BS 
 
 111 
 
 W55 
 
 

 '0. 
 
 :<g> 
 
 Library of Congress. 
 
 ®. 
 
 Chap. -X-LO- Jj^Jli 
 
 Shelf.. 
 
 UNITED STATES OF AMERICA.; 
 
 ssossesesssgsgaesssgsgragE^gggegssgsgsgaragsgHBS 
 
RATIONAL THEOLOGY 
 
 REV. JOHN MILTON WILLIAMS, D. D. 
 
 Contents of Volume I. 
 
 I. 
 
 Old and New Calvinism. 
 
 II. 
 
 The Conscience. 
 
 III. 
 
 Virtue, from a Scientific Stand- 
 
 
 point. 
 
 IV. 
 
 Regeneration. 
 
 V. 
 
 Divine Sovereignty and Free- 
 
 
 Agency. 
 
 VI. 
 
 The Atonement. 
 
 VII. 
 
 The Futureof Incorrigible Men. 
 
 VIII. 
 
 The Christ of Nazareth— (Who 
 
 
 Was He?) 
 
 Contents of Volume II. 
 
 I. The Supreme Law. 
 II. Divine Limitations. 
 
 III. The Emotional and Ethical in 
 Religion. 
 
 IV. Free Agency and Divine Sover- 
 eignty Reconciled. 
 
 V. The Westminster Confession. 
 VI. Fairchild's Elements of The- 
 ology. 
 VII. The Reason in Revealed Re- 
 ligion. 
 VIII. Morality and Religion. 
 IX. Woman's Sphere and Duties. 
 X. The Inspiration and Inerrancy 
 of the Sacred Scriptures. 
 XI. The Unity of Christendom. 
 
 Press and Personal Comments on Volume I. 
 
 A model of clear, cogent discussion . . . The very best popular and practical 
 exhibition of current theology, in its free and most rational form, of which we 
 have any knowledge. — Independent, New York. 
 
 We know of no essays on the subjects discussed more vigorous, luminous 
 and satisfactory than those contained in "Rational Theology."— Ex-President 
 J. H. Fairchild, Oberlin. 
 
 Dr. Williams writes an able book. Any Calvinist wishing to hear the other 
 side will find him a fair expositor.— New York Evangelist. 
 
 I congratulate you on giving to the public a very able presentation of the 
 so-called New Haven theology, in admirable classic English. — Prof. Thomas 
 Skinner, McCormick Theological Seminary. 
 
 Among the characteristics of the book is the clearness of its definitions and 
 the absence of any evasion in meeting difficulties. I do not believe the author's 
 views of virture can be more cogently presented. — Prof. George N. Boardman, 
 Chicago Theological Seminary. 
 
 The author has done a great deal of acute, cogent thinking. He does not 
 shrink from dealing with the deepest problems of human thought. No one can 
 read any part of the book, however he may differ from the views presented, and 
 not feel it is the hand of a clear, strong thinker that writes them. — Advance, 
 Chicago. 
 
 I do think the essay on conscience closes the case. It is as near a final 
 treatment of the subject as I can conceive. I have no language adequate to 
 express my gratitude to you for writing these essays. — Rev.Chas. Caverno, LL. D. 
 
 Volume II. 
 
 There are no problems in which men have more at stake than in those 
 discussed in this volume, and none in which human life is invested with more 
 dignity andimportance. Dr. Williams has been known to us as a strong writer 
 and thinker (who is ready with a rational reason for every step in his argument). 
 — Independent, New York. 
 
 The author is master of a fine literary style, and is an acute and cogent 
 thinker. In theology he is of the New School or New Haven type, and fairly 
 represents current practical theology. —Observer, St. Louis. 
 
 As an analytical writer the author has few, if any, superiors; and as a logical 
 thinker he ranks among the foremost. His admirable volume will be widely 
 welcomed, and make a deep impression. The essay on the Inspiration and 
 Inerrancy of the Sacred Scriptures will especially command attention, and they 
 ought and doubtless will, have a wide circulation— Christian Work, New York. 
 
 This work contains what is most valuable in systematic theology, which it 
 presents in language clear, terse and well nigh ideal. In my full convicton, it is 
 by far the most able and lucid exhibit of the New School system of theology in 
 the English language.— Rev. S. Bristol, author of " Pioneer Preacher." 
 
 Two volumes, crown octavo, 310 and 325 pages respectively, price $1.25 per 
 volume postpaid. Either volume sold separately or the two in a box. 
 
 QHARLES H. KERR & COMPANY, Publishers, 56 Fifth Ave., Chicago, 111. 
 
THE OLD TESTAMENT AND 
 THE CRITICS. 
 
 BY 
 
 REV. JOHN MILTON WILLIAMS, D. D. 
 
 Author of "The Empire of the Pulpit," '" Rational Theology," Etc. 
 
 Sub hoc Signo Vinces. 
 
 CHICAGO 
 CHARLES H. KERR & C 
 
 1898. 
 
 •two COPIES RECEIVED- 
 

 SECOND COPY, 
 
 ^\£ 
 
 5L648 
 
 Copyright 1898 
 By John Milton Williams 
 
INDEX. 
 
 PAGE 
 
 I. The Difficulties of the Old Testament, . 11 
 
 II. The Old Testament Corroborated by 
 
 the New, ..... 32 
 
 III. Old Testament Inspiration, . . .41 
 
 IV. Allegorical Interpretations, . . 49 
 V. Allegorical Interpretations, . . .68 
 
 VI. Are the Two Testaments Identical in 
 
 Spirit? . . . . . ,81 
 
THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS 
 
INTRODUCTION. 
 
 The object of the author in preparing this 
 little volume and taking the liberty of in- 
 truding it upon the public, is not the estab- 
 lishment of the divine authority of the Old 
 Testament. The awful claim of being a 
 communication from God to our race, he 
 believes should be acknowledged only up- 
 on evidence the most unimpeachable. Yet 
 the author most fully accepts this claim. 
 The evidence on which it rests seems to him 
 so ample, so overwhelming and so limitless, 
 the thought of adequately presenting it, were 
 he able to do so, brings the feeling of weari- 
 ness and discouragement. For more than 
 thirty centuries the Old Testament, like 
 some sacred fountain, has been issuing 
 streams of healing, of hope and gladness, 
 and every year the evidence of its divine 
 origin has been accumulating. 
 
 The object of the author, so far as he is 
 able, is rather to remove acknowledged dif- 
 ficulties from the Old Testament, by which 
 honest inquirers are perplexed and stum- 
 
 9 
 
INTRODUCTION. 10 
 
 bled. The author lays no claim to enlarged 
 scholarship, and is painfully conscious of the 
 imperfections of this little book, but having 
 been a public teacher of the Sacred Oracles 
 for forty years, he is too deeply grounded in 
 the conviction that the thought it embodies 
 carries the endorsement of the Divine 
 Teacher to be easily moved by objections 
 and criticisms. 
 
 The Old Testament was essentially what 
 it is now, containing the same imperfections 
 and difficulties it now contains, and Christ 
 virtually cancelled them, when, with perhaps 
 the Old Testament in his hand, he offered 
 the prayer, " Sanctify them through thy 
 truth; thy word is truth," meaning the Old 
 Testament is God's word ; it is truth— truth 
 more eternal than the hills, and we believe 
 by and by it is certain to dominate the con- 
 victions of the world. 
 
 The Author. 
 597 Cleveland Ave., 
 Chicago. 
 
The Old Testament and the Critics. 
 
 CHAPTER I. 
 
 THE DIFFICULTIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 
 
 The Bible is now in its crucial period. It 
 has probably never passed a severer ordeal. 
 Attacks, especially upon the Old Testament 
 were never more insidious, persistent, and 
 never threatened more harm. They are not 
 the attacks of ignorance ; the time of scoff- 
 ing has passed by; nor, in the main, are 
 these attacks from open enemies. It is not 
 from Voltaires, Tom Paines, Ingersolls, we 
 have most to fear. Christianity has won too 
 many conquests, and planted itself too deeply 
 in the soil of this world, to be much affected 
 by sneers and coarse invective. Science has 
 taken the field ; the attacks come largely 
 from scholarship, from patient toil, the mid- 
 night lamp, and from professed friends. Its 
 
12 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 foes are chiefly those of its own household. 
 The men with whom we contend use pol- 
 ished weapons. "The pen is mightier than 
 the sword." To eliminate the supernatural 
 from the Old Testament, and, perhaps inad- 
 vertently, to remove the pillar on which the 
 superstructure of Christianity rests, has been 
 the chief end they have sought to accom- 
 plish. A Bible devoid of the supernatural, 
 whose heroes and martyrs and great men 
 are myths, and whose histories are legends, 
 is not a revelation from God. It is a mat- 
 ter of sorrow to find in the category of so- 
 called critics many highly honored names, 
 such as Harper, Briggs, Mitchel, Abbott, 
 Denney, Driver, Preserved Smith and Gold- 
 win Smith. The reader will allow a few 
 quotations to indicate the trend of their 
 criticisms. 
 
 Professor Goldwin Smith utterly discards 
 the inspiration of the Old Testament, and 
 rules the supernatural out of it. In his arti- 
 cle entitled Christianity s Milestone he says : 
 "The time has surely come when they, (the 
 Hebrew books), as a supernatural revela- 
 
DIFFICULTIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 1 3 
 
 tion, should be frankly and reverently laid 
 aside, and no longer be allowed to cloud the 
 vision of free inquiry, or cast the shadow of 
 primeval religion and law over our modern 
 life. It is useless and paltering with truth 
 to set up, like the writer in Lex Mundi, the 
 figment of semi-inspiration, an inspiration 
 which errs, which contradicts itself, which 
 dictates manifest incredibilities, such as stop- 
 ping the sun, Balaam's speaking ass, Elisha's 
 avenging bears, the transformation of Nebu- 
 chadnezzar, is no inspiration at all."* 
 
 It is not a matter of surprise that one who 
 discards the supernatural should discard 
 such alleged events and records. Denying 
 the supernatural logically necessitates the 
 denial of all alleged events involving the 
 supernatural, including nearly all the He- 
 brew history up to the entrance of Israel 
 into Palestine, and many events of a later 
 date, events of surpassing interest and im- 
 portance, such as the sublime account of 
 creation, the establishment of the Sabbath, 
 of the marriage relation, the entrance of sin 
 
 * See North American Review Dec, 1896. 
 
14 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 into this world, the flood, the patriarchal 
 history, the captivity of Israel into Egypt 
 and their wondrous deliverance, their 
 marvellous sojourn in the desert, the 
 shekinah, next to the advent of the Son 
 of man, the most wondrous thing of his- 
 tory ; the sublime and awful grandeur of 
 the giving of the law, events transcending 
 in interest and meaning almost any others 
 the pen has ever recorded — types and her- 
 alds of the advent of the Son of God. It is 
 divine history which is sought to be erased. 
 The Professor from whom I have quoted 
 is in doubt as to the deity of the God whom 
 the Hebrews worshiped. His language is, 
 "Why should we cling any longer to that 
 which, whatever it may have been to the 
 men of a primeval tribe, is to us a low and 
 narrow conception of the Deity ? Why 
 should we force ourselves to believe that 
 the Being who fills eternity and immensity 
 became the guest of a Hebrew sheik, en- 
 tered into covenant with the sheiks to the 
 exclusion of the rest of the human race?" 
 "Judaism," he assures us, "never reached 
 
DIFFICULTIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 1 5 
 
 the elevation of some of the choice spirits of 
 the heathen world, such as Seneca, Epicte- 
 tus ; nor ever gained the conception of the 
 universality of law, as we find in Plato and 
 Cicero." 
 
