..I.l.'.-I .-._¦¦'.?

The Nature of Scripture

" The wealth of Dr. Peake's scholarship is evident
on every page of this book which is a veritable mine
of information." — Professor A. L. Humphries, M.A.
THE BIBLE
Its Origin, its Significance and
its Abiding Worth
By Professor A. S. PEAKE, D.D.
Seventh Edition. 7/6 net.
" Dr. Peake has given us a book which is timely and
of incalculable value. It is a great book, written in
the clear, convincing and unaffected style to which
we are accustomed from the pen of the author.
Multitudes who have become uncertain where and
how they stand towards the Bible will be reassured
as they read these pages. They are a veritable
storehouse of truth, a mine of wealth and learning."
— Baptist Times.
" For the great majority of persons who wish to
know to what extent scholars are agreed regarding
the meaning and place of the Bible, and what their
agreement refers to, the best book now is ' The
Bible : Its Origin, its Significance, and its Abiding
Worth.'" — Expository Times.
Contents. — Chapter I. The Situation. II. The
Method and Temper of the Apologist. III. New
Light on the Bible. IV. The Bible in the Original
Languages and in English. V. The Problem of
the Canon. VI. The Lower Criticism. VII. The
Legitimacy and Necessity of Biblical Criticism.
VIII. The Story of Old Testament Criticism. IX.
Reasons for the Critical View of the Old Testament.
X. The Conservative Reply to the Old Testament
Critics. XI. The Critic and the Apologist. XII.
The Criticism of the New Testament. XIII. History
as a Channel of Revelation. XIV. The Part played
by Experience in the Creation of Scripture. XV.
Revelation and its Record. XVI. The Problem
of Historicity. XVII. The Problem of Biblical
Theology. XVIII. The Old Testament and the
New. XIX. The Nature and Mechanism of Inspira
tion. XX. The .Misuse of tlie Bible. XXI. The
Bible and Theology. XXII. The Question of
Authority. XXIII. The Verification of Revelation
in Experience. XXIV. The Permanent Value of
Scripture.
HODDER & STOUGHTON, LTD.
Publishers London, E.C.4

The

IVature of Scripture

By A. S. PEAKE

Hodder and S tough ton
Limited London

Published Fc' ruary ig:2

Printed In Great Britain by Butler & Tanner, Frome and London .

TO
MISS C. HARTLEY
MAYOR OF SOUTHPORT
TRUE DAUGHTER OF NOBLE PARENTS
FIRM FRIEND OF THE SUFFERING AND THE WEAK
I DEDICATE THIS VOLUME
IN ADMIRATION OF EMINENT PUBLIC SERVICE
IN COMMEMORATION OF HIGH CIVIC DIGNITY ,
IN MEMORY OF A LONG AND VALUED FRIENDSHIP

Preface
This volume contains a collection of papers
and lectures mainly concerned with the
nature and value of Scripture as it appears
to a student who combines an acceptance
of critical method with a loyal adhesion to
the evangelical faith. Most of the papers
included were written for Conferences ; but
the two Deansgate Lectures and the sermon
on The Record of Revelation have been re
produced from shorthand reports of extem
pore utterances, and it has seemed undesir
able to obliterate the traces of this origin.
I have to thank my old friend Mr. Cradock-
Watson for the cordial permission to reprint
The Teaching of Scripture as Determined by
the Nature of Scripture, and the authorities
of the recent Ecumenical Methodist Con
ference for similar permission to reprint
the second paper on The Modern Criticism
of the Bible. The publishers have kindly

8 Preface
consented to the reprinting of the second
paper on The Permanent Value of the Old
Testament, delivered in 1907 to the National
Free Church Council at Leeds, and The
Verification of Revelation in Experience
from my book The Bible : its Origin, its
Significance and its Abiding Worth. Both
of these addresses seemed necessary to
complete the structure of the present
volume. The final paper falls outside the
scope indicated by the title of the volume ;
but I trust it may not appear really irrele
vant to my purpose.
The recent course of discussion has sug
gested that the publication of this volume
might serve a useful purpose. The advo
cates of traditional theories on the Bible
have been stirred to new efforts. It must
be said with regret that these have in some
instances been marred bj* a painful absence
of Christian temper and the courtesies
of controversy, and by a lack of that
scrupulous fairness and accuracy of state
ment which is the first essential in debate.
Heated language, an acrimonious temper,
and reckless misrepresentation, however
effective with partisans, will in the long

Preface g
run only recoil on those who indulge in such
tactics. The reasons for rejecting the traditional
view of the Bible x and for accepting what
may for convenience be called the critical
view, have been placed before the public
in a large number of works during the last
forty years. The " secret propaganda," of
which we are sometimes accused, is the
creation of a fevered imagination. Our
zeal in advocating critical method and
results is due partly to our desire that the
Bible may be better understood, partly
to our wish to win or retain for the faith
those to whom the old view of the Bible
has become incredible and who are told
that its surrender involves the abandon
ment of Christianity. We feel that Scrip
ture is likely to be effectively discredited
by the claim that it must satisfy tests
which, in the judgment of an increasing
number of devout students, who gladly
recognize it as the record of Divine revela
tion, it assuredly does not meet. So far
as criticism is dominated by rationalism or
1 For a description of this see pages 81 f„ 199-201,
251 f., 255-257.

io Preface
seeks to dissolve those historical facts
which are vital to the very existence of
Christianity, so far I also disavow it. The
only criticism for which I care is the criticism
which has an open eye for the actual
phenomena of Scripture, and so great a
reverence for truth as to accept the con
clusions to which those phenomena direct
us. In theories of Scripture spun by the
human imagination, working under the
impulse of false reverence, and imposed on
the facts rather than drawn from them, I
have long lost all belief.
The antagonism to criticism has its roots
largely in the erroneous expectation with
which Scripture is approached. Men come
to it with their theory of it ready-made ;
and because they radically misunderstand
its nature, they make claims for it which
cannot be substantiated, but, at the same
time, largel}* fail to appreciate the greater
and deeper things it has to offer. Critical
investigation is, as such, neither friendly
nor hostile to the literature it examines.
It is an attempt to do impartial justice to
the phenomena it discovers. And its well-
tested results must be taken into account

Preface il
when the general theory of Scripture is
formulated. What then is our duty to a student of
Scripture, who is convinced that the critical
view is sound in principle and largely
correct in results, but at the same time
sincerely accepts the Christian faith ? Must
we allow him to be misled by those who
assure him that he is occupying contradic
tory positions and who take the risk of
forcing him to abandon his Christianity if
they fail to persuade him that his critical
conclusions are untrue ? We cannot decline
the duty of challenging such perilous coun
sels. We are wholehearted believers in
the Christian religion ; we are assured
beyond all misgiving that the traditional
view of the Bible has broken down ; we
earnestly desire to strengthen distressed
and wavering faith ; we offer a conception
of revelation, which we regard as true to
the characteristics of Scripture, while it
does not compromise the sincerity or
retrench the fullness of our evangelical
belief. From the determination to go for
ward with our task we shall not be moved
by censorious judgments, nor will they

12 Preface
dim our assurance that it is of Divine
appointment. As a contribution to the fulfilment of
this mission I have collected these papers.
On most of the problems I stated my
position in my book on the Bible, where
this had not already been done in Chris
tianity : its Nature and its Truth. But a
volume of five hundred pages is too formid
able for many whom I desire to help ;
moreover it covers a larger field than that
traversed in the present work. And I hope
that the very fact that the same set of
problems is handled again and again, from
different points of approach and with
different presentation, may by dint of
repetition leave the theory of Scripture I
seek to establish firmly fixed in the reader's
mind. If this is accomplished, the legiti
macy and indeed the necessity of criticism
follows of itself. It will then, I trust, be
realized that there is no necessary incompati
bility between faith and criticism, but that
each may support and enrich the other.
December 12, 1921.

Contents

PAGE
i. The Modern Criticism of the Bible. I 15
2. The Modern Criticism of the Bible. II 35
3. The Permanent Results of Biblical
Criticism  55
4. The Old Testament after Criticism . 73
5. The Record of Revelation . . 113
6. The Permanent Value of the Old
Testament. I 137
7. The Permanent Value of the Old
Testament. II ... . 183
8. The Teaching of Scripture as Deter
mined by the Nature of Scripture 199
9. The Verification of Revelation in
Experience  225
13

14 Contents

PAGE
io. The Evangelical Faith and the Modern
View of Scripture . . . 249
11. The Place of the Gospel in the Preach
ing of To-day .... 269

The Modern Criticism of the Bible. I1
A Few features in the theological situa-
•*"*¦ tion are more striking than the change
which has come over the attitude towards
the Bible. This is by no means entirely
due to modern criticism. Other depart
ments of Biblical study have had their
share in it ; and investigations in anthropo
logy, archaeology, and the physical and
biological sciences have contributed greatly
to the result. As illustrations of this, I
may refer to the difficulties raised in
connexion with the Hebrew conception
of the universe, the antiquity of man, the
stories of the Creation, the Fall, and the
Deluge, the ages attained by the patriarchs.
1 Read at the National Free Church Council,
Cheltenham, March 6th, 1912.
15

1 6 The Modern Criticism
Then there are the moral difficulties,
such as the temper of the vindictive
Psalms, or the acts of savagery, committed
by the alleged order of God. The study
of Comparative Religion has brought to
light the prevalence of institutions and
beliefs similar to those we find in the
Bible, but of much greater antiquity. An
unprejudiced exegesis has discredited the
argument from prophecy in its traditional
form, and forced the interpreter to discard
the New Testament use of the Old as
his standard for interpreting the latter.
The science of Biblical Theology has made
it clear that it is not with one system
of theology set forth with greater or less
clearness, and with more or less ample
detail, that we have to do, but with different
points of view and divergent presentations.
I have no wish to minimise the difference
which criticism has made ; but it is only
right to remember that these other factors
have contributed greatly to the change of

of the Bible 17
attitude. And we cannot forget that the
claim to authority in every department is
being rigidly scrutinised, and that nothing
is too sacred for its value to be judged by
its intrinsic worth.
It is inevitable that any statement as to
assured results will be met with contra
diction. In the brief space at my disposal
it is obviously impossible to deal with the
subject in a controversial way * but I must
express my own conviction, which rests
on an examination of the evidence in the
light of the best statements for and against
the critical view, that if the question is
to be settled by unprejudiced examination
of the documents themselves, apart from
considerations imported from a foreign
region, results have been reached of far-
reaching significance, which the progress
of research is not likely to overturn. For
many of these results the opinion of
experts is almost unanimous, where theo
logical bias has not controlled the critical
N.S. 2

18 The Modern Criticism
faculty. I am far from saying that any
special science can refuse the challenge
that its conclusions must stand the test
of adjustment to our ultimate conception
of the universe. And this applies to
criticism as to other sciences. But within
its own domain it has the right to work
by its own laws and reach its own results,
without submitting to the demand that
its results shall conform to a standard
imposed from the outside.
Ideally criticism should occupy a position
of neutrality and detachment towards all
alien interests. It is neither hostile nor
friendly to the documents it examines ;
it holds no brief for faith, nor is it inspired
by animus against it. It is a passionless
inquiry controlled simply by the desire to
ascertain the truth through the application
of rigid scientific method. I do not of
course forget that in actual practice it is
not so impersonal as I have described.
The sphere in which it operates is not

of the Bible 19
like that of the mathematician, where the
same results must be attained by all
competent inquirers, whatever the difference
in their general outlook. In history and
in criticism there is nothing corresponding
to the calculating machine ; and on the
same data it frequently happens that critics
will reach very divergent results. And we
must allow for bias which deflects the
judgment in favour of the desired con
clusion, and remember that those who
most loudly complain of bias in others
often exhibit a bias of their own. Critical
method is best practised in the first instance
on literature with which our religious
interests are not bound up, inasmuch as
our judgment is then unaffected by any
anxiety as to our conclusions. But those
who have to learn criticism from its appli
cation to our sacred books should be on
their guard against the invasion of illegiti
mate postulates. It is a trite saying that
the Bible must be studied just as any

20 The Modern Criticism
other book. And those are not its truest
friends who claim an immunity for it
from a method universally employed by
students of secular literature and history.
Indeed, the higher our conception of Scrip
ture, the deeper our sense of its inestimable
value, the more anxious we ought to be
to base our study of it on a rigidly tested
foundation. What, then, do we mean by criticism ?
We understand in this connexion not
the aesthetic appreciation of the literary
qualities of Scripture, but the scientific
investigation of the problems raised con
cerning the origin, the structure, the date
and authorship, the text of our sacred
writings, the growth of the Canon and
the limits to be assigned to it, and the
historical accuracy of the records it includes.
We are concerned with Lower or, as it is
more commonly called, Textual Criticism,
which, from a laborious examination of
the manuscripts and versions, establishes

of the Bible 21
their mutual relations, classifies them into
groups, constructs a genealogy of the
groups, forms a judgment as to the types
of text, and then, by a combination of
external with internal evidence, decides
in any given case which reading should
be adopted, or, where the true reading
seems not to have been preserved, attempts
to restore it by conjecture. We pass from
the Formal to the Material as we pass
from Lower to Higher Criticism. The
critic is now concerned not with restoring
the documents to their original form but
with the examination of the history of
the documents themselves. Where exter
nal evidence is available, great weight is
naturally attached to it, but over large
areas, especially in the Old Testament,
the critic is practically confined to the
documents. They give their testimony
to those who are sufficiently skilled to
read it. The critic searches for historical
allusions, which enable him to fix the

22 The Modern Criticism
date of the document as a whole, then
he attempts to discover whether it incor
porates earlier material. If so, he seeks
to get behind the document to the sources
which it has incorporated and, so far as
may be possible, to reconstruct those
sources. This is an indispensable pre
liminary to a scientific Historical Criticism.
An examination, valuation, and chrono
logical arrangement of documents must
precede their employment as sources for
history ; and in particular, for the most
important thing of all in this connexion,
we must place our documents in the true
order if we are to trace the growth of
Biblical religion. Historical Criticism in
vestigates first the qualifications and the
qualities of the various writers and their
sources, where such can be discovered, as
historical authorities ; and secondly exa
mines the historical character of the events
they describe. The practical value of
Historical Criticism lies in this, that the

of the Bible 23
Biblical revelation has been conveyed by
historical channels. A knowledge of the
history is therefore essential if we would
understand the revelation.
The statement of results, even in the
most moderate form, is bound to elicit
the protest that we are simply championing
a set of opinions already on the way to
the lumber-room, where the dust of ages
gathers on discarded absurdities. The re
proach of rationalistic origin, the veto of
archaeology, the stampede of the Assyrio-
logists, are all held to portend the collapse
of the crazy structure of Old Testament
criticism, which indeed has been suspected
for a number of years of growing top-
heavy. It is not because the critics are
too deaf to hear these ill-omened words,
or too perverse to pay them heed, that
they hold on their way ; but because
they are persuaded that their main results
rest on a secure foundation, and that the
assaults directed against them have failed.

24 The Modern Criticism
It is not uncommon to meet with allusions
to "the cobweb theories of the so-called
Higher Criticism." But even cobwebs are
not spun out of nothing, and they are
admirably designed to gain the end in
view. And similarly critical theories are
not, as a rule, fanciful deductions from
fictitious premises.
The task of criticism is to observe and
register the phenomena of its documents,
and to construct a theory to account
for them. If the phenomena are simple,
a simple theory will account for them ;
if complex, a complex theory will be
required to do them justice. It is not
necessarily a valid objection to a theory
that it is elaborate. When the wards
of the lock are intricate, the key must be
intricate to match them. Now, it is unde
niable that critical investigation has, at
any rate, brought a large number of facts
to light, which older scholars had ignored
or explained away. And so far, at least,

of the Bible 25
it has rendered conspicuous service. But
it is possible either for facts to be discovered
under the stimulus of a previously accepted
theory, or for the theory to be suggested
by the facts. One may suspect that but
for the Hegelian philosophy the Tubingen
theory would hardly have come into exist
ence. The New Testament and early
Christian literature would not have given
rise to it, though naturally the theory
could have made no way if it had not
been possible to point to a number of facts
which appeared to support it. But the
collapse of the theory is an impressive
warning against the danger of formulating
a theory as to what the facts must have
been, and then examining the documents
for facts to support it. I call attention to
this case not only for its intrinsic interest,
but because it is often used to point the
moral that a similar fate awaits the domin
ant critical theory of the Pentateuch.
But not only are the conditions of Old

26 The Modern Criticism
and New Testament criticism so different
that an inference from one to the other is
very precarious, but the criticism of the
Pentateuch has followed the line of true
scientific research.
In other words, the hypothesis has been
suggested by the facts, which a scrutiny
of the literature has brought to light. So
far from being a ready-made hypothesis,
brought to the documents, it grew by slow
and tentative stages, moving with reluct
ance farther and farther away from its
starting-point in tradition. And so with
the criticism of the Synoptic Gospels.
The commonly accepted Two-document
theory was the outcome of a similarly
elaborate process of investigation. And
in each case the result has been that scholars
have accepted the result with ever-growing
unanimity ; whereas the Tubingen critic
ism was, even in its palmiest days, rejected
by some of the most eminent New Testa
ment scholars ; and it became more and

of the Bible 27
more apparent as time went on that the
problem of the transition from primitive
Christianity to the Old Catholic Church
was more complex than it had imagined,
and that its critical criteria were altogether
too narrow. The more deeply the New
Testament was studied and the more pheno
mena were discovered which the theory
was incompetent to explain, the more it
became clear that there were other factors
co-operating in the process of which it
made little or nothing.
Turning now for a moment to estimate
the present position, I should say that so
far as the Old Testament is concerned there
is a marked agreement among critics as
to the main issues. There is no real sign
of a reaction, and the new lines which
have been opened up, whether by the Pan-
Babylonists or by Eerdmans, lead in direc
tions even more alien from tradition.
At present I know of nothing which warrants
the opinion that the recognition of the

28 The Modern Criticism
composite character of the Pentateuch
and presence in it of four main documents,
the dating of the Deuteronomic Code in
or not long before the reign of Josiah, and
of the Priestly Code after Ezekiel, the
composite character of the historical books
and much of the prophetic literature, the
post-exilic origin of large portions of the
Hagiographa, will be abandoned by any
considerable number of experts.
In the case of the New Testament it is
more difficult to speak of any general con
sensus of opinion covering the whole ground.
The very late dates for many of the books
have been largely abandoned even in cases
where traditional views of authorship are
still repudiated. The authenticity of the
Pauline Epistles, apart from the Pastorals,
is widely recognised, though several
scholars reject Ephesians, several reject
2 Thessalonians, and a few reject Colossians.
The view that Mark is the earliest of our
Synoptists and, along with a collection of

of the Bible 29
sayings and discourses of Jesus, formed the
basis for Matthew and Luke, is very widely
accepted. The Lucan authorship of the
third Gospel and the Acts of the Apostles
is still very generally denied in Germany,
in spite of Harnack's elaborate vindication.
At present we are far from agreement with
reference to the Catholic Epistles, the
Revelation of John and, above all, the
Fourth Gospel. Nor, even where books
are reclaimed for traditional authors or
pushed back to earlier dates, does it mean
that their historicity is freely recognised.
In other words, a more conservative Higher
Criticism does not always involve a more
conservative Historical Criticism.
It may, however, be said that what
people really want to know is the answer
to the question, how far criticism affects
our estimate of the Bible, our use of it,
the value we attach to it, the trust we
repose in it. A few brief suggestions are
all that can be added at the close of a paper.

30 The Modern Criticism
It is well in the first place never to forget
the fact that, whatever criticism may
do or fail to do, the Bible itself remains.
No matter what view we take as to the way
in which it has been produced, here it is — •
a stupendous fact in literature, in history,
in morals, and in religion. From its pages
the collective consciousness of the Church,
as well as the individual Christian, has
heard the Divine voice speaking, and the
fact that in this book as in no other God
has disclosed Himself to us is attested by
evidence which no criticism is competent
to touch.
In the next place, while it is not right to
speak smooth things or minimise the results
of criticism, we must avoid exaggeration.
Many things, and those not the least
important, criticism leavts much as they
were. On numerous points the critics
cordially accept tradition. Even where
they diverge from it on questions of author
ship, structure, or date, the spiritual value

of the Bible 31
often remains largely or entirely undimin
ished. Where the writer speaks the
language of the eternal, the truth and
power of the utterance are lifted above the
limitations of space and time. Does the
twenty-third or the fifty-first Psalm lose
in spiritual value if we assign it to an
unknown poet ? Does the great prophecy
of Israel's restoration, with its deep and
wonderful songs of the Suffering Servant,
lose when we recognise that an unknown
prophet has written it ? Is the Epistle
to the Hebrews less valuable than if it
had come from the hand of Paul ? Or
is the glowing faith of the Apocalyptist
in the triumph of God's Kingdom less
inspiring if we refuse to claim it for the
son of Zebedee ? Once more, we are, I
believe, strategically in a much better
position for defending the Bible against
its enemies, if we cordially accept the main
results of criticism. I should, for example,
find it much more difficult to defend the

32 The Modern Criticism
Divine origin of the Hebrew legislation,
with all the divergences within the legisla
tion itself, on the traditional view that the
laws were given to Israel by Moses than on
the critical theory which finds three stages
reflected in the Law, and explains the
differences as due to revision of it in adjust
ment to new situations. And many of
the objections which played so large a part
in the Secularist attack on the Bible derived
their cogency from the traditional theory
of the Bible, and have become largely
irrelevant and pointless for those who have
abandoned it.
The objections which are often felt to
the critical theory largely rest, I believe,
on erroneous conceptions of what the
Bible must be. Partly it is approached
from too modern and Western a point of
view, and standards are applied to it
which would not have seemed reasonable
to an ancient Oriental. Partly justice
has not been done to the fact that Scripture

of the Bible 33
is the record of an historical process spread
over many centuries, starting from lowly
origins and moving by slow degrees to
its culmination in Christ and the interpre
tation of His Person and Work given in
the New Testament. No doubt the ulti
mate question about criticism is not, Have
we gained or lost by it ? but, Is it true
or false ? That it is true along the lines
which I have indicated I do not doubt ;
but neither do I doubt that the loss is
outbalanced by the gain. For criticism
has enabled us for the first time to recover
the true history of that process ; to
vindicate for the Old Testament its perman
ent value by the side of the New, and to
read the New more truly through our
fuller understanding of the Old.

N.S.

The Modern Criticism of the Bible. II 1
Q At the outset I desire to state my
^ personal convictions about the Bible,
that what I say of Biblical Criticism may
be set against the right background, and
be seen in the right perspective, and from
the right" point of view. While there is
a Light which lighteth every man, and
God has never left Himself without witness
among the Gentiles, there was in Israel, from
the origin of the nation onwards, an action
of God, unique in quality and intensity,
consciously directed to a climax, which it
attained in the Incarnation, the life and
1 An address dehvered at the Methodist CEcumen
ical Conference, held in London, September, 1921.
Several passages are restored which had to be re
moved for lack of time. 35

36 The Modern Criticism
ministry, the death and resurrection of His
only-begotten Son. Of this unique Divine
action the Old and the New Testaments
contain an adequate record and interpreta
tion, and are thus the classical docu
ments of our rehgion. Inasmuch as Jesus
recognised this Divine element in Israel's
history, and claimed to stand in continuity
with it, there is an organic connexion
between the Old Testament and the New
which assures the Old Testament its place
in the Christian Canon. Since, in gracious
condescension, God took the Hebrews as
they were, and through their history slowly
disclosed Himself, and fashioned His chosen
people to be the medium of revelation, we
may anticipate that in the Old Testament,
which is the record of this interaction of
Divine and human factors, much will be
preserved which is not in harmony with the
loftier reaches of revelation in the Old
Testament itself, still less with that vouch
safed to us in the Person and Work of

of the Bible 37
Christ. While these lower levels of revela
tion are in the nature of the case not final,
and cannot be authoritative for us, their
preservation in the Old Testament enables
us to grasp the processes through which
Divine wisdom ordained that the knowledge
of God should be revealed.
Like every other document or set of
documents of antiquity, the Bible requires
criticism. The text is purified of errors
by Lower Criticism. Dates, authorship,
analysis, are determined by Higher Criti
cism ; while Historical Criticism tests the
competence and trustworthiness of the
historians, and estimates the value of the
story they tell, or seeks by comparisons of
various versions to work back to an earlier
form. A critical theory is an attempt to
do justice to the phenomena disclosed in
the study of documents. That is the best
theory which furnishes the best explana
tion of all the facts that have to be taken
into account. While the critical method

38 The Modern Criticism
is the same for sacred as for secular
writings, and while what is legitimate for
the Old Testament cannot be illegitimate
for the New, there are differences in the
two cases which make it desirable at some
points to treat them separately.
It may be well at this point to refer to
some misapprehensions of criticism. Biblical
criticism, as such, is not due to Rationalism
or to rejection of Christianity, or to human
arrogance which dares to sit in judgment
on the utterances of God and to know
better than Christ. On the contrary, the
main results of Old Testament criticism
are accepted by many scholars who believe
that miracles have actuaUy happened ;
stake their own hopes of salvation on the
truth of the Christian rehgion ; confess
with full and thankful hearts the Divinity
of Christ, the incarnate Son of God, the
supreme and final Revealer of God to man,
the all-sufficient Reconciler of man to
God.

of the Bible 39
Nor is it true that the generally accepted
results of criticism are cobwebs spun by
the enemy of souls, or glittering soap-
bubbles blown by intellectual vanity, luring
men to their ruin. Nor have they been
dictated by the a priori assumption that
history' must have gone on the lines laid
down beforehand by Hegelian philosophy
or a theory of evolution borrowed from
biology. They rest on a number of
phenomena actually present in the docu
ments themselves which the traditional
view fails to explain. These phenomena
may, to a large extent, be verified by any
person of intelligence, provided he does not
follow the precedent of Galileo's opponents
and refuse to look through the telescope.
Even were the critical theory wrong or
defective, the facts would still remain to
be explained. The traditional view would
not be rehabilitated, but would share in
the judgment passed on other rejected
theories ; and so far as the phenomena

40 The Modern Criticism
remained unexplained, we should be driven
to devise new hypotheses, which would
cover the facts more adequately.
But, in the main, scholars are convinced
that the dominant critical theory of the
Old Testament provides a reasonably
adequate account of those things which
call for explanation. The assertion that
Hegelianism or a philosophical theory of
evolution is responsible for the Grafian
theory is more plausible than sound. As
a matter of fact, its main thesis was first
hit upon by a Biblical scholar who was
himself quite innocent of Hegelian ten
dencies, and it has been accepted by many
scholars equally detached from philoso
phical prejudices. The charge would be
more warranted with reference to the
Tubingen criticism of the New Testament,
though it must, in fairness to Baur, be
recognised that he himself regarded his
theory as suggested by a study of the
Epistles to the Corinthians. Moreover,

of the Bible 41
the Tubingen theory had only a very
partial acceptance at any time among
New Testament scholars. As time went
on, its influence dwindled till it was univer
sally abandoned. The Grafian theory en
joyed no early popularity, and for long had
the critical opinion of Germany solid
against it, and was finally accepted only
because the accumulated mass of evidence
forced critics to accept it, almost against
their will. Nor have critical theories been
discredited by exploration or excavation,
nor is it true that the pillar on which the
whole critical fabric rests has been under
mined by the demonstrated inferiority
of the Hebrew text to the Septuagint in
the transmission of the Divine names.
In spite of statements to the contrary,
it still remains true that archaeological
investigation has not really confirmed
positions contested by sober and responsible
critics. It is one of the ironies of contro
versy that some who pose as zealous

