home indeed by the Spirit, that we know 
 
90 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 and understand Him. It is as we study the Scriptures 
 that Christ stands out to our view in the fulness of His 
 redeeming love, that we have the security of life eternal. 
 If we rest upon these Scriptures as the Word of God, as 
 everywhere of authority, then we grow in the knowledge of 
 God, and are built up in the faith ; but if we throw doubt 
 upon their authority, and are left struggling with our feeble 
 lights, to find out what is of God and what not, if we have 
 no certain guide, the foundations are shaken. The great 
 final effort of evil now is to throw down our strong- 
 hold. The attacks are now directed chiefly against the 
 Old Testament. Many have been carried away. But the 
 Old Testament is a part of the living organism. It has not 
 been shaken by genuine investigation, but only apparently 
 shaken by those who apply to it the test of the anti- 
 supernatural, and attempt to explain it as containing neither 
 miracle, nor prophecy, nor God. 
 
APPENDIX A. 
 
 THE POET BURNS.* 
 BY A HIGHER CRITIC OF A FUTURE CENTURY. 
 
 We have lately come across a valuable work of Professor 
 Scharfschiitze, well known as an able critic, on the works of 
 the so-called poet Burns, whom, however, the Professor 
 now proves to have never existed. The field of higher 
 Scriptural criticism has long been exhausted. The many 
 ingenious theories in regard to the origin of the Old and 
 New Testament books, one after another, gave way. It is 
 many years, almost generations, since the doubts cast upon 
 the authorship and times of writing of different books were 
 finally disposed of. Our readers can scarcely imagine the 
 excitement of the controversy of the time. Many critics 
 were for a long period engaged in the work. Ingenious 
 theories were devised. But these theories generally contra- 
 dicted each other. Gradually there was a retreat along the 
 whole line. The testimony, strengthened by the then recent 
 discoveries of the stone records recovered from buried 
 cities, and by the generally more intimate knowledge of 
 
 * An article written by me, published in the Christian Church, 
 some years ago. 
 
92 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 the different countries at the periods referred to, became 
 irresistible. The critics were thus driven from a very 
 inviting field, though perilous to the peace of Christendom. 
 The power of Christianity, which they thought they had 
 shaken, is now immensely greater than it was at that 
 period. 
 
 But there is still, happily, work for able critics, in other 
 directions, of a more harmless kind. And no one of the 
 present day has exhibited more acuteness than the learned 
 Professor, whose work we are now considering. In this book 
 he enters with much ability upon an interesting inquiry, 
 and in our view establishes conclusively his various positions. 
 
 The first question is, Did ever such a man as this Burns 
 exist ? The Professor is prepared to allow that there may 
 have been an individual of that name, who had,, perhaps, a 
 good deal to do with the collecting together and final editor- 
 ship of the poems. As to his having himself written these 
 poems, as alleged, or any at least but a very small part 
 of them, all scholars are now agreed that the idea must 
 be given up. The Professor recognises at least five different 
 writers. These five, at all events, he has distinctly proved, as 
 we shall now show by a brief reference to the evidence given. 
 
 In the first place we have the great division, at once 
 apparent, from language itself. These poems are in two very 
 distinct dialects — we might say languages. The most of 
 them are in what he calls old Doric Scottish — the finest 
 specimens that we have of that language, with its touching 
 beauty and tenderness, in which it surpasses the contem- 
 porary English. They contain a number of masterpieces in 
 this dialect of, however, very different kinds. The Professor 
 has given various specimens of each in his volume. When 
 
THE POET BURNS. 
 
 93 
 
 these are placed in juxtaposition, it is easily seen that they 
 proceed from different sources. Some are national songs, 
 very many are love-songs, others are descriptions of nature. 
 There is thus a great variety, indicating different writers, 
 and the Professor believes that the Scotch poems are a 
 selection of the poems current at the period at which the 
 editor lived, and, say, during the two previous centuries. 
 Some few of them are, perhaps, even considerably older, 
 though the language may have been slightly changed by the 
 editor so as to make them understood at the time. The 
 following, for instance, must have been written at a period 
 much earlier than that to which it is ascribed. At the close 
 of the eighteenth century Scotland had been long united to 
 England, and there were no longer feuds between the two 
 countries, whereas this poem breathes the spirit of national 
 hate, and also of the slave longing to be free. We quote 
 from the noble war-song, ' Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled,' 
 perhaps sung on many a bloody battle-field : 
 
 * By Oppression's woes and pains ! 
 By your sons in servile chains ! 
 We will drain our dearest veins, 
 But they shall be free ! 
 
