THE ORACLES OF GOD

Orforb
HORACE HART, PKINTEE TO THE UNIVERSITY

The Oracles of God.

NINE LECTURES ON THE
NATURE AND EXTENT OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION
AND ON THE
SFECIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
SCRIPTURES AT THE PRESENT TIME

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W. SANDAY, M.A., D.D., LL.D.
DEAN IRELAND'S PROFESSOR OF EXEGESIS;
FELLOW OF EXETER COLLEGE ; OXFORD PREACHER AT WHITEHALL

SECOND EDITION, REVISED

LONDON
LONGMANS, GREEN AND CO.
AND NEW YORK: 15 EAST i6th STREET
1891
\_All rights reserved']

Mev/47

NfO^

TO
MY FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES
Samuel IRollcs Brivec Cbomas IRellB Cbegne
2)avi& Samuel ^argolioutb
THIS LITTLE BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED
IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE
OF ALL THAT I OWE TO THEM IN THE PAST
AND IN CONFIDENT HOPE OF MORE
WHICH NOT ONLY I BUT MANY OTHERS WILL OWE TO THEM
IN THE FUTURE

Hoc erit pactum, quod feriam cum dome Israel
post dies illos, dicit Dominus : Dabo legem meam^ in
visceribus eorum, et in corde eorinn scribam eain :
et era eis in Deum, et ipsi erunt milii in populum.

PREFACE.
The duty of the Theological Professor appears
to be twofold : on the one hand to advance by aU
the means in his power the detailed study of the
subject committed to him, and on the other to do
what he can to help the public mind to clear Itself
in times of difficulty and perplexity. It is with some
reluctance and self-distrust that the writer of these
pages has turned away for the moment from the first
of these functions to take up the second. He does
not know how far the thoughts which have been
helpful to himself may be helpful also to others, and
he does not know how far he may be able to state
them acceptably. Still the call has seemed to come
to him, and he has obeyed it to the best of his
abiUty. Of the lectures which follow, the first six were
preached as a course at Whitehall on the mornings
and afternoons of three successive Sundays (July 27,
August 3 and 10), which, if report speaks true,
may prove to be the last on which the Chapel was
open. If that should be the case they would also
mark the close of a line of University preachers

viii PREFACE.

which has included many illustrious names. The
lectures were shortly afterwards repeated In Oxford
to some of the students who came up in con
nexion with the movement for University Extension :
a few alterations were made to adapt them to
this second purpose, and it was then that the notes
were added. The subject of Lecture VII had been
originally dealt with in one of these notes, but it
was felt that it required a fuller treatment. This,
therefore, with Lecture VIII, may be taken as sup
plementary to the original series. Lecture IX was
delivered to a different audience from the University
pulpit at St. Mary's. It should be said perhaps that
in the case of all the earlier discourses the audience
was of a very changing character : this involved a
certain amount of repetition which it was attempted
to reduce to as narrow limits as possible.
The lectures contain partly what the author wished
to say and partly what he was compelled to say as
the necessary set-off on the other side. Our age
needs above all something positive — not exactly, as
it is sometimes urged, positive teaching, or dogma,
for which it does not see the reasons, but positive
reasons, few, simple, and fundamental, which It can
apprehend for itself and on which it can take its
stand. Such reasonsj or some of them, it has been
the author's earnest desire to supply; and if in the
course of stating them he has had to put forward
the negative side of the question, it is only because
he was bound in candour not to give the one without

PREFACE. ix

the other. It will be very much in accordance with
his wishes if those to whom this is superfluous will
pass on at once to Lectures III or IV where the
positive argument begins.
The question was often asked at the Extension
Lectures what books could be recommended as
giving expression to the changed views of things here
contemplated. As a simple and popular survey of
the ground it did not seem easy to name a better
book than one which came into the author's hands
just as the lectures were being delivered. The Nature
and Method of Revelation, by Dr. G. P. Fisher,
Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the University
of Yale (New York, Scribners ; London, Fisher
Unwin). Rather less popular and more limited in its'
range, but full of weighty thought, is The Chief End
of Revelation, by Dr. A. B. Bruce (London, Hodder).
On a larger scale, going fully into the criticism of
the Old Testament, it was not possible to mention
anything In English, but two companion volumes
had recently appeared by a writer of singular sobriety
of judgment who in the truth-loving pursuit of
science never lost sight of the Interests of religion,
the posthumously published Einleitung in das Alte
Testament and Alttestamentliche Theologie of Dr.
Eduard Riehm, sometime Professor at Halle. It
is hoped, however, that the English reader may soon
be more immediately provided for by the promised
Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament
from the pen of Dr. Driver. A very comprehensive

X PREFACE.

and constructive little work, written in an admirable
spirit, by another Halle Professor, recently deceased,
Schlottmann's K ompendium der Bihlische^i Theologie
des Alten und Neuen Testaments, is being translated
by the Rev. A. Robertson, Principal of Bishop
Hatfield's Hall, Durham. Happily, although English
books written from a standpoint similar to this are
rare, for the central point of all we have an almost
ideal treatment in Dr. Driver's Isaiah (Nisbet),
backed as it is by Professor Cheyne's commentary.
It only remains to add that the author's old and
tried friend, Dr. Plummer, has done him the kind
ness to look over the proofs and help him with his
advice.

Marchfield, Oxford.
October 20, 1890.

PREFACE
TO THE SECOND EDITION.

In sending out a second edition of his little book
the author cannot refrain from expressing his sense
of the pains which have been taken by many, if not
quite by all, of those who differed from him as well
as of those who agreed with him, to deal justly and
more than justly with what he has written. He
could not have wished for a better or more faithful
reproduction of the leading features of his book
than has been accorded to it in more quarters than
he could have hoped for.
The one feature which he was himself most anxious
to succeed in bringing out was the appeal to the
consciousness of those who were chosen to be the
bearers of Revelation (Lecture IV). The best evi
dence for the reality of that Revelation seemed to
him to be the clear and strong conviction on the
part of those who gave expression to it, that it was no
invention of their own, but that it was put into their
thoughts directiy by God. This view is In fact ex
actly that which is stated by Luther in one of his
most striking aphorisms.
'Melanchthon discoursing with Luther touchingthe prophets,
who continually boast thus, " Thus saith the Lord,'' asked
whether God, in person, spoke with them or no. Luther

xii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
replied : They were very holy, spiritual people, who seriously
contemplated upon holy and divine things ; therefore God
spake with them in their consciences, which the prophets
held as sure and certain revelations.' — [Table Talk, dxlix).
The great Reformer was a man of unguarded speech,
and laid himself open to criticisms which have been
meted out to him somewhat unsparingly of late; it
may be well therefore to note in passing, what quiet
thought, what genuine religious apprehension lay be
hind his vehement utterance. We are however rather
concerned with the substance of this particular saying,
which sums up better than the writer himself could
the gist of what he wished to say. He is the more
glad to have such an authority at his back, because it
is just this part of his argument which is taken up
and directly challenged by an able critic in the
Inquirer for Feb. 28, 1891.
' In the midst of this manifold imperfectness, it is difiBcult
to see where the alleged "inspiration" can come in, or what
has been the good of it. This divine quality does, however,
we are told, abundantly manifest and vindicate itself. It is
seen, first, in the fact that Rloses, Isaiah, and other eminent
Biblical characters were pressed into their legislative or pro
phetic office against their own will, and therefore the impulse
which moved them came to them from without — or in other
words, was the product of the divine afHatus which we term
Inspiration. But then the passages relied upon to prove this
(in Exodus iii., Isaiah vi., Jerem. i., and others) may surely
be referred simply to the sacred writer's style, his vivid and
earnest manner of expressing the resolves of his own mind,
as suggested to him by the circumstances around him. As
for example, when Isaiah (xx.) says that the Lord told him
to walk naked and barefoot three years for a sign and a
wonder upon Egypt, or when Ezekiel (iii.) says that the Lord
commanded him to eat the roll of the book, and in another

PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION, xiii
place (iv.) to take a tile and portray upon it a siege of
Jerusalem — are we to think that in such narratives as these
(which are pretty numerous in the prophets) actual occur
rences are recorded? Are they not simply the prophet's way of
describing, pictorially and figuratively, his own thoughts and
purposes ? Clearly the latter is the only rational explanation.'
It will hardly be denied that if some of these sym
bolical acts are regarded as taking place in trance or
vision (Isa. vi. 6 f., Ezek. iii. i f.) others are as clearly
regarded as literally put into execution (Isa. xx. 2 f.,
Ezek. iv. i ff. ; cf. i Kings xi. 29 ff., xx. 35 ff., xxii.
II, &c.). But the question is whether the prompting
was really external to the prophet and really came
from God as he supposed it to come. It need not be
disputed that the particular form which the sym
bolism took was as much the product of the pro
phet's own mind as the words which he wrote came
to him by natural processes ; but unless we would
explain away the language of the Bible altogether, we
must needs believe that there was an impulse from above
working through and guiding those processes. Certainly
the biblical writers imagined themselves to be doing
something more than using metaphors. We may think
that they were mistaken, and to a materialist this is the
only explanation possible, but if we once believe that
there is a spiritual Being who does hold any sort of
converse with the soul of man, then it becomes far more
reasonable to take the prophets at their word. The
alternative is to explain away not only these but a
myriad other facts of human consciousness in like
manner. And if that were done we might as well
close the book of human thought altogether, and
content ourselves with inscribing Vanitas vanitatum
outside.

xiv PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION.
On one other crucial point a word should be added.
In speaking of the condescension of the Son of God
(p. Ill), it is right that full stress should be laid on the
voluntary nature of 'that condescension. Justice must
be done to the strongly reflexive form of the Greek
text in the passage on which it mainly turns : eKevccaev
eavTov, He emptied Himself — by no external compul
sion but by that same free and gracious act by which
He took our nature upon Him. One of the author's most
scholarly correspondents reminds him of a passage
with which he was not unfamiliar, though he had not
thought of using it in this connexion. As far back as
Irenaeus the necessity was seen for taking account of
this side of the Incarnation. The phrase which he
used was the quiescence of the Word (ro r\(jvyJ>.C,(.iv roC
Aoyov, Adv. Haer. iii. 19. 3). It was by means of this
conception that Irenaeus explained the possibility that
the Son of Man could undergo temptation ; and His
self-renunciation in matters of literary knowledge
may well be placed in the same category.
In the present edition some errors of the press
have been corrected, and a few verbal changes have
been made chiefly in the Biblical quotations in cases
where greater accuracy seemed desirable. The only
addition is the valuable Note to Appendix I, for the
substance of which the author is indebted to the
kindness of Dr. Driver.
Easier, 1891.

CONTENTS.
CHAP. PAGE
I. The Present Disquietude  i
II. The Human Element in the Bible . . . -15
III. The Divine Element generally considered . . 34
IV. The Divine Element in its Special Manifestations 47
V. The Blending of Human and Divine . . . 6i
VI. Loss and Gain  76
VII. True and False Inspiration  89
VIII. Christ and the Scriptures  102
IX. The Special Value of the Old Testament at the
Present Time  113
Appendix I. The Date of the Psalter . . . .129
Appendix H. Some Extracts from Recent Criticism on
THE Defective Apprehension of the Old Testament
IN THE Early Church  ijo

I.
THE PRESENT DISQUIETUDE.
(WiitehaU, July 27, 1890.)
Hebrews i. i, 2.
God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in
time past unto the fathers by the Prophets, hath in these last
days spoken unto us by His Son.
There is concentrated in these words a whole
philosophy of revelation. They contain a summary
view of the more special dealings of God with man.
They embrace the age of patriarchs, prophets, and
apostles, and they trace the course which the several
revelations of God followed till they finally cul
minated in His Son.
Before we go more fully into the passage just a
word should be said as to its exact meaning. This is
apt to be obscured by the rendering with which
we are most famUiar. The free and beautiful rhythm
of our old Bibles is gained at some cost of minute
accuracy of expression, which is preserved in the
stiffer and less living version adopted by the Revisers :
God having of old time spoken unto the fathers in
the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners.

THE PRESENT DISQUIETUDE.

hath at the etid of these days spoken unto us in His
Son (more strictly still in One who is Son) \
By many portions and in many manners is the
characteristic phrase which is chosen to describe the
methods of God's Spirit up to that final epoch
inaugurated by the coming of the Son. It would
probably be true to say that the fitness of these
words has never been appreciated so fully as it is
now. Let us ask ourselves what they mean.
They mean, first, that the revelation of God to man
has not been made all at once. It has been a long
process and a gradual process ; a process broken up
into parts and those parts all fitting into each other,
so as to form not merely a continuous chain but an
articulated whole. Mahometanism has but a single
prophet. Its sacred book is the work of one man.
Its doctrines were all proclaimed at one time. Its
Theology was built up from beginning to end in the
course of a single life. It had no period of prepara
tion. It came into the world as an adult system ; at
least its maturity was reached so rapidly that it might
be described as adult. I am not of course speaking of
Mahometanism as a historical phenomenon. His
torically it has its antecedents, and those antecedents
can be explained and traced ; but as a prophet
Mahomet had no precursors. He brought his own
credentials ; he delivered his own message ; he left
' The preposition cannot rightly be explained as merely instrumental;
cf. Rom. i. 19, Gal. i. i6.

THE PRESENT DISQUIETUDE.

that message in a form which he intended to be final,
and to need no supplementing by others.
¦ In all these respects the faith of Christ and that
of Mahomet stand in marked contrast. Mahomet
indeed had Christianity and Judaism to build upon,
or he would never have reached the height that he
did. He himself to some extent recognised his
obligations. But when we think of Mahometanism,
we think of a religion promulgated once for all as a
whole. And the difference when we turn to our own
Bibles helps us to realize what is meant by divers
portions. , Then again, secondly, Christianity, has also been
revealed in divers manners. There may be unity
beneath the diversity, but stilLjfche result is diverse.
All these worketh the self-same^pirit, dividing to
every man severally as He will. Our Christian revela
tion is expressed through the medium of many indi-
viduaUties. Paul is one ; ApoUos is another ; Cephas
is distinct from both, and yet more James. The New
Testament is fuU of different types and shades of
teaching. And if the New Testament, quite as much
the Old. There we have lawgiver, historian, psalmist,
prophet ; and not only ' prophet ' but ' prophets,' not
only ' psalmist ' but ' psalmists,' not only ' historian '
but ' historians.' How clearly here again do some of
the types stand before us ! How different is Jeremiah
from Isaiah, Amos from Hosea, Micah from Ezekiel .!
B 2

THE PRESENT DISQUIETUDE.

And if these distinctions and idiosyncrasies appear in
the authors whom we know, may we not expect to
find them equally in the authors whom we do not
know, in the anonymous composers of psalms or
narratives ? As a matter of fact we do find them ;
and the labours of successive generations of scholars
have succeeded in discriminating some of them with
great nicety.
Much might be said about this, and something
may perhaps be said at some future time, but I do
not wish at present to raise any difference of opinion.
So far I believe that I shall have carried all my
hearers with me. I have in fact merely paraphrased
— and that in the most general terms — the words of
my text. It is when we leave general terms that
divergence begins. God spake of old time to the
fathers in the prophets, hy divers portions and in
^ divers manners. In other words, God revealed Him
self through that long period of time which preceded
the coming of Christ, through His prophets in ways
which were partial and differing in individuals though
coalescing together so as to form a whole.
StUl I do not think that there will be any dis
agreement with this. It is only when we come to
close quarters and ask, in what sense ' God spake,'
in what sense He revealed Himself, to what precise
extent the precise revelations given by Him were
partial, to what precise extent the individuality of the

THE PRESENT DISQUIETUDE.

messenger entered into his message, that differences
of opinion will arise.
And here I know that I am beginning to tread
upon dangerous, because sacred, ground. I am be
ginning to touch on matters in which deep feelings
are involved. And I must beware, or do my best to
beware, of making sad the heart of the righteous
whom the Lord hath not made sad.
It cannot be denied that there is not a little dis
quietude and anxiety in the air, and that especially
amongst good people. They are concerned at
opinions which have been expressed upon a point
which I am now approaching. They have recently
become aware — more fully aware than they were
before — of a considerable change of front among
scholars and thoughtful men in regard primarily to
the Old Testament, but we might add also to the
New. And the form which this has taken is such as
to excite uneasiness aiid apprehension.
This uneasy feeling is not lessened by the fact that
the expressions of opinion by which it has been
excited have not had anything of the nature of an
attack. They have not come from the Extreme
Left or from the destructive party in ecclesiastical
politics and theology, but they have come from men
of known weight and sobriety of judgment, from men
of strong, Christian convictions, who it is felt would
not lightly disturb the same convictions in others.

THE PRESENT DISQUIETUDE.

men, too, of learning, who do not speak without
knowing what they say.
It is not mine to interpose with authority in these
matters. In these days it is necessary for every one
who would do sound and permanent work to choose
some definite line. And the line which I have chosen
stretches forwards from the New Testament rather
than backwards. In regard to the Old Testament I
can only look on from outside. But at the same time
one who holds a responsible position must do his best
to ascertain which way things are tending : he must
not let any considerable change in theology come
upon him unprepared : he must consider beforehand
how it is likely to affect himself and to affect others,
especially those who come under his charge. And it
is from that point of view that the remarks which I
am about to make in this and in succeeding sermons
will be offered.
I shall abstain from expressing any opinion as to
the extent to which the conclusions involved have
been proved. In regard to this there may be not a
few here who will be as well able to form a judgment
as I am. I, like them, must be content to take a
great deal upon trust. The only advantage I can
claim is perhaps a rather fuller acquaintance with
foreign work as well as with English, and with the
general balance of opinion abroad as well as at home.
I have also the advantage that some of those engaged

THE PRESENT DISQUIETUDE.

in these studie's are personal friends of my own, and
to their singleness of mind and earnest religious pur
pose, as well as to their thorough competence to deal
with questions of so much importance, I must needs
bear testimony.
The question as to which I said that there was a
change of front is as to the nature of God's re<'elation
of Himself in the Bible, and especially in the Old
Testament, or more accurately as to the nature of
the methods by which that revelation has been con-
veyed. There is no change at all in respect to the
Divine attributes revealed in the Old Testament ;
there is no change as to the lessons of human dutyr
to be derived from it; no change as to the general ,<
conclusion that the Old Testament points forward
prophetically to Christ, though there may be some
change in the interpretation of particular prophecies : '
but there is a change in regard to the conception of
the Old Testament itself as the vehicle of revelation. '
I will endeavour the next time we meet to state
more precisely in what this change consists. For the
present I will content myself with attempting to
answer the preliminary question, why there should
be any such change. All, no doubt, will not admit
the reasons. The student of the subject must form
his own opinion as to how far they are adequate. I
simply state the fact that they exist.
The reasons are partly external and partly internal. ,

THE PRESENT DISQUIETUDE.

Partly they turn upon the discovery or extended use
of new material, and partly they depend upon the
closer analysis of the sacred texts.
The Old Testament has not been unaffected by the
explorations which have been going on so actively
in the East for the last half century. In Egypt,
Palestine, Assyria, and Babylonia much has been
done. The enterprise of English societies has sur
veyed and mapped a great part of the Holy Land,
and has unearthed the buried monuments of the
ancient Egyptian civilization. In both these tasks
French and German savants have also been busy.
Many of the sculptures which adorned the Assyrian
palaces had before this found their way through
private energy to the British Museum or the Louvre.
Whole libraries of the baked brick tablets which
served for books have been disinterred from the
mounds in which they lay, and are being deciphered
and published. A whole people, the Hittites, have
been, as it were, resuscitated from their grave, though
as yet our knowledge of them is but slight.
In many respects the result of these discoveries has
been to confirm the truth of the Old Testament
history — in many, but not quite in all.
An instructive example is supplied by the chro
nology. Both the Assyrian and the Babylonian
chronologies rest on a very secure basis. They can
be traced up to authorities which are either con-

THE PRESENT DISQUIETUDE.

temporary or nearly contemporary. And they are
further confirmed by the mention of astronomical
phenomena, such as eclipses, which have been verified
by modern calculations. Now although these chro
nologies present a great deal of approximate agree
ment with the Books of Kings there are some
not unimportant differences \
' The state of the case is this. For the Assyrian chronology we have
what are called the ' Eponymous lists,' that is lists of certain officials
after whom the years were reckoned, just as at Rome they were reckoned
after the consuls. These lists exist in two forms, a shorter which gives
the names only, and a longer which adds brief notes of contemporary
events. The first extends from 893-666 B.C., the second only from
817-728 B.C. or a little further. In addition to the lists there are also
inscriptions of the different kings. For the later Babylonian history we
have the so-called Ptolemaean Canon. Ptolemy is the celebrated geo
grapher and astronomer who lived at Alexandria in the second century
a.d. He has preserved for us a list, originally carried from Babylonia
to Egypt, of the Babylonian kings from Nabonassar in 747 downwards.
The accuracy of this list is doubly vouched for, by coincidences with the
Assyrian records and also by the mention of eclipses.
The Assyrian and the Biblical data agree exactly in assigning the Fall
of Samaria to the year 722 B.C., but some correction is required of the
statement in 2 Kings xviii. 10 that this event took place in the sixth
year of King Hezekiah. Sennacherib's invasion, which three verses
lower is assigned to the fourteenth year of the same king, did not really
take place until after the year 702. This point I believe is well made
out ; and it appears to be also necessary to shorten the reigns of Uzziah,
which has fifty-two years assigned to it in 2 Kings xv. 2, and of Manasseh,
which is reckoned fifty-five years in 2 Kings xxi. I . I take these points
of chronology as involving a clear and definite issue, and because a
strong case can be made out for the non-Biblical authorities in regard
to them. (See Riehm, Einleitung, i. 464 ff. ; Rosch in Herzog, xvii.
474 ff. ed. 2 ; Schrader, Keilinschiften, &c. p. 292 ff.) Another instance

lO THE PRESENT DISQUIETUDE.
Of another kind was the discovery of the tablets
which contain Babylonian versions of the Creation
and of the Flood. With aU their inferiority, the
resemblance of these to the corresponding Biblical
stories was striking and needed to be accounted for^.
of the same kmd, in which the Bible is at variance with a contemporary
monument, is in regard to the revolt of Moab from Israel which, accord
ing to 2 Kings i. I, iii. 5, took place after, but according to the Moabite
stone before the death of Ahab (see Driver, Notes on Heb. Text of the
Books of Samuel, p. Ixxxviii £).
' The most searching examination of the Babylonian versions will
probably be found in Jensen, Die Kosmologie der Babylonier, Strassburg,
1890. The English reader should consult especially an article by Dr.
Driver in the Expositor for January, 1886. It would seem that traditions
in respect to the Creation and the Flood were originally the common
property of the Semitic races, developed by each in accordance with
the genius of its religion. We shall see later (Lecture V.) that they
were not of a kind to be referred directly to Revelation ; at the same
time in the Hebrew version the influence of the Spirit of Revelation is
clearly visible, not on the side which belongs of right to science, but in
all that concerns the nature and relations of God and man. Even from
the point of view of science, when allowance is made for the simple
mode of presentation which alone was possible when the early chapters
of Genesis were written, we may see an approximation to the truth which
the believer in Providence will easily refer to its origin : but we must
be careftil not to exaggerate the extent of this approximation. The
history of science reveals plainly that God has permitted the evolution
of true ideas on scientific subjects to be entangled in a mass of fantastic
error. In the Biblical account this appears to be reduced to something
like a minimum. More than this we cannot safely say. [I am glad to
be able to refer to an article by the Dean of Peterborough in the
Expositor for October, 1890. He quotes an authority no less un
prejudiced than Haeckel as affirming that ' from Moses, who died about
1480 B.C., down to Linnaeus, who was bom 1707 a.d., there has been
no history of creation to be compared to the Biblical ' (p. 243).]

THE PRESENT DISQUIETUDE. 1 1
By the side of this and of more far-reaching signi
ficance are the results obtained — or at least thought
to be obtained — from the critical investigation of the
Bible itself. The last hundred years have been a
time of great activity, in which literary problems of
all kinds have had much attention paid to them.
The Bible also is a literature, and it was inevitable
that the same methods which had been applied to
other literatures should be applied also to it ^. It
' In regard to the analytic criticism of the Old Testament I may
remark that there is for the most part in England a very imperfect idea
of the immense mass of literature and of close detailed study dealing
with it. The most prominent problem relates to the composition of
the Pentateuch. The systematic treatment of this may be said to date
from the French Court-physician Astruc, whose work, under the title
Conjectures sur les Memoires originaux, dont il paroit, que Mayse iest
servi pour composer U livre de Genise, appeared at Brussels in 1753.
From that time onwards, but especially in the last fifty years, an almost
incessant stream of publications upon the subject has come out, most
of them dealing with the subject at first hand and with great minute
ness and care. A very significant fact was the conversion of the veteran
Delitzsch, who died on March 4th of this year at the age of nearly
seventy-seven, substantially to the new views. A man of extraordinary
learning and of deep piety, he had all his life long contended for the
Mosaic anthor^ip of the Pentateuch, until first, in two preliminary essays
published in 1880 and 1882, and then in the fifth edition of bis Com
mentary on Genesis, published in 1887, he threw over this, and without
admitting any change in his religious convictions he practically went
over to the other side. We must not lose sight either of the enonnous
amount of labour expended on this subject, or of the very considerable
extent of agreement which has been reached upon it on the Continent.
It is agreed on all hands that the Pentateuch is formed by the dovetail
ing together of different documents ; it is agreed by the great mass of

12 THE PRESENT DISQUIETUDE.
has been approached by friends and approached by
enemies, approached by religious minds and ap
proached by others the primary interest of which
was not religious. What then? Is not the Bible
capable of satisfying all this manifold curiosity ?
The landowner who holds his property by long and
lineal descent does not mind having his title deeds
examined. And we with eighteen centuries of Chris
tian, history behind us — with eighteen centuries, nay,
with more than twice eighteen centuries in which the
finger of God has been visibly manifest ordering and
guiding the course of events down to this present —
why should we take alarm ? why should we expect
that anything but good should issue from the process,
in the future more than in the past ?
enquirers that nearly all of these documents in their present shape are
not earlier than the time of the Kings. The points most debated are
(i) how far the traditions embodied in these documents go back ulti
mately to Moses, and (2) whether a particular document, the so-called
Priestly Code, is earlier or later than the Exile. An average view of
the results obtained for the Book of Genesis is conveniently presented
in a work by two Tiibingen Professors, Kautzsch and Socin, who have
printed the text in different types corresponding to the different docu
ments {Die Genesis mit dusserer Unterscheidung der Quellenschriften,
Freiburg i. B., 1888). Similar problems arise in respect to the historical
books. The other most prominent questions are the assignment of large
parts of the Book of Isaiah and of the last six chapters of Zechariah to
writers other than the authors of the main body of the book  in the
case of Isaiah later, and in the case of Zechariah earlier ; and the dates
of the compobition of many parts of the Psalter and the Books of Joel,
Jonah, Job, Ecclesiastes and Daniel.

THE PRESENT DISQUIETUDE. 13
Whatever happens, the foundation of God stands
sure, and must stand sure. There is one assumption
from which we can start with confidence. All sound
knowledge the Christian faith can assimilate. If
there is anything which it cannot assimilate, that we
may firmly believe is not sound. Of course time is
needed before we can ascertain what will stand the
test and what will not — time and a calm unruffled
temper, not easily moved by the swayings to and fro
of the moment.
The best sign of which I am aware is the
gradual growth of this temper. Not many years
have passed since the cry was wont to be. He
that is not with us is against us. Everything which
did not at once fall in with preconceived ideas was
treated as an 'attack.' Hostility and bitterness on
one side were met by hostility and bitterness on the
other. Men were driven with or against their will
into two great opposing camps. It did not seem
pos.sible to be critical and yet reverent, devout and
yet candid. Now, I trust, our faith is stronger. We
do not see an enemy in every bush. We do not
think it necessary to meet every question that arises
with a peremptory yes or no. We are able to wait
and look around and take our bearings without being
hurried or disturbed. Such at least seems to me to
be the attitude of that younger generation which is
now coming to the front in these matters. It is, to

14 THE PRESENT DISQUIETUDE.
my mind, an attitude which is not only a hopeful
one, but the only attitude which really becomes a
Christian. I would fain, if I may, make some small contri
bution to the question of the hour. I propose this
afternoon and on succeeding Sundays to do what I
can to estimate the effect upon a Christian's faith .
of the changes which seem to be in progress. There
must be in this an element of anticipation. I do not
say that all that I may regard as possible is as yet
completely proved. It may perhaps never be proved.
If that is so our course is plain. We only have to
remain where we are. But it is right for us to keep
in view contingencies which will seem to some at
least more or less probable. And I hope that I may
be able to show that if those contingencies should be
realized, there is not only no reason for despair —
despair is a word which should not cross (I do not say
the lips but) even the thought of a Christian — but
that they may leave his faith stronger, richer, deeper'
than it was before. There may be loss as well as
gain ; and yet I cannot but think that the gain will
be found to overbalance the loss, and that all things
— even the progress of criticism — still work together
for good to those who love the Lord Jesus Christ in
sincerity.