42 The Modern Criticism
defenders of the Bible from cover to cover
hail the attempts to discredit the Hebrew
text because it is alleged that the Greek
variants render the differences in the use
of the Divine names too uncertain a clue
to analysis. A drowning cause will clutch
at any straw, but it will not thereby avert
or postpone the inevitable end. Even in
its least extravagant form the hypothesis
of the untrustworthiness of the Hebrew
text in this respect in comparison with
the Septuagint is grossly improbable. But
even were it otherwise, it would make no
substantial difference, for the microscopical
scrutiny of the Pentateuch during the last
hundred and fifty years has brought to
light a large number of other phenomena,
mutually independent and converging on
the same result. Under this irresistible
pressure the abler and more candid defen
ders of tradition have been forced to make
a number of important concessions. This
demonstrates that there are real facts to

of the Bible 43
be explained, and that the critical case
does not hang on gossamer threads. But
this reluctant tribute to its cogency is far
below what the facts demand.
It must of course be recognised that the
problems of Higher Criticism in the Old
Testament, that is, of date, authorship,
and the analysis of composite works, raise
much slighter issues than those presented
by Historical Criticism, which estimates
the trustworthiness of the historical writers
and investigates the accuracy of the stories
they record. And the gravity of the
issues is greatly intensified when we pass
to the New Testament and, in particular,
to the Gospel story. For here nothing less
than the existence of Christianity itself
is at stake. It is obviously conceivable
that results might be reached, which would
imperil those elements in our religion,
which are indispensable and vital. For
Christianity is not one of those religions
which are independent of history. It

44 The Modern Criticism
grew out of a religion in which history
played an essential part. It was itself
from the first indissolubly associated with,
and indeed largely constituted by, certain
events in space and time. The Founder
is an integral element in the religion. If
He is eliminated from it, its character is
radically transformed. Could it be demon
strated that Jesus never lived, or granted
that He lived, could it be proved that we
knew little about Him ; if the Cross
turned out to be a fiction, or if indeed
Jesus was crucified, but that was the end
of Him, Christianity in any tenable sense
could hardly survive. Much that was
precious and incomparable would be left
to us in the portrait of a character, ideal
though imaginary, and the priceless ex
pression of spiritual and moral truth ;
yet the heart of the religion, both His
revelation and redemption, would have
been cut out of it. For it is not in the
sayings apart from the speaker, nor in

of the Bible 45
the presentation of a fictitious character,
that the charm and power of the Gospel,
its authority and its triumph, really reside.
The supreme contribution which Jesus
made to religion was Jesus Himself, His
personality, His achievement. In that
human life God translated Himself from
the speech of eternity into the speech of
time. And in the work Jesus accomplished
He unsealed the springs of redemptive
energy, the springs of cleansing and for
giveness, of power and of peace. No
wonder, then, if many Christians, dreading
radical results, refuse to admit the right
of criticism to operate in these vital
regions, where its surgery might be fatal
to the patient's life.
But this way of escape is not really
open to us. If historical facts are necessary
to our religion we cannot evade the chal
lenge—Did these facts really happen or
not ? Where history gains admission, the
door cannot be slammed in the face of

46 The Modern Criticism
criticism. Indeed, we welcome the keenest
scrutiny of the credentials our rehgion
presents. The appeal to experience to
demonstrate the historicity of events in
the distant past is vain. For experience
assures us of states of consciousness which
we enjoy and of effects visible in our hfe.
It cannot, in the nature of the case, prove
even the historicity of Jesus, still less the
details of His career. At most it can
combine with historical investigation to
assure us of the truth of the story. History
must be examined by critical investigation.
Nor can we escape by detaching
Christianity from history. To concentrate
our attention and emphasis on the religious
and moral ideas, and argue that it does not
matter whether Jesus ever lived or died,
is to abandon what is of supreme value in
the religion. And we do not really save
Christianity from hostile criticism in this
way. We sacrifice the facts to save the
ideas, only to find that philosophy attacks

of the Bible 47
the ideas when we have robbed them of
the guarantee of the facts.
We must then accept the risks of history
and run the gauntlet of historical criti
cism. But this is abundantly worth while,
for the historical element secures the
supreme and imperishable wealth of Chris
tianity as a religion at once of revelation
and redemption. That God's own nature
and character was once exhibited in a
perfect human life means that we may
know God's inmost nature, no longer by
abstract description, but in the most
concrete and vivid way. That the Son of
God made our nature and experience His
own, bore the uttermost strain of our
temptations, and sounded all the depths of
our pain and sorrow, yields us the inexpres
sible consolation that He is qualified to be
our sympathetic Helper in our own hours
of conflict and tragedy. That He accepted
to the full the consequences of the sin of
His brethren, even to the consciousness

48 The Modern Criticism
of that separation from God which is sin's
most terrible sequel, won for us deliverance
from the guilt and domination of sin.
That He triumphed over death is the
assurance of our own immortality.
That the difficulties with which historical
criticism confronts us in the Gospel narra
tive are really serious is not to be denied.
But we are not entitled to assert that these
difficulties ought not to have been there.
AU we can properly ask is that we should
have enough for a firm foothold and solid
ground beneath our feet, as faith treads
the narrow and perUous path which
leads us through time to eternity. The
venture of faith is warranted, since histori
cal inquiry, combined with the experience
of redemption, leaves us a margin of
security which, if too narrow for our
desires, is yet enough for our needs.
It is the fact that history, whether of
the nation or the individual, has been
God's chosen medium of revelation which

of the Bible 49
makes criticism, not merely a right we
may exercise at our pleasure, but a duty
which we are not at liberty to neglect.
Since that revelation was given through
history we must know the history that
we may understand the revelation. For
we understand it aright only as we retrace
the processes by which it was given. We
must accordingly investigate the sources
of our information, free the text from
corruption, disentangle documents of differ
ent periods, arrange them in their chrono
logical order, and thus follow the whole
Divine movement from beginning to end.
It might have pleased God to choose
a way less difficult for us, a way which
we should have expected Him to choose,
had we been unaware of the way He has
actually taken. For no one definitely
knows what the precise limits of the Canon
are ; and corruption has been suffered to
run riot in the transmission of the text.
Our commentaries Ulustrate the uncer-
N.S. 4

50 The Modern Criticism
tainties of interpretation on almost every
page of Scripture. Uncertainties of inter
pretation are often most thickly concen
trated where the importance of the subject-
matter is at its height. We ask why He
chose a method of revelation so incidental
and unsystematic ; why, refusing short
cuts and direct easy roads, He moved so
leisurely and by such devious ways to His
goal ; why so much has been aUowed to
remain ambiguous and obscure. How much
better it would have been, we are tempted
to say, if our sacred Scripture had been a
short, compact, lucid handbook of doctrine
and ethics, given from the first, and aU
at once, and avaUable for all mankind, with
no difficulties, no uncertainties, no possi
bility of error in the transmission of the
text, or the determination of its extent ;
with no ambiguities in expression and the
consequent possibility of divergence in
interpretation, with no problems of date
or authorship or structure or historic

of the Bible 51
accuracy ; all on the same level in its
religious and moral teaching.
Such is the kind of revelation we might
have expected God to give. But His ways
are not our ways, and the fact that He
selected one form and method of revelation
rather than another is of deep signi
ficance which we are not entitled to disre
gard. The revelation was given bit by
bit to a puny people in a tiny country,
passing by great empires, teeming multi
tudes, advanced civilisations. By a great
act of redemption God took that people for
His own, patiently subdued it, intractable
though it was, to be the instrument of
His purpose ; gradually through its history
He taught the nation to know Him and
enjoy fellowship with Him. Then He
rose to higher levels than a revelation
co-extensive with the whole nation could
attain, and found His medium in the
experience of chosen individuals, through
whom the religion gained in richness and

52 The Modern Criticism
depth, in purity and intensity, in keenness
of insight, in quickness of understanding,
in delicacy of expression, in sensitiveness
of response to the Divine truth.
Then the final revelation became possible.
It was given not piecemeal or through a
purely human medium, whether national
or individual, but through God's only-
begotten Son, who became bone of our
bone and flesh of our flesh. The whole
process of God's self-unfolding and self-
imparting to man might have been carried
through without resort to writing ; but
entrusted to the capricious action of human
memory, exposed to alterations due to
human preferences and antipathies, it
would, as time went on, have been changed
out of recognition, mutUated, distorted,
disfigured, by foreign excrescences. But
the Holy Spirit moved men to write that
record, and He moved men to give us its
interpretation. And these are enshrined
or us in our sacred Scriptures. Thus we

of the Bible 53
stand not for elegant extracts or purple
passages, but for the Bible as a whole ;
a whole greater than the sum of its parts,
for it is all linked together in an organic
unity ; not, indeed, the unity of a single
point of view, but the unity of a process
steadily moving upwards by degrees till
the partial revelations through the Prophets
were crowned by the final revelation in
a Son.

The Permanent Results of Biblical Criticism 1
O The subject which has been assigned
^ to me is one of so large a range that it
can be touched only in the most general
and aUusive way. The nineteenth century
was pre-eminently the era of criticism.
The critical and historical method was not
whoUy new even as applied to the sacred
literature of Christendom; but it was
exercised with unprecedented thorough
ness, with detachment from dogmatic
control, with instruments of finer and finer
precision, handled with a dexterity becom
ing ever more skiUed by practice. No
tradition was too sacred for relentless
investigation, no belief too cherished to
1 Read at the Methodist (Ecumenical Conference
at Toronto, on Monday, October 9, 1911.
55

56 The Permanent Results
claim exemption from chaUenge. The pro
cess naturaUy evoked anger and violence,
pain and dismay, among those who felt
that the critic's knife cut at the very vitals
of their religion. But through fierce storms
of resentment or clouds of misrepresenta
tion the critic foUowed the star that he
might find his way to Bethlehem and bring
his gifts and his worship to the shrine of
Truth. For if we may rightly deplore the
iconoclastic temper which was too often
shown and the new dogmatism which
guided his quest and prejudiced his results,
it is the barest justice to admit that the
critical movement was animated above aU
by a sincere desire to discover truth. When
it was true to its own principles it was free
from animus of every kind, it went its
own way of impartial inquiry, indifferent
whether it helped or hindered the cause of
faith. And justly, for if investigation is
to be scientific it must be free and not
deliberately conducted to reach a given

of Biblical Criticism 57
goal. Yet it must not be forgotten that
criticism is a special science, and whUe it
must be granted autonomy within its own
domain, we have to check and combine
its results with the results of other lines of
inquiry before we reach that complete
rounded view in which a due place is
accorded to all the facts of which account
must be taken.
The wrath and dismay which criticism
occasioned were largely due to its negative
aspect and the uncertainty in which every
thing seemed to be involved. Whether it
was in the Lower Criticism which sought
to restore the true text of Scripture ; or
the Higher Criticism which attempted to
determine the problems of date and author
ship, to analyse composite documents into
the elements of which they were composed
and thus go behind the literature we possess
to its sources ; or Historical Criticism
which estimated first the qualities of the
historians and their qualifications for their

58 The Permanent Results
task and then appraised the historical
worth of the documents themselves ; there
was always a sense of uneasiness aroused
by the mere fact that so much which had
seemed secure now appeared unsettled. It
was as if the solid rock was changing into
a quaking morass. The text of Scripture
for which infailibUity had so often been
claimed was shown to be subject in multi
tudes of instances to serious uncertainties.
Many books were denied to the authors to
whom tradition had assigned them, and
what had been attributed to one writer was
frequently distributed among several. And
the results were even more unsettling when
the investigation passed from the Lower and
Higher to Historical Criticism. The early
narratives of Genesis were judged to be
myth, the later to be legend, and even when
real history was reached with Moses many
of the details of the story were regarded as
unhistorical. The same freedom of attitude
was adopted with reference to the later

of Biblical Criticism 59
history and in particular the Gospel story.
Here at the very citadel of our religion the
critic pressed home his scrutiny for the
vulnerable points.
It is perhaps even yet too early to ask
what the permanent results are likely to
be. In many departments investigation is
stUl proceeding, and on several questions
there is stUl a sharp divergence of opinion.
But a tentative statement may perhaps be
given as to some of the results which are
likely to be ultimately established by the
common consent of scholars. In the Lower
Criticism we must resign ourselves to a
large measure of uncertainty as to the text
of the Old Testament unless ancient Hebrew
manuscripts should be discovered. The
Versions, especially the Septuagint, do
much for us, but by no means all we want ;
and where they fail us we are thrown back
on conjectural emendation, which is usually
a risky art. In the New Testament we
have ample materials, but wide difference

6o The Permanent Results
of opinion stUl prevails touching the con
clusions which ought to be drawn from
them. In both cases there is general agree
ment that the text which has for many
centuries been the Received Text of the
Church is very far from being identical
with the text as the authors wrote it. So
far as the Higher Criticism goes, we may
include among the points which are likely
to secure general adhesion the foUowing :
The analysis of the Pentateuch into four
main documents, each of which has itself
had a history ; the identification of the
Book of the Law of Josiah with the kernel
of Deuteronomy and its composition in the
reign of Manasseh or Josiah ; the origin of
the Priestly sections, at least in their present
form, after Ezekiel. Sources wiU simUarly
be recognised in other historical books.
Several of the prophetical books wiU be
acknowledged to be composite ; some of
them, notably Isaiah and Jeremiah, to
be highly composite. Job, Proverbs and

of Biblical Criticism 6 1
Ecclesiastes, together with a large part of
the Psalter, will be assigned to the post-
exUic period, Daniel to the Maccabean era.
In New Testament criticism we may expect
to see the now generally-accepted Two-
document theory hold its ground as the
solution of the Synoptic problem — 'the
theory, I mean, that the first and third
Gospels are based on the Gospel of Mark
and a collection of addresses and sayings
of Jesus probably formed by the Apostle
Matthew. Those of us who have always
held to the Lucan authorship of the third
Gospel and Acts are led to hope that Har-
nack's conversion to this opinion will be
foUowed by that of German critics generally ;
but at present the signs are not very en
couraging. As to the Pauline Epistles, I
entertain little doubt that all wUl be recog
nised as authentic with the definite excep
tion of the Pastorals and the possible
exception of Ephesians. No agreement
seems likely to be reached on James,

62 The Permanent Results
Jude, or on the Epistle to the Hebrews;
and I wish I could feel more confident than
I do that the authenticity of i Peter wiU
secure ultimate recognition. Nor can I
take a sanguine view as to a speedy settle
ment of the Johannine problem. At present
the current sets very strongly against the
traditional opinion. As one who keenly
realises the difficulties of the fourth Gospel,
but is desirous of seeing the apostolic
authorship rehabilitated, it is with regret
that I observe the very negative trend of
recent criticism. Permanent results cannot
be spoken of at present. I believe, however,
that such results are nearer in the criticism
of the Apocalypse. The positions with
reference to this enigmatic book which
seem to be likely to stand are its employ
ment of earlier documentary sources, both
Jewish and Christian, its dependence on
very ancient apocalyptic tradition, its re
flection of the contemporary historical con
ditions, the distinction between its author

of Biblical Criticism 63
and the author of the fourth Gospel.
So far as Historical Criticism is concerned,
those who recognise its legitimacy as applied
to Scripture will probably discover that
the mere admission that the early chapters
of Genesis cannot be regarded as historical
is whoUy inadequate. We must allow
a method, whose validity we have once
recognised, to put the whole literature
through the most searching scrutiny. Of
course, the scientific method must be strictly
scientific ; it must not smuggle in illegitimate
postulates, nor permit metaphysic to mas
querade as science, but it must set itself
in the spirit of impartial inquiry to ascertain
the actual course of events. It is weU to
remember that we may apply altogether
inappropriate standards and treat an
ancient writer as if he wrote history on the
same principles which would be foUowed
by a modern historian. Much of the
difficulty which is felt by modern Western
readers in accepting the historical criticism

64 The Permanent Results
of Scripture is due to the assumption that
a Biblical historian must necessarily have
made it a leading principle to give an actual
record of facts. They were not writing for
modern Western readers, however, and one
can readUy see from a mere reading of the
text that their conception of the historian's
task was very different from that which
prevails in our own time. We need no
little sympathetic imagination to put our
selves back at the appropriate standpoint
for judging the Biblical historians from
their contemporary point of view.
I pass on to the permanent results of
criticism in our estimate of the Bible. It
has in the first place given us a view of
Scripture which corresponds more closely
than the earlier theories with the actual
phenomena of Scripture. Their tendency
was to be at once too narrow and too wide ;
to concentrate the Divine revelation and
inspiration in the written word, and at the
same time to make claims for the individual

of Biblical Criticism 65
parts in isolation which were not really
justified. Owing to the idea that Scripture
contained everywhere the immediate word
of God to the soul the theory of Scripture
was unduly atomistic ; and since experience
did not show that all parts of Scripture
did convey a blessing, the inevitable result
was that large portions were either not read
at aU or, if read, yielded profit only at a
few points. Even the prophets, in whose
writings the Old Testament reaches its
climax, were read largely in fragments.
One of the chief results of our modern study
has been that we have learnt to appreciate
Scripture as a whole and to recognise the
permanent value of much which in itself
could hardly be said to convey any direct
spiritual or moral lesson. The supreme
achievement of our modern study has been
that it has forced upon us the fact that
God has revealed Himself through history
and experience. To bring out the full
significance of this would require a long
N.S. 5

66 The Permanent Results
discussion. I must indicate in the briefest
way the positions which are implicit in it.
It has shown us that the action of the
Spirit is to be sought primarUy in the
history itself. The Bible contains the
record of that Divine movement which,
beginning in the dim antecedents of Israel's
history, worked alike in the chosen people
as a whole and pre-eminently in elect indi
viduals tiU it achieved its climax in the
Person, the teaching and the Work of
Christ, and the interpretation given to
these by the New Testament writers.
From this standpoint we can give a meaning
and permanent significance to much in the
Bible which it was difficult to claim for it
from the older point of view. There is
much which, when detached from the
whole, has little or no value, but which
may be indispensable for the appreciation
of the whole. Much in the Old Testament,
several things in the New, have to be judged
on this principle. It is only on this prin-

of Biblical Criticism 67
ciple that the permanent value of the Old
Testament can be vindicated. No doubt,
considerable sections would always hold
their place for their inspiring eloquence,
their lofty morality, their soaring spiritu
ality, their fascinating romance. But it is
not these qualities which would ensure
them a place in the Canon of Scripture, in
view of the fact that much of its teaching
has been rendered obsolete by the Gospel.
From this point of view we understand
why it has pleased God that Scripture has
included much which from the Christian
standpoint is not simply obsolete but
objectionable. It is because only so can
the fuU import of the Spirit's action be
rightly understood. The answer to many
objections which have been supposed to
discredit the Bible is to be found in a true
understanding of what the Bible is. It is
not primarUy a manual either of theology
or of ethics, but it is the record of God's
gradual self-disclosure, of the Spirit's leaven-

68 The Permanent Results
ing of a material often too uncongenial.
It was this too self-wiUed and too intractable
medium which He had to subdue to His
purpose, and the Old Testament records
for us the wonderful story of His progressive
mastery of His instrument. Only in frag
mentary portions, as the author of the
Epistle to the Hebrews has told us, was it
possible for God to speak to His ancient
people ; it was only in a Son who was the
radiance of His glory and the clear-cut
impress of His essential being that He
could fully translate Himself into human
speech and express Himself in a human
experience. And this leads us to the further result
that we have come to recognise the glorious
variety of Scripture. We do not find that
the Biblical writers always express them
selves in accordance with the same scheme
of doctrine, not even in the New Testament,
still less in the Old. We can frame no
satisfactory theology by an indiscriminate

of Biblical Criticism 69
coUection and arrangement of all the Bibli
cal statements on each subject. The whole
movement of revelation as an historical
process must first be studied. Each writer
must be placed in his context, and his
theology as a whole so far as possible repro
duced, and only when this has been done
can the various types of theology be
brought together and unified. Only in
this way can we do justice to the rich and
many-sided experience of the writers and
the truths which have been conveyed
through it. We can hardly over-emphasise
the importance of the fact that whUe the
Bible contains doctrines of the highest
importance, it is primarUy a book of ex
perimental religion ; and that the truths
it enshrines did not come simply as direct
communications of theological propositions,
but were realised through doubts and
misgivings, through wrestlings of the soul
with God, through long and perplexed
groping, or through some sudden and radi-

70 The Permanent Results
ant flash of insight. And it is this human
element which gives the Bible so much
of its appeal to the human heart, and stamps
it with such marks of authenticity. If
we go expecting to find a body of doctrine
formulated with scientific precision, or an
accurate record of events such as a modern
historian would give us, we may be disap
pointed. But we find something far better :
we find life itself, the interaction of the
Divine and the human in a great national
history, and the experience of many an
elect spirit. We may lose in abstract cor
rectness, but we gain in warmth and interest.
The teaching may not be so instantly avaU
able as if the Bible had been restricted to a
series of theological and moral statements
accurately expressed and duly co-ordinated
into a system. But the difficulty in disen
gaging them from the history in which
they are embedded is far more than balanced
by the vital experimental quality conferred
on them by the process through which

of Biblical Criticism. 71
they have come. We can perhaps hardly
speak of the Bible as modern criticism
gives it us, for in the hands of different
critics it becomes a different thing. And
it is well to close such a paper as this with
the reminder that whatever be the con
clusions of criticism the fact of the Bible
remains ; and it may truly be called a
colossal fact. But speaking for myself, I
may truthfully say that my sense of the
value of Scripture, my interest in it, my
attachment to it, have been almost inde
finitely enhanced by the new attitude and
new mode of study which criticism has
brought to us.

The Old Testament after Criticism 1
A I begin by recaUing the views held
~ about the Old Testament before the
critical era, views in which many of us
were brought up. The Old Testament we
were taught was a Divinely inspired litera
ture, reaching, roughly speaking, from the
time of Moses down to that of Malachi,
when for a period revelation ceased. The
Pentateuch was written by Moses, the
Book of Job perhaps by Moses or even
by an earlier writer, the Historical Books
compiled by those who followed the great
law-giver, the Psalter largely composed
by David but including contributions by
others down to the time of the Babylonian
1 Deansgate Lecture, dehvered at the Milton Hall,
Manchester, October 31, 1911.
73

74 The Old Testament
captivity, Proverbs for the most part from
the pen of Solomon, the Prophetic Books
written by the authors whose names they
bore. No doubt attached either to the
traditional authorship of the books or the
statements they enshrined. We had a
sound text; we could feel assured as we
read our Enghsh Bible that it was a
translation of a text which was definitely
fixed and accurately transmitted. Outside
the limits of our Old Testament Canon
we recognised no book as inspired tiU we
came down to the New Testament litera
ture. If we thought about the Apocrypha,
it was only to be thankful that we were
not as other men and did not recognise
its inspiration.
Meanwhile the best scholarship in Ger
many and to some extent in England was
challenging all the ancient traditions and
forcing the literature to give an account
of itself. We heard some mutterings of
the storm — controversies raged about Col-

after Criticism 75
enso, and Samuel Davidson, and Robertson
Smith, and others, who were introducing
into Britain the views of " German neo-
logians." But for a long time the Churches
were settled in their attachment to the
older view. That is no longer possible.
We have felt in Great Britain the full
force of the critical movement which has
wrought such marvels in the interpretation
of the Biblical literature and the unraveUing
of its composition ; and we have to ask
first of all what are the critical results
which nearly all competent Old Testament
scholars regard as definitely established ?
Then we must inquire, How far do these
results affect our estimate of the value
of the Old Testament ? Can we still
recognise that through it God has revealed
Himself to humanity ? Can we stUl go
back to it as our predecessors did, finding
in it what we need for our own spiritual life,
something that will instruct and elevate our
thought about God and life and destiny ?

76 The Old Testament
In the first place let me sketch briefly
the present critical position. Criticism
may be divided into three classes : Lower,
Higher and Historical. In this lecture I
must pass over the last of these and deal
very briefly with the first. This is the
criticism which seeks to determine the
exact text of the book with which it is
concerned. Hence it is called Textual
Criticism. Another name for it is Lower
Criticism, given not because it is an inferior
type of criticism, nor because it demands
less inteUectual power or technical skill,
but because it deals with the primary
part of the subject. IdeaUy, at any rate,
we should fix the text of a document
before we investigate such problems as
authorship or structure or date. In the
New Testament we have a vast number
of manuscripts presenting very divergent
readings. A few are selected for mention
in the margin of the Revised Version.
But in a great critical edition, such as

after Criticism 77
Tischendorf's eighth edition, an immense
mass of variant readings wiU be found.
The Hebrew manuscripts of the Old Testa
ment give us essentially the same text
throughout. We are tempted to imagine
that we are on much firmer ground in
the Old Testament than in the New.
Confronted by the many thousands of
variations in the New Testament text
you ask, Where am I to find firm footing ?
How can I be sure that I am reading
what the writer actually said ? How much
better is the case with the Old Testament,
where there is little evidence of a different
text from that which we actually possess !
But this is quite a mistaken view. In
the New Testament the multitude of various
readings is so vast that the true text is
generally likely to be preserved somewhere,
and the abundance of the material provides
critics with means for working back with
considerable confidence to the original
form. But in the Old Testament there

78 The Old Testament
is only too much reason to suppose that
in many instances the Hebrew does not
preserve the true text at all. The uni
formity presented by the manuscripts, so
far from attesting the care with which
the text had been handed down, is probably
due to a deliberate suppression of the
divergent readings and the formation of
a standard text, so that the variant readings
which would have been so valuable in
helping us by comparison to work back
to the original text have been almost
entirely obliterated. It is fortunate that
we have certain translations, notably that
into Greek known as the Septuagint, which
enable us to go behind the present Hebrew
text to a certain extent, and occasionaUy
to restore the original. Yet since this
translation was itself made only shortly
before the Christian era, there was abun
dant time for numerous corruptions to
intrude into the text in the course of the
many centuries, which, in some instances,

after Criticism 79
elapsed between the composition of the
book and its translation. There is thus
room for much uncertainty in determining
what an author originally wrote. Yet there
is no need to be disheartened. Though
in detaU the text is frequently uncertain,
and it would be wrong to disguise how
uncertain it often is, still we may say in
the main that the text of the Old Testa
ment is tolerably well preserved, and if
we are content with not demanding too
much, we can read it with very fair confi
dence that on the whole we are really
in touch with what the authors actually
wrote. Nevertheless, there are instances
in which the text seems to have been
preserved neither in the original nor in
translation, and in such cases we must
resort to conjectural emendation. Natur-
aUy, this is a process attended with risks
and rarely leading to more than highly
probable results, frequently to results to
which a much lower degree of probability

80 The Old Testament

must be assigned. It is a difficult art to
practise with success. It demands adequate
scholarship, palaeographical experience, exe-
getical skill, literary tact ; and even the
presence of aU these may be sterilized for
lack of a certain happy gift of chvination.
Competent scholars wiU nevertheless be
generally agreed that not a few conjectures
have been proposed which carry conviction
with them.
When we pass from the Lower to the
Higher Criticism the results become more
revolutionary. The Higher Criticism is
so-called — it should not be necessary to
explain — not because of any arrogant claim
on the part of those who are engaged in
it, nor because it demands for its exercise
higher powers than the Lower Criticism.
Nor is the distinction between the two
that the Lower Criticism is that which
supports traditional views while the Higher
Criticism rejects them. The terms have
nothing to do with views held or results

after Criticism 8 1
reached. They indicate different fields of
research. The Lower Criticism, as I have
aheady explained, is concerned with the
restoration of the text to the form in
which it left the author's hand ; the
Higher Criticism investigates problems of
date and authorship ; it inquires whether
earlier sources have been embodied in the
document, seeks to disengage them, and
determine the question of their date and
origin, and examine the way in which the
compUer has treated them. Now, here
there is room for conclusions of a revolu
tionary character. Such conclusions have
been reached and have excited bitter
resentment. Much which was once re
garded as beyond dispute has now been
surrendered by the great majority of
scholars in deference to evidence which
they feel to be conclusive. Naturally the
older views are tenaciously maintained by
others. I have famUiarised myself for a
good number of years with the more
N.S. 6

