•^f 
 
 ■f 
 
 M 
 
 
 %. 
 
 "W^'M-
 
 THE BIBLE: 
 
 ITS FORM AND ITS SUBSTANCE. 
 
 Cljm ^crntMs 
 
 PEEA.CHED BEFOEE 
 
 THE UNIVERSITY OF OXFORD, 
 
 BY 
 
 ARTHUR PENRHYN STANLEY, D.D., 
 
 BEGItJS PROFESSOR OF ECCLESIASTICAL HISTORY, 
 AND CANON OF CHRIST CHURCH. 
 
 (Hvforb uir^ ITonbon : 
 JOHN" HENRY and JAMES PARKER. 
 
 1863.
 
 PEEFACE. 
 
 npHE three following Sermons were preached in 
 consecutive order during the last two years 
 before the University of Oxford. The substance of 
 much of the first two has been printed already else- 
 where — one in my Lectures on the Eastern Church, 
 the other in my Lectures on the Jewish Church. It 
 has occurred to me, however, that there might be 
 some to whom the publication of them in their 
 original connexion might be of use : the more so, 
 as they are the direct expositions of a text which has 
 long appeared to me to contain not merely the best 
 definition which the Bible contains of its own struc- 
 ture and contents, but also to give the best reply 
 to many of the difficulties which have of late years 
 beset the path of the theological student. 
 
 Some years ago this noble passage was invested 
 to me wdth an additional interest by an incident 
 w^hich befel me in Russia. I was on my way to 
 the country residence of the venerable Archbishop 
 and Metropolitan of Moscow, Philaret, in com- 
 pany wdtli a Russian General, who had under- 
 taken to act as interpreter. During our drive we 
 discussed the topics of conversation suitable to the 
 interview ; and I suggested some question relating 
 
 B 2
 
 IV PRE I- ACE. 
 
 to the Old Testament, as a subject to which, it was 
 understood, the Metropolitan had paid special at- 
 tention. The General himself started the difficulty 
 which, he said, had often occurred to him, of the ap- 
 parent vindictiveness and cruelty of the precepts in 
 the Old Testament, compared with the milder spirit 
 of the New. We discussed this difficulty as we went ; 
 and I ventured, amongst other solutions, to suggest 
 the words of the text, which, as well as the Epistle 
 from which it is taken, w^as wholly new to him. In 
 the interview with the Archbishop which follow^ed, 
 this topic of the difference betw^een the Old and 
 the New Dispensations was the one which he in- 
 troduced to the aged Primate. The Metropolitan 
 immediately broke into an animated argument, in 
 the course of which the General turned round wdth 
 inifeigned astonishment and delight, and said, " He 
 " has quoted the very same passage to which you 
 *' referred in our conversation, and has pointed out 
 " how in the expression ' sundry times and divers 
 " ' manners ' there is a complete acknowledgment 
 " of the gradual and various modes of imperfect 
 " Revelation before the full light of Christianity." 
 
 It is indeed an obvious statement and answer of 
 the whole difficulty. I mention this simple incident, 
 first because it shews how naturally it occurs to 
 serious students of the Old Testament under cir- 
 cumstances the most widely different ; and secondly, 
 because it shews how a doctrine which in our own 
 country is often regarded at the present day with 
 extreme hostility and suspicion, was familiar and 

 
 PREFACE. Y 
 
 congenial to the mind of the most venerable autho- 
 rity of the most orthodox of European Churches, 
 
 The explanation and expansion of this grand 
 passage will sufficiently appear in the following 
 pages. But it may be well to say a few words in 
 answer to an objection, which, being of a contro- 
 versial and temporary kind, I forbore from noticing 
 in the Sermons themselves. It may be said that 
 the doctrine contained in the Sacred Text is incon- 
 sistent with that theory of a uniform and equal In- 
 spiration of every word and letter of the Bible, 
 which is at present regarded almost as an article of 
 faith by many religious persons in this country. 
 That such a divergence exists, I freely admit. The 
 doctrine of the author of this great Epistle, and the 
 facts of the Bible generally, are alike irreconcileable 
 with this modern hypothesis ^. Neither is the theory 
 to which I allude contained in any of the formularies 
 of the Church of England, In the only ^ instances 
 in which the word " Inspiration" and its cognate 
 
 * I have called it modem as regards the history of Chris- 
 tendom. No doubt such a theory prevailed in regard to the 
 Old Testament amongst the Eabbinical schools. In Christian 
 Theology, it appears to have been first systematised in the 
 Formula Consensus Helvetica, 1675. 
 
 ^ The Collect in the Communion Service, " Cleanse the 
 " thoughts of our hearts by the inspiration of Thy Holy Spirit ;" 
 the Collect for the Fifth Sunday after Easter, " That by Thy 
 " holy insjnration we may think those things that be good ;" 
 the Prayer for the Church Militant, " Inspire continually the 
 " Universal Church ;" the Veni Creator, " Come, Holy Ghost, 
 " our souls inspire ;" the Xlllth Article, " Works done before 
 " the inspiration, of Christ's Spirit."
 
 VI PREFACE. 
 
 verb are used in the Liturgy and in the Articles, 
 the sense is invariably that of the Divine influence 
 suggesting all good thoughts and wise counsels to 
 the hearts and minds of all men. To deny this wide 
 signification of the word, and to restrict its meaning 
 to any single exercise of the Divine operations, 
 would be an offence against the letter if not the 
 spirit of the Formularies, which ought not to be 
 needlessly incurred. 
 
 But without entering at length into the preten- 
 sions of the Helvetic theory of Inspiration, I have 
 thought it right to state its general relations to Chris- 
 tianity and to the Bible in words, which may have 
 more weight from having been written before the rise 
 of those personal feelings w^hich have of late so much 
 embittered the controversy on this subject : — 
 
 " It is very true that our position wdth" respect to 
 " the Scriptures is not in all points the same as our 
 " fathers'. For sixteen hundred years nearly, wiiile 
 " physical science, and history, and chronology, and 
 " criticism, were all in a state of torpor, the ques- 
 " tions which now present themselves to our minds 
 " could not from the nature of the case arise. 
 " When they did arise, they came forward into 
 " notice gradually : first the discoveries in as- 
 " tronomy excited uneasiness ; then as men began 
 " to read more critically, differences in the several 
 " Scripture narratives of the same thing awakened 
 " attention ; more lately, the greater knowledge 
 " which has been gained of history, and of lan- 
 " gunge, and in all respects the more careful in-
 
 PREFACE. Vn 
 
 " quiry to which all ancient records have been 
 " submitted, have brought other difficulties to light, 
 " and some sort of answer must be given to them. 
 
 " It has unfortunately happened that the diffi- 
 " culties of the Scripture have been generally treated 
 *' as objections to the truth of Christianity ; as such 
 *' they have been pressed by adversaries, and as 
 '* such Christian writers have replied to them. 
 
 " Yet what conceivable connexion is there be- 
 " tween the date of Cyrenius's government, or the 
 " question whether our Lord healed a blind man as 
 " He was going into Jericho or as He was leaving 
 " it ; or whether Judas bought himself the field of 
 " blood, or it was bought by the high priests : what 
 " connexion can there be between such questions, 
 " and the truth of God's love to man in the Re- 
 " demption and of the Resurrection of our Lord? 
 " Do we give to any narrative in the world, to any 
 *' statement, verbal or written, no other alternative 
 " than that it must be either infallible or unworthy 
 " of belief? Is not such an alternative so ex- 
 " travagant as to be a complete reductio ad ab- 
 " surdum? And yet such is the alternative which 
 " men seem generally to have admitted in consider- 
 " ing the Scripture narratives : if a single error 
 " can be discovered, it is supposed to be fatal to 
 " the credibility of the whole. 
 
 " This has arisen from an unwarranted intcrpre- 
 " tation of the word ' inspiration,' and by a still 
 " more unwarranted inference. An inspired w^ork 
 " is supposed to mean a work to which God has 
 " communicated His own perfections ; so that the 
 " slightest error or defect of any kind in it is
 
 Vlll PREFACE. 
 
 inconceivable, and that which is other than per- 
 fect in all points cannot be inspired. This is 
 the unwarranted interpretation of the word ' in- 
 * spiration.' But then follows the still more un- 
 warranted inference, — ' If all the Scripture is not 
 ' inspired, Christianity cannot be true ;' an infer- 
 ence which is absolutely entitled to no other con- 
 sideration than what it may seem to derive from 
 the number of those who have either openly or 
 tacitly maintained it. 
 
 *' Most truly do I believe the Scriptures to be 
 inspired ; the proofs of their inspiration rise con- 
 tinually with the study of them. The Scriptural 
 narratives are not only about divine things, but 
 are themselves divinely framed and superintended. 
 I cannot conceive my conviction of this truth 
 being otherwise than sure. Yet I must acknow- 
 ledge that the Scriptural narratives do not claim 
 this inspiration for themselves ; so that if I should 
 be obliged to resign my belief in it, which seems 
 to me impossible, I yet should have no right to 
 tax the Scriptures with having advanced a pre- 
 tension proved to be unfounded ; their whole 
 credibility as a most authentic history of the 
 most important facts would remain untouched. 
 " So much for the unwarranted inference, that, if 
 the Scripture histories are not inspired, the great 
 facts of the Christian Revelation cannot be main- 
 tained. But it is no less an unwarranted inter- 
 pretation of the term ' inspiration,' to suppose 
 that it is equivalent to a communication of the 
 Divine perfections. Surely, many of our words 
 and many of our actions are spoken and done by
 
 PREFACE. IX 
 
 the inspiration of God's Spirit, without whom we 
 can do nothing acceptable to God. Yet does the 
 Holy Spirit so inspire us as to communicate to 
 us His own perfections ? Are our best words or 
 works utterly free from error or from sin ? All 
 inspiration does not then destroy the human 
 and fallible part in the nature which it inspires ; 
 
 it does not change man into God 
 
 " Feeling what the Scriptures are, I would not 
 give unnecessary pain to any one by an enumera- 
 tion of those points in which the literal historical 
 statement of an inspired writer has been vainly 
 defended. Some instances will probably occur to 
 most readers ; others are perhaps not known, and 
 never will be known to many, nor is it at all 
 needful or desirable that they should know them. 
 But if ever they are brought before them, let 
 them not try to put them aside unfairly, from 
 a fear that they will injure our faith. Let us not 
 do evil that evil may be escaped from ; and it is 
 an evil, and the fruitful parent of evils innumer- 
 able, to do violence to our understanding or to 
 our reason in their own appointed fields ; to 
 maintain falsehood in their despite, and reject the 
 truth which they sanction. 
 
 " And if it should happen, as in all probability it 
 will, that we shall be called upon to correct in 
 some respects our notions as to the Scriptures, 
 and so far to hold* views different from those of 
 our fathers, we should consider that our fathers 
 did not, and could not stand in our circum- 
 stances ; that the knowledge which may call ujDon 
 us to relinquish some of their opinions, was
 
 X PREFACE. 
 
 " a knowledge which they had not. Till this know- 
 " ledge comes to us, let ns hold our fathers' 
 " opinions as they held them ; but when it does 
 " come it will come by God's will, and to do His 
 " work : and that work will, assuredly, not be our 
 " separation from our fathers' faith ; but if we fol- 
 " low God's guidance humbly and cheerfully, cling- 
 " ing to God the while in personal devotion and 
 " obedience, we may be made aware of what to 
 " them would have been an inexplicable difficulty, 
 " and which was, therefore, hidden from their know- 
 •' ledge ; and yet, 'through the grace of our Lord 
 " ' Jesus Christ,' we believe that we shall be saved 
 " even as they." — Arnold's Sermons^ vol. iv. pp. 
 485—492. 
 
 This is the statement of the case by one who 
 was no doubt frequently assailed in his lifetime, al- 
 though since his removal from amongst us no one 
 has ventured to bring against him the charges of un- 
 belief which are now for similar statements so freely 
 employed against the living. But it may be well to 
 shew that the same sentiments are substantially 
 shared by those who have not encountered any 
 serious obloquy for their opinions. I subjoin ex- 
 tracts from two volumes which have recently ap- 
 peared, the one wdth the sanction of the present 
 Bishop of Oxford, the other with the sanction and 
 concurrence of the present Archbishop of York : — 
 
 " To declare that there are no interpolations or 
 " corruptions in the Sacred Volume is to make an 
 " assertion improbable a priori, and at variance
 
 PREFACE. XI 
 
 " with the actual phenomena. The soher-minded 
 " in every age have allowed that the written Word, 
 " as it has come down to us, has these slight im- 
 " perfections, which no more interfere with its value 
 " than the spots upon the sun detract from his 
 " brightness, or than a few marred and stunted 
 " forms destroy the harmony and beauty of Nature." 
 — Aids to Faith, p. 247. 
 
 " All such terms as ' mechanical' and ' dynamical' 
 ' inspiration, and all the theories that have grown 
 ' round these epithets — all such distinctions as in- 
 ' spirations of superintendence, inspirations of sug- 
 ' gestion, and so forth — all attempts again to draw 
 ' lines of demarcation between the inspiration of 
 ' the books of Scripture themselves and the inspi- 
 ' ration of the authors of which those books were 
 ' results — may be most profitably dismissed from 
 ' our thoughts, and the whole subject calmly re- 
 ' considered from what may be termed a Scriptural 
 ' point of view. The holy Volume itself shall ex- 
 ' plain to us the nature of that influence by which 
 ' it is pervaded and quickened. Thus far we are 
 ' perfectly in accord with our opponents. We are 
 ' agreed on both sides that there is such a thing 
 ' as inspiration in reference to the Scriptures, and 
 ' we are further agreed that the Scriptures them- 
 ' selves are the best sources of information, on the 
 ' subject." — Aids to Faith, p. 404. 
 
 " Origen was the first great Biblical critic: few 
 ' things have tended more than Biblical criticism 
 ' to modify the theory of verbal inspiration ; and 
 ' this appeared even in the patristic ages and among 
 * some of the most illustrious of the patristic writers.
 
 XU PREFACE. 
 
 The critical labours of Clirysostom and Jerome, 
 in the beginning of the fifth century, made them 
 observe the apparent discrepancies in the accounts 
 of the Evangelists, and other like difficulties in 
 Holy Writ. Such observations led to a greater 
 appreciation of the human element in the com- 
 position of Sciipture. St. Chrysostom could see 
 that some slight variations in the different narra- 
 tives of the same event were no cause for anxiety 
 or unbelief, but rather a proof that the Evangelists 
 were independent witnesses. And St. Jerome 
 could discern in the New Testament writers a 
 dialect inferior to the purest Greek, and even at 
 times a mixture of human passion in the language 
 of the Apostles." — Aids to Faith, p. 290. 
 " Some Christian controversialists, who take high 
 grounds themselves, write as if they thought that 
 Christianity was not worth defending, unless it 
 was defended exactly on their principles. The 
 minds of the young, more especially, are some- 
 times greatly endangered by this means. The 
 defender of the Gospel may be but an indifferent 
 reasoner. He fails to make his ground sure and 
 strong. His reader finds more forcible, at least 
 more specious, arguments elsewhere. He thinks 
 the advocate he rested on defeated, his arguments 
 answered and upset, and Christianity itself seems 
 lost. Now, we may surely begin by saying, that 
 the question of inspiration is, within certain limits, 
 a question internal to Christianity. No doubt it 
 may materially affect the evidences of Christianity ; 
 but the questions of verbal inspiration, mechan- 
 ical inspiration, dynamical inspiration, and the
 
 Preface. xiu 
 
 " like, are all questions on which persons believing 
 *' in the Gospel may differ. There is a degree of 
 " latitude which must be fatal to faith ; but within 
 " certain limits men may differ, and yet believe. 
 
 " We have a number of different books written 
 " in different styles, indicating, the different charac- 
 " ters of the writers. At times, too, there appear 
 " slight diversities of statements in trifling matters 
 " of detail. Here we mark a human element. If 
 •' God spoke, it is plain that He spoke through 
 " man ; if God inspired, He inspired man. Even 
 " the Gospel miracles were often worked with some 
 " instrumental means; no wonder, then, that when 
 " God would teach men, He would teach through 
 " human agency. And the difference of style — 
 " perhaps the slight discrepancies in statements — • 
 " seem to satisfy us that some portions at least of 
 *' the Bible were not simply dictated by God to 
 *' man ; there was not what is called mere mechan- 
 " ical or organic inspiration ; God did not simply 
 " speak God's words, using as a mere machine 
 " man's lips to speak them with." — Aids to Faith, 
 p. 302. 
 
 " There is no attaining a satisfactory view of the 
 " mutual relations of science and Scripture till men 
 " make up their minds to do violence to neither, 
 '* and to deal faithfully with both. On the very 
 " threshold, therefore, of such discussions as the 
 *' present, we are encountered by the necessity for 
 " a candid, truthful, and impartial exegesis of the 
 " sacred text. This can never be honoured by being 
 " put to the torture. We ought to harbour no 
 " hankering after so-called * reconciliations,' or
 
 XIV PREFACE. 
 
 " allow these to warp in the very least our ren- 
 " dering of the record. It is our business to deci- 
 " pher, not to prompt; to keep our ears open to 
 " what the Scripture says, not exercise our inge- 
 " nuity on what it can be made to say. We must 
 *' purge our minds at once of that order of pre- 
 " possessions which is incident to an over-timid 
 " faith, and, not less scrupulously, of those counter 
 " prejudices which beset a jaundiced and captious 
 " scepticism. For there may be an eagerness to 
 *' magnify, and even to invent difficulties, as well 
 " as an anxiety to muffle them up and smooth 
 " them over, — of which last, the least pleasing 
 " shape is an affectation of contempt disguising 
 " obvious perplexity and trepidation. Those who 
 " seek the repose of truth had best banish from 
 *' the quest of it, in whatever field, the spirit and 
 " the methods of sophistry. The geologist, for 
 " example, if loyal to his science, w^ill marshal his 
 " facts as if there were no book of Genesis. Even 
 " so is it the duty of the interpreter of the Mosaic 
 " text to fix its sense and investigate its struc- 
 " ture, as though it were susceptible of neither colla- 
 *' tion nor collision with any science of geology." — 
 HepUes, p. 277. 
 
 " Let the interpreter then resolve, with God's 
 " assisting grace, to be candid and truthful. Let 
 *' him fear not to state honestly the results of his 
 *' own honest investigations ; let him be simple, 
 *' reverent, and plain-spoken, and above all, let 
 " him pray against that sectarian bias wdiich, by 
 '* importing its own foregone conclusions into the 
 " word of Scripture, and by refusing to see or to
 
 PREFACE. XV 
 
 *' acknowledge what makes against its own pre- 
 *' judices, has proved the greatest known hindrance 
 " to all fair interpretation, and has tended, more 
 " than anything else in the world, to check the 
 
 " free course of Divine Truth It is indeed 
 
 *' a cause for devout thankfulness, if not even for 
 " a recognition of a special providence, that out of 
 " the vast number of various readings so few affect 
 " vital questions ; still it is indisputably a fact that 
 *' but few pages of the New Testament can be 
 *' turned over without our finding points of the 
 *' greatest interest affected by very trivial varia- 
 
 " tions of reading 
 
 *' There are, alas ! still many signs of uneasiness 
 " and obstruction ; but we do entreat and conjure 
 ** those who Avould only too gladly put the whole 
 " question in abeyance, to pause, seriously to pause, 
 " before they do such dishonour to the w^ords of in» 
 
 " spiration Mournful, indeed, wall be the 
 
 *' retrospect, and gloomy indeed the future, if un- 
 *' becoming anxiety or a timid conservatism is to 
 " tempt honest hearts to shew sadly lacking mea- 
 ** sures of faith, and to deal deceitfully with the 
 ** Oracles of God."— ^/^5 to Faith, p. 421. 
 