II.
THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE.
(Whitehall, July 27, 1890.)
2 Corinthians iv. 7.
We have this treasure in earihen vessels.
Let me take up the subject proposed this morning
by endeavouring to state, in as summary a form as
possible, the main points in that change of which I
spoke as coming over the conception which many
good and instructed Christian men hold of the Bible.
It has for a long time been distinctly recognised
that there is a human as well as a divine element
in the Book by which God has been pleased to
convey the revelation of Himself to us. However
much we may feel that the Holy Spirit itself is pre
sent in that Book, and speaks to us through its pages,
there can be no question that it speaks through
human media. It was the hand of man which held
the pen. The words written down were human
words. They are governed by the ordinary laws of
language ; and the forms of expression which they

1 6 THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE.
assume are not always perfect as men count per
fection. This we may start with, that there is a human
element even in the Bible ; and the tendency of the
last 50 or 100 years of investigation is to make it
appear that this human element is larger than had
been supposed. The freedom of the human agents
made use of in the Bible was less restricted than
those who argued from an antecedent view of what
was to be expected in a Divine revelation would have
imagined it to be.
That is the first point; but the second, which
seems to me to be equally clear, is that, in spite of
the enlarged scope which is thus given to human
thought and human action, the Divine element
which lies behind it is not less real and not less
Divine. The third point is that we make a mistake in
attempting to draw a hard and fast line between the
two elements. The part which comes from man and
the part which comes from God run into and blend
with each other. We think of them best not as
acting separately but as acting together. And this
intimate or organic union only serves to bring home
the message which God has condescended to speak
to man with greater force and greater reality.
Lastly, I think it will be seen that the application
which we in turn make of that message may need to

THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE. 17
be somewhat modified. We may find our view of
the motive forces in religion somewhat altered. I do
not think for a moment that we shall find them less
powerful or less effective than they have been.
Bear with me if I try now and next week to ex
plain in more detail the nature of these conclusions —
not in any spirit of wanton innovation, but only to
help those who find themselves face to face with new
conditions which they do not feel able simply to put
aside and ignore. And permit me to ask that no
one will listen to the negative side of what I have
to say without also listening to the positive side.
The function of the teacher in these days is like the
function of the prophet of old ; he is not called upon
only to break down and to overthrow, but to build
and to plant^.
This applies especially to my present duty this
afternoon. I must begin by seeming at least to con
tend for an encroachment of the human element upon
the Divine. If I do so, let me beg of those who
are willing to pay any attention to this part of
what I have to say, also to give a hearing to what
seems to me to be the complementary or counter
balancing truth, the affirmation which I shall have
to make next of the undiminished — nay, the height
ened — reaUtyof the Divine element which lies behind
and gives an impulse to the human. I cannot claim
^ Jeremiah i. 10.
C

1 8 THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE.
to be heard on either side of the argument, but
I may ask that one may not be taken without the
other.
"" To assume then this ungracious and unwelcome
but I fear necessary task, I must first point out how
it is probably true that the human element in the
Scriptures is larger than many good people now, and
nearly all good people not long ago, supposed it
to be.
Let us take a glance at the history of the doctrine
of Inspiration. The writers and teachers of the early
Church doubtless held a high view of it, but it was
not by any means a mechanical view. They would
not have hesitated to admit what we might call slips
of the pen^. Origen went further in admitting positive
' Take for instance the patristic comments upon Matt, xxvii. 9, where
a saying which really belongs to Zechariah is attributed to Jeremiah.
Origen thinks that there has either been some error in writing by which
Jeremiah is put for Zechariah, or else that the passage might be found
among the apocryphal works of Jeremiah. St. Augustine mentions the
omission in some MSS. of the name Jeremiah, so that the sentence runs
through the prophet only, and not throtigh Jeremiah the prophet.
He will not lay stress on this because the word is found both in the
majority of Latin MSS. and also in the Greek text. He is rather in
clined to think that the name Jeremiah occurred to St. Matthew
instead of Zechariah, and that he would have corrected it if he had not
remembered that the Spirit might have determined him to write thus
in order to bring out that all the prophets really said the same thing.
St. Jerome says roundly that there is a mistake here as in Matt. xiii. 35
{¦videtis ergo quia et hie error fuit sicut ibi). See the passages quoted in
Tischendorf ad loc.

THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE. 19
error in the literal statements if not in the deeper
sense of Scripture. If the language of St. Augustine as
to the composition of the Gospels were to be pressed,
he, too, would be committed to views which implied
considerable freedom of handling ^
At the Reformation we know with what freedom
Luther spoke upon the subject. We know how he
singled out a particular branch of Christian doctrine
— a Gospel within the Gospel — and how applying
this as a test to the different parts of the Bible he
put a high or a low value upon them according to
the degree in which it was embodied, venturing even
to call one Epistle an epistle of straw, because that
for which he looked was not to be found there.
In the latitude which he thus allowed himself,
Luther was not imitated by his followers. On the
contrary, it was really the Reformation which led to
the predominance of the stricter view. It was a lead
ing principle of the Reformation to throw wholly upon
the Bible the weight of authority which had hitherto
been shared by it with tradition. The Bible, and the
^ Speaking of the discrepancies in the Gospels, Origen says that ' if
one were to set them all forth then would he turn dizzy, and either
desist from trying to establish all the Gospels in very truth, and attach
himself to one, , . . or, admitting the four, grant that the truth does not
lie in their corporeal forms ' {iv Tofs aa/MTMots x"po*'r5pffi : Comm. in
Joan. x. 2, quoted by Westcott, Introd. p. 419, ed. 3). St. Augustine
describes the Second Gospel as an ' epitome ' of the First, in which
case the Evangelist could not have kept to his text very closely,
c a

20 THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE.
Bible only, became the watchword of the Reformed
Churches. Hence we cannot be surprised if its autho
rity was most jealously safeguarded. The one broad
foundation on which the whole of Christianity seemed
to rest must needs be without flaw.
The rigid theory which thus came in led to some
palpable exaggerations. As the study of Hebrew
revived, the scholars of the sixteenth and seventeenth
centuries began to win back little by Uttle the know
ledge which had been lost. Now-a-days eveiy one
knows that ancient Hebrew — the Hebrew of the Old
Testament — was written purely in consonants with
out vowels. The vowels were added by a group of
diligent Jewish scribes and students of the Scriptures
in the sixth and seventh centuries after Christ This
was first made out by a French professor, Louis
Cappel or Cappellus, in the Calvinistic Academy of
Saumur^.. The book was quietly received, until in
1648 a sharp attack was made upon it by one of the
most learned Hebraists of his day, the younger Bux-
torf; and a controversy arose in which the set of
opinion throughout the Reformed Churches was so
strong that a later work by Cappellus ^ could only be
' Arcanum punctationis revelaium,'^\AX\^ti. at Leyden anonymously,
under the care of Erpenius, in 1624.
^ This was the Cri/ica Sacra published at Paris in 1650. Riehm
{Einleitung, p. 21) does not appear to be strictly correct in saying that
the son, Jean Cappel, ' found himself compelled, after his father's death,
to become a Roman Catholic in order to publish the book.' He had
joined the Roman Church some time previously in spite of his father's

THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE. 21
pubUshed by the help of his son, who had joined the
Church of Rome. It was in that Church that the
view which is now universally held to be the right
one found its ablest advocates. The writer indeed
who laid the foundation of Old and New Testa
ment criticism was a member of that Church — the
Oratorian Richard Simon \ So far did opinion go
upon the other side that in one of the Swiss for
mularies, dated 1675, it is expressly laid down that
not only the consonants but the vowel-points of the
Hebrew text were divinely inspired ^.
The question could not rest here. It soon came
to be understood that more was involved than the
vowel-points. The less-instructed sort of Protestants
pinned their faith to the versions which every man
was now able to read in his own tongue. But
they could not help admitting that an appeal lay
beyond them to the originals^. It could not be
remonstrances; and the father did not die until 1658, so that he must
have been aware of the steps his son was taking.
^ Histoire Critique du Vieux Testament, 1685 ; Histoire Critique du
Text du N. T. (1689), des Versions (1690), des principaux Commenla-
teurs (1693).
" Consensus Ecclesiarum Helveticarum Can. II. : Hebraicus Vet.
Test, codex . . . turn quoad consonas tum quoad vocalia sive puncta ipsa
sine punctorum saltern potestatem . . . BeoirvevaTos, &c. Quoted by
Riehm, Einl. p. 22.
' In the Westminster Assembly of Divines, in which as a member of
Parliament he had a right to sit and debate, 'Mr. Selden spake admirably
and confuted divers of them in their own learning. And sometimes

33 THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE.
maintained that all these versions, the origin of
which was known and which often differed widely
from each other, enjoyed any special inspiration.
But if so, where was it that inspiration really resided?
What guarantee was there that the Greek and
Hebrew texts from which those versions were made
truly and accurately represented that which had
really proceeded from the sacred writers ? When men
began to think and to enquire they would have no
difficulty in tracing the origin of these Greek and
Hebrew texts. They too were made by certain
known scholars from certain known MSS., but when
these MSS. came to be compared with others which
lay upon the shelves of the European libraries, there
was found to be a great diversity among them.
Further, it was found in regard to the Greek of the
New Testament that, to speak roughly, the older a
MS. was the more widely it differed from the
common printed copies. But there was a presump
tion at least that these older copies, as they were
nearer to the originals, so also would represent them
more faithfully. So arose by degrees the science
of Textual Criticism, which attempts by comparing
together the different MSS. and other authorities
when they had cited a text of Scripture to prove their assertion, he would
tell them perhaps in your little Pocket Bibles with gilt leaves (which
they would often pull out and read) the Translation viay be thus, but
the Greek or the Hebrew signifies thus and thus ; and so would totally
silence them.' Whitelocke, Memorials, p. 71, ed. 1732.

THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE. 23
to get at the truth of what was originally written.
The method by which this is done has become much
more elaborate and systematic, but even yet a com
plete consent has not been reached ; and although
the limits of possible error are not really very wide,
and although the great mass of the Greek text is not
open to question, still a residue even yet remains
about which we cannot be absolutely certain that
we have the actual words of the Apostolic writers
before us.
The question as to the Hebrew text of the Old
Testament seems easier, but is in reality more diffi
cult than that as to the Greek text of the New ^.
There is not indeed the same amount of difference
between the MSS., though the oldest of these is
younger by several centuries than the oldest MSS.
of the New Testament. In other ways it is possible
to trace back the Hebrew text up to and even
beyond the time at which the vowel-points came
to be attached to it. From the end of the fourth
century of the Christian era onwards we may say
that the care bestowed upon the copying of the
Old Testament was so great that no important
' ' The majority of Hebrew MSS. are of the twelfth to the sixteenth
centuries. Very^few are earlier : the earliest of which the date is known
with certainty being the MS. of the later Prophets, now at St. Petersburg,
which bears a date = a.d. 916 ' (Driver's Notes on Heb. Text of the
Books of Samuel, p. xxxvi). The oldest MSS. of N. T. are assigned to
the fourth century.

34 THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE.
variation was possible. It is further back still that
the real problem begins. We possess, as it happens,
versions of the Old Testament made some before
and some not very long after the Christian era.
These versions make it clear that at that earlier date
there was a much larger amount of diversity. And it
is behind this that the critic has to penetrate ; so that
his task is even more difficult than that which lies
before the critic of the New Testament, and at the
present stage the results obtained are even less certain.
Such is the state of the case on one line of in
vestigation, the investigation of the text. On other
lines the course which events have taken has been
very similar. At one time it was held, in pursuance
of the same view of doctrine which we have been
hitherto considering, that the language of the New
Testament writers must needs be perfect, and their
grammar faultless ^. Now it is distinctly recognised
that this is far from the fact ; that the language
of the New Testament writers, though an excellent
instrument in its way, contains not only many
Hebraisms, but many an idiom which belongs to
popular speech and by no means conforms to the
standards of literary correctness.
Again, on more important ground it is well known
' The most extreme of the Purists were Pfochen (1629), Musaeus
(1641, 1642), Georgi (1732, 1733), and Schwarz (1736). See Winer's
Grammar, pp. 13-15 (i. 1. § l) E. T.

THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE. 35
what a conflict has long been maintained between
the Bible and Natural Science. The names of
Galileo, Newton, Darwin recall to us conspicuous
instances in which the Bible has been invoked to
check the course of free enquiry, and, as we can
now see, wrongly invoked. It is coming to be agreed
among thinking men that the Bible was never meant
to teach science, and that the Biblical writers simply
shared the scientific beliefs of their own day and
expressed themselves in the language which was
currently used all around them.
What I have been describing so far is a state of
opinion which has been very generally reached, and
in regard to which there is little room left for sharp
antagonism. To some extent, as regards at least
the uncertainty of Greek and Hebrew readings, it
has found expression in a public document like the
Revised Version. But having reached this point the
question will, of necessity, force itself upon some
minds : having gone so far, is there not room to go
still further? The Bible has not been exempted
from the fate of other books : it has been copied,
and in the process of copying its text has been
corrupted: it has been transmitted across centuries
of declining knowledge : it has passed through the
hands of scribes who were both ignorant and careless,
and whose ignorance and carelessness have hardly
done so much mischief as weU-intentioned but un-

2,6 THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE.
fortunate attempts at correction^. Neither again
were the Biblical writers exempted from some at
least of the general characteristics of their con
temporaries : they shared the literary peculiarities
of men of their own nationality and station : they
were not supernaturally raised above the level of
knowledge to which their contemporaries had attained
in matters of science. Even in the things of religion
it is becoming every day clearer that there is a
growth and progression running through the New
Testament as well as the Old. No one generation
reached the limits of truth all at once : there was
a gradual withdrawing of the veil at different times
and in different portions.
It may be asked then, independently of any critical
enquiries, where can we draw the line and say
Hitherto and no further ? We admit that the Bible
has shared the fate of other books in its subsequent
history. May it not also have shared the fate of
other books in the circumstances of its origin ? We
admit that the writers spoke and wrote in the
language of their contemporaries, with many at least
of the same faults of style and diction, with some
' 'The Syrian text' (i.e. the text substantially current in the later
MSS. and in the older printed editions, the original of the so-called
Textus Receptus) ' must in fact be the result of a recension in the
proper sense of the word, a work of attempted criticism, performed
deliberately by editors and not merely by scribes ' (Westcott and Hort,
Introduction, p. 133).

THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE. 27
at least of the same defects of knowledge. But if
with some, why not also with others ? They were
not perfectly acquainted with the facts of science :
is it certain that they would be more perfectly
acquainted with the facts of history ? In the secular
writings of antiquity there are many phenomena
which are not in exact accordance with the literary
practice of our own day. A later writer will incor
porate the work of an older writer often with but
slight alteration. The annals that are transmitted
from age to age receive gradual accretions in their
course, and there is often no external mark to show
where the older matter ends and the new begins.
Institutions which are well established in one age
are assumed to go back to an earlier date than can
really be claimed for them. Certain great names
stand out in the history round which stray documents
and stray incidents appear to crystallize. When a
group of writings is collected together the name
which stands at the head of the group is held to
cover every member of it. And in like manner
laws and customs which grow up by slow degrees
are referred to some one great lawgiver who was
the first to formulate the leading provisions of the
code with which they are associated. There is no
deception about it. It is the same sort of process
that we see going on every day where oral tradition
is at work. Wherever some notable character has

28 THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE.
passed over the stage, in aftertime things come to
be set down to him with which he has no real con
nexion. We must throw ourselves back into an age
when writing is the exception and hearsay the rule.
There comes a time when regular histories are
written, but before that tradition has been at work
moulding and combining the facts which history
records. Processes like these have gone on in all the ancient
literatures which have been preserved to us. Can
we say that the literature of Israel is an exception ?
Is there reason to think that that alone has had
an immunity from conditions which are elsewhere
universal ? Some of the best and most competent
judges tell us that it is not so. They tell us that
in the Old Testament — yes, and in the New Testa
ment too — there are books which are composite in
their origin, which were not written as we have them
all at once, but which were put together at sundry
times and in divers manners, one document here and
another document there, welded together into a
single whole, but not so welded that all traces of
the combination are obliterated. They tell us that
there are aggregates of writings which pass under
names which of right belong only to a part of them.
They tell us that laws and customs of a later date
are sometimes attributed to an earlier; that not all
the historical statements rest upon contemporary

THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE. 29

record, but that some of them have passed through
a stage — longer or shorter — of tradition, before they
were committed to writing.
This we are told, and that not lightly or con-
jecturally, but as a result of close examination. The
body of proof is weighty and cannot easily be
rejected. Why should it be rejected ? The grounds,
when we come to think of it, are mainly those of
our own imagination. We do not think it likely
that God would allow the revelation of Himself to
be mixed up with such imperfect materials. But
we are no good judges of what God would or would
not do. His ways are not as our. ways. Out of the
imperfect He brings forth the perfect. It is so in
the world of nature, and it is so in the world of
grace. We have our treasure in earthen vessels.
The vessels may be earthen, but the treasure which
they contain is Divine. It is best for us not to
trouble our minds with vain speculations as to what
ought to be, but to take with thankfulness that which
is. After all there are, as I hope to be able to show,
two sides to the question. We can imagine the Bible
in some of its accessories more perfect than it is —
what we at least might think more perfect. But if
it had been so it could never have been in such close
contact with human nature. Its message could never
have come home to us so fresh and warm as it does.
As it Is, it speaks to the heart, and it does so because.

30 THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE.
according to a fine saying in the Talmud, it speaks
in the tongue of the children of men.
I hope to show, as I proceed, that none of the
qualifications to which it is subject really touch the
root of the matter. I hope to show that, in spite
of all that is human about it, there is more that is
Divine. The body, the outward form, may be of
the earth earthy, but the spirit by which it is per
vaded and animated is from heaven. This too,
believe me, is no mere matter of assumption or
speculation. It is proved in the same way as that
by which we prove the presence of a human element.
And if I fail in conveying that proof in all its
cogency, the fault will be mine.

NOTE.

The gradual nature of the steps which lead up from ques
tions of what is called the Lower Criticism (which deals with
the text) to questions of the Higher Criticism (which deals
with authorship, &c.), and the difficulty of drawing a hard
and fast line between them will be understood from the
following examples.
(a) I St. John V. 7. The three Heavenly Witnesses [comma
fohanneuiri).
Now almost universally given up on grounds of
External Evidence (immense preponderance of testi
mony against the words which are only found in

THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE. 31
two Greek MSS., one of the fifteenth and one of the
sixteenth century, though going back as far as the
fourth century in Latin) -|- Internal Evidence (break
in the continuity of the passage).
The words were originaUy a gloss, or comment, sug
gested by the text and written in the margin, but
afterwards mistaken for part of the text and inserted
with it
(^) St. John vii. 53 — viii. 11. The section of the Woman
taken in Adultery [pericope adulterae).
Rejected by nearly all critical authorities on the
ground of
External Evidence (all Greek MSS. older than the
eighth century, except one which has Latin affinities,
and many express statements) -f Internal Evidence
(inappropriate break in the context).
Originally a narrative derived from some other early
source, transcribed in the margin to illustrate the
saying, I judge no man (St. John viii. 15); thence
transferred to the text at the nearest place where an
insertion could be made.
(7) St. Mark xvi. 9-20. The Last Twelve Verses of St.
Mark.
Rejected by many critical authorities on the ground
of
External Evidence (absence not from many MSS., but
from the two best, some express patristic statements,
and the presence of an alternative ending to the
Gospel in a few MSS.) 4- Internal Evidence (es
pecially the abrupt beginning, which has been antici
pated in ver. i).
If the verses are not genuine, we must suppose that

32 THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE.
the original ending to the Gospel had been torn
away or become illegible, and that they were added
to supply its place.
(6) Romans xv, xvi. and especially xvi. 1-16 (or 3-16).
Supposed by some critics not to have been originally
part of the Epistle to the Romans on the ground of
Slight External Evidence (the position of the closing
doxology, xvi. 25-27, in a few MSS. at the end of
ch. xiv. or at both places) 4- Internal Evidence (the
difficulty of accounting for the number of greetings
which St. Paul is sending to a Church which he had
not yet visited).
Several explanations are proposed for the section as it
stands if not original : some believe it to belong to
a letter written at a later date to Rome; others
believe it to be part of a letter addressed by St. Paul
to Ephesus.
(e) 2 Corinthians vi. 14 — vii. r. Supposed by two or three
critics not to belong to this Epistle on the ground
of
Purely Internal Evidence (break in the continuity of
the argument).
Some of those who hold this view believe the verses to
be a fragment of the lost letter alluded to in i Cor.
V. 9, with which they would agree in subject. A
discussion of this theory has been recently carried
on in the pages of the Classical Review.
(f) I Samuel xvii. i — xviii. 5. Large portions of this
passage are omitted in the best MS. of the Septua
gint, Cod. Vaticanus (B.), and there are some marks
of omission in other MSS.
It is probable, on the whole, that the verses are

THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE. 33
genuine, and that they were omitted in some very
early Greek or Hebrew MSS. in order to escape a
difficulty in harmonizing the contents of this section
with I Sam. xvi. 14-23.
(i)) Passages like this last lead us up to questions such as
that as to the authorship of Isa. xl-lxvi. or Zech.
ix-xiv, which turn entirely upon Internal Evidence
(difference of style and difference in the historical
situation from the rest of the book).
As soon as books began to be written in vellum volumes,
or codices, shaped like our present books, it is easy enough to
understand how writings came to be attributed to wrong
authors. These books were of considerable size, and would
hold several treatises. Three or four by some well-known
author would be written first : then would come an anony^
mous treatise : the original scribe would know it to be
anonymous, but the next-comer would suppose it to be by
the author whose name stood at the head of the volume, and
would quote it as such. This would hold good from the
fourth century onwards. The process would not be quite so
easy in the earlier period, when the usual form for books was
that of the roll, which was smaUer in size. StiU, the same
sort of thing no doubt took place. Two writings would be
supposed to have the same author, simply because they lay
side by side in the same case or were otherwise brought into
juxtaposition. It was a mistake, but an accidental mistake,
and involves no suspicion of bad faith.

III.
THE DIVINE ELEMENT GENERALLY
CONSIDERED.
(Whitehall, August 3, 1890.)
2 Corinthians iv. 7, R. V.
We have this treasure in earthen vessels, that the exceeding
greatness of ihe power may be of God, and not from, ourselves.
The fundamental mistake that is too often made
is to form the idea of what Inspiration is from what
we should antecedently expect it to be and not from
the evidence to what as a matter of fact it is. It is
hardly a century and a half since Bishop Butler
showed in his masterly way the precariousness of
arguments of this kind. We are not competent
judges before the fact of the method of God's deal
ings with men. In the world of nature there are a
thousand things which are different from what we
should have expected. We see but a little corner,
but an infinitesimal part of the universal frame of
things. We know not what lies behind and beyond.
There are doubtless hidden harmonies of which we
have no cognisance, far-off goals which lie beyond
our ken. If we had but fuller glimpses into these,

THE DIVINE ELEMENT CONSIDERED. 35.
many of the perplexities which now surround us
might well be explained. If we believe in God, as
we needs must believe in Him, there are many of
His ways which we must simply take upon trust,
confident that all things really work together for
good, however much we see or fail to see by what
processes the end is attained. The point is soon
reached where we can only bow our heads in silent
acceptance of the Divine Will.
But if this is true of the works of God it holds
good equally of His word. History is strewn with
warnings as to the mistakes in which we are involved
the moment we begin to lay down what an Inspired
Book ought to be and what it ought not to be. I
spoke of some of these mistakes last time. They
are all so many applications of the assumption that
an Inspired Book must be infallible, not merely as a
Revelation but as a Book. Is there any better
reason for this than there was for those other assump
tions which Bishop Butler showed to be so untenable
— that a revelation from God must be universal, that
it could not be confined to. an obscure and insigni
ficant people ; that a revelation from God must be
clear — that it could not be wrapt up in difficulties of
interpretation ; that its evidence must be certain
and such as should leave no room for doubt ^ .'^ All
these criteria had been actually put forward ; the
' See especially Analogy of Religion, Part H. Chap. iii.
D 2

36 THE DIVINE ELEMENT
Christian revelation had been tried by them and
found wanting. No one would think of putting
forward any such criteria now. Yet there is no
essential difference between the claim which was
then made for the Revelation itself, and the claim
which is still made for the Book in which that Reve
lation is embodied. Such a Book, it is urged, must
at the least be infallible. If that were so, we should
find it hard to contend with the facts ; for the sphere
of its infallibility has been steadily narrowed. Its
text is not infallible ; its grammar is not infallible ; its
science is not infallible ; and there is grave question
whether its history is altogether infallible. But to
argue thus is to take up a false position from the
outset. It is far better not to ask at all what an In
spired Book ought to be, but to content ourselves with
the enquiry what this Book, which comes to us as in
spired, in fact and reality is. It will not refuse to
answer our questions.
Let us look at the matter in the first instance broadly,
and then examine it in somewhat closer detail \
When the first Christians went about with their
little cases packed with rolls, some more and some
fewer, and when they placed these precious writings
' An argument similar to that which follows will be found, stated
with great force and ability, in the early lectures of a volume, which has
appeared since this was written, by Dr. R. W. Dale, The Living Christ
and the Four Gospels (London, 1 890).

GENERALLY CONSIDERED. 37
in the hands of the pagans with whom they came in
contact, and begged them to read and study them,
what sort of impression do we suppose that the read
ing made upon a candid mind ? When our own
missionaries distribute Bibles and Testaments, and
those to whom they are given take them into some
quiet corner and scrutinize their pages, what is it
for which they look and what is it that they find ?
Or without letting our imagination travel so far,
without going beyond our own English homes, there
is one volume which occupies an honoured place in
them, which lies beside the sick-bed or the armchair,
and ministers solace to the aged and suffering, or in
struction to the young. If we were to ask any of
these what it was that came home to them in the
Bible, we should not find them troubling their heads
as to details of chronology or archaeology, we should
not find them speculating as to the exact wording of
a text or as to the process by which some of the Books
had assumed their present form, neither should we
find them attacking the question in strictly logical
order and beginning with the enquiry what ground
there was for the authority which the Bible claimed ;
but they would tell us that there was a great deal
perhaps which they could not understand, but yet
that there were sayings on every page, not few or
far between, but constantly occurring, which spoke
to their hearts with power.

38 THE DIVINE ELEMENT
Now of course it is true that every one who is given
to reading books at all knows of many which have
exercised a very considerable effect upon him. There
are collections of ' wit and wisdom ' to which he may
turn if he will — or he will have his own collections
stored away in the chambers of his brain. There
will be included among these a number of sayings
which at one time or another, as Sir Philip Sidney
said, have stirred his blood ' as with the sound of a
trumpet.' The Bible contains a vast number of such
sayingSj full of ripe insight and wisdom, such as this :
The heart knoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger
doth not intermeddle with itsjoy^; or this : It is better
to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house^
of feasting . . . Sorrow is better than laughter : for by
the sadness of the countenance the heart is made
better ^.
Sayings Uke this are thickly scattered over books,
for instance, like Proverbs, which do not hold at all
the highest place in the volume. And then again in
the histories there are narratives full of chivalrous
courage like the meeting of David and Goliath, or
wonderfully tender and touching, Uke the discovery
of Joseph to his brethren, the parting of Ruth and '
Naomi, the friendship of David and Jonathan.
It may be doubted whether on this level of common
human interest there is any other book which on the
' Prov. xiv. 10. " Eccl. vii. a-3.

GENERALL Y , CONSIDERED.