82 The Old Testament
important and some of the less important
refutations of the critical views. In spite
of this, my convictions as to the general
conclusions established remain unchanged.
What, then, are the results which are not
likely to be unsettled by future research
and debate ?
First of aU, the idea of the Mosaic author
ship of the Pentateuch has to be com
pletely given up. We have to recognise
in it four main documents, each of which
has a history behind it. The two earliest
of these may date from the eighth or
ninth century B.C. These are the most
interesting and fascinating parts of the
Pentateuch ; they contain those stories
which charmed us by their romance and
beauty when we were chUdren, and stUl
cast their literary and spiritual speU upon
us now that we have come to riper years.
Next we have the document which forms
the nucleus of the Book of Deuteronomy.
This is generally assigned either to the

after Criticism 83
reign of Manasseh or that of Josiah, though
it may be as early as the reign of Heze
kiah ; and it is to be identified with the
Book of the Law, discovered by Hilkiah in
the Temple, which formed the basis of
the Reformation inaugurated by Josiah.
Finally, there is the great section commonly
known as the Priestly Document. It em
braces not a little of Genesis and Exodus,
of Numbers and Joshua, together with
Leviticus. It includes some narrative, but
is for the most part occupied with the
ecclesiastical constitution under which the
Hebrews lived. After prolonged discussion
this document 'has been assigned to a
period later than the time of Ezekiel, on
whose legislation in the last nine chapters
it partially rests. Its approximate date
is about 500 B.C. These four documents
are continued in the Book of Joshua,
hence critics often speak of the Hexateuch,
meaning thereby the work in six books.
I must return to speak of the Pentateuch

84 The Old Testament
in more detail, but I wiU first complete
my summary statement of results.
The other historical books contain a
great deal of early historical matter, but
they have been subjected to repeated
revisions. While some of the elements
they embody are written from a more
antique point of view, the books are, in
their present form, written sometimes from
the standpoint of Deuteronomy, at other
times from that of the completed Law.
Parts of the prophetic literature have
been subjected to far-reaching revision.
In some cases we have the combination
in a single book of prophecies composed
in different ages and uttered by different
men. The best known example of this
is the Book of Isaiah. But the currency
of the phrase " two Isaiahs " illustrates
how vague and imperfect is the popular
acquaintance with critical results. No one
who has really understood what these
results arc ever talks about the two Isaiahs.

after Criticism 85
He knows that this represents too optimis
tic an opinion as to the unity of the book.
The book is unquestionably highly com
posite ; it contains writings by a large
number of authors from different ages in
Israel's history, from the time of Isaiah
probably to the time of Alexander the
Great. What is true of the Book of
Isaiah is true of some of the other
prophetic books, notably Jeremiah and
Zechariah. I pass on to the third section in the
Hebrew Canon called " The Writings."
For the most part these books are now
relegated to the post-exilic period. Instead
of attributing a large number of Psalms
to David, critics would now regard very
few in any case as having been written
by him, and many would entirely deny
that there are any Davidic Psalms at all.
Several regard the Psalter as in the main
a product of the period after the return
from exile. Similarly, while some will not

86 The Old Testament
deny that there is a certain Solomonic
element in the Book of Proverbs, that
book is now for the most part dated in
the post-exUic period. Ecclesiastes is
assigned to the late Persian or late Greek
period. The Book of Job is placed in
the sixth or fifth century ; later stiU by
some scholars. The Song of Songs is
scarcely attributed by any scholar to
Solomon himself ; usuaUy it is. thought
to be much later than his time. The Book
of Daniel is dated in the early Maccabean
period. These are the main results of Higher
Criticism. I have not shrunk from putting
them before you in their naked form, nor
tried to show you that they are not so
revolutionary as they are commonly
thought to be. These are the general
results, but, as in every progressive science,
room must be left for divergences of
opinion on detail. But, speaking broadly,
I should have with me in this statement

after Criticism 87
the great majority of critics who have
deserted the traditional views.
From this summary statement of the
results as they have emerged over the
whole range of Old Testament literature,
I return to speak more definitely about
the results of the criticism achieved in
the Pentateuch. Long before criticism
had entered upon its modern development
it had been recognised that there were
several elements in the Pentateuch which
could not be reconcUed with full Mosaic
authorship. It was supposed that at a
later period the work of Moses had been
subjected to slight revision, perhaps by
Ezra. In this way it was possible to
explain such indications of non-Mosaic or
post-Mosaic origin as " The Canaanite was
then in the land," or " the man Moses
was very meek," or the reference to Abra
ham pursuing his foes as far as Dan, long
before that town received this name, or
Joseph's statement that he was stolen out

88 The Old Testament
of the land of the Hebrews before the
Hebrews were in possession of it. Thus
we had presented to us what Bishop EUicott
called a " rectified traditional view." He
affirmed substantiaUy Mosaic authorship,
but admitted later revision. But this
position seems to be untenable. The evi
dence of non-Mosaic and post-Mosaic
authorship goes deeper than the kind of
evidence I have mentioned. The incon
sistencies in narrative and legislation,
together with the testimony of prophets
and historians, forbid us to regard the
Pentateuch as the work of one man or
the product of a single age. Indeed, the
assertion of Mosaic authorship involves
serious difficulties for those who wish to
believe in the inspiration of the work.
Many scholars, from an apologetic point
of view, have haUed the relief which has
come to them through emancipation from
the traditional view. There are features
in the Pentateuch which conflict with the

after Criticism 89
supposition either that Moses gave some
of the laws attributed to him or that God
inspired him to do so. There are numerous
inconsistencies in the legislative enact
ments. I take a single example, the dis
posal of the tithe enjoined in Deuteronomy
as compared with the regulations in Num
bers. In Deuteronomy we are told that
the tithe of Israel is to be used by the
farmer for a feast at the central sanctuary.
He is to bring the tithe of his produce
to the sanctuary, or, if it is too far for
him to do this, he is to turn it into money
to be spent there ; but in either case he
is to use his tithe for a feast before his God
at the sanctuary, and to that feast he is
to invite various dependent classes— the
stranger, the Levite, the widow and the
orphan : the Levite because he has no
inheritance in Israel ; the stranger because
he is an alien, not a Hebrew citizen, and
therefore exposed to civic and social dis
abilities and frequently persecuted; the

90 The Old Testament
widow and the orphan because their
bereaved and defenceless condition most
appeals to pity and compassion. You
wiU see, then, that the Levite partakes of
the tithe upon the invitation of the farmer,
in whose disposal it rests. That is to go
on for two years. In the third year the
whole of the tithe is to be devoted to
charity ; the Levite is to participate in
it, but only along with the stranger, the
widow and the orphan. The reason is that
the Levite obviously has a very precarious
means of livelihood. When you turn to
the Book of Numbers you read that the
tithe of Israel, instead of being the property
of the farmer and taken to the sanctuary,
is to be paid over to the tribe of Levi.
The tithe is to be given to the Levites as
a legal right ; it is not used for a feast,
and is not the property of the farmer, as
in Deuteronomy. It is the legal possession
of the Levites, and out of it they pay a
tithe to the priests. So far from the

after Criticism 9 1
position of the Levites being as it is in
Deuteronomy, they have a handsome com
petence : forty-eight cities with surround
ing pasture are assigned to them, and
considerable share in the other dues of
Israel. In particular the priestly members
of the tribe are liberally provided for,
since, while Deuteronomy recognises the
whole tribe of Levi as priests, the Priestly
Document restricts the priesthood to the
decendants of Aaron.
This is only one specimen of a large
number of differences I might mention.
How are we to deal with them ? The
traditionalists say, " It is stated distinctly,
' The Lord spake unto Moses saying.' If
we are to abide by what is written, it is
quite certain that God gave to Moses the
prescriptions we find in these various codes
of law." But I beg of you to observe the
serious difficulty for apologetics in which
you are involved in that position. You
have to say that within a brief period you

92 The Old Testament
have God giving to Moses directly contra
dictory laws on the same subject, without
any explanation or indication how they
were to be harmonised. The Rabbis them
selves found the situation thus created
extremely difficult. What we regard from
our point of view as legislation arising out
of different ages and conditions they
regarded as given to Moses and for ever
binding, so that they combined the injunc
tion of Deuteronomy with those of the
Priestly Document, which certainly never
was intended.
The position we have to take up is this.
It is far easier, instead of supposing that
Moses contradicted himself, or, what is a
much more difficult position, that God
contradicted Himself in the legislation He
gave to Moses, to infer that this legislation
was given in different ages to Israel in
different conditions. We aU know that
it is not possible in a developing community
to have stereotyped laws. New conditions

after Criticism 93
arise which have to be met by new legis
lation, or devices that will stretch the old
legislation to cover new conditions not
before contemplated. It has often been
necessary to introduce on a very large
scale what are known as legal fictions,
whereby you are able to extend the old
legislation to embrace new circumstances.
Now, in what we call the Mosaic Law we
have something of this kind : a formula
such as " The Lord spake unto Moses
saying," which legitimises the legislation,
answering to what I have spoken of as a
legal fiction. It may be said that this
formula is a definite statement which we
have no right to contradict. But we have
a New Testament warrant for interpreting
the language in a liberal way. How do
New Testament writers interpret the for
mula, " And the Lord spake unto Moses " ?
They do not interpret it to mean that God
spoke directly to Moses. Take up the
speech of Stephen, or Paul's Epistle to the

94 The Old Testament
Galatians, or the second chapter of Hebrews,
or consider the argument of the Epistle
to the Colossians. The writers interpret
the words to mean that the Law was given
by angels. If it was possible for the New
Testament writers to interpret in so large
a way, in the spirit rather than in the
letter, the ancient formula " And the Lord
spake," it cannot be a very serious or
wrong thing for us to put a wider and
more liberal interpretation on the words
" unto Moses," and to say that Moses, as
the creator of Hebrew legislation and social
life, had embodied in a few great outstanding
principles those thoughts and regulations
which were to be applied to the history
of Israel as time went on, so that later
legislators were really only working out
in detaU what Moses had stated in prin
ciple. That I think helps to solve what
is one great difficulty in the minds of
those who approach the subject from the
traditional point of view. It lifts the

after Criticism 95
burden of having by some desperate exped
ient to bring together statements not really
harmonious. We can see the Divine way
by which Israel has been led. As the new
conditions arose, new legislation was formu
lated to meet them. We are not now
compelled to face the difficulty of affirming
that within a brief interval God gave what
seems to be such inconsistent guidance to
His people. That is one of the ways by
which apologetics has been helped by the
critical movement and interpretation of
the Scriptures.
But there are certain objections to the
critical view which may arise in the minds
of some of those to whom I am speaking.
They wUl say that no literature ever came
into existence through processes such as
those by which critics explain the origin
of the Old Testament. But you have only
to look at such a book as the Book of
Chronicles and compare it with Samuel
and Kings to see that the use of earlier

96 The Old Testament
documents was the method followed by
Old Testament historians themselves ; you
have only to compare the Synoptic Gospels
one with another to realise that along the
same lines also the writers of our first
and third Gospel used the Gospel of Mark.
The process was carried stUl further by
Tatian in the composition of his Diates
saron. You have only to go to the Arabic
chroniclers to see how they compUed their
history, now embodying a narrative from
one source, now from another, now inter
weaving narratives taken from separate
sources in exactly the same way in which
critics affirm that many narratives in the
Old Testament were compUed. The state
ment that books are not, and never were,
written along the lines along which critics
say the Old Testament books were put
together is contradicted by the Old Testa
ment itself, by the New Testament, and
by other Semitic literature, and could have
been put forward only by some one who

after Criticism 97
took the standard of modern literary
composition as the standard that could
alone have been followed by ancient his
torians. If we think ourselves out of the
twentieth century after Christ into the
conditions in which the Old Testament
was written, if we think ourselves out of
our Western habits, and look at things
from the Eastern point of view, we shall
realise that some of the objections are
such as would not have occurred to people
living in those ages and that environ
ment. Once more we have had numerous asser
tions that the conclusions of criticism have
been completely undermined. We have
had the veto of archaeology put on our
results ; we have been told that much
which critics have rejected as fictitious
has been vindicated by the spade of the
archaeologists. Archaeologists have done
much for us, and no doubt wUl do a great
deal more ; and no responsible critic is
N.S. 7

98 The Old Testament
under any temptation to undervalue what
they have really done or to leave out of
account in his critical results what has
really been brought to hght. But as I
have said elsewhere, it is very necessary,
in reading the works of some archaeologists,
to draw a clear line of distinction between
what archaeologists have actually discovered
and have definitely added as facts to our
knowledge and what the writers imagine
to be facts and their combined inferences
from both. I am bound to say with
reference to certain archaeologists that the
facts and the aUeged facts and the infer
ences from the combination of the two
are too often permitted to slide into each
other. So far as I know, there is no
position put forward by sober criticism
with reference to the Old Testament which
has been disproved by any discovery of
archaeology up to the present time. I say
that in full view of the assertions which
have been made with reference to the

after Criticism 99
fourteenth chapter of Genesis and other
passages of that kind.
But it will be said, "Is it not true,
after all, that, for those who believe in
the Divinity of Christ, these things are
settled by His definite statements with
reference to the Old Testament ? " Natur
ally a Christian desires to be very reverent
in treating any argument of this kind.
Those of us who confess Christ as our
Saviour and Lord naturally cannot take
any appeal to His authority except in the
most serious and reverent way. But the
very fact that we take it in that way is
to us a weighty caution that we ought
not to invoke the authority of Christ in
any cause He would not Himself approve ;
and I am sure that we ought not to make
Christianity answer for its life by any argu
ment of that kind. If I tell you Homer
said so and so in the fourth book of the
Odyssey, am I to be regarded as tied down
by that statement to the traditional view

ioo The Old Testament

that the Odyssey was written by a man
known as Homer, when as a matter of
fact I know that this is very uncertain ?
Every one would understand that I was
only using this apparent ascription of
authorship as a convenient form of literary
reference. It would be more accurate, but
more pedantic, if I spoke of the fourth
book of the Odyssey which has come down
to us as the work of Homer. It might
be more accurate, but surely every one
would feel that I was intruding my views
on Homeric criticism in a very unnecessary
fashion, and that to adopt the usual method
of speaking about these things pledged me
to no acceptance of the traditional view.
And that covers a great deal of what
Jesus said on this subject.
I hold also that we are not to regard
our Lord as lifted in these matters above
the knowledge of His time. He was like
His brethren in all points except sin, and
was tempted to the uttermost in every

after Criticism 101
point in which you and I are tempted.
He necessarUy had to enter into the inheri
tance of our lack of knowledge that He
might become one of us, to be one with
us to the ultimate fibre of our being, that
He might know what human life was from
the inside. He could not otherwise have
been tempted in aU points as we are, for
some of our severest temptations would,
in the nature of the case, be impossible to
Omniscience. When Jesus referred to the
Old Testament I do not imagine He meant
to be taken by His followers as endorsing
any view on questions of authorship. He
was simply referring to these things from
the standpoint of His own time. We are as
little to press His language here as when
He said, " If I by Beelzebub cast out devils,
by whom do your sons cast them out ? "
Do we reaUy insist that He believed the
disciples of the Pharisees literally cast out
devUs ? It is what logicians call an argu
mentum ad hominem. It is a serious matter

102 The Old Testament
to tell people who have been convinced by
many independent but converging argu
ments as to the truth of the critical posi
tions that they must either abandon these
positions or regard themselves as outside
the ranks of the foUowers of Jesus Christ,
since loyalty to Him forbids them to
accept these results. How if they choose
the non-Christian alternative ? Suppose
a man says, I am quite sure from my
investigations that the critics are right,
and if I must abandon my behef in Christ
ianity, greatly though I should regret to
do it, yet truth is to me the dearest thing
of aU, and I must make even that sacrifice
in loyalty to it. Those who are truly
helping faith are not those who are staking
on the authority of Christ something it
wUl not bear, something indeed it was
never intended to bear, but those who
try to convince men that critical views,
if they are in harmony with truth, cannot
ultimately involve disloyalty to Christ.

after Criticism 103
If He is the Way and the Life, He is also
the Incarnate Truth, and you find Him
best when you are loyal to all sides of
His nature, intellectual as weU as moral
and religious. And He will put His
approval on that honest intention of dis
interested search after truth, wherever it
may lead you ; for if carried out to the
end it wUl at last lead you to His feet.
Passing over much I should like to say,
I want to ask you briefly to look at the
gains and the losses. Of course there is
loss in the critical view. In the earlier
days when you read the Old Testament
you felt that you were in direct contact
with the living authors who were famUiar
to you from the history. You read the
Psalms of David or the words of Moses,
and were sure they came to you as utter
ances of those personalities. You have
lost that, and criticism has replaced these
historical characters with a multitude of
authors and editors and theologians, of

104 The Old Testament
whom we do not even know the names.
Much of the literature is brought down to
the later period, greatly impoverishing the
earlier ages, and you feel that the Bible
has become to you a much stranger book
than before. A sense of loss is inevitable.
But think how much criticism has done
for us on the other side. It does not
matter through what instrument the
message comes, so long as there is the true
revelation of the living God. If any resent
the crowd of nameless writers who fiU the
place formerly fiUed by great personalities,
we can reply that in any case much in
Israel's literature is anonymous, and that
we have something to gain by recognising
the far wider diffusion of the Spirit of
God in ancient Israel. Thiersch once
uttered a very striking saying, " If there
were a great picture which tradition had
affirmed to be painted by Raphael, and
it was proved not to have been painted
by Raphael but by some otherwise unknown

after Criticism 105
artist, the world would have not one great
painting the less but one great painter
the more." And the same is true with
reference to the Old Testament. We have
a far richer, far more widely diffused
outpouring of the Spirit of revelation than
the traditional view gave us. But in
addition to that we have now a connected
view of revelation which was previously
missing. We understand the growth of
the religion of Israel, because we can
place its documents in their true chrono
logical order. We can trace, as we could
not trace before, God's gradual education
of His ancient people till His final revelation
was possible in the Person of His Son.
We are now able to follow the movement
from point to point. We can see how
the Spirit of God struck into the life of
the nation, how behind and beneath the
literary documents we possess He was
creating the soil in which they were to
flower.

106 The Old Testament
The old-fashioned idea of inspiration
regarded the Spirit as simply enlightening
the minds of those who were the authors
of our Biblical literature. But from our
newer point of view we look upon the
Spirit's action as far wider and far deeper
than that. It is the whole nation and the
national history which are in the first
instance the object of that Divine inspira
tion. When we look abroad at the history
of the world, we may see that the Spirit
of God is everywhere present as atmos
phere ; there is no place so savage and so
unenlightened but there the light which
lightens every man is seeking to do its
congenial work. But what is present
everywhere as atmosphere is present in
the history of Israel as a rushing mighty
wind. We feel the influence of the Spirit
blowing in an exceptional and unique
degree through the whole of Israel's history.
We see a meaning in Israel's election which
previously we had not realised, and we

after Criticism ioj
understand that the revelation of God
which is enshrined for us in the Old Testa
ment is more firmly based, more deeply
rooted in the whole life of the people than
hitherto we had surmised. We understand
how, out of that nation's history, which
was under the direct leadership and guid
ance of God's Spirit, there arose graduaUy
those institutions in which its religious
instinct found its most congenial expression.
We watch Israel slowly rising out of its
early grossness and its crude conception
of God. We observe how the Spirit worked
like leaven in that uncongenial mass tUl
it so moralised and spiritualised it that
it was possible for a great philosopher to
say that, so far as her religion was con
cerned, Israel among the surrounding peo
ples seemed like a sober man in the company
of drunkards. We have no cause to apolo
gise for the Old Testament. Set it by the
religious literature of other nations and
you will be struck by its purity, its emo-

108 The Old Testament
tional quality, its elevated thought of
God, and its combination of a lofty religion
with an exalted morality.
When we reach this point' of view we
are the better prepared to estimate the
work accomphshed by the great outstanding
figures in Israel's history. For these were
elect spirits, men who had seen God face
to face, who had felt on their hps the
pressure of the glowing coal from the
altar, or whose spirits had been moved as
the hand of the Lord grasped them and
threw them into a prophetic ecstasy, men
whose inner eye had been unveUed that
they might penetrate into the secrets of
God. And through those chosen spirits
there was disclosed a truer and higher
revelation than had dawned on the people
as a whole.
If you ask what of the Old Testament
is left after the critics have done their
best or their worst for it, I reply that it
is all left. It is not the critics' intention

after Criticism log
to cut out parts of the Old Testament and
say this is done with or that is not inspired,
that has no reference to to-day and this
has. No, it all remains, only it remains
under a different point of view. You see
what the Old Testament was really designed
to be. It is the record of God's own self-
revelation to His ancient people ; a record
which has much that is morally objection
able, spiritually lower than the level at
which we stand. But it is all the more
valuable to us on that account, because
it shows us the Spirit of God leavening,
as I have said, that uncongenial mass ;
it shows us God gaining a progressive
mastery over His instrument, as He entered
more and more completely into the life
of His people. We see Him subduing
them to His wUl, checking them here,
driving them onward there, now sending
them to the sunshine of prosperity, now
the drastic discipline of suffering, leading
them by varied processes from that low

no The Old Testament

level, little better than savagery, at which
they started tiU they attained the high
level reached before the coming of Christ.
And thus we see that the Old Testament
maintains its value alongside of the New.
When we look at the Old Testament as
telling us something that is said more
clearly and more powerfully in the New
Testament, then it is difficult to maintain
any independent value for the Old Testa
ment alongside of the New, because when
that which is perfect has come then that
which is in part is naturaUy done away.
But the modern view bids us see in the
Old Testament not an obscure and myste
rious version of the New, but the indispen
sable preparation for it ; bids us discover
in it the direct action of God, spread out
indeed over a whole nation but working
with exceptional intensity in chosen spirits.
And it helps us to grasp the point of view
from which we may approach the Gospel
and really understand it.

after Criticism in
We may say then that, while the accept
ance of critical results must inevitably be
accompanied with a sense of loss, yet
when we have really taken our stand at
the critical point of view we are in a
position to understand the significance of
the Old Testament, as from the traditional
standpoint we could not apprehend it.
The Old Testament which God has given
to us is a very different revelation from
what we should have devised for ourselves,
and far more valuable, in virtue of the
fact that it was mediated through national
history and individual experience. It is
stamped indeed with many imperfections ;
it is not lacking in what is morally objection
able and spiritually debased. We should
not neglect it because of these things, for
their presence has its own valuable lessons,
and they are corrected for us in God's
supreme revelation in Christ. We are the
better able to measure the gift God has
given us in His Son when we set it by the

112 The Old Testament after Criticism
side of what is best and highest in the
Old Testament. He who spoke in frag
mentary language to the fathers through
Israel's lawgivers, seers and psalmists,
has spoken His final word, no longer in
broken utterance through men who were
the imperfect vehicles of His partial self-
disclosure, but through the full-orbed mani
festation He gave us in His Only-begotten
Son.

The Record of Revelation

" And the isles shall wait for his law." — Isa. xiii. 4.
C It would be much better to translate
*" this passage " And for his teaching
the far lands do wait." You are all
famUiar with the prophecy from which
this text is taken, the first of those four
wonderful poems which have for their
theme the Servant of the Lord, which
explain the tragic past that lay behind
him, and depict the splendid future that
stretches before him. He had been called
to a great destiny. He was a teacher
entrusted with the task of revealing the
true God to the heathen world, and of
1 The official sermon preached for the Primitive
Methodist Church on behalf of the British and Foreign
Bible Society in 1910.
n.s. 113 8

114 ^he Record
bearing upon him the burden of the world's
sin. Alike in its original meaning and in
the application which Christians have given
to it, this passage brings before us in a
very prominent way our special subject.
For that is the function which this Servant
of God fulfilled in revealing to the world
which sat in darkness the knowledge of the
true God and of the true religion.
The author of this poem meant by the
Servant the nation of Israel, that nation
whose suffering and death constituted the
great problem for the time in which he
lived. Why was it that Israel, which
worshipped the one true God, had been
brought to an end by a heathen power, and
now, with its city destroyed and its temple
in ashes, was languishing in exile far from
its native land, while still the heathen
oppressor lived and reigned and prospered ?
Why had God so dealt with His people ?
With the meaning of the suffering in itself,
as the author expounds it in the supreme

of Revelation 115
passage which closes the cycle of Servant
poems, we are not now concerned ; but
we are concerned with his interpretation
of the Servant's mission to reveal to the
heathen world the knowledge of the true
God. It is this mission which gives Israel
its significance in the history of the world.
Apart from it Israel has no meaning to us ;
it stands simply on a level with other
nations. There were nations that sur
passed it in many of those qualities which
make a people great, in culture, in power,
in artistic genius. But why is it that our
hearts are touched always as we think of
that tiny people, with no special claim
on our regard apart from this one thing ?
It is because we realise that it was chosen
by God to fulfil the greatest of all destinies,
to be the channel along which God's self-
revelation came to men, and in the fullness
of time to give birth to Him in whom the
supreme revelation of God was enshrined.
That is the thought which comes out of

116 The Record
this passage, the great thought that Israel
is able to give to the far lands and the
distant countries that for which they are
already waiting. Even as the prophet
writes, there is stirring in their breasts a
desire for some higher and better truth
than they possess, for something that shall
solve the riddle of the universe, that shaU
explain to them the secrets of destiny
and clear up the strange puzzle of human
life and conduct. To unravel aU these
things was beyond their wit and power ;
as Plato said, they were waiting for some
more sure word of God than they had
themselves been able to discover. And
it was in Israel that this more sure word
of God was to be found, and the meaning
of Israel in universal history is just this
and nothing more, that it was chosen of
God to fulfil this greatest of all functions,
to teach the world what the true religion
was. That, then, was the mission. And how

of Revelation 117
was the fulfilment achieved ? It came
along many hnes. First of all it came along
the line of a great national history. We
are perplexed, perhaps, when we open our
Bible and try to read it as if we had never
read it before. We put the question to
ourselves, what kind of a revelation we
should have expected God to give. The
answer would be, A revelation very unlike
what we have. We should have expected
something altogether different, a much
shorter book, a book in which the great
truths of the spiritual universe were brought
together in compact and concise form, in
which moral duties were clearly explained
and enforced, in which light was given us
on the various problems and perplexities
that confront us. But we open the Old
Testament and find ourselves in the
midst of a long national history which
seems quite irrelevant to the purpose of
revelation. At first we do not understand
why so much space is taken up with relating

118 The Record
what seems quite remote from a revelation
of God's character and human duty. When
we think more deeply about it we under
stand, as we never understood before, how
true it is that God's ways are not as our
ways, but higher and better. It was along
this line, not that of conveying to us
abstract propositions, not of giving us
theological definitions, or of summing up
for us in a few short and terse statements
our duty to God and to our neighbour,
that revelation primarUy came. God
struck with unexampled energy into the
current of human hfe, entering into the
experience of an elect people. The word
became incarnate in a human history.
Very slow and long was the process through
which it graduaUy emerged from its rude
rudimentary state tiU the full-orbed revela
tion came into view. We see how in this
national history God worked with chosen
instruments along definite channels. Some
times revelation selected for its medium a

of Revelation 119
great act of redemption, as when God freed
His people from Egypt, or when He brought
Sennacherib's threatened destruction of
Jerusalem to nought, and thus saved for
the world Israel's religion ; or later, in the
great struggles of the Maccabees, when, led
by inspired heroes, the Jews hurled back
the attempt to crush their faith into
nothing, and once more preserved their
religion for mankind. Or it may come
in great acts of judgment, as when God
rooted out the northern nation and sent
it into irretrievable captivity, or when
later He visited Judah with political death,
and banished the Jews from their home
that in Babylonia they might repent of
their sins and learn of a higher truth they
had as yet not known. Along these great
national acts of God His primary revelation
comes. It cannot be said too often or
pondered too deeply that the greatest fact
about the revelation God gives us in the
Old Testament is that it is a process in