 These extracts of course prove nothing as to 
 the general intention of the writers. Some of them 
 may be concessions reluctantly extorted, othcis 
 may be inconsistent with what they have said else- 
 where, or even in the immediate context. But 
 I have quoted them for two reasons. First, as 
 a pledge and omen of peace. When passages like 
 these can be found, implying so close an agreement
 
 XVI PREFACE. 
 
 of opinion between the assailant and assailed, it 
 is clear that ultimate harmony cannot be distant 
 between the candid and well-instructed of both 
 sides, however far it may be removed between the 
 mere ignorant partisans of either section. With 
 such a common ground of feeling and expression 
 on a topic admitting of so much dispute as that 
 of Inspiration, it is evident that, as has been well 
 said on another subject, if the human mind had as 
 great a power of appreciating agreement as it has 
 of appreciating differences, the controversy would 
 be at an end. These passages, whilst they do not 
 prove unqualified unanimity between the several 
 distinguished persons in question, do prove both 
 sides to be agreed in this — first, that the Bible is 
 inspired : but, secondly, that it is not inspired in 
 such a sense as to preclude human imperfection, 
 not in such a sense as is required by the Helvetic 
 Confession, or by the many excellent men amongst 
 ourselves, who unfortunately profess to regard the 
 admission of the least error in the Sacred Volume 
 as inconsistent with the communion of the Church 
 of England, or even with a belief in the Christian 
 religion. Secondly, these passages, so expressed and 
 so sanctioned, shew that, whatever may be the im- 
 mediate result of prosecutions and attacks on parti- 
 cular individuals, the general and final conclusion 
 is certain. The tide of speculation may pass be- 
 yond the principles here laid down, but it can never 
 recede behind them. We shall not be forced to 
 part with the belief that " God spake'' in the Bible j
 
 PREFACE. XVU 
 
 ^^ hy the Prophets, a?id hy His So)i ;^^ but neither 
 shall we be forced to part with the belief that " He 
 '''' spahe at sundry times and in divers manners.'''* 
 "The treatment of the Bible according to a theory 
 " of literal inspiration, which would make every 
 " theology impossible "^j" can henceforth be no more 
 imposed on the English Church. 
 
 It has lately been said that on the maintenance 
 or rejection of this theory depends the acceptance 
 or rejection of the whole Bible. Such an expecta- 
 tion is contrary to the whole previous analogy of 
 the history of Christian doctrine. The hypothesis 
 of a literal and uniform inspiration was not held by 
 those of the Fathers whose lives were most devoted 
 to the study of the Bible — Jerome and Chrysostom. 
 It was not held by the first Reformers, Erasmus, 
 Luther, and Calvin, who restored the study of the 
 Bible to Western Europe. It was not held by those 
 German divines'^ from whom has proceeded the 
 main impulse to the study and interpretation of the 
 Bible in modern Christendom. With a very few 
 exceptions, it is not held by those who have most 
 ardently and successfully pursued Biblical criticism 
 in England or in Frances If it be true that even 
 
 " I quote from tlie work of tlie great Roman Catholic divine 
 of Germany, " The Church and the Churches," by Dr. Bol- 
 linger, p. 162. 
 
 ^ See this well set forth in Dr. Pusey's " Theology of Ger- 
 many," Part II. c. 5. 
 
 ^ See an excellent Article on the subject by M. Prcssens^ in 
 the Revue Chrctienne, November, 1862. 
 
 C
 
 XVlll PREFACE. 
 
 now there is amongst theological students a very- 
 imperfect knowledge of the Scriptures compared 
 with that which is possessed on other subjects, yet 
 it is certain that this Imowledge is much more con- 
 siderable than it was twenty years ago ; and that 
 of all branches of theological study it is the one 
 which has made the greatest progress, contempo- 
 raneously with the growth of that freedom of in- 
 quiry which has, happily, till within the last few 
 years been allowed to advance without any sudden 
 or violent check. 
 
 The main end to be sought is an increased ac- 
 quaintance with the Bible, and increased appre- 
 ciation of its instructions. By these, more than by 
 any other means, will all theories of Inspiration find 
 their true solution. Tliis is the hope which I have 
 laboured to set forth in these Sermons, and which 
 I would wish here once for all to express briefly in 
 the well-known language of two of the best amongst 
 our living divines : — 
 
 " Christendom needed a firm spot on which she 
 " might stand, and has found it in the Bible. Had 
 " the Bible been drawn up in precise statements of 
 " faith, or detailed precepts of conduct, we should 
 " have had no alternative but either permanent 
 " subjection to an outer law, or loss of the highest 
 " instrument of self-education. But the Bible, from 
 " its very form, is exactly adapted to our present 
 " want. Even the perverted use of it has not 
 " been without certain great advantages. And 
 " meanwhile how utterly impossible it would be .
 
 PREFACE. XIX 
 
 " in the manhood of the world to imaguie any 
 " other instructor of mankind. And for that 
 " reason, every day makes it more and more evi- 
 " dent that the thorough study of the Bible, the 
 *' investigation of what it teaches and what it does 
 " not teach, the determination of the limits of 
 " what we mean by its inspiration, the determina- 
 ** tion of the degree of authority to be ascribed 
 "to the different books, if any degrees are to be 
 " admitted, must take the lead of all other studies. 
 " Even the mistakes of careful and reverent stu- 
 " dents are more valuable now than truth held in 
 " unthinking acquiescence. The substance of the 
 " teaching which we derive from the Bible will not 
 " really be affected by anything of this sort; while 
 " its hold upon the minds of believers, and its 
 *' power to stir the depths of the spirit of man, 
 " however much weakened at first, must be im- 
 " measurably strengthened in the end, by clearing 
 " away any blunders which may have been fastened 
 " on it by human interpretation. 
 
 " The immediate work of our day is the study 
 " of the Bible. Other studies will act upon the 
 " progress of mankind by acting through and upon 
 " this. For while a few highly educated men here 
 " and there who have given their minds to special 
 " pursuits may think the study of the Bible a thing 
 " of the past, yet assuredly, if their science is to 
 " have its effect upon men in the mass, it must be 
 " by affecting their moral and religious convictions ; 
 "in no other way have men been, or can men be, 
 " deeply and permanently changed." 
 
 " Those who hold the possibility of a recon- 
 c 2
 
 XX PREFACE. 
 
 cilement or restoration of belief, are anxious to 
 preserve the historical use of Scripture as the 
 continuous witness in all ages of the higher things 
 in tlie heart of man, as the inspired source of 
 truth and the way to the better life. They are 
 willing to take away some of the external sup- 
 ports, because they are not needed and do harm ; 
 also, because they interfere with the meaning. 
 They have a faith, not that after a period of 
 transition all things will remain just as they were 
 before, but that they will all come round again 
 to the use of man and to the glory of God. 
 When interpreted like any other book, by the 
 same rules of evidence and the same canons of 
 criticism, the Bible will still remain unlike any 
 other book ; its beauty will be freshly seen, as 
 of a picture which is restored after many ages 
 to its original state ; it will create a new interest 
 and make for itself a new kind of authority by 
 the life which is in it. It will be a spirit and 
 not a letter ; as it was in the beginning, having 
 an influence like that of the spoken word, or the 
 book newly found. The purer the light in the 
 human heart, the more it will have an expression 
 of itself in the mind of Christ ; the greater the 
 knowledge of the development of man, the truer 
 will be the insight gained into the ' increasing 
 ' purpose' of Revelation. In which also the indi- 
 vidual soul has a practical part, finding a sym- 
 pathy with its own imperfect feelings, in the 
 broken utterances of the Psalmist or the Prophet, 
 as well as in the fulness of Christ. The harmony 
 between Scripture and the life of man in all its
 
 PREFACE. XXI 
 
 *' stages may be far greater than appears at pre- 
 ** sent. There, a world weary of the heat and dust 
 " of controversy, of speculations about God and 
 *' man, weary, too, of the rapidity of its own mo- 
 *' tion, would return home and find rest."
 
 SEEMON L 
 
 €od ^ph at fiiDulri) iinm itiul in diuerfj miinnerfi. 
 
 PREACHED IN CJIRTST CHURCH CATHEDRAL, 
 
 ON THE TWENTY-SECOND SUNDAY AFTER TllINHT, 
 Nov. 4, 18G0.
 
 SEEMON L 
 
 HEBREWS i. 1, 2. 
 
 God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in 
 time past unto the fathers hy the prophets, hath in these 
 last days spoken unto us by His Son. 
 
 TN the Psalms for this morning's service, there are 
 
 a few well-known verses, which, though relating 
 
 in the first instance to a portion only of the Old 
 
 Testament, yet convey a true description of the 
 
 whole Bible. " The law of the Lord is an undefiled 
 
 ' law, converting the soul : the testimony of the 
 
 ' Lord is sure, and giveth wisdom unto the simple. 
 
 * The statutes of the Lord are right, and rejoice the 
 ' heart : the commandment of the Lord is pure, and 
 ' giveth light unto the eyes. The fear of the Lord is 
 ' clean, and endureth for ever : the judgments of 
 
 * the Lord are true and righteous altogether. More 
 
 * to be desired are they than gold, yea, than much 
 ' fine gold : sweeter also than honey and the honey- 
 ' comb. Moreover by them is Thy servant taught, 
 ' and in keeping of them there is great reward ^" 
 
 To shew how this is true of the contents of the 
 Bible, how profound a wisdom lies in its words, in 
 its history, in its doctrines ; how much its teachino; 
 has hitherto done for the world, how much it yet 
 may do, belongs rather to all sermons than to any 
 
 " Ps. xix. 7—11.
 
 26 God spake at Sundry Times 
 
 one in particular. But it may be within the limits 
 of a single discourse to point out how much may 
 be learned even from its outward form and struc- 
 ture ; how not merely from the Revelation which it 
 contains, but from the mode in which that Revelation 
 is given, it is fitted to be the guide of theological 
 study, fitted not merely to " rejoice the heart" and 
 "convert the soul," but "to give light unto the 
 " eyes and wisdom unto the simple." And if in this 
 short statement I can allay any needless alarm, or 
 satisfy any innocent doubt, or induce any one stu- 
 dent to value his Bible more truly, or persuade any 
 two opponents to find a common standing-ground 
 beyond what they thought for, my purpose will be 
 answered. 
 
 I propose, then, for the sake of convenience, to 
 take as an outline of what I have to say, the very 
 expressive words of my text ; which, though they 
 were written before the completion of the Sacred 
 Volume, yet describe with singular fidelity its gene- 
 ral characteristic. I quote them in the order in 
 which they stand in the original Greek. " In sundry 
 " times and in divers manners, in time past God 
 *' spoke unto the fathers in the Prophets, and in 
 " these last days spoke unto us in His Son." 
 
 "In sundry times," that is, in many parts, — "in 
 " divers manners," that is, in many modes — TroAf/xe- 
 pco9 KOLL TroXvTpoTTcas. This is the grand outward 
 distinction of the Divine Revelation — applicable 
 mainly to the Old Testament, but in a sufiicient 
 sense to the New Testament also. It is a truth
 
 and in Livers Manners. 27 
 
 which our carnal understanding and unenhghtencd 
 reason is unwilUng to admit: but which, the mo- 
 ment it is appreciated, solves innumerable difficul- 
 ties. Like the roll given to the Prophet ^, though 
 bitter in the mouth at first, it becomes, when eaten, 
 sweeter than honey and the honeycomb. As in the 
 case of the Apostle, out of what seems at first 
 sight the weakness of Scripture, comes its most 
 enduring strength ; when it is most weak, then it 
 is indeed most strong °. 
 
 In order to bring out fully and distinctly this 
 characteristic of our sacred Book, it will be useful 
 to contrast it throughout with what others esteem 
 their sacred book. For this purpose it will be 
 useful to take that which is next in dignity and 
 importance, the Koran of Mahometanism, and to 
 ask wherein the Bible differs from it — (not, I repeat, 
 in authority or doctrine — this would be superfluous,) 
 but in the outward appearance and structure by 
 which our attention is challenged to it, even before 
 we open it. Grant the excellence of the Koran to 
 the very utmost, — concede to it all that has ever 
 been claimed for it, — still the differences which I am 
 about to mention serve to bring out the contrast 
 between what the Bible would be, if narrowed down 
 to our puny measurements, and what, in its own 
 divine and universal excellence, it actually is. 
 
 1 . Tlie Koran is absolutely uniform in style and The di- 
 
 • T n ^ • ^ f Vcrstty of 
 
 mode of expression. It reflects the mmd of one style, 
 single person. It is as the Old Testament might 
 •^ Ezclc. iii. 3, 4. '2 Cor. xii. 10.
 
 28 God spake at Sundry Times 
 
 be if it were composed by the single Prophet Isaiah, 
 or the New Testament if it were composed by the 
 single Apostle St. Paul. It is what the whole Bible 
 would be, if from its pages were excluded all in- 
 dividual personalities, all human elements, all dif- 
 ferences of time and place and character. But it 
 is not so. The Bible is the composition not of one 
 person, but of many. It is full of the most varied 
 incidents. The styles of its different authors are 
 marked beyond the possibility of mistake. 
 
 Out of this diversity arise some of its chief in- 
 struction. On the face of each book, we see what 
 each book was intended to be, and to teach. The 
 order and succession of St. Paul's Epistles (to take 
 a single instance) is in itself a sermon. In each 
 portion of each book we see what is prose and 
 what is poetry ; what is primeval history and what 
 is later history ; what is allegory, or parable, or 
 drama, and what is chronicle, or precept, or narra- 
 tive. Follow out the account thus given of itself 
 by each part of Scripture, and you cannot go far 
 wrong. The Bible in this way is not only its own 
 interpreter, but its own guide. To read as history 
 what was meant for parable, to read as precept 
 what was meant for warning, is indeed striving to 
 be wise above that which is written. The styles 
 of Scripture are, as it were, so many heaven-planted 
 sign-posts to set our faith in the right direction- 
 And not only so, but from this manifold wisdom of 
 the Bible, " many coloured " {ttoXvitolklXos) as the 
 Apostle calls it, arises its singular power of addressing
 
 and in Divers Manners. 29 
 
 each individual as if he were the very person spoken 
 of in this or that book or chapter ; " Hke the eye of 
 " a portrait," as has been described in a well-known 
 passage, " uniformly fixed upon us, turn where we 
 " will." There is no other book, which, when 
 opened at random, has so often returned an appro- 
 priate answer to the inquirer. For there is no 
 other book, sacred or profane, which, within so 
 short a compass, expresses the thoughts and feel- 
 ings of so many different minds and situations. It 
 is not a continual rhapsody, like the Koran ; it is 
 not a continual hymn, Hke the Veda : we have but 
 to listen with an attentive ear, and we hear the 
 Scriptures speaking to us, " every man in our 
 "own tongue wherein we were born, the wonder- 
 "ful works of God ^" 
 
 2. The Koran represents not merely one single The di- 
 
 1 i • 1 11 i? • i. versity of 
 
 person, but one snigle scene and phase oi society, scene. 
 It is, with a very few exceptions, purely Arabian. 
 It is what the Bible would be if all external in- 
 fluences were obliterated, and it represented one 
 single exclusive phase of Jewish life. But our 
 Sacred Book, however Jewish and Oriental in its 
 origin, is a stream formed of the confluence of 
 many tributaries. Even the scenery and the life 
 of Palestine were far more diversified than those of 
 Arabia, so that whilst the Koran contains hardly 
 any allusions except to the phenomena of the desert, 
 the Bible includes topics which come home to al- 
 most every condition and position of life. The sea, 
 ^ Actsii. 8, 11.
 
 30 God spake at Sundry Times 
 
 the mountain, the town ; the pastoral, the civilized, 
 the republican, the royal state, can all find expres- 
 sion in its words. And not only so, hut Egypt, 
 Cbaldsea, Persia, Greece, Rome, all came into con- 
 tact with its gradual formation, so that alone of all 
 sacred books it avowedly includes the words, and 
 thoughts, and forms of other religions than its ow^n 
 — alone of all Oriental books, it has an actual af- 
 finity of aspect and form with the Northern and the 
 Western world — alone almost of religious books, its 
 story is constantly traversing tbe haunts of the world 
 at large. The Koran, the Vedas, even Thomas a 
 Kempis and St. Augustine, ''stmj at home." But the 
 Bible is a book that travels far and w^ide. "The 
 " whole Epistle," says Bengel of one of the letters 
 of St. Paul, " itinerarium sapit." The whole of the 
 Bible, it might almost be said, is one continued 
 journejdng to and fro. By sea and land, by valley 
 and mountain, by its coincidences, by its dangers, 
 by its escapes, it is the companion of every travel- 
 ler, however cosmopolite ; read even when not be- 
 lieved ; necessary, even when unw^elcome. " It goeth 
 " forth from the uttermost part of the heaven, and 
 " runneth about unto the end of it again, and there 
 ** is nothing hid from the heat thereof" 
 
 Even independent of its higher consolations, by 
 the very fact of its ubiquity what a treasure must 
 such a Book have been to the world, — what a bond 
 of union between East and West, between Jew and 
 Gentile ! Those traces of other nations and other 
 religions in its sacred pages, which some timid
 
 and in Divers Mimncrs. 31 
 
 Christians have tried to exorcise as though they 
 were unhallowed intruders into the sacred ground, 
 by how many additional links do they attach the 
 Bible to the great names and places of the human 
 race ! what a solidity, what a breadth have they 
 given both to its evidences and to its doctrine ! 
 what an indication of its lofty purpose, of its uni- 
 versal aims ! 
 
 3. The Koran prides itself on its perfection ofTbedi- 
 composition — on its freedom from all blemishes language. 
 of diction or statement. Its pure Arabic style 
 is regarded as a proof of its divinity. To trans- 
 late it into other languages is esteemed by ortho- 
 dox Mussulmen as impiety, and when it is trans- 
 lated its beauty is lost. It is maintained to be in 
 every word and point a transcript of the Divine 
 original. Mahomet represented himself as literally 
 the " sacred penman." Till quite recently it was 
 forbidden to be printed even in Arabic, lest any of 
 the sacred letters should be injured. Such is the 
 strength of the Koran. In far other and opposite 
 quarters lies the strength of the Bible. True, its 
 sacred text is uncertain ; and tliis uncertainty is 
 adduced by Mahometans as a cogent argument in 
 their disputes with Christian missionaries. True ; 
 but the Christian missionary, if he be well in- 
 structed in his own religion, will reply that the 
 Divine authority, which in the Koran is ascribed 
 to the words and syllables, is in the Bible far more 
 deeply rooted. The various readings which in the 
 Koran were suppressed once for all by the Caliph
 
 32 God spake at Sundry Times 
 
 Othman, have broken out freely by thousands and 
 thousands over the whole face of the Christian Scrip- 
 tures : the stumbling-blocks here and there of faith- 
 less disciples, but the delight of Christian scholar- 
 ship, the safeguards of Christian doctrine, the relics 
 of Christian antiquity. True, we have been so free 
 with the sacred words as to allow them to range 
 through hundreds of versions ; running the risk of 
 false and partial readings for the chance of their 
 wider diffusion. Even the Apostles used the Sep- 
 tuagint instead of the original, in spite of its mani- 
 fold deviations : we ourselves use two translations 
 of the Psalter, side by side, of wdiich neither agrees 
 with the other. But the Bible has stood the pro- 
 cess. Hebrew poetry, as often observed, instead of 
 repelling translation, by its freedom from rhyme 
 and metre absolutely invites it. The New Testa- 
 ment alone, it has been said, of ancient books, 
 actually gains by its re-appearance in the languages 
 of England and Germany. So little does its force 
 depend on its words, so mightily does its spirit 
 W'Ork even through "the sundry times and divers 
 manners" of modern. Gentile, Western nations. 
 
 And when we go back to the original itself, the 
 same truth emerges yet again. Its language is not 
 classical : in the Old Testament, it is the uncouth, 
 unhewn, unartificial Hebrew ; without particles, 
 without conjunctions, without degrees of compa- 
 rison : in the New Testament, it is not the pure 
 Attic of Demosthenes, but the debased, corrupted, 
 homely dialect of Hellenistic Greek.
 
 and in Divers Manners. 33 
 
 But let us thank God that imperfection of 
 grammar, of style, of expression, was not thought 
 an unworthy vehicle of the teaching of His Spirit. 
 These very imperfections, these very inaccuracies, 
 fitted the sacred languages for the task which they 
 had to perform. 
 