 It will astonish many to learn that the 
 author of the article from which these ex- 
 tracts are taken, professedly accepts the 
 New Testament as of divine authority, is a 
 member of a Christian church, and is termed 
 by Rev. Dr. J. C. Woodman, his reviewer, 
 "a reverent religious scholar. 5 ' 
 
 The following is from the pen of the 
 pastor of one of our largest evangelical 
 churches: "That God should tell a father 
 (speaking of Abraham) to kill his own child, 
 it is not possible to believe ; that God should 
 command the children of Israel to extermi- 
 nate the Canaanites, destroying women and 
 children, it is not possible to believe ; that 
 God inspired a persecuted Hebrew captive 
 to execrate Babylon in the words, ' O daugh- 
 ter of Babylon that art to be destroyed, 
 happy shall he be that rewardeth thee as 
 thou hast served us ; happy shall he be that 
 
16 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 taketh and dasheth thy little ones against 
 the stones I ' " * Says the same author, " The 
 new theology has no hesitation in accepting 
 some miracles and rejecting others ; accept- 
 ing, for example, the resurrection of Christ 
 as a fact sufficiently authenticated, doubting 
 the resurrection of saints at the death of 
 Christ as insufficiently authenticated, and 
 disbelieving the historical character of the 
 Jonah legend as not authenticated at all." f 
 "In fact, I believe that some of the events 
 there recorded, and generally regarded as 
 miraculous, did take place ; that others 
 there recorded as referred to did not take 
 place ; and concerning others there recorded 
 I am by no means certain whether they took 
 place as recorded, or not. I do not believe 
 that the sun stood still and the moon stayed 
 in the valley of Ajalon at Joshua's com- 
 mand ; I am uncertain as to what interpret- 
 ation is to be given to the wonderful stories 
 in the Book of Daniel." 
 
 The scholarly Griggs, while accepting the 
 religious lessons of the Old Testament as 
 divine, finds much of it utterly incongruous 
 
 * Evolution of Christianity, p. 57. 
 t Same, p. 114. 
 
THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. \*J 
 
 with the spirit and teachings of the New. 
 He cannot believe God commanded Abra- 
 ham to kill his child ; or that he commended 
 Jael for treacherously slaying Sisera. He 
 does not " believe the spirit of revenge 
 breathed in the command to exterminate 
 the Canaanites, or that animated the im- 
 precatory Psalms, or that threads itself into 
 the story of Esther," is the spirit of Christ, or 
 of the New Testament. He finds " occasional 
 representations of vindictiveness on the part 
 of God, jealousy of other gods, with cruel 
 disregard of human suffering and life, vac- 
 illation of purpose and the passion of an- 
 ger. * These he cannot accept as inspired. 
 There are real difficulties, no one denies, 
 connected with the Old Testament ; things 
 which seem, certainly to a superficial view, 
 incongruous with the whole spirit of the 
 New; and the question is on the lips of 
 thousands of honest enquirers, Can we ac- 
 cept the Old Testament as a whole, without 
 qualification, as of equal inspiration with 
 the New ? will modern criticism compel us 
 to relegate it, or any part of it, to the cate- 
 
 * See address before Parliament of Religions. 
 
1 8 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 gory of the human, or even lower our confi- 
 dence in its authority and sacredness ? 
 These questions, as will be seen in the 
 sequel, involve not the Old Testament only, 
 but the whole fabric of the Christian faith, 
 
 The difficulties over which our critics 
 largely stumble are the alleged incredibilities 
 of the book. It is no marvel the men who 
 discard the supernatural find them. It is a 
 book of wonders ; it deals chiefly with the 
 unseen and eternal. Its very atmosphere is 
 the mysterious and supernatural ; but the 
 reader should not be stumbled by this. It is 
 precisely what he should look for. Were it 
 (the Old Testament) otherwise the evi- 
 dence of its divine authority would be want- 
 ing. "If I do not the works," said the 
 Great Teacher, "that no other man doeth, 
 believe me not." 
 
 If God has made a revelation to the world 
 and commissioned chosen men to communi- 
 cate it to others, He certainly would have 
 provided them some means of confirming 
 the fact. " Jesus of Nazareth," says the 
 apostle, " was approved of God unto you by 
 
DIFFICULTIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. I9 
 
 mighty works, by signs and wonders which 
 God did by him, in the midst of you." Other- 
 wise he could not have been believed. Had 
 the prophet on Mt. Carmel assured gathered 
 Israel that Jehovah is God and Baal but an 
 image, the assertion would probably have 
 availed nothing; but when he prayed, "O 
 Lord God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, 
 and of Israel, let it be known this day that 
 I am thy servant, and that I have done all 
 these things at thy word ; hear me, O Lord, 
 hear me, that this people may know that 
 thou Lord art God," instantly fire fell, and 
 consumed the burnt offering, and the wood, 
 and the stone, and the dust, and licked up 
 the water that was in the trenches ; and 
 when all the people saw it they fell on their 
 faces, and they said, " The Lord, He is God, 
 the Lord, He is God." That fire was God's 
 indorsement of the prophet, his handwriting 
 which no being could counterfeit. So these 
 incredibilities are God's endorsement of 
 the truths the sacred writers put on record. 
 To the Christian they are divine interven- 
 
20 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 tions ; to our critics they are stumbling 
 blocks. 
 
 The logic of the critics is not logical ; it is 
 plainly petitio principii. Their syllogism 
 reads thus : ( i ) Any alleged event involv- 
 ing the supernatural is absurd and untruth- 
 ful. (2) Such alleged events as the resi- 
 dence of Daniel in a lion's den, Jonah in a 
 whale's belly, etc., do involve the super- 
 natural. (3) Therefore they are absurd 
 and untruthful. A better syllogism reads 
 thus : All records endorsed by special divine 
 intervention are inspired. All Old Testa- 
 ment records are thus endorsed, therefore 
 all Old Testament records are divinely in- 
 spired. 
 
 The critic creates his own difficulties. He 
 reads how Elijah was carried to heaven in a 
 chariot of fire ; how the Red Sea opened its 
 waters, and a nation passed over on dry 
 land. How a great people were fed for 
 decades on manna falling every morning 
 from heaven. The writers seem to be 
 truthful, and their statements well sup- 
 ported and generally believed, and he is 
 
DIFFICULTIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 21 
 
 perplexed. No wonder. He is like the 
 man who has convinced himself there is no 
 such thing as a sun, and is greatly perplexed 
 at the facts which meet his eyes in the 
 streets at noonday. There is a very simple 
 way out of his dilemma. He has but to con- 
 fess he has been mistaken ; that there is a 
 sun in the great heavens, but he has been 
 too blind to see it. Let the critics do like- 
 wise, and these wondrous narratives will 
 appear not only credible but just what we 
 should have expected. 
 
 But the critics answer us, that some of the 
 narratives of the Old Testament are too evi- 
 dently absurd to be believed. For example, 
 that a deluge once covered the entire globe 
 with water, so deep as to bury the high moun- 
 tains, which would have required ten or a 
 hundred times the water there is or ever was 
 upon the earth. There is, we answer, noth- 
 in the narrative inconsistent with the theory 
 that only the inhabited, a very limited por- 
 tion of the globe, was submerged. This 
 would have accomplished the end in view; 
 and as God, as far as we can see, always ac- 
 
22 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 complishes His purpose by the simplest and 
 least expensive means, this is the logical in- 
 terpretation of the narrative. This end was 
 effected by the falling rains and the break- 
 ing up the fountains of the great deep, or 
 the subsidance of the land below the level 
 of surrounding waters. The language, "un- 
 der the whole heavens" we may regard as 
 ad sensum, meaning under the whole sky, 
 the only heavens of which anything was 
 known. There certainly is no absurdity 
 here. 
 
 We are also pointed to the assertion, that 
 at the command of Joshua the sun stood 
 still for the space of a day in the midst of 
 the heavens, and we are assured that such 
 an event would have carried disorder 
 through the solar system, and made an 
 epoch in the world's history ; but we have 
 never learned that even a sparrow's nest 
 was disturbed. This event, which one of 
 our critics insinuates involves falsehood 
 enough to vitiate the w T hole Old Testament, 
 is usually regarded as one of the simplest 
 narratives, involving only an unusual but 
 
DIFFICULTIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 23 
 
 doubtless miraculous condensation of the 
 atmosphere, and so large a consequent re- 
 fraction of the rays of the sun, as to have 
 made it visible until perhaps late into the 
 night. In this way God accomplishes two 
 ends, ( 1 ) He confirms the divine commis- 
 sion of his servant Joshua; (2) He enabled 
 the Hebrew armies to overwhelm their 
 enemies before the darkness could conceal 
 them. The language is, "And the sun 
 stayed in the midst of the heaven, and 
 hasted not to go down about a whole day," 
 or, as Prof. Bush translates the language, 
 "as in a whole (or perfect) day." The 
 assertion is ad sensum, precisely like the 
 assertions, "the sun rose," and "the sun set." 
 The sacred writer doubtless accepted the 
 Ptolemaic theory of the universe, and by 
 using language ad sensum, he avoids com- 
 mitting the narrative to a false theory. "We 
 find," says a late writer, speaking of the 
 Bible, "marvelous wisdom in reference to 
 all matters of science, securing the use of 
 popular expressions which are always ap- 
 
24 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 propiate, and the avoidance of all technical 
 terms which imply scientific theory. * 
 
 It is admitted that a clear absurdity, or an 
 alleged event which contradicts a rational 
 intuition, is incredible, and that no proof 
 can establish it. But an absurdity cannot, 
 we claim, be found in the Old Testament. 
 To one who accepts the book as a special 
 revelation from God, its wonders are not 
 incredible. The proof is, they have been 
 credited by the millions of the best and 
 wisest of our race, and denied only by those 
 who discard the supernatural. 
 
 The Old Testament, no candid man will 
 deny, makes for purity, righteousnes and 
 the general good, and when its language 
 will bear such a construction, a different one 
 is forbidden by every canon of interpreta- 
 tion. The book suffers so much from no 
 other cause as from the gross violation of 
 this universal law. I shall be allowed to 
 refer to two such cases: (i) Deut., 14:21, 
 "Ye shall not eat anything that dieth of 
 itself ; thou mayest give it unto the stranger 
 
 * Fairchild's Elements of Theology, p. 13. 
 
DIFFICULTIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 2$ 
 
 that is within thy gates, that he may eat it, 
 or thou mayest sell it unto the foreigner, 
 for thou art a holy people unto the Lord!' To 
 interpret this into permission to sell un- 
 wholesome food to strangers is a cruel per- 
 version of this language. The last clause 
 shows, on the face of it, to be utterly inad- 
 missible. Because "thou art a holy people 
 unto the Lord" would be a remarkable 
 reason for permission to cheat and poison 
 the defenseless and the poor. The meaning 
 is obvious, when we consider that their cere- 
 monial law strictly forbade eating the flesh 
 of an animal, every drop of whose blood 
 had not been extracted in putting it to 
 death ; in other words, eating an animal that 
 dieth of itself . 
 