39

whole is so rich as the Bible. But if that were all
it still would not have a unique place among books.
The Bible and Shakespeare might be on the same
footing as part of an Englishman's library.
But then there is another class of sayings different
in kind from these, and with no such direct parallels.
Blessed is he whose unrighteousness is forgiven and
whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man unto whom
the Lord imputeth no sin^. Like as a father pitieth
his children, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him ^-
The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that <
which was lost^. And He said to me. My grace is
sufficient for thee, for My strength is made perfect in
weakness *.
These are thoughts that move in a new region.
They are something more than the formulated teach
ing of experience, ' the harvest of a quiet eye ' brood
ing over the lessons which life has brought. They.
tell of an experience indeed, but experience of a
different kind — an experience not easily reached, nay,
such as could not be reached at all except by ways
of which the world knows nothing. The sense of
forgiveness, the consciousness of Divine Love, the
assurance that there is a deliverance for the lost and
erring, self-surrender to a Power outside self which
supplements and supports the infirmities of human
* Ps. xxxii. I, 2. ' Ps. ciii. 13.
» St. Luke xix. 10. * 2 Cor. xii. 9.

40 THE DIVINE ELEMENT
nature — not only are these experiences which belong
not to the ordinary every-day intercourse of men
with men, but to the higher Life of the Spirit : more
than this, they imply a system of things, a series of
Divine interpositions, in which man is passive and not
active, a recipient rather than an originator. We are
reminded of the teaching of St. John's Gospel : He
came unto His own {land) and His own [people] re
ceived Him not. But as many as received Him to them
gave He the right to become children of God, even to
those that believe on His Name ; which were born not
of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of
man, but of God'^. And again of the High-Priestly
prayer : 0 righteous Father, the world knew Thee not,
but I knew Thee : and these know that Thou didst send
Me^.
There are two spheres. There is the sphere of
what St. John calls the world, and what St. Paul
calls the natural man, the sphere of eating and drink
ing, of marrying and giving in marriage, the sphere
of trade, of pleasure, of science, of politics ; and there
is the other sphere intersecting this, though distinct
from it, the sphere of a higher, finer spiritual life in
which they sow not, neither do they spin.
The Bible, every one who reads it must feel, is
charged with affirmations about this supersensual
sphere. Those affirmations do not hang in the air.
' St. John i. 11-13. « St. John xvii. 25.

GENERALLY CONSIDERED. 41
They are not merely such ' stuff as dreams are made
of They rest upon a foundation of fact.
The facts in question are not isolated or discon
nected. They form a chain, a continuous history
stretching back far into the past, culminating in the
events of a few short years of which there has come
down to us what we have reason to believe is a vera
cious record ; again, descending from that culmination
downwards, still in continuous sequence, to our own
day and generation. We have this guarantee that,
though spiritual, though ideal, the phenomena of which
we speak are not unreal. They could not have played
the part they have in the lives of so many millions
of men and women if they were. They rest on facts —
the facts of the divinely-ordered history of a divinely-
chosen nation ; the facts of the Life and Death of
Christ, and of the founding and subsequent history of
the Christian Church : they run into facts, facts of
living experience, such as, for all their delicacy, the
eye may see and the ear may hear.
Here is a fabric standing over against the other, a
' new creation ' within the old. In a book like Shake
speare's Plays we have the interpretation of the one :
in the Bible we have the interpretation of the other.
This it is which has made the Bible so precious to
the thousands and tens of thousands who have used
it. The question of interest to them has not been
what sort of external attestation it brought with it,

42 THE DIVINE ELEMENT
but what was its inner verisimilitude. As an inter
pretation of the spiritual life, was it true, was it
adequate? Again we appeal to the testimony of
the millions of men and women living or who once
lived, who have found it both true and adequate. It
has been at least to them,
'The fountain-light of all their day,
The master-light of all their seeing.'
Science may demand something more : it may demand
credentials formally proved ; it may demand investiga
tions rigorously conducted ; it may have its questions of
canonicity and authenticity ; it may insist on compari
sons with other sacred books and other religions. The
demand is a legitimate one, and must not be rejected
or ignored. It is to be hoped that our Christian
Faith will always have its philosophy for the
philosophers, its logic for the logicians, its learning
for the learned. But plain men and women will take
their own short cut for determining whether or no
the Bible is divine. Does it prove itself to be divine
to me? Has it proved itself to be divine to others
like me? The answer to this half at least of the
challenge cannot be uncertain. Already in the
Apostolic age there was a writer who appealed to a
cloud of witnesses. How many generations have
passed since then, and how has that cloud of wit
nesses spread and expanded! Comparing what it
is now with what it was then is like comparing the

GENERALLY CONSIDERED. 43
speck no bigger than a man's hand with the whole
sky overcast and the sound of abundance of rain.
Strictly speaking, in the logical order of things, in
that order which we are apt to assume but which
as a matter of fact few really follow, all this would
come in better as a confirmation or verification of
truths otherwise arrived at. In the present course it
might from some points of view come in more
appropriately after rather than before what I hope
to say next Sunday. It is an argument which
at first sight appears popular rather than scientific.
And yet it has, I cannot but think, a justification in
philosophy as well as in practice. Truth, when we
come to think of it, is really nothing more than
propositions framed in accordance with the ascer
tained laws of the human mind. The inner truth of
things in themselves we cannot know, or at least can
only infer remotely. What we are concerned with
primarily, if not entirely, is the impressions made
upon our own minds. But, if that is so, surely the
experimental test is of the very greatest importance,
especially where the question is of a theory which is
to cover the whole of life. It is natural to ask in
regard to such a theory before anything else. Does it
work ? Does it really harmonize with the conditions
of human nature ? Does it really result in a type of
Ufe and character which gives satisfaction to those
who attain to it and commands the respect of those

\

44 THE DIVINE ELEMENT
who do not ? If this mode of arguing appears unphilo-
sophical the fault is really in the philosophies, which
isolate a very small part of human nature and treat it
as if it could lay down laws for the whole. The
reason why people cling to old beliefs, as it sometimes
seems irrationally, is because in mental processes
of this kind there is much that enters in uncon
sciously besides the elements of which we are
conscious. A sound philosophy ought to widen itself
out so as to give some account of this. But when
that comes to be done with Christianity, and with the
Bible as the foundation of Christianity, all this
experimental testing supplied by the lives of so many
myriads of human beings is an enormous weight in
the scale. If it is instinct — even as we say a ' blind,'
that is, an ' unconscious ' instinct which makes it
possess such an attraction for them, that instinct must
have its causes and cannot rest on mere delusion.
The questions which at present are agitating
men's minds only touch the fringe of this immense
mass of testimony. They are really questions of
detail. They may mean perhaps a little more
here, a little less there. They do, I admit, take
away something of the definiteness and certainty
with which men were wont to appeal to their Bibles ;
but I shall endeavour to show that there are com
pensations for the loss. Definiteness is not always
a gain : the certainty which springs from the absence

GENERALLY CONSIDERED. 45
of questioning and of search is a different thing from
the certainty which comes after search and enquiry.
And the latter kind of certainty is, we may be sure,
the higher and better of the two.
I will make bold to use a comparison, which, if it
is rightly applied, will leave no doubt on which side
the advantage Ues. When our Lord condescended
to become Incarnate upon earth, He found the Jews
in the possession of an elaborate code of law by
which they were in the habit of directing their lives.
When they wished to know what to do in any case
they turned its pages till they found a precept cor
responding to that case. His coming was the end
of the Law ; it abolished all that code and did away
with the precepts on which the Scribes and Pharisees
had been wont to lean. And yet, in the very act of
abolishing the Law, Jesus said, I am not come to destroy
hut to fulfil. How so ? He fulfilled the Law, while
He abolished it, by s\}}a?,'6:(.vMva.g principles for precepts.
He fulfilled it when He said. Thou shalt love the Lord
thy God with all thy heart and thy neighbour as
thyself and when He set in motion forces which gave
men the capacity for loving God and their neighbour.
Now it seems to me that if what the critics say
is true, the change in the use of the Bible will be
only of the same kind. It will substitute principles
for precepts. It will no longer be so easy to find
proof-texts for this or that ; but the principles which

46 THE DIVINE ELEMENT CONSIDERED.
run through the Bible will be better understood i
and more vigorously realized ; they will be held with
a stronger and a firmer faith. The mechanical and
verbal inspiration of the Bible may be questioned,
but its real and vital inspiration will shine out as
it has never done^.
' No doubt there is a relative justification, similar in kind to that
which has just been urged in this lecture for other religions besides
Christianity. Mahometanism we need not count, because its best
elements are common to Christianity and derived either from it or from
Judaism. But Buddhism may allege with good reason the number of
its votaries. It is impossible to read the life and teaching of Gautama
without feeling that he too had an impulse from the Holy One. It
would be little in accordance with Christian doctrine to maintain that
the divine influences which were vouchsafed in so large a measure to
select spirits in Palestine were wholly wanting in India or Greece.
But the highest of faiths must be tested by the hold which they take
on the most widely cultured nations. Christianity succeeded to the
spiritual inheritance of Greece and Rome ; and the experiments which
have been made, not only by Christian missionaries, but by native move
ments like the Brahmo Somaj, all go to encourage the hope that it is
capable of succeeding, and will one day succeed, to the spiritual in
heritance of the Oriental peoples. For a fuller discussion of the relation
of Biblical Inspiration to the phenomena which resemble it in non-
Christian religions, see Lecture VII.

IV.
THE DIVINE ELEMENT IN ITS SPECIAL
MANIFEST A TIONS.
(¦Whitehall, August 3, 1890.)
2 St. Peter i. 21.
No prophecy ever came by the will of man, but men spake
from God, being moved by the Holy Ghost.
If what has been hitherto urged is true, we may ^
lay it down as a fundamental principle that a true
conception of what the Bible is must be obtained
from the Bible itself There is no reason to be afraid
of going straight to the Bible ; and there is, I think,
no reason to be afraid of putting to it a direct ques
tion, even though it may involve something that
might be called ' criticism.' Provided that we go to it
with complete singleness of purpose, with a perfectly
clear and open mind, not seeking merely to establish a
case either on the one side or on the other, but simply
to learn the truth, we shall be guilty of no irre
verence, and it would be a want of faith to say that
we were endangering anything sacred. Truth is not
such a brittle thing that it must break in pieces as

48 THE DIVINE ELEMENT
soon as it begins to be handled. Nor can we think
that He who has given to us the Bible will have left
His own image and superscription upon it so faint
that the observant eye cannot see it.
Certainly He has not done this. A more welcome
duty awaits me now than that in which I have been
engaged hitherto. I may now put the question.
What proof have we that the Bible is really the Word /
of God, and that His voice has really spoken to us
in its pages ? It seems to me that the clearest and
simplest and most direct proof — apart from the veri
fication supplied to it by history — is to be found in
the account which the sacred writers give us of them-'
selves. The central phenomenon of the Old Testa
ment is Prophecy. And the prophets have left us
very clear statements of the relation in which they
stood to the Almighty Power whose will they claimed
to interpret. The leading Prophets all tell us under
what circumstances they came to assume their office,
and how they came to regard themselves as ex
ponents of the Divine Will. The first on the line is
Moses, that typical figure on which — as you will
remember from Deut. xviii. i8 — not only the whole
succeeding revelation of the Old Testament, but even
the culmination of Prophecy in the New Testament,
was to be modelled. The Call of Moses is a famUiar
story. He was feeding his flock on the scanty
herbage found here and there among the mountains

IN ITS SPECIAL MANIFESTATIONS. 49
in the heart of the Sinaitic peninsula when a re
markable sight arrested his attention. The organ of
vision may have beeii the eye of the spirit and not
the bodily eye. To the men whose writing has come
down to us the Bible, the things of the. spirit, were
so near and so intensely realized, and their way of
expressing themselves is so simple — suited to the
primitive age in which they lived and to which their
message was addressed — that they were not careful
to distinguish between the two as we, with our more
precise definition of the human faculties, should be
bound to do. An awful voice — again as we may
well think heard by the spirit and riot by any bodily
sense — comes to him and delivers to him at once a
revelation and a commission ^- To appreciate the
full depth of the revelation would require a long en
quiry into which I cannot now stay to enter. It was the
custom in those early days to compress any weighty
truth as to the being and attributes of God into a
Name. And so the delivery of this Name I Am
THAT I Am marked an epoch in the history of Israel,
a new step in the process by which divine things
were disclosed to them. But the point which I de
sire more especially to notice is the reluctance of
Moses to accept the commission that is offered to
him. And Moses said unto God, Who am I that T
should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth
• On this see Driver in Studia Biblica, I. p. i, esp. pp. 17-18.
E

50 THE DIVINE ELEMENT
the children of Israel out of Egypf^? And then
follows a long expostulation in which one difficulty
after another is raised. Moses ends by pleading his
incapacity of speech. Oh Lord, I am not eloquent,
neither heretofore, nor since Thou hast spoken unto Thy
servant: for I am slow of speech and of a slow tongue.
And the Lord said unto him. Who hath made man's
mouth ? or who maketh a m.an dumb or deaf or seeing
or blind f is it not I the Lord? Now therefore go and
T will he with thy mouth and teach thee what thou
shalt speak. A last desperate effort to evade the
responsibility — And he said. Oh Lord, send, I pray
Thee, by the hand of him whom Thou wilt send. And
we read that the anger of the Lord was kindled against
Moses, and He said. Is there not Aaron thy brother,
the Levite ? . . . He shall be thy spokesman unto the
people ^.
The impression conveyed by the narrative clearly
is that the whole rdle of a prophet is forced upon
Moses very much against his will. It precludes, as
strongly as anything could preclude, the supposition
that the weighty message which Moses delivered to
his contemporaries and the revolution which he
wrought by it was purely a product of his own
imagination. Nothing can be clearer than that the
opposite of this was the case. Moses was really an
instrument in the hand of God, and the words which
' Exodus iii. II. " Exodus iv. 10-16.

IN ITS SPECIAL MANIFESTATIONS. 51
were put in his mouth to speak were put there by
the Divine Spirit.
It might be said perhaps, if any one were disposed
to play the part of an objector, that, according to the
newer views of criticism, the narrative was not set
down in writing by Moses himself, but only after a
considerable interval of time, and that we have no
guarantee that it is an exact representation of the
facts. However this may be, I think we shall admit
that there is a remarkable verisimilitude about it,
that it corresponds in a striking manner to the ana
logies of other great religious crises of the kind, and
that whatever intermediate steps may separate the
narrative, as we have it, from Moses himself, it must
be taken as a history which is in essence and sub
stance true, and that it does not err in ascribing the
origin of the movement of which Moses was the
visible human centre to direct Divine intervention ^.
The next witness to which I shall appeal is not
open to any such exception. There is no doubt that
the 6th chapter of Isaiah was actually written by the
prophet, and it describes his call just as the narrative
in the Book of Exodus describes the call of Moses.
The two narratives are so wholly different in the
range of their symbolism and in their outward setting
that no one would think of suggesting the literary
dependence of the one upon the other ; and yet when
' See the authorities quoted by Fisher, Nature, &c. p. 25 f.
e a

52 THE DIVINE ELEMENT
they come to be examined the fundamental lines of
the two passages, the nature of the relation between
the prophet and the source of his inspiration, are
the same. It is made equally clear that the inspira
tion comes from without and not from within. The
prophet himself is equally reluctant ; he is equally
conscious of inability and unworthiness ; but this
consciousness of his is overcome by what we are
obliged to regard as supernatural means. When he
is prostrate before the vision of the Divine Glory he
cries out, Woe is me I for 1 am undone ; because T
am a man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of
a people of unclean lips : for mine eyes have seen the
King, the Lord of Hosts. But in the midst of this
self-abasement he sees a seraph, as it were, flying
towards him with a live coal from off the altar. With
this his lips are touched, and he is told that his
iniquity is taken away and his sin purged. Then he
receives his message.
It is extraordinary how, one after another, the
same features are reproduced in the prophetic books.
The process is always extremely different from what
it would be if the prophet arrived at his insight into
spiritual things by the tentative efforts of his own
genius. There is something sharp and sudden about
it. He can lay his finger, so to speak, upon the
moment when it came. And it always comes in the
form of an overpowering force from without, against

IN ITS SPECIAL MANIFESTATIONS. 53
which he struggles but in vain. Listen to this, for
instance, from the opening of the Book of Jeremiah :
Now the word of the Lord came unto me, saying. Be
fore I formed thee in the belly I knew thee, and before
thou earnest forth out of the womb I sanctified thee:
I have appointed thee a prophet unto the nations. Then
said I, Ah, Lord God I behold I cannot speak: for I
am a child. But the Lord said unto me. Say not, I am
a child: for to whomsoever I shall send thee thou shalt
go, and whatsoever I shall command thee thou shalt
speak. The tender, humble spirit of Jeremiah de
precates the high commission which is being pressed
upon him, but he cannot refuse it. He must needs
testify at the peril of his life before kings and princes
and people. But the words put in his mouth are not
his own. Behold, I have put My words in thy mouth :
see, T have this day set thee over the nations and
over ihe kingdoms, to pluck up and to break down,
and to destroy and to overthrow ; to build and to
plant^. Read through in like manner the first two chapters
of the prophecy of EzekieL- Here perhaps the rhain
idea is suggested by Isaiah, though an individual
stamp is put upon it. The dating is even more pre
cise ; it was in the fifth day of the fourth month of
the fifth year of Jehoiachim's captivity that the great
vision with which his book opens was vouchsafed to
' Jeremiah i. 5-10.

54 THE DIVINE ELEMENT
the prophet and the roll given to him which con
tained his message.
It is not, however, only at the beginning of his
career that the prophet passes through a crisis which
is clearly not self-caused. Scattered all through the
prophetic writings are expressions which speak of
some strong and irresistible impulse coming down
'upon the prophet, determining his attitude to the
events of his time, constraining his utterance, making
his words the vehicle of a higher meaning than their
own. For instance this of Isaiah's : The Lord spake
thus to me with a strong hand — an emphatic phrase
which denotes the over-mastering nature of the im
pulse — The Lord spake thus to me zvith a strong hand,
and instructed me that I should not walk in the way
of this people ^- Or, again, take this of Jeremiah's :
T sat not in the assembly of them that make merry
nor rejoiced; I sat alone because of Thy hand; for
Thou hast filled me with indignation *. Or passages
like these from Ezekiel : So the Spirit lifted me up,
and took me away; and T went in bitterness, in the
heat of my spirit, and the hand of the Lord was
strong upon me ^- And it came to pass — on a given
day — as I sat in mine house, and the elders of Judah
sat before me, that the hand of the Lord God fell there
upon me^. The one standing characteristic of the
' Isaiah viii. il. * Jeremiah xv. 17.
¦¦' Ezekiel iii. 14. « Ezekiel viii. i. (Riehm, p. 211.)

IN ITS SPECIAL MANIFESTATIONS. 55
prophet is that he speaks with the authority of
Jehovah Himself This is part of the promise made
to Moses : / will raise them up a prophet from among
tlieir brethren, like unto thee; and I will put My words
in his mouth, and he shall speak unto them all that
I shall command him. And it shall come to pass,
that whosoever will not hearken to My words which
he shall speak in My name, I will require it of him.
But the prophet which shall speak a word pre
sumptuously in My name, which I have not com
manded him to speak, or that shall speak in the
name of other gods, that same prophet shall die^.
Hence it is that the prophets one and all preface
their addresses so confidently. The Word of the Lord,
or Thus saith the .Lord. They have even the au
dacity to speak in the first person, as if Jehovah
Himself were speaking. As in Isaiah, Hearken unto
Me, O Jacob, and Israel my called ; I am He, I am
the first, T also am the last"^, and so on. The per
sonality of the prophet sinks entirely into the back
ground ; he feels himself for the time being the
mouthpiece of the Almighty. Imagine any one doing
this in the present day. When we quote the Bible
indeed we may say Thus saith the Lord. But if any
one presumed to use such language, not quoting the
Bible, we should say that he was either an impostor
or mad. The prophets were certainly.not impostors,
' Deut. xviii. 18-20. ^ Isaiah xlviii. 12.

56 THE DIVINE ELEMENT
and they were certainly not mad. They were not
impostors, because their words often brought them
only mockery, abuse, imprisonment, and even death.
And they were not mad. Nothing could be more
^simple or more sincere — more sane we might say — •
than the language which they use ; there is not the
slightest trace of a morbid consciousness about it.
The effort, so far as there is an effort, is not to claim
a revelation but to escape it. And we, looking back
at this distance of time, can see more clearly than
' it was possible for their contemporaries to see that
they spoke the words of truth and soberness. Words
more sublime or more really illuminative never fell
from the lips of man.
I have taken the prophets as the typical example
of Old Testament religion, because in them we can
see the process that we call 'Inspiration* most
distinctly; but the imperatives of the Law, Thou shalt,
" and Thou shalt not, are essentially of the same kind.
Of the same kind it is too, for instance, in the Book
of Proverbs when Wisdom is introduced as speaking :
Doth not wisdom cry, and understatiding put forth her
voice f In the top of high places hy the way, where ihe
paths meet she standeth . . . Unto you, O men, I call;
and thy voice is to the sons of men *. And yet more
distinctly does the spirit of prophecy breathe in the
•' Psalter, for it is a Psalm of David (recorded in
' Proverbs viii. 1,2,4.

IN ITS SPECIAL MANIFESTATIONS. 57
3 Sam. xxiii) which begins, The Spirit of the Lord
spake by me, and His word was upon my tongue.
Compare again this from the Book of Job describing
one of the more agitating modes of revelation : Noiv
a thing was secretly brought to me and mine ear
received a whisper thereof. In thoughts from the
vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth on men,
fear came upon me, and trembling, which made all my
bones to shake. Then a spirit (or a hreath) passed before
my face; the hair of my flesh stood up. It stood still,
but I could not discern the appearance thereof: a form
was before mine eyes ; I heard a still voice saying,
ShaU a mortal man be more just than God? Shall
a man be more pure than his Maker^f It is true that
this is an imaginative description, and that it is put
in the mouth of Eliphaz and not of Job, but it shows
how deeply rooted was the conviction that all pro
phetic revelations had an external source, and the
exalted teaching which follows is well worthy of such
an origin. The prophecies of Balaam are another
striking testimony to the same conviction.
We are apt to think of the New Testament as if
it were different from the Old. We think of it too
as authoritative ; but we invest it with a different kind
of authority. We forget, however, that the Spirit
of Prophecy was just as active in the New Testament
times as under the older dispensation. The pheno-
' Job iv. 12-17.

58 THE DIVINE ELEMENT
mena may have been a little more varied, but the
source of the phenomena was the same. The apostles
themselves regarded the out-pouring of the Spirit,
^of which they themselves were partakers, as a direct
fulfilment of the prophecy of Joel, / will pour forth
of My Spirit upon all flesh : and your sons and your
daughters shall prophesy, and your young m£n shall
see visions, and your old men shall dream dreams:
Yea, and on My servants and on My handmaidens
in those days will I pour forth of My Spirit ; and they
shall prophesy ^. It would be easy to show by
detailed, examples how God made known His will
by precisely the same methods as those which were
in use among the Old Testament prophets ; by sym
bolical acts, as in the case of Agabus binding himself
with St. Paul's girdle, in visions as to St. Peter and
repeatedly to St. Paul, by sudden irresistible impulse,
as in the case of the girl with the spirit of divination,
sometimes even by the mouth of unconscious and
hostile witnesses, as in the memorable words of
Caiaphas, who spoke not knowing what he said.
And not only so, but the main drift of New Testa
ment revelation was really an expression of prophecy.
The testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy, said
the seer of the Apocalypse ^. We know that St. Paul
was richly endowed with this gift, and when we look
into his Epistles we see that they were really pro'
' Acts ii. 17, iS, ' Rev. xix. 10.

IN ITS SPECIAL MANIFESTATIONS. 59
phetic writings just as much as the works of the
elder prophets. Let us read his own account of his
own call, and compare it, for instance, with that of.'
Jeremiah. We have it in the first chapter of the
Epistle to the Galatians : T make known to you,
brethren, as touching the gospel which was preached
by me, that it is not after man. For neither did I
receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came
to me through revelation of Jesus Christ. For ye
have heard of my manner of life in time past in the
Jews' religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted
the Church of God . . . but when it was the good
pleasure of God, Who separated me from my mother's
womb, and called me through His grace — you will
remember Jeremiah's Before I formed thee in the belly
I knew thee, and before thou camest forth from ike
womb I sanctified thee — when it pleased God to
reveal His Son in me that I might preach Him among
ihe Gentiles ; immediately I conferred not with flesh
and hlood'^, and so on. Clearly the revelation, or
series of revelations, by which there was brought
home to the mind of St. Paul the full significance
of his Master's mission, was the same in kind as that of
the I Am that I Am of Moses, or the Wonderful,
Counsellor of Isaiah. It was not merely a product
of his own brain. Of him too it might be said, as it
was said to St. Peter after his confession. Flesh and'^
» Gal. i. 11-13, i5> i6-

66 THE DIVINE ELEMENT, ETC.
blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father
Which is in Heaven ^.
When we think of it, this continuity of the Bible
from first to last is exceedingly impressive. It forces
in upon the mind a conviction, which cannot easily be
J shaken, that there has been at work in it something
'more than natural,' the influence — the sustained
and vitalizing influence — of a Higher Power. 1 said
a moment ago that the prophets of the Old Testa
ment were not impostors and were not mad. We
may say the same of the writers of the New Testa
ment. They too were not drunk with new wine, but
the wine with which they were really filled and
intoxicated was the wine -of the Spirit. They assure
us that they spoke as the Spirit gave them utterance.
And all that we do is to take them at their word.
When we say that they were 'moved by the Holy
Ghost,' we mean by it what they meant, neither less
nor more. * Matt. xvi. 17.

V.
THE BLENDING OF HUMAN AND DIVINE.
(Whitehall, August 10, 1890.)
2 Peter i. 19, R. V.
And we have the word of prophecy made more sure; where-
untoye do well that ye take heed, as unto a lamp shining in a
dark place.
My purpose so far, and especially in the last of
these discourses, has been to speak a word of re
assurance to those who look with concern at the
direction which Biblical enquiry is taking. The idea
is too prevalent that if once free criticism is admitted
a process is begun which will end in the destruction
of all religious belief whatsoever. The process is apt
to look too much like an inclined plane, of which we
see the top but do not see the bottom. There are
many anxious minds who fear that when once belief
begins to slide it will find itself before it knows
precipitated into the abyss. This is the apprehension
which I have tried to show to be unfounded ; I have
tried to show that we do see what Ues at the bottom
of the incline, that there is a point where Criticism of

6a THE BLENDING OF HUMAN AND DIVINE.
its own accord must come to a standstill. That point
' I-found last time in the consciousness of the sacred
writers themselves. It seems to me that this is the
true starting-point for a really critical enquiry into
the nature of Biblical in.spiration. The advantage of
it is that it assumes nothing. It takes the documents
just as they stand. It is quite willing to make any
necessary allowance for dates and manner of com
position. But practically, as we saw, these literary
considerations make no difference. The great bulk
of the evidence is unimpeachable on this score, and
its tenor is too clear to be mistaken. The Biblical
writers themselves were convinced that the words
which they spoke were put Into their mouths by God.
They speak in accents of perfect confidence and
perfect sincerity. There is none of the straining of
personal assumption about them. They take no
credit for it. In the most conspicuous instances
^ there is not only no eagerness to claim inspiration,
but a positive shrinking from it. This reluctance is
in each case overborne by a Power which the writer
feels to be outside himself. The Spirit of the Lord
took hold of them and made them for the time being
^its organs. This was their own belief And looking
back upon their words In the light thrown upon them
by history we cannot think that they were wrong.
Here it seems to me that we have a clear standing
ground. There is no need to have recourse to any

THE BLENDING OF HUMAN AND DIVINE. 63
doubtful theories of external authority. We appeal
to the Bible ; and the Bible bears witness, and satis
factory witness, to itself
But having gone so far as this our attention must
now be turned to another side of the problem. If we
come back to the Bible again, and again interrogate
it to see what answer it makes to our enquiries, shall
we find that room is left for the phenomena which
recent criticism believes itself to have discovered in
it? Is there anything which the Bible lays down
in point of doctrine which would conflict with these
phenomena in point of fact ? In other words, do they
imply an extension of the human element in Scrip
ture inconsistent with that Divine element which
asserts its presence so unmistakeably ?
I have said that the typical expression of this
Divine element in the Bible is Prophecy. Other
forms of Biblical literature partake of it by virtue of
their share in the prophetic spirit. Now prophecy
certainly has its own limitations. The gift of
prophecy was a special gift In reference to particular
circumstances. It was called forth by those circum
stances ; and if it looked beyond them it did so as
giving expression to principles which were capable of
a wider application than the particular issue ; but it
was very far from implying universal knowledge. The
fundamental point in the activity of the Prophet was
his insight into the principles which lay behind the

64 THE BLENDING OF HUMAN AND DIVINE.
Divine ordering of events. His knowledge of these
principles was borne in upon his mind in a way
that he felt to be due to an influence from without.
He knew that all that he said in reference to them
was put into his mouth by God. There was also
perhaps something more than this. The prophet was
in part the conscious organ of the Divine Will ; and
it would seem that he was also in part an unconscious
organ of the same Will. If he was gifted with a
peculiar insight into the workings of God's Provi
dence, so also is it open to us to believe that he was
himself included in the sphere of those workings, so
that utterances which from his point of view and from
the point of view of the immediate circumstances
might have been described as accidental were not
really accidental but bore relation to some more
distant part of the Divine plan. I mean that, for
instance, when the Psalmist says. They pierced my
hands and my feet, or They parted my garments among
them, he may not have been himself thinking of the
Death of the Messiah, and yet his words and the
facts corresponding to them may have been over
ruled so as to be rightly applied to features in the
Death of the Messiah \ But to say this is a very
different thing from saying that a prophet possessed
' all mysteries and all knowledge ' besides those of
' See especially Essay iii. on ' The Christian Element in the Book of
Isaiah ' in Cheyne's Isaiah, vol. ii.