 Beautifully has this adaptation been portrayed by 
 our two highest authorities on each of the two 
 Scriptural languages. " The words of judgment 
 "bursting out, one by one, slowly, heavily, con- 
 *' densed, abrupt, from the Prophet's heavy and 
 " shrinking soul ; " " each sentence wrung forth with 
 " a groan, as though he had anew to take breath be- 
 " fore he uttered a renewed woe ; each word forming 
 " a whole for itself, like one heavy toll in a funeral 
 " knell." This is the bold, but not too bold, descrip- 
 tion (by one who knows it welP) of the rough, dis- 
 jointed, yet sublime style of the Hebrew Prophet. 
 And of the Greek of the New Testament it has been 
 said with equal reverence and equal force : — "At the 
 "time when our Saviour came into the world the 
 " Greek language was in a state of degeneracy and 
 '' decay. But that degeneracy may be ranked among 
 " the causes that fanned the gi'owth of Christianity. 
 " It was a preparation for the Gospel ; the decaying 
 " soil in which the new elements of life were to come 
 " forth; the one common speech of the then civiHzed 
 " nations of the world. The definiteness of earlier 
 " forms of human speech would have imposed a limit 
 " on the freedom of the Gospel, A religion which 
 ' Professor Pusey's Commentary on Hosea, pp. 5, 6. 
 D
 
 84 God spake at Sundry Times 
 
 " was to be universal required that the division of 
 *' languages, no less than of nations, should be 
 " broken down. It pleased God, through broken 
 " and hesitating forms of speech, with no beauty 
 " or comeliness of style, to reveal the universal truth 
 " for which the Greek of Plato would have been no 
 ** fitting templet" 
 Thedi- 4. The Koran claims not only a perfection of 
 
 versity of /» • t 
 
 materials, stylc, but a unifomi Completeness of materials. It 
 incorporates in itself no earlier documents ; it has 
 no degrees (or hardly any) of authority in its several 
 chapters ; it contains the whole religion of Islam 
 within itself In all these points, again, the Bible 
 takes its stand on what some would deem a lower 
 level, but on what experience has proved to be 
 a far higher. Its contents are like a vast quarry 
 rather than a finished building : we find the rough 
 materials with which the edifice must be recon- 
 structed, the solid marble and the precious metal, 
 sometimes on the surface, sometimes far below. 
 We must not be ashamed to dig for it ; by the 
 sweat of our brow, by the toil of our brain, must 
 we eat our spiritual as well as our bodily food : 
 
 " Pater ipse colendi 
 Haud faeiletn esse viam voluit." 
 
 It is this which makes researches into the Bible 
 so attractive, so suggestive, so inexhaustible. Its 
 contradictions and variations ; the large variations 
 of the Septuagint from the Hebrew text ; the 
 
 ' Professor Jowett's Commentary on St. Paul, i. p. 135. 
 Essays and Eeviews, p. 390.
 
 and in Divers Manners. 35 
 
 well-known discrepancies between the several Evan- 
 gelists, or between the Books of Kings and Chroni- 
 cles, — how invaluable as a Divine witness to the 
 great Evangelical doctrine that the spirit is above 
 the letter, the whole above the parts, the end 
 above the means ^ ! Its scattered portions of truth, 
 not gathered in one place, but lying here and 
 there ; the history eked out by Psalmists and 
 Prophets ; the Acts supported and corrected by the 
 Epistles ; fragments in the Chronicles fitting into 
 a vacant place in the Books of Exodus or Kings, — 
 what a stimulant to industry, what an exercise for 
 judgment, what a sanction to those modern arts of 
 study, by which these treasures have been first 
 discovered and put together ! 
 
 ^ Take the single instance of St. Stephen's speech in the 
 Acts of the Apostles. It is a summary of the Old Testament 
 history ; yet, in almost every incident which it quotes, it con- 
 tains a variation from the sacred text. Tliere are no less than 
 seven remarkable discrepancies or additions of this kind. It is 
 just possible that for each one of these an explanation may be 
 , imagined or invented. JBut this does not make the variation 
 itself less remarkable. If the Bible were what we in our later 
 theories have supposed it to be, — " every book of it, every 
 chapter of it, every verse of it, every word of it, every letter of 
 it, the direct utterance of the Most High, . . . absolute, fault- 
 less, unerring, supreme," — then every one of those variations 
 would be as great a crime as Stephen's denunciations of the 
 local worship of the temple were in the eyes of the Jews. But, 
 because the Bible is to be viewed, not by our theories concern- 
 ing it, but by what it says of itself, therefore the speech of 
 Stephen, so far from being a difficulty, is an immense advantage, 
 in shewing ua that already in the Apostolic age the stress was 
 laid not on its letter but its spirit, not on its form but its 
 substance, and that the form and the letter are repeatedly 
 altered and varied as if to impress upon us this very truth. 
 
 d2
 
 36 God spake at Sundry Times 
 
 Thedi- The lessons of this divine incompleteness may 
 
 effects^ be carried yet a step further. The Koran is to the 
 Mussulman, in one sense, even more than the Bible 
 is to the Christian. It is his code of laws, his 
 liturgy, his creed. The Bible, on the other hand, 
 needs, for its full effect, the institutions, the teach- 
 ing, the society of Christendom. Its truths are 
 capable of expansion, diffusion, progression, far be- 
 yond the mere circumference of the volume w^hich 
 contains them. " The Word of God," as the Apo- 
 stle says, " is not bound" in its own fetters. 
 
 The lives and deeds — above all, the One vast Life 
 and Work — which it records, spread their influence 
 almost irrespectively of the words in which they 
 were first recorded. The Bible propagates itself by 
 other means than multiplication of its written or 
 printed copies. Creeds, as has been sometimes said, 
 are Bibles in miniature ; sacred pictures have been 
 often and truly called the Bibles of the unlearned. 
 " Ye are my epistle," said the Apostle to his con- 
 verts ^ ; Christians are, or ought to be, the living 
 Bibles of the world. The false religion begins and 
 ends in a Sacred Book ; the true religion is founded 
 on a Sacred Life, and ends in a Sacred Spirit. It is 
 not in the close limitation of the stream to its parent 
 spring, but in the wide overflow of its waters, that 
 the true fountain of Biblical inspiration shews its 
 divine abundance and vitality. 
 
 5. The Koran, with a few exceptions, is sta- 
 tionary. It is literally one book, and it is a book 
 
 ^ 2 Cor. iii. 2.
 
 and in Divers Manners. 37 
 
 (for the most part) without coherence, without se- 
 quence, without advance. 
 
 On the other hand, the vast variety of the Bible, The di- 
 of which I have ah^eady spoken, would lose half its reveia- 
 interest unless it were also progressive. Each suc- 
 cessive revelation, dispensation, and manifestation 
 which its pages contain is partial, incomplete, and 
 imperfect, because it is superseceu by some fuller 
 and higher revelation which grows out of it. It is 
 not one Testament, but two ; not one book, but 
 many. It has been scornfully said ' that it is now 
 too late to view the books of the Bible as separate 
 from each other. " Too late" is a word alarmingly 
 true in worldly politics ; but it is a w^ord that has 
 no place in Christian theology, any more than in 
 Christian practice. It never can be too late " rightly 
 " to divide the word of truth" into its separate parts. 
 Nor is it too late. Here, as elsewhere, what is called 
 new is very old, as old as the Sacred Volume itself. 
 There are two names by which the volume is called, 
 expressing the double truth concerning it. One 
 is the present modern name, " the Bible,'' which 
 was first introduced in the thirteenth century, and 
 which expresses by a happy solecism the general 
 unity of form and design that runs through all its 
 pages. But the names by which it was known in 
 earlier times, and which are still its authorized and 
 solemn titles, indicate no less clearly the plurality of 
 its books. At Tpa(paL, ra B/^Ata — the Scriptures 
 — Biblia Sacra ; these are the names by which for 
 ' "Westminster Ecvicw, (October, 1860).
 
 88 God spake at Sundry Times 
 
 the first twelve hundred years of the Church the 
 manifold divisions of the Bible were signified to the 
 humblest reader. Book after book, Scripture after 
 Scripture, Psalm after Psalm, Epistle after Epistle, 
 each with its own sacred message, go to make up 
 the still more sacred whole. 
 
 *' O fools and slow of heart" if, by confounding 
 them altogether, we miss the special purpose and 
 occasion of each ! O happy, thrice happy, if we 
 did but recognise our own good gifts ; if we would 
 but thankfully observe how God has tempered the 
 whole together, so that " those parts w^hich we think 
 " less honourable, on those He has bestowed more 
 *' abundant honour ;" if only we will remember that 
 each has its appointed task — that " the foot is not the 
 " hand, nor the eye the ear." " If the whole Bible 
 "were seeing, where were the hearing; or if the 
 '* whole w^ere hearing, where were the smelling''?" 
 
 Bishop Warburton perhaps pushed his argument 
 to excess when he endeavoured to prove the Divine 
 Legation of Moses, by shewing the absence of any 
 doctrine of a future state in the Mosaic law. Yet 
 within certain limits the argument admits of a 
 sound and a wide application. The blanks, the 
 silences, the pauses, the defects, of the sacred Books 
 are often as necessary and as wholesome as their 
 fulness, perfection, and eloquence. The Book of 
 Esther never names the name of God. Shall we 
 on that account cast it out of the Canon ? Shall w^e 
 not rather hail it as a blessed assurance that the 
 ^ 1 Cor. xii. 17, 23.
 
 and in Livers Manners. 39 
 
 Spirit of God may be found where His Name is not, 
 as surely as it often is not found where His Name is ? 
 The Book of Ecclesiastes is full of distraction and 
 despondency. God be praised that at least in one 
 Book of the Bible the cries of doubt and perplexity 
 which man refuses to hear have reached the ears of 
 the Lord of Sabaoth, and not been shut out from 
 His written Word ! The Epistle of St. James, in 
 direct contravention of the theological language of 
 later days, says that "a man is not justified by 
 " faith only^ :" is it therefore to be rejected as "an 
 " Epistle of straw," or is it not rather the very book 
 we need for the completion of Apostolical truth, 
 and the correction of our own theories ? 
 
 And wdien from particular instances we turn to 
 the effect of the whole, the lesson both becomes 
 more distinct and more widely useful. We see the 
 gradual dawn. We read the express announcement 
 of the fact in the successive declarations of Scripture 
 itself. *' I spake not unto your fathers concerning 
 *' burnt-offerings or sacrifices," says Jeremiah of 
 the ceremonial Law""; "I will avenge the blood 
 '* of Jezreel," is the word of Hosea upon Jehu°. 
 '* The son shall not bear the iniquity of the father," 
 says Ezekiel of the second commandment". "The law 
 ' ' came by Moses, but grace and truth by Jesus Christ," 
 says St. John '', in contrasting the old and the new 
 dispensations. "A shadow of things to come, but 
 " the body is of Christ," says St. Paul ^ " The law 
 
 ' St. James ii. 24. "^ Jer. vii. 22. " Hos. i. 4. 
 
 " Ezck. xviii. 20. ^ St. Jolui i. 17. "^ Col. ii. 17.
 
 40 God spake at Sundry Times 
 
 *' was a shadow of good things to come," says the 
 author of the Epistle to the Hebrews'". " Many pro- 
 *'phets and kings desired to see the things which 
 "ye see, and have not seen them," says our Lord 
 Himself. "Moses, because of the hardness of your 
 *' hearts, suffered you to put away your wives." 
 " Moses gave you not that bread from Heaven ^" 
 " Ye have heard that it hath been said by them, 
 ** Hate your enemy ; but I say unto you. Love 
 *' your enemies \" 
 
 How completely do passages like these acknow- 
 ledge, and by acknowledging solve, the difficulty 
 of the inferiority of the earlier Revelations to the 
 later ! How completely do the words of my text tell 
 us, on the one hand, that it was " to oar fathers," 
 and not to us, that "God spoke in times past ;" and 
 yet, on the other hand, that it was the voice of 
 God to them, although in different tones from those 
 which He uses now. It was a great misfortune for 
 Christian theology when, in the days of the Puri- 
 tans, all the laws and jirecepts of the Old Testament 
 were considered binding on Christian men. But it 
 would be an almost equal misfortune, for the pros- 
 pects of enlightened knowledge no less than of reli- 
 gious zeal, if the Old Testament with its manifold 
 instructions ceased to be valued and studied amongst 
 us, in connection with the Christian Scriptures. It 
 is this very connection, this sanction in spite of 
 differences, which furnishes the best example of that 
 great truth, so distasteful to the unrenewed intellect 
 
 ■• neb. X. 1. ^ St. Johu vi. 32. t st. Matt. v. 43, 41.
 
 and in Divers Manners. 41 
 
 and the unregenerate heart, — the truth, namely, 
 that ages, nations, churches, individuals must be 
 judged, not by our standard but by theirs ; not by 
 the light which they have not, but by the light 
 which they have. Considering the immense diffi- 
 culty and also the immense importance (for all pur- 
 poses of instruction and intelligence) of impressing 
 this truth on the uneducated and the half-educated, 
 we can hardly over-rate the possible use of the Bible 
 in this respect. 
 
 There is a well-known congregation in the east of 
 London in which not long ago the preacher was 
 interrupted by loud and tumultuous signs of dis- 
 approval, because he stated that "in matters of re- 
 *' ligion there must be differences of opinion," and 
 that '* we ought to put ourselves in our opponent's 
 *' point of view." To feelings like these, and to that 
 far more numerous class of which they are the rough 
 representatives, reason of course speaks in vain and 
 philosophy is a word unknown. But the Bible, 
 even with these, is still a recognised authority, 
 and it is a pledge and hope for the future that 
 the large and generous principle to which the 
 passions of men are so vehemently opposed is 
 the very principle of which not merely the doc- 
 trines of the Bible are full, but on which its 
 very framework and existence is built up and 
 held together. 
 
 6. There remains the concluding, but extensive, 
 lesson to which this day's Epistle calls our atten- 
 tion — the duty, amidst a Book so manifold, of
 
 tioiis. 
 
 43 Ood spake at Sundry Times 
 
 "proving the things that are excellent," — SoKifid- 
 ^€Lv TO. Siacjyepoi^Ta, — distinguishing the important 
 from the unimportant. 
 Thedi- In saying this, I under-rate no portion of the 
 
 propor- sacred volume. There are those (and I thankfully 
 count myself amongst their number) to whom in- 
 finite and unfeigned delight is imparted by a chap- 
 ter of geographical names in the Book of Joshua, 
 the dark story of Rizpah the daughter of Aiah, or 
 of Ishmael the son of Nethaniah. Study and ex- 
 amine these portions, — the more, the better. But 
 the whole tenor of the Bible forbids us to raise 
 them to the same level as the Prophecies of Isaiah 
 or the Sermon on the Mount. We cannot mistake 
 the emphasis with which the progressive Revelation 
 accentuates (so to say) the leading episodes and 
 characters which it discloses. Most useful is this 
 intimation even in its most general aspect. We 
 can never be too often reminded that there is 
 a sacred doctrine of proportion in all things, divine 
 as well as human. Truth is one, as light is one. 
 But light has its many colours, and truth has its 
 many shades, its many degrees, its many aspects. 
 To track out these several shades lightening ever 
 more and more into the perfect day would be most 
 edifying even had we no distinct landmarks to guide 
 us. Such landmarks we have in abundance. I 
 confine myself to two — those two which are named 
 in the text, and which shall be followed out at 
 length hereafter. 
 
 "He spake hy the Prophets.'' This one word
 
 and in Divers Manners. 43 
 
 taken in its full original sense, and in all its bear- 
 ings on the history, is the key to the main purpose 
 of the Old Testament. Fix your eye on the Pro- 
 phets, not only in their writings, but their lives ; 
 observe wherein the Prophetical office consisted, 
 and why it was of such supreme value to the Jew- 
 ish Church, and through them to all mankind. 
 The spirit of the Prophets is the spirit of the Old 
 Testament, indeed of the whole Bible. 
 
 " He hath in these last days spoken to us hy 
 " His Son." This opens a still wider field. It re- 
 veals the centre of the New Testament. It indicates 
 the end to which the graduated, multiform, com- 
 plex revelation of the Old Testament had been 
 tending, and wherein it closed. This necessary 
 gravitation, as it were, of the Jewish history to its 
 final catastrophe is at once the sanction and the 
 correction of the whole system of types and anti- 
 types, prophecies and fulfilments of prophecy. We 
 want a storehouse of illustrations for the Chris- 
 tian history, and we find them to our hand in the 
 Jewish annals ; we want a conclusion to the Jewish 
 history worthy of its great beginning, and we find it 
 beyond question in the greatest event of all history. 
 Consciously or unconsciously, the characters and 
 writings of the rest of the Bible fall into their rela- 
 tive places around the Gospel history, as surely as, 
 in that history itself, the soldiers, priests, disciples, 
 Jews, and Romans derive their interest and signi- 
 ficance from being grouped round the central Figure 
 and round the Cross on Calvary. Take away that
 
 44 Ood spake at Sundry Times 
 
 Figure, take away that Cross, and the background 
 of the Old Testament as well as the foreground of 
 the New Testament become dull and colourless, as 
 when the sun has gone down. Of all the cha- 
 racteristics of the Sacred Volume, none is more 
 pregnant with instruction than that by which the 
 Gospel history thus takes its place above the rest 
 of the Bible, — above the Prophets of the Old Testa- 
 ment, above the Epistles of the New Testament. 
 
 And O ! my brethren, if any of us have any 
 doubt about any part of the Bible, or if any of us 
 be eager to answer any doubts in others, first and 
 before all things learn the mind and spirit of 
 Christ as set forth in the four Gospels. In that 
 mind and spirit lies the true solution of all our 
 disputes about the nature of the Infinite. In that 
 mind and spirit lies the true key to all the mysteries 
 of His life and death, — the meaning of His miracles, 
 the salt of His words, the virtue of His sacrifice, 
 the power of His resurrection. It was a true feel- 
 ing which gave to our religion the name of that 
 one single pre-eminent portion of the Sacred Volume 
 — ^the Gospel. It was a true feeling which led the 
 Fathers to take, as the subject of the Creeds, the 
 one doctrine which above all others belongs to the 
 Gospels, namely, the Incarnation. 
 
 To those who are weary of controversy, to those 
 who are laden with perplexities, to those who 
 travail and labour with the hardness, or the dul- 
 ness, or the indifference of men, no less than to the 
 suffering and the mourners, there is one and the
 
 and in Divers Manners. 45 
 
 same exhortation of which the fulness of meaning 
 still remains, and will long remain, unexhausted, — 
 " Hear what comfortable words our Saviour Christ 
 *' saith to all that truly turn to Him : ' Come unto 
 " ' Me all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and 
 " ' I will give you rest,' "
 
 SERMON IL 
 
 (00(1 senile h^ ih ^Yo^hk, 
 
 PREACHED IN ST. MARY'S CIIURCn, 
 On Feb. 9, 1862.
 
 SERMON II.' 
 
 I 
 
 HEBREWS i. 1. 
 
 God spake by the Prophets. 
 
 N my former discourse on this subject I called 
 the attention of this congregation to the former 
 part of this verse, as describing those peculiarities 
 in the form of the Bible which distinguish it from 
 all other Sacred Books. It is my intention on the 
 present occasion to dwell on the second part of the 
 verse, describing the peculiarity of s])irit which dis- 
 tinguishes the whole Bible, but in a special degree 
 the Old Testament. 
 