 There is another consideration which 
 makes this interpretation doubly inadmissi- 
 ble, the idea that a Jew was authorized, by 
 law, to sell unwholesome food to the stranger 
 and the poor, is absurd in view of the then 
 stringent laws requiring most tender and 
 sacred regard for the rights of this class. 
 "Thou shalt not oppress the stranger" was 
 
26 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 emblazoned on their statute books. Such a 
 contradiction as this permission would make 
 in their laws was not possible. 
 
 (2) Numbers, 13, is subjected to an inter- 
 pretation still more gross and unpardonable. 
 Moses, according to the account, sent forth 
 the armies of Israel with instructions to 
 utterly exterminate the Midianites, their 
 cruel, corrupt and corrupting enemies. 
 Israel returns from the conflict, bringing 
 back large spoil, and the women they had 
 taken captive. Moses was angry exceed- 
 ingly at their disobedience, especially so as 
 the women had been chiefly instrumental in 
 seducing Israel into idolatry and its corrupt- 
 ing orgies. But he consents to spare the 
 lives of the old and young, of whose inno- 
 cence he was certain. Now in view of the 
 regard of that people for chastity, and the 
 stringent laws, even the death penalty pro- 
 tecting it, it is inferred that aged law giver 
 publicly and by proclamation spared these 
 female captives, the aged and the little ones, 
 for lewd purposes, and allowed the fact to 
 be committed to their nation's history. The 
 
DIFFICULTIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 27 
 
 suggestion is simply shameful, and doubly 
 so when we consider the character of the 
 men who constituted that army. It was the 
 last army Moses ever sent into the field. 
 
 The chapter in which this event is re- 
 corded commences thus: "And the Lord 
 spake unto Moses saying, 'Avenge the chil- 
 dren of Israel of the Midianites, and after- 
 ward thou shalt be gathered unto thy 
 fathers.' " Israel was then on the borders of 
 the promised land. With two exceptions, 
 that whole people had been reared from in- 
 fancy, not in Egyptian bondage, but in the 
 intense religious atmosphere of the desert, 
 overshadowed by the Shekinah, dwelling 
 almost in the immediate presence of God. 
 Another race of people, excelling them in 
 purity of morals and lofty integrity, the 
 world's history has probably failed to pro- 
 duce. 
 
 The question, whether the records of the 
 Old Testament are historical or apochry- 
 phal, is not a matter for discussion. They 
 are confirmed beyond rational dispute by 
 contemporaneous history outside the Bible. 
 
28 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 The plagues of Egypt, the wondrous exo- 
 dus of Israel from Egyptian bondage, their 
 passage over the Red Sea, the burial in its 
 waters of the armies of Egypt, the giving of 
 the law, the wonders of the desert, and the 
 sacrifice on Mt. Carmel, occurred not in a 
 corner, but in the presence of thousands and 
 hundreds of thousands of eye witnesses. 
 They occurred when the art of writing was 
 generally understood, and when books and 
 libraries abounded over Egypt, Syria, Chal- 
 dea and Palestine, and were early incorpo- 
 rated into, and became a part of the unchal- 
 lenged history of the world, and are as well 
 attested as the destruction of Jerusalem, or 
 the decline and fall of the Roman Empire. 
 
 Is it possible that two million of men and 
 women believed they crossed the Red Sea 
 on dry ground, shielded from pursuing ar- 
 mies by a pillar of cloud and fire, all one 
 awful night, had it not been true ! would 
 their children and children's children, down 
 to the present hour, without, so far as is 
 known, a dissenting voice ! and would these 
 records stand unchallenged to-day as a part 
 
DIFFICULTIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 29 
 
 of their national history had they not been 
 verities ? It would savor of infatuation to 
 believe it. 
 
 No other history has ever been regarded 
 so sacred, or been guarded with such sleep- 
 less vigilance as the annals of the Hebrew 
 people. Says Josephus, a Jew of great learn- 
 ing and influence, born seven years after 
 the crucifixion : " How firmly we have given 
 credit to these books of our nation (the Old 
 Testament) is evident by what we do; for 
 during so many ages as have already elaps- 
 ed, no one has been so bold as either to add 
 anything to them or take away anything 
 from them. But it has become natural to 
 all Jews immediately and from their birth, to 
 esteem these books to contain divine doc- 
 trines, and to persist in them, and if occasion 
 comes, be willing to die for them, for it is 
 no new thing for our captives, many of 
 them in numbers, and frequently in time, to 
 be seen to endure racks and death of all 
 kinds upon the theatres, that they may not 
 be obliged to say one word against our laws, 
 or the records that contain them. Whereas 
 
30 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 there are none in all among the Greeks who 
 would endure the least harm on that account, 
 no, not in the case if all their writings, 
 which are among them, were to be de- 
 stroyed." 
 
 The knowledge of the Old Testament 
 events was not limited to the Hebrew peo- 
 ple. It was gathered up, committed to 
 writing to a greater or less extent, and in 
 part constituted the contents of books and 
 libraries. The histories, or clear allusions 
 to them, are found engraven on monuments 
 and tombstones and buried rocks, where 
 they have been sleeping in silence and for- 
 getfulness for thousands of years. These 
 are being exhumed by the spade of the 
 archeologist, and are to a degree dupli- 
 cating the Old Testament, and to a won- 
 derful extent are corroborating the sacred 
 records. That fourteenth chapter of Gen- 
 esis, long the arsenal of the skeptic and 
 critic, now gives the most unimpeachable 
 testimony to the accuracy of the Old Testa- 
 ment historians. The Tell Amarna tablets, 
 and almost every added discovery, is but a 
 
DIFFICULTIES OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. 31 
 
 new witness to the veracity of the Old Test- 
 ament. And "there's more to follow." 
 
 I am sure we shall soon hear from the 
 skeptic the cry of the dying emperor, "O 
 Galilean, thou hast conquered !" The 
 spade is becoming conqueror, mightier than 
 the pen or the sword. 
 
CHAPTER II. 
 
 THE OLD TESTAMENT CORROBORATED 
 
 BY THE NEW. 
 
 He who accepts the divine authority of 
 the New Testament logically accepts that of 
 the Old. 
 
 The two are inseparable, so interlinked 
 and interwoven together, as to make them 
 a unit. The avowal of belief in one, and 
 disbelief in the other, is an absurdity, a 
 self contradiction. The strongest support 
 of the divine authority, and the historical ac- 
 curacy of the Old Testament is found in the 
 hundred times repeated indorsement of the 
 New. "If ye had believed Moses," says the 
 Master, "ye would have believed me"; 
 and he might have added, If ye had be- 
 lieved me, ye would have believed Moses, 
 "for he wrote of me." 
 
 At the time of Christ, the books of the 
 Old Testament — all now recognized by 
 Protestants as inspired, and no others were 
 
THE OLD TESTAMENT CORROBORATED. 33 
 
 bound in a single volume under the names 
 "the Word," "the Law," "Scriptures," "The 
 Law and the Prophets" — were in common use 
 among the Jewish people, were read in their 
 synagogues on the Sabbath, and venerated as 
 no other book was ever venerated, as of di- 
 vine authority, and as such it was as clearly 
 indorsed by the Great Teacher of Galilee as 
 it is possible to indorse a book. "Think 
 not," he says "I came to destroy the Law 
 and the Prophets. I came not to destroy, 
 but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, till 
 heaven and earth pass away, one jot or tittle 
 shall in no wise pass from the law, till all 
 things be accomplished ; whosoever there- 
 fore shall break one of these least command- 
 ments, and teach men so, shall be called 
 least in the Kingdom of heaven. But who- 
 soever shall do and teach them shall be 
 called great in the Kingdom of heaven." 
 
 No candid man will say here is not a clear 
 and emphatic endorsement of the divine 
 character of the Old Testament. Christ 
 stakes the destiny of men upon breaking or 
 keeping its precepts. 
 
34 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 He teaches this truth in a manner tran- 
 scendently solemn in the parable of the rich 
 man and the beggar. He represents the 
 former as in the regions of despair, and 
 after having abandoned all hope for him- 
 self, lifting to heaven the cry " Father Abra- 
 ham, send Lazarus to my father's house, for 
 I have five brethren, that he may testify 
 unto them, lest they also come into this 
 place of torment." But the answer comes 
 back, "They have Moses and the Prophets, 
 let them hear them." 
 
 But the lost man continues to plead, " Nay 
 father Abraham, but if one go to them from 
 the dead, they will repent." The crushing 
 answer comes back, "If they hear not 
 Moses and the Prophets, neither will they 
 be persuaded if one rise from the dead," 
 and the poor man is silent. The mean- 
 ing of this is, the Old Testament is the 
 most effective instrumentality God has 
 provided for the salvation of man. If this 
 fails the bell may toll ; nothing else will 
 avail, not even one coming back from the 
 dead. 
 
THE OLD TESTAMENT CORROBORATED. 35 
 
 To the same effect is the Master's asser- 
 tion, John 5 139: "Ye search the Scriptures 
 because ye think that in them ye have eter- 
 nal life, and these are they which bear wit- 
 ness of me, and ye will not come to me that 
 ye may have life." This is the language of 
 sadness and astonishment, — meaning, ye 
 search the Old Testament and know what 
 it contains, and yet refuse to come to me 
 for life. 
 
 Similar testimony could be adduced to 
 almost any extent. The New Testament is 
 the complement of the Old. Each is incom- 
 plete without the other. The New Testa- 
 ment explains the Old, enforces its pre- 
 cepts, confirms its histories, and vouches 
 over and over again for its divine authority. 
 It refers with more or less detail to many of 
 its miracles, and its great histories, such as 
 the creation of man and woman, the 
 apostacy, the deluge, the exodus of Israel 
 from Egypt, the crossing of the Red Sea, 
 the wonders of the desert, the ass speaking 
 with man's voice, the sublime events of Mt. 
 Carmel, and numerous others, yet casts no 
 
36 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 shadow of doubt upon the validity of a sin- 
 gle statement. 
 
 Even Prof. Smith is compelled to acknowl- 
 edge that " Christ accepted the sacred 
 books, and in addressing an audience which 
 believed in them, cited them and appealed 
 to their authority. He cited the book of 
 Jonah, and in terms which seem to show he 
 regarded it as real history. Few, even the 
 most orthodox, would now profess to believe 
 that Jonah sojourned in the belly of a fish. 
 St. Paul in like manner treats the narrative 
 of the fall of Adam as historical, and con- 
 nects a doctrine with it, though the mythical 
 character of the narrative is admitted by a 
 dignitary of the church. And the evangel- 
 ists find in the sacred books of their nation 
 prognostications of the character and mis- 
 sion of Jesus." And we are amazed he 
 should add, "no specific prediction of the ad- 
 vent of Jesus, or any event of his life, can be 
 produced from the books of the Old Testa- 
 ment." 
 
 So interlinked are the Old and New Test- 
 ament, the former is regarded by the Chris- 
 
THE OLD TESTAMENT CORROBORATED. 37 
 
 tian world as Messianic. It seems to have 
 been the great object of the former to ac- 
 quaint the world with Christ and the nature 
 of his mission ; to prepare the world for his 
 advent and furnish proof of his Messiahship. 
 So the Master himself teaches. " All things," 
 he says, "must be fulfilled which are written 
 in the law and ,in the prophets concerning 
 me." "Search the Scriptures, for these are 
 they which bear witness of me." " If ye had 
 believed Moses ye would believe me, for he 
 wrote of me." "Beginning," says the evan- 
 gelist, "with Moses and all the prophets, he 
 interpreted to them in all the Scriptures the 
 things concerning himself." Christ repre- 
 sents himself as being the great theme of 
 the Old Testament Scriptures. 
 