120 The Record
the history of mankind through the history
of a chosen people. There most of all we
see God at work, and the Bible is precious
to us because it does not confine the revela
tion of God to the more abstract truths,
but shows us God at work in history gradu
ally revealing Himself and His purpose.
But revelation was not confined to this
channel. It was disclosed in those sacred
institutions, in which Israel learnt to draw
near to its God and realized that its God
drew near in response. Or it might be in
some vision in which a man saw God face
to face, as Isaiah saw Him, and in that
vision beheld not only the face of God,
but his own heart in the light which
streamed from God's holiness, and under
stood with an altogether new intensity of
meaning what it was to be a sinful man in
the presence of a holy God. Or we may
take the case of Ezekiel, and mark how in
his vision he learnt of God's sovereignty
and the way in which He bent all history

of Revelation 121
to the manifestation of His own glory
and holiness. Or we may remind ourselves
how it has slowly come to light in some
great experience. Take, for example, the
Book of Job. It can have been created
in no other way except in the way I have
indicated. There must have come to this
author some experience similar to that
through which he represents his hero as
passing. He must have known what it
was to doubt to the foundations the morality
of God, the righteousness of His govern
ment ; he must have felt his feet slipping
and the ground quivering beneath him ;
he must have felt himself on the ruinous
edge of utter unbelief. And then in some
mystical vision of God, in which the scales
fell from his eyes, he must have learnt
that God was righteous, though he could
not understand His action. If he could
not fathom His designs or justify His
methods, he was sure of God Himself,
and knew that all must be well. And

122 The Record
similarly we can trace the way in which
Hosea through the tragedy in his own home
rose to the conception that God was love.
So Jeremiah, from the intimate converse
he held with God, learned to transform, in his
doctrine of the New Covenant, the very
conception of religion, and instead of
proclaiming a merely national covenant,
proclaimed a covenant in which each man
might know God for himself. And aU
these channels through which the revela
tion of God flowed into Israel graduaUy
led to a truer and worthier conception of
God, of man's relation to Him and to his
fellows. Thus towards the close of the
pre-Christian history of that religion there
was reached a coherent and lofty thought
of God and an understanding of human
privilege, duty and destiny such as had
never before been achieved. These, then,
were the ways along which the revelation
came. And what was the revelation when it

of Revelation 123
had thus been slowly built up ? It was
primarily a conception of God which stood
far above what any other nation had been
able to reach, so refined, so lofty, so spirit
ual, so ethical was the thought of God
Israel had attained. They had laid hold
of the great truth of His unity in contrast
to the multitudinous gods of the heathen.
They had learnt that Israel's God was
supreme in nature and in history, and that
all the nations were equaUy with them
selves under His righteous government.
They had learnt that God must be holy,
in contrast to the unclean and lustful
deities whom the heathen worshipped.
And as God was in holiness and righteous
ness, so it was held man must seek to
become. We can trace the origin of these
elevated thoughts and the way in which
they gradually penetrated the consciousness
of Israel tUl they became a permanent
possession with which to enrich the world.
And yet with all Israel achieved there

124 The Record
was much it faded to do. The Jews had
learnt that Israel's God was supreme, and
beside Him there was none else, but they
had cancelled their monotheism by appro
priating this God to themselves and looking
on the heathen as outsiders, or as vastly
inferior to themselves, with a far slighter
claim on God. They monopolised their
God, and in that way practically cancelled
the doctrine of His supremacy and unity
which they theoretically confessed. His
spirituality was restricted by the material
and local character of the cultus. Only
in one place was it possible for men to
offer sacrifices to God. The whole religion
was stamped with a physical and material
character. There was a physical priesthood
which offered physical sacrifices in a physi
cal sanctuary, and in that way the spirit
uality of the religion was lost in a ritualistic
materialism. And so one might go on to
speak of other ways in which the religion
was narrowed. We ought firmly to insist

of Revelation 125
on its limitations, for only in the light of
them do we understand the full worth and
the supremacy of the religion Jesus was
able to establish. If Jesus brought no
fuller revelation of God than had been
attained in Israel, then one-half of His
work, and that a very important half,
falls into the background and becomes
almost unnecessary. But once we realise
how much there was still to learn, we place
in His true position the supreme Revealer
of the Father to the world. It was neces
sary, therefore, in view of these limits,
that the religion of Israel should expand
into something higher and better than it
was. National religion had to give place
to a universal religion ; race and sect had
to count for nothing. These barriers had
to be broken down, and only when all men
were embraced in the circle of that religion
could it be said that the religion of
humanity, the final revelation of God, had
come. And so while Christ recognised

126 The Record
His continuity with the past, He rose
sheer above it. He came as the supreme
Revealer of God to men, who not only
brought new truths and deeper truths, but
achieved very much more. For just as it
is important for us to remember that it is
not the word which is uttered so much
as the deed that is done, which constitutes
revelation, so we have to remember that
even in Christianity it is not the word
that Jesus utters which is the greatest
thing in the revelation ; it is the Word
that He is, the highest expression of the
Father's nature and the Father's love, the
incarnate Word brought down to our
human measure and translated into our
human tongue. But if His revelation was
not exhausted in what He said, neither was
it completed in what He was. The supreme
deed He did, that was also the supreme
revelation of God. It is a mistake to
suppose that the chief element in revelation
consists in the word which is uttered. It

of Revelation 127
is in the redemption achieved on the Cross
and in its glorious sequel, that we find
the ultimate unveUing of God, His final
judgment on sin, the secret of perfection,
the pathway to blessed immortality.
But what, then, is the Bible to us in the
light of what I have said ? Let us suppose
that the history of Israel had been enacted ;
let us suppose that, as the climax of that
history, Christ had come as God's final
revelation, but that then there had reached
us no written record of it, that it had not
been enshrined in literature so as to be
transmitted in a fixed form from age to
age. What would have been the result ?
We can easily imagine what the result
would have been, for we have had the
lesson of experience on this very point.
We know what happens when the Bible
is put aside, how the Christian religion
becomes debased, how foreign elements
enter into it, and there is no standard by
which it can be judged. You are at the

128 The Record
mercy of tradition, which in every age
becomes more corrupt ; you are at the mercy
of priestcraft and ecclesiasticism ; you are
at the mercy of all the evil tendencies
and vicious habits of the human heart
that are continuaUy at work to tone down
the principles of Christianity and make
them more congenial to unregenerate
human nature. You are at the mercy
of legend and of myth-making, of fantastic
imagination, of the theories of theologians
which have gone adrift from the actual
facts of history. And this would have
been our position had not God provided
that the revelation should be preserved,
that for all time we should be able to
read the records of God's grace and love,
of the revelation to Israel and its consumma
tion in Jesus Christ. This is the meaning
of the Bible to us, that it incorporates for
us the record of God's redeeming love,
that it brings to us in documents that can
never grow old the history of the past,

of Revelation 129
which, though it tells the story of past
ages, has yet within it an eternaUy signifi
cant truth. So God, understanding all the
weaknesses and needs of His people, did
not simply accomplish the act of redemp
tion, did not simply train the nation and
reveal Himself to it, but He has given to us
a permanent record to which we can at
any time go back, and in which we can
trace all the history of His love and His
grace. And we can do it for ourselves.
The Bible has been given to us not as the
theologian's, but as the people's book;
not as a book simply for the expert and
specialist, but as a book for the lowliest
and humblest Christian. It is perfectly
true that it would not be possible for the
unlettered Christian to avaU himself to
anything like the same extent of the treasure
stored in it were it not for the patient and
untiring labour of the scholar. But even
though it takes the expert to bring out
the full meaning of Scripture, it is also true
N.S. 9

130 The Record
that there is very much in it which lies
on the surface accessible and easUy to
be understood even by the poorest and
least educated. There is much we can
read, whether it is in Psalm or history,
in Gospel or Epistle, that fiUs our hearts
with joy and our souls with light. And
as we read, we feel that we are in immediate
contact with God Himself, that these
words have the magical gift to hft the soul
into fellowship with God, where it is not
possible for any power to intrude between
the soul and Him. Here we are face to
face with God, and as we read His Word,
whatever may be the difficulties or per
plexities that it creates, there is abundance
in it upon which we can feed our souls,
whereby we may know our duty and gain
strength to do it.
But if we are so conscious of the blessing
that comes to us from an open Bible, we
ought to have the utmost sympathy with
those who are seeking to extend its influ-

of Revelation 131
ence. The prophetic writer who is seeking
to describe the mission of Israel, which was
ultimately fulfilled in Christ, says that for
the teaching of the Servant the far lands
are waiting. Even in his own day his
sympathetic spirit caught vibrations in that
heathen world, which told him of the
longing and aching hearts and the groping
hands that were stretched out to reach
for God, for some Rock of Ages to which
they could cling. And he knew that
Israel had the true religion, so he says that
the Servant will not fail nor be discouraged
tiU he have set judgment, or, as we might
better paraphrase it, the true religion in
the world. And for his teaching the far
lands were even then already waiting.
Centuries have passed away since he wrote,
centuries stretching out into millenniums,
and yet there are multitudes in heathen
lands of whom the same thing might be said.
Their hearts are groping after God, and
the Christian world has turned too often

132 The Record
a deaf ear to their cry. And how are we
to spread the light of that which is to us
the greatest thing in life, the knowledge of
God in Jesus Christ ? We can only do it
as we go out to these heathen peoples
with intensified zeal and with doubled
and trebled resources. And wherever the
missionary goes, there comes to him the
necessity sooner or later of giving to his
converts the Word of God in their own
tongue. Where would our missionary
societies be, when confronted with this
necessity, if it were not for the great society
whose claims we bear in mind to-day ?
The British and Foreign Bible Society
has a history of the most wonderful,
of the most romantic, order. None of
us can have any adequate idea of its great
achievements, which have resulted in the
translation of Scripture into four hundred
and eighteen languages. And is not our
imagination kindled as we think of all that
it means ? For what does it involve to

of Revelation 133
translate the Scriptures ? We have our
selves in our native speech a glorious
instrument for uttering human thought,
rich and flexible, capable of expressing
subtle and abstract ideas. And yet anyone
whose business it is to render the Scriptures
into our own English tongue, though it
has a majesty and dignity worthy to clothe
the Word of God, is aware how at best his
task is beset with difficulty, and how
unsatisfactory the result often is. But
think of the missionary who goes to a
people which possesses no literature, which
does not know even the rudiments of
writing, where the language is exposed to
constant change, where the vocabulary
is of the most limited character, where few
abstract terms have been coined because
there is scarcely any abstract thought,
where words are the precipitate of a very
limited experience. And think what it is
for the missionary who goes there abso
lutely ignorant of the speech of the people

134 The Record
to whom he is to minister. He has first
to learn the language and reduce the
Gospel to the lowest terms, so that he may
make it intelligible to the people. Then
he has gradually to create a speech adequate
to express its sublime and heavenly truths.
And yet over and over again in the course
of little more than a hundred years that
which looks almost like a miracle has by
the grace of God been achieved. To-day
we have before us the splendid record of
these missionaries' work in spreading so
widely the Word of God and making it
accessible to so many peoples in their
own language. And it is the British and
Foreign Bible Society which has made
this possible ; a society which both at
home and abroad has done more than we
can ever reckon to spread the light of God's
glory. And it is not merely the helper
of the missionary in his task. For through
its agency the Scriptures have entered
many a home where the foot of the mission-

of Revelation 135
ary has never been admitted ; and there
the Bible, left to do its own work without
note or comment, has been the means in
God's hands of awakening and satisfying
the highest aspirations. There is no work
done in England that lays on the Churches
a greater claim than this work of the Bible
Society. The supreme thing in life is
religion, and the supreme thing in religion
is the knowledge of God in Jesus Christ.
We can only fulfil our duty and discharge
our obligations both to Christ and our
fellow-men as we take up with far greater
earnestness and intensity the task of spread
ing this knowledge to the uttermost parts
of the world. There is nothing which
helps us so much in that work as this
Society, whose record is so honourable
and whose work, great as it has been, would
have been far greater had it only been
supported in a more adequate degree.
In this twentieth century, in the full blaze
of our modern knowledge and with the

136 The Record of Revelation
best results of scholarship and criticism
before us, we stiU feel that we have in the
Bible not only the best book in the world,
but a book which stands by itself, with
no other book to be placed by its side.
And having this treasure, we should, as
far as it lies in our power, help this great
Society to carry it to the distant parts of
the earth and to those far lands that are
even now crying out for its teaching.

The Permanent Value of the Old Testament. I x
£2 In my former lecture on the subject
^ of " The Old Testament after Criti
cism," my main desire was to explain what
had been the outcome of the process of
learned investigation that had been devoted
to the task of unravelling the strands of
which the Old Testament is composed,
dating the documents and setting them in
their true order. But I had also the duty
of indicating, in a very brief fashion, what
were the results of this process of critical
investigation upon the views which we hold
of the Bible and the attitude we could
take up to it, how far we could stiU consider
that the Scriptures of the Old Testament
1 Deansgate Lecture, dehvered at the Milton HaU,
Manchester, 1912. 137

138 The Permanent Value
maintained a right to a place in our Bible.
But, inevitably, after I had spoken on the
critical problems, the time which remained
was too brief to deal in any satisfactory
way with the latter of the two questions,
and it is with this question that I am
specially concerned to-night. It touches
the permanent value of the Old Testament,
and it is a topic which presses upon us
very much at the present time. It is not
altogether a new question. Those of you
who are famUiar with the history of the
early Church wiU remember that there were
those in the ranks of the primitive Christians
who doubted whether the Old Testament
maintained its place as a sacred book for
Christians alongside the sayings of the Lord
and the teaching of their own writers.
They felt, and, of course, there was much
which might plausibly be urged in favour
of their contention, that the Old Testament
had been superseded. Some of them took
up a position of antagonism to it ; they

of the Old Testament 139
affirmed that it had come from a power
quite different from the Father of the Lord
Jesus Christ, from a hostUe power or a
limited deity, and that it represented a
stage which Christians had for ever left
behind. Such, of course, was the view of Marcion,
one of the most famous of the second
century heretics. He started from the
position that the God of the Jews was an
inferior power, just and punctilious in His
attitude towards men who were under His
law, but without the grace and mercy of
the Lord Jesus Christ. This God had given
the revelation which we find in the Old
Testament ; but the true revelation that
we find in Jesus came from the highest
realm of all. Now, we do not present the
subject to ourselves in that light. We
recognise, as a matter of course, that the
dualistic theory which underlay what
Marcion had to teach is altogether foreign
to our modes of thought ; it is obsolete

140 The Permanent Value
for us. We do not expect to see Gnosticism
rising up again in the Christian Church.
But you can see how even those who did
not press to that extreme the Pauline
doctrine of the difference between the
condition of things under the Law and
that which had been brought in under the
Gospel, might, nevertheless, be easUy
tempted to ask how it came about that a
sacred book was stiU maintained in authority
in a Church which professed to have left
this Law behind it as a stage for ever over
and done with. To us, in the same way,
the question appeals why it is that a stage
of religion which we aU recognise to be
lower than that in which we ourselves live
should maintain its footing in our sacred
literature ; why the Old Testament, the
religious book of Judaism, should stand
side by side with the religious book of
Christianity. Now, for a long period, it
was possible for people to get over the
difficulty by one expedient or another

of the Old Testament 141
which has ceased to become possible for
ourselves. They asserted that if you only
rightly understood the Old Testament
you would find the true Christian doctrine
in it, and by the key of allegorical inter
pretation they unlocked what they felt to
be the treasure-house of God. There they
found Christian Theology in type, in symbol,
and in prophecy ; and if you only came,
they would tell you, to the literature with
the right method and approached it from
the right point of view, you would be able
to discover all the mysteries of Christianity
comprised within the Old Testament. In
fact, they went so far as to say that this,
after aU, was the Christians' book; it
belonged to the Church, it did not belong
to the Jews at all. You take, for example,
such a work as the Epistle of Barnabas,
in which you see how the problem pressed
upon the Christians to defend the position
that they gave to the Old Testament, whUe,
at the same time, they set the Old Testa-

142 The Permanent Value
ment religion aside. Barnabas takes up
one after another of the various ritual
prescriptions of the Law, and he says
the Jews did not understand its commands
at all. He interprets the laws of clean
and unclean foods to refer to certain virtues
and vices. He thinks, also, that the Jews
made a great mistake and went against
the wUl of God when they buUt the Temple.
When God told them to buUd a temple He
did not mean them to do it hteraUy, for
He did not dweU in a temple made with
hands ; it was only a spiritual temple that
He intended. And so childish do the
arguments of Barnabas appear to-day that
we are tempted to see in them nothing
but a string of fantastic puerUities. But
when we understand the situation in which
he was placed, we realise how the very
logic of that situation drove him to
extricate himself from the difficulty in
this way. You find the same thing
with reference to the allegorical inter-

of the Old Testament 143
pretation which prevaUed in the later
Fathers. Now it is quite impossible for us to
adopt any position of that kind. AUegorism
has for us no place whatever in the inter
pretation of Scripture. Scripture is not,
to quote the well-known saying, a nose of
wax which can be twisted in any direction
according to the fancy or caprice of the
interpreter. You must come to it as a
scientific inquirer, as one who does not
wish to impose his own views upon the
documents that he has to interpret, but,
clearing his mind of aU prepossessions, sets
himself to understand the doctrine and
the documents in their original and true
sense ; to think himself into the mind of
the author ; to feel as he felt ; to look
out upon the world as he looked out
upon it ; to understand the movement
of history and the design of Provi
dence as he understood it ; that is the
supreme triumph of the interpreter, not

144 The Permanent Value
to bring his own views to the Scripture,
but to find out what the writers reaUy
meant in the situation in which they
were placed.
Now, I have caUed attention to the
difficulties in which the early Christians
were placed, because, to a certain extent,
they have their counterpart in attitudes
with which we are more familiar to-day.
We aU know how the ordinary Bible reader
goes to the Old Testament very much as
he goes to the New Testament, with the
idea that he wiU everywhere find the same
kind of thing being told. It is said in
the Old Testament in a more obscure
way ; in the New Testament it is said
clearly. It is told in type or in dark
prophecy in the Old Testament ; the
meaning is written large and plain when
you come to the New. He proves his own
Christian doctrines indiscriminately by
texts chosen from the Old, or chosen from
the New. If he wants, for example, to

of the Old Testament 145
discover the teaching of Scripture upon
the doctrine of the Atonement, he wUl go
just as readUy to the book of Leviticus
as to the Epistle to the Hebrews, or, in
aU probabUity, he wUl go to both, and to
many other writers as weU, and weld them
into a composite amalgam and caU that
the Biblical doctrine of the Atonement.
But now we have to break radicaUy with
that point of view. There must be no
casting a backward glance to a position
which scholarship has rendered completely
untenable ; we must take the Old Testa
ment for what it is, and we must see
whether we can vindicate for it its position
alongside of the New.
I do not think that it is quite an easy
task to do this. And yet I believe that,
if we wiU only put ourselves at the right
point of view, those of us who are the
most surely convinced that Christianity
is the absolute religion and the final
revelation of God may, nevertheless, while
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146 The Permanent Value
we do not find in the Old Testament the
Christian scheme of teaching, and what is
far more important, the perfect type of
character and the supreme revelation in a
Personality, accord to it a place not only
of honour and of distinction, but a place of
indispensable quality and of inalienable
right to be regarded as an integral part of
our Christian Scriptures.
We are famUiar with the saying, " When
that which is perfect is come, that which
is in part shaU be done away." And it
might seem, at first sight, as if those of us
who recognised a lower stage of religion in
the Old Testament than what we find in the
New, were by the very force of that principle
driven logically into the position of exclud
ing the Old Testament from our sacred
literature. But I hope to make good the
thesis that the very fact that the Old
Testament is imperfect is the very reason
why we want to keep it in the Bible. I
know that this will seem a paradox to

of the Old Testament 147
many minds when it is first uttered. But I
will put it to you in this way. If it were
true, as people often used to think, that
the Old Testament said just the same
things as the New, only it said them in a
darker and more difficult form, then we
might reasonably say : " Well, life is short ;
religion is a very grave matter ; I may
easUy be misled by what is hard to interpret.
Why should I trouble myself with a book
which speaks in this dim and uncertain
way, which needs exceptional penetration
to discover the Christian meaning in it,
when I can go to the New Testament and
find the Christian revelation set out in
clear and unambiguous language ? " It
would be hard indeed to vindicate for the
Old Testament its permanent value and
position alongside of the New if it only told
us in a roundabout way what the New
Testament tells us in a direct way ; if it
were just the New Testament, so to speak,
written in hieroglyphics. It is not that.

148 The Permanent Value
The value of the Old Testament lies
precisely in the fact that it is not the New
Testament and it does not contain the New
Testament doctrine.
But before I pass on to vindicate, so
far as I can, this position, I want to touch
upon certain types of value which some
might feel ought to be prominent in any
estimate that we form of the Old Testa
ment. For example, it is not wonderful
that in our own day a great deal of attention
is called to the value of the Old Testament
to the social reformer. A modern student,
as he goes back to those burning words of
the prophets, or as he reads certain regu
lations in the Hebrew Law, feels that he
has, in them, expressed in language of great
eloquence and power, principles which are
dear to himself and which he longs to see
applied to the conditions of our own country,
to heal so many of its social and its economic
wounds. Now, the Old Testament here has
unquestionably a very great value ; but

of the Old Testament 149
we must be careful that we see where the
value really lies and under what limitations
it suffers. I need hardly labour the point
that you cannot take legislation which was
designed for a people in a somewhat
primitive condition of social development,
legislation devised in the ancient world,
in a country with the geographical conditions
of Palestine and its economic development,
and, without more ado, apply this to the
conditions of England at the present time.
The value of the Old Testament in that
respect remains, if only we are willing not
to press its language too much, but to work
back, behind the expression of the principles,
to the principles themselves, that so, when
we have understood the principles, those
eternal principles of right and justice and
mercy which were expressed with such
unparaUeled power by the Hebrew prophets,
we may, having warmed and thrUled our
own soul and enlarged our ideals by their
burning words, go forth with a new courage

150 The Permanent Value
and a clearer insight to apply those principles
to the conditions of our own time. That,
of course, wiU always make the Old Testa
ment a book precious to the social reformer
(and who of us that has felt on his heart
the burden of our country's misery but
longs with all his power that he, too, may
share in such a movement ?), and all the
more valuable because the New Testament
lays comparatively httle stress or deals very
little with problems of that kind ; so that
the Old Testament, so far as national
and social life is concerned, is not left behind
by the New Testament. Principles are
expressed in the New Testament more
universal and deeper and more inward
than the principles which were expressed
in the Old ; but the apphcations to the
social and economic conditions, to questions
of politics, are not made in the New
Testament in the same way in which they
are made in the Old.
Or, again, we may feel that much of the

of the Old Testament 151
value of the Old Testament lies in its
extraordinary literary power, and we do
well to lay a great deal of stress upon that.
Too often, under the pressure of our newer
ways of looking at things, we are tempted
to withdraw the expression from the range
of what we call inspiration, because we
are nervously afraid of anything that
should seem to savour of verbal inspiration.
But it is not of this that I am thinking.
For us it would be impossible, I suppose,
to go back to the old idea of dictated
utterances. We do not look upon the
prophet as one who was a passive instru
ment of the Holy Spirit. He was not a
mere channel through which the Water
of Life was poured. We know now,
especiaUy since we have understood how
large a part experience plays in the creation
of Scripture, that the inspiration of the
prophet was a more complex thing than
this ; that it resulted from the inter
action of the human and the Divine factors ;

152 The Permanent Value
that, as a matter of fact, it was not the
dictation by an external Spirit to a passive
recipient who wrote down what came into
his mind from that external source, with
out himself co-operating either in thought
or expression with the process as it went
on and found its ultimate expression in
the written word. No, the inspiration was
something which seized upon the man and,
so to speak, heightened aU his powers.
But if it heightened the power of spiritual
intuition and the firmness of spiritual grasp,
along with that heightening of thought and
emotion there went also the heightening
of the power of expression. It was the
whole man, so to speak, who was captured
and subdued by this invasion of his person
ality, so that he was lifted to heights, not
simply of thought and of insight to which,
in his normal condition, he was a stranger,
but he felt that his lips also had been
touched by the glowing coal and that his
tongue had been loosed to express in

of the Old Testament 153
grander and more glorious language the
great thoughts which surged up in his
mind. And so I would not withdraw the
expression from the influence of inspiration.
Much of the Old Testament belongs to the
class of great literature, and we do it an
injustice when we do not see, even in the
very form in which it has come to us, some
sign and token of its heavenly as well as
its human origin. And therefore it is, and
it is quite fit that it should be so, that the
language of the Bible is touched with an
elevation and with a majesty, with a
splendour of diction and of epigrammatic
power which lifts it into the range of the
great literature of the world, makes it a
universal book. And so we also will hold
that the Bible is precious to us as great
literature. Yes, but so also is Shake
speare ; so also is Plato ; so also is Dante.
But we do not look on their writings on
that account as sacred books. It is not
in the literary quality that the permanent

154 The Permanent Value
value of the Bible really lies. It lies behind
and beneath that in something deeper and
more universal stiU.
And so one might go on pointing out this
and that element in the Bible which
remain a permanent possession of the
human race, though it is not in them that
the unique value of the Bible reaUy lies.
I suppose that many, if they were asked
where they thought that it lay, would lay
their stress upon the fact that in the Bible
— in the Old Testament of which I am
speciaUy speaking as weU as in the New
— we have the only revelation given by
God ; the truth about theology, about the
great doctrines of God and man, of sin and
redemption and human destiny ; that we
go to it, in other words, in order to learn
truth. But I hope that we shall get
away, before we have finished, from the
idea that the main value of the Bible
consists in this : that it is the revelation
of truth which we could not otherwise have

of the Old Testament 155
discovered. It is not in its theological
quality that the Bible is most valuable
and precious to us. Let us remember that
there are other values besides this intel
lectual value of giving to us the truly
accurate doctrines. There is such a thing
as emotional value, and there is much
which we read in the Old Testament to
which we should do the gravest injustice
were we to regard it as mainly given to
us as the expression in scientifically precise
language of some truth about God or about
man. The emotional value — something
which is indefinable, and that escapes us as
we try to pin it down and exactly define
it, but which we can all of us feel as we
read the literature that is suffused with
emotion — -that is something which gives
to the Bible much of its power over the
hearts of men. You know how it is even
with our own hymns. You bring an
entirely wrong standard to some of these
hymns if you coldly analyse them and

156 The Permanent Value
treat them as scientific statements of
theological truth ; and yet you would not
be without them, because you feel that,
although they could not be treated in this
way and might even, indeed, become
grotesque instead of inspiring were you to
apply to them so inappropriate a standard,
yet they have the faculty of stirring and
moving your heart as the statement of an
abstract doctrine cannot possibly do. You
read the familiar hymn : "Oh worship
the King aU- glorious above ! " and you
find language used in that hymn which
has its roots far back in mythology.
Oh tell of His might,
Oh sing of His grace,
Whose robe is the light,
Whose canopy space ;
His chariots of wrath
The deep thunder clouds form,
And dark is His path
On the wings of the storm.
You take a hymn like that and you ask
the systematic theologian who has no sense

of the Old Testament 157
of poetry, the man who is utterly prosaic,
to interpret this verse for you, and if he is
a man of an old-fashioned type, he wUl
distU from it a consistent bit of theology,
which wUl move you to ridicule as you
read it, as something too childish for
reasonable men to believe. And yet, when
you sing these words in the great congre
gation, do you not feel that your hearts
are stirred and uplifted and moved and
swayed by them ? The thrUl that goes
through you with the swing and beauty
of the music and with the singing of the
vast multitude is inspired also by the
language which you are singing, saturated
though it is with mythological ideas which
go back to the very dawn of human thought.
You feel that it is poetry that you are
singing and not theology. It appeals to
something within you other than your
cold abstract reason. It stirs you, and
you are not ashamed of the emotion since
you feel that this has its legitimate appeal

