THE SCRIPTURES A REVELATION FROM GOD.

CHAPTER 1.

PRELIMINARY CONSIDERATIONS.

I. REASONS A PRIORI FOR EXPECTING A REVELATION FROM GOD.

1. Needs of man’s nature. Man’s intellectual and moral nature requires, in order to preserve it from constant deterioration, and to ensure its moral growth and progress, an authoritative and helpful revelation of religious truth, of a higher and completer sort than any to which, in its present state of sin, it can attain by the use of its unaided powers. The proof of this proposition is partly psychological, and partly historical A. Psychological proof. — (a) Neither reason nor intuition throws light upon certain questions whose solution is of the utmost importance to us; for example, Trinity, atonement, pardon, method of worship, personal existence after death. (b) Even the truth to which we arrive by our natural powers needs divine confirmation and authority when it addresses minds and wills perverted by sin. (c) To break this power of sin, and to furnish encouragement to moral effort, we need a special revelation of the merciful and helpful aspect of the divine nature. (a) Bremen Lectures, 72, 73; Plato, Second Alcibiades, 22, 23; Phædo, — lo>gou qei>ou tino>v , Iamblicus, peri> tou~ Puqagorikou~ bi>ou , chap. 28.Æschylus, in his Agamemnon, shows how completely reason and intuition failed to supply the knowledge of God which man needs: “Renown is loud,” he says, “and not to lose one’s senses is God’s greatest gift...The being praised outrageously Is grave; for at the eyes of such a one Is launched, from Zeus, the thunder-stone. Therefore do I decide for so much and no more prosperity than of his envy passes unespied.”

Though the gods might have favorites, they did not love men as men, but rather, envied and hated them. William James, Is Life Worth Living?

Internat. Jour. Ethics, Oct. 1895:10 — “All we know of good and beauty proceeds from nature, but none the less all we know of evil...To such a harlot we owe no moral allegiance...If there be a divine Spirit of the universe, nature, such as we know her, cannot possibly be its ultimate word to man. Either there is no Spirit revealed in nature, or else it is inadequately revealed there; and, as all the higher religions have assumed, what we call visible nature, or this world, must be but a veil and surface show whose full meaning resides in a supplementary unseen or other world.” (b) Versus Socrates: Men will do right, if they only know the right.

Pfleiderer Philos. Relig., 1:219 — “In opposition to the opinion of Socrates that badness rests upon ignorance, Aristotle already called the fact to mind that the doing of the good is not always combined with the knowing of it, seeing that it depends also on the passions. If badness consisted only in the want of knowledge, then those who are theoretically most cultivated must also be morally the best, which no one will venture to assert.” W.S. Lilly, On Shibboleths: “Ignorance is often held to be the root of all evil. But mere knowledge cannot transform character. It cannot minister to a mind diseased. It cannot convert the will from bad to good. It may turn crime into different channels, and render it less easy to detect. It does not change man’s natural propensities or his disposition to gratify them at the expense of others. Knowledge makes the good man more powerful for good, the bad man more powerful for evil. And that is all it can do.” Gore, Incarnation, 174 — “We must not depreciate the method of argument, for Jesus and Paul occasionally used it in a Socratic fashion, but we must recognize that it is not the basis of the Christian system nor the primary method of Christianity.” Martineau, in Nineteenth Century, 1:331, 531, and Types, 1:112 — “Plato dissolved the idea of the right into that of the good, and this again was indistinguishably mingled with that of the true and the beautiful.” See also Flint, Theism, 305. (c) Versus Thomas Paine: “Natural religion teaches us, without the possibility of being mistaken, all that is necessary or proper to be known.”

Plato, Laws, 9:854, c, for substance: “Be good; but, if you cannot, then kill yourself.” Farrar, Darkness and Dawn,75 — “Plato says that man will never know God until God has revealed himself in the guise of suffering man, and that, when all is on the verge of destruction, God sees the distress of the universe, and, placing himself at the rudder, restores it to order.” Prometheus, the type of humanity, can never be delivered “until some god descends for him into the black depths of Tartarus.” Seneca in like manner teaches that man cannot save himself. He says: “Do you wonder that men go to the gods? God comes to men, yes, into men.” We are sinful, and God’s thoughts are not as our thoughts, nor his ways as our ways. Therefore he must make known his thoughts to us, teach us what we are, what true love is, and what will please him. Shaler.