 " God spake by the Prophets." The author of 
 the Epistle had in the words immediately preceding- 
 spoken of the various gradations of revelation, and 
 then fixes our attention on the instructors or re- 
 vealers of God's will, who stood on the highest step 
 of those gradations. These are, in one word, the 
 Prophets. There can be no one in this place to 
 whom the historical portions of the Old Testament 
 are more precious than they are to me ; but I 
 cannot refuse to acknowledge the limitation of the 
 Sacred Text which says that "God spake," not by the 
 
 ^ This Sermon was preceded by a Lecture delivered on the 
 previous day, on the History of the Prophetical Order. I have 
 inserted so much of this Lecture in the early part of the Sermon 
 as was necessary to complete the argument. 
 
 E
 
 50 God spake by the Prophets. 
 
 historians, geographers, chronologers, but in a spe- 
 cial sense " by the Prophets." And again, although 
 the full sense of the word " Inspiration" is that in 
 which alone our Church has used it, as applying to 
 the Universal Church, and to every good thought 
 and work of the human heart ; yet there is a deep 
 truth in the third clause of the Nicene Creed, *' I 
 " believe in the Holy Ghost, who spake" (not by 
 Bishops, or Presbyters, or General Councils, or 
 General Assemblies, but) " by the Prophets." 
 
 This limitation or concentration of the Divine 
 Inspiration to the Prophetic spirit is in exact ac- 
 cordance with the facts of the case. The Prophets 
 being, as their name both in Greek and Hebrew 
 implies, the most immediate organ of the will of 
 God, it is in their utterances, if anywhere, that we 
 must expect to find the most direct expression of 
 that will. However high the sanction given to King 
 or Priest in the Old dispensation, they were always 
 to bow before the authority of the Prophet. The 
 Prophetic teaching is, as it were, the essence of the 
 Revelation, sifted from its accidental accompani- 
 ments. It pervades and, by pervading, gives its 
 own vitality to those portions of the Sacred Volume 
 which cannot strictly be called Prophetical. Jose- 
 phus speaks of the succession {pLaboxrf) of the Pro- 
 phets, as constituting the main framework and 
 staple of the Sacred Canon of the Old Testament. 
 What has been beautifully said of the Psalms as 
 compared with the Levitical and sacrificial system 
 is still more true of the Prophets. " As we watch
 
 God spake by the Prophets. 51 
 
 " the weaving of the web, we endeavour to trace 
 ** through it the more conspicuous threads. Long 
 " time the eye follows the crimson — it disappears at 
 " length : but the golden thread of sacred prophecy 
 " stretches to the end." It stretches to the end : 
 for it is the chief outward link between the Old 
 and the New Testament; and though the New 
 Testament has its own peculiarities, yet the Spirit 
 of Prophecy, though expressing chiefly the spirit of 
 the Old Testament, may also fitly be called the 
 spirit of the whole Bible. 
 
 Of the outward forms of the Prophetic teaching 
 I have already spoken elsewhere. It will be here 
 my duty to speak of the inward spirit of the Pro- 
 phetic order, — to ask what there is in it which gave 
 to the Jewish^ people that element of progression 
 and elevation, which is the best proof of the Divine 
 authority of the Old Testament itself, and of its 
 practical use for us ? 
 
 The very name of " Prophet" is expressive of its import- 
 great design. If the derivation of the word, as com- office 
 monly given, be correct — the '^boiling or bubbling p,ophet3, 
 " over" of the Divine Fountain of Inspiration within 
 the soul — it is impossible to imagine a phrase more 
 expressive of the truth which it conveys. It is one 
 of those words which conveys a host of imagery and 
 doctrine in itself. In the most signal instances of 
 the sites chosen for the Grecian oracles, we find 
 that they were marked by the rushing forth of a 
 living spring from the recesses of the native rocks of 
 Greece, the Castalian spring at Delphi, the rushing 
 
 E 2
 
 52 God spake by the Prophets. 
 
 stream of the Here3'na at Lebadca. It was felt 
 that nothmg could so well express the Divine voice 
 speaking from the mysterious abysses of the unseen 
 world, as those inarticulate but lively ebullitions of 
 the life-giving element from its unknown mysterious 
 sources. Such a figure was even more significant in 
 the remoter East. The prophetic utterances were in- 
 deed the bubbling, teeming springs of life in those 
 hard primitive rocks, in those dry parched levels. 
 "My heart," to use the phrase of the Psalmist in 
 the original language^ " is bursting, bubbling over 
 " with a good matter." That is the very image 
 which would be drawn from the abundant crystal 
 fountains which all along the valley of the Jordan 
 pour forth their full-grown streams, scattering fer- 
 tility and verdure as they flow, over the rough 
 ground. And this is the exact likeness of the 
 springs of prophetic wisdom and foresight, contain- 
 ing in themselves and their accomplishment the 
 fulness of the stream which was to roll on and 
 fertilise the ages. 
 
 The existence of such an institution in the midst 
 of an Eastern nation, even if we knew nothing of 
 its teaching, must be regarded as a rare guarantee 
 for liberty, for progress, for protection against 
 wrong and falsehood. Even of the modern Der- 
 vishes, with all their drawbacks, it has been said, 
 that "without them no man would be safe. They 
 " are the chief people in the East, who keep in the 
 " recollection of Oriental despots that there are 
 •^ Ps. xlv. 1.
 
 God spake by the Prophets. 63 
 
 " ties between heaven and earth. They restrain 
 " the tyrant in his oppression of his subjects; they 
 " are consulted by courts and by the counsellors of 
 " state in times of emergency; they are, in fact, 
 " the great benefactors of the human race in the 
 *' East''." 
 
 Such, in relation to the mere brute power of the 
 kings of Judah and Israel, were the Jewish Pro- 
 phets, — constant, vigilant, watch-dogs^ on every 
 kind of abuse and crime, even in the highest ranks," 
 by virtue of that universal, and at the same time 
 elevated, position which belonged to the whole 
 order. But they were much more than this. A 
 great philosophical writer of our own time has thus 
 set forth the position of the Ilebrew Prophets ^ : — 
 
 " The Egyptian hierarchy, the paternal despotism 
 " of China, w^ere very fit instruments for carrying 
 *' those nations up to the point of civilization which 
 **' they attained. But having reached that point, 
 " they were brought to a permanent halt, for want 
 " of mental liberty and individuality, — requisites 
 " of improvement which the institutions that had 
 " carried them thus far entirely incapacitated them 
 *' from acquiring, and as the institutions did not 
 " break down and give place to others, further im- 
 " provement stopped. In contrast with these na- 
 " tions, let us consider the example of an opposite 
 " character, afforded by another and a compara- 
 " tively insignificant Oriental people — the Jews. 
 
 « Dr. Wolff's Travels. " Isa. Ivi. 2. 
 
 "■ Mill's Ivcprcscutativc Oovcrntncut, 41, 42.
 
 54 God spake by the Prophets. 
 
 " They, too, had an absolute monarchy and a hier- 
 " archy. These did for them what was done for 
 " other Oriental races by their institutions — sub- 
 " dued them to industry and order, and gave them 
 ** a national life. . But neither their kings nor their 
 " priests ever obtained, as in those other countries, 
 *' the exclusive moulding of their character. Their 
 ** religion gave existence to an inestimably precious 
 " unorganised institution, the Order (if it may be 
 " so termed) of Prophets. Under the protection, 
 " generally, though not always effectual, of their 
 " sacred character, the Prophets were a power in 
 " the nation, often more than a match for kings 
 " and priests, and kept up, in that little corner of 
 " the earth, the antagonism of influences which is 
 " the only real security for continued progress. 
 ** Religion consequently was not there — what it 
 " has been in so many other places — a consecra- 
 * ' tion of all that was once established, and a barrier 
 " against further improvement. The remark of a 
 *' distinguished Hebrew, that the Prophets were in 
 " Church and State the equivalent of the modern 
 *' liberty of the press, gives a just but not an ade- 
 " quate conception of the part fulfilled in national 
 " and universal history by this great element of 
 " Jewish life ; by means of which, the canon of in- 
 " spiration never being complete, the persons most 
 " eminent in genius and moral feeling could not 
 " only denounce and reprobate, with the direct 
 " authority of the Almighty, whatever appeared to 
 " them deserving of such treatment, but could give
 
 God spake by the Prophets, 55 
 
 forth higher interpretations of the national reh- 
 gion, which thenceforth became part of the re- 
 ligion. Accordingly, whoever can divest himself 
 of the habit of reading the Bible as if it was one 
 book, which until lately was equally inveterate in 
 Christians and in unbelievers, sees with admira- 
 tion the vast interval between the morality and 
 religion of the Pentateuch, or even of the histo- 
 rical books, and the morality and religion of the 
 Prophecies, a distance as wide as between these 
 last and the Gospels. Conditions more favour- 
 able to progress could hardly exist ; accordingly, 
 the Jews, instead of being stationary, like other 
 Asiatics, were, next to the Greeks, the most 
 progressive people of antiquity, and, jointly with 
 them, have been the starting-point and main 
 propelling agency of modern cultivation." 
 
 What then is the essence of this prophetic teach- 
 ing ? It may be divided into three parts, according 
 to the three famous words of St. Bernard — Respice, 
 Jspice, Prospice. The interpretation of the Di- 
 vine Will respecting the Past, the Present, and the 
 Future. 
 
 I. Of the Prophets as teachers of the experience As teach- 
 
 ^ crs of tho 
 
 of the Past we know but little. It is true that we Past. 
 have references to many of the books which they 
 thus wrote. The acts of David, by Samuel, Gad, 
 and Nathan ; of Solomon and Jeroboam, by Nathan 
 and Iddo ; of Rehoboam, by Iddo and Shemaiah. 
 But these unfortunately have all perished. Alas!
 
 56 God spake by the Prophets. 
 
 of all the lost works of antiquity, is there any, hea- 
 then or sacred, to be named with the loss of the 
 biography of David by the Prophet Nathan ? We 
 can, however, form some notion of these lost works 
 by the fragments of historical writings that are left 
 to us in the Prophetical Books of Isaiah and Jere- 
 miah, and also by the likelihood that some of the 
 present canonical books were founded upon the 
 works which the compilation of the existing books 
 must have tended to supersede. And it is probably 
 not without some ground of this sort, that the Pro- 
 phetical Books of the Old Testament, in the Jew- 
 ish Canon, include the Books of Joshua, Judges, 
 Samuel, and Kings. From these slight indications 
 of the mission of the Prophets as historians, we 
 cannot deduce any detailed instruction. But it is 
 important to have at least this proof, that the study 
 of history, so dear to some of us, and by some so 
 lightly thought of, was not deemed beneath the 
 notice of the Prophets of God. And if we may so 
 far assume the ancient Jewish nomenclature as to 
 believe that the historical books of the Canon just 
 enumerated may be called " Prophetical," their 
 structure furnishes topics well worthy of the con- 
 sideration of the theological student. In that mar- 
 vellously tessellated workmanship which they pre- 
 sent, — in the careful interweaving of ancient docu- 
 ments into a later narrative, — in the editing and 
 re-editing of passages, where the introduction of 
 a more modern name or word betrays the touch of 
 the more recent historian, — we trace a research
 
 God spake by the Prophets. 57 
 
 which may well have occupied many a vacant hour 
 in the prophetic schools of Bethel or Jerusalem, 
 and at the same time a freedom of adaptation, of 
 alteration, of inquiry, which places the authors or 
 editors of these original writings on a level far 
 above that of mere chroniclers or copyists. Such 
 a union of restraint and freedom gives us, on the 
 one hand, a view of the office of an inspired or pro- 
 phetic historian, quite different from that which 
 would degrade him into the brief and passive in- 
 strument of a power which effaced his individual 
 energy and reflection ; and, on the other hand, pre- 
 sents us with something like the model at which an 
 historical student might well aspire even in our 
 more modern age. And if, from the handiwork 
 and composition of these writings, we reach to their 
 substance, we find traces of the same spirit, which 
 will appear more closely as we speak of the Pro- 
 phetical Office in its two larger aspects. By com- 
 paring the treatment of the history of Israel or 
 Judah in the four prophetical Books of Samuel and 
 of Kings, with the treatment of the same subject in 
 the Books of Chronicles, we arc at once enabled to 
 form some notion of the true characteristics of the 
 Prophetical office as distinguished from that of the 
 mere chronicler or Levite. But this will best be 
 understood as we proceed. 
 
 II. I pass therefore to the work of the Prophets As tcach- 
 
 n I TA* • -^TTMi • 1 L^ crsofthe 
 
 as mterpreters ot the Divine Will in regard to the I'resent. 
 Present. 
 
 (1.) What was the characteristic of their directly
 
 58 God spake by the Prophets. 
 
 religious teaching which caused the early Fathers 
 to regard them as, in the best sense of the word, 
 " Theologians ? " 
 The Uuity It consistcd of two points — their proclamation 
 of the Unity and of the SpirituaHty of the Divine 
 Nature. They proclaimed the V?iif^ of God, and 
 hence the energy with which they attacked the 
 falsehoods and superstitions which endeavoured to 
 take the place of God. This was the negative side 
 of their teaching, and the force with which they 
 urge it, the withering scorn with which Elijah and 
 Isaiah^ speak of the idols of their time, however 
 venerable, however sacred in the eyes of the wor- 
 shippers, is a proof that even negative statements 
 of theology may at times be needed, and have at 
 any rate a standing place amongst the Prophetic 
 gifts. The direct object of this negative teaching 
 virtually expired with the immediate call for it 
 The Spi- under the Old Dispensation. But the positive side 
 of God.^ of their teaching, the assertion of the SpirituaUty, 
 the morality of God, His justice, Plis goodness, His 
 love, continued to the very end, and received its 
 highest development in the Prophets of the New 
 Testament. Then the Prophetic teaching of the 
 moral attributes of God were brought out more 
 strongly than ever. Then Grace and Truth ^ were 
 declared to be the only means of conceiving or ap- 
 proaching to the Divine Essence. Then He who 
 was Himself the Incarnation of that Grace and 
 Truth was enabled to say, as no Prophet before or 
 ' 1 Kings xviii. 27; Isa. xliv. IG. ^ St. John i. 14.
 
 God spake by the Prophets. 59 
 
 after could have said, " Ye believe in God, believe 
 " also in J/e\'' To that crowning point of the Pro-* 
 phetic Theology, the Apostolic Prophets direct our 
 attention so clearly, that no more need have been 
 said on this subject. The doctrine of the Incarna- 
 tion of Christ by the last of the Prophets, St. John, 
 is the fitting and necessary close of the glimpse of 
 the moral nature of the Divinity revealed to the 
 first of the Prophets, Moses. This revelation of 
 the Divine Essence, this manifestation of God in 
 some unusually impressive form, constituted, as we 
 have already seen, and shall see as we advance, at 
 once the first call and the sustaining force of every 
 Prophetic mission. 
 
 (2.) And now how is this foundation of the Pro- The im- 
 portance 
 phetic Teaching carried out into detail ? This brmgs of Moral 
 
 • 1 • • r 1 -n 1 • above Ce- 
 
 us to the main characteristic oi the Prophetic, as remoniai 
 distinguished from all other parts of the Old Dis- '^^^'^^ 
 pensation. The elevated conception of the Divinity 
 may be said to pervade all parts of the Old Testa- 
 ment, if not in equal proportions, yet at least so 
 distinctly as to be independent of any special ofiice 
 for its enforcement. But in the Prophetical teach- 
 ing there is something yet more peculiarly its own. 
 The one great corruption to which all Religion 
 is exposed, is its separation from morality. The 
 very strength of the religious motive has a tendency 
 to exclude, or disparage, all other tendencies of the 
 human mind, even the noblest and best. It is 
 against this corruption that the Prophetic Order 
 
 •■ St. Jolin xiv. 1.
 
 60 God spake by the Prophets. 
 
 from first to last constantly protested. Even the 
 mere outward appearance and organisation of the 
 order bore witness to the gi'eatness of the opposite 
 truth of the inseparable union of morality and re- 
 ligion. Alone of all the high offices of the Jewish 
 Church they were called by no outward form of 
 consecration, and w^ere selected from no special 
 tribe or family. But the most effective witness 
 to this great doctrine was borne by their actual 
 teaching. 
 
 Amidst all their varieties, there is hardly a Pro- 
 phet, from Samuel downwards, whose life or writ- 
 ings do not contain an assertion of this truth. It is 
 to them as constant a topic, as the most peculiar 
 and favourite doctrine of any eccentric sect or party 
 is in the mouths of the preachers of such a sect or 
 party at the present day, and it is rendered more 
 forcible by the form which it takes of a constant 
 protest against the sacrificial system of the Levitical 
 ritual, which they either, in comparison with the 
 Moral Law, disparage altogether, or else fix their 
 hearers' attention to the moral and spiritual truth 
 which lay behind it. 
 
 Listen to them one after another : — 
 Samuel. — " To obey is better than sacrifice, and 
 " to hearken than the fat of rams'." David. — 
 " Thou desirest not sacrifice; else would I give it. 
 " Thou delightest not in burnt-offering. The sacri- 
 " fices of God are a broken spirit. Sacrifice and 
 " burnt-oflfering Thou didst not desire J. Then said 
 
 ' 1 Sam. XV. 22. ' Ps. li. IG, 17, xl. G — 8.
 
 God spake by the Prophets. 61 
 
 " I, Lo, I come to do Thy will, O God." ITosea. — 
 " I desired mercy, and not sacrificed" Amos. — " I 
 " hate, I despise your feast days, and I will not 
 " smell in your solemn assemblies. Though ye 
 " offer Me burnt-offerings, and your meat-offerings, 
 " I will not accept them, neither will I regard the 
 " peace-offerings of your fat beasts. But let judg- 
 " ment run dowm as w^aters, and righteousness as 
 " a mighty stream V Micah. — " Shall I come be- 
 " fore the Lord with burnt-offerings, with calves of 
 " a year old? Will the Lord be pleased with thou- 
 " sands of rams, or with ten thousands of rivers 
 " of oil? shall I give my first-born for my trans- 
 " gression, the fruit of my body for the sin of my 
 " soul? He hath shewed thee, O man, what is 
 " good ; and what doth the Lord require of thee, 
 " but to do justly, and to love mercy, and to walk 
 " humbly with thy God™ ?" IsaiaJi.—'' Your new 
 " moons and your other feasts My soul hateth : 
 " they are a trouble to Me ; I am weary to bear 
 " them. Wash you, make you clean ; cease to do 
 " evil ; learn to do w^ell. Is not this the fast that 
 " I have chosen, to loose the bands of wickedness, 
 " to undo the heavy burdens, and to let the op- 
 " pressed go free"?" Jeremiah.— '' Kmendi your waj^s 
 " and your doings, and I will cause you to dwell in 
 " this place. Trust ye not in lying words, saying, 
 " The temple of the Lord, The temple of the Lord, 
 " The temple of the Lord, are these"." Ezehiel—''\i 
 
 ^ Hosca vi. 6. ' Amos v. 21. "" Micah vi. 6—8. 
 
 ° Isa. i. 14, Iviii. 15. " Jer. vii. 3, 4.
 
 62 God spake by the Prophets. 
 
 " a man be just, and do that which is lawful and 
 " right, . . . and hath executed true judgment be- 
 " tween man and man, hath walked in My statutes, 
 " and hath kept My judgments, to deal truly ; he 
 " is just, he shall surely live. . . . The soul that 
 " sinneth, it shall die. The son shall not bear the 
 " iniquity jof the father, neither the father the ini- 
 " quity of the son : the righteousness of the righte- 
 " ous shall be upon him, and the wickedness of the 
 " wicked shall be upon him. . . . When the wicked 
 " man turneth away from his wickedness that he 
 " hath committed, and doeth that which is lawful 
 '* and right, he shall save his soul alive *'." 
 
 Mercy and justice, judgment and truth, repent- 
 ance and goodness — not sacrifice, not fasting, not 
 ablutions, not local or hereditary sanctity — is the 
 burden of the whole Prophetic teaching of the Old 
 Testament. It is this which distinguishes the Pro- 
 phetical from the Levitical portions even of the 
 historical books. Compare the exaltation of moral 
 duties in the Books of Kings with the exaltation 
 of merely ceremonial duties in the Books of Chron- 
 icles, and the difference between the two elements 
 of the Sacred History is at once apparent. 
 