 Can there be clearer testimony to the in- 
 spiration of the Old Testament than Acts 
 4:25: "The Holy Ghost by the mouth of 
 our father y David, didst say, ' Why do the 
 heathen rage, and the people imagine a 
 vain thing.'" Hebrews i :i : "God having 
 spoken unto the fathers in the Prophets in 
 divers portions and in divers manners, hath 
 
38 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 at the end of these days spoken unto us in 
 his Son." " Thus saith the Lord" is a for- 
 mula with the Prophets. We have the ex- 
 pression, "The Lord spake unto Moses," 
 more than an hundred times in the Penta- 
 teuch. "The prophecy came not in old 
 times," says the apostle, "by the will of 
 man, but holy men of God spake as they 
 were moved by the Holy Ghost." How it 
 is possible to accept the divine authority of 
 the New Testament, and reject that of the 
 Old, certainly needs explanation. 
 
 There are difficulties in the Old Testa- 
 ment, and there are difficulties out of the 
 Old Testament. In the natural world there 
 are wonders, unanswered questions, inexpli- 
 cable things. We are environed on every 
 side by mysteries ; the best way out of them 
 is not the denial of the divine existence, for 
 it only deepens the mysteries around us. 
 Nor is the denial of the supernatural the 
 best way out of Old Testament difficulties. 
 It only increases the darkness and compli- 
 cates the riddle. "I would give all I possess 
 in the world, and all this world beside, were 
 
THE OLD TESTAMENT CORROBORATED. 39 
 
 it mine," said an aged atheist, " could I be- 
 lieve there is a God, for the rest it would 
 bring." 
 
 That awful thinking intelligence within, 
 whose thoughts "wander through eternity," 
 needed rest. He felt himself on a dark and 
 shoreless ses. lost — darkness above, dark- 
 ness beneath, darkness and mystery every- 
 where. There is but one resting place in 
 this universe, that is in God ; here, and no- 
 where else is rest unto the intellect and unto 
 the soul. Eliminating supernaturalism from 
 the Old Testament is eliminating it from 
 the New, and virtually leaves a man "with- 
 out God in the world." 
 
 A somewhat popular theory, "The Old 
 Testament contains the word of God, rather 
 than is the word of God," removes no diffi- 
 culty. The objection fatal to this theory is, 
 we have no canon determining what por- 
 tions are the word of God and what por- 
 tions are not the word of God, and conse- 
 quently it is not possible with any degree of 
 certainty to predict divine authority of any 
 particular chapter or verse, and practically 
 
40 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 the theory voids the whole Bible of the 
 divine element. The word of God may be 
 in the Old Testament, but if we have no 
 means of knowing where, it is of no practi- 
 cal value. This theory is applicable to the 
 New Testament as well as the Old, and vir- 
 tually robs us of the revelation God has 
 given. 
 
 Prof. Briggs, who adopted this theory, 
 draws the line between the secular and relig- 
 ious lessons of the Bible. But such a line, 
 were it possible to draw it, affords us no re- 
 lief, since it is the religious lessons to which 
 its difficulties mainly, if not wholly pertain. 
 
 It seems to me we should hesitate long 
 before adopting this mode of removing the 
 difficulties of the Old Testament, as it allows 
 anyone to deny the divine authority of any 
 promise, or precept, or declaration he may 
 choose, and instead of removing the diffi- 
 culties of the Old Testament, it removes the 
 Old Testament and also the New. 
 
CHAPTER III. 
 
 OLD TESTAMENT INSPIRATION. 
 
 Inspiration, either of the Old Testament 
 or of the New Testament, involves two ele- 
 ments, (i) the inbreathing by the Holy 
 Spirit thoughts into the minds of chosen 
 men, by means of visions, dreams, words, or 
 by any other means. (2) Such superin- 
 tendence and aid of the Holy Spirit as was 
 requisite to secure a fair and adequate em- 
 bodiment of these truths in writing. 
 
 In reference to the first element, there 
 can, it would seem, be no doubt as to the in- 
 errance of the thought communicated. It is 
 hardly thinkable the Holy Spirit would 
 communicate untruth or error; we may, I 
 think, lay it down as axiomatic that an in- 
 spired thought is an inerrant thought. 
 
 In reference to the second element, the 
 
 question has long been before the Christian 
 
 world, as to the extent of aid the inspired 
 41 
 
42 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 received from the Inspirer. Just here prob- 
 ably lies the difference, if there be any, be- 
 tween Old and New Testament inspiration. 
 A correct theory of inspiration is of prime 
 importance in this discussion, especially in 
 dealing with the alleged difficulties of both 
 the Old and the New Testaments. Defect- 
 ive theories are the source of a large share 
 of them. The Bible has suffered much from 
 this source, especially from what is termed 
 plenary inspiration in its various phases. It 
 has proved, I think, "one of the Bible's mill- 
 stones." The idea that the Bible is, or was 
 as it came from the hands of its original 
 writers, absolutely inerrant or that the 
 sacred penmen were little other than 
 amanuenses copying the language dictated 
 by the Holy Spirit, assuming any error is in- 
 combatable with inspiration, puts a very 
 effective weapon into the hands of the skep- 
 tic, (i) This theory cannot be proved. (2) 
 It would add nothing to the authority or 
 value of inspiration if it could. (3) It is 
 assuming an unnecessary burden, one we 
 are unable to carry, and laying ourselves 
 
OLD TESTAMENT INSPIRATION. 43 
 
 open to criticism and defeat. (4) The 
 theory is both unscriptural and untrue. The 
 writer of the Hebrews sets it aside by a sin- 
 gle word, 1:1: "God having of old time 
 spoken unto the fathers in the Psalms and 
 in the Prophets in divers portions and in 
 divers manners, hath in those last days 
 spoken unto us in his Son." It will occur to 
 the reader of the Old Testament that God 
 largely employed, not words alone, but vis- 
 ions and dreams as modes of communicating 
 truth. 
 
 The theory of inspiration most satisfac- 
 tory to my mind, is the one suggested by 
 the author of Rational Theology. * The 
 author distinguishes broadly between a 
 truth or thought and the language in which 
 it is clothed, a distinction which we think 
 everyone recognizes. Everyone admits he 
 has ideas he is unable to embody in lan- 
 guage. The theory holds that the former, 
 the thought, contained in the Holy Scrip- 
 tures is divine and inerrantly inspired. The 
 latter, the language, is so far inspired as to 
 make it a fair exponent of the divine thought, 
 
 * Pp. 286, 287, vol. II. 
 
44 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 leaving the writer to his own discretion in 
 the choice of language. Thus introducing 
 two elements into the holy Scriptures, a 
 hnman and a divine, one inerrant, the other 
 subject to the infirmities and imperfections 
 of all that is human. 
 
 In the words of another, he defines inspi- 
 ration as "that guidance from above, where- 
 by the sacred penmen were preserved from 
 all errors which would interfere with the 
 ends the Holy Spirit had in view, in giving 
 a revelation to man." In a word, the Holy 
 Spirit saw fit to correct only such errors as 
 would impair the meaning or value of the 
 truth he sought to communicate, and to pro- 
 tect it only from such defects as would per- 
 vert or obscure its meaning. As the result of 
 this human element, the author believes the 
 Bible more valuable, inasmuch as it is better 
 adapted to human weakness, just as was the 
 Son of man in "being made like unto his 
 brethren." 
 
 This theory of inspiration, as will be seen, 
 tides us over the bad grammar, the defec- 
 tive logic, the feeble metaphor, and indeed 
 
OLD TESTAMENT INSPIRATION. 45 
 
 the major part of the difficulties of which 
 the critics complain. These are not the 
 defects of inspiration, but of the ignorance 
 and carelessness of the sacred writers. 
 
 When on meeting an inaccuracy in the 
 Bible, or a discrepancy between its writers, 
 the question is not, Is it an error ? but is it 
 an error which affects the lesson the Holy 
 Spirit intended to impart ? If it does not, 
 inspiration is in no sense responsible for it. 
 It lies outside the sphere of inspiration. 
 The Holy Spirit did not purpose to correct 
 all the errors of the sacred writers. Its 
 work was accomplished in securing an ade- 
 o^ate expression of the thought He pur- 
 posed to convey. The discrepancy between 
 the evangelists Matthew and John, as to the 
 color of the robe worn by Christ at his trial, 
 or between Matthew and Luke as to how 
 many blind men were restored to sight near 
 Jericho, or as to the exact spot where the 
 miracle occurred, were no more defects of 
 inspiration than would have been inaccura- 
 cies in orthography. This simple theory of 
 
46 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 inspiration removes the larger share of the 
 Old Testament difficulties. 
 
 In what consists the difference between 
 the inspiration of the Old and the New 
 Testaments ? Did it consist in the larger 
 amount of divine aid imparted to the New 
 Testament writers ? or in their superior cul- 
 ture, or superior ability to express inspired 
 truth in a clear and more incisive language ? 
 I see no evidence of this. The writers of 
 the Old Testament were not inferior men. 
 It is questionable whether history mentions 
 a greater name than Moses. Samuel was a 
 remarkable man, a man of overshadowing 
 influence. During his active life he held 
 the reins of authority over a great people, 
 The reigning monarch was a child in his 
 presence. He was above the throne. The 
 names of Isaiah and David will be honored 
 and wept over while human hearts pulsate. 
 And the writer of the book of Job ranks 
 among the greatest poets of the world. The 
 writers of the New Testament were better 
 instructed in the things of God. They had 
 basked in the rays of the Sun of righteous- 
 
OLD TESTAMENT INSPIRATION. 47 
 
 ness, as the writers of the Old had not. Of 
 the two, if we may compare infinities, the 
 New is the richer and the more valuable, as 
 it contains the earthly history and teaching 
 of the Son of man. But both are products 
 of the same author. They speak in the 
 same language and by the same authority, 
 and breathe the same spirit. I see no dif- 
 ference as to the degree and extent of their 
 inspiration. 
 
 But it is objected that considerable por- 
 tions of the Old Testament could not have 
 been inspired, because quoted from other 
 writers. That there are quotations in the 
 Old Testament, as in the other books, no 
 one doubts. The earlier records of Genesis 
 might have been extracts from monuments 
 antedating the life of Moses more than a 
 thousand years. The beautiful epic of the 
 prophetess Hannah, the song of the He- 
 brews lifted on the banks of the Red Sea, 
 over the graves of Egypt's armies, were 
 quotations ; and probably the whole book of 
 Job was written by some Homer of earlier 
 times. But if incorporated into the sacred 
 
48 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 canon under divine direction, and endorsed 
 by the Great Teacher, the evidence of 
 their divine inspiration is not in the least 
 impaired. 
 
 It is not claimed these quotations were in 
 every respect inerrant. But I think we may 
 with certainty claim they contain no deadly 
 thing, and no word or thought has been in- 
 corporated into the sacred canon which inter- 
 feres with the end the Inspirer had in view 
 in giving a revelation to men. 
 
 It is asked whether inspiration includes 
 events which were perfectly familiar to the 
 sacred writer, and of general notoriety. I 
 answer, it is not credible any event has 
 crept into the sacred volume unauthorized 
 by the sacred Author. 
 
CHAPTER IV. 
 
 ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION. 
 
 The use of language is to convey thought, 
 and the paramount question of the reader 
 should always be, What is the exact thought 
 the writer intended to convey? The pre- 
 sumption always is, it is to be found in the 
 plain, obvious import of his language, and 
 so his language should be interpretated un- 
 less there are adequate reasons for inter- 
 preting it otherwise. By an unvarying 
 canon of interpretation the burden of proof 
 lies on the side of an allegorical or figura- 
 tive meaning. 
 