Interpretation of Nature, 227 — “The inculcation of moral truths can be successfully effected only in the personal way; ...it demands the influence of personality...the weight of the impression depends upon the voice and the eye of a teacher.” In other words, we need not only the exercise of authority, but also the manifestation of love.

B. Historical proof. — (a) The knowledge of moral and religious truth possessed by nations and ages in which special revelation is unknown is grossly and increasingly imperfect. (b) Man’s actual condition in anti-Christian times, and in modern heathen lands, is that of extreme moral depravity. (c) With this depravity is found a general conviction of helplessness, and on the part of some nobler natures, a longing after, and hope of, aid from above.

Pythagoras: “It is not easy to know [duties], except men were taught them by God himself, or by some person who had received them from God, or obtained the knowledge of them through some divine means.” Socrates: “Wait with patience, till we know with certainty how we ought to behave ourselves toward God and man.” Plato: “We will wait for one, be he a God or an inspired man, to instruct us in our duties and to take away the darkness from our eyes.” Disciple of Plato: “Make probability our raft, while we sail through life, unless we could have a more sure and safe conveyance, such as some divine communication would be.” Plato thanked God for three things: first that he was born a rational soul; secondly, that he was born a Greek; and, thirdly, that he lived in the days of Socrates. Yet, with all these advantages, he had only probability for a raft on which to navigate strange seas of thought far beyond his depth, and he longed for “a more sure word of prophecy” ( 1 Peter 1:19). See references and (quotations in Peabody, Christianity the Religion of Nature,35, and in Luthardt, Fundamental Truths, 156-172, 335-338; Farrar, Seekers after God; Garbett, Dogmatic Faith, 187. 2. Presumption of supply. What we know of God, by nature, affords ground for hope that these wants of our intellectual and moral being will be met by a corresponding supply, in the shape of a special divine revelation.

We argue this: (a) From our necessary conviction of God’s wisdom. Having made man a spiritual being, for spiritual ends, it may be hoped that he will furnish the means needed to secure these ends. (b) From the actual, though incomplete, revelation already given in nature.

Since God has actually undertaken to make himself known to men, we may hope that he will finish the work he has begun. (c) From the general connection of want and supply. The higher our needs, the more intricate and ingenious are, in general, the contrivances for meeting them. We may therefore hope that the highest want will be all the more surely met. (d) From analogies of nature and history. Signs of reparative goodness in nature and of forbearance in providential dealings lead us to hope that, while justice is executed, God may still make known some way of restoration for sinners. (a) There were two stages in Dr. John Duncan’s escape from pantheism: 1. When he came first to believe in the existence of God, and “danced for joy upon the brig o’ Dee”; and 2. When, under Malan’s influence, he came also to believe that “God meant that we should know him.” In the story in the old Village Reader, the mother broke completely down when she found that her son was likely to grow up stupid, but her tears conquered him and made him intelligent. Laura Bridgman was blind, deaf and dumb, and had but small sense of taste or smell. When her mother, after long separation, went to her in Boston, the mother’s heart was in distress lest the daughter should not recognize her. When at last, by some peculiar mother’s sign, she pierced the veil of insensibility; it was a glad time for both. So God, our Father, tries to reveal himself to our blind, deaf and dumb souls. The agony of the Cross is the sign of God’s distress over the insensibility of humanity which sin has caused. If he is the Maker of man’s being, he will surely seek to fit it for that communion with himself for which it was designed. (b) Gore, Incarnation,52,53 — “Nature is a first volume, in itself incomplete, and demanding a second volume, which is Christ.” (c) R.T. Smith, Man’s Knowledge of Man and of God, 238 — “Mendicants do not ply their calling for years in a desert where there are no givers. Enough of supply has been received to keep the sense of want alive.” (d) In the natural arrangements for the healing of bruises in plants and for the mending of broken bones in the animal creation, in the provision of remedial agents for the cure of human diseases, and especially in the delay to inflict punishment upon the transgressor and the space given him for repentance, we have some indications, which, if uncontradicted by other evidence, might lead us to regard the God of nature as a God of forbearance and mercy. Plutarch’s treatise “De Sera Numinis Vindicta “is proof that this thought had occurred to the heathen. It may be doubted, indeed, whether a heathen religion could even continue to exist, without embracing in it some element of hope. Yet this very delay in the execution of the divine judgments gave its own occasion for doubting the existence of a God who was both good and just. “Truth forever on the scaffold, Wrong forever on the throne,” is a scandal to the divine government, which only the sacrifice of Christ can fully remove.