 1 Lay the proud usurpers low ! 
 Tyrants fall in every foe ! 
 Liberty's in every blow ! — 
 Let us do or die.' 
 
 This was evidently written at a time when Scotland was much 
 oppressed by England. We seem to hear the very clanking 
 of the chains. The probability is that it is a song of a very 
 early period — the thirteenth or fourteenth century — adapted 
 and somewhat modernized by the editor. 
 
94 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 But to look again to the different kinds of poetry, there 
 are these patriotic songs. Then there are a large number of 
 love-songs. Even these are of very varied types, and 
 indicate different authors. Then there are poems descrip- 
 tive of objects of external nature and scenery. The 
 Professor has proved his position beyond all doubt to men 
 of scholarly mind, that these poems in what he calls the 
 Doric Scottish dialect are a collection written by men of 
 different periods, and with different sympathies. Possibly 
 they may even have grown up by frequent verbal repetition 
 into many of the beautiful forms which they assumed before 
 they were finally adjusted. 
 
 But, again, there is another most clear division. There 
 are a number of the poems, classified under the name of 
 Burns, in the pure English of that day, quite a different 
 language — more stately, but less winning. The style of 
 these poems is also different, in harmony with the different 
 genius of the language. Take, for instance, the following : 
 
 1 Edina ! Scotia's darling rest ! 
 All hail thy palaces and towers, 
 Where once beneath a monarch's feet 
 Sat Legislation's sovereign powers ! 
 From marking wildly scattered flowers, 
 As on the banks of Ayr I stray'd, 
 And singing lone the lingering hours, 
 I sheltered in thy honoured shade. 
 
 • Here wealth still swells the golden tide 
 As busy Trade his labour plies ; 
 There Architecture's noble pride 
 Bids elegance and splendour rise ; 
 Here Justice from her native skies, 
 High wields her balance and her rod ; 
 There Learning, with her eagle eyes 
 Seeks Science in her coy abode.' 
 
THE POET BURNS. 
 
 'J 5 
 
 How entirely different the stately and somewhat stiff measure 
 of this poem from that of the tender Scottish songs ! One 
 man could not have possibly written both — and that one 
 man, represented as scarcely above an uneducated peasant, 
 could in no case have written English of such purity. 
 
 But the Professor directs attention, also, to internal 
 differences of a moral and religious kind. In Burns' poems 
 there is a beautiful picture of the life of a godly peasant, 
 evidently written by one who had the deepest sympathy 
 with the religion of his country. This beautiful poem, after 
 describing the pious home of a cotter and his earnest family 
 prayer, says : 
 
 ' From scenes like these Old Scotia's grandeur springs, 
 That makes her loved at home, revered abroad : 
 Princes and lords are but the breath of kings, 
 An honest man's the noblest work of God. ' 
 
 The man that wrote this poem must have been an enthusiast 
 for his country's religion. All men of intelligence will, of 
 course, see that the same writer could not possibly have 
 written another poem called ' The Holy Fair,' in which 
 pictures are given of Scotch religion by no means flattering, 
 and evidently with keen enjoyment of the descriptions given. 
 There is a most extraordinary mixture in these poems in this 
 respect. There are a few, besides the ' Cotter's Saturday 
 Night,' that show a great sympathy with earnest religion ; 
 there are a number of others, including even addresses to 
 the devil, that are really profane. And so in regard to their 
 moral character. Some are pure and elevated ; many arc 
 the very opposite. Some of the finest poems, as poems, as 
 ' Should Auld Acquaintance be Forgot,' are drinking songs, 
 and drinking was the great vice of Scotland at that period. 
 
9^ MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 Then, again, there are poems which exhibit the most 
 tender and sensitive sympathy with Nature, evidently the 
 work of another hand. There are the 'Mouse' and the 
 1 Daisy,' familiar to all readers of poetry. What could be 
 more touching than the description of 'A Winter's Night,' 
 or more tender than the following verses of it ? — 
 
 ' Listening, the doors and winnocks rattle, 
 I thought me on the ourie cattle, 
 Or silly sheep, wha bide this battle 
 
 O' winter war, 
 And through the drift, deep-lairing, sprattle, 
 
 Beneath a scaur. 
 