158 The Permanent Value
as well as the appeal which is addressed
to your reason. And it helps us to appraise
the Old Testament more surely and justly
when we go to it and we find language
which we may not be able to work into
our schemes of theology, which does not
lend itself to the scientific statement of
doctrine, but speaks to something within
our hearts which is deeper than all our
reason, and touches us at the elemental
bases of our being, and we feel, as we read
such words, stimulated and uplifted and
filled with an emotion which is among the
most precious things that great literature
can bring to us.
And we want in our conception of the
Old Testament to leave ample room not
simply for its teaching upon doctrine or
its revelation of spiritual mysteries, but
for this element of emotional value, which
does not suffer itself to be defined in a
precise way, but is an atmosphere that we
must drink in, and feel, as we drink it, that

of the Old Testament 159
it fills and irradiates our souls. But I
would not say, even apart from this, that
the great value of the Old Testament
consists in its statements upon theological
subj ects . It has an abundance of theological
material which we could not do without ;
but it is not there, I think, that the main
stress ought to be laid. I will illustrate
this by passing for a moment or two to the
case of the New Testament, because for
ourselves it comes out more clearly in the
New than it does in the Old. We are
sometimes told that Christianity, after all,
did not bring anything new into the
world ; at any rate, anything that was
both new and true ; because, it is said,
you could parallel everything that Jesus
said from other sources. Now, I do not
want to discuss in this lecture the question
whether that is true. I think it is over
stated, and I believe that the parallels
which are put forward — and I have read a
good many — *are not parallels that will

160 The Permanent Value
always bear a close and critical examina
tion. But I am not concerned to argue the
matter on that ground, because the very
putting of the question in this form shows
that the real Christian position has not been
properly grasped at aU. Nor yet do I
want to lay stress on the consideration,
that it is one thing to quote isolated
parallels raked in from aU quarters of the
globe, and that it is quite another thing to
parallel a whole system in itself by a simUar
coUection of sayings uttered by one man.
It is impossible, I believe, to bring together
within the same compass a coUection of
sayings which wiU match in their quality,
their first-rate religious and moral quality,
the saying**, of Jesus. That, again, I do
not wish to press ; I do not wish to put
the issue there at all. No Christian could
admit, without being untrue to his own
faith, that the supreme thing in the New
Testament is the theology, not even the

of the Old Testament 161
theology or the teaching of Jesus Him
self. He could not do it, I say, without
being untrue to the deepest element in
Christianity. For the deepest thing is not
by any means what Jesus said. As I have
put it elsewhere : it was not the word that
Jesus uttered, but the Word that Jesus
was, which is the vital thing. The great
contribution which Jesus made to religion
was not what He said, not even His doctrine
of the Fatherhood of God, interpreted as
He would have interpreted it ; the great
contribution that Jesus made to religion
was Jesus Himself : His character, His
life, His activity, His personality ; and
we measure His quality by the impact of
that personality upon those who knew Him
and upon human history. It is there that
we find His true significance.
Now I do not want to say this about
Jesus and not go on to say the same about
the Old Testament. The same thing in
its measure holds true there ; that it was
N.S. n

1 62 The Permanent Value
not the message which the Old Testament
writers uttered, but it was something which
lay deeper than their message, and lay
behind it ; it was the experience through
which they passed ; it was the sense of
God and their fellowship with Him ; the
personal religion of the men themselves,
the character which they revealed ; it was
these things which were really more
important than the principles which they
uttered. If you wiU look, for example,
at the case of our Lord once more, what
you feel is that, even as revelation, what
He was was greater than anything that He
could say. He was limited, to begin
with, by our human terminology ; He was
limited also by the capacity of those to
whom He was speaking ; and it was not
possible for Him to put all His meaning
and all His thought of God and of man
into any words that He might speak,
great and incomparable though these words
might be. But what it was not possible

of the Old Testament 1 63
to do in speech, it was possible to do in
personality, in life, in character, in action.
You might say, indeed, when people dis
tinguish between revelation and redemption,
between the Person and the Work ; you
might say, and it would be the simple
unvarnished truth to say it, that the
supreme revelation which Jesus gave was
given in His redeeming act, not in anything
which He said, because there was no
language which could utter it ; but in
something which He achieved, in the char
acter He exhibited, in the life He lived
before men, in the death He died in fidelity
to His mission, and in men's behalf and
for their salvation.
And so also in the Old Testament. We
have a religious experience, first of all
national and then individual — a religious
experience which was greater than any
verbal expression of it could be, great
though we must admit that expression
is.

164 The Permanent Value

You take the greatest of the prophets,
for example, Jeremiah, and anyone who
has steeped himself in the records of that
wonderful prophet's career must feel that
greater than anything he said — 'although I
do not forget that he was the prophet of
the New Covenant — was the personality of
the man himself and the type of religion
and fellowship with God which he was the
first to discover, and in which he has found
so many foUowers. And this brings me
to the question, Where does the supreme
religious value of the Old Testament reside ?
What seems to me often to have been the
great mistake in the older attitude towards
the Bible, and towards the Old Testament
in particular, was that it was too atomistic ;
instead of seeing that the real value of
the Bible lay in the Bible as a whole, men
held it to reside equally in any bit of the
Bible when you took it out and isolated it
from the rest. Wherever you opened the
Bible there you had the word of God,

of the Old Testament 1 65
which by a not too Ulegitimate process of
interpretation, might be made to convey
a message to your own soul. That was
the prevalent idea. The difficulty might
be put in our old proverb ; it made it
impossible for people to see the wood for
the trees. They did not realise that after
aU it was the conception of the Bible as
a whole which was the vital thing ; that
it was there that you could most safely
rest your case for its Divine quality, its
permanent value ; and, hence you con
stantly had snippets of the Bible treated in
isolation from the rest as though they
contained to the full all the religious value
and Divine quality which ought to have
been claimed only for the Scripture as a
whole. Now it is with this atomistic way of
looking at Scripture that we must radically
break. More, we must recognise that when
we are talking about the Bible as revelation ;
or when we are talking about the Old

1 66 The Permanent Value
Testament alone as revelation ; that it is
the Old Testament as a whole, or the Bible
as a whole. Now, you wiU not misunder
stand me to mean that there are not
multitudes of passages both short and
long which you could take out of the Old
Testament that have their self-evidencing
Divine quality within them to any man
with the spiritual insight to detect it and
the spiritual faculty to hear the voice of
God when He is really speaking. Some of
the most precious of things for aU of us
in our religious life are just some of those
passages in the Old Testament. But you
wiU see that the stress laid on those passages
leads you into a difficult situation when
you want to defend the Bible as a whole ;
because at once you are brought to this
position: that there are passages which
move you in this way — 'yes, but there are
passages which do not. There is much
that seems to be quite irrelevant in the
Bible. Looking upon it from this point of

of the Old Testament 167
view you do not understand why it is
there. You take unpromising material, let
us say, like the account of the partition
of the land of Canaan in the Book of
Joshua, or the genealogies in the First
Book* of Chronicles, and you feel that,
after all, these things do not speak to your
soul in this way. No one would choose
the first chapters of the Book of Chronicles
for devotional reading except at the dictates
of a theory he might hold, that though
he did not know how it was done, yet
God had so appointed it that the reading
of any portion of Scripture would bring its
blessing to him whether he realised any
spiritual significance in it or not. I can
quite understand people taking up that
attitude and defending that point of view ;
but surely for ourselves that is too childish
a position to be possible. We do not
believe that there is any devotional value
to be found naturaUy and spontaneously
in literature of that kind. In all this our

1 68 The Permanent Value
difficulty lies here, that when we lay the
stress upon the purple passages we incline,
if we are logical, to rule out drab pas>
sages as irrelevant, and say that these
things after aU should not be there. Now
I wish to take a truly conservative posi
tion. The position I reaUy want to defend
is this, that all the Bible is valuable if
we know how to approach it in the right
way. You may feel that the case is even worse
than I have put it, because you find what is
not only useless for religious purposes but
what is positively misleading and harmful.
You take, for example, the accounts of the
wars of the Hebrews and the extermination
of the Canaanites in the Book of Joshua,
or the simUar stories in the Book of Judges.
When Ulfilas translated the Bible he left
out the Books of Kings because he was
afraid of the effect that these warlike
books would have upon his too warlike
Goths if he allowed them to get into their

of the Old Testament 169
hands. Or you take again such a book as
that of Ecclesiastes, which gives you a
radicaUy false view of life. It is not true
that all things are vanity. It is not true
that God has a beautiful, harmonious plan
of the world's order, and that He is deliber
ately withholding it from men so that man
does not know how to see his way aright.
It is not true that man is like the beasts,
and that there is no hope for him in the
next life. All these things from the
Christian point of view are not only things
left behind ; they are a contradiction and
negation of what is dearest to us in the
Gospel, and indeed of much which we find
in the Old Testament itself. But I want
to find a theory which shaU enable me to
retain such a book as Ecclesiastes, and yet
to recognise to the fuU that the book is
what it is, and not to try to trim it into
harmony with different views in the Old
Testament, or different views in the New,
but to aUow it to stand for just what it is,

170 The Permanent Value
an expression of a despairing pessimism,
an outlook upon human life which has
become impossible for ourselves. For me
the Old Testament would become greatly
impoverished if such a book as Ecclesiastes
were to be removed from it. At the same
time I do not think for one moment that
Ecclesiastes gives us a true outlook upon
life. How, then, are we to form such a theory
of Scripture as shaU bring us to the point
of view of accepting the Old Testament as
it stands for what it is, and what it reaUy
means to be ? Not if we go to the Old
Testament expecting that wherever we
open it there we find the truth of God ;
we may find it, we may not. Nor yet
expecting that we must necessarily find a
true rule for human life. That we shall
find often ; at other times we do not find
it, or we find wrong rules. If we are to
approach the theme from a Christian point
of view we must do so with the frankest

of the Old Testament 171
recognition of the imperfections of the
Old Testament, and find in these a clue to
our true theory. And when we do this,
we at once begin to see daylight, if we are
only prepared to open our eyes to it. We
realise that the value of the Old Testament
consists in this, that it is the record of an
exceptional movement of the Divine Spirit
upon a chosen and a guided people, taking
them at a low level and gradually leading
them to a higher and higher level until it
became possible for them to receive the
supreme revelation in God's Only Begotten
Son. Now, when we see this, we do not
any longer come to the Old Testament
with illegitimate demands upon it ; we
do not ask that the Old Testament shall
give us all that we find in the New ; we
ask that it shaU show us the ordered
progression which shall move on and up
to that supreme revelation. And when
we look at things in this way we realise
that the Old Testament has become of the

172 The Permanent Value
greatest possible value to us. It shows us
in the first place the history of this unique
action of God upon that chosen people,
and it shows us the process of slow education
given by God to a people (no doubt gifted
with exceptional religious genius, otherwise
He presumably would not have chosen
them), but a people which from the very
circumstances of its origin and environ
ment had to be taken at a stage little
removed from heathenism. We watch the
process of the Spirit's action as the leaven
slowly leavens the whole lump ; and we
must, in order that we may understand it,
know the history in which the Spirit was
working in this exceptional fashion. If
the revelation is a process which comes
through a history, we can understand the
revelation only as we know the history,
and, in this we find the meaning for very
much in the Old Testament that, in our
first impatience, we might have been
tempted to cast aside as irrelevant. There

of the Old Testament 173
is much in it that seems to have no special
moral or spiritual lesson to communicate ;
we cannot distU from it any theological
doctrine, or find any guidance for our own
individual or social life. It appears to be
far removed from any spiritual interest,
to be touching questions of national life
or individual adventure. Yes, but suppose
it removed from the Old Testament ;
what would be our difficulty then ? We
should be face to face with some of the
documents in which the Spirit was finding
His most congenial and His loftiest expres
sion, and be without the key to the history
which would enable us to understand it.
We should be like those who have just one
half of a conversation related to them, or
like we are when reading one of those
biographies in which we have all the letters
from one side but none of those to which
they are the replies. We should miss what
we have given to us in this historical
sequence, the atmosphere, the background,

174 The Permanant Value
which are indispensable to us for under
standing the revelation, and that is why
these things are there. They are there
not as a guide to human life or as a revel
ation of theological doctrine ; they are
there because the revelation that is to
be found in the literature could not be
rightly appreciated or understood without
them. And once you have got away from the
atomistic method of approaching Scripture
and do not come to it with the demand,
which it was never intended to satisfy,
that at every point it should be dealing
with spiritual or with moral issues, when
you have got to that point you see that
these things are reaUy indispensable. But
not only is this the case, but even where
you have the imperfect or the definitely
false, there you have also the same fact to
recognise. For it was necessary for us
that we should see not only the light side,
but also the dark. For us, Ecclesiastes is

of the Old Testament 175
precious from an historical point of view,
because it shows to us possibilities in
Judaism that we might not otherwise have
anticipated. To many of us, indeed, it
seems to be what would be the truest word
upon human life for ourselves also, if it
were not for the fact that we felt that our
optimism was justified by Christ. And so
the dark shadows are necessary for the
complete picture as weU as the brilliant
points of light ; and unless we have them
all and can paint them all into the single
picture we have not rightly understood the
Old Testament as we should. And the
question whether we have truly understood
the Old Testament is not by any means to
be answered by saying that we know it
very well ; that we have read it all and
read it over and over again, and can give
chapter and verse with the utmost fluency.
No, that is not to understand the Old
Testament or to appreciate its real signifi
cance. There are people who have the

176 The Permanent Value
Old Testament at their ringers' ends, but
they have never had it inside their brains.
At any rate, there are some who, if you
ask them what the fourth verse of the fifth
chapter of the Book of Amos says, might be
able to tell you without any trouble what
ever ; yes, but if you ask them what
contribution did Amos make to the develop
ment of the religion of Israel, what new
thing did he say, they wiU be utterly
confounded by such a question ; it would
never have occurred to them that such a
question could be put because it was obvious
to them that if you opened Amos you would
find the Gospel there, just in the same way
as if you opened Leviticus ; that right
from the beginning onward, the same truth
was being taught and expressed, now in
this form and now in that. Yet the
question is really to be answered in this
way that that man has truly understood the
Old Testament who is able to retrace in
his mind the whole development of the

of the Old Testament 177
religion of Israel ; who can take it from
its origin, and before whose mind it unrolls
itself as a continuous panorama ; who can
watch the whole movement, the interaction
of the political and the social environment
on the whole ; who can say what was the
original deposit that was entrusted to that
people and how, as they put it out to
interest, it grew at this point and at that ;
how this man made a contribution to
morality and that man a contribution to
religion ; and how the whole moved steadily
forward as one great drama tiU it reached
its final and its supreme culmination.
That is the man who understands really
the true significance of the Old Testament.
Not the man who knows the letter of it
and can quote it fluently and glibly ; but
the man who is able to put his finger on
every point of the development, to indicate
how an idea emerges for the first time, and
how it is taken up and developed by those
who come after ; and in this way he sees
N.S. 12

178 The Permanent Value
the whole history as a great connected
movement, and seeing it in this form he has
within himself the witness to its Divine
origin. Yes, but perhaps you wiU say that when
all this is done, after aU, we are stUl face
to face with this : that those of us who are
Christians believe that that stage has been
superseded, and, of course, have ourselves
the final truth. But let us ask ourselves,
did Jesus Himself and the early Christian
Church grow out of Judaism ? Would
Christianity itself be explicable to us apart
from the Old Testament ? How could we
understand the language in which it is
given to us, the terminology which had a
long history behind it in Israel, the ideas
with which they operated, the motives to
which they appealed, and the connexion of
all these with a national history unless we
had the Old Testament to enable us to do
it ? For us, however incomparable we may
believe the New Testament, the Old Testa-

of the Old Testament 179
ment must for ever remain indispensable,
an integral part of the Christian revelation
containing much which did not need to be
repeated in the New Testament, but even
where it dealt with characteristic New
Testament themes, giving to us the only
key by which we are enabled to understand
the revelation which came through Christ
and the men whom He had trained. That,
then, is the true significance of the Old
Testament. I wUl not say that we must
apply this repudiation of the atomistic
method simply to the Old Testament. We
must apply it to the whole Bible, and just
as we say that much of the Old Testament
is unintelligible apart from the history it
enshrines, and that history and its record
gain their value and significance because
only through them is it possible to under
stand the spiritual ideals ; so, I say, for
Christians, we cannot understand the New
Testament in isolation. We cannot cut it
off from its historical root and treat it as

180 The Permanent Value
though it had come without antecedents
or preparation. For us, the action of the
Spirit of God is as real in the Old Testament
as in the New, even if it is less intense.
And Jesus Himself, who fed His own soul
upon the Old Testament and used it as the
Sword of the Spirit in His conflicts with
evU, who appealed to its authority, and
who found in it the means of feUowship
with God and the nutriment of His own
spiritual life, is, and must be, for aU
Christians the law as to their attitude to
the Old Testament. On matters of literary
criticism or of documentary analysis, which
lay altogether outside the scope of His
mission, we are not bound by the language
that He used to the people of His own
time ; but in His attitude towards the
Old Testament as a whole we Christians
must copy Him, and never suppose because
it has pleased God to give to us in His Son
a revelation which surpasses all that has
come through any other channel to the

of the Old Testament 181
sons of men, that, therefore, we can afford
to despise or to leave behind the revelation
apart from which His own would have been
impossible.

The Permanent Value of the Old Testament. II
P7 Probably many Christians have been
¦ tempted to suppose that it would have
been better for the Church if she had broken
loose from the religion of Israel altogether
and abandoned the Old Testament to the
Synagogue. There were those in the second
century who took that view, and it is not
difficult to sympathise with some of the
motives which impelled them to it. I
believe, however, that the Church was
Divinely guided in the resolve to keep the
Old Testament as part of her sacred litera
ture, though few would deny that she has
not been wholly successful in escaping the
perils involved in her choice. Yet it was
not for a very long time that she became
clearly aware, if indeed she has even yet
183

184 The Permanent Value
understood the significance of that action
wherein she budded better than she knew.
Too often the meaning of the Old Testament
has been largely missed because its readers
have insisted on the anachronism of carry
ing back the Gospel into the religion of
Israel. The great significance of the earlier
literature has been supposed to lie in the
presentation of the Gospel in type, in
symbol, and prophecy. This seems to me
a hopeless line on which to defend the value
of the Old Testament for ourselves to-day.
For if the main drift of the earlier literature
is that it said in an obscure and roundabout
way what is expressed in the New Testa
ment in a plain and direct way it seems to
follow that the New Testament largely
supersedes the Old. When that which is
perfect is come that which is in part has
been done away. What measure of truth
underlies this description of the Old Testa
ment I need not inquire, but in dweUing
on the place of the Old Testament in the

of the Old Testament 185
religious life of to-day it is obvious that we
must present it in some other light than
to say that the Old Testament is simply
the New Testament in hieroglyphics.
At the outset we ought frankly to recog
nise the limitations of the Old Testament,
a duty imposed upon us not simply by
fidelity to patent facts but by the example
of our Lord. That the Old Testament
represents a lower religious stage than the
New Testament, that it is marred by out
bursts of ferocity, of national and even
personal hate, by vindictiveness, and in
tolerance, ought to be confessed without
reserve. But in justice we ought to remem
ber how much can be said on the other
side, even with reference to those qualities
where the literature is most vulnerable.
Had we taken the lessons of the Sermon
on the Mount to heart, the defects of the
Old Testament would have caused us no
trouble. That it does not stand upon the
level of the Gospel ought to be a common-

186 The Permanent Value
place rather than a paradox. At its very
best it is true it rises to the New Testament
level, in Jeremiah's prophecy of the New
Covenant, in the description of the Suffer
ing Servant of Yahweh, in the Book of
Jonah, in some of the Psalms such as the
51st and 73rd. But this wide range of
diversity reminds us how difficult it is to
speak of the Old Testament as a whole, to
construct a formula for example which shaU
embrace the Book of Jonah at one end of the
scale and the Book of Esther at the other.
It would be foolish to seek in this large liter
ature for a spiritual or ethical uniformity.
Whatever theories people may hold, their
practice clearly proclaims their conviction
that it is not equally authoritative and
helpful throughout. Now as we shall see
this does not mean that the less directly
helpful portions ought not to be there at all,
it means that we must not misunderstand
the purpose for which they are included.
And it is specially necessary for us to re-

of the Old Testament 187
member this in view of the progress of
modern knowledge. We must try to throw
the emphasis in the right place and to put
the Old Testament where the progress of
physical science, literary criticism or his
torical research cannot nullify the claims
that we make for it.
Why then do we believe that the Old
Testament with all its limitations still re
mains precious to us who live in the clear
sunlight of the Gospel ? First of all be
cause the New Testament itself would be
largely unintelligible apart from the Old.
It everywhere pre-supposes the Old Testa
ment, builds upon the foundation it had
laid, speaks to a people who had been
trained by it. Jesus Himself stood in the
succession of the Prophets. He summed
up in Himself all the religious meaning of
Israel as the revealer of God to the world.
He transcended indeed the national limit
ations of His race and became the great
Prophet of the world, but His work was

188 The Permanent Value
rooted in the Old Testament and would
have been impossible without it. And
how are we to understand the theology of
Paul or the author of the Epistle to the
Hebrews without reference to that Old
Testament literature in which theh heart
and intellect had been steeped ? Further,
we cannot forget that Christianity is itself
the culmination of the religion of the Old
Testament. It is true that the old argu
ment from prophecy is largely obsolete,
partly because the centre of gravity in
apologetics has shifted from external
credentials to intrinsic worth, and partly
because the propounders of that argument
could not see the wood for the trees. But
in a larger sense the earlier revelation is a
prophecy of Christ since it moves forward
to Him so steaddy as its goal. It further
becomes a very important element in
Apologetics to trace the history of Hebrew
religion and show how the trend of it
pointed inevitably to the Gospel. Once

of the Old Testament 189
more there is much in the Old Testament
that we do not find in the New, Just in
virtue of the fact that the New Testament
writers pre-suppose the Old, a great deal
is omitted that must have been included had
they been building from the foundations.
Much in the Prophets for example, especi
ally in their treatment of social questions,
remains of permanent importance to our
selves, at any rate in the ideals and princi
ples by which they were animated if not
in the precise applications which they
made to the conditions of their own time.
Or again the New Testament has nothing
corresponding to the Book of Psalms or the
Book of Job. Moreover, we cannot forget
our Lord's own attitude to the Old Testa
ment. It was discriminating and free it is
true, but it was also reverent and sym
pathetic. To it He turned for solace and
spiritual refreshment and with it He re
pelled the temptations that assailed Him.
Perhaps the value of the Old Testament

190 The Permanent Value
will become clearer to us if I now turn to
speak of its positive qualities. We cannot
lay too much stress on the fact that revela
tion was a process in history, that it was
everywhere in the closest contact with life.
This helps us to avoid certain difficulties
which are often experienced. I have
already said that there is much in the Old
Testament which does not minister directly
to our spiritual needs and which may not
be authoritative for our theology. But it
is nevertheless rightly included in the Bible,
for we were not intended to use Scripture
simply as a collection of detached utter
ances, every one of which must have an
immediate message of God to the soul.
There is much in the Old Testament that
would satisfy this test, there is much,
however, which would not satisfy it. We
need to gain a conception that shall find
a place for those parts of Scripture which
do not lend themselves to immediate edifi
cation. And we gain this when we remem-

of the Old Testament 191
ber that the vital thing is not to understand
this or that section which speaks directly
to us but to understand the Old Testament
as a whole, as a great record of God's
revealing and redeeming activity in Israel.
Everywhere the Old Testament is in inti
mate touch with life. It is vivid and con
crete in the highest degree. Hence the
historical books, even where they deal with
purely secular matters and convey no special
message, are yet of great value for our
conception of the whole. They supply the
necessary atmosphere and background in
which we see revelation at work. Even
those parts of the Old Testament which
seem to us most in conflict with the temper
of the Gospel may have their right to a
place in Scripture vindicated from this
point of view. What, for example, are
we to make of the Book of Ecclesiastes?
Some would say it is in the Old Testament,
therefore it cannot give us a false view of
life, and an orthodox meaning would be

192 The Permanent Value
put into it by exegetical violence. Others
would say its teaching is radically false,
therefore it ought not to be in the Old
Testament. I agree with neither. In
spite of qualities that compel our admira
tion the book presents a view of existence
fundamentally incompatible with Christian
ity. It is not true that life is vanity and
striving after wind, that progress is a
delusion, that man dies like the beasts, that
the knowledge by which men might order
their lives aright has been withheld by
God, that existence is an evil which may
be palliated but cannot be cured. And
yet the Old Testament, from my point of
view, would be distinctly impoverished by
the omission of the book from the Canon.
It sets before us possibilities in Judaism
which we ought not to ignore and helps
us to realise more intensely how great was
the urgency that the Saviour should come.
Take Christ from the world, and Ecclesi
astes describes with clear-sighted despair

of the Old Testament 193
what for many of us existence would mean.
This, it is true, is an extreme case, but it
helps us to a more adequate sense of what
the Old Testament is, the record of the
spiritual history of the Hebrew people.
The Old Testament then is the precipitate
of a great religious experience. It came
through a people which combined in a
unique degree a genius for religion with a
passion for righteousness. It worshipped
a God who counted all religion as vain which
was not penetrated throughout with an
enthusiasm for conduct. It fused religion
and ethics, those elements so often dis
joined, into an inseparable unity. It gave
the sanction of religion to the loftiest
morality in a way hitherto unknown. Not
untruly has it been said that in matters of
religion the Hebrews appear among the
peoples of antiquity as a sober man among
drunkards. And their religious develop
ment was guided and inspired by a series
of teachers who stand alone in the history
N.S. 13

194 The Permanent Value
of our race. We can watch the religion
grow under the hands of its great leaders :
the Titanic figure of Moses who created the
nation and the religion ; the rugged Elijah
with his wrathful protest alike against the
worship of the Tyrian Baal and the judicial
murder of Naboth ; Amos the prophet of
a righteousness so inflexible that the nation
must be sacrificed to its vindication ; the
broken-hearted Hosea who through the
love that rose above contempt and injury
learnt to understand the love that would
not give Israel up ; Isaiah with his thought
of God's holiness and majesty, of the
judgment that must come upon the sinful
people, and of the righteous remnant under
its Messianic King ; Jeremiah, the greatest
of them all, who by his doctrine of the New
Covenant transformed the very conception
of religion ; Ezekiel with his doctrine of
God's glory to which the whole course of
history is made subservient ; the Second
Isaiah with his wonderful interpretation

of the Old Testament 195
of Israel as the Servant of Yahweh who
proclaimed the true God to the world and
suffered for the sin of the heathen ; the
author of the Book of Jonah with his
matchless proclamation of God's all-em
bracing love ; the thinker who wrestled with
the dark problem of evil and uttered his
thoughts in one of the great poems of the
world ; the Psalmists who took the teaching
of the Prophets and enshrined it in their
moving and inspiring lyrics. And as we
thus learn to know the life-history of the
religion the Old Testament becomes a
new book to us. We do not restrict our
reading to this or that favourite portion,
we recognise that even more important
is it to understand these as parts of a
mightier whole. It is not a system of
theology, an ordered and coherent state
ment of the lofty truths about God and
man, but something far better than that.
It is a great collection of the testimonies
of experts on the deep things of God, and

196 The Permanent Value
it shows us revelation at work not in a
restricted area but on a vast national scale.
And while the development is intensely
human it is not exclusively such. There
must have been features in Israel which
led God to choose it as the fittest vehicle
of His revelation. And yet Israel alone
would have been unequal to the task. It
thought of its own religion as resting on a
Covenant between God and the nation.
The action of the living God was realised
throughout and with peculiar vividness by
its great spiritual leaders. When we think
of the theatre on which its history was
enacted, when we remember the great
critical events through which the people
came to a deeper and deeper apprehension
of God's nature and His wa3'S, the impres
sion is borne in upon us that here we have
something for the creation of which mere
flesh and blood even at its best is inade
quate. Here the God who is never absent
from history strikes into its stream with

of the Old Testament 197
an intenser energy. And thus even for us
of the New Testament His Word lives on
in the Old with a vitality and power that
could belong to no mere human utterances.
As we ponder these ancient writings we feel
across all the gulf of centuries, amid
conditions so utterly different, that quality
within them which speaks to our inmost
heart. Their unshrinking application of
morality, not simply to individual but to
social and to political affairs, their unwaver
ing faith in the triumph of the Kingdom
of God, the disinterested piety which sought
God for Himself alone and conceived
fellowship with Him to be man's highest
good, rebuke our own opportunism, our
despair, our selfish religionism. And how
inexpressibly precious the great passages
remain ! The noble rhetoric in which
they are written stirs and thrills us as no
other literature can, and in seasons of
great spiritual emotion and stress there are
no words like the dear familiar words to

198 Permanent Value of the Old Testament
express with perfect adequacy the thoughts
and feelings which lie too deep for any
poor words of our own.
We cannot then eliminate the Old Testa
ment from our religious life and feel that
the New makes it superfluous for us. We
ought not to love it less than our prede
cessors, though we should love it more
wisely by frank recognition of its limita
tions and especiaUy by laying stress upon
its meaning as a whole. It wiU be a happier
augury of the enrichment and deepening of
the religious life in our Churches when it
shall be the aim of our teachers to see that
the meaning of this great religious move
ment which gave Israel all its significance
for the world's history is clearly understood,
at least in its main outline, by all who
have any claim to a religious education.