The problem presents itself also in the Old Testament. In Job 21, and in Psalm 1; 37, 49, 73, there are partial answers; see Job 21:7 — “Wherefore do the wicked live, Become old, yea, wax mighty in power?” 24:1 — “Why are not judgment times determined by the Almighty? And they that know him, why see they not his days?” The New ‘Testament intimates the existence of a witness to God’s goodness among the heathen, while at the same the it declares that the full knowledge of forgiveness and salvation is brought only by Christ. Compare Acts 14:17 — “And yet he left not himself without witness, in that he did good, and gave you from heaven rains and fruitful seasons, filling your hearts with food and gladness” 17:25-27 — “he himself giveth to all life, and breath, and all things; and he made, of one every nation of men...that they should seek God, if haply they might feel after him and find him”; Romans 2:4 — “the goodness of God leadeth thee to repentance”; 3: 25 — “the passing over of the sins done aforetime, in the forbearance of God”; Ephesians 3:9 — “to make all men see what is the dispensation of the mystery which for ages hath been hid in God”; 2 Timothy 1:10 — “our Savior Christ Jesus, who abolished death, and brought life and incorruption to light through the gospel.” See Hackett’s edition of the treatise of Plutarch, as also Bowen, Metaph. and Ethics, 462-487; Diman, Theistic Argument, 371.

We conclude this section upon the reasons a priori for expecting a revelation from God with the acknowledgment that the facts warrant that degree of expectation, which we call hope, rather than that larger degree of expectation which we call assurance: and this, for the reason that, while conscience gives proof that God is a God of holiness, we have not, from the light of nature, equal evidence that God is a God of love. Reason teaches man that, as a sinner, he merits condemnation; but he cannot, from reason alone, know that God will have mercy upon him and provide salvation. His doubts can be removed only by God’s own voice, assuring him of “redemption...the forgiveness of... trespasses” ( Ephesians 1:7) and revealing to him the way in which that forgiveness has been rendered possible.

Conscience knows no pardon, and no Savior. Hovey, Manual of Christian Theology, 9, seems to us to go too far when he says, “Even natural affection and conscience afford some clue to the goodness and holiness of God, though much more is needed by one who undertakes the study of Christian theology.” We grant that natural affection gives some clue to God’s goodness, but we regard conscience as reflecting only God’s holiness and his hatred of sin. We agree with Alexander McLaren: “Does God’s love need to be proved? Yes, as all paganism shows. Gods vicious, gods careless, gods cruel, gods beautiful, there are in abundance; but where is there a god who loves?”

II. MARKS OF THE REVELATION MAN MAY EXPECT.

1. As to its substance. We may expect this later revelation not to contradict, but to confirm and enlarge, the knowledge of God, which we derive from nature, while it remedies the defects of natural religion and throws light upon its problems.

Isaiah’s appeal is to God’s previous communications of truth: Isaiah 8:20 — “To the law and to the testimony! If they speak not according to this word, surely there is no morning for them.” And Malachi follows the example of Isaiah; Malachi 4:4 — “Remember ye the Law of Moses my servant.” Our Lord himself based his claims upon the former utterances of God: Luke 24:27 — beginning from Moses and from all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself” 2. As to its method. We may expect it to follow God’s methods of procedure in other communications of truth.

Bishop Butler (Analogy, part ii, chap. iii) has denied that there is any possibility of judging a priori how a divine revelation will be given. “We are in no sort judges beforehand,” he says, “by what methods, or in what proportion, it were to be expected that this supernatural light and instruction would be afforded us.” But Bishop Butler somewhat later in his great work (part ii, chap. iv) shows that God’s progressive plan in revelation has its analogy in the slow, successive steps by which God accomplishes his ends in nature. We maintain that the revelation in nature affords certain presumptions with regard to the revelation of grace, such for example as those mentioned below.

Leslie Stephen, in Nineteenth Century, Feb. 1891:180 — “Butler answered the argument of the deists, that the God of Christianity was unjust, by arguing that the God of nature was equally unjust. James Mill, admitting the analogy, refused to believe in either God. Dr. Martineau has said, for similar reasons, that Butler ‘wrote one of the most terrible persuasives to atheism ever produced.’ So J.H. Newman’s ‘kill or cure’ argument is essentially that God has either revealed nothing, or has made revelations in some other places than in the Bible. His argument, like Butler’s, may be as good a persuasive to skepticism as to belief.” To this indictment by Leslie Stephen we reply that it has cogency only so long as we ignore the fact of human sin. Granting this fact, our world becomes a world of discipline, probation and redemption, and both the God of nature and the God of Christianity are cleared from all suspicion of injustice.