THE BLENDING OF HUMAN AND DIVINE. 65
which the Spirit of God made him the special vehicle.
He spoke the words that were put into his mouth,
but outside those words and outside the range of
facts which came under the same general principles
as those to which he was giving utterance, his
knowledge did not differ from that possessed by the
rest of his contemporaries. We must dismiss from
our minds the idea that the prophet possessed a
knowledge of aU truth, even of all religious truth,
much less of all truth unconnected with religion. He
was the organ of a particular revelation which God
vouchsafed to make at a particular place and time,
but it is only the sum of such revelations that makes *
up the whole body of religious truth as we have it in
the Bible. It was not given all at once, but at sundry
times and in divers manners.
Only One there was to Whom the Spirit of God ^
was given without measure. Only One there was
upon Whom the spiritual eye might have seen the
angels ascending and descending and keeping up a
constant communication with the Father all through
His earthly career. What Jacob saw in a certain
memorable vision at a turning-point in his life, that
was given to the Prophet of Nazareth all through.
But in this He was unique, and we must not argue
from Him even to the greatest of His servants. The
very frequency of that expression, The word of the
Lord came to this or that among the prophets shows
F

66 THE BLENDING OF HUMAN AND DIVINE.
what wide spaces of time there must have been when
no word came, when there was neither voice, nor any
to answer, nor any that regarded. Jeremiah tells us
that on one occasion when he was consulted upon a
point directly connected with the main subject of his
mission, he had to wait ten days before any revelation
came to him ^.
There are some significant places in the New
Testament from which a light is reflected back upon
the Old. For instance in the Epistle to the Romans,
where St. Paul bids his con-verts prophesy according to
the measure of \their'\ faith; or again where he speaks
of himself and the Apostles as preaching each as the
Lord gave to him^ ; or where he says, unto each one of
us was the grace given according to the measure of the
gift of Christ ^. There were various grades and pro
portions in the prophetic gifts ; and it is in contrast
to these that Christ is said to possess the gift without
measure. Not only is there a difference of degree in the
insight which prophecy implied, but there is also an
evolution of its several parts, a progressive succession
in order of time. Some things which belong to the
sphere of prophecy, such as the praise of the act of ^
Jael, the command for the extermination of the
Canaanites, what are called the ' imprecatory Psalms,'
were in place at one stage of the history of Revela-
' Jer. xlii, 7. " I Cor iii. %.^. ' Eph. iv. 7.

THE BLENDING OF HUMAN AND DIVINE. 6j

tion, whereas they would not have been in place at
a later stage. It was in reference to such things as
these that our Lord rebuked the disciples by telling
them that they knew not what spirit they were of^
The disclosure of the Divine Will is gradual : it is
line upon line and precept upon precept ; one truth here
and another truth there, not all truth at once. The
description at the beginning of the Epistle to the
Hebrews emphatically holds good : Revelation was
given at sundry times atid in divers manners, in many
portions and in many different forms.
When we turn from prophecy to the other great
elements in the Bible, to law and to history, to a cer
tain extent the same phenomena meet us. It is the
prophetic spirit which is the proper vehicle of Revela
tion. And so far as both law and history contain a
revelation they too are prophetic. Moses is the first,
and in some ways perhaps the greatest, of the long
line of prophets. The historians were either prophets
themselves or wrote largely under the influence of
prophecy. It is this characteristic which has gained
them their place in the Bible. And so far as it is
embodied in them they would come under the same
laws, and the same principles would hold good in
* St. Luke ix. 55. Probably these words were really spoken by our
Lord, though they are wanting in so many of the best MSS. that they
can hardly have been part of the original Gospel : they seem to have
been added to it at a later but still early date from oral tradition.
F 2

68 THE BLENDING OF HUMAN AND DIVINE.
respect to them as in respect to prophecy strictly so
called. But in law and in history there was another ele
ment, which we may describe in a single word as
commemorative or historical. In regard to this
element different principles come into play. If we
take the historical Books and look at them no
longer as revelation but simply as history, then we
find ourselves on different ground. With the sacred '
historians the record of fact as fact, and apart from
Its significance in the unfolding of the Divine purpose,
is something very secondary and subordinate. Every
thing that bears on the Divine purpose, the religious
lessons to be drawn from the history, are pointed out
with great care and from a standpoint that is dis
tinctly prophetic. But when once this prophetic
element is subtracted, the bare record of events which
remains does not seem to differ from any other "'
history. The writers tell us from what sources their
facts are derived just like any ordinary historian.
Even in the Pentateuch some ancient documents are
quoted like the ' Book of the Wars of the Lord ^,' or
the ' proverb ' about Heshbon ^, and critical analysis
can detect the composite origin of the Books. When
we come to the Books of Samuel, Kings, and
Chronicles, the number of previous documents quoted
is greatly multiplied. The ' Book of Jashar,' or ' the
' Num. xxi. 14. ' Num. iv. 27-30.

THE BLENDING OF HUMAN AND DIVINE. 69
Upright,' a collection of odes relating to the heroes
of Israel, the histories of Samuel, Gad, and Nathan —
perhaps, as it is thought, not three distinct works but
successive sections of a continuous single work — the
'acts' of Solomon, the 'chronicles' of the kings of Israel
and of the kings of Judah both separately and com
bined, 'commentaries' like those of Iddo the prophet \
the 'acts' of Uzziah which had no less an author than
Isaiah^, and another work by the same prophet deal
ing with the reign of Hezekiah * — all these and more
are enumerated as authorities, just as any profane
historian might refer to the sources from which he
was drawing. These various documents vary also in
value ; some are very near and even contemporary
with the events, some are separated by a greater or
less interval from them. A large proportion of the
narratives, especially in the earlier books, must rest
ultimately upon oral tradi-tion, committed to writing
after a considerable lapse of time. I know of nothing
which would mark off these merely as narratives
from others of the same kind outside the Bible.
I know of nothing, which should isolate them, and
prevent us from judging them as we should other
similar narratives. Their authority must needs rise
or fall according to the relation of the writer t'o the
events : some will rank higher, some lower : some will
* 2 Chron. xiii. 22. '2 Chron. xxvi. 22.
' 2 Chron. xxxii. 32.

70 THE BLENDING OF HUMAN AND DIVINE.
carry with them better attestation than others. But
so far as the Bible itself instructs us on the point, 1 do
not see how we can claim for them a strict immunity
from error. There Is indeed a gradual shading off.
Some parts of the Old Testament stand out as unique
and distinct from all other books ; others, so far as we
can judge, are on much the same level with them.
We turn to the New Testament and we find there
phenomena of much the same kind. St. Paul lets
us see plainly what his inspiration is, and how far it
extends. The passage quoted on the last occasion
is decisive as to the central features at least in his
teaching : he did not receive it from man, neither/
was he taught it, but it came to him through reve
lation of Jesus Christ. The person of St. Paul is
surrounded by the supernatural. Through all the
modes in which the Spirit of God held communion
with the elder prophets, the same Divine influences
were communicated to him. He too prophesied ; he
spake with tongues ; he received intimations of the
Divine Will in dreams. In visions, in other ways not
more particularly specified. But yet he too not only
drew the distinctions, to which reference has been
already made, between the different degrees of in
spiration vouchsafed to different individuals, but he
was also conscious of degrees in his own inspiration
and in the authority with which he spoke on different
occasions.

THE BLENDING OF HUMAN AND DIVINE. 7 1
This comes out clearly in the chapter which con
tains so much wise counsel on the subject of mar
riage^. For one of his precepts he claims an authority
higher than his own : unto the married I give charge, /
yet not I but the Lord^. For another he wUl not
claim so much as this : to the rest say I, not the •
Lord^. Other precepts he places rather upon the
footing of advice than of command. Concerning
virgins, he says, I have no commandment of the Lord:
but I give my judgment, as one that hath obtained mercy
of the Lord to be faithful"^; where the word 'judg
ment' means rather the decision to which he has
come in his own mind, than anything which he
regarded as binding upon others ; it is only a little
stronger than 'opinion.' Again, at the end of the
chapter, speaking of a widow, he says : she is happier
if she abide as she is, after my judgment : and I think
that I also have the Spirit of God^. The Apostle
modestly claims for himself some enlightenment from
above, but still he will not pre.ss his opinion with too
much emphasis. He does not regard it as an ab
solute law for all Christians. It happens that the
Apostle does not elsewhere graduate his precepts in
the same explicit manner, but we can well beUeve
that he did so tacitly.
In the New Testament as in the Old there is the
* I Cor. vii. ^ Ibid. 10. ' Ibid. 12.
* Ibid. 25. ' Ibid. 40.

72 THE BLENDING OF HUMAN AND DIVINE.
same sort of difference between doctrine and history.
Where the history contains doctrine, there we have
every reason to suppose that the doctrine rests upon
the samfc supernatural basis, that it is as intimately/
connected with the great Messianic outpouring of the
Spirit as it is elsewhere. But the history as history,
as a narrative of events, appears to proceed upon
ordinary methods. The classical passage for this
is the preface to the Gospel of St. Luke. Here the
Evangelist writes just like any other historian. He/
claims that his narrative is based upon the report
of eye-witnesses, and the attendants and helpers of
eye-witnesses: he claims to have used all possible
care and research : but he nowhere assumes super
natural direction : he apparently wishes to have his
work taken upon its merits. We are quite prepared
to find that he has made use of pre-existing materials.
And, as a matter of fact, when the Gospel and the
Acts come to be closely examined, there is strong
reason to believe that both works have incorporated
in them the contents of older documents. We are
reminded that there is a criticism of the New
Testament as well as of the Old. And this criti
cism has made considerable progress, though a final
result has not yet been arrived at. One of the chief
subjects of debate is the composition of the first
three Gospels. These can no longer be treated as
so many independent witnesses to the same events.

THE BLENDING OF HUMAN AND DIVINE. 73
It is far more probable that the common element
in them is all derived from a single source, whether
that source were in writing, or whether it represents
a common body of oral tradition. I would only
remark in passing that if we lose in thus having
only one ultimate witness instead of three, we gain
in that this one witness is thrown back to a date
anterior to the three which have come down to us,
and is so brought still nearer to the events, with
a corresponding increase in its value as history.
In the Book of Acts in like manner older sources
of information appear to have been used. But other
wise, except that the Epistle to the Hebrews is now
usually assigned to some other writer than St. Paul,
and that the evidence for 2 St. Peter ^ is acknow
ledged to be inferior to that for the other . books,
^ Doing my best to weigh impartially the arguments for and against
2 St. Peter, I do not find myself able to get beyond a non liquet : if the
arguments in its favour are unconvincing, so also are those on the other
side. The defective external attestation; the (probable) use of St.
Jude ; the strangeness of diction and alleged coincidences with Josephus ;
the reference to the delay of the Second Coming — are not incompatible
with the genuineness of the Epistle. One of the strongest points is
perhaps the designation of St. Paul's Epistles as ypa<pai. But it is cer
tain that in the first century this term was not confined to the Books of
the Hebrew Canon : and I am not clear that it might not be applied at
an early date to works possessing such high prophetic authority as the
Epistles of St. Paul. Already, in the year 57, we see what an im
pression these Epistles had made from 2 Cor. x. 10. We hesitate, too,
to treat quite so freely as if it were anonymous an Epistle which bears
the name of St. Peter distinctly upon its front, and at the same time

74 THE BLENDING OF HUMAN AND DIVINE.
there is less clear reason for revising the traditional
verdicts upon the Books of the New Testament than
on those of the Old. The Books most impugned are
St. John's Gospel (and Epistles) and the Pastoral
Epistles. Others of the Epistles are criticized, and
a new theory has recently been put forward about
the Apocalypse. But in none of these cases has the
innovating theory been proved at all conclusively ^
I must not go further into these details, but must
attempt to sum up briefly the results at which we
seem to arrive. What is the relation of the natural
to the supernatural, of the human to the Divine,
in the Bible? They shade off into each other by
almost insensible degrees ; but at the two ends of the
scale they are wide enough apart to stand out quite
clearly. In all that relates to the Revelation of God
and of His Will, the writers assert for themselves
gives no sign of disingenuous motive. On the whole question I am
much inclined to adopt the able summing-up given by Dr. Salmon
{Introd. pp. 529-559, ed. 4).
' To say this is not to deny that there are some points in these
writings which are imperfectly explained with our present knowledge.
Our German friends, as a rule, seem to me to allow too small a margin
for possibilities due simply to our ignorance. Bearing these in mind
the balance of argument seems to me in the main clear on the side of
tradition. The freaks of criticism of which something has been heard
of late in Holland and Switzerland are mere extravagances, which only
serve to put us on our guard against the kind of arguments relied upon.
The most decisive reply is probably that by Gloel, Die jUngste Kritik
des Galaterbriefes , Erlangen and ieipzig, 1890. Dr. Gloel is a writer
with whom I find myself in much agreement.

THE BLENDING OF HUMAN AND DIVINE. 75
a definite inspiration ; they claim to speak with an
authority higher than their own. But in regard to
the narrative of events, and to processes of literary
composition, there is nothing so exceptional about
them as to exempt them from the conditions to which
other works would be exposed at the same place and
time. St. Peter compares the light of prophecy to that
of a lamp shining in a dark place ; our Lord com
pared the Kingdom of Heaven in all its many
aspects to leaven hid in three measures of meal. The
light of a lamp has a vivid centre with a corona
which melts by degrees into the darkness by which
it is surrounded. The leaven in the lump of dough
ferments at first most actively at the point at which
it is inserted. In both cases there is an active force
introduced into material which offers some resistance
to it. So is it with Revelation: the heavenly and the
earthly mix and blend. Human instruments are
made use of for Divine ends. The humanity is not
lost : it is not even altogether transfigured : but it
performs its office none the less. It is the medium
through which the knowledge of God is imparted
to ever-widening circles among the sons of men.

VI.
LOSS AND GAIN.
(Whitehall, August 10, 1890.)
Isaiah xi. g.
The earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the
waters cover the sea.
We are now perhaps in a position to estimate
rather more closely the effect which the changes of
which w;e have been speaking are likely to have upon
the faith of Christians. It must be admitted frankly
that they involve a loss. They make the intellectual
side of the connexion between Christian belief and
Christian practice a matter of greater difficulty than
it has hitherto seemed to be. In old days it was
very much as with the Jews in the time of our Lord.
When any question arose of doctrine or practice, all
that was needed was to turn the pages of Scripture
until one came to a place which bore upon the point
at issue. This was at once applied just as it stood,
without hesitation and without misgiving. It becomes
a different matter when the enquirer feels bound not
only to take the passage along with its context, but

LOSS AND GAIN. 77
also to ask who was the author, when did he write,/
and with what stage in the history of Revelation is
the particular utterance connected ? Really the dif
ference is not in principle at least so great as it seems,
because in all ages it has been recognised that there
were some things in the Bible, and especially in the
Old Testament, which could not be transferred just as
they stood to a later day. For instance, no one in
Christian times would have thought of justifying the
practice of polygamy by the examples of the
Patriarchs and Kings of Israel. And for more than
one generation past, in this country at least, no one
would have thought of finding a similar justification
for the institution of Slavery. In principle, therefore,
the two points of view are the same, and what appears
to be a change is only the extension to other and
less obvious places of a rule which had been already
recognised implicitly, if not explicitly, in regard to a
few that were more obvious. Increased knowledge/
in this as in other things, brings with it increased
responsibilities ; and if more is required of the present
generation than was required of our fathers, the
facilities put in their hands are also far greater. The
general level of education has been raised ; books are
multiplied, and in the next few years may be ex
pected to multiply still more, and to improve in
quality — at least so far as quality means the diffusion
of special knowledge hitherto in the hands of a few—

78 LOSS AND GAIN.
even more than in quantity. There is besides this
consolation. The main outlines of Christian faith
and Christian duty are well understood independently
of the interpretation of particular passages. They
have entered into the life of the Church as a whole,
and are handed on from age to age. The plain man
who studies his Bible within the limits imposed by
these cannot very well go wrong. And there is the
incidental but great advantage that in proportion as
the average of Biblical knowledge rises it will become
more and more impossible to split up the Church into
the multitude of small and eccentric sects which have
hitherto been so disastrous to it. A few broad lines
of division will no doubt remain, but many of the
minor varieties will probably be absorbed, while it is
hardly possible that their number can be increased.
Perverse and sectional interpretations of the Scrip
tures will not be able to live in the future as they
have done in the past in the face of an instructed
public opinion. As knowledge widens, all classes of
society will move together more than they have done.
We may look to have a larger consensus of opinion,
and along with it a greater readiness to join in con
certed action.
When we have said that the use which good men
will make of the Bible may be expected to become
less simple and less definite in its details, that it will
involve more research and more trouble, and that less

LOSS AND GAIN. 79
educated Christians will perhaps pay more deference
to the opinion of the more educated and to the
advancing consciousness of the Church at large, we
shall, I think, have said all that need be said as to
the loss — surely not all loss — for which we must be
prepared. But if we assign the utmost weight to
this, it will, I think, be far more than counterbalanced
by the gain.
The first gain is a gain in truth. I do not wish to
assume the ultimate establishment of any particular
set of propositions. AU that I mean is that those
which are ultimately established — those which obtain
a large amount of general acceptance — will do so
because they are true. There is great force in the
old adage, Securus judical orbis terrarum, ' The
whole world can't go wrong.' Only we should of
course take this in its literal sense, and not confine It
to a particular section of the world which happens to
assume to itself a special infallibility. For practical
purposes, a Christian means by the world in this con
nexion the great mass of Christian opinion. Happily
this is now becoming a much more real thing than it
was. Theology is becoming far more international
and interconfessional. England and France are joining
hands with Germany, and America ^ is joining hands
' The rise of theological scholarship (as distinct from dogmatic
or philosophical theology) in America may be said to date from Pro
fessors Andrews Norton, of Harvard (.died 1853), and Moses Stuart, of

So LOSS AND GAIN.
with England. Lutheran scholars and Reforme(i
Anglican and Presbyterian are all making common
cause. And even Roman Catholics do not hold
aloof ^. Men are comparing notes the whole world
over, and extravagances and aberrations are being
struck off on this side and on that. Before this great
tribunal, eccentricities cannot stand. Some public
man, I forget who, is reported to have said that ' all
sensible men were of one religion,' The saying was a
bold one at the time when it was uttered : it would
still be bold, and an anticipation of a perhaps distant
future. But this at least we may say : that an agree
ment upon the critical bases of religion is far more
within sight than it was even a short time ago. There
is a more reasonable temper aU round. Men are
beginning to ask in what they can agree with as
Andover (died 1852). Professor Norton left a distinguished follower
in Dr. Ezra Abbot (died 1884). Biblical and theological studies
flourish at the present moment under Dr. Thayer at Harvard, J^
jMeight and Dr. Fisher of Yale; Dr. Schaff, Dr. Briggs, and Dr.
Isaac Hall at New York ; Dr. Green and Dr. Warfield at Princeton ;
and Professor Rendel Harris (who is English by birth and training) at
Haverford College, Pennsylvania.
' Besides the Old Catholics like Dr. Dbllinger, so lately taken away.
Bishop Reinkens and Professors Reusch and Friedrich, there is an
admirable school at Paris at the head of which is the Abbe Duchesne —
one of the first theological scholars in Europe, — M. Le Blant, M.
Tixeront, and the Abb^ BatiiTol : in Germany, Bishop Hefele, Pro
fessors Kraus, Funk, and Schanz; in Rome, Cardinal Hergenrother
and the veteran De Rossi, who in 1885 lost the companionship of
another distinguished Christian archaeologist, Garrucci.

LOSS AND GAIN. 8 1
much willingness as to fight the points on which they
differ. This is a good augury, and one which is
every day pronouncing itself more clearly.
The next gain is a gain in security. Belief which''
rests on grounds such as I have been describing
touches the bottom; it feels the solid rock. Belief
which rests upon authority has always a certain
amount of scaffolding between it and the base on
-which it stands ; and the mind cannot help being
haunted by the doubt whether that scaffolding is
strong and firm enough to bear the weight thrown
upon it. Will the authority itself bear the solvents
of criticism ? But belief which has been itself tested
by criticism — which comes out as the result of a
critical process — cannot have any further solvent
applied to it. Its anchor cannot drag. Its roots go
down into the very constitution of the human mind.
And the faith which springs from it has all that
buoyancy and sense of freedom which comes from
having no reserve — no weak place which one shrinks
from putting to the proof The confidence which
comes from the rigorous exclusion of opposing forces
Is one thing : that which comes from having met and
fought and conquered them is another. The last
alone is a healthy confidence ; it alone carries with it
the true assurance and elation of victory.
A third gain is the gain In reality. The old way
of looking at the Bible was mainly as a collection of
G

8a LOSS AND GAIN.
doctrines — a number of abstract propositions which
might indeed be applied to life, but which were not
themselves in any full sense living. The new way
makes them live and breathe so intensely that their
life cannot help being communicated even across the
gulf of ages. It is like the story of Elisha, who we
are told went up and lay upon the dead child, and put
his mouth upon his mouth and his eyes upon his eyes
and his hands upon his hands ; and he stretched himself
upon the child, and the flesh of the child waxed warm ^
Such is the contact into which our modern im
poverished existence is brought with the ancient and
perennial spring of life contained in the Bible. By
treating the Bible history as a human history like
any other, by investing each period and stage in
it with all the surroundings proper to that period,
by observing the close and intimate relation which
doctrine always bears to the times and circumstances
out of which it arises, the doctrine itself acquires a
new vitality. An ideal, however high, when severed
from life, has always something thin and pale and in
effective about it. Take the same ideal and find a
body for it ; infuse into it a touch of genuine realism ;
let it be seen how it glows through its veil of flesh,
how it courses like pure blood through the arteries,
how it puts its own fine lines upon the features and
kindles them with its own enthusiasm, and it becomes
' 2 Kings iv. 34.

LOSS AND GAIN. 83
tenfold more winning and attractive — not only in
spired itself but a source of real inspiration in others.
St. Paul speaks of Christians reflecting as in a mirror
the glory of the Lord, being transformed into the same
image from glory to glory ^, and that should be the case
with all who are brought into vital and vitalizing
contact with the Bible.
Truth, security, reality are three things closely
allied to each other. They are only different aspects
of the result of a more profound study, a more
thorough apprehension of the Bible as it is and not
as we imagine it to be. The gain which they re
present is one for which it would not be easy to pay
too dear. Of course I do not , mean that we shall
grasp the whole amount of this gain all at once.
This too, like all other processes, must be gradual.
But it is a process on which, as it seems to me, we
are well launched. The Continent is ahead of us
just at present: in Germany especiaUy the results of
criticism have been more fully assimilated : but I
believe that we shall soon do more than make up
for lost time, as the scholars of our own, in whose
hands the working out of these problems Ues, are
distinguished by a peculiarly happy balance between
the interests of religion and of science : we may be'/
sure that the one will not be sacrificed to the other.
There is, however, another point which I think
» 2 Cor. iii. 18.
G 3

84 LOSS AND GAIN.
that we need not hesitate to set down under the head
of ' gain,' in the change involved in the manner of
using the Bible. Hitherto the use which has been
made of it has been mainly of two kinds. On the
one hand it has been taken as the basis of formulated
doctrine, such as constitutes the substance of Creeds
and Articles. On the other hand single texts have
been constantly applied as sources of stimulus or of
comfort. The last Is the use which has been most
common with plain, everyday Christians ; the first is
that which has exercised the leaders of Christian
thought and the deliberations of the great Church
assemblies. Both these uses are legitimate, and ought
not to be disparaged. Only it is not wrong to bear in
mind that, while the decisions of Councils, represent
ing as they do the deliberate judgment of the great
majority of the Church at moments when a clear
issue has been set before it, are not likely to be
reversed, — so that, for instance, it is extremely im
probable that anything at all corresponding to the
Arianism which was rejected in the fourth century
should establish itself in the nineteenth or twentieth, —
these decisions are nevertheless historical in their
character, having relation to particular phases of
thought prevailing at particular periods, and there
fore are apt to lose, if not their essential truth, yet
to some extent their interest and appositeness to
the present. With this qualification the two older

LOSS AND GAIN. 85
uses of the Bible will doubtless continue, and need
not be called in question. But there is yet a third
use which it seems to me is likely to become more
and more prominent in the future: I mean, the use
of the Bible not merely as a basis for abstract
doctrine, more or less metaphysical, and not merely
in the form of isolated single texts directly applied
to the life of individuals, but in a form which might
be described as standing midway between these, and
more in accordance with the circumstances under
which the Biblical revelations were originally commu
nicated. What, when we come to think of it, was the
method of those revelations ? They were not primarily
metaphysics or pure abstractions, neither were" they a
collection of detailed maxims or aphorisms, but they
consisted of certain great ruling principles or ideas,
always enunciated in connexion with some pressing
problem of actual practical life, and usually on a
somewhat large scale. Let me enumerate some of
these ruling ideas or principles, so that I may be better
understood. The Fatherhood of God is one of them,
an idea realized — or that ought to be realized — by
Jew and Christian with a force and in a degree un-
imagined, I beUeve I am right in saying, by any
people outside the sphere of our own special Revela
tion ; the Holiness, and yet more, the Loving-kind
ness of God, an idea which, again, has nowhere
reached anything like the intensity of expression

86 LOSS AND GAIN.
which it has attained in the Jewish Prophets and in
Christianity; the Kingdom, or I would say rather
the Reign, of God, not merely in the form of an
earthly society, but more searching and pervasive in
its action ; the Divine Choice, both of individuals and
of nations, to be the instruments of God's mighty pur
poses, with the corresponding idea so prominent, first
in Isaiah and then in St. Paul, of the preservation of
a faithful Remnant in times of trial and apostasy;
the great and dominant idea which runs through
both Old and New Testament, from the beginning
to the end of the Divinely-wrought Deliverance or
Deliverances culminating in the Redemption of
Christ ; and along with this another leading idea,
which again passes in a deeper and more penetrating
sense from the Old Testament to the New, of the
Indwelling of God among His people ; and yet once
more the idea on which this last is based, of the
relation as of Covenant into which God enters with
His Chosen, in its twofold aspect as implying at once
privileges and obligations.
AU these it will be felt are something more than
ideas ; they are moving ideas or forces ; they appeal,
when rightly presented, not only to the intellect but
to the emotions ; they do not only guide and direct,
but they add elevation, strength, buoyancy to Ufe.
They are that Divine element which is capable
of counteracting the wear and tear, the troubles,

LOSS AND GAIN. 87
anxieties, and sorrows, the weaknesses and tempta
tions of this earthly existence.
It would of course be an absurd exaggeration to
say that the ideas or principles or forces, of which
I have been speaking, have not hitherto played their
part in Christianity. Every one who reads his Bible
at all must recognise their presence. At particular
periods in history first one and then another has
been brought into special prominence. But the way
in which this has been done has not been quite
happy. There has been too much of a tendency to^
erect them into abstract dogmas. That was not the
form in which they were first promulgated, but as
living, pulsating, moving truths, which came from
the lips of Prophets and Apostles with genuine in
spiration, and which carried their inspiring powei*
with them wherever they penetrated. I cannot help
thinking that the critical and historical way of look
ing at the Bible is calculated to win back some of
this inspiring power. It takes them out of the
region of abstractions and puts them again into
relation with life. But life is the true generator of
life. Let us see the fabric of Divine Revelation
rising up around us as it really rose ; let us see its
different parts one after another in contact with the
actual crises of history ; let us observe them working
like leaven in some of the strongest, grandest, richest
of human personaUties— an Isaiah or a St. Paul; let

88 LOSS AND GAIN.
us observe them swaying the fortunes of nations and
masses of men ; let us mark how the light first dawns
and then broadens ; how the formative force which
God has implanted in His Revelation draws into its
vortex, absorbs and assimUates first this and then
that element of extraneous or secular culture ; let
us trace the mighty purpose which runs through
the ages down even to our own time ; and it seems
to me that both our hearts and our imaginations
must be kindled and inflamed to the very utmost
of their capacity. It is not for me to find fault with
the work of men who as preachers and teachers
have far greater gifts than my own, but I cannot help
thinking that there has been something rather half
hearted in the presentation of what I believe to be
the real fundamentals of Christianity, and all for
want of that vital apprehension of them which should
be the proper fruit of criticism and history. We
have played too long upon the surface of things : but
the time is coming I beUeve — thanks to that move-
meiit which has filled some with a natural but mis
taken alarm — when we shall be so possessed with
these great truths ourselves, that we shall be able
to convey more of their greatness to others. The
Christian who studies the signs of the times will not
despond, but he will rather look up and lift up his •*
head, for, in spite of the clouds which drift fitfully
across his vision, the sky is really bright above him.