 In the New Testament we read, "Jesus 
 was born in Bethlehem of Judea in the days 
 of Herod," and "he was baptized of John in 
 Jordan," and no one ever put a construction 
 upon the words other than their plain literal 
 import. In the Old Testament we read the 
 equally plain assertion, "In the beginning 
 
 49 
 
50 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 God created the heavens and the earth;" 
 and, "He formed man out of the dust of the 
 ground and breathed into his nostrils the 
 breath of life, and he became a living soul," 
 and the Christian public is desirous of 
 knowing why the one quotation is accepted 
 in its obvious meaning, and an interpreta- 
 tion is given the other as diverse from its 
 obvious meaning as would be the history of 
 France. Can any reason for this be sug- 
 gested ? The scenes of the creation were 
 probably presented to the eyes of the seer 
 like a panorama, and we have the right to 
 assume he committed to writing as accurate 
 a description as his limited language would 
 allow; and we find the character and order 
 of events certainly not inconsistent with the 
 best and latest results of scientific research. 
 If there are good reasons for making one of 
 the quotations literal and the other alle- 
 gorical, it certainly is not obvious. 
 
 This world exists and somehow came 
 into being, and so did man and beast. Can 
 anyone suggest a genesis more natural, 
 credible, or one less offensive to our fastid- 
 
ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION. 5 I 
 
 ious critics, than the one given by Moses ? 
 Our critics are ready with an answer. They 
 assure us that the law of evolution presents 
 a theory of creation more simple, natural, 
 probable, and vastly less objectionable, the 
 scientific theory, the one all scientific men 
 are accepting. 
 
 Says Dr. Lyman Abbott, "All scientific 
 men to-day are evolutionists, that is, they 
 agree substantially that all life proceeds 
 by regular and orderly sequence, from the 
 simple to the complex, from lower to higher 
 forms, in accordance with laws, which either 
 are now or may be understood." "Evolu- 
 tion," says Le Compt, " is progression, ac- 
 dording to certain laws, and by means of 
 resident forces." The only phase of this 
 theory pertaining to our subject, is its rela- 
 tion to the genesis of man, It holds that 
 man sprang ages ago from protoplasm, or 
 the earliest germ of animal life, and by 
 some resident force, either inherent potency 
 of matter or divine energy, has been de- 
 veloped through all the grades of animal 
 
52 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 existence to his present altitude in accord- 
 ance with fixed laws. 
 
 "Man," says Dr. Abbott, "is an animal, 
 about this there can be no doubt ; a verte- 
 brate animal, belonging to the class mam- 
 mel, and by most scientists classed in the 
 family of apes, and has ascended from a 
 lower animal. There is absolutely no ques- 
 tion that every individual of the race has 
 passed through animal stages in reaching 
 manhood. I embrace the conclusions of the 
 embriologists, we are animals, we ascended 
 from lower animals." President Jordan, of 
 the Leland Stanford University, is even 
 more explicit. " Homologies," he says, 
 "more perfect than those connecting man 
 with the great group of monkeys could not 
 exist. These embrace the hosts of apes 
 and monkeys ; as to this there can be no 
 doubt, and as similar relations with all 
 members of the group mammels, blood re- 
 lations must exist. It is perfectly true that 
 with the higher anthropoid apes, the rela- 
 tions are extremely intimate." * 
 
 * The Arena, August, 1897. 
 
OLD TESTAMENT INSPIRATION. 53 
 
 Is this the allegorical interpretation and 
 real thought the sacred writer intended to 
 convey in Gen. i -.26-27 : " And God said let 
 us make man in our image after our like- 
 ness." " And God created man in his own 
 image, in the image of God, created he him. 
 Male and female created he them." Gen. 
 2:6.: "And the Lord formed man out of 
 the dust of the ground, and breathed into 
 his nostrils the breath of life, and man be- 
 came a living soul." Is there anything in 
 the evolution theory that suggests the 
 Mosaic genesis of woman or is even consist- 
 ent with it ? No, the Mosaic language is 
 just as legitimately allegorized into the his- 
 tory of the war of the Revolution as into 
 the evolution theory. Still Dr. Abbott has 
 attempted it. "In a sense," he says, "it is 
 true scientifically, that God has made man 
 out of the dust of the earth — that is, out of 
 lower forms, reaching back through various 
 formations to the inorganic, dating man's 
 genesis back of vegetable life to the inor- 
 ganic." Prof. Guyot's "Scheme of Recon- 
 ciliation" is much preferable, for the reason 
 
54 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 no one ever understood it, and no one has 
 the right to call it absurd. There are very 
 many, and as it seems to us, insuperable ob- 
 jections to the theory of evolution, espe- 
 cially as it relates to the genesis of man. 
 
 (i) It is utterly unrelated to, and appar- 
 ently incongruous with, the theory recorded 
 in the sacred Scriptures and clearly in- 
 dorsed by the Great Teacher. 
 
 (2 ) It seems to contain no practical lesson, 
 no valuable or important thought, even if 
 true. It affords no relief to the skeptic. It 
 does not remove the supernatural from the 
 Bible, the existence of a personal God from 
 the universe, or the awful sense of obliga- 
 tion from the human soul. It required the 
 same infinite intelligence and recourses to 
 breathe that mysterious thing we call life 
 into protoplasm six hundred thousand years 
 ago, it did to breathe it six thousand years 
 ago into a perfected human form. There is 
 necessarily no atheism in it to commend it to 
 the atheist. 
 
 (3) The unanswerable objection to its 
 theory of the genesis of man, is of a nega- 
 
OLD TESTAMENT INSPIRATION. 55 
 
 tive character. There is not the slightest 
 evidence, so far as I am able to discover, of 
 its truth. It is hardly thinkable, if this pro- 
 gression of life upward by established law, 
 has been going forward through uncounted 
 centuries, and not the slightest evidence of 
 it, on the surface of the ground, or in the 
 rock beneath us, though searched for as for 
 hidden treasure, has ever been found. 
 Though if this theory be true, nine-tenths 
 if not ninety-nine one-hundredths of animal 
 life must have been spent in this transitional 
 state, between lower and higher species of 
 animals, yet nothing of the kind, dead or 
 living has ever been seen. This fact simply 
 cancels the evolution theory, so far as it 
 pertains to the genesis of man. 
 
 Can there be a clearer antithesis than 
 that between this theory and the declaration 
 Gen. 1 :25 "And God made the beasts of 
 the field after his kind, and the cattle after 
 their kind, and everything that creepeth on 
 the ground after its kind," making each 
 species of animal sui generis, so far as is 
 known, and so to all appearance it has 
 
$6 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 remained. It is well said that no one species 
 of animal has ever been transmuted into an- 
 other. The dog has made no approach to 
 man, since he was in the garden of Eden ; 
 and there is no shadow of evidence he has 
 undergone any change since the hour he 
 first took his place on the theatre of this 
 world. Nor so far as appears, has there 
 been any essential change in man. He was 
 just as noble and perfect the hour God 
 "breathed into his nostrils the breath of 
 life, and he became a living soul," as now; 
 and, 
 
 "When mid the wonder and surprise 
 Of circling angels, woman's eyes 
 First opened upon heaven and earth, 
 And from their lids a beam was sent 
 That through each living spirit went 
 Like first thought, through the firmanent," 
 
 she was just as loving, and beautiful and 
 loved as now. 
 
 (4) If this resident force, of which we 
 hear so much, is the eternal energy from 
 which all things proceed, and as Dn Abbott 
 assures us, is "a constant force, never in- 
 
OLD TESTAMENT INSPIRATION* 57 
 
 creased or diminished, and never admits of 
 intervention," the unequal progress upward 
 of animal life needs explanation. How is it 
 that of a family of tadpoles, for example, all 
 equal a thousand centuries ago, but to-day 
 one branch has evolved into human beings, 
 while another remains unchanged. One, 
 to-day has his seat in the United States 
 Senate, another keeps his place in the vil- 
 lage mill-pond. How is it that the lower 
 animals, which, as science shows, have been 
 on this globe ages longer than man, have 
 been so strangely outstripped. All the 
 lower animals would, were this science true, 
 have been developed into men centuries 
 ago, and men would have been the only liv- 
 ing beings on our planet. There certainly 
 are some things about evolution hard to be 
 understood. 
 
 (5) It is unfortunate that the advocates 
 of evolution are not sufficiently agreed 
 among themselves to formulate a clear, in- 
 telligible definition of their science. It 
 would be greatly to their advantage to know 
 definitely what they are talking about. 
 
58 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 Charles R. Darwin, the reputed father of 
 the science, never accepted the doctrine of 
 resident force, which constitutes the essen- 
 tial element of the system. He believed 
 in the progression of animals upward, but 
 attributed it to the " struggle for life" and 
 the " survival of the fittest." 
 
 Very few certainly agree with Dr. Abbott 
 that man was once a vegetable, or deny 
 there are second catises, which involves a 
 denial of human free agency, of accounta- 
 bility, and the possibility of guilt, and cer- 
 tainly few believe sin is an inheritance be- 
 queathed the human race from the lower 
 animals, which never had any sin. 
 
 Nor do many evolutionists agree with 
 President Jordan, who includes in this 
 "enormous science" not only "all natural 
 history, not only processes like cell divisions 
 and nutrition ; not only the laws of varia- 
 tion, natural selection and mutual help, but 
 all matters of human history and the most 
 complicated relations of civics, economics, 
 and ethics." We are glad to know there is 
 one department of human knowledge the 
 

 OLD TESTAMENT INSPIRATION. 59 
 
 President does not include in the " greatest 
 of all sciences," that is religion. His lan- 
 guage is: "There are many definitions of 
 religion, but evolution does not fit any of 
 them." The definition of Prof. McKenzie, 
 who makes the terms evolution and conti- 
 nuity synonyms, is a good one, as it can be 
 made to mean anything we choose ; but I 
 think most educated men would prefer verba, 
 praeterea nihil. 
 
 Dr. Behrends asserts "the word evolution 
 has never yet been defined. Everyone uses 
 it, yet no one seems able to give it a defini- 
 tion which is clear and final. No magician's 
 wand ever played so many fantastic tricks 
 as can this word ; it can be theistic or athe- 
 istic. It can at one time bow God out of 
 the universe ; at another make him imma- 
 nent and personal in every action." 
 
 Many calling themselves evolutionists I 
 profoundly respect as scholars and Chris- 
 tians, many of whom have given the subject 
 of evolution years of thought, and seem 
 deeply impressed with its vastness and 
 value. I am far from claiming to be au- 
 
60 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 thority on the science, and were I not under 
 the impression that multitudes, probably the 
 vast majority of educated men, think sub- 
 stantially as I do, it would be with hesitancy 
 and self-distrust I should acknowledge, as I 
 now do, that I have no recollection of ever 
 having seen an argument for the evolution 
 theory, so far as it relates to the genesis of 
 man, which carried to my mind the shadow 
 of plausibility. 
 