The analogy between God’s methods in the Christian system and his methods in nature becomes an argument in favor of the former. (a) That of continuous historical development, — that it will be given in germ to early ages, and will be more fully unfolded as the race is prepared to receive it.

Instances of continuous development in God’s impartations are found in geological history; in the growth of the sciences; in the progressive education of the individual and of the race. No other religion but Christianity shows “a steady historical progress of the vision of one infinite Character unfolding itself to man through a period of many centuries.” See sermon by Dr. Temple, on the Education of the World, in Essays and Reviews; Rogers, Superhuman Origin of the Bible, 374-381; Walker, Philosophy of the Plan of Salvation. On the gradualness of revelation, see Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation, 46-86; Arthur H. Hallam, in John Brown’s Rab and his Friends, 282 — “Revelation is a gradual approximation of the infinite Being to the ways and thoughts of finite humanity.” A little fire can kindle a city or a world; but ten times the heat of that little fire, if widely diffused, would not kindle anything. (6) That of original delivery to a single nation, and to single persons in that nation, that it may through them be communicated to mankind.

Each nation represents an idea. As the Greek had a genius for liberty and beauty, and the Roman a genius for organization and law, so the Hebrew nation had a “genius for religion” (Renan); this last, however, would have been useless without special divine aid and superintendence, as witness other productions of this same Semitic race, such as Bel and the Dragon, in the Old Testament Apocrypha; the gospels of the Apocryphal New Testament; and later still, the Talmud and the Koran.

The O.T. Apocrypha relates that, when Daniel was thrown a second the into the lions’ den, an angel seized Habbakuk in Judea by the hair of his head and carried him with a bowl of pottage to give to Daniel for his dinner. There were seven lions, and Daniel was among them seven days and nights. Tobias starts from his father’s house to secure his inheritance, and his little dog goes with him. On the banks of the great river a great fish threatens to devour him, but he captures and despoils the fish. He finally returns successful to his father’s house, and his little dog goes in with him. In the Apocryphal Gospels, Jesus carries water in his mantle when his pitcher is broken; makes clay birds on the Sabbath, and, when rebuked, causes them to fly’; strikes a youthful companion with death, and then curses his accusers with blindness; mocks his teachers, and resents control. Later Moslem legends declare that Mohammed caused darkness at noon; whereupon the moon flew to him, went seven times around the Ka„ba, bowed, entered his right sleeve, split into two halves after slipping out at the left, and the two halves, after retiring to the extreme east and west, were reunited. These products of the Semitic race show that neither the influence of environment nor a native genius for religion furnishes an adequate explanation of our Scriptures. As the flame on Elijah’s altar was caused, not by the dead sticks, but by the fire from heaven, so only the inspiration of the Almighty can explain the unique revelation of the Old and New Testaments.

The Hebrews saw God in conscience. For the most genuine expression of their life we “must look beneath the surface, in the soul, where worship and aspiration and prophetic faith come face to face with God” (Genung, Epic of the Inner Life,28). But the Hebrew religion needed to be supplemented by the sight of God in reason, and in the beauty of the world. The Greeks had the love of knowledge, and the æsthetic sense.

Butcher, Aspects of the Greek Genius, 34 — “The Phúnicians taught the Greeks how to write, but it was the Greeks who wrote.” Aristotle was the beginner of science and outside the Aryan race none but the Saracens ever felt the scientific impulse. But the Greek made his problem clear by striking all the unknown quantities out of it. Greek thought would never have gained universal currency and permanence if it had not been for Roman jurisprudence and imperialism. England has contributed her constitutional government and America her manhood suffrage and her religious freedom. So a definite thought of God is incorporated in each nation, and each nation has a message to every other. Acts 17:26 — God “made of one every nation of men to dwell on all the face of the earth, having determined their appointed seasons, and the bounds of their habitation”; Romans 3:12 — “What advantage then hath the Jew? ...First of all, that they were entrusted with the oracles of God.” God’s choice of the Hebrew nation, as the repository and communicator of religious truth is analogous to his choice of other nations; it’s the repositories and communicators of æsthetic, scientific, governmental truth.