VII,
TRUE AND FALSE INSPIRA TION.
(Exeter College Chapel, Oct. 26, 1890.)
Jeremiah v. 30, 31.
A wonderful and horrible thing is come to pass in the land;
the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests bear rule by their
means J and my people love to have it so : and what will ye do
in the end thereof?
The Christian who rests his belief in the Bible
primarily upon the Bible itself— who finds that
nothing impresses him so strongly as the conviction
which the Biblical writers themselves evidently had
that their words were an announcement of the Divine
Will and were put in their hearts by the Holy Spirit
— ^vnll find himself confronted with two questions s
(i) How is he to tell where this Divine prompting
begins and where it ends, in other words, what is
inspired and what is not ? and (2) How is he to dis
tinguish true inspiration from false ?
The first question will not trouble him very greatly.
All he has to do is to pursue the same method
with which he began — to look closely at the language
which the Biblical writers use, and to see where they

90 TRUE AND FALSE INSPIRATION.
claim inspiration and where they do not, where they
profess to speak the words of God, and where they *
write after the manner of other men. This is a line
of thought v/hich any one can work out for himself
I have spoken about it elsewhere^, and I do not
intend to return to it now. But the other question
needs, I think, to be more directly dealt with. I
am not sure that it is not the last fundamental
question on this side which a theology which seeks ^
to build itself up without assumptions has to ask.
Again we have not to look outside the Bible for
a hint of its own limitations. I have pointed out
on other occasions that the essence of the Bible
lies in prophecy. The prophetic spirit is the proper
vehicle of revelation. This holds good for the New
Testament equaUy with the Old, for St. Paul and
St. John are as much prophets as Isaiah and Hosea.
But if this is so — and I may perhaps for the present
assume without staying to prove it — then it is dis
tinctly recognised all through the Bible that there
are false prophets and false prophecy side by side
with the true. We need to remember that prophecy
was a profession, and that the prophets formed a
professional class. There were schools of the prophets
in which the gift was regularly cultivated. A group
of young men would gather round some commanding
figure — a Samuel or an Elisha — and would not only
' See Lecture V.

TRUE AND FALSE INSPIRATION. 9 1
record or spread the knowledge of his sayings and
doings, but seek to catch themselves something of
his inspiration. It seems that music played its part
in their exercises ^. It was not, however, necessary
to belong to one of these schools in order to be a
prophet. The prophet Amos tells us expressly that
he was no prophet, neither was he a prophet's son ^,
where prophet's son means practically the same thing
as ' member of a society,' Uke that certain man of
the sons of the prophets ^ who gave a sign to Ahab
condemning him for sparing the life of Ben-hadad.
And on the other hand it is perfectly clear that by
no means all of these sons of the prophets ever
succeeded in acquiring more than a very small share
in the gift which they sought. It was clearly pos
sible to ' counterfeit ' prophecy. Sometimes that
was done deliberately, as in the case of the deception
practised upon the man of God who was sent to
speak against the altar of Jeroboam at Bethel*.
But it by no means follows that in all cases where
a false message was given the giver of it was alto
gether conscious of what he was doing. Every one
will remember that striking scene at the end of the
First Book of Kings ^ where Ahab and Jehoshaphat
gather together the prophets, about 400 in number,
to enquire whether or not they are to go up against
» I Samuel x. .1;. " Amos vii. 14. ' i Kings xx. 35.
* I Kings xiii. 18, " i Kings xxii.

gH TRUE AND FALSE INSPIRATION.
the Syrians at Ramoth-Gilead, and how, when
the king of Israel puts to them the question,
with one voice they encourage him to go, one of
the prophets in the approved prophetic fashion
making himself horns of iron to symbolize the defeat
which would be inflicted on the Syrians. Jehoshaphat
is not perfectly satisfied, and he asks if there is not
besides a prophet of Jehovah. With some reluctance
Micaiah is produced, though Ahab confesses that he
hates him. Micaiah prophesies the death of the
king, and Israel scattered like sheep that have no
shepherd. He goes on to explain by a parable the
unanimity of his opponents. He had seen the Lord
sitting on His throne with the host of heaven on the
right hand and on the left. The question was pro
posed how Ahab was to be persuaded to go up
and fall at Ramoth-Gilead, and at last one of the
spirits offers to go forth and he a lying spirit in
¦tlie mouth of all his prophets. The offer is accepted
and the mission succeeds ^. We can see from the
context how there are mixed motives' at work. The
400 prophets truckle to the powerful monarch, who
is impatient of anything which does not run in the
direction of his own wishes. But on the other hand
there is a spirit of delusion abroad as well. We
are not to suppose that these men really knew that
Ahab would fall : their minds were warped by self-
' I Kings xxii. 17-23.

TRUE AND FALSE INSPIRATION. 93
interest, and they deceived themselves before they
deceived others.
In every age of the Church a very broad distinc
tion must be drawn between the machinery of reve
lation or of spiritual influence and the revelation
or spiritual influence itself Nothing can be more
decisive on this head than the verses from the Book
of Jeremiah which I took as my text. The prophet
looks out upon the theocracy as it was in his day,
and he sees that every part of it is corrupt: the/
whole organization is out of gear ;. the prophets
prophesy falsely ; the priests are set on their own
power and advancement ; the people know that
things are wrong and yet they will not insist on
amendment ; they would rather have smooth things
and peace and comfort than brace themselves Yor
any strenuous effort at reform. So the whole head is
sick and the whole heart faint. Religion itself is
poisoned at its source.
A passage like this is an emphatic warning to
all times. It is no doubt an extreme state of things.
Jeremiah himself is conscious that it is. He calls
it a wonderful and horrible thing. But tendencies
are best seen by extremes. It does not follow that
because there are prophets all is truth, or because
there are priests all Is righteousness and holiness.
This, then is one part of the problem before us..
How are we to distinguish true from false inspiration

94 TRUE AND FALSE INSPIRATION,
^-how are we to distinguish it within the sphere of
Revelation itself? And another part of it is. How
are we to distinguish one professing revelation from
another ? I cannot bring myself — and there Is really
nothing in the history of Christianity to compel me
to bring myself — to divide religions absolutely into
true and false. From the first days of Christian
teaching down to our own there has been not wanting
a succession of men who have seen and rejoiced
in the elements of good in Creeds which we have
not subscribed. Take a phenomenon like the oracle
at Delphi ; take that most touching account which
Plato gives of the baii^ovLov of Socrates ; take the
teaching of Gautama (Buddha) ; analyse the character
of Mahomet ;— shall we say that there is no * spark
from heaven ' in these ? Assuredly there are ' sparks
from heaven ' — assuredly there are ' seeds of the
Divine Word ' [a-nipy.aTa tov Aoyou) — assuredly there
were (as Justin Martyr recognised) ' Christians before
Christ ' — assuredly even now there are ' heathen who
are not heathen ' — not My people who shall be called
My people, and not beloved who shall be called
Beloved ^. We may be asked then what account we
give of these. What test should we apply? What
is the bearing of the existence of false prophecy in
Israel upon the religion of the Bible ? How are we to
correlate that religion with the ethnic religions?
' Romans ix. 25 ; Hosea ii. 23.

TRUE AND FALSE INSPIRATION. 95
In the first place let us weigh this simple fact.
The Bible speaks of false prophets even in Israel.
But no one would say that the Bible itself contained
false prophecy— for false prophecy and unfulfiUed
prophecy are not the same thing. False prophecy
might have its place In Israel ; but it had no rightful
place in the religion of Israel. The words of the
Law are most emphatic : The prophet which shall
speak a word presumptuously in 'yny name, which I
have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in
the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die ^.
The safeguard against false prophecy has been the
Canon of Scripture. A process of sifting has taken
place. If we look at it from one point of view we
may call the efficient cause the Providence of God ;
if we look at it from another point of view we may
call it the consciousness of the Church. It has been
agreed to mark off certain books from others as con
taining in a special sense the Word of God. I will
not take upon myself to say that the verdict of the
past may not conceivably undergo revision. It hag
already been to a certain extent revised — at the
Reformation : and two different estimates are current
in the Roman and in the Reformed Churches. It is
possible that the future may have in store for us
another such revision. No doubt points are present
to people's minds now which were not equally present
' Deut. xviii. 20.

96 TRUE AND FALSE INSPIRATION.
in the early ages. These points might perhaps be
taken into fuUer consideration. But at present there
does not seem to be any inclination even among those
who question the dates and authorship of some of the
books to displace them as Scripture. The most
would seem to be that some of the books (e.g.
a St. Peter) are appealed to as authorities with rather
more hesitation than others. Taken as a whole it
may be said that the verdict of the later Church has
ratified the verdict of the earlier. Christendom still
holds that the truths for which Prophets and Apostles
contended are really truths — and truths which are not
unworthy to have been revealed from above. In this
we may well see a Divine guidance. But indeed the
process by which the Canon was formed gave the
best guarantee of permanence. It is based upon an
Instinct which went deeper than argument. The
' usage of the Churches ' was better than any
theoretical criteria. Those books were adopted which
possessed the same credentials as the Apostles
possessed, and which proved themselves to be divine
by the demonstration of the Spirit and of poivcr.
That is our answer to those who ask what means
we have of discriminating pretended revelation from
true. And our answer is not dlssimUar to those who
ask how we weigh the claims of prophetic manifesta
tions in Greece, or Arabia, or India, as compared with
those in Israel or that wider ' spiritual Israel ' which

TRUE AND FALSE INSPIRATION. 97
we call Christianity. In the perspective of history,
truth and falsehood, lower truth and higher truth,
disentangle themselves, and stand out with quite
sufficient clearness. Vicisti Galilaee are the dying
words attributed to the last imperial champion of
Paganism, and the Muse of history does but take
them up and echo them. Let us deny nothing, let
us depreciate and minimize nothing of all that there
is of high and unworldly aspiration, of all that there
is of deep and penetrating insight in the religions
external to Christianity. The facts are there, and it is
our duty to accept and rejoice over them. They are
the outskirts of the working of that Divine Spirit
which fills the universe. But because we recognise
this we do not therefore touch the prerogative of our
own religion. Let us take two examples out of those
which have been mentioned. One of the most
striking things about Socrates is what he calls his
'Daemon,' that voice which has attended him from
his youth up and whispers in his ear when he or those
in whom he is interested are about to do anything
that they should not. It is a pathetic touch, when,
in the Epilogue to his Apology, he consoles, those
who voted for his acquittal by telling them that this
Warning Voice of his, which in all the rest of his life
had been ready enough to stop him when he was
doing anything wrong or unpropitious, placed no
obstacle before him when he went out to his arrest,
H

98 TRUE AND FALSE INSPIRATION.
or when he was on his way to trial, or at any part of
his speech in his own defence. At other times it was
in the habit of interrupting him while he was speak
ing, but it had not done so then. He argued from
this that it was a mistake to suppose that death was
an evil. Otherwise his mentor would not have let
him go to certain death \
Again, if we take the case of Mahomet, a just
criticism must see in him an element — and even a
large element — of sincerity. He really felt himself
called to be the prophet of God, to preach that God
was one, that idols were nought, that absolute sub
mission to God's will was the first duty of man.
These were real truths, descended in fact from
Judaism, and to be conscious of a commission to
proclaim them was no imposture. But unfortunately
this is not the only element In Mahometanism. There
is too much in that religion — too much in the Koran —
which was dictated, not by any genuine inspiration,
but by the prophet's own strong passions ^.
Neither Socrates nor Mahomet afford more than
a very rudimentary and imperfect analogy to the
Bible. Delightful as is the simplicity with which the
' Plato, Apol. Socr. c. 31 (p. 40).
' It is a pleasure to refer once more to Dr. Dale's book, where
the case of Mahometanism is also considered in connexion with an
argument similar to that of Lecture HI, and treated as it seems
to me very dirtctly and satisfactorily. See The Living Christ, &c.
pp. 64-68.

TRUE AND FALSE INSPIRATION. 99
Platonic Socrates speaks of his familiar spirit, so free
from strain and assumption, and with just a touch of
playfulness which softens but does, not conceal the
seriousness of character in which the conception has
its rise, the Daemon is after all only a negative
thing. It checks and dissuades, but it does no more'.
The beautiful argument about death is only sug
gested by its prompting^. And when we compare
the Koran with the Bible, the disinterestedness, the
richness and fulness of the latter stand out more than
ever. What is best in the Koran is only reflected
from the Bible. And how much is there in the
Bible to which the Koran affords no parallel ! How
powerful is that stream of enlightenment and truth
which grows broader and deeper, and gains at every
stage in volume and force, as prophet succeeds
prophet, and the Law makes way for the Gospel !
In putting the religion of the Bible at the head
of all reUgipns, in claiming for its exponents a real
Divine inspiration, we do not take it out of all natural
conditions. Inspiration works through human facul
ties: it does not supersede them. The analogies
which connect Biblical religion witb. other religions
are not aU illusory. Healthy phenomena pass into
' This is the description which Socrates is made to give of it : ian
fip-Ti Seiq lioipq. iraptiro/uvov k/xol Ik iraiS&s dp^A/ievov SaifiSviov, (dTi 5\
toSto ^an'4, fj orav yivriTat, dii iwi arjpalvei, b hv liiWa -nplmuv,
TouTou anroTpoiriiv, irporpina tk ovSiiroTe. Plato, Theages, c. 11 (p. 128).
" Apol. Socr. c. 31 (p. 40). -
H 2

100 TRUE AND FALSE INSPIRATION.
morbid, lower into higher, natural into supernatural,
by the most gradual transitions. It is a mistake to
set the natural and the supernatural in too sharp
antithesis. Whether we look at the individual who
is endowed with the prophetic gift and study the
process by which that gift receives expression, or
whether we look at the whole complex product of
prophetic religion, they touch each other all along
the line, and it is equally difficult to say where the
one ends and the other begins. Perhaps it is well
that we should be reminded in this way that both are
really parts of the same great Divine economy. They
proceed from the same Author ; they co-operate for
the same ends; they are included in the same vast
chain of causation. The only difference is that we
know a little more about the one than we do about
the other, and that the Power which presides over
both aUke lays — or seems to lay — a little more stress
here than He does there. When the organist sits at
the key-board of his instrument he plays some
passages soft and some loud ; sometimes the notes
that he gives forth are muffled, sometimes they are
loud and clear. Bu* the different parts of his playing
are all upon the same instrument, and they all
harmonize together. The very same note is alter
nately subdued and emphasized ; and there are
crescendoes and diminuendoes to connect the soft with
the loud. So with Him who sits at the key-board of

TRUE AND FALSE INSPIRATION. loi
the universe, and touches now with lighter and now
with more constraining force the chords of the human
spirit : the music which results is not broken and
discordant, but it all blends into a subtle harmony
and the rising and the falling cadences alike con
tribute to the whole.

VIII.
CHRIST AND THE SCRIPTURES.
(Exeter College Chapel, KTov. 0, 1890.)
Hebrews ii. 7.
Thou madest Him a little lower than the angels.
The controversy respecting the criticism of the Old
Testament has taken what I cannot but think a very
unfortunate turn. The true method in this and in
all cognate questions seems to me to be first, at all
costs of time and labour, to ascertain what are the
exact facts. When that has been done the explana
tion of the facts will come almost of itself We shall
see them in their true proportions, and they will fall
into their proper place and relation to each other.
It is the reverse of this to take a single text, to draw
from it at once far-reaching dogmatic consequences
and so to foreclose by an appeal to authority the
whole line of detailed investigations. It is needless
to say that even the effect which is sought will not
be attained. The investigations will go on all the
same. And meanwhile they wUl be conducted under
prejudice on both sides, and when they have reached

CHRIST AND THE SCRIPTURES. 1 03
their conclusion the shock of collision between the
opposed opinions will be all the greater.
It does not however follow because I would de
precate this that I would have us shrink from facing
any question that maybe legitimately proposed to us.
In this particular instance it is not so much the
raising of the question that I deprecate as the time
and place, the logical order, in which it is raised, and
the use that is made of it in controversy. Sooner or
later we must no doubt be clear in our own minds
as to the bearing of certain quotations from the Old
Testament in the Gospels. The question involved
is nothing less than the authority of our Lord Him- '
self His authority is thought to sanction the tra- /
ditional views as to the origin and authorship of the
Books of the Old Testament, and to preclude from
the outset the adoption of any other.
There is therefore a distinct issue placed before us
which we must not decline because we would rather
take it in a different order or because we hesitate to
touch a point on which misunderstanding is so easy.
Happily this last danger is greatly lightened for
those who are committed to the cause of criticism
by the wise and thoughtful utterances of leaders in
the Church who are not so committed ^. Never, as it
' I have in my mind not only the publicly expressed opinions of the
Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishops of Carlisle, Durham, and
Oxford, but even more, those of the Bishop of Lincoln and Dr. Gregory

104 CHRIST AND THE SCRIPTURES.
seems to me, has a great and really momentous ques
tion been approached from all sides in so excellent a
temper. I venture then, with a prayer for chastened and
careful speech, to address myself to it this evening.
In some positions he who would climb a perilous
ascent seeks to plant his feet firm before he makes
another forward motion. Let us do this by first re
calling to our minds why it is that we invest every
word spoken by our Lord with such supreme autho
rity. We regard His words as the words of One who
was God as well as Man. And we so regard them,
I think it maybe said, for three reasons : (i) because /
of the way in which He spoke about Himself; (a)
because of the impression which He made upon His
companions and contemporaries, notably such men
as St. Paul and St. Peter and St. John ; (3) because
cf the prolonged and tried experience of the Church
at large.
(i) In orderto have unimpeachable standing-ground,
I reserve expressions, such as those in the Fourth
Gospel, which might be thought to bear witness
rather to the intense conviction of the disciple than
to the certain affirmation of the Master, and I con
fine myself to the Synoptic Gospels. There we have
Smith. Where men of such delicate and sensitive loyalty have gone
before it is far easier for others to follow : the edge is taken from
criticism when its course is guided by such hai;ds.

CHRIST AND THE SCRIPTURES. 105
a number of mysterious claims which are all the
more impressive because they are put forward so
indirectly. Stronger evidence there could hardly be
to the strictly historical character of the narrative
than the peculiar and consistent reticence which Is
observed on this head ; first one and then another
of those who are healed from various maladies being
expressly forbidden to proclaim their Healer, and
the crowds avoided which would have taken Him by
force to make Him King ; and yet all the time un-
mistakeable if not explicit hints thrown out. He is
greater than Jonah, greater than Solomon ; He alone
knows the Father; none but the Father knows the
Son ; He alone gives rest and peace ; the yoke
which the disciples bear is His yoke ; He is the
great Judge who is to separate between the sheep
and the goats ; in that day the good deeds which
have been done to the poor are as if they had
been done to Him ; on the other hand. His claim
takes precedence of that even of the poor ; so ex
alted is His claim that to receive one of His
disciples is to receive Him, and to receive Him
is to receive the Father. Nowhere is the truth
to which St. Peter confessed distinctly expressed,
though everywhere it is implied. Thou art the Christ, /
the Son of ihe living God; and then at last
comes that warm and emphatic ratification. Blessed
art thou, Simon Bar-jonah, for flesh and blood hath •

ic5 CHRIST AND THE SCRIPTURES.
not revealed it to thee, but my Father which is in
heaven. This is our first ground. That which Jesus claimed
for Himself cannot be wrong. We say with the cen
turion, as we look back over the history, Truly this t
was the Son of God.
(a) And then next there comes the strong con
sensus of the Apostolic age. In all ranks and schools
and parties among Christians it is agreed that Christ
died for our sins and rose again and sat down on the
right hand of God. This is not the doctrine of St.
Paul alone or of ApoUos, but of St. Peter and
St. Jude and St. John — we may add of St. James and
of the nameless author of the work which is known
as the Epistle to the Hebrews as well. Nothing can
be more emphatic than the testimony which is borne
by all but one of these writers. [The only exception
is St. James, who has not occasion to bring out this
particular doctrine, though we cannot doubt that he
held it, for he names the Father and the Son to
gether, and calls himself a servant of the Lord Jesus
Christ ' ; and we know also that Christ appeared to
him ^.] The image of ihe . invisible God, in whom it
pleased the Father that all the fulness (of the divine
attributes) should dwell, writes St. Paul. The bright-'
ness of His glory, and the express image of His
substance, writes the author of the Epistie to the
' St. James i. i. 2 i Cor. xv. 7.

CHRIST AND THE SCRIPTURES, 107
Hebrews. In the beginning ivas the Word, and the
Word was with God, and ihe Word was God, writes
St. John. And there are a hundred other passages if
we needed them. On other points there were contro
versies among Christians, — whether converts were to
be circumcised or not ; whether prophecy was greater,
or speaking with tongues ; whether it was right to be
ascetic and to avoid certain kinds of meat ; what was
the part played by angels in the work of creation and
redemption ; when was to be the Second Coming, and
what were its signs ; how Christians ought to behave
in view of its near approach. All these were points
that were really disputed. But there was no dispute
that Christ was Lord, no dispute that He had risen, ^
no dispute that He, and none but He, should judge
the quick and the dead.
This is our second ground, the overpowering
weight of consent in all quarters of the Christian
world, of which we have abundant evidence little
more than twenty years after the Ascension — the
consent not of weaklings but of men of such strength
of intellect and character as St. Paul and St. John.
(3) Then, lastly, we have the confirmation of this
primitive belief by the deliberate verdict, long pon
dered and decisively given, of the later Church. An
other hypothesis was tried on a large scale in the
fourth and fifth centuries and found wanting. It was
tried with all the advantages of imperial support.

lo8 CHRIST AND THE SCRIPTURES.
with all the weight behind it of young and. vigorous
and warlike peoples. And yet not only was it
solemnly and repeatedly condemned in the assem
blies of Christendom, but the peoples who adopted it,
one by one, gave it up until it vanished from the
face of the earth. The verdict of history seems final
against Arianism. Its champions were beaten in
argument ; they were beaten in the field ; they were
beaten in the hold which their tenets had upon the
affections of their followers. It could not be said that
Arianism had not a fair trial ; it had more than a
fair trial ; but the result was a defeat so crushing as
to leave no hope that it would ever successfully raise
its head again.
We may however look beyond the horizon of
Arianism, and we may say that the experience of more
than eighteen centuries affords the very strongest pre
sumption that nothing short of the Catholic doctrine
will ever permanently satisfy the wants of Christian
women and Christian men.
On these grounds we hold fast to the beUef of the
Church that Our Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God is
God and Man ; God of the Substance of the Father, he-
gotten before the worlds ; and Man of the Substance of
His Mother, born in the world ; perfect God, and
perfect Man : of a reasonable soul and human flesh
subsisting ; equal to the Father, as touching His God
head, and inferior to the Father, as touching His Man-

CHRIST AND THE SCRIPTURES. 109
hood. Such is the clearly formulated Creed, which
we hold with the whole Christian Church dispersed
throughout the world. What then is the bearing of
that Creed upon those passages in the Gospels in
which He who is perfect God and perfect Man
refers by name to the currently received authors of
books of the Old Testament? Does it stamp and
stereotype those names upon them absolutely and for
ever? Here will be apparent the reason why I think
that it is a far sounder method not to ask this
question until we know first what is the truth about
the books in question, whether they were really the
works of their reputed authors or not. It is not
beyond the power of scholarly enquiry to determine
this. Some think that it is determined already. I
will not go so far as this, though I may have an
opinion myself on which side the truth lies. Such an
opinion, I admit, is different from certainty. It is
different from the deliberate, sustained and tested
assent of competent judges. That assent has not yet
been obtained to such an extent as to pass from the
region of the subjective to that of the objective, from
opinion to ascertained fact.
We can, therefore, at present only speak provision
ally and hypothetically. If it should be proved that
the Law, as we have it, was not written by Moses, or
that the iioth Psalm was not written by David, what

no CHRIST AND THE SCRIPTURES.
in that case should we say to the affirmations of the
Athanasian Creed? The question I think, for the
reasons I have given, is premature : but if we are
forced to answer it, thus much at least seems obvious,
that the explanation must lie in the fact that He of
whom we are speaking is not only God but Man.
The error of statement would belong in some way to
the Humanity and not to the Divinity. But here some
theologians tell us that no such mistake is possible
even to the Humanity. When they are confronted
with our Lord's own assertion that there was one
thing which He did not know — the hour of His own
Second Coming, they argue that the two things are
different, that imperfect knowledge is one thing,
erroneous teaching (though it is hardly teaching —
only a presupposition in what is taught) is another.
Again, when such an expression as He maketh His
sun to rise is referred in like manner to imperfect
science, that they admit, but maintain that questions
relating to the authorship of the Old Testament
touch more nearly the subject-matter of Revelation.
Are these distinctions valid ? Are they valid enough
to be insisted upon so strongly as tiiey must be if the
arguments based upon them are to hold good ? I
greatly doubt it. They belong to a class of reason
ing upon which I confess that 1 always look with
suspicion. They are a priori in their character : they
are not a definition of what is, but a laying down ol

CHRIST AND THE SCRIPTURES. Ill
what must be: and that in a matter as to which I
question whether we are competent judges. The mere
phrase ' God-Man ' is to me enough to make us
silent ; it is enough at least to make our words be
'wary and few.' How shall we touch that mystery
just at its tenderest part, and speak of it as we might
speak of that which is well within our ken ? To me
it seems that our wisdom is, to abstain from theorizing
altogether until we are better assured as to the facts
about which we have to theorize.
One hypothesis, however, I think we may reject
beforehand. I should be loth to believe that our
Lord accommodated His language to current notions,,
knowing them to be false. I prefer to think, as it has
been happily worded, that He ^condescended not to
know ^' It is part of that process of kenosis or ex- ¦
inanition described at least in two places of St. Paul's
Epistles : Though He was rich, yet for our sakes He
became poor ^, and Though He was in the form of God,
and counted it not a thing to grasp at that He should
be on an equality with God, He nevertheless emptied
Himself, taking the form of a servant^. Though rich
in knowledge. He divested Himself at least of such
parts of that knowledge as enabled Him to take a real
humanity on the same footing with that of His fellow-
men. He was made, as the text has it, adopting the
^ The phrase is Dr. Gregory Smith's in a letter to the Guardian.
» 2 Cor. viii. 9. * Phil. ii. 6, 7.

II a CHRIST AND THE SCRIPTURES.
words of the Psalm, a little lower than the angels.
Some humiliation, some circumscription. His Advent
upon earth did involve. Before the fact I do not
think that we can say precisely how much humiliation
or circumscription. To do so is to take upon us too
much ' the mystery of things."
Man is a curious being ; and he has many legitimate
objects for his curiosity. I doubt if this is one.
The data are too precarious ; they involve too great a
leap of the mind into the unknown. In regard to
these questions, I think we shall do better to ponder
the words of the Psalm : Lord, I am not high-minded :
T have no proud looks. I do not exercise myself in
great matters, which are too high for me. But I
refrain my soul and keep it low, like as a child that is
weaned from his mother : yea, my soul is even as a
weaned child.
That infinite ocean on the shores of which we play
may invite, us to enter its fringe, but our footing is
soon lost as the bottom shelves away into depths
that for us are unfathomable. It is far better for us to
retire and do our allotted tasks upon the margin with
an outlook that sobers but does not affright us,
and with a heart not lifted up but chastened and
solemnized.