The Teaching of Serif ture as Determined by the
Nature of Scripture.1
Q I have had no experience in teaching
*-' Scripture to boys, so that I offer
practical suggestions with great diffidence.
But perhaps the most useful thing I can
do is to indicate the lines along which
the character of the Bible itself suggests
that it may most profitably be studied
and taught. Our emancipation from a
mechanical view of inspiration, while alike
inevitable and welcome, has created new
perUs of its own, just because it has often
not been accompanied by a corresponding
1 Reprinted from Scripture Teaching in Secondary
Schools : A Report of a Conference held at Oxford,
April 22-23, I9I3- This paper was written for the
Conference and included in the Report, but was not
actuaUy delivered. 199

200 The Teaching of Scripture as
change in the conception of what the Bible
is. Formerly it was almost universally
held by Christian people that from the
first page to the last the Bible was written
under the direct inspiration of the Holy
Spirit. Opinions might differ as to the
degree and the range of the Spirit's action.
But as a rule the human element was
severely limited and generally, I believe,
it would be no exaggeration to say that
the Bible was everywhere held to have
God for its author, the human writer
being little if anything more than the
amanuensis of the Holy Ghost. WhUe
this view was held, no differentiation
between the various parts of Scripture
was possible on the lines that some exhibited
more and others less of the Divine influence.
It was all God's word, therefore all must
be looked on as important, nor could
fallible man venture to discriminate between
the utterances of Omniscience. Every
thing in the Bible must be of value just

Determined by the Nature of Scripture 201
because it was there. Moreover, it was
truth wholly unmixed with error, truth
conveyed, it might be, in type or symbol
or dark oracle which the Gospel alone
could illuminate ; but it was all equally
true, the same scheme of theology was
everywhere presupposed. All Scripture,
since it was inspired of God, was held to
be " profitable for doctrine, for reproof,
for correction, for instruction in righteous
ness." Logically, then, one could not pick
and choose. All was profitable, nothing
could safely be neglected.
This view of Scripture is still no doubt
widely prevalent, especially in theory.
But it has been abandoned by many, and
we may safely say that it is becoming less
and less credible to an ever-increasing
multitude. The facts are so clearly against
it that only a preconceived theory could
have made men blind so long. It is very
evident to any unprejudiced student of
the Bible that it is not throughout on

202 The Teaching of Scripture as
the same level, whether of historical accu
racy, of moral insight, or theological cor
rectness. A worthy thought of God impera
tively prohibits us from referring many
things in the Bible to Him as its author.
The human element is far more prominent
than was formerly recognised, and in many
places it might seem to be difficult to
detect the presence of the Divine element
at all. Such then is the situation, and
we need not suppose that it wiU be other
than permanent. But it has its own risks,
against which the only effective safeguard
is a correct apprehension of what the
Bible is. The practical inference, which
wUl no doubt be drawn by multitudes, is
that a scale of values must be constructed
according to which some parts of Scripture
will stand very high, others very low,
while the rest is distributed over all the
intermediate parts of our scale. For if
it be granted that the Bible is, above all
things, a communication of truth about

Determined by the Nature of Scripture 203
religion and morals, especially of such
truth as attests its own Divine origin
by the superhuman quality of its ideas,
we must be impressed by its uneven re
sponse to the expectations with which
we approach it. For while some parts of
Scripture are obviously rich in ethical and
theological teaching, others seem to be
well-nigh destitute of any nutriment of
this kind. They appear, indeed, so irrele
vant to the purpose for which the Bible
was given, that their right to a place in
Scripture seems obviously to be challenged
by their own unfitness for the purposes
of a revelation. And though this is a
matter of moment for all readers of the
Bible, it is especially serious for the teacher
in our schools. The problem is less serious
in the New Testament, but in the Old it
is otherwise. Even in the New Testament
the more abstract portions, where on the
view I am considering inspiration might
seem to be at its high-water mark, are

204 The Teaching of Scripture as
least suitable for school teaching except
perhaps in the highest forms. It will be
granted, however, that the Synoptic Gos
pels are among the weightiest portions of
the New Testament, and they are more
suited for school study than its more
abstruse and mystical books ; though they
raise problems as perplexing and perhaps
more perplexing than those parts of the
literature which are superficially more
difficult. And probably no serious difficulty
will be felt about admitting the Acts of
the Apostles to a place in the curriculum,
though it contains narrative rather than
theology. But the case seems to be far more
serious when we turn to the Old Testament.
The books most suitable for boys to study
are those which this view of the Bible
would place low in its scale, even if it
is thought desirable that they should be
in the Bible at all. The narrative books
are much more congenial than the didactic.

Determined by the Nature of Scripture 205
Is it then the case that the books which
are easy enough and interesting enough to
find a place in the school curriculum are
not entitled to it by their intrinsic merit ?
Is the story, often secular in its character
and low in its moral ideals, a worthy
instrument for that training in religion
and morality which we desire our pupils
to receive ? It is my contention that
such questions could never arise if we
had really grasped what the Bible actually
is. We need, I would say, to form a
correct idea of its essential character before
we can rightly appreciate the presence
within it of elements which may strike
us as strange. I desire to put forward
a view of Scripture which shall make it
appear valuable throughout, and especially
to vindicate the indispensable character
of just those portions which an impatient
misunderstanding of its nature would con
demn as superfluous.
The fundamental mistake in the view of

206 The Teaching of Scripture as
the Bible to which I have alluded consists
in this, that it takes Scripture primarily
to contain a revelation of doctrines and
rules. It is no doubt true that in the
Bible we find a rich store of theology and
of ethical precepts and truths. But whUe
it is inevitable that this should be the
case, the real significance of Scripture lies
in something much deeper. The view
which I am criticising assumes that reve
lation consists mainly in truths which
can be expressed in words. But the mere
consideration of the place held by our
Lord in revelation is sufficient to demon
strate the inadequacy of such a view. No
Christian who understood his own rehgion
could admit that the teaching of Jesus
was His most important contribution to
religion. No words could be adequate to
express what He brought into the world.
Even the most complete description of
His personality, the most accurate views
about Him, the fullest record of His teach-

Determined by the Nature of Scripture 207
ing, not only do not exhaust the personality,
they do not even give the most important
thing about it. For the most important
thing is just the personality itself, as it
moves among men and acts upon history,
as it unfolds its character in contact with
others, often all the more fully and impres
sively because this self-revelation is so
largely unconscious. And so, incomparable
though we may feel the teaching of Jesus
to be, it is but the most obvious truism to
say that He Himself was far more than
all His teaching could enshrine. Not the
Word He uttered but the Word He was,
not the teaching He gave but the character
He disclosed, the mighty achievement He
wrought, was the pith of the revelation
with which He illumined the world. It
is not uncommon to distinguish between
His function as Revealer and His function
as Redeemer, but in the light of what
has been said such a distinction becomes
largely irrelevant. It was in the Redemp-

208 The Teaching of Scripture as
tion that His supreme Revelation was
conveyed. It is this consideration which
enables us to see why the Gospels and
in particular the Synoptic Gospels must
always retain for Christians a place in the
front rank of our Biblical books. They
bring us most closely to the actual historical
Person as He lived on earth. We are in
those writings in contact with the Jesus
of history so far as that is now possible
to us. And the knowledge of Him, which
we thus derive, is all-important for rehgion.
It is so, first, because Jesus Himself is
the highest revelation of God's essential
character, He is God translated out of
the speech of eternity into the speech of
time ; secondly, because He represents the
human ideal ; and thirdly, because the
knowledge of the Jesus of history is the
necessary corrective to subjectivity in our
apprehension of the Christ of faith.
But now we are in a position to inquire
why the historical sections of Scripture

Determined by the Nature of Scripture 209
are an integral element in it which could
have been omitted from the Bible only
at a ruinous loss. We have seen from
our brief consideration that the significance
of the Synoptic Gospels is that they bring
us into direct relation with God's supreme
revelation, which is a revelation given not
primarily in statements of truth but in
personality and historical fact and deed.
And it is in the light of this principle
that we may go back to the revelation
in the Old Testament. Here also revelation
comes through history and personality,
and that not simply in what might be
regarded as definitely religious history.
The sphere of the Spirit's exceptional
operation is first of all the whole nation.
Not that this could have been marked at
the outset by any human observer. Even
Israel itself was but dimly conscious of
its mission. But gently the wedge was
insinuated between Israel and the nations,
which was to make so wide a separation
N.S. 14

210 The Teaching of Scripture as
between them. And it was across the
whole area of the national life that the
Spirit was brooding with His quickening
energy. Deep in the secular realm He
was laying the foundations of the Kingdom
of God. We can watch how His action
grew at once more specialised and more
intense, how the spiritual became more
and more clearly disengaged. But right
through the development from Semitic
Paganism to the early religion of Yahweh,
on through the prophetic and into the
legal and apocalyptic period our sharp
distinction of secular and religious was
not attained. All along, the religion was
intimately connected with the political and
social life of the nation. This statement
needs neither proof nor illustration, it is
written large all over the history of the
religion. It will be clear then that reve
lation lies far behind the creation of the
Old Testament literature. We could even
have conceived that the revelation might

Determined by the Nature of Scripture 211
have been given, and no written record
have been left of it, though I need not
labour the point that a religion entrusted
to oral transmission would quickly have
become so deeply corrupt as to be barely
recognisable. But I state my point in
the paradoxical form, that the revelation
in Israel is conceivable without the Old
Testament, in order to drive home the
thought that the written record is largely
secondary and not primary. The Old
Testament is the precipitate of that unique
and intense action of the Holy Spirit on
His chosen medium of revelation. It is
accordingly not possible for us to leave
the historical books out of account as if
they were irrelevant to the purpose of a
revelation. If we are to reach the revela
tion itself this part of the literature is
essential for our purpose. For the history
itself is primarily the sphere of God's self-
manifestation. That is the stage on which
He is in the first instance at work. Just

212 The Teaching of Scripture as
as in the climax, so also in that which
led up to it, God unfolds His character
and His purpose in life and action rather
than in abstract doctrine. History is His
chosen mode of self-expression. We learn
to understand Him as we watch His
moulding of events, His great acts of
retribution or deliverance, the slow but
steady movement towards a predestined
goal. The deliverance of Israel from Egypt,
its discipline in the wUderness, its transition
to the settled life of Canaan, and exposure
to the fascinating perils of the cult of
the Baalim, its emergence from the rude
chaos of the period after the conquest
into the more ordered government under
the kings, were all reverently recognised
by the Biblical writers as incidents in a
Divinely guided process. And so one might
pass on through the various stages of the
history, and in the words of the Hebrew
poet " rehearse the righteous acts of the
Lord." Since, then, the events themselves

Determined by the Nature of Scripture 213
are part of God's self-revelation, the books
which might be dismissed as concerned
merely with external events of a secular
kind become for us a necessary element
of Scripture. But we need to go beyond
the term self -revelation. The Hebrew did
not simply feel that through history he
learnt about God. He realised that in
history he was in contact with God Himself,
that in Israel's reverses or triumphs and
also in the everyday life of the people
God was present in all His living energy.
And we are thus in secondary contact
with God in the record of the revelation.
But, it may be urged, does not this
lead us to the paradox that we thus accord
the primacy to those portions of Scripture
which our modern study of the Bible has
tended to push into the background ?
Are we seriously to suppose that we are
as much in contact with God in Judges
or Samuel or Kings as we are in the great
Prophets or Psalmists ? It is not my

214 The Teaching of Scripture as
intention to suggest this. But I would
point out first of all that the historical
literature is indispensable if we are to
understand the prophets, for it supplies
us with the background and the atmosphere
needed to make them intelligible. Even
if, considered in themselves, they had no
Divine quality in them, yet their function
in the whole organism of Scripture could
not rightly be chaUenged. They supply
the setting in which Prophet and Psalmist
must be placed. But on the other hand
I am not depreciating the literature of
poetry, of wisdom and of prophecy ; for
these also are events and not merely words.
Just as behind the narrative there lies
the action, so behind these other forms
of literature there lie the personality and
its experience. And this personality was
Divinely selected and trained to be the
vehicle of revelation, the environment was
chosen, the experience was planned. In
the tragic history of Hosea, through which

Determined by the Nature of Scripture 215
there slowly dawned upon bim a wholly
new sense of Yahweh 's love for Israel, the
broken-hearted prophet discerned an expres
sion of Yahweh 's will . Similarly the Christ
ianity before Christ which we find in
Jeremiah's prophecy of the New Covenant
was the outcome of those bitter years of
agony in which, forsaken and scorned by
men, he sought a refuge in God and slowly
came to realise that in personal fellowship
with Him the essence of religion consisted.
But here again the prophet is conscious
that it is God who has taken the initiative
with him and forced the task on His
reluctant servant, so that though he chafes
against it, his struggles are in vain against
the compulsion of God's resolute will. If,
once more, the whole teaching of Isaiah,
his proclamation of God's holiness and
majesty, his impassioned denunciation of
Israel's sin, his conviction of a ruthless
judgment which would leave the land
desolate and denuded of its inhabitants,

2 1 6 The Teaching of Scripture as
his sane outlook on international politics,
his serene assurance of Zion's escape when
its captivity seemed inevitable, all go back
directly or indirectly to the vision in which
he received his call, that vision was no
self-induced ecstasy but the real self-
manifestation of God in an overwhelming
psychical experience. So too Ezekiel 's
sense of the glory and the sovereignty of
God, from which we may deduce practically
the whole of his teaching, was borne in
upon him in a vision simUar to that of
Isaiah. The actual mechanism of prophecy
we can at the best, it is true, only dimly
discern, and in other cases only uncertainly
divine, but the force which drives it, the
illumination which it sends forth, have no
meaner source than God Himself, as with
an energy unparalleled among other peoples
He strikes into the current of national
life and history.
What, then, in the light of these considera
tions is the result at which the teaching

Determined by the Nature of Scripture 217
in our schools ought to aim ? It is to
secure that at least the foundation shall
be laid for a comprehensive view of that
great historical process in which God was
present as a living energy, communicating,
not simply theological truth, but Himself
with growing clearness and fuUness till the
time was ripe for that supreme deed of
grace in which at once the whole depth
of His nature was disclosed and His redemp
tive energy received its loftiest, its most
penetrating, its most universal expression.
In many cases it is only the foundation
which can be laid in knowledge of the
historical facts. But in our Secondary
Schools it ought not to be impossible to
do something more. I hope, however, that
what I have said may do something to
relieve uneasy consciences of the feeling
that the religious teaching they are called
upon to give has in many cases only a
remote connexion with religion. If what
I have said is true, it is an integral part

218 The Teaching of Scripture as
of any sound Christian education, vital
indeed to the true apprehension of religion.
The teacher must be prepared to take
long views, to feel that he need not reproach
himself with having missed his opportunity,
if his Scripture lesson has not been made
to lead up directly to any moral or spiritual
truth. The great lessons of religion and
ethics are conveyed by a long cumulative
process in which we think ourselves by
sympathetic imagination into the historical
process through which they were originally
conveyed. Once more I repeat that the
impression we should gain from our study
is not simply, nor even primarUy, that we
are learning about God and His ways, but
that we should feel ourselves to be in
touch with God Himself, I mean with
God in history, the chosen sphere of His
self-manifestation. The history itself then
must be known if any firm basis of sound
religious instruction is to be secured. But
one would regret to think that no step

Determined by the Nature of Scripture 219
further could be taken to the higher reaches
of the subject, to that literature which
has ceased to be mainly narrative and is,
apparently at least, more abstract and
didactic, such as some of the prophetical
books. Here too we are really in contact
with history and with great personalities,
whose experience is largely the key to their
teaching and the explanation of their work.
The books are in many cases too difficult
for much detailed study, but something
might be done even here by judicious selec
tion. What is mostly needed, however,
at this stage, is a sketch of the develop
ment written by a scholar who not only
has competent knowledge but the power
of lucid, sympathetic, and fascinating
exposition. Critical problems must neces
sarily be touched upon, but they should
never be made unduly prominent. It is
a mistake to give the impression that
Biblical criticism is an end in itself. It
is necessary simply because we cannot

220 The Teaching of Scripture as
write a history of the religion without
analysing our sources and arranging them
so far as may be in chronological order.
The history should have been largely
learned at first-hand from the Bible in
the lower forms, but now an outline of
it should be given as modern scholars
have reconstructed it. But the emphasis
should come on the history of the religion,
and here pre-eminently on the significance
of the great personalities and what they
have contributed to spiritual and moral
development. WhUe the opinion prevaUed
that the Old Testament as a whole and
in all its parts was really saying the same
things as the New, that it was written from
the same theological standpoint, and per
haps from the same moral level, and taught
the same theological truths, it was no
wonder if the Bible seemed to be a dull
book. But now we realise that before us
there lies the record of the greatest religious
and ethical development in the history of

Determined by the Nature of Scripture 221
our race, and that the study of this mighty
movement is among the most enthralling
that history opens to us. It is indeed
much more than this, it is also momentous
for the quality and the wide or narrow
diffusion of religion in the days before us.
But it is not this aspect that should be
uppermost in our presentation, though it
may be deepest in our purpose and our
thought. We must enlist the interest in
stirring events, the hero-worship which is
evoked by the loving and enthusiastic
study of mighty personalities, the intel
lectual satisfaction which comes through
tracing the history of a great movement
and watching how it develops from point
to point and from age to age and what
contribution to the development was made
by the chosen spirits appointed for the
task. The present is unintelligible without
the past. Our religion cannot permanently
survive if divorced from history. The
Gospel can be rightly understood only as

222 The Teaching of Scripture as
we apprehend its vital connexion with the
religion of Israel. The schools cannot, it
is true, do everything and the competition
of other subjects prevents much from
being given which is not in itself unsuitable
for boys to receive. The necessity is all
the greater for teaching the essential things,
teaching them in the right way and in a
form which will serve as a basis for future
progress. We must, of course, recognise
that many will concern themselves but
little if at all with Scripture when school
days are over. It is good for them to
have got at least such knowledge as their
teachers have been able to impart. But
the subject ought to be and can be made
so interesting that not a few may be
willing to keep it up after school has been
left. But along with the basis for future study
care should be taken to give the right
point of view. Much of our difficulty and
confusion with reference to the Bible is

Determined by the Nature of Scripture 223
due to the prevalence of incorrect and
inadequate conceptions of what the Bible
really is. To place in the possession of
his pupils the true conception is among
the greatest and most necessary things
which the teacher of Scripture can do for
those entrusted to his care.

The V erification of Revelation in Experience x
Q This title at once suggests a whole
*J series of questions. Assuming that
the Revelation given in Scripture is that
intended, in what sense do we propose to
make it the subject of verification ? Is it
the whole Bible as it stands or certain
portions of it ? Again is it the whole range
of subjects on which Scripture has spoken or
only a selection that is contemplated in
our inquiry ? Do we emphasise the unity
of Scripture or do we recognise a large
diversity within it ? Do we confine our-
1 Paper read at the Methodist Assembly held in
Wesley's Chapel, City Road, London, on October 5,
1909. Some passages have been restored, which
had to be omitted in reading for want of time, and
some trifling alterations have been made to fit it
for its new function.
n.s. 225 15

226 The Verification of
selves to the Bible itself or do we include
the affirmations which theology has made
about it ? What is it that we want to
verify ? Is it fact or idea, or both ? Do
we pursue our search in the field of psy
chology, or history, or metaphysics, or
doctrinal theology ? How far is experience
competent to take us in our search ? To
whom is the verification given, to him who
is immediately conscious of the experience
or to others ? Whose experience have we
to take into account, the individual or the
collective ? our own merely or that of
others ? If the latter what limits are we
to set to our search ? Is there a standard
type of experience, the common possession
of all who call themselves Christians ? or
are there types of experience each of which
may claim to be a legitimate though not a
monopolist form of Christianity ? And
indeed have we the right to limit ourselves
to Christianity ? By far the larger though
not the more precious portion of our Bible

Revelation in Experience 227
is pre-Christian and ought therefore to
admit of verification from those who remain
at the Old Testament point of view.
I have enumerated these questions not
because it is my intention to attempt the
task of answering them in a time which
would be wholly inadequate for the purpose
but that some of the salient issues may be
before us at the outset. I hope, however,
to indicate my position with reference to
some of the problems involved.
I begin with the literature which we
propose to test. In a sacred book it is at
first surprising to find so much that is
secular, not a little that seems unfitted to be
the vehicle either of religious or moral
instruction. What are we to do with
elements in the Bible apparently so in
tractable to spiritual handling as the
genealogies in Chronicles, or the account
of the division of Canaan in Joshua ? If
every part of Scripture, just because it is
Scripture, must yield spiritual or ethical

228 The Verification of
edification, we shall be driven to allegorical
interpretation. But that way of escape
is closed against us. Scripture means what
it says and it is not to be run into the
moulds of this or that interpreter's caprice.
We cannot escape by reading back the
New Testament into the Old. By such
an illegitimate anachronism we wrong both
the Old Testament and the New; we
deprive the former of its independent value
and we depreciate the uniqueness of the
Christian revelation. Are we then to
strike out large sections of the Bible on
the ground that in our sacred literature they
have no right to be there ? It is only an
erroneous theory as to the real character
of the Bible, which could lead us to answer
such a question in the affirmative. We
must rise from the mistaken view of
Scripture which it implies, to a conception
that shall enable us to rejoice in theh
inclusion. We must break with an atom
istic view of the Bible, or we shall never

Revelation in Experience 229
discern its fuU value. We have no right
to insist that every part of it shall yield
a direct spiritual message. Such a demand
involves an illegitimate and violent exegesis.
There is much which has no spiritual value
when it is torn from the organism of which
it forms part. A very large number of
passages come home to the soul with
immediate and self-authenticating power.
And it is these passages which sustain the
average reader's estimate of the Bible.
He extends to the whole literature the im
pression that is made by these portions
of it. But what of the other portions
which do not satisfy this test ? The
ordinary Bible reader theoreticaUy recog
nises the inspiration of these as of the
other portions. But the practical treat
ment varies. Some read them in the belief,
which is not free from superstition, that
the reading of them is in itself bound to
bring a blessing ; while others who equally
recognise their inspired character, wUl

230 The Verification of
neglect them for passages which are
charged with religious and moral power.
Both attitudes are unfortunate and they
rest on what I have caUed an atomistic
view of Scripture. It is only when we
rise above this idea of the Bible and regard
it as a great connected whole that these
parts of Scripture which are either neglected
or read without benefit will be appreciated
at their proper worth. The lack of his
torical imagination is responsible both for
the abuse of many parts of Scripture and for
the failure to use them. Once we have
grasped the principle that revelation has
come as a process in history, Scripture is
invested for us with a new significance.
To a large extent we may say that the
Bible is occasional and incidental, concerned
with immediate necessities and contem
porary problems. Even when it narrates
the history of earlier ages it does so with
a mainly practical motive. The selection
of incidents is deliberately made for its

Revelation in Experience 231
bearing on the writer's own age. The
interest of the scientific historian is almost
entirely absent, the dominant interest is
edification. And when we turn to the
prophets, in many ways the most important
part of the Old Testament, this interest in
the contemporary situation becomes much
more apparent. The consequence is that
the prophetic literature has been very
widely neglected and where not neglected
it has been misunderstood. Its relevance
to contemporary conditions prevents it
from being immediately available for con
ditions altogether different. And yet there
is no part of the Old Testament which we
can so little afford to neglect. For while
the message was limited by the circum
stances of the hour the principles it em
bodied were of eternal validity. If then
we are to win their full value from the
prophetic utterances we must aim at two
things. We must reach the eternal prin
ciple by divesting it of its temporary garb,

232 The Verification of
and we must observe how the prophets
apply the principle to the situation with
which they deal. But we can achieve
our double purpose only through a precise
apprehension of the actual conditions to
which the eternal truth was so exquisitely
adjusted. And it is from this point of
view that much in the Bible, which on an
atomistic conception appears to be super
fluous or even out of place, becomes
valuable. For it gives us indispensable
assistance in reconstructing these con
ditions, it supplies us with atmosphere and
background. It may have little indepen
dent value, but it was not included in
Scripture for its own sake but for the sake
of the whole organism of which it forms a
necessary part. " The eye cannot say to
the hand I have no need of thee." We
have not made the highest use of the Old
Testament when we have nourished our
souls on its loftiest and choicest passages.
It is when we have apprehended it as a

Revelation in Experience 233
great living organism in which each part
has its place and function that we have
rightly understood it. It is a whole which
is more important than the greatest of its
parts. Moreover on a true view of Scrip
ture even the limitations and imperfections
of the Old Testament have their signifi
cance. The Old Testament is not our final
authority. Judaism is not for us on the
level of Christianity. The contrast between
the prayers of the Psalmists for vengeance
on their persecutors and the prayer of
Stephen for his murderers is a precious
testimony to the revolution wrought by
Christ. It has been with no intention of deserting
my theme that I have spoken at such
length on the nature of Scripture. We
must know what it is that we want to
verify before we attempt the process of
verification. Moreover, what I have al
ready said forms an introduction to this
section of the subject. That revelation is a

234 The Verification of
process in history prepares us to believe
that it wiU find its verification in life. And
especially I would emphasise that much
in Scripture is the direct creation of experi
ence. The Bible is pre-eminently a book
of experimental religion. What experience
has created we may expect experience to
verify. But we must not overlook the
inherent limitations of experience, even
when interpreted in the largest way, as
an instrument of verification. Experience
cannot verify aUeged historical events in a
sacred book ; they must be left to his
torical investigation. It cannot directly
verify the authorship of books, that is the
province of criticism. It is imperative to
insist on this because it is constantly over
looked. Cowper's famous couplet on the
poor cottager who
" Just knows, and knows no more, her Bible true —
A truth the brilliant Frenchman never knew,"
illustrates what I mean. Her conviction

Revelation in Experience 235
that the Bible was true rested simply on
her experience of redemption. But ob
viously the religious element in the Bible is
all that religious experience can directly
verify. The Bible, however, contains very
much more than a religious element. In
particular it includes much of a historical
character which in the nature of the case
experience cannot verify. Were Christian
ity simply a matter of inward experiences
with such outward results as flow from
them we might stake our position on the
verification they supply. But the Gospel
stands or falls by a series of facts in space
and time, and by certain theological affirm
ations which it makes about these. And
it is very difficult to argue on the strength
of transactions within the soul for the truth
of historical events or theological doctrines.
The cures effected by Christian Scientists
do not guarantee the metaphysics of Chris
tian Science. It is unquestionable that
through the gracious condescenion of God

236 The Verification of
spiritual blessing has often come to devout
souls where the explanation of the experi
ence has been entirely false. The sense of
union with Christ which comes to the pious
Romanist in the Eucharist does not prove
the Roman theory of the Mass. The
Biblical doctrine of sin's universal dominion
I find attested in experience, but experience
can give no direct attestation to the events
narrated in the thhd chapter of Genesis.
The proclamation of redemption has found
its echo in the experience of the redeemed,
but that experience cannot vindicate the
historicity of the facts on which the Church
has always insisted that salvation depends.
Accordingly as one who is deeply concerned
for the acceptance of the great Christian
truths I can only express my dismay at
the recklessness with which the Christian
case is sometimes staked on experience
alone. It is a combination of historical
proof with the argument from experience
which alone can bear the weight.