 ' Ilk happing bird, wee helpless thing, 
 That in the merry months of spring 
 Delighted me to hear thee sing, 
 
 What comes o' thee ? 
 Where wilt thou cower thy chittering wing, 
 
 And close thy e'e ?' 
 
 Here, then, there is another vein of poetry, of a most 
 exquisitive kind. 
 
 We must bring this matter quickly to a close. The con 
 elusions of the learned Professor, the grounds of which he 
 has stated with great fulness, may thus be summarized : 
 The Burns poems are as poetry a most beautiful collection 
 or selection, maintaining far too high a level throughout to 
 have been the production of one man. They also belong to 
 different periods and different types of character and thought. 
 The opposing elements are most striking. 
 
 He is able to predicate with certainty at least five 
 different hands as traceable in them. The poems in the 
 English and Scotch dialects, so exceedingly different in 
 language as well as thought, are by men of different 
 
THE POET BURNS. 97 
 
 countries ; and the Scotch have perhaps just been a little 
 too grasping in claiming these beautiful English poems for 
 one of themselves. Then, again, the ballad poems, as 
 'Scots wha hae wi' Wallace bled,' belong evidently to a 
 much earlier period, when Scotland was at bitter feud with 
 England. This divides the Scottish poems into two parts. 
 But they must be apportioned still further to different 
 authors. There are evidently two writers of entirely 
 opposite moral and religious convictions. This may be seen 
 even by the most cursory readers. Here, then, we have at 
 least three writers of the Scotch poems : — 1. The writer of 
 the older part, when Scotland and England were bitter foes. 
 2. The enthusiastic admirer of the Scottish religion of a 
 later period. 3. The keen and sarcastic foe of that religion. 
 One author of the English poems and these three of the 
 Scotch make at least four different writers. But the poems 
 descriptive of natural scenery, evidently by another hand, 
 supply a fifth. The five are thus clearly proved ; but the 
 Professor thinks that many of the poems may have been 
 only adapted by one of the five. They probably existed in 
 five different books, each of which may have been in great 
 part original. But in the end they were put together, in a 
 curious mixed fashion, as if to hide their varied origins, by 
 some editor — who may have possibly been called Burns, 
 probably a man of extensive reading, but not much literary 
 faculty, or he would have arranged them in a better fashion. 
 The poems are beautiful, but the arrangement is extra- 
 ordinary. This editor was probably a keen Scottish patriot, 
 and, with an excusable wish to ring the fame of some great 
 name for his country's glory, he attributed all these poems 
 to one man. However the mistake happened, happen it 
 
 7 
 
98 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 did, as now proved most clearly to the satisfaction of all 
 scholars. It is, in fact, ascertained knowledge. 
 
 There was no such poet as Burns. Many may be startled 
 by this discovery. Some, no doubt, will insist on the 
 importance of the historic testimony to the existence of the 
 man and to the authenticity of his reputed works. They 
 will insist on the general and undisputed belief that they 
 were his, till a recent period. But such evidences fade into 
 insignificance when seen in the light of that searching, 
 careful, learned inquiry, on internal grounds, pursued in the 
 volume which we have noticed. Let our doubtful capable 
 readers read the book for themselves, and all their doubts 
 must vanish. 
 
 The reasons here are much stronger than those of the 
 1 higher critics,' in regard to Daniel or any of the other 
 books — apart from the denial of the miracles and prophecy. 
 Let our readers try the system with other known authors. 
 
APPENDIX B. 
 
 THE MIRACLES OF THE TALMUD AND OF THE 
 SPURIOUS GOSPELS, ETC. 
 
 It is interesting to note the way in which Jews and Chris- 
 tians dealt with miracles when they invented them, and 
 what kind of Bible we should have had, if the rationalistic 
 view of the origin of the accounts of the miracles were 
 correct ! How does the contrast impress both the truth- 
 fulness and the Divine guidance or inspiration of the Scrip- 
 tures ! 
 