IX.

THE SPECIAL VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
AT THE PRESENT TIME.
(St. Mary's, Oct. 19, 1890.)
PSALM cxix. 1 8.
open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things
out of Thy Law.
In Christianity as a formulated system there are
three main elements : (i) the common foundation
of Hebrew religion as contained in the Old and
New Testaments, but primarUy in the Old; (a) a
specially Christian element which is due to the life
and work of Christ ; (3) certain peculiar forms of
expression, gradually determined upon after six
centuries of keen controversy, which are to a large
extent of Greek origin. Compared with these, the
part really contributed by modern times is very small
indeed. I do not say that modern thought is not
very largely affecting our conception of Christianity ;
but so far it has done so only in a vague and in
definite way. The influence derived from this source
has not succeeded in impressing itself upon Creeds
and Articles. The really formative elements in these
I

114 SPECIAL VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
will, I think, be found to be those which I have
just enumerated.
At the present moment attention is being turned
in full stream upon the first. It is likely also, if
I am not mistaken, to be directed shortly to the
third. The question of the Old Testament comes
home to so many that it may be described as a
popular question. The question of Greek thought
can hardly reach these dimensions, but it cannot
fail to attract to itself the careful study of thinking
and far-seeing men. It is fraught with issues of
considerable importance, which will perhaps occasion
some anxiety at first, but which, I believe, will be
found to bode good and not harm in the end.
I am led to make these remarks by the approach
ing publication of Dr. Hatch's Hibbert Lectures, in
which, with the boldness and originality characteristic
of him, he grappled with this problem, so far as my
knowledge extends, for the first time on English
ground. I do not doubt that these Lectures will
be found greatly stimulating to thought, though
another series of enquiries may be necessary in order
to complete them. What Dr. Hatch has done has
been to trace broadly the transition or transplanta
tion of certain ideas and usages from the sphere
of Hellenism to that of Christianity. W^at remains
to be done is to apply a close analysis, one by one,
to the works of the early Christian writers, so as to

AT THE PRESENT TIME.

ascertain in what proportions the different elements
of which we have spoken, and particularly the Greek
element, were present in them.
A beginning has been made already in this direc
tion in Germany, but not, I think, at all in England.
It may perhaps be instructive to take a brief survey of
the history of the subject and of the place at which
the problem now stands. To Dr. Hatch, I rather think,
the problem presented itself mainly as an abstract
one. He had studied Philo and the Neo-platonists ;
he had studied the Stoics ; and he observed in the
Christian writers and in Christian controversies the
recurrence of terms and conceptions which he had
met with outside Christianity. To the Germans
the problem came as in the first instance historical.
It goes back, I suppose, to Baur. He definitely asked
himself the question. How are we to account for that
conception of Christianity which we find in posses
sion of the field at the end of the second century,
and increasingly so as time went on ? Any one who
looks at once with candour and with penetration
at the Christianity of Irenaeus at one end of the
Christian world, and of Clement of Alexandria
at the other, will see that there is a considerable
interval between it and the Christianity of Christ
and the Apostles. How was this interval to be
accounted for ? What shifting of elements had taken
place ? What was there in the one which there was
I a

Il6 SPECIAL VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
not in the other? Baur, with his keen insight into
the turning-points of history, took hold of this ques
tion and set himself to solve it. The solution which
he proposed is well known. It proceeded on the
lines of a Hegelian antinomy: and it was to the
effect that in the Apostolic age there were two great
opposing forces, Jewish Christianity or Ebionism on
the one hand and Pauline or Gentile Christianity on
the other; by degrees these two opposites became
reconciled by dropping their distinctive features, and
Catholicism or the average creed of the Christian
world at the year aoo was the result. Since the
time of Baur a number of attempts have been made
to improve upon his view. In the most successful
of these attempts two negative factors were recog
nised and one positive. The negative factors were
that the writers who immediately succeeded the
Apostles failed really to grasp the deeper side of the
teaching of St. Paul and that they also failed to
understand the Old Testament ^. The positive factor
was that they imported into Christian speculation
the principles which they had learned in the schools
of Greek philosophy. The insight into the weakened
apprehension of St. Paul's teaching has been rather
widely shared. It is found in writers like Neander,
who made the great mistake of supposing that this
defective apprehension was caused by a return to
• On this point see the extracts in Appendix IL

AT THE PRESENT TIME. 1 17
Judaism. It was not a peculiarity of the Judaizing
side of the Church, but was common in greater or
less degree to all parties. The bringing out of the
significance of the Old Testament was due to the
strongest of all the disciples of Baur, who went back
upon and corrected the conclusions of his master, in
a work which has done more than any other with
which I am acquainted to lay the foundations of a
really sound conception of the course of events in
the second century — Albrecht Ritschl. Since Ritschl
published, in 1857, the second improved and developed
edition of his work on the Origin of the Old Catholic
Church, an excellent monograph, constructed upon
his lines, came out in 1878 on the Christianity of
Justin Martyr by Dr. Moritz von Engelhardt. Von
Engelhardt was Professor at Dorpat, where I believe
that he had for pupil Adolph Harnack, and I suspect
that that fertile and able writer owes not a few of
his best and soundest ideas to his old teacher.
Quite recently a similar monograph by Werner on the
Paulinism of Irenaeus has appeared under his auspices,
which is, however, not perhaps free from exaggeration.
By all these writers alike the element which took
the place of the missing constituents of Apostolic
Christianity is sought in the current Greek philo
sophies, either apprehended immediately or filtering
downwards into popular thought. We might sum
up their construction of the history of doctrine very

Ii8 SPECIAL VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
briefly thus. Through defective understanding first of
St. Paul and then of the Old Testament, and through
the influence of Greek ideas, there arose the older
Catholicism of the early Christian . centuries which
has had a continuous development down to modern
times. St. Augustine (partially) and the Reformers
(again partially) rediscovered St. Paul ; and I will
make bold to add that the full rediscovering and
full appropriating of the Old Testament are the
special problem of our own day.
Many will think no doubt that this is an arrogant
claim. I hope it is not made in any spirit of
arrogance, but simply in deference to what seem
to be the actual facts. I am anxious not to go a
step beyond these. Of course it is true that a large
and substantial part of the spirit of Christianity was
perpetuated by Irensus and his contemporaries. In
particular one primary doctrine — the doctrine of the
Logos, which fell in with the prevalent tendencies of
thought, was seized hold of by them with great
tenacity, and developed in great wealth and fulness of
detail. But when we turn to another side of the
New Testament Scriptures — to St. Paul's deep and
inward conception of Faith, to the mingled attraction
and awe with which he looked on the ' scandal of the
Cross,' to that long series of oppositions between
works and grace, law and promise, law and Gospel —
in place of which we find Christianity regarded as

AT THE PRESENT TIME. 1 19
itself merely a second revised system of law — we feel
how much has been lost in the process of transmis
sion. Even if we take a great fundamental idea like
that of the Kingdom of God, which dominates aUke
the Old Testament and the New, we have to wait
until we come to St. Augustine before it is worked
out at all on an adequate scale ; and even then it is
not worked out exactly on the lines of the original
conception. When we think of these things and of
many more— the growth of the Messianic Idea, sub-"
lime personifications like the Servant of Jehovah, the
use which Jeremiah makes of his doctrine of the
twofold Covenant, all those wonderfully tender per
sonal relations between God and His people implied
in the Psalms and the Prophets which shrink into the
cold oKTws ov of the philosophers — when we think of
all this, we cannot help being conscious that we do
indeed see them more in their true proportions than
the early Fathers did.
And yet let us be just to these founders of
the Church and of Christian Theology to whom
our debt is so large. Let us try to put in its
right light the relation in which we stand to them.
We think that we understand the Bible better than
they did. There can be little doubt that we really
do understand it better. But that is not because we
are great men and they are small, but because the
Bible is great and it has taken many centuries hitherto

lao SPECIAL VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
and wUl take a considerable time longer stUl before
we understand it thoroughly. If the Jews so mis
interpreted their own Bible as they certainly did in
the time of our Lord, can we wonder if those who
were not Jews by birth but brought up under very
different conditions failed to understand it ? I wUl
not deny absolutely the truth that there is in
allegory; but few of us would be willing to apply it
as the universal key to the unlocking of the Old
Testament, as some of the best and greatest minds of
antiquity were ready to apply it. The fashioning of
the methods by which the secret of the Old Testa
ment is to be approached and elicited has taken
many centuries. We are not yet agreed about it ;
but I do not think that it is being too sanguine to
feel that we are drawing nearer to it. We are be
ginning to feel the warmth and the Ufe and the reality
come back to those pale and shadowy figures. Isaiah
and Hosea and Jeremiah no longer walk in a limhus
Patrum, but we see them as they were among the
forces by which they were actually surrounded. We
see what they were as men ; we see what they were
as exponents of a message from God; we see the
grand and glorious ideas which stirred within them in
all their richness and fulness, conditioned, yet not
wholly conditioned, by the world of thought and
action in which they moved. We see these ideas
linking themselves together, stretching hands as it

AT THE PRESENT TIME. lai
were across the ages, the root-principles of the Old
Testament running on into the New, and there
attaining developments which may have been present
to the Divine Mind — though they cannot have been
present to the human instruments whose words
went and came at its prompting. The famous
saying of St. Augustine had a deeper sense than even
he imagined for it. The New Testament was latent
in the Old, not merely in the sense in which the type
might be said to embrace the thing typified ; the Old
Testament is patent in the New, not merely in the
sense in which one series of events may be said to
reflect another, but by a more vital and organic
connexion. The further enquiry goes, the more
impressively does it appear how much the lead
ing ideas of the New Testament had their way
prepared for them, and by what strict continuity of
growth they spring out of the leading ideas of the Old.
There is a field here which I cannot help thinking
will be ploughed and worked in the near future more
effectively than it has been. But this idea of the
organic connexion of thought with thought Is com
paratively a recent one ; and to expect it to determine
the work of the older commentators as it ought to
determine ours would be as absurd as to expect that
primeval man should be equipped with the encyclo
paedia of science.
But if there is such a valid excuse for the great

1 23 SPECIAL VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
men of old as Exegetes, they hardly need an excuse
at all in their other capacity as Dogmatists. If
they are only judged fairly as they ought to be
judged, that is with reference to their own time and
circumstances, we shall be so far from scoffing at
them that we shall be rather lost in wonder at the
edifice which they reared. Certainly as much brain
power went to the building up of this as to any of the
best of our modern systems. Note the closeness and
precision of thought ; note the accuracy with which
one detail is fitted into another; note the multitude
of speculations, sometimes, it is true, resting upon
mistaken premisses, but often really profound and
striking, by which they are surrounded ; note the
symmetry and harmony of the total result as it is
summed up for instance in the Athanasian Creed —
and any one who is capable of appreciating an in
tellectual construction, and can divest himself of his
modern notions, will I think be most powerfully
affected by it. One would like as an experiment to
set down some well-trained modem scholar, with no
appliances but his own unaided thinking, before the
problems with which the ancients wrestled, and then
to compare the result, say with a page of St. Cyril
of Alexandria, and I do not think that we should find
the comparison very flattering to our vanity. To say
that the ancients worked with the tools which lay to
their hands, that they operated with ideas which were

AT THE PRESENT TIME. 123
the staple of the schools and lecture-rooms about them,
is so much a matter of course that but for the extent
to which it has been forgotten, it would hardly need
to be insisted on. With our modern machinery we
can produce circles and angles more exact than many
an old-world craftsman, without possessing a tenth
part of his skill of hand and eye.
And yet, on the other hand, I should be quite
prepared to lay stress upon the fact that the formu
laries which were the product of all this intellectual
subtlety and vigour have a value which is primarily
historical and relative. They stand in living relation
to the past rather than to the present. The problems of
to-day have drifted away from them ; and if we go to
them for a solution of these problems the answer we
shall get must needs be Imperfect and partial. May
we not say that the simile which would best describe
them would be that of the stations along our old
coach-roads from which the traffic has been turned
into other channels? They stand as landmarks
which are speaking witnesses to a bygone time, but
which no longer serve for the practical uses of the
present, or which serve them so far only as the present
is a direct outcome of the past. A great mass of
wisdom is embodied in them — the wisdom not of an
individual working in his study or his cell, but the
wisdom of a Church or family of Churches all bring
ing their contributions to the common stock, and

ia4 SPECIAL VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

testing each clause by the fire of an active and search
ing criticism. Given the premisses, and I think we
may say still that a better result could not have been
obtained ; and that result has been verified by the
assumption and practice of ages. To this day I doubt
if any different conclusion could justify itself, ap
proached along the same lines. So far as our problems
are identical I doubt if we shall have any need, or,
if we had the need, I doubt if we should have the
power, to reopen the decisions of united Christendom.
But the problems which press upon us most urgently
are not identical : the premisses which we have to
assume in dealing with them are a different set of
premisses, and it seems to me wrong to invoke laws
to decide cases which when they were framed were
never or but imperfectly contemplated.
The practical moral which I would venture to draw
from the whole situation is this, that we should not
spend our time in the cheap and easy but demoral
izing employment of undervaluing the wisdom of our
forefathers and congratulating ourselves upon our
own, but that we should rather face and grapple with
the positive tasks which Ue before us. We say that
the ancients had a defective understanding of the
Old Testament and a defective understanding of
St. Paul. There are doubtless some who will need
to have this proved to them : for them let us prove
it. And, having proved it, let us go on to the next

AT THE PRESENT TIME. 135
step and see that we get an understanding of both
these prime constituents of Christianity which is not
defective. Supposing it to be made out that there
has been in the formulating of Christian doctrine a
certain encroachment of Hellenism, the true way to
redress the balance is — not to disparage Hellenism,
which surely had a work to do in the providence of
God as well as Hebraism, but to go back to the old
Hebraic foundations of our religion and lay them
again more deeply and more firmly — or rather see
how they have been laid by an Architect wiser and
mightier than we. To do this as it ought to be done
would alone be the work of any ordinary generation.
How from all sides does the call come to us to be up
and doing ! To us indolent dwellers in Zion who
have taken our ease by our rivers that flow softly,
thinking to enjoy our cakes of fine meal and our
wine, though we have left it to others to cut the corn
and to gather in the vintage and to bear all the
burden and heat of the day. I speak not to those
whose study is Theology alone. The universitas
literarum includes all the sciences : they form a
single body; and if one member suffers, all the others
suffer with it. Let us march altogether ; let us take
our exercise altogether in the same palaestra — not
in dilettante fashion like half-hearted competitors,
but like men who are determined to run for the
prize and who. are prepared to undergo the requisite

la6 SPECIAL VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT
training before they enter for it. Then let the scholar'
help the theologian and the theologian the scholar ;
and let the historian lend a hand to and receive a
hand from both. Sometimes it is said that the sub
jects of study are being exhausted. And perhaps it
may be so with some subjects ; but the date when
anything of the kind will be true is far distant in
ours. I have said enough to show what fruitful
openings lie close to us. And the special beauty of
theological study is that knowledge does n^t lie wide
apart from practice, but that in proportion as we
acquire the one we ought to be building up a body
of principles to apply to the other. When we go for
these to the Bible we are in no danger of being dis
appointed. And we shall find, or I am much mis
taken, that each fresh discovery gilds with some new
light or invests with some new reality, truths which
had seemed to be trite and hackneyed. I do not say
that every discovery will be what is called, on a
superficial view, a ' confirmation.' It may be of that
sort which sends us back and back again for further
enquiry. But the ultimate result must be to strengthen
the stakes and lengthen the cords, to deepen our appre
hension and to extend its application. It is no less
true now than ever it has been that the surest means
of religious advance is to be sought in renewed study
of the Bible. What we need especially at this
moment is freshness, a real getting at the heart of

AT THE PRESENT TIME. XII
the matter instead of dallying with the outside. And
I question if we shall get this in any better way
than by approaching our task under the guidance
of Criticism and History — of Criticism and History
not, as too often, dissevered from, but united with,
ReUgion ^.
* It would be an important branch of the enquiry sketched above to
determine precisely how far Greek thought enters into and is conse
crated in the New Testament itself. The discussion would tum mainly
round two points which cannot be regarded as settled, the origin of the
Logos-doctrine in St. John and the theological affinities of the Epistle
to the Hebrews. The purely Palestinian element in both may be
larger than is sometimes supposed. Still it is probably true at the
same time that Palestinian thought was putting out feelers in the
direction of Hellenism. And I do not think it will be denied that the
subsequent developments of the Logos-doctrine were developments in a
straight line.

Note to page 114.
I believe it is literally true to say that Dr. Hatch was the
first to raise the question discussed in his Hibbert Lectures
'on English ground'; but I ought not to have overlooked
a course of lectures delivered about the same time (March
1 888) at Princeton, U.S.A., by Dr. G. T. Purves, and published
under the title The Testimony of fustin Martyr to Early
Christianity (New York, Randolph). This is an independent
counterpart to Von Engelhardt's work mentioned above, and
is satisfactorily done.

APPENDIX I.
ON THE DATE OF THE PSALTER.
WmLE I am anxious not to step outside my proper pro
vince by offering opinions upon a subject on which I am
conscious of possessing very partial knowledge, there is just
one of the problems of Old Testament criticism in regard
to which I should like to set down a few points which have
occurred to me, and submit them to the consideration of
more competent judges. The problem to which I refer is
one which is exciting a good deal of interest at the present
time, viz. the date of the Psalter. I approach it from the
side of the history of the formation of the O. T. Canon,
and the history of the Text and of certain accessories with
which this is intimately connected.
(i) The well-known passage in the prologue to Ecclesi-
asticus must no doubt be used with much caution. The
latest date that we can possibly assign to this is a little
after the year 132 b. c. This is assuming that the 38th
year mentioned in it is that of Euergetes II — a view to
which I think that I incline myself, though not with complete
confidence. If that were so, we must allow some further
interval [a-vyxpovia-as) for the actual composition of the pro
logue. But as evidence it would still go back some way
before rather than after 132 b.c, for the frequency with
which the writer repeats his phrase, in so short a compass
(' by the law and ihe prophets, and by others thai have followed

130 APPENDIX I.

their steps' 'the reading of ihe law and ihe prophets and other
books of our fathers', 'the law itself and the prophets and the
rest of the books'), seems to show that it was no novelty
picked up by him in Egypt, but part of the mental stock
which he brought "with him. And I should greatly hesitate
to adopt Dr. Edersheim's view [Speaker's Comm. on Apocr.
ii. 5), that the writer himself gave rise to this tripartite
division. He seems to me to refer to it in a way which
would assume that it was already established.
In any case his language appears to imply a rather ad
vanced stage in the history of the O. T. Canon. The con
ception of such a Canon is distinctly formed : certain books
are set aside and marked oflf from the rest of literature : two
of the three groups into which they are divided appear to
be already defined, and the third is in process of definition.
The stage arrived at is so distinctly that of collecting and
arranging older materials that it is difficult to think of
writings newly composed, as at once placed upon the same
level with them. We must remember, also, that the writer
of the prologue was not himself an Eg}'ptian Jew ; but came
to Egypt — we may presume from Palestine or even from
Jerusalem, the home of his grandfather (Ecclus. 1. 27); so
that the view represented would be that of the stricter
Palestinian Jews, and it was within this stricter circle
that the Psalter received its present circumscription. Al
though, therefore, the ' Wisdom of the Son of Sirach ' was
itself admitted into the Alexandrian Bible, we must not press
this fact too far. Neither must we treat a book like the
Psalter as if it were necessarily already closed. There is a
laxity of outline around the other books which there is not
in the law and ihe prophets. The Psalms of Solomon show
us that psalms were still being written ; and that at a much

APPENDIX I. 131

later date than this they could still gain admission into the
larger Bibles. For instance, they were originally included in the
coUection of Cod. Alexandrinus, and still stand in the list of
contents of that MS. On the whole, though I should not con
tend, on this ground at least, for the complete closing of the
Psalter by the year 132 b.c, I should confess to an uneasy
feeling if I admitted into it a Psalm headed a Psalm of David,
but not really composed till the time of Hyrcanus.
(2) The next point has reference to the ' Psalms of
Solomon' just mentioned. Does not a collection which
goes by this name imply the existence, in a well-defined
and substantive shape, of a previous collection of 'Psalms
of David ' ? The Psalms of Solomon cover the years 63-
48 B.C., and must have been composed or finished not
long after the latter date. It would, however, of course,
be too much to suppose that the title which they now bear
was attached to them at once. Still, it cannot have been
very long in coming. By the middle of the third century
the collection has been augmented by five ' Odes of
Solomon,' which, as the Psalms appear to have been reckoned
at XVII, made up the total number to XXII, corresponding
to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet^- The fondness of
Jews and Hellenists for literary artifices of this kind is well
known. Not only is the title thus firmly attached to them,
but the collection has also a considerable history behind it
(implying possibly translation, not only into Greek, but
into Coptic, because the Psalms and Odes are both quoted
in a Coptic work) by the year 250.
1 The Gnostic treatise Pistis Sophia, dating from the middle of the
third century, quotes the Second Ode as no. xix thus : Tua vis luminis
kvpoc^Tivaev de his verbis per Salomonem in eius decima nana ode et
dixit, Dominus super meum caput sicut corona, etc. (ed. Petermann-
Schwartze, p. 118 [76]). E 2

132 APPENDIX I.

(3) Some further light is thrown on the history of the
Psalms as a coUection by the New Testament. By the
time that the Acts of the Apostles was written (if we may not
say rather by the time of St. Paul's first missionary journey),
not only is the collection complete, but it has received a
fixed numbering. Ps. ii. 7 is quoted in Acts xiii. 33 expressly
as The Second Psalm. And this quotation has an interesting
history. There are traces of an extremely early reading
known to Origen, and adopted by Hilary, by which first
is substituted for second. And this variant numbering of
the first two Psalms goes back beyond Origen to Justin,
and beyond Hilary to Tertullian and Cj^rian. Origen
had seen the two Psalms combined in one of two Hebrew
copies to which he had had access'. It seems, therefore,
that the variation began in the Hebrew before it was trans
ferred to the Greek ; and we should thus have four distinct
stages (the original Hebrew collection and numbering, the
Hebrew variant, the Greek translation, and the Greek
variant), all to be got through before the time of Justin;
if the reading npa>Tm were original, we should have to say
before the tinae of St. Luke, or even of St. Paul. As a
matter of fact, the reading is adopted by Lachmann, Tischen
dorf, and Tregelles ; but it is not endorsed by Westcott
and Hort, and being so clearly what is technicaUy called
a ' Western ' reading, cannot be pressed \
We cannot here be sure that we have an original wrong
reading, implying a fourfold process of corruption, actually
¦ See Westcott and Hort, ad loc.
'' I see that Dr. Cheyne connects the uniting of Pss. i. ii. with the
reckoning of the whole number as 147, 'according to the number
of the years of Jacob {The Book of Psalms, p. xiv). It is certainly
surprising to find such an advanced stage of reflexion in the second
century.

APPENDIX I. 133

in New Testament times. But there are other examples
in the New Testament itself better attested and not less
significant. I wUl quote a few which have come to my
hands after no very long search : there are probably others
quite as important.
Rom. XV. 1 1 Kai jraXtv" Aimre jrai/ra toi tQvr) tov Kvpiov, Kai
iiraive(TdTa<rav airov rravres ol Xaoi.
eitaivfaaTwaav NABCDE ; Chrys. cod. Jo.-Damasc. ; Edd.
iirmviaaTf FGLP al. pier. ; Chrys. codd. Theodrt. al.
Ps. cxvi (cxvii). I Alvcire tov &vpiov, iravTa to, 'IBvq, alveaaTwcrav
avTov irdvres ol \aoi.
alveaaTOKjav H {def. B).
kntvatveffcLTaiffav A (jzV).
inaiviaaTe RT { = iTtaiviaaTai N°»).
Here the right reading in Romans is undoubtedly iiraivfcrd-
Ttna-av. It is not so clear that the same word is right in
the Psalm : the simple form alvfcrdTaxrav would compete
with it, if not also iirmveaare. The text of the Epistle is
thrown decidedly into the scale of A, and stands or falls
with it.
Rom. iii. 4 KaBas yiy pairTaC "Ojrms hv SiKataBrjs iv toXs \6yois
(TOV KOI viKri<reLs cv ra Kplveadai (ti.
vtieriaeis XADE, minusc. aliq.; LaK Ti. Tr'. WH.
«/nj(ri7s BGKL, al. pier.; LaK TrK
Ps. 1 (Ii). 6 "Oncog &v SiKaiad^s hi to'is \dyoK (Tov Kai viK.fj(TrjS
iv Tm KpivcaBal tre.
vmriaris NBRT {ex sil. Swete ; def. A).
vtK^ffets minusc. aliq. ap. Holmes.
Here vmrjireis is probably right in Romans (B has a weak
place in the Epistles at which the alternative reading seems
to come in), and viKfjo-ris in the Psalm.

134 APPENDIX I.

Eph. iv. 8 Aw \Ey«' 'Avoids els iJi/'OS rJxiidKa>Tev<Tev aip^/ioXo)-
(TLav KQL eStoKev dopara toIs dvdpdtTrots.
^'XiM\iiTfvaev NBCDEFGKP etc. ; Edd.
TpX/^aXirrevffas AL, minusc. aliq. al.
ins. ml Vi^BC*'D''KLV al. pier.; Tr. WH^.
om. Kol !>«*AC»D*FG at. ; La. Ti. WH\
tv av9p6iwois F^'G, patr. aliq.
Ps. Ixvii (Ixviii). 19 dva^ds els v^os fi\p,a\a>Tev(Tas cu}(iJiaKa-
aiav, eXu^es Sdfiara iv dvOpairai.
&o/3ds B*R*.
avifiris X«'B''''R».
av($r, N* {def. A), Lat.-Vet.
¦gXliaXinevao' K*, Lat.-Vet.
mi0p6mq> B* 0' *.
dvepimois NB'R".
Here the true reading is undoubtedly dvafids yxpaXoiTeva-ev
in Ephesians, and probably dvafids rjxpcLKaTevaas in the
Psalm, though dvi^rj dvi^jjs and rjxpaXdmvo-ev are all early
readings. There is then, perhaps, some doubt as to the first of these
passages : the New Testament reading may, perhaps (though
not certainly), be right. In the other two passages it is
pretty certainly wrong. But the error is something more
than a mere isolated lapse : it involves in each case the
endorsement in the New Testament, not only of a wrong
reading, but of a wrong type of text : already in New
Testament times the leading texts of the LXX have begun
to diverge, and corrupt texts have gained currency. The
evidence so far has been confined to the Psalms; but the
same conclusion would hold good of the other books : e. g.
in Rom. xi. 34, and i Cor. ii. 16, two distinctively A-readings
[a-i/p^ovKos avTov and a-vp^t^da-ei) are adopted from Isa. xl. 13.

APPENDIX I. 135

The text in which these phenomena are found clearly is not
a young one.
(4) The conclusion just arrived at is confirmed by refer
ence to Philo. Of the readings quoted by Dr. Hatch [Ess.
in Bibl. Greek, p. 173) the following may be taken.
Ps. xiv (xlvi). 5 '¦°>' iTOTapxtv Ta opprjpaTa ev<jipaivov(n ttjv noKtv
TOV Qeov.
rb Sppijpa ei<l)patvei, one cursive, Lat.-Vet.: and so Philo.
Ps. xciii (xciv). 9 o wXda-as o0duX^ou5, oi Karavotl;
ifOoKpiovs KB : and Philo.
Toiis b<p6a\nois R.
ric b(f>9aKiiiv A.
IxpeaXpIiv N"*.
[The other variants of Philo's text in this passage
are not to our purpose.]
Here it is, perhaps, probable that Philo is right, in which
case this reading would be of no significance. The Hebrew,
however, has the singular, and antecedently it would have
seemed rather more likely that the plural would be sub
stituted when the scribe no longer had the Hebrew before
him, i.e. in some copy of the LXX after the first. But
the decision must turn ultimately on the value of the com
bination NB, which is not as yet quite a fixed quantity.
In the first passage Philo has against him NabrT: still
there can be no doubt that his reading, though hardly right,
is a very early one. We are again on the trace of a
divergent family — represented by Lat.-Vet. Philo would
thus testify to the existence of this family quite at the begin
ning of the first century.
(5) It were much to be wished that some competent
scholar would set himself to work out systematically the

136 APPENDIX I.

history of the Titles to the Psalms. An excellent beginning has
recently been made by Dr. Neubauer [Studia Biblica., ii. p. i ff.)
for the later history as it may be traced especially through the
Jewish interpreters. This alone is valuable ; but we want a
searching examination of the earlier history — backwards, let
us say, from the Hexapla. We need to have more exactly
defined the stages which the titles have passed through up to
that date. Dr. Neubauer has brought out quite clearly that
the later Jewish commentators had no tradition on the
subject. Some of the best of them make shrewd guesses ;
but their guesses are not different in kind from those
which are made in our own day. We go back to the
Targum, an Aramaic paraphrase, made probably by a Jew
who had some knowledge of Greek, in the fourth century,
and still we find the same thing. From the Targum we
turn to the Hexapla ; and from that we find that even our
earliest authorities, the Greek Versions, are equally at fault.
Let us take one or two of the first that occur. I give a
literal rendering of the Greek in each case.
PSALM IV.
LfXX. els to TeXos iv ylraXpols wSij Tw Aavcid.
iv ^aXiiois wSrj NB.
ipa\pibs a)S^$ R.
i/zaX/ids A.
' For the end ; in psalms ; a song of David : ' i. e.,
as explained by Eusebius and Theodoret, ' a psalm
relating to things which are to happen at the end [of
the world].' It seems that the Hebrew taken in
this way might possibly= 'for performance' (Delitzsch,
ad loc. ed. 3).
Aquila. tu wKOffoiM iv ^aXpo'is fieXdSrjpa ra Aau€f8.
' For the victor ; in psalms ; a melody of David.'