 The argument which I have met most 
 frequently is the embryonic resemblance, 
 growth, changes, etc., of all animals. Does 
 this prove that all animals, including man, 
 originated in the same stock ? The roots of 
 the apple tree and the oak, in their earlier 
 growth, probably so closely resemble each 
 other as to be indistinguishable ; does that 
 prove their genesis was the same germ ? Is 
 there force enough in this consideration to 
 set aside the divine declaration of making 
 everything " after its kind"? But the ma- 
 turity and fruit of the apple and oak proves 
 the roots of these trees are not alike, though 
 
OLD TESTAMENT INSPIRATION. 6l 
 
 the difference is imperceptible even to the 
 microscope ; and we may be pretty sure em- 
 bryos of different animals are not alike. 
 The argument is a manifest non seguitur. 
 
 In proof of evolution, we are referred to 
 the testimony of primitive rocks. Says a 
 late writer : "The lowest races of men exist- 
 ing at the present time fairly represent men 
 as they must have been tens and hundreds 
 of thousands of years ago, like the aborig- 
 ines of Australia, or the Bushmen of Africa, 
 prowling about, living very much as the ani- 
 mals they hunt, and with which they com- 
 pete for food, sheltering in dens and holes, 
 their social relations not much above those 
 of prairie dogs and horses, with the scanti- 
 est language, with little or no intellectual 
 life, with ideas of right and wrong, truth and 
 error, which can scarcely be identified as 
 such. In short, what these men are now, 
 such, and even lower, were primeval men, 
 such too have they continued to be for thou- 
 sands and hundreds of thousand years." 
 
 This does not strike us as satisfactory 
 
62 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 proof of a universal law of evolution. If 
 primitive man were little, if any, above the 
 brute, and so remained for thousands and 
 hundreds of thousands of years, it is not 
 perfectly evident where the proof comes in, 
 " That all life proceeds by regular and or- 
 derly sequence from lower to higher forms, 
 from the simple to the complex, by means 
 of resident force." That there might have 
 been such men in the early ages, no one 
 doubts, but we learn from archeological ex- 
 plorers, that in the early times, while some 
 tribes were very uncivilized, other tribes 
 were very civilized ; while some lived in 
 caves, others lived in palaces. We have no 
 more authority for calling the age in which 
 some tribes cut their hair and carved their 
 food with sharpened stones, the "Stone 
 age" than we have to call the present age in 
 which the Fiji Islanders eat men, the can- 
 nibal age. 
 
 It is not scholarly to decry the past. 
 There has been, admittedly, a great amount 
 of ignorance and brutality on the planet, 
 
OLD TESTAMENT INSPIRATION. 63 
 
 and there Has been a large amount of in- 
 tellectual and moral greatness. Every age 
 has had its great men, its poets, its prophets 
 and seers, its heroes and statesmen, its 
 Plato, whose birth antedates the Christian 
 era more than four hundred years, whose 
 name to-day is as familiar to scholars as 
 household words, its Homer, born a thous- 
 and years before Christ, its Abraham, whose 
 birth dates back almost to the flood, but 
 whose name is to-day on the lips of an 
 hundred million men and women. These 
 are among the greatest names history re- 
 cords. We can trace back many a century, 
 an almost world-wide tradition of a golden 
 age that was. It is a remarkable fact that 
 probably no tradition has planted itself more 
 deeply in human memory. Dillman de- 
 scribes it as "a belief spread through all 
 antiquity." Ex-Pres. Bartlett in his Ver- 
 acity of the Hexeteuch, calls it "the con- 
 sensus of antiquity!' There is no greater 
 mistake than that the world was first 
 peopled by savages, or that man in his in- 
 
64 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 fancy was a wild beast. The art of writing, 
 books and schools probably antedated the 
 flood. 
 
 Whatever else may be true of the science 
 of evolution, if we may call it a science, its 
 theory of the genesis of man is not true. 
 To my mind it is not conceivable that a nat- 
 ural law called evolution, without some 
 outward and higher intervention, has lifted 
 the lower animals over the immeasurable 
 gulf which lies between brutality, on the one 
 side, and intelligence, accountability and 
 immortality on the other. I would, in the 
 language of the scholarly Agassiz, say: "Of 
 the two, I prefer the theory that the primi- 
 tive man was a fallen angel, to the theory 
 he was an improved monkey." 
 
 A natural law is uniform, unintermittant, 
 and universal in its action. The alleged law 
 of evolution is neither. There is in this uni- 
 verse no universal progression from the sim- 
 ple to the complex, from the lower to the 
 higher. 
 
 The great rhythm of things moves in two 
 
OLD TESTAMENT INSPIRATION. 65 
 
 directions. There is growth, and there is 
 decay ; there is progress and there is retro- 
 gression, and the two pretty nearly balance 
 each other. I believe the world is growing 
 better, but it is the result of herculean 
 effort, not of natural law. Men and nations 
 let alone, like the clock, run down. 
 
 "The earliest literature of a nation," says 
 a recent writer, "is not always its poorest, 
 nor its latest its best. Socrates and Plato 
 and Aristotle are still unrivaled. We are 
 not more skillful builders than the men who 
 reared the Pyramids. We have not sur- 
 passed the old masters in painting, sculp- 
 ture and music. In the realm of science 
 evolution is an unproved theory. In the 
 realm of literature it is demonstrably false!' 
 "Growth, development, evolution," says 
 Dr. Abbott, "are synonyms." If to a pile of 
 sand additions are daily made, and none re- 
 moved, it will grow, but if additions cease to 
 be made, it will cease to grow. Can this 
 growth properly be said to be made by resi- 
 dent forces? If contributions be made from 
 
66 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 water, the atmosphere, and from the soil to 
 a tree, it will grow to maturity; if whole- 
 some food be fed a child it will thrive, but 
 if its natural nutriment be withheld from 
 either, it will die. Resident forces cannot 
 keep either a child or tree alive an hour. 
 Can it properly be said that their growth is 
 evolution, or effected by resident forces ? 
 Can any material thing increase without ad- 
 ditions from without ? God built the solar 
 system, perhaps from preexisting material, 
 as the carpenter builds our residences from 
 preexisting material ; can we attribute the 
 existence of either to evolution or resident 
 forces. Adam knew all this when in the 
 garden of Eden. Has evolution added any- 
 thing new ? I confess I see no need of this 
 new science, called by one of its advocates 
 "the grandest generalization of this or any 
 other age." 
 
 Serious objections other than those of a 
 negative character are charged against the 
 evolution theory. It is believed by many 
 that in at least some of its aspects, to be in- 
 
OLD TESTAMENT INSPIRATION. 67 
 
 imicable to the great doctrines of the Chris- 
 tian religion. But this hardly seems possible 
 of a system that numbers among its adher- 
 ants such men as McCosh and the lamented 
 Drummond, yet all are obliged to confess, it 
 seems to have played havoc with the faith 
 of some who were once pillars in the temple 
 Christ is erecting. 
 
CHAPTER V. 
 
 ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION. 
 
 The alleged histories of the Old Testa- 
 ment, such as the Mosaic cosmogony, the 
 story of the creation of man and woman, of 
 the garden of Eden, and the trees in its 
 midst, the temptation and fall, the flood, the 
 confusion of tongues, etc., the great Teacher 
 accepted, and so did all his inspired follow- 
 ers, as historical ; and so has the church 
 through all these intervening centuries 
 treated them as it has other reliable his- 
 tory, accepting that which is allegorical as 
 allegorical, and that which is not plainly 
 allegorical it has accepted in its simple ob- 
 vious meaning, assuming the truth of God 
 is expressed in language common people 
 can understand. Nor has the church ever 
 been stumbled by its great histories and 
 miracles, knowing well that a divine com- 
 munication must be attested by divine in- 
 terpositions. 
 
 19 
 
ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION. 69 
 
 The presumption is, God, in addressing 
 our race in its early infancy, certainly if just 
 emerging from the weakness and ignorance 
 of the lower animals, would not have em- 
 ployed riddles, or concealed his meaning 
 under types and figures which only the 
 astute and learned can decipher. It would 
 seem at least to us, the simplest statement, 
 such as we address to the child, would be 
 more appropriate. 
 
 The obvious meaning of the sacred record 
 — any other is forced, unnatural, and in the 
 circumstances inadmissible — is that Adam 
 and Eve were a new creation, and that their 
 advent into this world introduced a new 
 order of things. It was the world's great 
 epoch. Its sovereigns had come to their 
 possessions with the scepter in their hands. 
 Henceforth the beasts of the field, the birds 
 of the air, and the fish of the sea had a 
 master. 
 
 In the work of creation, when all else was 
 finished, there seemed a pause, and a voice 
 was heard, "Let us make man in our own 
 irxiage, after our likeness." " And God ere- 
 
70 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS 
 
 ated man in his own image, in the image of 
 God, created he him, male and female cre- 
 ated he them." If this language is inspira- 
 tion, I cannot but believe it sets aside evolu- 
 tion, and teaches that man was an order of 
 creation infinitely distinguished from any- 
 thing previousely made. This is the view 
 which has dominated and will dominate the 
 convictions of the world. 
 
 But we are told many of the narratives of 
 the Old Testament are so improbable it be- 
 comes necessary in an age like this to resort 
 to allegory, if we expect anyone to believe 
 them. The motive in saying this may be all 
 right, but we doubt the assertion. We en- 
 tertain the impression that these narratives 
 render the Old Testament not only attrac- 
 tive, especially to the young, but that they 
 are replete with valuable instruction. 
 
 For example, the genesis of woman in- 
 volves a lesson of immeasurable importance, 
 as the context suggests. It is an object 
 lesson setting forth the unity of the family, 
 the oneness of man and wife, and the ten- 
 der, interesting and endearing relations 
 
ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION. *]\ 
 
 they sustain to each other. "A man shall 
 leave father and mother and cleave unto his 
 wife," and the relation shall be so close as 
 practically to cancel their individuality 
 and make the two a unit — so united that 
 separate interests and discord would be 
 excluded. God thus kindly impressed upon 
 our race in its infancy, truth, which, had it 
 been practically accepted, what an ocean of 
 tears it would have saved ! Who would 
 cancel the great lesson ? 
 
 For the alleged events of the garden, I 
 see no occasion for resorting to allegory. 
 It is certainly credible God commenced 
 early to educate mural beings into subordi- 
 nation to authority and law. I can con- 
 ceive of no means more simple and feasible 
 than the prohibition to eat of one of the 
 trees of the garden. 
 
 But the tempter was there; of course he 
 was there, and probably just where God could 
 make the best use of him in perfecting his 
 plans of mercy ; not the men reared where 
 there are no temptations, dangers or battles 
 are the kind God needs. The way to insure 
 
72 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 the safety of our ships is not to attempt to 
 banish all storms from the deep, but it is to 
 build them so strong they can outride the 
 wildest tempests that sweeps over the 
 waters. 
 
 In the garden God began rearing men 
 who can be trusted anywhere or in any 
 work. This may be in part the object of 
 this earthly life. God commits the use of 
 one talent to man to make it safe to intrust 
 him with ten talents by and by. 
 
 It is not certain the animal employed by 
 the tempter to deceive the woman was the 
 serpent before it was doomed to crawl on 
 the ground and eat dust. It might have 
 been the parrot or the gazelle. 
 
 This is not the only instance on record in 
 which the tempter has spoken through other 
 lips than his own. The apostle plainly sanc- 
 tions this narrative as historical. "I fear," 
 is his language, "lest by any means as the 
 serpent beguiled Eve through his craftiness, 
 your mind should be corrupted from the 
 simplicity and purity that is toward Christ." 
 Another monument was lifted bearing wit- 
 
ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION. 73 
 
 ness to-day, and will to the end of time to 
 the historic accuracy of this narrative. I 
 refer to the curse denounced against the 
 serpent. " I will put enmity between thee 
 and the woman, and between thy seed 
 and her seed. It shall bruise thy head 
 and thou shalt bruise his heel." This curse 
 struck its roots deep into the human race 
 and lingers there still unrelieved and una- 
 bated. There is no other animal on the 
 earth, or in the sea from which men shudder 
 and shrink, as from the serpent kind. The 
 name almost creates a shudder. 
 