Hegel: “No nation that has played a weighty and active part in the world’s history has ever issued from the simple development of a single race along the unmodified lines of blood-relationship. There must be differences, conflicts, a composition of opposed forces.” The conscience of the Hebrew, the thought of the Greek, the organization of the Latin, the personal loyalty of the Teuton, must all be united to form a perfect whole. “While the Greek Church was orthodox the Latin Church was Catholic: while the Greek treated of the two wills in Christ, the Latin treated of the harmony of our wills with God; while the Latin saved through a corporation, the Teuton saved through personal faith.” Brereton, in Educational Review, Nov. 1901:339 — “The problem of France is that of the religious orders; that of Germany, the construction of society; that of America, capital and labor.” Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:183, 184 — “Great ideas never come from the masses, but from marked individuals.

These ideas, when propounded, however, awaken an echo in the masses, which shows that the ideas had been slumbering unconsciously in the souls of others.” The hour strikes, and a Newton appears, who interprets God’s will in nature. So the hour strikes, and a Moses or a Paul appears, who interprets God’s will in morals and religion. The few grains of wheat found in the clasped hand of the Egyptian mummy would have been utterly lost if one grain had been sown in Europe, a second in Asia, a third in Africa, and a fourth in America; all being planted together in a flowerpot, and their product in a garden bed, and the still later fruit in a farmer’s field, there came at last to be a sufficient crop of new Mediterranean wheat to distribute to all the world. So God followed his ordinary method in giving religious truth first to a single nation and to chosen individuals in that nation, that through them it might be given to all mankind. See British Quarterly, Jan. 1874: art.; Inductive Theology. (c) That of preservation in written and accessible documents, handed down from those to whom the revelation is first communicated.

Alphabets, writing, books, are our chief dependence for the history of the past; all the great religions of the world are book religions; the Karens expected their teachers in the new religion to bring to them a book. But notice that false religions have scriptures, but not Scripture; their sacred books lack the principle of unity which is furnished by divine inspiration.

H.P. Smith, Biblical Scholarship and Inspiration,68 — “Mohammed discovered that the Scriptures of the Jews were the source of their religion. He called them a ‘book people,’ and endeavored to construct a similar God for his disciples. In it God is the only speaker; all its contents are made known to the prophet by direct revelation; its Arabic style is perfect; its text is incorruptible; it is absolute authority in law, science and history.” The Koran is a grotesque human parody of the Bible; its exaggerated pretensions of divinity, indeed, are the best proof that it is of purely human origin. Scripture, on the other hand, makes no such claims for itself, but points to Christ as the sole and final authority. In this sense we may say with Clarke, Christian Theology, 20 — “Christianity is not a book religion, but a life religion. The Bible does not give us Christ, but Christ gives us the Bible.” Still it is true that for our knowledge of Christ we are almost wholly dependent upon Scripture. In giving his revelation to the world, God has followed his ordinary method of communicating and preserving truth by means of written documents. Recent investigations, however, now render it probable that the Karen expectation of a book was the survival of the teaching of the Nestorian missionaries, who as early as the eighth century penetrated the remotest parts of Asia, and left in the wall of the city of Singwadu in Northwestern China a tablet as a monument of their labors. On book revelation, see Rogers, Eclipse of Faith, 73-96, 281-304. 3. As to its attestation. We may expect that this revelation will be accompanied by evidence that its author is the same being whom we have previously recognized as God of nature. This evidence must constitute (a) a manifestation of God himself; (b) in the outward as well as the inward world; (c) such as only God’s power or knowledge can make; and (d) such as cannot be counterfeited by the evil, or mistaken by the candid, soul.

In short, we may expect God to attest by miracles and by prophecy, the divine mission and authority of those to whom he communicates a revelation. Some such outward sign would seem to be necessary, not only to assure the original recipient that the supposed revelation is not a vagary of his own imagination, but also to render the revelation received by a single individual authoritative to all (compare Judges 6:17, 36-40 — Gideon asks a sign. for himself: 1 Kings 18:36-38 — Elijah asks a sign for others).

But in order that our positive proof of a divine revelation may not be embarrassed by the suspicion that the miraculous and prophetic elements in the Scripture history create a presumption against its credibility, it will be desirable to take up at this point the general subject of miracles and prophecy.

III. MIRACLES, AS ATTESTING A DIVINE REVELATION.

1. Definition of Miracle.

A. Preliminary Definition. — A miracle is an event palpable to the senses, produced for a religious purpose by the immediate agency of God; an event therefore which, though not contravening any law of nature, the laws of nature, if fully known, would not without this agency of God be competent to explain.