APPENDIX I. 137

Gregory of Nyssa combines the two renderings ' vic
tory and ' end : els t6 TeXos ottep ia-Tiv f) vIkt). And
Chrysostom remarks that in Hebrew the same word
means 'end' and 'victory,' — a statement which appears
to be really true of different periods in the language
(Delitzsch).
SyMMACHUS. imvUiot 8id yjrdkTripimv t^Stj T^ A.
' Of victory, on psalteries, a song of David.'
ThEODOTION. els TO viKos iv vpvois \j/a\p6s ra A.
' For victory, in hymns, a psalm of David.'
R.V. (=Heb.) 'For the chief musician; on stringed
instruments ; a psalm of David.'
This appears to be the true meaning : the psalm is to be
handed to the choirmaster for performance on stringed
instruments. PSALM VIII. [There are the same variants for the word
meaning ' choirmaster.']
LXX. and Symmachus. im-ep tS>v XrjvZv.
' For the wine-presses ' (i. e. vintage).
Aquila and Theodotion. imp ttjs yeT^mSoi.
'For the Gittite' (fem.).
Targum. ' On the harp which came from Gath.'
A. V. ' Upon Gittith ' (i.e. a kind of harp).
R. V. ' Set to the Gittith ' (i.e. a jubilant tune, ' March
of the men of Gath,' Hitzig).
PSALM IX.
LXX. OS TO TeXos irrep tZv Kpwpiav tov vlov.
om. tov vtov R,
'For the end concerning the secrets of the son.'
Pro occultis filii, Vulg.

138 APPENDIX I.

Aquila. ra viKOwoia veavidrriTos tov vlov.
' For the victor of the youth of the son.'
Symmachus. imvUiov nepl tov BavaTOV tov vlov,
' A victor's ode concerning the death of the son.'
Theodotion and Quinta. ra viKorroia iirip dKprjs tov vlov.
' For the victor on the coming of age of the son.'
SeXTA. els ro TeXos veavtKorrjs tov vlov.
' For the end, youth of the son.'
Targum. To praise, on the occasion of the death of the
man who came out from the camp (Goliath).
R. V. ' For the chief musician ; set to Muth-labben ; a
psalm of David.'
Of these, Aquila and Sexta are sheer nonsense, and
Theodotion and Quinta little better. It is very doubtful
whether anything can be made of LXX. There is, however, a
consistent sense in Symmachus, whose rendering points to
some such event as the death of Goliath (Targ., David ben
Abraham, and others), Absalom, the son of Bathsheba, etc.
No doubt the reference is really to a tune, the name of
which R. V. discreetly veils.
These examples might be multiplied to any extent; but
enough will have been given to show how helpless the Greek
versions are from the earliest to the latest. There is clearly
no tradition in the strict sense, but each of the translators
makes the best conjecture that he can. It is important to
observe that the second-century versions are no better off
than the Septuagint. Otherwise we might have supposed
that the knowledge of what the tides originally meant,
though lost at Alexandria, had been preserved in Palestine.
This appears to be the explanation suggested by Hupfeld
[Die Psalmen, p. 46). Even so, we could hardly have

APPENDIX I. 139

accepted it without hesitation, because there was so much
intercourse between the Jews of Egypt and those of Palestine
as to make it difficult to believe that a whole section of
knowledge could thus have been possessed by the one and
not possessed by the other. We remember at once that,
according to the Pseudo-Aristeas, the seventy translators
themselves came from Palestine : we think at once of Onias,
of the grandson of Jesus, the son of Sirach, of the letters at
the opening of 2 Maccabees, of Agrippa I at Alexandria, and
of the constant stream of Jewish immigrants into Egypt, and
of pUgrims from Egypt to Jerusalem. If the Alexandrian
Jews had forgotten what the titles meant, it would have been
easy enough for them to get to know. But then we find
that in the second century of our own era the Jews of Pales
tine were just as ignorant; and not only in the second
century, but quite early in the century, in circles so well
informed as that of Aquila, and with hardly a generation
intervening since the fall of the Herodian temple. It is diffi
cult to think of the break in the tradition on such a point as
occurring between Hillel and Akiba.
On one point I have not ventured to touch, the possibility
that some of the varieties of rendering might be explained
by differences of reading in the Hebrew text. The
Hebraists must teU us what opening there is for this.
In any case there wiU be at least the following stages:
(i) the Hebrew psalm composed; (2) a tide attached to it —
often a title which impHes that the true circumstances of its
composition are forgotten ; (3) then further the meaning of
the title itself lapses from memory ; (4) the great current
version is made into Greek with titles already misunderstood ;
(5) a secondary group of versions arises under different
geographical and historical conditions and in connexion with

I40 APPENDIX I.

several distinct schools or parties, yet the same ignorance
prevails in all. Not only are these distinct stages, but they
must each be of considerable length. If we must allow for
variants in the Hebrew, one of them would be still further
prolonged. I cannot attempt to put a definite estimate upon these
data ; for that a more special knowledge is required. I
would only venture to commend them to the attention of
those who have that knowledge. At the same time I confess
that, on z. prima facie view, it appears to me that four out of
the five stages mentioned above wiU have to be got through
at the latest by the time of Hillel. But even Hillel was not
the first of the Scribes : and, working back from him, we are
soon brought to the age of the Maccabees. It seems to me
that this age is the latest which can be assigned for the com
pletion of the Psalter. I am strongly tempted to go further,
and to add, that in spite of the indications which are often
thought to point to Maccabean Psalms, the doubt is still
present to my mind whether even this is not descending
too low.

NOTE.
I HOPE that the object of this Appendix will not be misun
derstood. It was intended to be wholly tentative. So far as it
might seem to express opinion on the date of the Psalter, it was
opinion not formed but forming. I imagine that there must
be many others in the same state of mind as myself, feeling
their way graduaUy on the subject, and resting for the moment
in temporary hypotheses and half-way positions, prepared to
go either forwards or backwards as the case may be, but

APPENDIX I. 141

wishing not to commit themselves to definite affirmations until
they feel more sure of their ground. I took the opportunity
of the issue of this volume to set down in print some of these
tentative hypotheses,' partly for my own sake, as a help in the
process of thinking, and partly for the sake of others at a simi
lar stage to myself, to whom they might render a like service.
The points chosen for discussion of course cover only a small
extent of ground ; they were chosen not so much for their
intrinsic importance as for certain links of connexion with my
own more special studies. Any hypothesis to be finally ac
cepted as true must needs embrace all parts of a question ;
and to break up that question into some of its smaller subdivi
sions may be a real step towards obtaining their solution.
To attempt more than this would have been presumption
on my part ; and it would have been particularly ill-timed
in view of the near publication of Dr. Cheyne's Bampion
Lectures. I join most cordially in the interest with which
those lectures are expected, and I promise myself much
instruction from them. It will have appeared from the body
of this work that it will be no serious or insuperable shock to
me if some of the Psalms, more or fewer, should ultimately
be referred to Maccabean times. In this, as in all else, we
must be guided simply by the evidence. Still I seem to see
difficulties in the way ; and I was not sorry to have an oppor
tunity of stating some of these difficulties in a shape which I
hope is free from controversy.
My purpose in doing so has been answered to an extent
beyond what I could have anticipated through the kind
permission which has been given me to print portions of a
letter from Dr. Driver which form a running comment on
the questions raised in the Appendix, especially the last
on which I was most anxious to have his opinion. On

142 APPENDIX /.

this in particular I think it will be felt that great light is
thrown; but apart from that a lesson may be learnt from
the combined open-mindedness and caution which are cha
racteristic of a scholar. Dr. Driver writes as follows : —
' On (i) I have little to say. The passage is generally admitted to pre
suppose the threefold division of the Canon recognised by the Jews, though
it could not be taken as proving that the third comprised all the books
which it now contains. Certainly, some very late Psalms — though it is
difficult to say positively how late — have David's name attached to them
(ciii, cxxiv, cxxxiii, cxxxix, cxliv, cxlv, — late, from the language). The
distribution ai Davidic Psalms, especially in Books III-V, is difficult
to understand ; if ex. for instance be his, or date from his time, why does
it stand where it does, in a late collection, and after two which are cer
tainly much later than David's time (cviii. a composite Psalm=parts of
Ivii. and Ix.)! One opinion is that there was a collection (or collections)
gradually added to, the nucleus of which was ancient and was probably
really Davidic ; in this case the collection might be known as "David's,"
and a Psalm taken from it, though really much later, may have been
inscribed " David's." This certainly seems to be the explanation of the
Asaph-Psalms. That a Psalm composed in the second century should
be inscribed "David's'' is no doubt singular; but is it more so than
that Psalms composed in the fifth or fourth century should be so
inscribed 1 The Chronicler (i Chron. xvi. 7 ff.) attributes to David a
composite Psalm, composed of three post-exilic Psalms. Indeed, he
consistently treats David as the founder of the Temple-services, as they
were organized in his own day, representing in this, no doubt, the current
opinion of his age (300 B.C.). Has not this something to do with the
(incorrect) ascription of Psalms to David ? I own that I sympathize with
your 'uneasy feeling'; but I am not sure whether, in order for it to
be decisive, we ought not to be clearer than we are as to the precise
motives and grounds on which Psalms were said to be "David's."'
I should be far from supposing that the argument of the
Appendix was in any way ' decisive ' : but the observation as
to the usage of the Chronicler seems to me important, and
such as might well furnish a starting-point in the investiga
tion of these Davidic collections. Is it not remarkable that of
the three Psalms (cv, xcvi, cvi) which the Chronicler — whether

APPENDIX I. 143

for the first time or, as I should prefer to think, following
some previous editor— combines together and ascribes to
David only one (Ps. xcvi=xcv, LXX) has an extant tide attri
buting it to David, and that not in the Hebrew but only in
the LXX ? It would be natural to suppose that there would
be two stages in the history of these collections ; the first, if
we may so call it, the fiuid stage, during which the contents
of scattered and fragmentary MSS. would be painfully brought
together by scribes and editors; and the second, during
which the collections so formed would be publicly known and
circulated. In the first stage I can readily understand how —
often perhaps from mere accidental juxtaposition — Psalms
not really written by David might come to have his name
attached to them. But in the second period it seems to me
far less easy to realize to ourselves the process by which
Psalms newly composed would get incorporated into existing
and known collections. Is not the Chronicler's in fact a case
in point ? Should we not have expected that his influence
alone would have been enough to bring the name of David
into the tides of the three Psalms, if not to gain a place for
the one composite Psalm in the Psalter ? Yet this has not
been done. The inference seems to be suggested — and I
should have thought that it was in keeping with the part
assigned by the Chronicler to David in connexion with the
Temple-music generally — that the second period had already
been reached, and that the Davidic collections would in the
natural course of things be closing, if not closed. There is
however another important point, to which my attention is
also called by Dr. Driver, that with very few exceptions the
Psalms ascribed to David are not liturgical or such as in the
first instance would have been composed for use in public
worship.

144 APPENDIX I.

On the next point Dr. Driver briefly touches : —
'(2) No doubt "Davidic"' collections existed prior to 63-48 B.C.
The problem is. How did they arise ? '
My argument was [valeat quantum) that a Solomonic
Psalter implied a previous Davidic Psalter; but I admit that
the condition might be satisfied by the existence of smaller
collections under the name of David without supposing that
the larger collection went as a whole by his name. Any
argument of this sort would be superfiuous if these Davidic
collections went back as far as the time of the Books of
Chronicles. Professor Kirkpatrick, in his excellent edition
just published of the First Book of the Psalms, p. xxxvii,
gives a new and more important tum to the argument by
pointing to the chasm in thought and tone which separates
the Psalms of Solomon from the Canonical Psalms. He
urges, after Schiirer, that the righteousness of these later
Psalms is already that of Pharisaic Judaism.
My remarks upon the bearing of the history of the text
of the Greek Psalter on the age of that version, and therefore
ultimately of the Hebrew original, were prompted by the
belief that this was a train of reasoning which had proved of
use in regard to the New Testament and had not yet been
opened up in reference to the Old. Dr. Driver's comments
are as follows : —
' (3) The point is an interesting one, and deserves further investigation.
Is not a wider induction needed to show whether the variations are acci
dental (i.e. due to quotation from memory, &c.\ or whether they tend to
agree systematically with A (or any other MS. or group of MSS.) ?
Another point arises in connexion with the fact that A' (as is well
known), as compared with B, exhibits a text that has constantly been
corrected so as to conform with the Hebrew (see e. g. i Sam. i. i, and
continually) ; do the variants in the N. T. approximate also to the Heb.?
And if so are they corrections which might have been made inde
pendently or will they liave been Ijorruwed trum texts of the LXX?

APPENDIX I. 145

Variations resulting from intentional correction would not presuppose
such a long interval of time as those arising from the ordinary sources
of textual corruption.'
I am glad that Dr. Driver encourages the prosecution of
this line of inquiry. No doubt there are many possibilities
<which will have to be duly considered on the right hand and
on the left. I do not think, however, that the two disturbing
elements which he mentions are likely to prove of great
importance. Variants in a quotation are seldom due to
mere accident where they coincide with MS. readings of the
original text. The chief point to be considered is whether
these MS. readings derive their origin from the quotation and
are not independent of it — a case which is more than usually
possible with quotations from the O. T. in the N. T. There
is no doubt frequently a reflex action from N. T. quotations
upon the text of O. T. MSS. But the prima facie tendency
of criticism will probably be to exaggerate the amount of
corruption due to this cause. Many O. T. variants can be
proved to have been in existence before it can well have
come into operation. In such cases the other alternative
must be chosen — that the N. T. writers were themselves
making use of a divergent text. The other cause, assimi
lation to the Hebrew, is also one that can be allowed for
without much difficulty. I have not specially tested the
O. T. quotations in the N. T. text of A. The archetype at
least of one very important line of N. T. text can be traced
to a scribe who possessed a knowledge of Hebrew ; but this
is not the line of A. It should be remembered too that A
is not so distinctly the representative of a particular line
of text in the N. T. As a matter of fact the number of
authorities for the early history of the text of the N. T. is so
great that corruption from the Hebrew would soon reveal

146 APPENDIX I.
itself. The instances of readings given in the Appendix had
undergone a certain amount of preKminary sifting; and I
believe that they will be found to belong to varied types and
by no means only to that of A.
Points (3) and (4) practically go together, and on the
second of these Dr. Driver makes no separate remarks ; but \
I had specially invited his opinion on (5), and on this I will
give what he has been so good as to write to me in full.
' I doubt greatly whether much weight is to be attached to the ignor
ance of the LXX. The LXX, in all parts of their translation (which
of course, as its varying character shows, is the work of very different
hands, and in all probability was only completed gradually), are apt to
stand aloof from the Palestinian tradition ; they frequently show them
selves to be unfamiliar not only with uncommon or exceptional words,
but even with those which one would have expected to be well known.
This may be illustrated, in particular, from the very word from which
the Hebrew term rendered "precentor'' is derived. The verb, n23, of
which n?50, "precentor," is the participle, is never found in the pre-
exilic literature; it occurs only in the Chronicles and Ezra; i. c. it was
employed in Palestine, by an author writing c. 300 B.C., and, it may
reasonably be assumed, was understood there at the time. It is not
mostly used with reference to music; it denotes properly to be pre-eminent^ ,
then more generally to preside or superintend, the sense to lead (in
music) being merely a special application of this idea. It is hardly
possible that a word familiarly known in Palestine, \j. 300 B.C., and
(in its musical connexion) retained in use in the Temple services,
should have had its meaning forgotten there during the period of 1-2
centuries which may have elapsed between 300 B.C. and the date at
which the LXX translation of the Chronicles and Ezra was made ; yet
the translators of these books have evidently no idea of its meaning
when used in that connexion. The following is a synopsis of the passages
in which the verb occurs : —
I Ch. XV. 21 R.V. to lead, LXX toS evia-)(y<sai^.
xxiii. 4 R.V. to oversee, LXX epyodiSiKTai.
' In Aramaic, to be distinguished, cf. Dan. 6, 3 [Aram. 4], often also
to prevail, triumph ; the substantive n: n s 5 , M*. jJ victory. This Aramaic
usage explains some of the renderings of the term to be noticed below.
' For the associalion of the idea of strength with what is ^in reality

APPENDIX I. 147

2 Ch. ii. 2 [Heb. i] ' R.V. to oversee, LXX iitiaTdTai.
18 [Heb. 17] 1 R.V. overseers, LXX ipyoSiunTat.
xxxiv. 12 R.V. to set forward, R.V. marg. to preside (over it),
LXX eTTtfficoireTv.
13 R.V. set forward, LXX enl.
Ezra iii. 8 R.V. to have the oversight, LXX omit (liri representing the
following ') r) .
9 R.V. to have the oversight, LXX similarly omit.
In all these passages except the first the LXX render freely or make use
of some general equivalent ; in 1 Chron. xv. 21, in spite of the reference
being manifestly to music, they show themselves to be entirely unac
quainted with the meaning of the verb. Their rendering, in the Psalms ',
of the title nsJD^ (which they must have vocalized, not as a participle
nsjnl) \mt ass. substantive nsspl;) by eis to t€\os {with the article) is
plainly to be accounted for by their rendering of the common nsSZ
"for ever" by eh t^Aos {without the article) ; but in the light of
what has been said, it caimot be held to show that the sense of
the word was unknown at the time in Palestine ; it only shows that it
was unknown in Alexandria. The usage of the verb ri23 appears to me to
constitute a presumption that the sense " precentor" for the participle
nsjO originated in ^oj/-exilic times ; its use in Hab. iii. 1 9 is not opposed
to this view ; for it may well have been added afterwards, at a time
when the ode of Habakkuk was used in the services of the Temple^.

or appearance) the same root, see Is. xxv. 8, Jer. xv. 18, LXX. The
LXX not unfrequently give to a Hebrew word a sense which the root
only bears in Aramaic ; and it is probable that they were led to this
rendering of ns3 by the sense to prevail which the root has in Aramaic.
' These two verses are plainly based upon i Ki. v. 14-15, with slight
modifications — amongst others, with the substitution of the late word
ns3, for mi 'bear rule,' used in the book of Kings.
^ In Hab. iii. 19, tov vixyaai (i.e. n 2 : Q ^, vocalized as an inpn., and
explained from the Aramaic : compare the preceding notes).
' I do not, however, desire by this to be supposed to hold that the
Temple-psalmody itself originated only after the exile. I have no doubt
that the beginnings of this were much earlier; the ' Singers,' who returned
in B.C. 536 (Ezra ii. 41), must have been the descendants of those
who had discharged similar functions in the pre-exilic Temple. And some
of the other technical terms, as Shiggaion, the Gittith, Sec, may also
well be of ancient origin; but they hardly prove anything as to the
L 2

148 APPENDIX I.

But whether this be the case or not, r Chron. xv. 21 is evidence that
the word was understood in Palestine c 300 B.C.' : either, therefore,
it gradually fell out of use, and its meaning thus gradually became
obscured in the centuries following ; or (as this seems hardly probable
during the continuance of the Temple-services) the break in the tradition
must have taken place in the great dispersion which overtook the nation
alter the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, A.D. 70. In either case
the revisers of the Greek translation of the O.T., who lived in the next
century, Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, will have sought to
recover the lost meaning of the technical terms of Hebrew music, by
etymological combinations, in which they were much influenced by their
knowledge of the Aramaic dominant at the time. Hence their rendering
ofnsjo hyviKOTToihsoiemviKiov.
'In the case of Aquila there is another point also to be bome in mind.
Aquila was essentially an innovator : he was a pupil of R. Akiba, who
introduced new and highly artificial methods of interpretation ° : he
made it his aim, even at the cost of the sense, to reproduce particles ;
in particular, he cultivated etymological renderings. Because II]? means
a diadem, he rendered in Ps. xxii. 13 the bulls of Bashan '^'iri? by
SieS7}naTi(iavT6 lie ; because rij'is signifies a raised Jlower-bed (Cant. v.
1 3), i. e. ¦npaaid, he rendered the verb 3^5 to long or pant in Joel i. 20 by
eTrpaaioiBf] ; the Hebrew word for oil he represented etymologically by
tTTiKirvbTTis. The root ns: expressed to him the idea of victory (cf. the
Aramaic usage referred to above') ; hence he used vIko^ not only in
Isa. xxv. 8 (where, even though incorrect, it would yield a suitable sense'),
but even where it produces no sense at all, as Ps. Ixxiv. i " Wherefore, O
God, hast Thou cast us off unto victory")" (similarly in v. 10, and Ps. Ixxix.
date of the Psalm to which they are attached ; for even after their true
meaning had been forgotten, they might still have been employed con
ventionally to denote particular tunes, or kinds of melody, and attached
as such to Psalms of late origin.
1 The style of i Ch. xv. 1-24 (as of the other passages quoted, in
which nsj occurs) shows that it was written by the Chronicler him
self, and was not taken by him from earlier sources.
'^ For some account of R. Akiba's methods, see Dr. Pusey, ' What is
of faith as to everlasting punishment ?^ p. 79 ff.
' And see also i Sam. xv. 29, RV. marg. ; Hab. i. 4, RV. marg. ;
Lam. iii. 18, LXX; i Ch. xxix. 11, LXX and RV. (rightly).
' So also Theodotion, and in the quotation i Cor. xv. 54.

APPENDIX I. 149

5'). Aquila's renderings are essentially artificial^; they prove nothine;
as to either the presence or the absence of genuine traditional knowledge
possessed by well-informed circles in his time.
'The origin of the Targum of Ps. ix. title is manifest. Goliath is
called in l Sam. xvii. 4 "the man of the /'Azaim, or of the space between
{"bhi") the two armies (the fieraixp'ov)," i.e. the champion ; here Hebrew
words occur which might apparently mean " on the death of the bin''
The similarity of bin in the title of Ps. ix to bhiaim (which — looking
at the form alone — might be its dual) in I Sam. xvii. 4 is quite sufficient
ground for a Targnmist to interpret the one passage by the other, and
to understand the " ben" here as denoting Goliath. The phrase used in the
Targum here, " On the death of the man who came forth from between
the camps," is nearly the same as that in the Targum of i Sam. xvii. 4
" And there came forth a man from between them, from the camps of
the Philistines." '
This goes far to cut away the ground from the argument
I had used. It is clear that both in the LXX and Aquila
tradition played a very subordinate part. The only point on
which I have still a lingering doubt is whether the dispersion
which overtook the nation after the destruction of Jerusalem
by Titus in a.d. 70, is enough to constitute a real break in
tradition where such has to be postulated. The Rabbinical
schools soon found a rendezvous at Jamnia ; the succession
of Rabbis goes on without interruption, and there must have
been many priests dwelling in the country, like Zacharias
(Luke i. 39), who escaped the general massacre. At a time
when the Jews were so alive to the memories of their past,
it is less easy to suppose a breach of continuity which might
have been credible enough in an older generation.
' The same false rendering of nsJ 'for ever' by 'unto victory' is
found in some parts of the LXX : 2 Sam. ii. 26 ; Am. i. n , viii. 7 ; Lam.
V. 30 ; Job xxxvi. 7, — except in the last passage, to the entire ruination of
the sense. Aquila's veavtorrjTos in Ps. ix. title is a similar etymological
rendering of mD"b», treated as one word niaby.
' See this abundantly illustrated by Dr. Field, Hexapla, pp. xxi-iii.

APPENDIX IL
SOME EXTRACTS FROM RECENT CRITICISM ON THE
DEFECTIVE APPREHENSION OF THE OLD TESTA
MENT IN THE EARLY CHURCH.
The diversion of the stream of genuine Old Testament
influence from the Early Church, during the formative
period of its theology, is a fact of so much importance in
itself, and one which is so little appreciated generally in
England, that I will venture to give a few extracts from
recent German writers bearing upon it. When we read the
New Testament we see that, not only the Gospels, but the
whole teaching of St. Paul, St. Peter, and St. John is in the
most vital contact with the Old Testament. One of the
greatest wonders of the New Testament is indeed the extent
to which what we should call a strictly historical conception
of the Older Dispensation is embodied in it, at a time when
anything deserving of the name was so rare in the secular
philosophers and historians. But when we turn to the
second century, all is changed. Think of the references to
Jewish history in the Episties to the Galatians and Romans,
and then (e. g.) in the Epistie of Barnabas ; or observe the
treatment of fundamental Pauline ideas in writers like
Clement of Rome and Justin, and trace the defect in their
teaching to its cause. This is the way in which the problem
is worked out by Ritschl ' : —
' I have not scrupled to use a slight amount of paraphrase, both in
this and the following extracts, so as to make the German read more
easily and naturally in English.