 To illustrate the 107th Psalm — 'They that go down to 
 the sea in ships, that do business in great waters, these see 
 the works of the Lord, and His wonders in the deep ' — 
 Rabbi Bar Chuna says that he once saw a bird so tall that 
 its head reached to the sky, and its legs to the bottom of 
 the ocean. The water in which it stood was so deep that a 
 carpenter's axe which had fallen in seven years before had 
 not then reached the bottom. He also saw a frog as large 
 as a village containing sixty houses. This frog was swal- 
 lowed up by a serpent, and this serpent in turn by a crow. 
 The crow flew and perched on a cedar, and this cedar 
 was as broad as sixteen waggons abreast. There is also an 
 
 7—2 
 
ioo MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 account of a fish which was killed by a worm. This fish, 
 when driven ashore, destroyed sixty cities, and sixty cities 
 ate of it, and sixty cities salted it, and with its bones the 
 ruined cities were rebuilt. Stories are also told of fishes 
 with eyes like the moon, and of horned fishes 300 miles in 
 length. To illustrate Amos iii. 8, a story is told of a lion 
 which one of the Caesars wished to see. At 400 miles' 
 distance he roared, and the walls of Rome fell ; at 300 
 miles he roared again, and all the people fell on their backs, 
 and Caesar fell on his throne. Caesar then prayed for his 
 removal to a safer distance. It is also said that a young 
 unicorn one day old is as large as Mount Tabor, and that 
 Noah, not being able to get one into the ark, bound it by 
 its horn to the side. An account is given of the river 
 Sanbation, which flows with stones all the six days of the 
 week, but rests on the Sabbath day. A miracle is described 
 of one rabbi killing another rabbi in a drunken fit, and then 
 working a miracle which restored him to life. In the fol- 
 lowing year he again invited the rabbi to drink with him, 
 but he declined on the ground that miracles are not wrought 
 every day. It is said that the men of the Messianic period 
 will be 200 ells high. The land of Israel will produce 
 cakes, and cloths of the finest wool. The wheat will grow 
 on Lebanon as high as palm-trees, and a wind will be sent 
 by God to reduce it to fine flour for the support of those 
 who gather it. Each kidney (of wheat, Deut. xxxii. 14) 
 will be as large as the kidneys of the fattest oxen. In every 
 cluster of grapes there will be thirty jars of wine. Jerusalem 
 will be built three miles high ; the gates of the city will be 
 made of pearls and precious stones thirty ells high and 
 thirty ells broad. 
 
THE MIRACLES OF THE TALMUD, ETC. 101 
 
 In the spurious narratives of the post-Apostolic period, 
 the following are specimens of stories of Jesus' childhood. 
 At His birth all kinds of motion suddenly ceased. Birds 
 stopped in the midst of their flight ; men at table with 
 their hands to their mouths were unable to eat. When 
 a child, He turns some children who refuse to play with 
 Him into kids. A child by accident runs against Him, He 
 says, ' Thou shalt fall and not rise/ and the child dies on 
 the spot. His master strikes Him ; Jesus curses him, and 
 he dies. A favourite amusement of His was to make beasts 
 and birds of clay in the presence of companions, and then 
 to animate them and to make them run or fly away. As to 
 His later years, it is said that He appeared to His disciples 
 sometimes as a youth, sometimes as an old man, sometimes 
 as a child, sometimes larger, sometimes less, sometimes so 
 tall as to reach to the heavens. There is a description 
 of the military standards making of themselves an obeisance 
 to Him when He was brought before Pilate. There is also 
 a story of a picture of Him, presented to Gamaliel by Nico- 
 demus, which, when pierced by the Jews, gave forth blood 
 and water. We are told that at the age of eight years, 
 Joseph being anxious about a piece of work to be done, not 
 having the right wood to do it, Jesus made a short piece of 
 wood of the same length as a longer one. In another 
 book we have accounts of a long conference between Nero 
 and Simon Magus and the Apostles Peter and Paul, in 
 which the greatest nonsense is talked, and which ends by 
 Simon's making a flight to heaven, Paul looking up full of 
 tears at seeing Simon's success, and adjuring Peter to inter- 
 pose, and Peter's looking steadfastly towards Simon and 
 saying : ' I adjure you, ye angels of Satan, who are carrying 
 
102 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 him into the air to deceive the hearts of the unbelievers, by 
 the God that created all things, and by Jesus Christ, whom 
 on the third day He raised from the dead, no longer from this 
 hour to keep him up, but to' let him go.' And immediately, 
 being let go, he fell into a place called Sacra Via— that is, 
 Holy Way — and was divided into four parts, having perished 
 by an evil fate. 
 