Revelation in Experience 237
A second limitation of experience is to
be found in its mixed origin and character.
It is not simple but complex and many
factors have gone to its making. The
Christian life is created and fostered by
the Divine action, but the Divine is inevit
ably coloured and limited by the human.
Elements which we contribute mingle with
those that have their source in the gracious
working of the Holy Spirit. It is the play
of innumerable forces, many of them
hardly guessed by us, which has made us
what we are. We must beware therefore of
resting a weight on our experience which
it will not bear, or we may even surround
with a halo our own foibles and eccen
tricities. We escape to a certain extent
from these dangers when we permit the
experience of others to enlarge and correct
our own. It is true that we cannot be con
tent with a second-hand experience. Our
relationship to God must be immediate
and direct. It is also true that the soul's

238 The Verification of
secrets are largely incommunicable, and
the most brUliant combination of psycho
logical analysis with gift of expression
inevitably leaves the deepest things unsaid.
But when all this has been admitted it
remains true that for our own profit we do
well to enrich and expand our own spiritual
life by communion with rarer and riper
spirits, while it is imperative that when
we use experience as an instrument of
verification we should understand it in its
collective rather than in its individual sense.
I must be able to say what Christ has
meant to me — otherwise my testimony
loses its note of authenticity and conviction
and the intimate glow of feeling which
gathers about the most cherished possession.
But if I am to press on others the argument
from experience, or if I seek to find the
Bible mirrored and verified in experience,
I must interpret this in the largest way,
humbly conscious how narrow at the best
is the reflection my own life can give.

Revelation in Experience 239
What then can experience do for us ?
It is in the first place the indispensable
complement of history. If, after we have
studied the historical evidence, we reach
the conclusion that Jesus was what the
Church claims Him to have been, and did
what she claims Him to have done, that
conclusion itself will not be long main
tained unless experience continuaUy re
affirms it. For if the proof from experience
has its limitations, so also, as every histor
ical critic knows only too well, has the
argument from history. Left alone neither
can bear the weight of the Christian case.
Locked into an arch where each supports
the other we can securely trust our faith to
them. Experience corroborates the testi
mony of history to the Divinity of Christ
and the redeeming quality of His work. In
the next place, the religious experience is
in itself a fact for which an explanation
must be found. It is with no mere individ
ual nor even with a group that we are

240 The Verification of
concerned, otherwise hallucination, in
dividual or collective, might be a reason
able explanation. But in the vast ex
perience of Christendom we are dealing
with facts as real as any which are in
vestigated by the scientist or the historian,
and which require some great and worthy
cause. Moreover this specificaUy Christian
experience has been associated with a high
view of Christ's Person and Work. When
these have been abandoned, the experience
tends to die out and the enthusiasm to die
down. From the inseparable connexion
of the fact with the doctrine we cannot
strictly infer the truth of the latter, but
at least we are strongly predisposed to
accept it. In view, however, of the fact
that this experience is associated with very
different theories, or with theories of the
most rudimentary kind, we cannot regard
it as verifying more than the general
doctrine. In other words, we cannot build
on it any developed Christ ology or any

Revelation in Experience 241
particular theory of the Atonement.
Again, while experience is largely incom
municable and therefore comes with its
note of immediate assurance only to him
who receives it, yet his testimony as to his
experience is calculated to impress and win
those who are without. At this point also
a qualification may be made which we are
sometimes tempted to overlook. A Church
that has been created by a revival, in
which conversion has meant that for a
large number of its members the continuity
of life has been violently ruptured, tends to
state and to go on stating the doctrine of
assurance in a one-sided way. The old and
the new are set in sharp and definite opposi
tion, and the experience of the new life is
made all the more vivid by the shock of
contrast with the old. The danger is that
this should come to be regarded as that
which is alone legitimate. And thus on
the one side Christians fall into the sin of
censoriousness, while on the other side the
N.S. 16

242 The Verification of
incautious presentation of the doctrine
depresses anxious and scrupulous souls.
As a corrective to this we must always keep
weU to the front our objective tests. On
the other hand we must insist that the
Divinely appointed conditions are faith
fully observed on the human side and leave
with God the responsibUity for the Divine
response. I might add that the doctrine
of assurance is a subject which more than
most needs judicious handling, and more
than most, perhaps, has suffered from the
want of it. What is most mischievous in
the Christian life is unreality, and where
this takes the form of a manufactured con
sciousness in obedience to the exigencies
of a theory, the gravest harm is done to
the spiritual development. No man has
the right to make his personal experience
normal for aU the children of God, and the
witness of the Spirit, like aU His holy and
saving operations, may not assume in
each the same form. That the tempera-

Revelation in Experience 243
ment and previous training of the man
may condition the precise form it takes is
clear. In some it wiU be more objective
in its character than in others.
In what I have said about the Bible and
about experience I have to some extent
anticipated the consideration of the question
how far one is verified by the other. One
or two further points demand a few words.
Experience may first be verified by repeti
tion. But repetition may be false or true.
As false repetition I must reckon the
imitation of Christ as it has been often
practised. Quite apart from the fact
that Christ is the Redeemer, and we the
redeemed, He the Master and we the ser
vants, the painful imitation of Him is the
mark of a servile temper which has not
risen to the liberty of the chUdren of God.
Nor do we necessarily reproduce the apos
tolic type. It is not our aim to restore
primitive Christianity, but to fill our own
very different conditions with the same

244 The Verification of
spirit. It is the glory of this spirit that
it is so fluid and so flexible, that it has a
Protean variety of incarnation. There is
need of aU types, and in each type of
much charity towards the rest. So much,
indeed, we may learn from primitive
Christianity. There was no apostolic type,
there were several types. It is natural
that many of us should feel the Pauline
type to be the most congenial. Yet since
it has pleased God that other types should
be represented in the classical documents
of our faith, we do well to nourish ourselves
on these also. Genuine Christianity must
•be discerned in very divergent forms. It
varies from age to age. Within the same
age there is wide divergence of groups,
within groups there is divergence between
individuals. The individual verifies the New Testa
ment by the immediate response which
it awakes within him. The tones struck
by these ancient writers set our own heart-

Revelation in Experience 245
strings in sympathetic vibration. It is
verified also by the course of our own
spiritual history. We may feel, indeed,
that our experience is sadly lacking in the
intensity which we find in the New Testa
ment, and that there are expressions of it
which would have seemed too daring for
us to use had we not the warrant which it
supplies. Yet with all its shortcomings
we may claim that the witness in the heart
answers to the witness of the Word. And
this argument becomes much more im
pressive when we turn from the personal
to the collective experience. The existence
of the Canon is to some extent a proof
that the writings had been verified. Of
course this statement needs qualification,
for there were other criteria of canonicity,
and there is a fringe as to which doubt
may be legitimately entertained. But the
margin of uncertainty is neither large nor
important. We should have in the New
Testament aU we want, even if books

246 The Verification of
whose canonicity has been widely doubted
were excluded from it, although the ex
clusion of the Epistle to the Hebrews would
greatly impoverish the New Testament.
Moreover, we may thankfully admit that
a book is in its right place in the Bible,
and yet recognise that it secured that place
on grounds which we must regard as false
or inadequate. But looking at the matter
broadly, the creation of the Canon is one
of the most impressive examples of the
response given by experience to Revelation.
The Church did not write the Bible, but
in a sense she guarantees it. The Church
found in the New Testament the record
of an earlier experience. There she read
the record of what the primitive Church
had found Christ to be. And age after
age, as she studies that record, she is
conscious that here she has the classical
expression of what in her turn she has
proved Christ to be.
It may, indeed, be urged that much

Revelation in Experience 247
which we claim for the New Testament
may also be claimed for other Christian
literature. Why should we attach a value
to certain parts of the New Testament or
even of the Old exceeding that which we
attach to some of the finest monuments
of the eloquence, the consecration, and the
insight into Christian truth, which the
later ages of Christendom have produced ?
Why should we deny to some of our great
Christian hymns, which move us profoundly
as we sing them, a rank which we accord
to many a composition in the Old Testa
ment, that seems to stand on a lower level
and moves us far less deeply ? Our great
books of devotion, our masterpieces of
theology, our prayers, our hymns, they
too register experience to which we respond.
But they are largely secondary and deriva
tive, the New Testament is primary and
classical. And from the best which the
non-canonical literature of Christendom
has to offer us, we turn to the Bible to

248 Verification of Revelation in Experience
gain an ever-renewed sense of its uniqueness,
of its inexpressible value. It is a light
whose radiance Ulumines our way, whUe
its glow cheers our hearts. It has some
thing to fit our varied individuahties and
our changing moods. It is, indeed, the
river that makes glad and sweet the city
of God, a river with clear shallows and
unfathomed depths, reflecting now the
bright untroubled sky and now the dark
and lurid thunder-cloud, bathing our tired
spirits in its warmth and softness, or
bracing them by the rigour of its cold,
moving here in a great stillness, and there
in a rushing flood, cleansing us from our
defilement, reviving us as we drink its
life-giving waters, bearing us on its broad
bosom through an enchanted land.

The Evangelical Faith and the Modern View
of Scripture.1
A f\ The problem created by views of
AvJ Scripture which diverge from those
till recently current in the Church is not,
of course, a new one. For several decades
it has been discussed pretty thoroughly in
Great Britain, and the debate arose a good
deal earlier on the Continent. But there
has been recently a marked revival of
activity among the opponents of the more
modern view, and this makes it desirable to
clear up the relation between that view and
our evangelical faith. Those who reject the
traditional dogma fully recognise its right
1 Read in a slightly abbreviated form at the
Federal Council of the Evangelical Free Churches, in
London, September 27, 1921. 249

250 The Evangelical Faith and
as a legitimate form of belief about the
Scriptures, though they repudiate the claims
to exclusive right often made for it. But
in ever- widening circles this theory is
rejected ; and as the older generation dies
out, newer views wiU presumably more and
more prevail. I have no desire to argue at
any length with which type of theory the
truth really lies. Speaking for myself and
multitudes of others, I do not doubt at aU
that the traditional view of the Bible has
been definitely dislodged, and that to accept
it would be for us a kind of inteUectual sin
against the Holy Ghost. It is therefore our
duty to devise another theory which is
suggested by the actual phenomena and
attempts to do justice to them. NaturaUy
this is a more laborious task than to spin
an a priori hypothesis and impose it on the
phenomena, however glaring the misfit.
The practical issue before us is whether a
view of Scripture can be formulated which,
while loyal to the results of research, is not

the Modern View of Scripture 251
inconsistent with our evangelical faith.
The contrast between the two positions is
too famUiar to need detailed statement, but
a brief description is necessary. The tradi
tional view among Protestants in Great
Britain took the Bible to consist of the books
included in our English Bible as commonly
circulated, that is, excluding the Apocrypha.
These books, in their original languages and
in the form given to them by their authors,
were sharply marked off from all other books
by a quality known as inspiration which
was peculiar to them. This might be
defined in a more or less rigid way, but it was
generally agreed that the writers were the
penmen of the Holy Ghost who, whatever
freedom might be left to the human agents,
exercised such a constant and vigUant
control that they were secured from error
and Divinely controlled, alike in the selec
tion of their matter and in the form in
which it was written. Even where the
existence of error was allowed as an abstract

252 The Evangelical Faith and
possibility, it was likely to be denied in any
given case. The action of corruption on our
text could not, of course, be denied ; and
this aUowed, as a refuge for those who
asserted inerrancy, the explanation that
real errors, if such existed, were due to
corruption of the text, and that the auto
graphs, if they had been accessible, would
have been free from them. The traditional
ascription of books to certain authors was
as a rule strenuously affirmed, especiaUy
in cases where the documents themselves
made the claim, or the authorship was
asserted or implied in other parts of Scrip
ture, in particular by Christ or the New
Testament writers.
As against this we have a general theory
of Scripture which is very different. Far
greater scope is given to the human factor
alike in initiative and in execution. There
is a full recognition of the large range of
difference in spiritual value or historical
accuracy to be found within the canonical

the Modern View of Scripture 253
books ; of the approximation between parts
of the canonical literature and non-canonical
sacred books ; the repudiation on a large
scale of traditional beliefs as to the author
ship, unity, and date of individual writings ;
a clear perception of the uncertainties in
which the determination of the Canon was
involved. In considering the situation thus created,
it must be remembered that the cleavage is
not to be identified with that between old
and new theology. It has not been
unknown for a very free theology to be
associated with adhesion to traditional
views on critical problems, while a con
servative theology is not infrequently com
bined with an advanced critical position.
It is accordingly not the case that surrender
of the older view is necessarily dictated by
reasons drawn from another sphere and
imposed on the attitude adopted towards
Scripture. It really springs from a con
sideration of the phenomena presented by

254 The Evangelical Faith and
Scripture itself. Every special science must
be allowed to work by the methods proper
to it, and to reach its own results without
external dictation. It is not for any special
science to formulate a general view of the
universe ; but it is entitled to carry through
its own investigations unfettered, and to
insist that its results shaU have their full
weight in determining the final synthesis.
It lies in the very nature of an investigation
that it shall be scrupulous in discovering
and registering all the relevant facts. It
must not be biased in the selection of the
material or guide the presentation of the
evidence towards any desire for predeter
mined results. Scholars of different schools
need this reminder. If the traditionalists
constantly make the impression that they
are determined at all hazards to establish
the older views, it is also true that some
scholars start with the postulate that
miracle cannot happen.
My purpose is not primarUy negative or

the Modern View of Scripture 255
controversial, but I ought at least to indicate
the reasons which have led to rejection of
the traditional view. The causes, which
have brought about its abandonment by
many evangelical theologians, are not to be
sought in any hostUity to the Bible or love
of novelty for its own sake, or leaning to
rationalism. The phenomena presented by
Scripture are in their judgment inconsistent
with the older theories whether in a strict
or a " rectified " form. Conscious of the
large measure of uncertainty which fre
quently surrounds the text itself, they
cannot understand why, when such care
was taken, as is asserted, to secure inerrancy
in the autographs, no care seems to have
been taken to preserve that inerrancy in the
copies of the Scriptures actually used by the
Church. They are aware that the limits of
the Canon have fluctuated and that the line
between canonical and uncanonical cannot
be drawn with precision or with confidence.
The evidence for critical analysis of docu-

256 The Evangelical Faith and
ments and the denial of traditional affirma
tions of authorship and date they feel to
be cogent. They feel the difficulties created
by discrepancies of statement within the
literature itself, and by the task of recon-
cUiation with the results of scientific,
archaeological and historical research.
They are impressed with the obscurity
which hangs over many passages, with the
uncertainties of exegesis which constantly
range interpreters in opposite camps, and
in particular with the grave issues raised
by the science of Biblical Theology. They
recognise the problem created by the
ascription to the Holy Spirit of what their
better feelings assure them to be unworthy
of Him. These difficulties we are not
entitled to ignore, and they are fatal to the
traditional theory. To insist that the older
view must be maintained in its integrity, or
that Christianity itself must be surrendered,
is to limit the possibUities in an Ulegitimate
way, and to risk an intolerable strain on

the Modern View of Scripture 257
faith which no one should lightly incur. It
is natural that those who approach the
Scriptures with rationalistic prepossessions
should reject the traditional dogma of
Scripture ; but that does not justify the
illogical inference that such rejection is
incompatible with a loyal acceptance of the
full evangelical faith.
It is, of course, true that aU unprejudiced
investigation has its risks. It is conceivable
that its results may be fatal to faith. We
cannot accept the well-meant but cowardly
advice that we should decline to imperil
our faith by a scrutiny of the grounds on
which it rests. The position is indeed
easier with reference to the Old Testament
than to the New Testament ; though even
here it is necessary to face the problem
created by the attitude of Jesus to the Old
Testament. So far as the New Testament
is concerned, the problem is much more
acute, for it contains the classical documents
of our religion. And the issues raised by
N.S. 17

258 The Evangelical Faith and
the indissoluble alliance of Christianity with
history are very grave. They cannot be
evaded by treating the historical element
as detachable without injury to the rehgion.
But the inclusion of historical events as
indispensable to the rehgion does mean that
historical inquiry with aU its uncertainties
must play freely upon the documents and
the facts they narrate. And such inquiry
must be genuine and unfettered, not
dhected to the attainment of a desired goal.
Mystical experiences, however vivid, can
not in the nature of the case attest the
reality of historical events, though they
have a very important place in the case for
Christianity. But it is not all the facts recorded in the
Gospels which are vital to Christianity. It
is weU to begin in a modest way and
inquire whether we have the minimum.
That minimum I take to include the
historical existence of Jesus, an adequate
impression of His personality, His teaching

the Modern View of Scripture 259
and His work, His death, and His triumph
over death. This minimum seems to me
critically secure, and most evangelical
Christians would feel themselves assured of a
great deal more. But, of course, faith needs
more than bare facts; the facts must be
interpreted and valued, otherwise we have
no Gospel to preach. This is provided for
us in the New Testament ; but, here also,
difficult problems confront us as to the
harmony of the various interpretations with
themselves and with each other, and above
all their agreement with the mind of Christ.
Here, too, I think that we may claim to have
the necessary minimum which faith requires.
With the central interests of faith thus
secured, we are in a position to occupy
more and more of the old territory, and
we are also able to form a truer estimate
of our sacred literature. In particular it is
along this line that we may perhaps best
approach the difficult question of our
attitude to the Old Testament. In his

260 The Evangelical Faith and
large and very important work on Marcion,
recently published, Harnack has expressed
the view that while in the second century
it was an error rightly repudiated by the
great Church to reject the Old Testament,
to retain it in the sixteenth century was
a fate which the Reformation could not as
yet escape, but to preserve it as a canonical
document in Protestantism, since the nine
teenth century, is the result of ecclesiastical
and religious paralysis. The value of the
Old Testament he freely allows, but refuses
to grant it canonical rank alongside of the
New Testament. Our judgment of this
position wiU naturally be modified by the
significance we attach to the idea of
canonicity. But two reasons seem to
demand the retention of the Old Testament
in the Christian Bible. One is the attitude
adopted towards it by Jesus Himself ; the
other is the fact that it stands in organic
connexion with the New Testament, large
sections of which would be unintelligible

the Modern View of Scripture 261
without it. In other words, those who
recognise in Jesus a Divine revelation
ought to regard it as the climax of a long
process, the record of which is preserved
for us in the Old Testament.
This brings us then to the question What
is revelation ? The popular conception is
that it is the disclosure by God of religious
and moral truths which man could not
reach by his unaided powers. I do not
deny, of course, that such truths are given in
our Scriptures. But we are on the wrong
track when we put the emphasis on ideas,
even ideas about God. It is not correct
ideas that revelation is primarily designed
to give, but the actual knowledge of God
Himself. Had right conceptions on theo
logy and ethics been the primary object
of revelation, the Bible would have been an
entirely different book from what it is.
Revelation, it cannot be said too emphati-
caUy, and repeated too often, is a process in
history. In saying this I am not thinking

262 The Evangelical Faith and
primarUy of what is famUiar to us as the
progressive nature of revelation. I mean
that history is the chosen medium through
which God has revealed Himself. Through
outstanding events in the nation's history,
acts of deliverance or of chastisement, the
people not only learnt truths about the
character of their God, they were brought
into contact with God Himself. And what
was true of the chosen nation was true in
a far fuller degree of elect personalities.
Theh individual history was for them a
medium through which they came into that
feUowship with God in which they learnt to
know God Himself and not simply truths
about Him. Had we been consulted, we
should naturaUy have suggested another
way which would have left no loop-hole for
error and would have been limited to a
compact and lucid statement of religious and
moral truths. But abstract correctness,
clear-cut and precise definition, and brevity
which would not have unduly taxed our

the Modern View of Scripture 263
fitful attention or feeble memories, would
have been purchased at a ruinous price.
Life alone is the adequate revelation of
personality, and in our mortal sphere it is
the highest, the most flexible, the least
inadequate medium for God's self-dis
closure. There is then in the history of Israel and
the religious experience of elect personalities
a unique action of God. The people was
chosen just as it was, uncongenial and at
times intractable, with a crass theology, a
rudimentary religion, a slave morality. It
reached in a few centuries the loftiest
pinnacle attained by any pre-Christian
religion ; and by the contrast between its
lowly origin and its amazing achievement
we measure the unique and tremendous
energy with which the Spirit of God was
at work within it. We realise this most
fully as we think of the great men, prophets,
psalmists and sages, who spoke out of the
depth of a great spiritual experience, and

264 The Evangelical Faith and
with first-hand knowledge of God. This
movement found its climax in Jesus, who
summed up all that was best and greatest
in it, transcended it and perfected it. But
whUe He Himself rose out of Israel and in
Him the long upward process reached its
climax and attained its goal, He was not
simply, as His predecessors, a part of the
process, the last link of a long chain. For
He was not merely the perfect flower of
our humanity, the supreme achievement
revealing the hitherto undreamed-of possi
bilities of our nature. He is not man's last
best word to God, but God's last best word
to man, who came less to teU us about God
than to live the life and express the nature
of God, so far as was possible, in the limits
of our human experience. With His life,
crowned by death, the long process of
revelation was complete.
We see then what is meant by the state
ment that the Bible is the record of revela
tion. It is not the revelation itself. That

the Modern View of Scripture 265
was given through history and experience,
in life and personality. But a record of
it was needed that it might be preserved
for posterity, and this we have in the
Bible. Inasmuch as the process started
from a very low level and moved slowly
upward, we are not surprised to find these
lower stages reflected in the literature; It
would, indeed, have been untrue to its
great purpose if they had been omitted.
But while a larger place was left for the
human factor in the making of the record
than we might have anticipated, we must
recognise that the record is adequate for
its purpose, and be grateful that God has
given us all we are entitled to expect . It was
necessary, however, for the meaning of the
history to be made clear, and this need was
met by divinely-gifted men, who were
sensitive to the spiritual forces at work
beneath the surface and the far-reaching
plan which controlled the movement of
events. We have then the double process

266 The Evangelical Faith and
of revelation and interpretation, and the
record of this is contained in Scripture.
It lies in the nature of the case that supreme
value and authority attaches to the final
stage in the process ; but the whole move
ment has permanent significance, and the
New Testament did not make the Old
Testament obsolete. By this I do not
mean that we are to place it on the same
level or to imagine that it reaUy says the
same thing as the Gospel only in an obscure
and roundabout way. Even the greatest
lights of Israel turn pale in the presence of
the Light of the world, and we are hving
not according to the Law but under the
control of the indweUing Spirit. But frag
mentary and incomplete, marred by the
imperfections and impoverished by the
limitations of the medium, yet the process
of revelation in Israel is organically one
with the revelation in God's only begotten
Son, and he who would understand the
climax aright must retrace with patient

the Modern View of Scripture 267
care the long and steep ascent by which it
was finally reached.
It will, I hope, be clear that criticism is
rendered imperative by the very nature of
Scripture. That it comes to us in writing
necessitates the Lower Criticism which
purges the text of errors and seeks to restore
it to its original form. That it records a
movement from stage to stage necessitates
Higher Criticism so that the documents may
be arranged in their true chronological
order. That history was its medium
necessitates a knowledge of the history that
we may understand the revelation, and this
involves the use of Historical Criticism.
Taken just as it stands, without the
application of any critical method, the
Bible itself is an amazing fact over
whelming in the impression of Divine
qualities which it makes upon us. But he
is in the best position to appreciate its
exceUence who, having worked his way
through the problems of criticism and

268 Faith and Modern View of Scripture
exegesis and absorbed their results, has
risen above laborious study and pre
occupation with details once more to con
template the literature as the mighty
monument of the long process of revelation
and redemption.