APPENDIX IL 151

' Although Clement maintains in words the root-idea of the Apostle
that the believer is redeemed from his sins, and that God has thus
through Christ placed the believer in a specific relation to Himself, he
has failed to understand the true significance of this thought, and
grounds the relation of the believer to God on his attitude of repentance
occasioned by the Death of Christ. The cause of this phenomenon is to
be sought, not in the greater stress laid upon the moral attitude of the
individual, which can only be regarded as a co-operating factor, but in
the inability of a Gentile to master the Old Testament background of
the leading features of the Apostle's teaching (die Unfahigkeit des
Heiden, der richtigen alttestamentlichen Voraussetzungen der aposto-
lischen Grundideen sich zu bem'achtigen).' {Entstehung d. altkatliol.
Kirche, 2nd ed., Bonn, 1857, p. 2S2.)
Again, it is remarked of Justin, that while he connects re
demption with the Death of Christ, and does not omit to men
tion the condition of faith, ' this faith is not conceived of as
faith in Christ ; and instead of 'meaning with him that central
function of the will which surrenders itself to the Person of
Christ it is resolved into repentance and active obedience
(Werkgehorsam), and the whole efficacy of the Death of Christ
shrinks into the condition by which this state of things is
realized (beschrankt die Wirkung des Opfers Christi auf die Be-
dingung dieses empirischen Verhaltens).' Here, too, as in the
case of Clement, Ritschl accounts for the confusion by saying
that Justin as a Gentile-Christian had not ' that true under
standing of the Apostle's root-ideas which was to be derived
from the Old Testament rightly interpreted ' [ibid. p. 304).
What Ritschl has thus said of particular writers and cer
tain particular doctrines, Overbeck takes up and applies to
the early Fathers generally : —
' St. Paul, with his lines of thought striking their root deep into the
religious thinking of Judaism [Hebraism?], was a wholly closed book to
these Gentile-Christian interpreters. If it is true that the questions
which exercised the Apostle of the Gentiles had to a certain extent lost
their immediate practical significance (for only the Jewish-Christian
sects regarded the Mosaic law as still obligatory), at the same time

1 52 ^rt'ENVIX II.

there was a complete drifting away from the connexion of St. Paul's
ideas with those of the Old Testament and the Judaism of his time. In
particular the purely moralizing view of things characteristic of these
Fathers, and the way in which they teach the freedom of the will, place
impassable barriers between them and the theology of St. Paul with its
purely religious premisses, of which they have indeed no conception.
Law and the freedom of the Gospel, righteousness, faith, and election of
grace, all these root-ideas of the Pauline Epistles are either reduced to
common-places (verflacht) or filled with a wholly alien content. The
world of thought in which they moved was wholly different, and they
imported into primitive Christianity the conceptions of a wholly dif
ferent civilization.' {Inaugural Lecture, delivered in 1871, and quoted by
Von Engelhardt, Christenthum Justins des Mdrtyrers, p. 59 f.)
In the concluding chapters of his work on the Christianity
of fustin (pp. 434-490) Von Engelhardt himself works out
at length the points which have just been summarized. He
shows clearly how the ' degeneration ' in Justin's conception
of certain sides of Christian truth is due to his antecedents.
It was impossible that he should cast off the ideas in which
he had been brought up and which he had made his own
by earnest study, and that he should enter heart and soul
into modes of thought which had a wholly different history
and origin. All unconsciously a transfer took place : the
long list of terms and ideas which were handed on from
the Old Covenant to the New was retained, but their mean
ing was altered into conformity with the training and asso
ciations of a Greek philosopher. And in this Justin's case
was only typical of what went on with the other leading
spirits among his contemporaries. Von Engelhardt does
well to insist upon this : —
' So in all directions Justin proves to be the key to the understanding
of the course which the Church took in its evolution. From his
writings alone can it be ascertained what is the origin of that peculiar
form of Christianity whicli meets us in different degrees in the Apostolic
Fathers ; and only through the analysis of the modes of his Christian
tliinlcing can we get at the beginning of the so-called Old-Catholicism

APPENDIX II. 153

and of the later Greek theology. The legal turn (Gesetzlichkeit) of
Old-Catholic Christianity, the fluctuations of Ante-Nicene Christology
and of the Logos-doctrine, and lastly the one-sided reference of aainipia
or redemption to the imparting of eternal life in the sense of immortality,
find their explanations in the confusion which is demonstrable in Justin
of doctrines and ideas which are either specifically Christian or the
products of Revelation generally with the religious and moral ideas of
Greek and Pagan culture (des griechisch gebildeten Heidenthums).'
{Ibid. p. 433 f.)
Harnack writes to the same general effect, only pointing
out in addition the importance of the part played by the
Jewish propaganda in preparing the way for this amalgama
tion of Greek thought with Christianity : —
' The conviction (that Christianity must possess all knowledge) soon
had to be tested by its application to the Old Testament : that is to say,
the greater number of thinking Christians had the problem set before
them by the circumstances under which the Gospel had been preached
to them of putting an intelligible meaning upon the Old Testament ;
in other words, of using this Book as a Christian book, and of finding
the means by which at once the Jews' claims upon it might be repelled,
and their inteipretation of it refuted. This problem would never have
been raised, and still less would it have been solved, if the Christian
commimities in the Empire had not entered into the inheritance of the
Jewish propaganda in which an extensive spiritualizing of the Old-
Testament religion had already taken place. This spiritualizing was due
to lookmg at the religion from the point of view of philosophy, and the
tendency to look at it thus was the result of a prolonged action of Greek
philosophy and the Greek spirit generally upon Judaism. It followed
that all the facts and sayings of the Old Testament of which nothing
could be made were converted into allegories. " Nothing was what it
seemed, but it was only the symbol of something invisible. The narra
tive of the Old Testament was in this way sublimated into a history of
the emancipation of Reason from Passion." It marks, however, the
beginning of the world-wide development of Christianity, that it had to
adopt the method of this fantastic syncretism as soon as it began to
reflect upon itself or to apply and use the Book-Revelation which went
with it. We have seen that the authors who made a diligent use of the
Old Testament invariably employed the allegorical method. They were
driven to this, not only by their inability to understand the literal sense
of the Old Testament, or in other words by divergences of religious and

154 APPENDIX II.

moral opinion, but above all by the conviction that every page of that
Book must speak of Christ and the Christian Church. How could such
a conviction as this have seemed to be verified if the view of the Old
Testament adopted by the current Jewish philosophy had not first
effaced its definite concrete meaning ?' {Dogmengeschichte, i. 187, ed. 2.)
A litde further on Dr. Harnack remarks upon the pregnant
significance of the fact that in order to hold its own at all
the Old Testament had to have recourse 'to the allegorical
method,' that is to a distinct section of Greek ideas, and that
on the other hand it set up the strongest barrier to the com
plete Hellenizing of Christianity [ibid. p. 1 9 1 f.).
My last two quotations shall be taken from writers repre
senting a different branch of theological study, no longer
from historians of the Christian Church, but from students
specially of the Old Testament. The first shall be from
Ludwig Diestel, who wrote at an earlier date than any of
the writers excerpted above except Ritschl, and in whom we
shall therefore not be surprised at finding a less satisfactory
explanation of the facts which he sets himself to account for,
although he at least recognised clearly the receding of the
Old Testament in the Post- Apostolic as compared with the
Apostolic age, and the injury done to it by allegorical inter
pretation. The point which he misses is that with most of
the writers of that date he sets down to Jewish influence
what is due rather to Greek.
' In the lively controversy with Judaism and Jewish Christians the
national and contemporary (zeitgeschichtliche) significance of the Old
Testament retired more into the background ; all that could not pass into
the Christian faith as eternal truth found its explanation in Israel's sm.
This controversy told disastrously on the conception of Christianity
itself. The Apologists borrowed all the more readily from their op
ponents the identity of Covenant and Law, that the practical tendency of
the first communities gave a great impulse to the conception of
Christianity as a nova lex. Even in Pauline circles (Ep. Bam.) . . .
the foundations of the theological conception were already laid when

APPENDIX n. 155

the Canon of the Old Testament was more sharply defined, and side by
side with, or in the end above, it was placed the Canon of the New
Covenant. The allegorical interpretation also for a. long time con-
.tiibuted to its support in such a degree that the need for a theory of
Hermeneutics which gradually made itself felt could only be satisfied by
the better justification of this exegetical method. These powerful cur
rents of interest with the controversies to right and left determine the
formation of theological theory and the direction of Biblical studies
in far higher degree than the recollections of the Apostolic age: the
germs of what was best in these either lay neglected or else developed in
a way that was extravagant and one-sided : the limitations imposed by
the tendencies of the age which the Apostolic theory itself could not
help admitting, were not gradually thrown off, but were rather in many
respects accentuated, until at the end of the period knowledge sought
new channels.' [Geschichte d. A. T. in d. Christi. Kirche, Jena, 1869,
p. 17.) The other passage is from a more recent writer. Dr. C.
Siegfried, who brings us nearer to the problems of our own
day. The expressive phrase in the first sentence has to be
toned down somewhat in English.
'When one looks back over the history of the interpretation of the
O. T., one gets the impression that the Church has been wholly in
capable of assimilating it fals babe dasselbe der Kirche wie ein Stein
im Magen gelegen). The book is as it were sealed with seven seals.
One is reminded of Isa. xxix. 11, 12. Even he who could otherwise
read well enough was hindered by the seals. The rest got no good fi-om
the book, because they could not read. Who was it then who so closed
up the book ? It was the Soferim and Perushim, the Scribes and
Pharisees, when they made the end into th? beginning, when they put
the Torah first and so created the illusion which was to last for centuries
that the Religion of Israel began with a Law. No one who starts from
this assumption will ever come to understand the Old Testament. He
who would really trace the development of the higher religion from the
older popular religion of Israel must start from the Elder Prophets.' —
{Die theologische und die historische Betrcuhtung d. A. T., Frankfurt
a. M., 1890, p. 26.)
From the Elder Prophets Dr. Siegfried recommends that
the student should pass on to the Jehovistic document; from

156 APPENDIX IL

this to Deuteronomy, and then to Jeremiah and Deutero-
Isaiah. That will bring him to the Exile, Ezekiel, and the
Priestly Code. When he has felt the heavy yoke of the Law
he will then be prepared to understand the light and easy
yoke of Christ.
Probably the order thus sketched is the best that the
student could adopt. By going first to Isaiah and the prophets
who are grouped round him, he will penetrate at once to
the very centre of the Religion of Israel : he will learn to
understand its distinctive features : and he will be in the best
position for tracing them both backwards in the order of
their genesis and forwards in their ulterior developments.

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Residentiary of Worcester, and Vicar of Hoar Cross.
THE CHRISTIAN HOME. Crown 8vo.
THE HOPES AND DECISIONS OF THE PASSION OF OUR
MOST HOLY REDEEMER. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.
THE THREE HOURS' AGONY OF OUR BLESSED REDEEMER.
Being Addresses in the form of Meditations delivered in St. Alban's
Church, Manchester, on Good Friday, 1877. Small 8vo. 2s. ; or in
Paper Cover, is.
CHARACTERISTICS AND MOTIVES OF THE CHRISTIAN
LIFE. Ten Sermons preached in Manchester Cathedral, in Lent
and Advent 1877. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.
SERMONS PREACHED FOR THE MOST PART IN MANCHES
TER. Crown 8vo. js. 6d.
THE MYSTERY OF THE PASSION OF OUR MOST HOLY
REDEEMER. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.
THE WITNESS OF THE PASSION OF OUR MOST HOLY
REDEEMER. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.
THE LIGHT OF LIFE. Sermons preached on Various Occasions.
Crown 8vo. js, 6d.
SUNLIGHT AND SHADOW IN THE CHRISTIAN LIFE.
Sermons preached for the most part in America. Crown 8vo. js. 6d

IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE.

Lear. — ^Works by, and Edited by, H. L. Sidney Lear.
CHRISTIAN BIOGRAPHIES. Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d. each.
Madame Louise de France, Daughter of Louis xv., known
also as the Mother T^r^se de St. Augustin.
FOR DAYS AND YEARS. A Book containing a Text, Short Reading,
and Hymn for Every Day in the Church's Year. i6mo. 2s.6d. Alsoa
Cheap Edition, 32mo. is.; or cloth gilt, is. 6d.
FIVE MINUTES. Daily Readings of Poetry. i6mo. 3s. 6d. Also a
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WEARINESS. A Book for the Languid and Lonely. Large Type.
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THE LIGHT OF THE CONSCIENCE. i6mo. 2s. 6d. Also the
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A Dominican Artist : a Sketch of
the Life of the Rev. Pfere Besson,
of the Order of St. Dominic.
Henri Perreyve. ByA. Gratry.
St. Francis de Sales, Bishop and
Prince of Geneva.
The Revival of Priestly Life
IN the Seventeenth Century
in France.

A Christian Painter of the
Nineteenth Century.
bossuet and his contempora
RIES.
FfNELON, Archbishop of Cam-
ERAI.
Henri Dominique Lacordaire.

DEVOTIONAL WORKS. Edited by H. L. Sidney Lear.
Uniform Editions. Nine Vols. i6mo. 2s. 6d. each.

New and

F£nelon's Spiritual Letters
TO Men.
Fenelon's Spiritual Letters
TO Women.
A Selection from the Spiri
tual Letters of St. Francis
de Sales.
The Spirit of St. Francis de
Sales.

The Hidden Life of the Soul.
The Light of the Conscience.
Self-Renunciation. From the
French.
St. Francis de Sales' Of the
Love of God.

Selections Thoughts.

from Pascal's

Library of Spiritual Works for English Catholics. Original
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Editions. i6mo. zs. 6d. each.
OF THE IMITATION OF CHRIST.
THE SPIRITUAL COMBAT. By Laurence Scupoli.
THE DEVOUT LIFE. By St. Francis de Sales.
OF THE LOVE OF GOD. By St. Francis de Sales.
THE CONFESSIONS OF ST. AUGUSTINE. In Ten Books.
THE CHRISTIAN YEAR. y. Edition only.

A CATALOGUE OF WORKS

Liddon. — Works by Henry Parry Liddon, D.D., D.C.L., LL.D.,
late Canon Residentiary and Chancellor of St. Paul's.
THE DIVINITY OF OUR LORD AND SAVIOUR JESUS CHRIST.
Being the Bampton Lectures for 1866. Crown 8vo. S-f-
ADVENT IN ST. PAUL'S. Sermons bearing chiefly on the Two
Comings of our Lord. Two Vols. Crown 8vo, y. each. Cheap edition
in one Volume, Crown 8vo. 5s.
CHRISTMASTIDE IN ST. PAUL'S. Sermons bearing chiefly on the
Birth of our Lord and the End of the Year. Crown 8vo. $s.
PASSIONTIDE IN ST. PAUL'S. Sermons bearing chiefly on the
Passion of our Lord. Crown 8vo. 5J,
EASTER IN ST. PAUL'S. Sermons bearing chiefly on the Resurrec
tion of our Lord. Two Vols. Crown 8vo. ^s. each. Cheap Edition
in one Volume, Crown 8vo, ^s,
SERMONS PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF
OXFORD. Two Vols. Crown 8vo. $s. each. Cheap Edition in
one Volume, Crown 8vo, 55.
THE MAGNIFICAT. Sermons in St. Paul's. Crown 8vo. zs. 6d.
SOME ELEMENTS OF RELIGION. Lent Lectures. Small 8vo.
2S. 6d. ; or in Paper Cover, is. 6d.
Th£ Cro^vn Svo Edition (5J.) may still be had.
SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS OF H. P. LIDDON, D.D.
Crown 8vo. 3s. 6d.
MAXIMS AND GLEANINGS FROM THE WRITINGS OF H. P.
LIDDON, D.D. Selected and arranged by C. M.S. Crown i6mo. zs.
Littlehales. — Works Edited by Henry Lttlehales.
A FOURTEENTH CENTURY PRAYER BOOK : being Pages in
Facsimile from a Layman's Prayer Book in English about 1400 a.d.
^to. 3s. 6d.
THE PRYMER OR PRAYER-BOOK OF THE LAY PEOPLE IN
THE MIDDLE AGES. In EngUsh, dating about 1400 A.D. Part I.
Text. Soyal 8vo. t,s.
Luckock. — Works by HERBERT MORTIMER LUCKOCK, D.D.,
Canon of Ely.
AFTER DEATH. An Examination of the Testimony of Primitive
Times respecting the State of the Faithful Dead, and their Relationship
to the Living. Crown 8vo. 6s.
THE INTERMEDIATE STATE BETWEEN DEATH AND
JUDGMENT. Being a Sequel to After Death. Crown 8vo. 6s.
FOOTPRINTS OF THE SON OF MAN, as traced by St. Mark. Being
Eighty Portions for Private Study, Family Reading, and Instruc
tions m Church. Two Vols. Crown 8vo. izs. Cheap Edition in one
Vol, Crown 8vo. 5J.

[continued.

IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. ii
Luckock.— Works by Herbert Mortimer Luckock, D.D.,
Canon of Ely — continued.
THE DIVINE LITURGY. " Being the Order for Holy Communion,
Historically, Doctrinally, and Devotionally set forth, in Fifty Portions.
Crown 8vo, 6s.
STUDIES IN THE HISTORY OF THE BOOK OF COMMON
PRAYER. The Anglican Reform— The Puritan Innovations— The
Elizabethan Reaction — The Carohne Settlement, With Appendices.
N Crown 8vo. 6s.
THE BISHOPS IN THE TOWER. A Record of Stirring Events
affecting the Church and Nonconformists from the Restoration to. the
Revolution. Crown 8vo. 6s,
LYRA APOSTOLICA. Poems by J. W. Bowden, R. H.
Froude, J. Keble, J. H. Newman, R. I. Wilberforce, and
I. Williams ; and New Preface by Cardinal Newman. i6mo.
zs. 6d.
LYRA GERMANIC A. Hymns translated from the German by
Catherine Winkworth. Small 8vo. ss.
MacCoU.— CHRISTIANITY IN RELATION TO SCIENCE
AND MORALS. By the Rev. Malcolm MacColl, M.A., Canon
Residentiary of Ripon. Crown 8vo. 6s.
Mason. — ^Works by A. J. Mason, D.D., formerly Fellow of Trinity
College, Cambridge.
THE FAITH OF THE GOSPEL. A Manual of Christian Doctrine.
¦ Crown 8vo. js. 6d. Large-Paper Edition for Marginal Notes, uto.
IZS. 6d.
THE RELATION OF CONFIRMATION TO BAPTISM. As taught
by the Western Fathers. A Study in the History of Doctrine. Crown
8vo.
Mercier.— Works by Mrs. Jerome Mercier.
OUR MOTHER CHURCH: being Simple Talk on High Topics.
Small Svo. 3S. 6d.
THE STORY OF SALVATION : or. Thoughts on the Historic Study of
the Bible. Small Svo. 3s. 6d.
Moberly.— Works by George Moberly, D.C.L., late Bishop of
Salisbury.
PLAIN SERMONS. Preached at Brighstone. Crown Svo. 5s.
THE SAYINGS OF THE GREAT FORTY DAYS, between the
Resurrection and Ascension, regarded as the Outlines of the Kingdom
of God. In Five Discourses. Crown Svo. ss.
PAROCHIAL SERMONS. Mostly preached at Brighstone. CrownSvo.
ys. 6d.
SERMONS PREACHED AT WINCHESTER COLLEGE. Two Vols.
Small Svo. 6s. 6d. each.

A CATALOGUE OF WORKS

Mozley. — Works by J. B. Mozley, D.D., late Canon of Christ
Church, and Regius Professor of Divinity at Oxford.
ESSAYS, HISTORICAL AND THEOLOGICAL. Two Vols. Svo. S4S.
EIGHT LECTURES ON MIRACLES. Being the Bampton Lectures
for 1865. Crown Svo. js. 6d.
RULING IDEAS IN EARLY AGES AND THEIR RELATION TO
OLD TESTAMENT FAITH. Lectures delivered to Graduates of
the University of Oxford. Svo, los. 6d,
SERMONS PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY OF
OXFORD, and on Various Occasions. Crown Svo. -js. 6d.
SERMONS, PAROCHIAL AND OCCASIONAL. Crown Svo. 7s. 6d.
Mozley. — Works by the Rev. T. MozLEY, M.A., Author
of 'Reminiscences of Oriel College and the Oxford
Movement.'
THE WORD. Crmm Svo. 7s. 6d.
LETTERS FROM ROME ON THE OCCASION OF THE
CECUMENICAL COUNCIL 1869-1870. Two Vols. Cr. Svo. i8s.
Newbolt. — Works by the Rev. W. C. E. Newbolt, Canon
Residentiary of St. Paul's.
THE FRUIT OF THE SPIRIT. Being Ten Addresses bearing on
the Spiritual Life. Crown Svo. 21. 6d.
THE MAN OF GOD. Being Six Addresses delivered during Lent
1886, at the Primary Ordination of the Right Rev. the Lord Alwyne
Compton, Bishop of Ely. Small Svo. is. 6d.
COUNSELS OF FAITH AND PRACTICE. Being Sermons preached
on Various Occasions. Svo. 7s. 6d.
THE VOICE OF THE PRAYER BOOK. Being Spiritual Addresses
bearing on the Book of Common Prayer. Crown Svo. zs. 6d.
Newnham.— THE ALL-FATHER : Sermons preached in a
Village Church. By the Rev. H. P. Newnham. With Preface by
Edna Lyall. Crown Svo. 4^. 6d.
Newman.— Works by John Henry Newman, B.D. (Cardinal
Newman), formerly Vicar of St. Mary's, Oxford.
PAROCHIAL AND PLAIN SERMONS. Eight Vols. Cabinet Edition,
Crown Svo, e,s, each. Popular Edition. Eight Vols. Crown Svo.
3s. 6d. each.

[continued.

IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. 13
Newman. — Works by John Henry Newman, B.D. (Cardinal
Newman), formerly Vicar of St. Mary's, Q-x-iord.— continued,
SELECTION, ADAPTED TO THE SEASONS OF THE ECCLE
SIASTICAL YEAR, from the 'Parochial and Plain Sermons.'
Crown Svo. jj.
FIFTEEN SERMONS PREACHED BEFORE THE UNIVERSITY
OF OXFORD, between a.d. 1826 and 1843. Crown Svo. ss.
SERMONS BEARING UPON SUBJECTS OF THE DAY. Crown
Svo. SJ.
LECTURES ON THE DOCTRINE OF JUSTIFICATION. Crown
Svo. $s.
%* For the Catholic Works of Cardinal Newman, see Messrs. Longmans & Co.'s
Catalogue of Works in General Literature,

THE LETTERS AND CORRESPONDENCE OF JOHN HENRY
NEWMAN DURING HIS LIFE IN THE ENGLISH CHURCH.
With a Brief Autobiographical Memoir. Arranged and Edited by
Anne Mozley. Two Vols. Svo, 30s, net.
Osborne.— Works by Edward Osborne, Mission Priest of the
Society of St. John the Evangelist, Cowley, Oxford.
THE CHILDREN'S SAVIOUR. Instructions to Children on the Life
of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ. Illustrated. i6mo. 3s. 6d.
THE SAVIOUR-KING. Instructions to Children on Old Testament
Types and Illustrations of the Life of Christ. Illustrated. i6mo, -y, 6d,
THE CHILDREN'S FAITH. Instructions to ChUdren on the Apostles'
Creed. With Illustrations, i6mo, 35. 6d.
Oxenden. — Works by the Right Rev. Ashton Oxenden, for
merly Bishop of Montreal.
THE PATHWAY OF SAFETY ; or. Counsel to the Awakened. Fcap.
Svo, large type. zs. 6d. Cheap Edition. Small type, limp. is.
THE EARNEST COMMUNICANT. Common Edition, ^mo. is.
New Red Rubric Edition. 3Zmo. zs.
OUR CHURCH AND HER SERVICES. Fcap. Svo. zs. 6d.
FAMILY PRAYERS FOR FOUR WEEKS. First Series. Fcap. Svo.
zs. 6d. Second Series. Fcap, Svo, zs, 6d.
Large Type Edition. Two Series in one Volume. Crown Svo. 6s.
COTTAGE SERMONS; or, Plain Words to the Poor. Fcap. Svo. 2s.6d,
THOUGHTS FOR HOLY WEEK. i6mo, is. 6d,
DECISION. i8mo. is. 6d. [continued.

14

A CATALOGUE OF WORKS

Oxenden.— Works by the Right Rev. Ashton Oxenden,
formerly Bishop of Montreal — continued.
THE HOME BEYOND ; or, A Happy Old Age. Fcap. Svo. is. 6d.
THE LABOURING MAN'S BOOK. iSmo, large type, cloth, is. 6d.
The Lord's Supper Simply
Explained. iSmo, cloth, is.
Cheap Edition. Paper. 6d.
Prayers for Private Use.
32mo, cloth. IS.
Words of Peace ; or. The Bless
ings of Sickness. i6mo, cloth.

Confirmation. iSmo, cloth, gd. ;
sewed, 3d. ; or zs. 6d, per dozen.
Counsels to those who have
been Confirmed ; or, Now is
the Time to serve Christ. iSmo,
cloth, IS,

Paget.— Works by the Rev. Francis Paget, D.D., Canon of
Christ Church, and Regius Professor of Pastoral Theology.'
THE SPIRIT OF DISCIPLINE : Sermons. Crown Svo.
FACULTIES AND DIFFICULTIES FOR BELIEF AND DIS
BELIEF. Crown Svo. 6s. 6d,
THE HALLOWING OF WORK. Addresses given at Eton, January
i6-i8, 1888. Small Svo, 2S,
PRACTICAL REFLECTIONS. By a Clergyman. With
Prefaces by H. P. Liddon, D.D., D.C.L. Crown Svo,
Vol. I. — The Holy Gospels. 4?. 6d.
Vol. II. — ^AcTS to Revelation. 6j.
The Psalms, ss.
PRIEST (THE) TO THE ALTAR ; Or, Aids to the Devout
Celebration of Holy Communion, chiefly after the Ancient English
Use of Sarum. Royal Svo. izs.

Pusey.— Works by the late Rev. E. B. PuSEY, D.D.
MAXIMS AND GLEANINGS FROM THE WRITINGS OF
EDWARD BOUVERIE PUSEY, D.D. Selected and Arranged for
Daily Use. By C. M. S. Crown i6mo. zs.
PRIVATE PRAYERS. With Preface by H. P. LlDDON, D.D. 32^0. zs. 6d.
PRAYERS FOR A YOUNG SCHOOLBOY. Edited, with a Preface,
by H. P. Liddon, D.D. 24mo. is.
SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS OF EDWARD BOUVERIE
PUSEY, D.D. Crown Svo. 3s. 6d.

IN THEOLOGICAL LITERATURE. i;
Richmond.— CHRISTIAN ECONOMICS. By the Rev.
Wilfrid Richmond, M.A., sometime Warden of Trinity College,
Glenalmond. Crown Svo. 6s,
Sanday.— THE ORACLES OF GOD : Nine Lectures on the
Nature and Extent of BibUcal Inspiration and the Special Significance
of the Old Testament Scriptures at the Present Time. By W.
Sanday, M.A, D.D., LL.D. Crman Svo. ^s.
Seebohm.— THE OXFORD REFORMERS— JOHN COLET,
ERASMUS, AND THOMAS MORE : A History of their Fellow-
Work. By Frederick Seebohm. Svo. 14?.
Stephen.— ESSAYS IN ECCLESIASTICAL BIOGRAPHY.
By the Right Hon. Sir J. Stephen. Crown Svo. 7s. 6d.
Swayne.— THE BLESSED DEAD IN PARADISE. Four
All Saints' Day Sermons, preached in Salisbury Catjiedral. By Robert
G. Swayne, M.A. Crown Svo. 3s. 6d.
Tweddell.— THE SOUL IN CONFLICT. A Practical Exami
nation of some Difficulties and Duties of the Spiritual Life. By
Marshall Tweddell, M.A., Vicar of St. Saviour, Paddington.
Crown Svo. 6s.
TweUs.— COLLOQUIES ON PREACHING. By Henry
Twells, M.A., Honorary Canon 'of Peterborough CrownSvo. 5J.
Wakeman.— THE HISTORY OF RELIGION IN ENGLAND.
By Henry Offley Wakeman, M.A. Small Svo. is. 6d.
Welldon. — THE FUTURE AND THE PAST. Sermons
preached to Harrow Boys. (First Series, 1885 and 1886.) By the Rev.
J. E. C. Welldon, M.A., Head Master of Harrow School. Crown
Svo. 7s, 6d.
Williams.— Works by the Rev. Isaac Williams, B.D., formerly
Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford.
A DEVOTIONAL COMMENTARY ON THE GOSPEL NARRA
TIVE. Eight Vols. Crown Svo. 5J. each. Sold separately.

Thoughts- on the Study of the
Holy Gospels.
A Harmony of the Four Gospels.
Our Lord's Nativity.
Our Lord's Ministry (Second Year).

Our Lord's Ministry (Third Year).
The Holy Week.
Our Lord's Passion.
Our Lord's Resurrection. [continued.

i6 A CATALOGUE OF WORKS.
Williams.— Works by the Rev. Isaac Williams, B.D., formerly
Fellow of Trinity College, Oxford — continued.
FEMALE CHARACTERS OF HOLY SCRIPTURE. A Series of
Sermons. Crown Svo. 5J.
THE CHARACTERS OF THE OLD TESTAMENT. A Series of
Sermons. Crown Svo, 5^.
THE APOCALYPSE. With Notes and Reflections. Crman Svo, s^.
SERMONS ON THE EPISTLES AND GOSPELS FOR THE SUN
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PLAIN SERMONS ON THE CA'TECHISM. Two Vols, Crown Svo,
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SELECTIONS FROM THE WRITINGS OF ISAAC WILLIAMS,
B.D. Crown Svo, 3s. 6d.
Woodford.— Works by James Russell Woodford, D.D.,
sometime Lord Bishop of Ely.
THE GREAT COMMISSION. Twelve Addresses on the Ordinal.
Edited, with an Introduction on the Ordinations of his Episcopate, by
Herbert Mortimer Luckock, D.D. Crown Svo, jr.
SERMONS ON OLD AND NEW TESTAMENT SUBJECTS. '
Edited by Herbert Mortimer Luckock, D.D. Two Vols, Crown
Svo. 5J. each.
Wordsworth.— Works by Elizabeth Wordsworth, Principal
of Lady Margaret Hall, Oxford.
ILLUSTRATIONS OF THE CREED. Crown Svo. y.
ELIZABETH AND OTHER POEMS. Crown Svo. 6s.
Younghusband. — Works by Frances Younghusband.
THE STORY OF OUR LORD, told in Simple Language for ChUdren.
With 25 Illustrations on Wood from Pictures by the Old Masters, and
numerous Ornamental Borders, Initial Letters, etc., from Longmans'
New Testament. Crown Svo. zs. 6d.
THE STORY OF GENESIS, told in Simple Language for Children.
Crown Svo. 2s. 6d.

Printed by T. and A. Constable, Printers to Her Majesty,
at the Edinburgh University Press.

YALE UNIVERSITY LIBRARY

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