 In the New Testament, the same doctrine is re- 
 peated in terms slightly altered, but still more 
 emphatic. In the words of Him who is our Pro- 
 phet in this the truest sense of all, I need only 
 refer to the Sermon on the Mount *•, and to the re- 
 markable fact that His chief warnings are against 
 
 p Ezck. xviii. 5—9, 20, 27, 28. "J St. Matt, v.— rii.
 
 Gud spake by the Prophets. 63 
 
 the ceremonial, the narrow, the religious world of 
 that age ^ In His deeds, I need only refer to His 
 death — proclaiming as the very central fact and 
 doctrine of the New Religion, that sacrifice, hence- 
 forth and for ever, consists not in the blood of bulls 
 and goats^ but in the perfect surrender of a perfect 
 Will and Life to the perfect Will of an All Just and 
 All Merciful God. In the Epistles the same Pro- 
 phetic strain is still carried on by the elevation of 
 the spirit above the letter ^ of love above all other 
 gifts", of edification above miraculous signs'", of faith 
 and good works above the outward distinction of 
 Jews and Gentiles'". With these accents on his 
 lips ^y the Last of the Prophets expired. 
 
 It is this assertion of the supremacy of the moral 
 and spiritual above the literal, the ceremonial, and 
 the dogmatical elements of religion, which makes 
 the contrast between the Prophets and all other 
 sacred bodies which have existed in Pagan and, it 
 must even be added, in Christian times. They 
 were religious teachers without the usual faults of 
 religious teachers: They were a religious body, 
 whose only professional spirit was to be free from 
 the usual prejudices, restraints, and crimes by which 
 all other religious professions have been disfigured. 
 They are not without grievous shortcomings ; they 
 are not on a level with the full Hght of the Christian 
 
 ' St. Matt. XV. 1—20, xxiii. ; St. Luke xv. ' Hcb. x. 7. 
 
 * 2 Cor. iii. 6. " 1 Cor. xiii. 1, 2. " Ibid. xiv. 5. 
 
 * Rom. ii. 29 ; Gal. ii. 5, 20, vi. 15 ; Tit. ii. 8, 
 y 1 St. John ii. 3, 4 ; Jerom. ad Gal. vi.
 
 64 God spake by the Prophets. 
 
 Revelation. But, taken as a whole, the Prophetic 
 order of the Jewish Church remains alone. It 
 stands like one of those vast monuments of ancient 
 days — with ramparts broken, with inscnptions de- 
 faced, but stretching from hill to hill, conveying in 
 its long line of arches the rill of living w^ater over 
 deep valley and thirsty plain, far above all the puny 
 modern buildings which have gi'own up at its feet, 
 and into the midst of which it strides with its mas- 
 sive substructions, its gigantic height, its majestic 
 proportions, unequalled and unrivalled. 
 Example We caunot attain to it. But even whilst we re- 
 Cbristian Hnquisli the hope — even whilst we admire the good 
 Clergy. Providcnce of God, which has preserved for us this 
 unapproachable memorial of His purposes in former 
 ages — there is still one calling in the world in 
 which, if any, the Prophetic spirit, the Prophetic 
 mission, ought at least in part to live on, and that 
 is, the calling of the Christian clerg)^ We are not 
 like the Jewish Priests, we are not like the Jewish 
 Levites, but we have, God be praised, some faint 
 resemblances to the Jewish Prophets. Like them, 
 we are chosen from no single family or caste ; like 
 them, we are called not to merely ritual acts, but 
 to teach and instruct ; like them, we are brought 
 up in great institutions ^ which pride themselves on 
 fostering the spirit of the Church in the persons of 
 its ministers. O glorious profession, if we would 
 see ourselves in this our true Prophetic aspect ! 
 We all know what a pow^erful motive in the human 
 
 \ Comp. 1 Sam. x. 10, xix. 20 ; 2 Kings ii. 3.
 
 God spake bij the Frophets. 65 
 
 mind is the spirit of the order, the spirit of a pro- 
 fession, the spirit (as the French say) of the hody, to 
 which we belong. O if the spirit of our profession, 
 of our order, of our body, were the spirit, or any- 
 thing like the spirit, of the ancient Prophets ! if 
 with us truth, charity, justice, fairness to opponents, 
 were a passion, a doctrine, a point of honour, to be 
 upheld, through good report and evil, with the 
 same energy as that with which we uphold our 
 position, our opinions, our interpretations, our part- 
 nerships ! A distinguished prelate "" has well said, 
 " It makes all the difference in the world whether 
 " we put the duty of Truth in the first place, or in 
 "the second place." Yes: that is exactly the 
 difference between the spirit of the world and the 
 spirit of the Bible. The spirit of the world asks, 
 jirst, "Is it safe. Is it pious?" secondly, "Is it 
 "true?" The spirit of the Prophets asks, /r*/, 
 "Is it true?" secondly, "Is it safe?" The spirit 
 of the world asks,/rs^, " Is it prudent?" secondly, 
 " Is it right ?" The spirit of the Prophets asks, 
 first, " Is it right ?" secondly, " Is it prudent ?" It 
 is not that they and we hold different doctrines on 
 these matters, but that we hold them in different 
 proportions. What they put first, we put second ; 
 what we put second, they put first. The religious 
 energy which we reserve for objects of temporary 
 and secondary importance, they reserved for objects 
 of eternal and primary importance. When Ambrose 
 closed the doors of the church of Milan against the 
 * Archbishop Whately. 
 F
 
 66 God spake by the Prophets. 
 
 blood-stained hands of the devout Tlieodosius, he 
 acted in the spirit of a prophet. When Ken, in 
 spite of his doctrine of the Divine right of Kings, 
 rebuked Charles II. on his death-bed for his long- 
 imrepented vices, those who stood by were justly- 
 reminded of the ancient Prophets. When Savona- 
 rola, at Florence, threw the whole energy of his 
 religious zeal into burning indignation against the 
 sins of the city, high and low, his sermons read 
 more like Hebrew prophecies than modern ho- 
 milies. 
 
 We speak sometimes with disdain of moral essays, 
 as dull, and dry, and lifeless. Dull, and dry, and 
 lifeless they truly are, till the Prophetic spirit 
 breathes into them. But let religious faith and 
 Jove once find its chief, its proper vent in them, as 
 it did of old in the Jewish Church — let a second 
 Wesley arise who shall do what the Primate of his 
 day wisely but vainly urged as his gravest ^ counsel 
 on the first Wesley, that is, throw all the ardour 
 of a Wesley into the great unmistakeable doctrines 
 and duties of Hfe as they are laid down by the Pro- 
 phets of old and by Christ in the Gospels, — let 
 these be preached with the same fervour as that 
 with which Andrew Melville enforced Presbyte- 
 rianism, or Laud enforced Episcopacy, or Whitfield 
 enforced Assurance, or Calvin Predestination, — then, 
 perchance, we shall understand in some degree what 
 was the propelling energy of the Prophetic order in 
 -the Church and Commonwealth of Israel. 
 «> See Wesley's Life, i. 222.
 
 God spake by the Prophets. 67 
 
 (3.) This is the most precious, the most super- Appeal to 
 natural, of all the Prophetic gifts. Let me pass on sciences 
 
 , of the 
 
 to the next, which brings out the same character- hearers. 
 istic in another and equally peculiar aspect. The 
 Prophets not merely laid down these general prin- 
 ciples of theology and practice, but were the direct 
 oracles and counsellors of their countrymen in ac- 
 tion ; and for this was required the Prophetic in- 
 sight into the human heart, which enabled them to 
 address themselv^es not merely to general circum- 
 stances, but to the special emergencies of each par- 
 ticular case. Often they were consulted even on 
 trifling matters, or on stated occasions. So Saul 
 wished to ask Samuel after his father: "When 
 " men went to inquire of God, then they spake, 
 " Come, let us go to the Seer''." So the Shuna- 
 mite went at new moons'^ or Sabbaths, to consult 
 the man of God on Carmel. But more usually they 
 addressed themselves spontaneously to the persons 
 or the circumstances which most needed encourage- 
 ment or warning. Suddenly, whenever their inter- 
 ference was called for, they appeared, to encourage 
 or to threaten ; Elijah, before Ahab, like the ghost 
 of the murdered Naboth on the vineyard of Jezreel ; 
 Isaiah, before Ahaz at the Fuller's Gate, before 
 Hczekiah, as he lay panic-struck in the palace ; 
 Jeremiah, before Zedekiah ; John, before Herod ; 
 the Greatest of all, before the Pharisees in the 
 Temple. Whatever public or private calamity had 
 occurred, was seized by them to move the national 
 = 1 Sam. ix. 9. '^ 1 Kings iv. 23. 
 
 f2
 
 68 God ftpake by the Prophets. 
 
 or individual conscience. Thus Elijah spoke, on 
 occasion of the drought ; Joel, on occasion of the 
 swarm of locusts ; Amos, on occasion of the earth- 
 quake. Thus, in the highest degree, our Lord, as 
 has been often observed, drew His parables from 
 the scenes immediately ait)und Him. What the 
 ear received slowly, was assisted by the eye. What 
 the abstract doctrine failed to effect, was produced 
 by its impersonation in the living forms of nature, 
 in the domestic incidents of human intercourse. 
 The Apostles, in this respect, by adopting the 
 written mode of communication, are somewhat more 
 removed from personal contact with those whom 
 they taught than were the older Prophets. But 
 St. Paul makes his personal presence so felt in all 
 that he writes, fastens all his remarks so closely 
 on existing circumstances, as to render his Epistles 
 a means, as it were, of reproducing himself. He 
 almost always conceives himself " present with them 
 "in spirit^," as speaking to his reader "face to 
 *' face V Every sentence is full of himself, of his 
 readers, of his circumstances, of theirs. And in 
 accordance with this is his description of the effect 
 of Christian prophesying. "If all prophesy, and 
 " there come in one that believeth not, or one 
 " unlearned, he is convinced of all, he is judged of 
 " alH." That is, one prophet after another shall 
 take up the strain, and each shall reveal to him 
 some fault which he knew not before. One after 
 another shall ask questions which shall reveal to 
 ' 1 Cor. V. ' 2 Cor. xiii. 2. » 1 Cor, xiv. 24, 25.
 
 God sjjake by the Prophets. 69 
 
 him his inmost self, and sit as judge on his inmost 
 thoughts, " and thus," the Apostle continues, " the 
 *' secrets of" his /ier/?i are made manifest., and so falling 
 *' down on his face" (awe-struck), "he will worship 
 " God, and report that God is in you of a truths 
 
 This is the true definition, by one of the mightiest 
 Prophets, of what true Prophesying is — what it is 
 in its effects, and why it is an evidence of a Real 
 or Divine Presence wherever it is found. It is this 
 close connexion with the thoughts of men — this 
 appeal to their hearts and consciences — this reason- 
 ing together with every one of us, which, on the 
 one hand, makes the interpretation of Scripture, 
 especially of the Prophetic Scriptures, so dependent 
 on our knowledge of the characters of those to 
 whom each part is addressed ; which, on the other 
 hand, makes each portion bear its own lesson to 
 each individual soul. — " Thou art the man''." So 
 in the fulness of the Prophetic spirit Nathan spoke 
 to David, and so in a hundred voices God through 
 that goodly company of Prophets still speaks to 
 us, and " convinces us" of our sin and of His 
 Presence. 
 
 And has this Prophetic gift altogether passed 
 aw^ay from our reach ? Not altogether. That di- 
 vine intuition, that sudden insight into the hearts 
 of men, is indeed no longer ours, or ours only in 
 a very limited sense. Still it fixes for us the stand- 
 ard at which all preachers and teachers should aim. 
 Not our thoughts, but the thoughts of our hearers, 
 '' 1 Sam. xli. 1.
 
 70 God spake by the Prophets. 
 
 is what we have to explain to ourselves and to them. 
 Not in om' language, but in theirs, must we speak 
 if we mean to make ourselves understood by them. 
 By talking with the humblest of the poor in the 
 parishes where our lot as pastors will be cast, w^e 
 shall gain the best materials — materials how rich 
 and how varied and how just ! — for our future ser- 
 mons. By addressing ourselves, not to any ima- 
 ginary congregation, or to any abstract and distant 
 circumstances, but to the actual needs which we 
 know, in the hearts of our neighbours and our- 
 selves, we shall rouse the sleeper, and startle the 
 sluggard, and convince the unbelievers, and en- 
 lighten the unlearned. So the great Athenian 
 teacher, — the nearest approach to a Jewish or 
 Christian Prophet that the Gentile world ever pro- 
 duced, — so Socrates worked his way into the minds 
 of the Grecian, and so of the European world. " To 
 "him," as has been well said by his modern bio- 
 grapher', " the prompt Know f/t?/se(/ wb-S the holiest 
 " of texts." He applied it to himself, he applied it 
 to others, and the result was the birth of all philo- 
 sophy. But not less is it the basis of all true 
 prophesying, of all good preaching, of all sound 
 preparation for the pastoral office. 
 Reintions (4.) Auothcr characteristic of the teaching of the 
 
 to their 
 
 Country. Prophcts to bc briefly touched upon is to be found 
 in their relation not to individuals, but to the State. 
 At one time they were actually the leaders of the 
 nation, as in the case of Moses, Deborah, Samuel, 
 
 ' Grotc's History of Greece, viii. G02.
 
 God spake by the Prophets. 71 
 
 David ; in earlier times their function in this respect 
 was chiefly to maintain the national spirit by appeals 
 to the Divine help, and to the past recollections of 
 their history. This function became more complex 
 as the Israelitish affairs became more entangled with 
 those of other nations. But still, throughout, three 
 salient points stand out. The first is that, universal 
 as their doctrine was, and far above any local re- 
 straints as it soared, they were thoroughly absorbed 
 in devotion to their country. To say that they 
 were patriots, that they were good citizens, is a 
 very imperfect representation of this side of the 
 Prophetic character. They were one with it, they Patriot- 
 were representatives of it ; they mourned, they re- 
 joiced with it, and for it, and through it. Often 
 we cannot distinguish between the Prophet and the 
 people for whom he speaks^'. Of that uneasy hos- 
 tility to the national mind, which has sometimes 
 marked even the noblest of disappointed politicians 
 and of disaffected Churchmen, there is hardly any 
 trace in the Hebrew Prophet. And although with 
 the changed relations of the Jewish Commonwealth, 
 the New Testament Prophets could no longer hold 
 the same position, yet even then the national feel- 
 ing is not extinct. Christ Himself wept over His 
 country \ His Prophecy over Jerusalem" is a direct 
 continuation of the strain of the older Prophets. 
 The same may be said of St. Paul's passionate allu- 
 sions to his love for the Jewish people in the Epistle 
 
 ^ See especially Isa. xl. — liv. ; Lamentations iii. 1 — C6. 
 ^ St. Luke xix. 11. "' St. Matt. xxiv.
 
 72 God spake by the P/ophets. 
 
 to the Romans'", which are almost identical with 
 those of Moses". I will not go further into the 
 enlargement of this feeling, as it followed the ex- 
 pansion of the Jewish into the Christian Church^ 
 It is enough that oar attention should be called to 
 this example for the teachers of every age. Public 
 spirit, devotion to a public cause, indignation at 
 a public wrong, enthusiasm in the national welfare, 
 — this was not below the loftiest of the ancient 
 Prophets ; it surely is still within the reach of the 
 humblest of Christian teachers. 
 
 Again, they laboured to maintain, and did to 
 a considerable degree maintain, in spite of the di- 
 vergence of tribes and disruption of the monarchy, 
 the state of national unity. The speech of Oded 
 reproaching the northern kings for the sale of the 
 prisoners of the south is a sample of the whole 
 prophetic spirit. " Now ye purpose to keep under 
 *' the children of Judah and Jerusalem for bondmen 
 " and bondwomen unto you : but are there not 
 ** with you, even with you, sins against the Lord 
 Mainten- " your God^?" To balance the faults of one pai*t 
 National of tlic uatiou agaiust the other in equal scales, was 
 "^^' their difficult but constant duty*^. To look for- 
 ward to the time when Judah should no more vex 
 Ephraim, nor Ephraim envy Judah *", was one of 
 their brightest hopes. If at times they increased 
 the bitterness of the division, yet on the whole 
 their aim was union, founded on a sense of their 
 
 " Rom. ix. 3, X. 1, xi. 1. ° Exod, xxxii. 32. 
 
 p 2 Chrou. xxviii. 10. ' Ezck. xvi. ' Isa. xi. 13.
 
 God spake by the Prophets. 73 
 
 common origin and worship, overpowering the sense 
 of their separation and aUenation, 
 
 And thirdly, and as a consequence of this, we 
 are struck by the variety, the moderation of the 
 Prophetical teaching, changing with the events of 
 their time. 
 
 It is instructive to see how at different epochs simplicity 
 
 i'/r> • II- • 1 J.1 ofpriuci- 
 
 ditierent evils attracted their attention ; now the pie and 
 same institutions, which at one time seemed good, of appiica- 
 at another seemed fraught with evil. Contrast 
 Isaiah's denunciation of the hierarchy with Mala- 
 chi's support of them^ Contrast Isaiah's confi- 
 dence against Assyria with Jeremiah's despair be- 
 fore Chalda^a*. There is no one Shibboleth handed 
 through the whole series. Only the simple faith 
 in a few great moral and religious principles re- ■ 
 main, the rest is constantly changing. Only the 
 poor are constantly protected against the rich ; 
 only the weaker side is always regarded ' with the 
 tender compassion which belongs especially to Him 
 to whom all the Prophets bare witness. To the 
 poor, to the oppressed, to the neglected, the Pro- 
 phet of old was and is still the faithful friend''. 
 To the selfish, the luxurious, the insolent, the 
 idle, the frivolous, the Prophet was and is still 
 an implacable enemy. 
 
 ' Isa. i. 10 ; Malachi i. 8. (Sec Arnold's Life, i. 259.) 
 
 ' Isa. xxxvii. 6 ; Jer. xxxvii. 8. 
 
 ° Isa. iii. 14, v. 8, xxxii. 5 ; Jcr. v. 5, xxii. 13 ; Amos vi. 3 ; 
 St. James v. 1. (See Aa-nold's Letters on this subject. Nov. . 
 
 1830. Life and Corresp., i. 234, 235.)
 
 74 God spake by the Prophets. 
 
 It is this aspect which has most forcihly brought 
 out the well-known likeness of the Prophets both 
 to ancient orators and modern statesmen''. The 
 often quoted lines of Milton^' best express both the 
 resemblance and the difference : — 
 
 " Their orators thou then extoll'st, as those 
 The top of eloquence ; statists indeed, 
 And lovers of their country, as may seem ; 
 But herein to our Prophets far beneath, 
 As men divinely taught, and better teaching 
 The solid rules of civil government, 
 In- their majestic, unaflFected style. 
 Than all the oratory of Greece and Rome. 
 In them is plainest taught, and easiest learnt, 
 What makes a nation happy, and keeps it so, 
 "What ruins kingdoms, and lays cities flat ; 
 Those only with our law best form a kings'." 
 
 inciepen. (5.) One point yet remains in connexion with their 
 ^"'^^' teaching — and that is their absolute independence. 
 Most of them were in opposition to the prevailing 
 opinion of their countrymen for the time being. 
 Some of them were persecuted, some of them were 
 in favour with God and man alike. But in all, 
 there was the same Divine Prophetic spirit — of ele- 
 vation above the passions, and prejudices, and dis- 
 tractions of common life. "Be not afraid of them 
 " — be not afraid of their faces — be not afiaid of 
 " their words. Speak My words unto them, whe- 
 " ther they will hear, or whether they will for- 
 
 " Comp. Hebrew Politics in the Time of Sennacherib and 
 Sargon, by Sir E. Strachey ; also The Prophets of the Old 
 Testament ; Tracts for Priest and I'eople, No. 8. 
 