 APPENDIX C. 
 
 THE NEGATIVE CRITICS AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 The Dean of Canterbury, Dr. Payne Smith, in his Bampton 
 Lectures on ' Prophecy — a Preparation for Christ,' says, 
 speaking of the German negative critics and Isaiah : 
 
 ' Whenever these German critics get into a difficulty and 
 do not know what to do with any portion of the prophetical 
 books, they invent an ancient prophet or a modern prophet, 
 or a great unknown or a little unknown, till one is weary of 
 such commonplace makeshifts. Thus the last twenty-seven 
 chapters (of Isaiah) are written by a " great unknown " who 
 lived at Babylon at the end of the exile ; but, first, he did 
 not write the opening words, he borrowed them ; he wrote, 
 however, the controversy with idols and the account of the 
 capture of Babylon ; but when you reach the very kernel of 
 the book — chapter fifty-three — Ewald owns that it could 
 not have been written at Babylon. He even thinks that it 
 may describe Isaiah's own martyrdom ; or, if not, then the 
 
THE NEGATIVE CRITICS AND THE PROPHETS. 103 
 
 martyrdom of someone else, but at all events the sorrows 
 spoken of were suffered under Manasseh. Why ? Simply 
 because the prophecy would have been almost more remark- 
 able in the mouth of an exile of Babylon than in that of 
 Isaiah. To get rid of the Messianic character you must 
 affirm that it is historical, an account of some past tragedy. 
 Tradition says that Isaiah was sawn asunder : it is certain 
 that Manasseh was a tyrant ; ergo, by the higher criticism 
 logic, it was Isaiah who bore our griefs and carried our 
 sorrows. Well then come chapters fifty-sixth, from the ninth 
 verse, and fifty-seventh. It is a passage which has brought 
 great ridicule upon the negative critics. No rational men 
 could believe that it was written at Babylon, as they at first 
 innocently affirmed. But Ewald is equal to the emergency. 
 It was copied from an " ancient prophet," and must be 
 printed in italics But chapters fifty-eight and fifty-nine are 
 almost as unmanageable ; so they, too, must be printed in 
 italics, and assigned to a " modern prophet," an imitator of 
 Ezekiel. And now there are no great difficulties till chapter 
 sixty-three. Judah had nothing to fear from Edom and 
 Bosra at Babylon. And so the first six verses are printed 
 in italics again, and the passage is borrowed from the 
 prophet who wrote chapter fifty-eight. And all the rest 
 Ewald fairly gives up. " The great unknown " may have 
 written it, but at a later time and under different historic 
 circumstances. Chapter sixty-six, verse six, which shows 
 that the temple was still standing when the prophecy was 
 composed, refers to a time, he says, subsequent to the 
 decree of Cyrus, and the weak commencement of the re- 
 building of the Holy City. Observe then, omitting the open- 
 ing words, eleven chapters out of twenty-seven — that is, all 
 
104 
 
 MOSES AND THE PROPHETS. 
 
 the crucial passages — are confessedly irreconcilable with the 
 theory of "a great unknown" having written this magni- 
 ficent composition at Babylon. Either, then, this book was 
 written by Isaiah, as the Jews constantly affirm from the 
 most ancient times, or it is a piece of patchwork. The 
 mental calibre of the man who can believe it to be the 
 latter must be infinitely small. The theory of a Babylonian 
 Isaiah is dead.' 
 
 Speaking generally of alleged interpolations in the 
 prophets, he says : 
 
 'Never were there writers whose style is more exactly 
 marked than the prophets, and the idea that large interpola- 
 tions are possible, and that you may pull a prophecy to 
 pieces and divide its dismembered limbs among a heap of 
 other writers, simply means that people know so little of the 
 subject that they suppose that Hebrew literature is unlike 
 every other literature. If I were to affirm that Horace wrote 
 considerable portions of Virgil's " Georgics," the assertion 
 would be treated as ridiculous : not because it is more 
 ridiculous than what has been said about Isaiah, for instance, 
 but simply because men generally know enough of Latin to 
 be able to form a judgment upon the subject. If a man 
 makes a similar assertion as regards the writers of the Old 
 Testament, he can always count upon the ignorance of his 
 readers. They do not know that the prophets have each 
 one his own marked and peculiar style. 
 
 THE END. 
 Elliot Stock, Paternoster Row, London.