 There were two trees in the garden with 
 names, one called the " Tree of the Knowl- 
 edge of Good and Evil," the other the 
 "Tree of Life." There is no evidence they 
 differed essentially from each other or from 
 other trees in the garden. We may suppose 
 connected with the latter there was a prom- 
 ise, either imaginary or actual, that man 
 should not die so long as he ate of its fruit. 
 After the pair had been expelled from the 
 garden, we are told God placed the " flame 
 of a sword" which turned every way to keep 
 
74 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 the way of the tree of life, lest man should 
 put forth his hand and take of the Tree of 
 Life" "and live forever;" in other words, 
 should claim the promise they believed God 
 had made, of exemption from death so long 
 as they partook of its fruit — a promise which 
 perhaps they knew God would have honored 
 so long as its conditions were fulfilled. 
 
 I am far from saying this is the correct in- 
 terpretation of this somewhat difficult ex- 
 pression "shalt live forever." It should be 
 considered that probably we have given in 
 this narrative the barest outline of the facts, 
 and that the fuller statement might remove 
 or modify the seeming difficulty. It should 
 also be borne in mind, that inspiration is 
 responsible only for the integrity of the 
 thought, and a presentation of it, which 
 would do it no injustice or violence; also 
 that tropes and figures may be woven into 
 literal narrative. 
 
 Do you credit, it is asked, the story of 
 Jonah ? I am compelled to do so, not be- 
 cause refusing involves a denial of the inspi- 
 ration, or the divine authority of the book — 
 
ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION. 75 
 
 this I do not believe — but because the reasons 
 for denying its historical character would 
 apply with equal force to any other narra- 
 tive or book in the sacred canon. (2) Be- 
 cause it has the undisputed air of truthful- 
 ness. It mentions the names of three then 
 existing cities, and tells a wondrous tale 
 about the great city of Ninevah, which 
 would be criminal were it not true. (3) The 
 whole history is self-consistent. It is won- 
 derful that the preaching of a lone 
 stranger should have shaken, from center to 
 circumference, one of the greatest capitols 
 of the world, as though earthquakes were 
 beneath it. All this is explained and made 
 credible by the probable fact that the mar- 
 vellous experience of this stranger in the 
 belly of a great fish, had become a mat- 
 ter of public notoriety, and king and peo- 
 ple believed he was a prophet of God. 
 (4) But the reason above all others for 
 crediting the book, is the plain endorsement 
 by Christ. The man who denies that 
 "Jonah-was three days and three nights in 
 the whale's belly," and "The men of Nine- 
 
?6 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 vah repented at the preaching of Jonah," 
 has a difficult problem to solve. 
 
 While allegorical interpretation of the 
 Mosaic records may not clash with the doc- 
 trine of inspiration, the question is apposite. 
 What is gained by such an interpretation ? 
 The presumption is against it, and so are 
 the teachings of Christ and his apostles. It 
 requires strong reasons to justify it. 
 
 If these alleged events are symbols, what 
 do they symbolize ? What truths are 
 couched beneath Abel's murder, beneath the 
 history of the flood, or the sublime and aw- 
 ful utterances and pageantry of Sinai ? Can 
 any allegory ever conceived of deepen 
 their impressiveness ? Can any theory sur- 
 pass the grandeur and value of the simple 
 events themselves ? No, I answer, or even 
 approach them. From these solemn and 
 grand events to any allegorical interpret- 
 ations is an infinite descent. 
 
 The events of Hebrew history from Abra- 
 ham to the entrance of his posterity into 
 Palestine are so interlinked as to be little 
 
ALLEGORICAL INTERPRETATION. 77 
 
 other than a continuous narrative. If the 
 name Adam stands, as the critics claim, not 
 for an individual but for the human race, 
 Cain and Able are myths, and the sacrifices of 
 one, the sad history of the other, and the 
 city he built are all myths. Making the 
 name of Adam stand for the race, makes 
 havoc of some events of his life. For ex- 
 ample, it makes Genesis 5:3 read thus: 
 " And the human race lived thirty years, and 
 begat a son and called his name Seth, and 
 the days of the human race after he begat 
 Seth were eight hundred years, and he begat 
 sons and daughters, and all the days of the 
 human race were eight hundred and thirty 
 years and he died." 
 
 If Abraham was a myth we must erase the 
 oppression of his descendents in Egypt, and 
 our critics must forego the pleasure of de- 
 nouncing the extermination of the Ca- 
 naanites. It seems to me logically neces- 
 sary to make the account wholly allegori- 
 cal or wholly historical; a part history and a 
 part myth makes patchwork. 
 
?8 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 We repeat the question — what is gained 
 by such interpretation ? Nothing, I answer; 
 on the contrary it involves an amazing loss, 
 a loss in the field of literature the world can 
 poorly afford. It virtually erases the oldest 
 and some of the most valuable history ever 
 committed to writing — history of untold 
 value, because confirmed by the divine en- 
 dorsement. It virtually blots out history 
 which antedates the oldest records of the 
 rocks beneath us, and reaches back to the 
 creation ; histories which give us the name, 
 and, in part, the life of the first man who 
 ever trod this globe ; some of the first words 
 ever spoken, some of the first deeds ever 
 performed, and blots them out irretrievably. 
 And what is gained by it ? Nothing ! It is 
 only dropping the substance, seizing the 
 shadow, and loosing both. Could any rob- 
 bery be more colossal ? 
 
 Still more disastrous is its effect in the 
 realm of religion. An allegorical interpre- 
 tation, unless the obvious meaning of the 
 writer, or demanded by the context, is not 
 
AELEGORICAL INTERPRETATION. 79 
 
 inspiration, it is mere human opinion, sub- 
 stituted for the word of God. It may be 
 truth, but it is not the truth the Holy Spirit 
 intended to convey, and carries no divine 
 authority and is of no more value than 
 other writing. 
 
 We deprecate the liberty taken by many 
 of the critics with the Bible. Its tendency 
 is to destroy all sense of its sacredness, and 
 to undermine all confidence in its divine 
 authority. Teach a child the Bible does 
 not mean what it says, assure him man was 
 not made of the dust of the ground, that 
 God did not breathe into his nostrils the 
 breath of life, but that man was made out of 
 lower animals ; that the story of Joseph and 
 of Jonah, which interested him so much, are 
 stories written to convey some important 
 truth concealed beneath the language, and 
 you destroy his confidence in the Bible. No 
 judicious Christian parent would allow such 
 instruction imparted to his child. This in- 
 terpretation is but a repetition of the old 
 slander, "The Bible is an instrument on 
 
80 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 which any tune can be played," and no slan- 
 der has proved more pernicious in its influ- 
 ence. The Christian world insist the word 
 of God shall be treated with at least the re- 
 spect and deference due ordinary history, 
 and that its awful verities shall not be trifled 
 with. 
 
CHAPTER VI. 
 
 ARE THE TWO TESTAMENTS IDENTICAL 
 
 IN SPIRIT? 
 
 The objection to the Old Testament hav- 
 ing the most weight, and presenting most 
 difficulty is probably its alleged incongruity 
 with the New. While it is admitted its 
 trend, on the whole, makes for righteous- 
 ness, it is claimed large portions of it incul- 
 cate the spirit of revenge, war, bloodshed, 
 hatred to enemies, and cruel disregard for 
 human suffering and life, contrasting with 
 the spirit of Christ and the love which is 
 breathed from every page of the New 
 Testament. 
 
 In discussing this matter our first question 
 may very appropriately be, Are the object- 
 ors sure they clearly understand what is the 
 spirit of Christ, and the true nature of the 
 love he enjoined ? This is the crucial point 
 in this whole discussion, to which the writer 
 invites the special attention of his readers. 
 
 81 
 
82 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 The word love is used in the new Testa- 
 ment in two distinct senses — (i) as an 
 emotion or feeling; (2) as a principle or 
 choice, called, respectively, emotional love 
 and moral love. In the former sense it is 
 used in 2d Cor. 5:14, "The love of God hath 
 been shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy 
 Ghost," in the latter sense in the divine 
 law, u Thou shalt love the Lord thy God 
 with all thy heart"; "Thou shalt love thy 
 thy neighbor as thyself" ; "Love your ene- 
 mies" ; " Love is the fulfilling of the Lr^y" ; 
 and generally in the New Testarr.eat. 
 Though these two kinds of love u?,i;al!y, 
 not universally, accompany each other, and 
 often so blend as to be hardly distinguisha- 
 ble in consciousness, they are widely dis- 
 tinct, and a greater mistake is hardly possi- 
 ble than to confound them. They are phe- 
 nomena of different mental faculties, one of 
 the sensibility, the other of the will. One is 
 utterly devoid the moral element, never a,n 
 object of obligation. There is not a com 
 mand in the Bible which can be either 
 obeyed or violated by emotion of a./.y kind, 
 
ARE THE TWO TESTAMENTS IDENTICAL ? 83 
 
 while the latter, moral love, includes and 
 exhausts all obligation. Nothing in the 
 universe is required of a moral being, other 
 than to love. It is "the whole law and the 
 prophets," " The fulfilling of the law." Love 
 is the synonym of virtue, holiness, righteous- 
 ness, religion pure and undefiled. The hu- 
 man mind never recognizes, nor can it con- 
 ceive of any obligation other than to love. 
 Can it be that emotional love is holiness 
 or any part of it ? A mother in the city in 
 which I reside discovered her little child 
 playing on the railroad track, while the 
 train was coming on with terrible speed. 
 She made a frantic effort to rescue her 
 darling, but failed. It was crushed to death, 
 and they took that poor mother home a 
 maniac. Here was love stronger than 
 death. How gladly that mother would have 
 died to save her child ! So far as that love 
 was emotion, was it that holiness without 
 which no man shall see God ? If so, no 
 man, and not even the lower animal, is des- 
 titute of it. 
 
84 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 Does feeling of any kind constitute holi- 
 ness ? The ancient Jews evidently thought 
 so. "They took delight in approaching 
 unto God as a nation that did righteousness." 
 The voice of their religious teachers was to 
 them as "a very lovely song of one that 
 hath a pleasant voice, and can play well 
 on an instrument." Yet they were aw- 
 fully wicked. So to-day thousands be- 
 lieve, and thousands at the altar of God 
 teach, and thousands are cherishing such 
 emotions as proof of their title to mansions 
 in the skies ; and going up to their great 
 account victims of a terrible deception. 
 Almost any emotion toward God may, for a 
 season at least coexist in hearts in awful 
 antithesis to the authority of God. There 
 is no more sin or holiness in our emotions 
 than in the clothing we put on. Oblivious- 
 ness to this truth is "Christianity's millstone." 
 
 This is perfectly consistent with the truth 
 that real attachment, emotional love for 
 God and for his Son Jesus Christ, is the off- 
 spring and the best evidence of a sanctified 
 heart, and in value above all price. They 
 
ARE THE TWO TESTAMENTS IDENTICAL? 85 
 
 constitute the peace of God passing under- 
 standing here, and the unending awards of 
 the hereafter. But they are rather a gift 
 than a subject of command, an experience 
 rather than an exercise. It is unphilosoph- 
 ical to require them, as an effort to feel is 
 the best w^ay to preclude feeling. 
 