 " Paradise Regained, iv. TjOG.
 
 God spake by the Prophets. 75 
 
 " bear." " I have made thy face strong against 
 " their faces, and thy forehead strong against their 
 " foreheads : as an adamant stronger than flint I 
 " have made thy forehead ; fear them not, neither 
 " be dismayed^" This is the position of all the 
 Prophets, in a gi'eater or less degree — it is the 
 position, in the very highest sense of all, of Him 
 whose chief outward characteristic it was that He 
 stood high above all the influences of His age, and 
 was the Rock against which they dashed in vain, 
 and on which they were ground to powder. This 
 element of the Prophetical Ofiice deserves special 
 consideration, because it pervades their whole 
 teaching, and because it is in its lower manifesta- 
 tions within the reach of all. Wliat is it that is 
 thus recommended to us ? Not eccentricity, not 
 singularity, not useless opposition to the existing 
 framework of the world, or the Church in which 
 we find ourselves. Not this — which is of no use 
 to any one — but this which is needed by every one 
 of us, a fixed resolution to hold our own against 
 chance and accident, against popular clamour and 
 popular favour — against the opinions, the conver- 
 sation, of the circle in which we live : a silent look 
 of disapproval, a single word of cheering approval 
 — an even course, which turns not to the right hand 
 or to the left, unless with our own full conviction — 
 a calm, cheerful, hopeful endeavour to do the work 
 that has been given us to do, whether wc succeed 
 or whether we fail. 
 
 "■ Ezck. ii. G, 7, iii. 8, '.t.
 
 76 God spake hy the Prophets. 
 
 And for this Prophetic independence, what is, 
 Avhat was, the Prophetic ground and guarantee? 
 There were two. One was that of which I will pro- 
 ceed to speak presently — that which has almost 
 changed the meaning of the name of the Prophets 
 — their constant looking forward to the Future. 
 The other was that they felt themselves standing 
 on a rock that was higher and stronger than they 
 — the support and the presence of God. It was 
 this which made their independent elevation itself 
 a Prophecy, because it spoke of a Power behind 
 them, unseen, yet manifesting itself through them 
 in that one quality which even the world cannot 
 fail at last to recognise. Give us a man, young or 
 old, high or low, on whom we know that we can 
 thoroughly depend, — who will stand firm when 
 others fail, — the friend faithful and true, the adviser 
 honest and fearless, the adversary just and chival- 
 rous ; in such an one there is a fragment of the 
 Rock of Ages — a sign that there has been a Pro- 
 phet amongst us. 
 
 The consciousness of the presence of God. In the 
 Mussulman or the Hindoo this makes itself felt in 
 the entire abstraction of the mind from all outward 
 things. In the fanatic, of whatever reHgion, it 
 makes itself felt in the disregard of all the common 
 rules of human morality. In the Hebrew Prophet 
 it makes itself felt in the indifference to human 
 praise or blame, in the unswerving fidelity to the 
 voice of duty and of conscience, in the courage to 
 say what he knew to be true, and to do what he
 
 God spake by the Prophets. 77 
 
 knew to be right. This in the Hebrew prophet — 
 this in the Christian man — is the best sign of the 
 near vision of Almighty God ; it is the best sign of 
 the Real Presence of Jesus Christ, the Faithful and 
 True, the Holy and the Just, the Power of God, 
 and the Wisdom of God. 
 
 III. This brings us to the Prophetic teaching of the Ti'e Pro- 
 Future. It is well known that in the popular and teaciiing 
 
 , of the 
 
 modern use of the word smce the seventeenth cen- Future. 
 tury, by a "Prophet" is meant almost exclusively 
 one who predicts or foretells ; and to have asserted 
 the contrary has even been thought heretical. It 
 is evident that this assumption is itself a grave 
 error \ It is wholly unauthorized, either by the 
 Bible or by our own Church. It has drawn off 
 the attention of the fundamental idea of the Pro- 
 phetical office to a subordinate part. It has caused 
 us to seek the evidence of Prophecy in those por- 
 tions of it which are least convincing, rather than 
 in those which are most convincing — in those parts 
 wdiich it has most in common with other systems, 
 rather than in those parts which distinguish it from 
 all other systems. 
 
 But this error, resting as it docs on an etymo- 
 logical mistake, could never have obtained so wide 
 
 ' "It is simply a mistake to regard prediction as synony- 
 " mous with prophecy, or even as the chief portion of a pro- 
 " phet's duties. Whether the Language be Hebrew, Greek, 
 " or Latin, the ancient words for prophecy all refer to a state 
 " of mind, an emotion, an influence, and not to prescience." — 
 Mr. Payne Smith's Messianic Interpretation of Isaiah, Introd., 
 
 p. XXX.
 
 78 God sjjake by the Frophets. 
 
 a diffusion, without some ground in fact ; and this 
 ground is to be found in the vast relation of the 
 Prophetic office to the future, which I shall now 
 attempt to draw forth — dwelling, as before, on the 
 general spirit of the institution. 
 Prospec- It is, then, Undoubtedly true that the Prophets 
 
 tive and /-v • ... 
 
 predictive of the Old Dispensation did in a marked and espe- 
 
 fj6IlQ6TlClCS 
 
 cial manner look forward to the future. It was this 
 which gave to the whole Jewish nation an upward, 
 forward, progressive character, such as no Asiatic, 
 no ancient, I may almost say, no other nation has 
 ever had in the same degree. Representing as they 
 did the whole people, they shared and they per- 
 sonated the general spirit of tenacious trust and 
 hope that distinguishes the people itself. Their 
 warnings, their consolations, their precepts, when 
 relating to the past and the present, are clothed in 
 imagery drawn from the future. The very form 
 of the Hebrew verb, in which one tense is used for 
 the past and for the future, lends itself to this 
 mode of speech. They were conceived as shep- 
 herds^ seated on the top of one of the hills of Judj^a, 
 seeing far over the heads of their flocks, and guid- 
 ing them accordingly ; or as watchmen standing on 
 some lofty tower, with a wider horizon within their 
 view than that of ordinary men. " Watchman, 
 " what of the night? Watchman, what of the 
 "night''?" was the question addressed to Isaiah 
 by an anxious world below. "I will stand upon 
 
 " Isa. Ivi. 10, 11. = Ibid. xxi. 11.
 
 God spahe hy the Propliets. 79 
 
 " my watch," is the expression of Habakkuk'^ 
 *' and set me upon the tower, and will watch to 
 " see what He will say unto me. Though the 
 " vision tarry, wait for it : it will surely come ; it 
 " wall not tarry." Their practical and religious 
 exhortations were, it is true, conveyed with a force 
 w^hich needed no further attestation. Of all of 
 them, in a certain sense, it might be said as of 
 the Greatest of all, that they spoke as one having 
 authority and not as the scribes. Still there are 
 special signs of authority besides, and of these, 
 one of the chief, from first to last, was their " speak- 
 " ing things to come''.'^ And this token of Divinity 
 extends (and here again T speak quite irrespectively 
 of any special fulfilments of special predictions) to 
 the whole Prophetic order, in Old and New Testa- 
 ment alike. There is nothing which to any re- 
 flecting mind is more signal a proof of the Bible 
 being really the guiding book of the world's his- 
 tory, than its anticipations, predictions, insight into 
 the wants of men far beyond the age in which it 
 was written. That modern element which we find 
 in it, — so like our own times, so unlike the ancient 
 framework of its natural form — that Gentile, Eu- 
 ropean, turn of thought, — so unlike the Asiatic 
 
 ^ Hab. ii. 1. 
 
 ^ It is observable that although the power of prediction is 
 never made the test of a true prophet, (some of the greatest of 
 them, Samuel, for example, Elijah and John the Baptist, having 
 uttered either no prediction or only such as were very subor- 
 dinate,) the failure of a prediction is in one remarkable passage 
 made the test of a false prophet. Deut, xviii. 22.
 
 80 God spake by the Prophets. 
 
 language and scenery which was its cradle, — that 
 enforcement of principles and duties, which for 
 years and centuries lay almost unperceived, be- 
 cause hardly ever understood in its sacred pages ; 
 but which now we see to be in accordance with the 
 utmost requirements of philosophy and civilization ; 
 those principles of toleration, chivalry, discrimina- 
 tion, proportion, which even now *are not appre- 
 ciated as they ought to be, and which only can be 
 fully realized in ages yet to come; these are the 
 unmistakeable predictions of the Prophetic spirit 
 of the Bible, the pledges of its inexhaustible re- 
 sources. 
 
 Thus much for the general aspect of the Pro- 
 phetical office as it looked to the Future. Its 
 more special aspects may be considered under 
 three heads. 
 Political (1.) First, their contemplation and prediction of 
 
 predic- 
 tions, the political events of their own and the suri'ound- 
 
 ing nations. It is this which brings them most 
 
 nearly into comparison \\^th the seers of other ages 
 
 and other races. Every one knows instances, both 
 
 in ancient and modern times, of predictions which 
 
 have been uttered and fulfilled in regard to events 
 
 of tbis kind. Sometimes such predictions have 
 
 been the result of political foresight. " To have 
 
 " made predictions which have been often verified 
 
 " by tbe event, seldom or never falsified by itV 
 
 has been suggested by one well competent to judge, 
 
 as an ordin^y sign of statesmanship in modern 
 
 ' Mill's Eeprcsentativc Government, 224,
 
 Ood spake by the Vrophets. 81 
 
 times. "To see events in their beginnings, to 
 " discern their purport and tendencies from the 
 " first, to forewarn his countrymen accordingly," 
 was the foremost duty of an ancient orator, as de- 
 cribed by Demosthenes^. Many instances will oc- 
 cur to students of history. Even within our own 
 memory the great catastrophe of the disruption of 
 the United States of America was foretold, even 
 with the exact date'', several years beforehand. 
 Sometimes there has been an anticipation of some 
 future epoch in the pregnant sayings of eminent 
 philosophers or poets ; as for example, the intima- 
 tion of the discovery of America by Seneca ; or of 
 Shahspeare by Plato, or the Heformation by Dante. 
 Sometimes the same result has been produced by 
 a power of divination granted, in some inexphcable 
 manner, to ordinary men. Of such a kind were 
 many of the ancient oracles, the fulfilment of which, 
 according to Cicero', could not be denied without 
 a perversion of all history. Such was the fore- 
 shadowing of the twelve centuries of Roman domi- 
 nion by the legend of the apparition of the twelve 
 vultures to Romulus ^ and which were so under- 
 stood' four hundred years before its actual accom- 
 phshment. Such, but with less certainty, w^as the 
 traditional prediction of the conquest of Constan- 
 tinople by the Mussulmans ; the alleged predic- 
 
 g De Corona, 73. See Sir E. Strachey on the Prophets of 
 the Old Testament, pp. 2, 29. 
 
 h Spence on the American Union, p. 7. ' Cic., De Di- 
 
 vinatione, i. 19. "^ Gibbon, c. 35. ' Ibid., c. 52. 
 
 G
 
 82 God spake by the Prophets. 
 
 tions"" by Archbishop Malachi, whether composed 
 in the eleventh or the sixteenth century, of the 
 series of Popes down to the present time ; not to 
 speak of the well-known instances which are recorded 
 both in French and English history. But there are 
 several points which at once place the Prophetic 
 predictions on a different level from any of these. 
 It is not that they are more exact in particulars of 
 time and place ; none can be more so than that of 
 the twelve centuries of the Roman Empire ; and 
 our Lord Himself has excluded the precise know- 
 ledge of times and seasons from the widest and 
 highest range of the prophetic vision. The differ- 
 ence rather lies in their close connection with the 
 moral and spiritual character of the Prophetic mis- 
 sion, and their freedom (for the most part) from 
 any of those fantastic and arbitrary accompaniments 
 by which so many secular predictions are distin- 
 guished. They are almost always founded on the 
 denunciations of moral evil, or the exaltation of 
 moral good, not on the mere localities or cities 
 concerned. The nations whose doom is pronounced 
 thus become representatives of moral principles and 
 examples to all ages alike. Israel, Jerusalem, Egypt, 
 Babylon, Tyre", are personifications of states or 
 
 ^ For this, and many other instances of more or less vahie, 
 see a collection in Das Buch der AVahr- und Weis-Sagun- 
 gen, published at Ratisbon, 1850, or in an abridged form in 
 French, Le Lin-e de Toutes les Prophetics ct Predictions, 
 Paris, 1849. 
 
 " This is well brought out in Arnold's Sermons on Pro- 
 phecy.
 
 Ood spake by the Prophets. 83 
 
 principles still existing, and thus the predictions 
 concerning them have, as Lord Bacon says, con- 
 stantly germinant fulfilments. The secular events 
 which are thus predicted, are (with a few possible 
 exceptions") within the horizon of the Prophet's 
 age, and are thus capable of being turned to the 
 practical edification of the Prophet's own age and 
 country. As in the vision of Pisgah, the back- 
 ground is suggested by the foreground. No object 
 is introduced which a contemporary could fail to 
 appreciate and understand in outline, although its 
 remoter and fuller meaning might be reserved for 
 a far distant future. These predictions are also, 
 in several striking instances, made dependent on 
 the moral condition of those to whom they are 
 addressed, and are thus divested of the appearance 
 of blind caprice or arbitrary fate, in which the 
 literal predictions of both ancient and modern di- 
 vination so much delight. " Yet forty days and 
 " Nineveh shall be overthrown." No denunciation 
 is more absolute in its terms than this ; and of 
 none is the frustration more complete. The true 
 Prophetic lesson of the Book of Jonah is, that there 
 was a principle in the moral government of God, 
 more sacred and moi'e peremptory even than the 
 accomplishment of the most cherished prediction. 
 "■ God saw their works, that they turned from their 
 
 ° The cases referred to arc such as need not be here discussed. 
 They are either confessedly exceptional, or else admit (on quite 
 independent grounds) of another explanation ; and they can only 
 be treated justly by being considered in detail. 
 
 g2
 
 84 God spake by the Prophets. 
 
 ** evil way ; and God repented of the evil, that 
 ** He had said that He would do unto them ; and 
 " He did it not^." What here appears in a single 
 case is laid down as a universal rule by the Prophet 
 Jeremiah. *' At what instant I shall speak con- 
 " cerning a nation ... to destroy it; if that na- 
 "tion . . . turn from their evil, I will repent of the 
 "evil that I thought to do unto them. And at 
 " what instant I shall speak concerning a nation 
 "... to build and to plant it ; if it do evil in My 
 "sight, that it obey not My voice, then I will re- 
 " pent of the good wherewith I said I would benefit 
 "them^." 
 
 With these limitations, it is acknowledged by 
 all students of the subject, that the Hebrew Pro- 
 phets made predictions concerning the fortunes of 
 their own and other countries which were un- 
 questionably fulfilled''. There can be no reasonable 
 doubt, for example, that Amos foretold the cap- 
 tivity and return of Israel ; and Micah the fall of 
 Samaria ; and Ezekiel the fall of Jerusalem ; and 
 Isaiah the fall of Tyre ; and Jeremiah the limits of 
 the Captivity. But, even if no such special cases 
 could be proved, the grandeur of the position which 
 the Prophets occupy in this respect is one which 
 it needs no attestation of any particular prediction 
 to enhance, and which no failure of any particular 
 prediction can impair. From those lofty watch- 
 towers of Divine speculation, from that moral and 
 
 P Jonah iii. 10, '^ Jcr. xviii. 7 — 9. 
 
 ' See Ewald, Gcschiclito dcs Volkes Israel, iii. 303.
 
 God spake by the Prophets. 85 
 
 spiritual height which raised them far above the 
 rest of the ancient world, they saw the rise and fall 
 of other nations, long before it was visible to those 
 nations themselves. "They were the first in all 
 ' antiquity," it has been well said*, " to perceive 
 ' that the old East was dead ; they celebrated its 
 ' obsequies, in advance of the dissolution which 
 ' they saw to be inevitable." They were, as Dean 
 Milman * has finely expressed it, the " great Tragic 
 'Chorus of the awful drama that was unfolding 
 ' itself in the Eastern world. As each independ- 
 ' ent tribe or monarchy was swallowed up in the 
 ' universal empire of Assyria, the seers of Judah 
 ' watched the progress of the invader, and uttered 
 ' their sublime funeral anthems over the greatness 
 ' and prosperity of Moab and Ammon, Damascus 
 ' and Tyre." And in those funeral laments and 
 wide-reaching predictions we trace a foretaste of 
 that universal sympathy with nations outside the 
 chosen circle, — of that belief in an all-embracing 
 Providence, — which has now become part of the 
 belief of the highest intelligence of the world. 
 There may be many innocent questions about the 
 date, or about the interpretation of the Book of 
 Daniel, and of the Apocalypse. But there can be 
 no doubt that they contain the first germs of the 
 great idea of the succession of ages, of the con- 
 tinuous growth of empires and races under a law of 
 Divine Providence, the first sketch of the Education 
 
 ^ Quinet, Genie dcs Religions, p. 372. 
 *■ History of the Jews, i. 298.
 
 86 God spake by the Prophets. 
 
 of the world, and the first outline of the Philosophy 
 of nistory'^. 
 Messianic (2.) I pass to the second grand example of the 
 tions. predictive spirit of the Prophets. It was the dis- 
 tinguishing mark of the Jewish people that their 
 golden age was not in the past, but in the future ; 
 that their greatest Hero (as they deemed Him to 
 be) was not their founder, but their founder's latest 
 descendant. Their traditions, their fancies, their 
 glories, gathered round the head not of a chief, or 
 warrior, or sage that had been, but of a King, a 
 Deliverer, a Prophet who was to come. Of this 
 singular expectation the Prophets were, if not the 
 chief authors, at least the chief exponents. Some- 
 times He is named, sometimes He is unnamed ; 
 sometimes He is almost identified with some actual 
 Prince of the coming or the present generation ; 
 sometimes He recedes into the distant ages ^ But 
 again and again, at least in the later Prophetic 
 writings, the vista is closed by His person. His 
 character, His reign. And almost everywhere the 
 Prophetic spirit, in the delineation of His coming, 
 remains true to itself. He is to be a King, a Con- 
 queror, yet not by the common weapons of earthly 
 warfare, but by those only weapons which the Pro- 
 phetic order recognised — by justice >, mercy, truth, 
 and goodness, — by suffering, by endurance, by iden- 
 
 " Sec Liicko on St. John, iv. 156. 
 " See Ewald, iii. 360—363. 
 
 y Ps. xlv. 4, Ixxii. 11—14; Isa. xl. 1—9, liii. 1—9; Jcr. 
 xxiii. 5, 6.
 
 God spake hy the Prophets. 87 
 
 tification of Himself with the joys, the suffenngs 
 of His nation, by opening a wider sympathy to the 
 whole human race than had ever been opened be- 
 fore. That this expectation, however explained, 
 existed in a greater or less degree amongst the 
 Prophets, is not doubted by any theologians of any 
 school whatever. It is no matter of controversy. 
 It is a simple and universally recognised fact, — 
 that, filled with these Prophetic images, the whole 
 Jewish nation — nay, at last the whole Eastern 
 world — did look forward with longing expectation 
 to the coming of this future Conqueror. Was this 
 unparalleled expectation realized ? And here again 
 I speak only of facts which are acknowledged by 
 Germans and Frenchmen, no less than by English- 
 men, by critics and by sceptics, even more fully 
 than by theologians and ecclesiastics. There did 
 arise out of this nation a Character by universal 
 consent as unparalleled as the expectation which 
 had preceded Ilim. Jesus of Nazareth was, on the 
 most superficial no less than on the deepest view 
 we take of His coming, the greatest name, the most 
 extraordinary power, tliat has ever crossed the stage 
 of History. And this greatness consisted not in 
 outward power, but precisely in those qualities in 
 which from first to last the Prophetic order had 
 laid the utmost stress — justice and love, goodness 
 and truth. 
 