The Place of the Gospel in the Preaching of
To-day *
A A When we speak of the Gospel what
¦*•¦** do we mean ? The term bears so
many senses. A friend of mine once heard
an eminent Calvinistic preacher in a Wes-
leyan Chapel, which, as the largest buUding
in the town, had been secured to accommo
date the anticipated crowd. The preacher
began his discourse with the remark, " You
don't often hear the Gospel in this place
but you shall hear it to-day." So he
unfolded the scheme of truth as he under
stood it, beginning with predestination
and closing with final perseverance. It
is not in any such specialised sense, how-
1 Read at the National Free Church Council,
Swansea. 269

270 The Place of the Gospel
ever, that in an assembly like this the
topic should be debated. Yet the term is
used in so many meanings that it is weU
to clear the mind by a reference to these.
To some it wUl suggest the whole complex
of traditional theology. Others mean by
it the so-caUed plan of salvation ; or
identify it with the proclamation of the
Kingdom of God, often with special emphasis
on it as the message of social regeneration.
Others, again, wiU limit it to the teaching
of Jesus as distinguished from those doc
trines of Christ's Person and Work in the
Epistles which are regarded as an Ulegiti
mate accretion. It is not possible to dis
cuss these conceptions — a few words must
suffice. It is not wise to identify the
Gospel with traditional theology, for not
only would several competing systems claim
the common title, but traditional theology
contains elements which are foreign to the
Gospel, or at least appendages to it rather
than integral parts of it. To define it

in the Preaching of To-day 271
as the plan of salvation would be unduly
to narrow it, and the conception is itself
unfortunate. The representation of the
glad tidings as a plan is too mechanical,
rigid, and formal. There is a danger of
reducing the Gospel too much to a series
of transparent formulae from which aU
mystery has evaporated and about which
there clings no aroma of rich suggestion.
To explain everything, to have no sense
of unfathomable depths, is the mark of
the theological charlatan. Nor yet is
the Gospel a scheme of social reform. It
is true that social reform is a practical
corollary from our fundamental doctrine
of the Fatherhood of God. But agree
ment upon this point is compatible with
the sharpest difference of conscientious
opinion on the lines which practical reform
should take. It is an evil day for any
Church when it pledges its Gospel to any
form of economic theory or political consti
tution. And, however plausibly it may be

272 The Place of the Gospel
argued that the lofty conceptions of Christ's
Person and Work which are to be found
in the Epistles and the Fourth Gospel are
alien from the teaching of Christ, we have
definitely taken our stand on these concep
tions. We do not consider the Gospel as
a repubhcation of Natural Religion, nor
yet merely as the flower of Judaism. For
us Jesus can never be simply the Revealer
of new truths — our emphasis lies on what
He was and did even more than on what
He said. Jesus was an integral part of
His own Gospel. He did not simply dis
cover the Way and invite men to walk with
Him, nor proclaim the Truth and caU
them to share it, nor yet disclose the
spring of Life and summon them to join
Him in drinking its vitalising waters. He
was all of these in His own Person, it was
Himself that He offered to mankind. For
us it is not true that Paul with his doctrine
of Christ and His work started the Church
down the fatal slope of mythology.

in the Preaching of To-day 273
What, then, is the Gospel ? It is not
simply a set of ideas or scheme of doctrine,
nor is it simply a series of facts. It em
braces both, but it combines them insepar
ably with a Person. The element which
differentiates Christianity from other re
ligions is Christ Himself. He was Him
self the main contribution which He made
to religion. We do not agree with those
who teU us that the Christological develop
ment in the Church has worked incalculable
mischief. With all the blunders and worse
than blunders, with all the over-refinement
of speculation, with aU the tendency to
shift the centre of gravity from personal
experience of the power of Christ to correct
views concerning His Person, we ought
not to close our eyes to the fact that the
Church had to make good its theory of
Christ's Person if it was to secure the
Gospel with which it had been entrusted.
In making its theology Christocentric it
obeyed an inevitable impulse which had
N.S. 18

274 The Place of the Gospel
been communicated to it by its experience
of its Founder and was sanctioned by His
teaching. And when I speak of our interpretation
of the Gospel as Christocentric, I would
urge that this should not be too narrowly
interpreted. I think we ought not to
concentrate attention so exclusively on
the Cross, that we belittle the theological
significance of the Incarnation, the life,
the ministry and the resurrection of Christ.
Jesus was not born simply that He might
die ; and, although in one sense we cannot
emphasise that experience too much we
may emphasise it too exclusively. The
danger of those who are endowed with
exceptional intensity of vision for one side
of the truth is that they pay for it by
their inabUity to give due regard to other
sides of truth, sometimes even by the
temptation to deny that these exist. Hence
I prefer to regard the Gospel as Christo
centric rather than Staurocentric, if I may

in the Preaching of To-day 275
coin the term, understanding, of course, that
any truly Christocentric theology will attach
a very high significance to the Cross.
In the light of what I have just said it
will be clear that I could not assent to
the old-fashioned view that the plan of
salvation should be in every sermon. No
doubt there was one very cogent argument
in favour of that maxim. The preacher
it was felt, should never take the risk of
permitting anyone whose only chance
that might be of hearing the Gospel message
to leave the church without an opportunity
of learning the way of redemption. But
it is quite clear that incessant dwelling
upon the theme would make the average
ministry one of intolerable tedium -and
defeat the very purpose which the preacher
had in view. Moreover, it is not the case
that the object of the preacher is merely
to bring men to Christ. It is important
that men should become Christians, but of
almost equal importance is the question,

276 The Place of the Gospel
What kind of Christians are they to be?
One of the most urgent concerns of the
preacher is to secure a richness and depth
of spiritual life in his congregation, morality
of high distinction, a grave sense of respon
sibility. Now it is true that much may
be done by a wise minister, who takes his
work with due seriousness, through other
channels than his preaching : by meetings
of a specificaUy devotional character and
by pastoral visitation, the neglect of which
is the most serious defect in the work of
not a few ministers. The genius may be
justified in exclusive concentration on the
pulpit ; the normal minister who desires
only to be a preacher is not worth)* to be
a preacher. But when all this is said, the
truth remains that much of this work of
buUding up the religious life of his people
must be done by the minister in the pulpit,
and his sermons therefore must have a
much wider range than the view I am
discussing will admit. Moreover, even the

in the Preaching of To-day 277
much larger range of subjects which would
be included in a ministry which was Christo
centric rather than Staurocentric, would
not cover aU the topics with which the
minister ought to deal. At the same time,
the old formula had an element of truth
in it. In every sermon there ought to be
a distinctively Christian element, and where
the Person or Work of Christ is not the
main theme, care should be taken that
these are made prominent in other parts
of the service, and that not only in the
prayers but especially in the hymns. It
ought to be inconceivable that a Christian
service should take place in which Christ
should be excluded from the hymns sung
by the congregation. From such services,
when it has been my misfortune to attend
them, I have gone away chUled. The
great theistic hymns have their place in
our worship ; but the hymns which move
us most profoundly are the hymns which
are definitely Christian.

278 The Place of the Gospel
The case of the missioner is of course
special. It is definitely his task to secure
the great decision. He has his own pecu
liar perils and needs an exceptional measure
of the grace of God if he is not to deteriorate
in his work. On some of these perils it is
not my duty to dweU.1 But there are some
points which are strictly relevant to my
theme. The causes which lead to success
are so complex that the missioner may
easUy trace his own success to the wrong
cause. He may believe that his special
1 I have spoken explicitly on these in a paper
Evangelism and the Intellectual Influences of the Age,
contributed to the volume Evangelism : a Re-Inter
pretation, edited by the Rev. E. Aldom French. As
my contribution has been singled out by various
reviewers for pained or bitter protest, I may be
permitted to reply that I adhere to everything I
said ; I set down nothing in malice ; I had grounds
for my strictures ; I felt strongly that there were
things that needed to be said, and that I ought not
to shirk the task of saying them, to avoid the odium
that my frankness would excite. I wrote as one
who desires for genuine evangelism a future even
more splendid and fruitful than its past.

in the Preaching of To-day 279
presentation of the Gospel is vindicated
by the results. But it is also possible
that he wins them in spite of imperfec
tions in his statement. The grace of God
works through very imperfect statements
of redeeming truth. For example, no
amount of success proves the correctness
of the missioner's theory of the Atone
ment. It demonstrates the great fact that
Christ is the Redeemer through belief on
whom the sinner may be saved. But in
the nature of the case it can prove only
the fact of the Atonement and not the
particular explanation. Now, it would not
be worth whUe dwelling on this if a mere
matter of theory were involved. But the
issue is much more serious, for there is
the danger that those who would accept
Christ as their Saviour may be repeUed
by their inability to accept the theory
which the missioner has insisted on identify
ing with the Gospel. Again we have to
recognise the fact that there are many

280 The Place of the Gospel
people whom the mission preacher or the
evangelistic address would never reach,
because they are kept from Christ, not by
love of sin, by indifference to religion, or
by self-wUl, though aU of these causes
operate on great masses of the population.
Those of whom I am thinking are held back
because they are not prepared to grant
the speculative and historical premises
which the revivalist pre-supposes. Now,
the qualities which make the successful
revivalist are not those which make the
successful apologist ; and it is an urgent
necessity that the Gospel should be pre
sented in such a way that its inteUectual
difficulties should no longer seem insuper
able. It would be unreasonable to expect
the missioner to know the problems and
the real pressure of difficulties, to have an
eye for strategic points, to understand
what positions have become untenable,
or how the citadel may be best defended.
We ought not to speak without sympathy

in the Preaching of To-day 281
of those who cling tenaciously to the faith
taught them at their mother's knee. But
God has laid it on the hearts of some of
us to care for those to whom that faith
has become incredible, but whom we may
perhaps be permitted to win, at least for
what is essential in that earlier belief. I
wUl add that it is very desirable that in
his difficult and delicate work the apologist
should not be hampered by suspicion,
wounded by assaults from his brethren,
or even stung by their pin-pricks. In a
time of theological flux we need the utmost
forbearance with each other. We should
seek to be free from censoriousness and
purge ourselves from the lust of mutual
excommunication .
We need, in our presentations of the
Gospel in our pulpit, both the teacher and
the prophet. And if, as a layman, I may
venture to offer advice to preachers who
are younger than myself, I would urge
them to bear the following points in mind :

282 The Place of the Gospel
The basis of the sermon should be soundly
exegetical. The preacher should not be
shy of great texts, for at any rate this
would ensure that the people would have
something to reward them for coming,
and no minister can rise to greatness unless
great themes are those most congenial to
him. The preacher should aim at balance
and proportion, and be very tolerant of
types other than his own. If he strikes
for the centre he is sure not to be too wide
of the mark. When he finds that the
best of his old sermons move him no longer
as he delivers them, it is time to print them
or put them on the fire. His sermons wUl
gain immeasurably if he has a sense of
style. He should certainly be sparing
with the language of Canaan, but he should
hold its provincial dialects in utter abhor
rence. Who shall tell us the number of
those who have been repeUed by them ?
And let me emphasise the vital necessity
of theological equipment. The minister

in the Preaching of To-day 283
needs it for his people, since faUure to
ground the members of our Churches
in the great truths of the Gospel is respon
sible for no little of the amazing bewUder-
ment in which so many are involved to-day.
And even more he needs it for himself.
How pathetic the spectacle of the man
who holds his position on the understanding
that he is an expert in the Gospel, but who
no sooner touches theology than he betrays
himself by the fumbling fashion in which
he handles it ! It is one of the pressing
duties of the pulpit to restate the essential
truths of the Gospel in such a form as to
commend them to the men of our own time.
And whUe it is not, perhaps, the duty of
the average minister to make theological
sermons prominent in his ministry, it is
essential that beneath what he says there
should be the firmly-knit skeleton of theo
logy. So as he ponders the question whether
it will stiU be possible for him to preach the
old Gospel in the light of the modern know-

284 The Place of the Gospel
ledge, he may come to learn that this is
possible, if he is wUling to distinguish
between accidents and essentials, to have
a sense of proportion and put the emphasis
on the right place.
And thus, as we meditate on the deep
things of the Spirit, the great fabric of
our religion rises before us in stately splen
dour, and yet in warm and gracious beauty.
The God proclaimed by our Gospel is not
simply the Almighty Creator, the trans
cendent Sovereign, nor yet simply the
immanent God who fiUs the whole uni
verse with His energy, but the Father of
our Lord Jesus Christ, who is also the
Father of spirits, the God whose name is
Holy and whose inmost nature is Love.
It sets man before us as the son of God,
made in His image, a son who has gone
astray in ignorance and rebeUion, and sunk
to nameless abysses of sin. It speaks of
evil with no honeyed words, but caUs
things by their right names. It shows

in the Preaching of To-day 285
us man's desperate case, it views sin as a
virulent disease which no balm in Gilead
can heal, and which baffles the skill of
the wisest physician. Yet with all its
stern sense of evU, the Gospel confronts
it without dismay. It has combined the
gravest estimate of sin with a hope which
despairs of none. It was with no super
ficial treatment that it grappled with the
cancer ; it was with sweat and agony, with
shame and torture and death that the
great Physician of souls won the sovereign
remedy. With a love deeper than hell and
mightier than death He undercut the settled
dominion of evU and hurled it from its
base. The note of the Gospel is paradox,
the foolishness of God which is wiser than
man. Victory is achieved through defeat,
life through death; the Lion of the
tribe of Judah is the Lamb standing as it
had been slain. And it is a universal
Gospel which sets at nought not only the
artificial barriers created by man, but

286 The Place of the Gospel
the deeper barriers of Nature. It snaps
the fetters of habit, liberates the conscience
from the sense of guilt, imparts a new
moral energy, satisfies man's craving for
fellowship with God. It brings God down
to man, that man may be lifted into union
with God. It serves the cause of progress,
allies itself with every agency to uplift
humanity, to relieve its misery and elevate
its lot. It crowns aU, not with the hope,
but with the triumphant assurance of
immortality. We have learnt so much that with wiser
methods we ought to achieve much more.
We have truer views of Scripture, if unhap-
pUy less familiarity with it, the incredible
elements in popular theology are being
gradually eliminated, our Divinity feels
the breath of a warmer humanity, our
Gospel is better than ever understood and
more free from the taint of paganism.
" What lack I yet ? " We read the great
Epistles of Paul, and across all the centuries

in the Preaching of To-day 287
our heart-strings still vibrate to that thrilling
note of discovery, that passionate Eureka
which rings from his exulting lips. Does
it spring spontaneously from ours ? Far
from it ; if we still believe the glad message,
we take it too much for granted. It has
largely lost its freshness, familiarity has
duUed our minds to its glory and power.
The Gospel has solved its problem so
completely that we have become unconscious
that there was a problem to be solved.
It does not electrify us with a sudden shock
of surprise. Happy if in some intense
and radiant moment there breaks upon us,
with all the rapture of a new discovery,
the amazing wonder of redemption, the
inexhaustible and unsearchable riches of
Christ !

Index

Abraham, 87
Acts of the Apostles, 29,
61, 204
Alexander the Great, 85
Allegorical interpretation,
141 -143, 228
Amos, 176, 194 ; Book of,
176
Angels, Law given by, 94
Apocrypha, 74, 251
Apologetics, Apologist,
188, 280 f.
Arabic chroniclers, 96
Archaeology, 15, 23, 41,
97-99
Argument from prophecy,
188
Assurance, Doctrine of,
241-243
Atonement, Doctrine of,
145, 241, 270, 272, 279
Authority, 17, 37, 45, 99,
102
Baal of Tyre, 194
Baalim, 212
N.s. 289

Barnabas, Epistle of,
141 f.
Baur, F. C, 40
Bible : a book of experi
mental religion, 69 f.,
195, 234 ; ambiguities
of, 49 f. ; and the
Church, 246 ; and
science, 15 ; as a whole,
53, 65 f., 164-174, 191,
195. I98, 205, 230-233;
atomistic treatment of,
65, 164 f., 174, 179,
190, 228-230, 232 ;
change in attitude to,
15. 55-59. 74 f-. !45.
201 f., 206, 228, 250-
253 ; emotional value
of, 155-159, 197 f- ;
human element in, 36 f.,
151 f., 200, 202, 252,
265 f . ; interpretation
of, 16, 50,141-144,256;
interpretation of Divine
action in history, 36,
52, 66-68, 265 f. ;
19

290

Index

moral difficulties of, 16,
32, 67, 109, 168-170 ;
not all on the same
level, 36 f., 169, 201-
203, 252 ; record of a
Divine process in
history, 32 f., 36, 52,
66, 109, 127-130, 171-
174, 178 f., 191, 261,
264-266 ; right under
standing of, 175-179,
184-188, 190 f., 198,
205, 220-223, 259 ;
teaching of, 199-223
text of, 49 f., 57-60, 74,
76-80, 252, 255, 267 ;
the people's book, 129 f. ;
traditional views of, 26-
32, 39, 42, 73 f., 81 f.,
88, 91 f., 106, in, 200 f.,
249-257 ; translation
of, 74, 132-134 ; unlike
what we should have
expected, 32 f., 49-
51, 63, in, 166-174,
203-206, 227-230, 261 f.,
265 ; uniqueness of, 30,
35 f., 136, 154, 248;
unity of, 53, 225 ;
value of, 20, 29, 65-71,
75, 167, 200 f., 228-
230, 248
Biblical Criticism, 15-33,
35, 37-43. 71, 219, 2 52 :
and archaeology, 23,
41, 07-09; apologetic

value of, 31-33, 88,
91-95, 102 ; legitimacy
of, 49, 63 ; loss or gain
through, 33, 103-112;
misapprehensions of,
38 f. ; necessity of, 49,
219 f., 267 ; results of,
l7, 23, 38-43. 55-71
Biblical Theology, 16, 68-
70, 256, 259
British and Foreign Bible
Society, 113, 132-136
Calvinism, 269
Canaanites, Extermina
tion of, 168
Canon of Scripture, 20,
36, 49 f., 67, 74, 245 f.,
251-253, 255, 260
Cathohc Epistles, 29
Christ, 33, 66, 68, 105, 112,
115, 125-128, 135, 175,
192, 233, 284 f., 287 ;
an integral element in
Christianity, 44, 272-
275 ; and Old Testa
ment criticism, 180 ;
attitude to Old Testa
ment, 180, 185, 189,
257, 260 ; authority of,
99, 102 ; character of,
44 ; continuity of, with
Old Testament, 36, 53,
178 f., 187 f., 264 ;
death of, 36, 44, 126 f.,
163, 259, 264, 274, 285 ;

Index

291

Divinity of, 38, 99, 239,
264, 266 ; final revealer
of God, 38, 45, 105, in,
115, 125 - 128, 131,
145 1, 171, 180, 187,
208 1, 217, 261, 264,
266 ; His chief con
tribution to reHgion,
45, 161-163, 206-208,
272 f. ; historicity of,
44, 46, 258 ; knowledge
of, 100 f. ; hfe of, 35 ;
ministry of, 36, 274 ;
only-begotten Son of
God, 36, 47, 52 f., 105,
in L, 171, 180 ;
originality of, 159 f. ;
reconciler of man to
God, 38, 45, 126 f. ;
references to Old Testa
ment, 99-102, 252 ;
resurrection of, 36,
274 ; teaching of, 44 1,
159-163, 206 f., 258, 270,
272, 274 ; temptation
of, 47, 100 f., 180, 189
Christian Science, 235
Christianity, 43 f., 125-
128, 145-147, 169,
178 f., 184, 188, 221 f.,
226, 228, 233, 244, 256,
258 ; and history, 43-
48, 221 f., 235 f., 239,
258 f.
Christocentric theology,
273-275, 277

Christology, 240, 270, 272-
275, 277
Chronicles, Books of, 95,
167, 227
Church, 30, 246 ; collec
tive consciousness of,
30, 226, 238, 245 f.
Clean and Unclean, 142
Colenso, 74
Colossians, Epistle to the,
28, 94
Comparative Rehgion, 16
Conjectural emendation,
21, 59, 79 f.
Conversion, 241, 275, 278-
280, 286
Corinthians, Epistles to
the, 40
Covenant, 122, 196
Cowper, 234
Creation, The, 15
Critical method, 18-26,
37 f- 55-57. 63
Criticism, 18-24, 37 f., 234
Cross, The, 44, 127, 274 f.
Dan (town), 87
Daniel, Book of, 61, 86
Dante, 153
David, 73, 85, 103
Davidson, Samuel, 75
Death, 48
Deluge, The, 15
Deuteronomic Code, 28
Deuteronomy, Book of,
60, 82-84, 89-92

292

Index

Diatessaron, 96
Ecclesiastes, Book of, 61,
86, 169 f., 174 f., 191-193
Eerdmans, 27
Egypt, Israel's deliver
ance from, 51, 119, 222
Elijah, 194
Ellicott, 88
Ephesians, Epistle to the,
28, 61
Epistles, The, 130, 270, 272
Esther, Book of, 186
Ethics, 50 f., 67, 118, 193,
197, 203, 205 f., 218,
261-263
Eucharist, 236
Evangelical faith and
modern views of Scrip
ture, 249-268
Evangelism, 278-280
Evolution, Theory of, 39 f.
Exile, The, 74, 119
Exodus, Book of, 83
Exorcism, 10 1
Experience, 46, 51 f., 65,
226, 234-247, 258
Experience as a medium
of revelation, 65, 69 f.,
108, in, 120-122, 151 f.,
162 1, 193-196, 214-
216, 219, 262 f., 265
Ezekiel, 28, 60, 83, 120,
194, 216
Ezra, 87
Faith, 18, 48, 102, 257

Faith and Criticism, 18,
38, 43-48, 56
Fall, The, 15
Galatians, Epistle to the,94
Galileo, 39
Genesis, Book of, 58, 63,
83. 236
Genesis xiv., 99
German criticism, 61, 75
Germany, 29, 41
Gnosticism, 140
God : and Israel, 35 f.,
51 f. ; conception of,
120-124; Fatherhood
of, 125 f., 161, 271, 284 ;
fellowship with, 130,
162, 164, 180, 197, 215,
262, 286; glory of, 121,
194, 216 ; holiness of,
120 f., 123, 194, 215,
284 ; love of, 122, 128 f.,
194 f., 215, 284 ; names
of, 41 f. ; righteousness
of, 121, 123, 194; self-
disclosure of, 30, 36, 67,
115, 212 f., 261-263 ;
spirituality of, 124 ;
sovereignty of, 120, 216,
284 ; supremacy of,
123 f. ; unity of, 123 f.
Gospel, The, 134, 269-275,
279-2S1, 2S3-287
Gospel History, 43, 48, 59
Gospels, 129, 208
Goths, 168

Index

293

Grafian theory, 40 f .
Hagiographa, 28
Harnack, 29, 61, 260
Heathen, 113-115, 123,
I3I-I34, I95> 209'
Hebrew text and the LXX,
41 f.
Hebrews, Epistle to the,
31, 62, 68, 94, 145, 188,
246
Hegelianism, 25, 39 f.
Hexateuch, 83
Higher criticism, 21 1, 24,
29, 37. 43, 57 f-> 60, 76,
80-87, 187, 267
Hilkiah, 83
Historical Books of Old
Testament, 28, 43, 60,
73, 84, 191, 204 f., 208 f.,
211-214
Historical criticism, 22 f.,
29,37-43. 47-49, 57-59,
63 f., 76, 187, 258, 267
Historical facts essential
to Christianity, 44-47,
235, 257-259
History, 22 f ., 36, 39, 43,
143, 196, 235
Holy Spirit, 52, 66-68,
105-107, 109, 151 f., 171-
173, 180, 209-211, 237,
250!, 256, 263, 266, 284
Homer, 99 f.
Hosea, 122, 194, 214 f.
Hymns, 155-158, 247, 277

Imitation of Christ, 243
Immortality, 48, 127, 286
Incarnation, The, 35, 38,
47, 52, ioof., 103, 126,274
Inerrancy, 58, 251 f., 255
Inspiration, 64, 73 1, 88,
106, 108 f., 151-153, 199-
201, 203, 229, 251, 265
Intellectual difficulties,
280 f
Isaiah, 84 f., 120, 194
Isaiah, Book of, 60, 84 f.
Israel, 35 1, 66, 114-120,
178, 187, 193-196, 209-
213, 262-264, 266; his
tory of, 36, 66, 106-109,
114-120, 127, 196, 208-
213,262 f. ; religion of
105-108, 119, 122-125,
131, 176 f., 183 f.,
188, 193-198, 210-212,
220-222 ; wars of, 168
James, Epistle of, 61
Jeremiah, 122, 164, 194, 215
Jeremiah, Book of, 60, 85,
186
Jerusalem, 114, 119, 216
Jesus, see Christ
Job, Book of, 60, 73, 86,
121, 189, 195
Johannine problem, 62
John, Gospel of, 29, 62 f.,
272
John, Revelation of, 29,
31, 62

294

Index

John son of Zebedee, 31
Jonah, Book of, 186, 195
Joseph, 87
Joshua, Book of, 83, 167 f.,
227
Josiah, 28, 60, 83 ; Law
book of, 60, 83 ; Refor
mation of, 83
Judaism, 175, 178, 192,
233, 272
Jude, Epistle of, 62
Judges, Book of, 168, 213
Kingdom of God, 31, 197,
210, 270
Kings, Book's of, 95, 168,
213
Law, The, 32, 140, 142,
148 i, 266
Legal fictions, 93
Legend, 58, 128
Levites, 89-91
Leviticus, Book of, 83, 145,
176
Lower Criticism, see Tex
tual Criticism
Luke, 29, 61
Luke, Gospel of, 29, 61, 96
Maccabean period, 86
Maccabees, 119
Malachi, 73
Manasseh, 60, 83
Manuscripts, 20, 59, 76-78
Marcion, 139, 260

Mark, Gospel of, 28 f., 61,
96
Matthew, 61
Matthew, Gospel of, 29, 61,
96
Messiah, 194
Missioner, 278-280
Missions, 132-136
Miracles, 38, 254
Monotheism, 124
Moses, 32, 58, 73, 82,
87-89, 91-94. i°3, 194
Myth, 58, 128
Naboth, 194
National rehgion, 124 f.
Natural rehgion, 272
New Covenant, 122, 164,
186, 194, 215
New Testament criticism,
25-29, 40 f., 61-63
New Theology, 253
Numbers, Book of, 83, 89 f.
Odyssey, 99 f.
Old Catholic Church, 27
Old Testament : and so
cial questions, 148-150,
189, 197 ; imperfections
in, 36 f., 109, in, 146,
168-171, 185-187, 191-
193, 198, 205, 233, 266 ;
in the early Church,
138-142, 260; literary
value of, 151-153, 197
f. ; on a lower level
than New Testament,

Index

295

109, 140, 146, 266;
organic connexion with
New Testament, 36, no,
171, 178-181, 187-189,
260 f., 266 f. ; permanent
value of, 75, 137-198,
260 f., 266 f. ; place in
Christian Canon, 36,
138-142, 146, 178-181,
183 f.
Optimism, 175
Orphan, 89 f.
Pan-Babylonianism, 27
Pastoral Epistles, 28, 61
Patriarchs, 15
Paul, 31, 93 f., 140, 188,
272, 286 f.
Pauline Epistles,28,6i,286f.
Pentateuch, Criticism of,
25 f., 40-42, 73, 82 f.,
87-95 ; composite char
acter of, 28, 32, 60, 82 f.
Pessimism, 170, 192
Peter, First Epistle of, 62
Philosophy, 46
Plan of salvation, 270! .,275
Plato, 116, 153
Preaching, 275-284
Priestly Code, 28, 60, 91 f.
Priests, 90 f.
Primitive Christianity, 27,
243 f., 246
Problem of suffering, 1 14 f .
Prophecy, 216 ; argument
from, 16

Prophetic literature, The,
28, 60, 74, 84 f., 219, 231
Prophets, 53, 65, 148 f.,
151, 187, 189, 213-216,
219, 231 f., 263
Proverbs, Bookof, 60,74,86
Psalmists, 195, 213 f., 263
Psalter, 61, 73, 85, 103, 130,
186, 189
Rabbis, 92
Raphael, 104
Rationalism, 23, 38
Record of revelation, 36,
52, 127-130, 210 f.
Redemption, 44, 47 f., 51,
126-128,128 f., 163 207L,
235^.239,275,279,287
Reformation, The, 260
Rehgion, 122, 193 f., 205,
208, 217 f., 221
Religious institutions of
Israel, 107, 120
Remnant, The, 194
Revelation, 23, 36 f., 44, 47,
64,75,113-123,125,154,
163, 165 f., 261-266 ; a
process in history, 23, 33,
351., 44-49, 51-53, 65 f.,
106 f., in, 117-120, 163,
171 -174, 178 f., 190, 196,
209-213, 217-219, 230,
233 f., 261-267 ; does
not primarily consist in
doctrines and rules, 67,
70, 117 f., 154 f-, 159-
163, 170-174, 190, 205-

296

Index

209, 261 ; its verification
in experience, 225-248 ;
progressive character of,
105, 107, 109 f., 171 I.,
177, 262-265
Revelation of John, see
John, Revelation of
Revised Version, 76
Revival, 241
Sacrifice, 124
Samuel, Books of, 95,
213
Science, 15, 18, 63, 187,256;
function of, 254
Scientific method, 63
Second Isaiah, 11 4-1 16,
131. 194 f-
Semitic rehgion, 210
Sennacherib, 119
Septuagint, 41 f., 59, 78
Sermon on the Mount, 185
Servant of Yahweh, 31,
113-115, 131, 186, 195
Servant poems, 11 3-1 15
Shakespeare, 153
Sin, 47 f., 194, 215, 236,
284-286
Smith, Robertson, 75
Solomon, 74, 86
Son of God, 38, 47, 52 f.
Song of Songs, 86
Spirituality, 67, 124
Stephen, 93, 233
Stranger, The, 89 f.
Subjectivity, 208, 237 f.

Synoptic Gospels, 26, 28,
96, 204, 208 f.
Synoptic Problem, 61
Tatian, 96
Temple, 142
Textual criticism, 20 f., 37,
57-60, 76-81, 267
Theology, 16, 50 f., 67-70,
118, 128, 141, 154-161,
173 f., 195, 201, 203, 206,
261-263, 270 f., 284-286
Thessalonians, Second
Epistle to the, 28
Thiersch, 104
Tischendorf, 77
Tithe, 89 f. [61
Two-document theory, 26,
Two Isaiahs, 84 f .
Tradition, 55, 58, 128
Tubingen School, 25-27,
40 f.
Ulfilas, 168
Universal rehgion, 125
Versions, 20, 59
Vindictive Psalms, 16, 233
Vision, 120 f., 216
Voltaire, 234
Widow, 89 f.
Wilderness, The, 212
Witness of the Spirit, 242 f.,
245
Writing, 52, 267
Writings, The, 85
Zechariah, Book of, 85

3 9002