 How preposterous is the idea, that the 
 one supreme imperative of the moral world, 
 including all others, requires feeling; and 
 how doubly preposterous the idea that feel- 
 ing meets and exhausts all obligation ; that 
 all that mother, of whom I have spoken, 
 owed her child, was feeling for it, and this 
 is all the claim a dying world has upon the 
 church, or God has upon his people. Is it 
 emotion the divine law enjoins or is it good 
 will to being ? 
 
 Does the command, "Thou shalt love thy 
 neighbor as thyself," in other words, thou 
 shalt love all men up to the degree thou 
 lovest thyself — or all men equally — mean 
 thou shalt feel the same affection for the 
 brutal depraved man you do for the little 
 toddlings that gather round your table and 
 
86 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 your hearthstone ? Obedience to such a 
 command ( i ) is not possible. (2) We do 
 not owe such men our affection. (3) Con- 
 ferring them would be conferring no favor. 
 (4) God does not love them in this sense. 
 He's " angry with the wicked every day." A 
 command to be born in the moon would be 
 just as feasible and just as rational. 
 
 But this is the love our critics find in the 
 New Testament, and charge the Old with 
 being incongruous with it. We admit the 
 justice of the charge. The sacred writers of 
 the Old Testament never indulged in that 
 kind of maudlin sympathy that assumes God 
 is too good to punish sin and maintain or- 
 der in his domain. 
 
 We come to the supreme question, What 
 is love?. Christ defines this word so fre- 
 quently and so distinctly it would seem im- 
 possible to mistake its meaning. "This," he 
 says, " is the love of God, that ye keep his 
 commandments." Again he says, "This is 
 the love of God, that }^e walk after his com- 
 mandments," "He that hath my command- 
 ments and keepeth them, he it is that loveth 
 
ARE THE TWO TESTAMENTS IDENTICAL ? 8) 
 
 me! 1 He gives us the meaning with unmis- 
 takable distinctness in the parable of the 
 man who on his way from Jerusalem to 
 Jericho fell among thieves. In this picture 
 we have love personified in the good Samar- 
 itan, and selfishness, its opposite, personified 
 in the priest and the Levite, and feeling has 
 nothing to do with either. 
 
 But more distinctly still, if possible, we 
 have love presented in Luke 6:27: " Love 
 your enemies. Do good to them that perse- 
 cute you ; bless them that curse you, and 
 pray for them that despitefully use you." 
 Again, Luke 6 135 : " Love your enemies and 
 do them good, lend never despairing, and 
 your reward shall be great, and ye shall be 
 the sons of the Highest, for he is kind to 
 the unthankful and the evil." This is love 
 in the New Testament sense. It crops out 
 in perhaps an hundred places in the Word 
 of God. The New Testament is ablaze 
 with it. It is the spirit of Christ and of 
 heaven, and of those " spirits of bliss who 
 bow their bright wings to a world such as 
 
88 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 this." It is the spirit of self-sacrifice for the 
 welfare of others. 
 
 Love is a choice, I have said ; of what is it 
 the choice ? But one answer is possible, but 
 one thing in this universe is worth choosing. 
 That is good. This includes all value. The 
 great Edwards defines love as "The choice 
 of good to being in general." Love and 
 benevolence are synonyms, the former the 
 Bible, the latter the scientific name for 
 the same thing. It is consecration to the 
 work, the only work in which God en- 
 gages, that of filling every heart that pul- 
 sates with joy, and every mouth with song. 
 There are two ways of accomplishing this 
 great result. In other words, love has two 
 modes of expression, (i) promoting good, 
 (2) repressing evil. We have an illustration 
 of one in the prayer, " Father forgive them 
 for they know not what they do," of the 
 other in the denunciation, "Ye serpents, ye 
 generation of vipers, how can ye escape the 
 damnation of hell. Fill ye up therefore the 
 measure of your fathers." Both of these 
 are expressions of love — the one as fully 
 
 
ARE THE TWO TESTAMENTS IDENTICAL ? 89 
 
 and as truly as the other. They are both 
 the legitimate outgushing of a supreme de- 
 votion to the welfare of being. 
 
 We find another illustration in the verdict 
 of the great day. To the one class it is, 
 "Come ye blessed of my father, inherit the 
 kingdom prepared for you from the founda- 
 tion of the world." To the other, " Depart 
 from me, ye cursed, into eternal fire pre- 
 pared for the devil and his angels." Every 
 thoughtful mind must recognize these two 
 verdicts as expressions of the same spirit, 
 made in the interests of the highest good — 
 equally the outbreathings of love ; perhaps 
 of the two, the latter is the greater — at least 
 it costs the greater sacrifice of feeling. In 
 a thousand instances the voice of the Judge 
 has grown husky and tremulous, and the 
 tear has started as he pronounced the sen- 
 tence of death upon a fellow-man, but never 
 when he pronounced the verdict of ac- 
 quittal. 
 
 Are we quite sure the doom of the Canaan- 
 ites was not the outcome of love, and the 
 demand of the highest good ? and shall we 
 
90 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 denounce it as unwise and cruel, and reject 
 the Old Testament for ascribing it to divine 
 agency? Are the critics aware that calling 
 their extermination unwise is an assertion 
 that it was not demanded by the highest 
 good ? and that it is arrogating to them- 
 selves more knowledge and wisdom than 
 the world will give them credit for ? How 
 do they know what are the demands and 
 exigencies of a kingdom which reaches out 
 over immensity and eternity ? 
 
 The presumption is God was the author 
 of the overthrow, and will frail man, the 
 child of yesterday, sit in judgment upon 
 Him who is from everlasting to everlasting ? 
 The insect perched upon the dome of St. 
 Peters, criticizing that vast structure, is a 
 philosopher compared with that man. 
 
 We can safely challenge any man to put 
 his finger upon any act, or upon the ap- 
 proval of any act ascribed by any sacred 
 writer, to God, which can be shown to be 
 detrimental to the highest welfare of being. 
 This is the only standard by which the 
 divine ways can be judged. On the pre- 
 
ARE THE TWO TESTAMENTS IDENTICAL ? 9I 
 
 sumption the Bible is the word of God, he 
 who objects to the morality or wisdom of 
 anything ascribed to him, assumes himself 
 to be wiser than the Ruler of all worlds. 
 
 Perhaps the objection urged against the 
 Bible having most influence, is the alleged 
 spirit of revenge which breathes through 
 much of the book, notably through what are 
 termed the imprecatory Psalms, the spirit, 
 which of all others, is the most perfect an- 
 tithesis to that of Christ and the New Test- 
 ament. Can there be, it is asked, any wider 
 contrast than that between the prayer, 
 ''Father forgive them, for they know not 
 what they do," offered in the agony of 
 crucifixion, and that of the 69th Psalm, "Let 
 their table become to them a snare. Let 
 their eyes be darkened that they see not. 
 Pour out thine indignation upon them, and 
 let thy fiercest anger overtake them, for 
 they persecute him that thou hast smitten." 
 Or the imprecation of the Hebrew captive, 
 "O, Daughter of Babylon, that art to be 
 destroyed ; happy shall he be that rewardeth 
 thee, as thou hast served us, happy shall he 
 
92 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 be that taketh and dasheth thy little ones 
 against the stones." 
 
 But is it not conceivable that these 
 prayers, so diverse apparently, still are out- 
 gushings of precisely the same spirit ? an 
 insatiable, overmastering longing for the 
 overthrow of violence, cruelty and wrong, 
 and the establishment of " Peace on earth, 
 and good will among men?" We know 
 but little about the provocations which ex- 
 torted the language of such Psalms. They 
 came from hearts weary, and sick, and 
 broken, under daily oppression and wrong 
 unendurable. The latter, probably both, 
 were written during the captivity, when men 
 and women and little ones were ground to 
 the earth, and fed on bread 
 
 "Such as captive's tears 
 Have watered many a thousand years." 
 
 What can so wring a mother's heart, as to 
 tear her little one from her arms and dash 
 it against the stones ? No language can 
 exaggerate such cruelty. Is the prayer 
 wrong, that God will rid the world of such 
 monsters ? Who did not pray, who pray at 
 
ARE THE TWO TESTAMENTS IDENTICAL. 93 
 
 all, that H. H. Holmes, that incarnation of 
 murder, might be brought to condign pun- 
 ishment ; and that all such creatures as the 
 Sultan of Turkey and the Captain General 
 of Cuba, should be made an example which 
 shall make the ears of men tingle. 
 
 The truth is, the more benevolent a man, 
 the more of the spirit of Christ he possesses, 
 the more intensely he hates wrong, and the 
 more earnestly will he pray for its over- 
 throw, and for the reign of righteousness 
 and peace. It is possible to interpret such 
 Psalms as expressions of hate and ill will, 
 but not necessary, nor logical. The best 
 canons of interpretation require that a 
 book, if it can be done without violence to 
 its language, shall be construed into har- 
 mony with itself. Is this worst interpreta- 
 tion in harmony with the book " ordained 
 to preach good tidings to the meek, to bind 
 up the broken hearted, to proclaim liberty 
 to the captives, and the opening of the 
 prison to them that are in bonds, and to 
 comfort all that mourn?" Where else can 
 be found such sublime conception of God ? 
 
94 THE OLD TESTAMENT AND THE CRITICS. 
 
 such incentives to purity and truthfulness ? 
 Where else are falsehood, hypocracy and 
 cruelty more emphatically denounced and 
 discouraged ? and by what other law so 
 severely punished ? And where else is such 
 protection thrown around the stranger and 
 the poor, or such longing breathed for 
 human welfare ? It would be gross injustice 
 to translate those imprecatory Psalms into 
 expressions of revenge and hate. 
 
 It is the /act of the divine authority of the 
 Old testament which differentiates it from 
 all other books except the New, and gives 
 it a value surpassing human thought. The 
 Apostle refers to the Old Testament, when 
 he speaks of the exceeding great and pre- 
 cious promises ; for example, the promise in 
 Isaiah 42-: 16, "I will bring the blind by a 
 way they know not, and in paths that they 
 know not will I lead them ; I will make 
 darkness light before them, and crooked 
 places straight, and I will not forsake them." 
 What is it worth ? If human, nothing ! If 
 divine, solar systems are poor in com- 
 parison. Isaiah 53:6, "The Lord hath laid 
 
ARE THE TWO TESTAMENTS IDENTICAL f 95 
 
 on him the iniquity of us all." What is that 
 declaration worth ? Ask the millions in 
 whose hearts it is a song ever singing, the 
 millions who have reposed upon it with 
 triumph and gratitude unspeakable, in the 
 hour when things seen and tempered were 
 fading out, and the unseen and eternal were 
 rising on their view, to whom it will prove 
 the theme of songs as unending as immor- 
 tality and eternal life. Is there a living man 
 who would eliminate the divine from the 
 Old Testament, and cancel promises un- 
 measured by the wealth of all worlds ? 
 
 I think that wonderful seer on the Isle of 
 Patmos refers to the Old Testament in say- 
 ing, 'T testify unto every one that heareth 
 the words of the prophecy of this book, if 
 any man shall add unto them, God shall add 
 unto him the plagues which are written in 
 this book, and if any man shall take away 
 from the words of the book of this prophecy, 
 God shall take away his part from the tree 
 of life, and out of the Holy City which are 
 written in this book."