 I jDush this argument no further. Its force is 
 weakened the moment we introduce into it any 
 controverted detail. The fact which arrests our
 
 88 God spake by tJie Projjliets. 
 
 attention is, that side by side with this great ex- 
 pectation, appears the great cUmax to which the 
 whole History leads up. It is a proof, if anything 
 can be a proof, of a unity of design in the education 
 of the Jews, in the history of the world. It is a 
 proof that the events of the Christian Dispensation 
 were planted on the very centre of human hopes 
 and fears. It is a proof that the noblest hopes and 
 aspirations that were ever breathed, were not dis- 
 appointed ; and that when " God spake by the Pro- 
 phets" of the coming Christ, He spake of that 
 which in His own good time He was certain to 
 bring to pass. 
 
 (3.) There is one further class of predictions in 
 which the Prophetic writings abound, and whicli 
 still more directly connects itself with their general 
 spirit, and of which the predictions I have already 
 noticed are only a part — the Future, as a ground 
 of consolation to the Church, to individuals, to the 
 human race. It is this which gives to the Bible at 
 large that hopeful, victorious, triumphant character, 
 which distinguishes it from the morose, querulous, 
 naiTOw, desponding spirit of so much false rehgion, 
 ancient and modern. The Poioer of the Future. — 
 This is the fulcrum by which they kept up the 
 hopes of their country, and on its support we can 
 rest as well as they. 
 Tredic- The Futurc of the Church. — I need not repeat 
 
 tioiis 
 
 of the those glorious predictions which arc familiar to all. 
 But their spirit is applicable now as well as then. 
 Although, in this sense, we prophesy and predict,
 
 God spake by the Prophets. 89 
 
 as it were, at second-hand from them, yet our anti- 
 cipations are so much the more certain, as they are 
 justified and confirmed by the experience, which the 
 Prophets iiad not, of two thousand years ago. We 
 may be depressed by this or that faihu*e of good 
 projects, of lofty aspirations. But the Prophets and 
 the Bible bid us look onward. The world, they tell 
 us, as a whole tends forwards and not backwards. 
 The losses and backslidings of this generation, if so 
 be, will be repaired in the advance of the next. 
 " To one far off Divine event," slowly it may be 
 and uncertainly, but still steadily onwards, " the 
 •' whole creation moves." Work on in faith, in 
 hope, in confidence ; the future of the Church, the 
 future of each particular society in which our lot is 
 cast, is a solid basis of cheerful perseverance. The 
 very ignorance of the true spirit of the Bible of 
 which we complain, is the best pledge of its bound- 
 less resources for the future. The doctrines, the 
 precepts, the institutions, which as yet lie unde- 
 veloped, far exceed in richness, in power, those 
 that have been used out or been fully applied. 
 
 The Future of the Individual. — Have we evcrPmiic- 
 thought of the immense stress laid by the Prophets individut 
 on this mighty thought? What is the sentence 
 with which the Church of England opens its morn- 
 ing and evening service, but a Prophecy, a Predic- 
 tion, of the utmost importance to every human 
 soul? "When tlie wicked man shall turn away 
 " from his wickedness, and doeth that wdiich is law- 
 " ful and right, /^ 6' shall save his soul alive.'''' So
 
 90 Ood spake by the Projjhets. 
 
 spoke Ezekiel^, advancing beyond the limits of the 
 Mosaic law. So spoke no less Isaiah and Micah : 
 " Though your sins be as scarlet, they shall be as 
 '' white as snow^." " He will turn again ; He will 
 '' have compassion upon us. He will subdue our 
 " iniquities. Thou wilt cast all their sins into the 
 " depths of the sea^." So spoke, in still more en- 
 dearing accents, the Prophet of Prophets, Jesus 
 Christ Himself, when He uttered His world-wide 
 invitation, " Him that cometh to Me, I will in 
 " no wise cast out." " Her sins which are many 
 " are forgiven.'* " Go and sin no more." The 
 Future is everything to us, the Past is nothing. 
 The turn, the change, the fixing our faces in the 
 right, instead of the wrong direction — this is the 
 difficulty — this is the turning-point — this is the 
 crisis of life. But that once done, the Future is 
 clear before us. The despondency of the human 
 heart, the timidity or the austerity of Churches or 
 of sects, may refuse this great Prophetic absolution ; 
 may cling to penances and regrets for the past ; 
 may shrink from the glad tidings that the good 
 deeds of the Future can blot out the sorrows and 
 the sins of the Past. But the whole. Prophetic 
 teaching of the Old and New Testament has staked 
 itself on the issue ; it hazards the bold prediction 
 that all will be well when once we have turned ; it 
 bids us go courageously forward, in the strength 
 of the Spirit of God, in the power of the life of 
 Christ. 
 
 ^ Ezck. xviii. 27. " Isa. i. 18. ^ Micah vii. 19.
 
 God spake by the Prophets^ 91 
 
 There is yet one more Future, — a future which Predic- 
 
 ^ 1 tionsof 
 
 to the Prophets of old was almost shut out, but a Futuro 
 which it is the glory of the Prophets of the New 
 Dispensation to have predicted to us with unshaken 
 certainty, — the Future hfe. In this respect, the 
 predictions of the latest of the Prophets far tran- 
 scend those which went before. The heathen phi- 
 losophers were content with guesses on the immortal 
 future of the soul. The elder Hebrew Prophets 
 were content, for the most part, with the conscious- 
 ness of the Divine support in this life and through 
 the terrors of death, but did not venture to look 
 further. But the Christian Prophets, gathering up 
 the last hopes of the Jewish Church into the first 
 hopes of the Christian Cimrch, throw themselves 
 boldly on the undiscovered world beyond the grave, 
 and foretell that there the wishes and fears of this 
 world would find their true accomplishment. To 
 this Prediction so confident, yet so strange at the 
 time, the intelligence no less than the devotion of 
 mankind has in the course of ages come round. 
 Powerful minds, which have rejected much beside 
 in the teaching of the Bible, have claimed as their 
 own this last expectation of the simple Prophetic 
 school, which founded its hopes on the events of 
 that first Easter- day, that first day of the week, 
 *' when life and immortality were brought to light." 
 And it is a prediction which shares the character of 
 all the other truly Prophetic utterances ; in that it 
 directly bears on the present state of being. Even 
 without dwelUng on the special doctrine of judg-
 
 92 God spake by the Prophets. 
 
 ment and retribution, the mere fact of the stress 
 laid by the Prophets on the certainty of the Future 
 is full of instruction, hardly perhaps enough borne 
 in mind. Look forwards, we sometimes say, a few 
 days or a few months, and how differently will all 
 things seem. Yes : but look forwards a few more 
 years, and how yet more differently will all things 
 seem. From the height of that Future, to which 
 on the wings of the ancient Prophetic belief we 
 can transport ourselves, look back on the present. 
 Think of our pleasures, as they will seem to us then. 
 Think of our troubles, as they will seem when we 
 know their end. Think of those good thoughts and 
 deeds which alone will survive in that unknown 
 world. Think of our controversies, as they will 
 appear, when we shall be forced to sit down at the 
 feast with those whom we have known only as 
 opponents here, but whom we must recognise as 
 companions there. To that Future of Futures 
 which shall fulfil the yearnings of all that the 
 Prophets have desired on earth, it is for us, 
 wherever we are, to look onwards, upwards, and 
 forwards, through Jesus Christ, the same yes- 
 terday and for ever.
 
 SEEMON III. 
 
 ^od Imtit swollen h^ gis $o\x. 
 
 PREACHED IN CHRIST CHURCH CATHEDRAL, 
 
 ON THE NINETEENTH SUNDAY AFTER TRINITY, 
 October 26, 1862.
 
 SERMON III. 
 
 HEBREWS i. 1, 2. 
 
 God .... hath in these last days spo/cen unto us by 
 His Son. 
 
 nnHIS is the concluding portion of that great text 
 — that fullest definition that the Bible contains 
 of its own Revelation — on which I have twice before 
 addressed you. In my first Sermon, I pointed out 
 the " sundry times and divers manners," the gradual, 
 partial, progressive character of the whole Revela- 
 tion. In my second, I dwelt on the special point 
 on which the Revelation of the Old Testament was 
 concentrated, namely, " God spake by the Pro- 
 " phets." In this, my last and concluding Ser- 
 mon, I have to dwell on the special point on which 
 the Revelation of the New Testament is concen- 
 trated. " God hath in these last days spoken to 
 " us 'in' His Son." 
 
 I have often dwelt on the necessity of preserving 
 the due proportion of faith. Almost all heresies, 
 extravagancies, and eccentricities in religion, have 
 (as the very words imply) arisen from their wander- 
 ing outside the orbit, away from the centre to some 
 narrow or insignificant point of their own choice 
 or fancy, which, neglectful of the essential features 
 of the world, the Church, and the Bible, has been
 
 96 God hath spoken by His Son. 
 
 pushed into undue celebrity and importance. The 
 task of rightly selecting the chief doctrine of our 
 .faith or of our theology is like the selection of the 
 site for a capital city. You have seen, it may be, 
 a vast plain, with a noble river, on the banks of 
 which a splendid city might have grown and spread, 
 and sent forth its merchandize and its armies ; and 
 you see instead, that it has, from some caprice of its 
 founder, been planted on a corner of a small stream, 
 where it cannot expand, and where its growth is 
 destructive to its health, its beauty, its usefulness. 
 Or you may have seen it fixed, by another caprice, 
 in the centre of a country, without water, without 
 verdure, without hills ; the nominal centre, but with 
 nothing central except the name ; a drain, an in- 
 cubus on the national life, and not its heart or its 
 head. Such have been many of the capital doctrines 
 of later theological systems ; true or half true in 
 themselves, but deprived of their own vitality, and 
 depriving other truths of their vitality, by assuming 
 a prominence for which they had no natural fitness. 
 But such was not the proportion of doctrine 
 either in the Bible or in the ancient Church. 
 The Revc- The Central doctrine of the New Testament was — 
 Christ the iudccd it could hardly be otherwise — that w hich is 
 
 doctrine of briefly expressed in the text, "God spoke by His 
 the Bible. ., g^^ „ jjg gp^l^g^ ^^ ^^^^^^ Ijy ^l^g Prophets of 
 
 old : this I set forth when last I spoke to you. But 
 put the Prophets, put the Hebrew Scriptures, as 
 high as we will, they are not the last, they are not 
 the clearest, they are not the most perfect, expres-
 
 God hath spohen h-j His Son. 97 
 
 sions of the Divine will. To me indeed, (if I may- 
 speak for a moment of myself,) the history of the 
 Jewish Church has an interest so intense, a value 
 so enormous, that I could fain adopt any expression, 
 however fervent, of veneration for the ancient Scrip- 
 tures which contain it. But this veneration ought 
 not to blind us to the fact that the Old Testament 
 is not, and cannot be, equal to the New. " God 
 spake by His Son" in a sense far more divine than 
 even by Moses, or David, or Isaiah. To attack the 
 New Testament through the sides of the Old, or 
 to defend the Old Testament by making the New 
 Testament identical with it, are courses not only 
 unwarrantable in themselves, but directly contrary 
 to the repeated declarations of the Bible, that there 
 is a paramount and unapproachable superiority in 
 the Revelation of God in Jesus Christ, above every 
 other that He has ever vouchsafed to man. 
 
 And not only is this important in the comparison 
 of the whole Christian dispensation with that of the 
 ancient covenant ; it is also important in adjusting 
 the value of the different parts of the Christian Re- 
 velation with each other. Here again I may con- 
 fidently re-assert the delight, which none can feel 
 more strongly than I do, in the history of the Apo- 
 stolic Age, and in the Epistles of the great Apostle 
 of the Gentiles. But even these, by the same un- 
 erring test, are not the culminating points of the 
 Christian Revelation. We are not told that " God 
 " in these last days spoke to us" by Paul or 
 Cephas, or even John — not even by Apostles or 
 
 H
 
 98 God hath spoken by His Son. 
 
 by Apostolic Churches — but " by His Son." The 
 Acts and the Epistles are the applications, the 
 manifestations of the Gospel. But the " Gospel" 
 itself, which controls and guides all the rest — "the 
 " Gospel," \\hich is fitly chosen as the very name of 
 our religion, is contained, as the word itself implies, 
 in the Four Gospels — the record of the life and 
 teaching of Him who is not only the Founder of 
 our Religion, but is our Religion itself. The Gospel 
 of St, John, as it is the end in point of time, so it 
 is the climax in point of importance of the whole 
 written Word of God. 
 The incar- As it is in the doctrines of the Bible, so it is, 
 
 nation the 
 
 central froui auothcr point of view, in the doctrines of the 
 
 GoctriiiG 
 
 ofihe early early Churcli. In later ages of the Church, dif- 
 ferent truths or forms of Christianity have assumed 
 the place of cardinal interest. Predestination, the 
 mode of Justification, the Sacrament of the Eucha- 
 rist, the independence of the State or the independ- 
 ence of the clergy, the supremacy or the inspiration 
 of the Bible — each of these in turn has been re- 
 garded as the article of a falling or a standing 
 Church. But not one of these has taken that place, 
 not one of them is even named, in the early Creeds. 
 The one truth around which those Creeds all ga- 
 ther, is the Incarnation. It is so in the Apostles' 
 Creed ; it is so in the Nicene Creed ; it is so, 
 although not quite so exclusively, in the Athanasian 
 Creed. Pay as much or as little attention as we 
 will to tlie languaire in whicli that doctrine was 
 couched, still all must acknowledge that it holds
 
 God hath spoken by His Son. '99 
 
 the chief place. The great moral doctrines of 
 the Gospel are of course above every theological 
 statement whatever. But to elevate any theolo- 
 gical doctrine into equality or superiority to the 
 doctrine of the Incarnation — to represent any of 
 the doctrines just named, however important, as 
 essential parts of the Creed of Christendom — is to 
 run directly counter to the language of the first 
 four General Councils, and to the whole genius of 
 the Catholic Faith and the Catholic Church, 
 
 Such being the case, I proceed to ask, in all 
 reverence, why this is so? What are the points 
 which make it fitting and natural, and full of in- 
 struction, that the most perfect Revelation of God 
 should be that which is contained in His Son 
 Jesus Christ ? I do not profess to exhaust this 
 great subject. I do not profess to defend, or to 
 establish the doctrine. I take it as it stands in 
 the Bible and in the Creeds ; and I ask you to 
 consider the meaning of this striking and incon- 
 trovertible selection of the Incarnation, as the 
 central truth of the Bible. 
 
 " God has spoken in His /So?i." The final Re- 
 velation of God is in the Person and Character of 
 Jesus Christ. This is the statement of the text. 
 What is its paramount significance and import- 
 ance ? What are its relations to the rest of our 
 Christian belief? 
 
 1. First, the study of the Person, the Mind ofTheCba- 
 Christ, is thus by the very force of the terms, the Christ the 
 foundation of all Christian "theology" properly so of^God.^"" 
 
 H 2
 
 ICO God hath ftpoke?! by His Son. 
 
 called — that which tells of the nature of God. We 
 want to know what is the voice of God. The 
 Bible answers, " It is the voice of Christ." I am 
 not going to re-open those questions of late debated 
 amongst us with so much zeal, and so much ability 
 on both sides, as to the possibility of the finite 
 comprehending the Infinite. But put the ques- 
 tion as we like, it is certain that, on the one hand, 
 we all of us, philosophers and simple men alike, 
 have a vast difficulty in conceiving and analyzing 
 the attributes and the nature of God. On the 
 other hand, it is certain that, whatever answer 
 philosophy may make to the question, the answer 
 which the Bible makes is this : It states the diffi- 
 culty as broadly as the most inveterate sceptic or 
 dogmatist would desire: " No man hath seen God 
 at any time." But it adds, " The only-begotten 
 Son which is in the bosom of the Father, He hath 
 declared Him." That is, in effect, — If we wish to 
 know, if we are in perplexity to know, what are 
 the essential characteristics of the Divine nature, 
 look at the life and character of Christ. Whatever 
 is the most vital part of His Character, is the most 
 vital part of the Nature of God. By seeing, as we 
 must see, that the most vital part is the moral cha- 
 racter, — the Will, the Wisdom, the Love, the Jus- 
 tice, the Compassion, the Forbearance, — we learn 
 beyond any matter of doubt, that these, according 
 to the Bible, give the best conception we can form 
 of the Divine Mind itself. These attributes of 
 Christ carried to the highest pitch are, if the Bible
 
 God hath spoken by Ilia Son. 101 
 
 and the Creeds speak true, of the very essence of 
 Divinity. In adoring these, in adoring Him, we 
 acknowledge that God is, above all other thoughts 
 that we can have concerning Him, a moral Being. 
 In this way it is that, according to the profound 
 remark of a late lamented theologian, one grand 
 result of the Nicene decision was the re-assertion 
 of the Moral character, of the Moral perfection, 
 of the Divine Nature. By these Christ-like, and 
 therefore God-like qualities, by these if by any 
 means whatever, we, weak and erring as we are, 
 far more than by power, or wisdom, or costly offer- 
 ings, or splendid rites, or correct belief, are enabled 
 to hold communion with the Father of Spirits, who 
 thus alone by us can be imagined or approached. 
 In this way we are allowed to see that He is not 
 a mere abstraction or general law, but that He, 
 even as we see Him in His Son, is One whom we 
 can love, and who can love and has loved us, even 
 as we can love Christ, and as Christ has loved us. 
 Christ is our Example. But He is much more than 
 our Example. The whole spirit of His appearance 
 is even more fully designed to shew us what God 
 is, than to teach us what man ought to be. But 
 we must not divide the two Natures ; as though 
 here we could trace a fragment of His Divinity, 
 and there a fragment of His Humanity. The per- 
 fect Divinity is seen only through the perfect Hu- 
 manity. He is one Christ, not two Christs. The 
 more fearlessly we explore the depths of His ex- 
 ample as the likeness of man, the more complete
 
 102 Gad hath sjjoktn hij Ills Son. 
 
 will be our knowledge of His revelation of the 
 Mind of CTod'\ It is one of the best of the dying 
 
 ^ "If our minds were but competent adequately to expand 
 " the idea included in that one word, God, we should need no- 
 " thing further, except consciousness of our own honest pur- 
 " pose, to set us at ease for time as well as eternity. But the 
 " Sacred Volume contains this expansion. In every part, but 
 " above all in the Four Gospels, it unfolds Deiit. It shews us 
 " Him, who dwelleth in the light which no man can approach 
 " unto, condescending to provide for the minutest of our wants, 
 " directing, guarding and assisting us, each hour and moment, 
 •' with an infinitely more vigilant and exquisite care than our 
 " own utmost self-love can ever attain to. In order to perceive 
 " the glory and appreciate the excellence of our Redeemer, we 
 " must see Him in His own light and estimate Him by the 
 " standard He has Himself afforded. We must take His own 
 " account of the motives which engaged Him to assume our flesh 
 " and to tabernacle amongst us. In His Divine discourses He 
 " has made both His design and Himself known to us. We 
 " can be wise therefore only by receiving this instruction ; and 
 " happy only by improving this acquaintance. lu thus appeal- 
 " iug to our Redeemer Himself, it is far from my thought to 
 " question either the authority or the satisfactoriness of the 
 " apostolic doctrine. This also affords us invaluable instruction 
 " and infallible guidance. But it supposes, not supersedes, the 
 " immediate lessons of Incarnate Godhead. These have an in- 
 " communicable pre-eminence over all which was ever deliver- 
 " ed ; inasmuch as to Him, who spoke, God gave not the Spirit, 
 " as He is intimated to give Himself in every other instance, by 
 " measure. Let us then, as we are most bounden, be ever 
 " mindful of what has been written for our learning, by the 
 " Apostles of our Lord and Saviour; but still, let it be our 
 " highest and holiest care to sit, as it were, with Mary at the 
 " feet of Him who spake as never man spake. Except we 
 " hearken to His gracious words, we cannot be certain that we 
 " are His disciples indeed ; nor can we estimate what we lose, 
 " in so relying on the purest and highest streams as to draw 
 " less assiduously and less profoundly from the fountain."' — 
 Bemains of Alexander Knox, pp. 262, 835, 336; quoted in
 
 God hath spoken by Uis Son. 103 
 
 aft 
 
 speeches of a well-known French pastor, — " The 
 " more Jesus Christ is God, the more is He man ; 
 "and the more He is man, the more is He God^." 
 Paradoxical as tliis is in form, it is true in spirit. 
 There is nothing in the Gospel history more divine 
 than the Agony of Gethsemane or the Crucifixion 
 on Calvary. In those depths of humiliation we 
 can catch a likeness of the Divine glory which we 
 miss even on the Mount of Transfiguration, or the 
 Ascension from Olivet. In this sense the Incarna- 
 tion is the last and crowning sanction of the first 
 truth of the Bible, "In the image of God made 
 " He man." It is the most complete declaration to 
 the human race that in the mind and heart of man 
 is the nearest approach that can be made to the 
 nature of God. Whereas the Greek philosophers, 
 it has been well said, included the Divinity in the 
 knowledge of the natural world, it was reserved for 
 the Christian revelation to shev/, that though in 
 a physical or metaphysical point of view God is 
 all but inaccessible, He reveals Himself to us as 
 a part of our knowledge of man ; as in other parts 
 of the Bible, so especially and chiefly in this grand 
 truth of the Incarnation, that as man alone He is 
 to be known, or is in any way comprehensible. 
 
 2. Into how many directions does this thought The works 
 of the entire unity of God and Christ extend light the Keve- 
 
 hition of 
 Dr. Ogilvie's Bam2)to)i Lectures, p. 230. 1 have uot dwelt God, 
 on the E-evelation of God in the words of Cluibt, because I 
 have spoken at length on this subject elsewhere, in my Ser- 
 mons on " The Unity of Evangelical and Apostolical Teaching." 
 •^ Adolphe Monod's Farewells, p. 146.
 
 104 God hath spoken by His Son. 
 
 and consolation ! When we waver in our tlioucrlits 
 of what God is and of what He would have us 
 do, what this or that event is intended to teach us, 
 let us turn to the life of Christ. There we are 
 intended to see — there we do see — what God wills 
 for us, what He wishes for us, how He deals with 
 us. The mighty works of Christ are, as He Him- 
 self tells us, not His own works, but the works 
 of His Father: — "My Father worketh hitherto, 
 " and I work." 
 
 And not merely the more general character of 
 God, but even His more special attributes, appear 
 in the character of Christ. " Full of Grace and 
 " Truth." Many have been the feelings and acts 
 in which men have believed that God would take 
 pleasure ; many are the feelings and acts in which 
 He does take pleasure. But the two acts, the two 
 states, which above all other states bring us near 
 to Him, are those two which above all others were 
 seen in the character of Christ — Grace, that is, love, 
 sympathy, eagerness to shew favour, forgiveness, 
 mercy ; Truth, that is, truthfulness, sincerity, reality, 
 justice. In Christ was the most gracious tenderness ; 
 in Christ was the most fearless truth. And what 
 there was in Him, that we may be sure there must 
 be in God, and in those in whom God delights. 
 
 These two were united in the character of Christ, 
 and they were united in the work of Christ. In the 
 work of His redemption, from first to last, these 
 two qualities stand conspicuous. And as they are 
 conspicuous in Him, so they are in God. In this
 
 God hath spoken hy Ills Son. 105 
 
 great act it is most emphatically true that Christ 
 and the Father are one. We may not confound the 
 Persons, but neither may we divide the Substance. 
 It may have been natural for our great Arian poet, 
 in that striking but fantastic passage in the " Para- 
 " dise Lost," by which so much of our popular 
 theology is coloured, to represent the Father and 
 the Son as in sharp conflict with each other, the 
 one as the Source of stern justice, the other as the 
 opposing Source of mercy and love. But such is 
 not the doctrine of the Bible or of the Church. 
 In the Sacrifice of Christ we see, if one may so 
 say, the Sacrifice of God Himself. In the Love of 
 Christ we see the Love of God ; the Truth of God 
 is shewn to us in the Truth of Christ. Christ 
 forgives us because God forgives us ; God forgives 
 us because Christ forgives us. God, not apart 
 from Christ, or against Christ, but " God i/i Christ" 
 "has forgiven us;" "God in Christ was reconcil- 
 es ing'^" (such is the absolutely uniform language of 
 Scripture) "the world to Himself:" not Hhnself 
 to Himself, as if estranged from us, nor to the 
 world, as though He hated us, but " the world to 
 " Himself," as estranged by sin from Him. In that 
 great Parable in which our Blessed Lord has set 
 forth the mystery of redemption, it is the Father 
 who draws near to meet the returning prodigal. 
 Christ, in drawing all men near to Himself, draws 
 them through Himself to the Father. 
 
 3. Thirdly, it is through the Character and 
 <= Eph. iv. 32, eV X/jio-rw. ^ 2 Cor. v. 19.
 
 106 God hath spoken by His Son. 
 
 Theciia- the Pcrson of Christ that all the facts and doctrines 
 Christ the respecting Ilim receive their true meaning. " God 
 tionoTnis " speaks to us" not in any statement respecting His 
 words and g^^^^ howcver important, not in any work of His 
 Son, however vast, but " in His Son" Himself. His 
 words are great. His acts are great, but He Himself 
 is greater than either. I will take two instances to 
 explain my meaning, — His death and His resurrec- 
 tion. I take them, not for the sake (God forbid !) 
 of reviving any of the disputes which have been , 
 raised concerning them, but in the humble hope 
 that by recalling to our minds the true doctrine of 
 the Bible and of the early Church, we may be able 
 to join hands across the yawning rents which are 
 now tending to divide one from the other those 
 who are really agreed. There are many w^ays, no 
 doubt, of approaching these subjects ; but the best 
 and simplest way is to approach them through the 
 study of the character of Him who is Himself the 
 Way, the Truth, and the Life. Most admirably 
 has this been expressed in the famous allegory, 
 where the Pilgrim casts off his burden at the foot 
 of the Cross, and at the mouth of the Sepulchre : — 
 
 " Blest Cross ! blest Sepulchre ! 131est rather be 
 The Man that there Avas put to shame for me." 
 
 "Blest Cross." Yes, — blessed Death ! blessed in 
 its history, in its effects, in its consolations, in its 
 warnings. "Blest Sepulchre." Yes, — blessed Grave! 
 which by shewing the victory of Christ over death, 
 brought life and immortality to light, and declared 
 Him to be the Son of God with power. Blessed
 
 God hath spoke)) by His So)i. 107 
 
 Resurrection, the glory of Easter-day, the joy of 
 the Christian Sunday, the hope of the Christian in 
 life and in death. 
 
 But more blessed even than His Cross — more 
 blessed even than His Resurrection — more blessed 
 because it is that from which each of those great 
 events and doctrines derive their force and mean- 
 ing, is He Himself. Take away what we know of ofHis 
 the character and life of Christ, and His crucifixion 
 would become a mere exhibition of pain and suf- 
 fering. It would be what it is in the religion of 
 Mahomet, an execution but not a Sacrifice, because 
 it would be without that Sacrifice of heart and will 
 in which alone the God of Revelation has declared 
 Himself to be well pleased. It is, as Anselm well ob- 
 served, the Life and the Obedience which constitutes 
 the merit of the Offering and the excellence of the 
 Satisfaction. It is from the Life which culminated 
 in the death that the Death derives its virtue. It 
 is from the long Sacrifice of Nazareth and Caper- 
 naum that the one supreme Sacrifice on Calvary 
 receives its living savour. It is by seeing the Eter- 
 nal Spirit of His mind as He was before, that we 
 are able to understand what He was then. It is 
 not from the side of the Atonement that we should 
 approach the Incarnation, but from the side of the 
 Incarnation that wc should approach the Atone- 
 ment. It is not by any single act, but by all the 
 acts of His life, from " His holy Nativity" up to 
 "His glorious Ascension," that "our good Lord 
 *' has delivered us."
 
 108 God hath spoken by His Son. 
 
 Of His Re- And not the less is this true of the ResuiTection. 
 ' Take it as a mere miracle or wonder, it is barren of 
 results, it is difficult of proof, it is inferior to many 
 wonders recorded in our own or in other religions. 
 But take it as the close — the natural close, if one may 
 so say — of the Life and Death which preceded it, and 
 then, even whilst we may acknowledge its difficul- 
 ties, we shall see its meaning ; we shall see in it the 
 pledge, not merely of one single Divine Immortality, 
 not merely of the immortality of the human soul in 
 general, but of the immortality of that w^hich it most 
 concerns us to know to be immortal, the eternal, 
 victorious, undying strength of that Wisdom, Good- 
 ness, Truth, and boundless Love, which though de- 
 spised and rejected of men, though crucified and 
 dead and buried, could not be holden by the bands 
 of death, but rose again to give to His Church and 
 His religion that cheerful, triumphant, victorious 
 hope, of itself the best proof and the best explana- 
 tion of the Resurrection itself " Christ is risen," 
 — so we thankfully repeat from the Bible. " God 
 " of God, Light of Light, Very God of Very God," 
 ■ — so we proudly repeat from the Creed. O my 
 brethren, think of what these or like words meant 
 in the mouths of the first Apostles ! They could 
 not divide their belief in Christ's Resurrection from 
 their belief that we too must rise again to that 
 divine life which had been manifested in Him. 
 They could not divide their belief that He was the 
 Son of God from their belief that they were bound 
 to follow Him in life and in death as His devoted
 
 God hath spoken by His Son. 109 
 
 servants. The energy, the vitality, the courage of the 
 early Christian Church was the living witness of 
 the power and the truth of Christ's Resurrection. 
 Our assurance, our unshaken confidence that the 
 mind and spirit of Christ is identical with all that 
 is most generous, most comprehensive, most free, 
 most progressive, is at once the surest pledge of 
 His divinity and the firmest support to those who 
 are involved in the struggles of the present age ; 
 because we thus know that He who is our Lord 
 and Master, has not been left behind us in the past, 
 but has gone before us, and is still going before us 
 in the Future. 
 
 4. This brin2;s me to a further class of thoudits The Reve- 
 suggested by this subject. " God in these last days chmt in 
 " spake by His Son." "In these last days:" the days! 
 sacred writer describes the event as though there 
 were something peculiarly appropriate in the reve- 
 lation of God in Christ coming " at that edge and 
 "verge of time," (so the words more exactly express 
 it). We know that this was so then. But it is so 
 still. " In these last days." On that edge and ex- 
 tremity of the ages, in which we stand in this gene- 
 ration, there is, it seems to me, an even greater 
 force than when they were first uttered, in the words 
 " God speaks to us in His Son." There are no 
 doubt many voices of God in the world, many 
 voices of God in the Bible, and "none of them," 
 as the Apostle says, "is without signification." 
 But, if there be any which can hope to make itself 
 heard above the questionings and distractions of this
 
 110 God hath spoken by His Son. 
 
 tumultuous time, it is the voice of God in His Son 
 — in the character and spirit of Jesus Christ. Tor, 
 first, amidst all the shocks and changes of belief, 
 this is the one part of our religion which not only 
 has undergone least attack, but has actually grown 
 in its hold on the understanding and affections 
 of mankind. We are alarmed at the advance of 
 negative theology, and the like. No one who has 
 touched these questions at all can be free from 
 anxiety. But it is precisely this stronghold of our 
 faith that is declared even from those very quarters 
 to be not only unassailed, but unassailable. I quote 
 the words of no advocate of received opinions, of 
 no English ecclesiastic, but of one whose name has 
 become a byword for destructive criticism. " Is 
 " it possible," he asks, "for the character of Christ 
 ** ever to be superseded ? Is it possible to expect 
 " a further and more perfect manifestation of re- 
 " ligion, as w^e may expect a further and more 
 " perfect manifestation of art, of science, or of 
 " philosophy?" "No," he answers, wdth a clear- 
 ness to which his critical turn of mind gives 
 an almost unexampled emphasis, — " No, it is not 
 ' possible. The unity which existed in the mind 
 ' of Christ between the divine and human is such, 
 ' that never through all time can any religious 
 ' development rise above it, in spite of all the ad- 
 ' vances of art, science, or knowledge. And never 
 ' cither, in our days or in the remotest future, 
 ' can any religious progress hope to rival the 
 * gigantic step which humanity made through the
 
 God hath spoken by His Son. Ill 
 
 " revolution effected by Christ. Never before or 
 " since has the unity of God and man been mani- 
 *' fested in a character so supreme, in a power so 
 " creative, as thus to penetrate and transfigure 
 " a whole life, uniformly and without the slightest 
 " appreciable perturbation ^" "As little as mankind 
 " will ever be without religion, so little will they 
 ** ever be without Christ : an historical, not a my- 
 " thical Christ ; an individual, not a mere symbol. 
 " Christ remains to us: He remains to us as the 
 " highest we know and are capable of imagining 
 " within the sphere of religion ; as He, without 
 " whose presence in the mind perfect piety is im- 
 " possible. In Him w« do still possess the sum 
 " and substance of the Christian faith V These 
 remarkable words, even if they do not concede, 
 
 * Strauss's Life of Christ, vol. ii. § 49, 3rd edit. It is re- 
 markable that iu Dr. Mill's well-knowu work ou Pantheism, (p. 
 104,) he gives at length, as though it were Strauss's own senti- 
 ment, the objection that Christianity might possibly be repre- 
 sented by a new religion. It is this objection that Strauss 
 proceeds to answer in the passage whicli I have cited iu a 
 somewhat condensed form, but which Dr. Mill has unfor- 
 tunately given in such a disjointed form as to be hardly re- 
 cognisable. I have ventured to notice (with all respect for so 
 learned and excellent a divine) this misapprehension, as an in- 
 stance of the oversights which can be induced even iu a pious 
 controversialist by the desire to make the opponent say that 
 which it is supposed that he must say. 
 
 It may be that such a reference as is here made to the pas- 
 sage in question is open to misconstruction. But I am satisfied 
 that to welcome unreservedly these indications of agreement 
 wherever found is in strict conformity with the sound dictates 
 of Christian cliarity and Christian wisdom. 
 
 ' Strauss, Soliloquies, 67.
 
 113 God hath spoken by His Son. 
 
 as yet surely they do, an immense vantage-ground, 
 from which alone we might almost hope to win back 
 the greater part of the outward history, which their 
 author thought that he had wrested from us, are at 
 least a testimony of the most undeniable kind to the 
 power, the perpetuity, the divinity of that which 
 after all is the keystone of the whole fabric. 
 
 And not only is this highest point of Christian 
 fact and doctrine the one which presents the firm- 
 est front to inquiry and speculation, but it is also 
 the one for which the thought of modern times 
 has achieved the most, in the way of just appre- 
 ciation and understanding. In the first four cen- 
 turies there was no doubt as strong, perhaps a 
 stronger, sense of the dogmatical or philosophic 
 truth of our Lord's Divine Nature. In the middle 
 ages there was as profound, perhaps a more pro- 
 found devotion to His Person. In the period of 
 the Reformation there may have been a deeper 
 sense of thankfulness for His work of redemption. 
 In the eighteenth century there may have been as 
 strong a sense of the complete impersonation of 
 human virtue in His acts and words. But I ven- 
 ture, without disparagement of previous ages, to 
 express a humble yet firm conviction that never 
 before our own age has there been so keen, so dis- 
 criminating a perception of the peculiarities (if I 
 may so speak), the essential, innermost, distinguish- 
 ing marks of the unapproached and unapproach- 
 able Character described to us in the Four Gospels. 
 We have not arrived at the end of it. Far from it.
 
 God hath spoken by His Son. 113 
 
 In the very fact of the large traits of His Ufe and 
 character which still remain unexplored, lies a 
 boundless hope for the future. But in the ad- 
 vances that have been made even within our own 
 generation in apprehending new yet eternal charac- 
 teristics of that Divine Mind, we may already feel 
 a confident hope for the present. We may feel that, 
 with all our shortcomings, we yet have been en- 
 abled, by penetrating deeper than heretofore into 
 the recesses of the mind of Christ, to penetrate 
 deeper into the presence of God. 
 
 Other ages dwelt exclusively on Bethlehem and 
 on Calvary. It has been reserved for this age to 
 fix its attention on the scenes which to ancient 
 pilgrims had but Httle or no interest — the Mount 
 of Olives and the Sea of Galilee ; the scenes, not 
 of a few hours or a few moments of our Blessed 
 Lord's appearance, but of those long days and 
 years which represent to us the whole Life, the 
 whole manifestation of the Word made flesh and 
 dwelling amongst us. O let us accept this slight 
 yet joyful omen ! O let us believe that in thus 
 reaching down below the surface to the foundation, 
 the corner-stone, of our religion, we have arrived, or 
 we shall arrive, at something deeper and wider and 
 truer than has ever been reached before — some- 
 thing which runs beneath and across the various 
 divisions of Christendom — something which, be- 
 cause it was common ground and not peculiar, 
 they have all hitherto suffered to go to neglect and 
 decay, but which now, in these last days, O may 
 
 I
 
 to us. 
 
 114 God hath spoken by His Son. 
 
 God grant that they may build up with all their 
 united efforts till it overtops and outshines all 
 besides ! 
 The Reve- One final word of the text. " God in these last 
 Christ " days speaks by His Son to us." Already the 
 author of that great Epistle was living in a genera- 
 tion which had not seen our Lord on earth ; and we 
 are further removed still. Yet still "to us," in 
 every generation — to us in our generation, no less is 
 this the one great message of God. The " Imitation 
 " of Christ :" this is the one book of devotion which 
 has won the affections of the whole of Christendom, 
 because it is the one subject which is identical with 
 Christianity itself. To be like Christ : this is the 
 one object which the whole New Testament im- 
 presses upon us. He who is not like Christ, how- 
 ever correct his belief, is not a Christian except in 
 name. He who is like Christ, amidst whatever dif- 
 ferences, is a Christian indeed and in truth. To 
 be one with Christ : this is a doctrine which we all 
 shrink from stating, which we all shrink from hear- 
 ing, because it appears to condemn us all alike. 
 But we can at least '' folloid" Him ; we can follow 
 at a distance ; we can set our faces in the direc- 
 tion to which His life and spirit point. When we 
 speak of coming to Christ, of apprehending Christ, 
 we can ask ourselves what those words mean ; and 
 we can remember that they mean an imitation of 
 that Divine Character, which embraces not merely 
 the commonplace virtues which are too vague or 
 too universal to be applicable, but graces some
 
 God hath spoken by His Son. 115 
 
 of which, at least, are so definite and distinct, 
 that we cannot mistake them. Constant exertion 
 for the good of others ; cheerfulness and unfaiHng 
 courage ; stedfast devotion to truth and to justice ; 
 to live in the world and yet above it ; toleration 
 even of those from whom there is the widest dif- 
 ference ; an absolute fusion of rehgion and moraUty ; 
 an absolute repose on the justice and the love of 
 God; a free and far-reaching acknowledgment of 
 all the facts of the world and of human nature, 
 combined with the loftiest ideal of heroic duty and 
 of heavenly holiness — these are some of the un- 
 mistakeable landmarks of the character of Christ 
 our Lord. If we cannot attain to them our- 
 selves, we can at least admire them in others. If 
 to be like Christ is too hard a task, let us at least 
 try to be like them in whom we can recognise any 
 or all of these graces. We have known such : we 
 have seen in them these unearthly gifts, which raise 
 them above the world whilst they are with us ; 
 which carry us with them to the other world when 
 they are taken from us. To be like them is (in a 
 measure) to be like Christ ; to be with Christ here- 
 after is to be with them ; and in that better world 
 which now seems so very far away, we may humbly 
 hope to be like Him, and like them, for we shall see 
 Him as He is. 
 
 f rinftb bij |ttissrs. "§\xxhr, Cornmarlid, ©vforb.
 
 ■^'' 
 
 -i