This definition corrects several erroneous conceptions of the miracle: — (a) A miracle is not a suspension or violation of natural law; since natural law is in operation at the time of the miracle just as much as before. (b) A miracle is not a sudden product of natural agencies — a product merely foreseen, by him who appears to work it; it is the effect of a will outside of nature. (c) A miracle is not an event without a cause since it has for its cause a direct volition of God. (d) A miracle is not an irrational or capricious act of God; but an act of wisdom, performed in accordance with the immutable laws of his being, so that in the same circumstances the same course would be again pursued. (e) A miracle is not contrary to experience since it is not contrary to experience for a new cause to be followed by a new effect. (f) A miracle is not a matter of internal experience, like regeneration or illumination; but is an event palpable to the senses, which may serve as an objective proof to all that the worker of it is divinely commissioned as a religious teacher.

For various definitions of miracles, see Alexander, Christ and Christianity, 302. On the whole subject; see Mozley, Miracles; Christlieb, Mod. Doubt and Christ. Belief, 285-339; Fisher, in Princeton Rev., Nov. 1880, and Jan. 1881; A.H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, 129-147, and in Baptist Review, April, 1879. The definition given above is intended simply as a definition of the miracles of the Bible, or, in other words, of the events which profess to attest a divine revelation in the Scriptures. The New Testament designates these events in a two-fold way, viewing them either subjectively, as producing effects upon men, or objectively, as revealing the power and wisdom of God. In the former aspect they are called te>rata, ‘wonders,’ and shmei~a ‘signs,’ ( John 4:48; Acts 2:22). In the latter aspect they are called duna>meiv, ‘powers,’ and e]rga, ‘works,’ ( Matthew 7:22; John 14:11). See H.B. Smith, Lect. on Apologetics, 90-116, esp. 94 — shmei~on, sign , marking the purpose or object, the moral end, placing the event in connection with revelation.”

The Bible Union Version uniformly and properly renders te>rav by ‘wonder,’ duna>miv by ‘miracle,’ e]rgon by ‘work,’ and shmei~on by ‘sign.’ Goethe, Faust: “Alles Vergangliche ist nur ein Gleichniss: Das Unzulangliche wird hier Ereigniss” — “Everything transitory is but a parable; The unattainable appears as solid fact.” So the miracles of the New Testament are acted parables, — Christ opens the eyes of the blind to show that he is the Light of the world, multiplies the loaves to show that he is the Bread of Life, and raises the dead to show that he lifts men up from the death of trespasses and sins. See Broadus on Matthew, 175.

A modification of this definition of the miracle, however, is demanded by a large class of Christian physicists, in the supposed interest of natural law. Babbage proposes such a modification. in the Ninth Bridgewater Treatise, chap. viii. Babbage illustrates the miracle by the action of his calculating machine, which would present to the observer in regular succession the series of units from one to ten million, but which would then make a leap and show, not ten million and one, but a hundred million; Ephraim Peabody illustrates the miracle from the cathedral clock, which strikes only once in a hundred years; yet both these results are due simply to the original construction of the respective machines. Bonnet held this view; see Dorner, Glaubenslehre 1:591, 592; Eng. translation, 2:155, 156; so Matthew Arnold, quoted in Bruce, Miraculous Element in Gospels, 52; see also A.H. Strong. Philosophy and Religion, 129-147.

Babbage and Peabody would deny that the miracle is due to the direct and immediate agency of God, and would regard it as belonging to a higher order of nature. God is the author of the miracle only in the sense that he instituted the laws of nature at the beginning and provided that at the appropriate time miracle should be their outcome. In favor of this view it has been claimed that it does not dispense with the divine working, but only puts it further back at the origination of the system, while it still holds God’s work to be essential, not only to the upholding of the system, but also to the inspiring of the religious teacher or leader with the knowledge needed to predict the unusual working of the system. The wonder is confined to the prophecy, which may equally attest a divine revelation. See Matheson, in Christianity and Evolution, 1-26.

But it is plain that a miracle of this sort lacks to a large degree the element of ‘signality’, which is needed, if it is to accomplish its purpose. It surrenders the great advantage which miracle, as first defined, possessed over special providence, as an attestation of revelation — the advantage, namely, that while special providence affords some warrant that this revelation comes from God, miracle gives full warrant that it comes from God. Since man may by natural means possess himself of the knowledge of physical laws, the true miracle which God works, and the pretended miracle which only man works, are upon this theory far less easy to distinguish from each other: Cortez, for example, could deceive Montezuma by predicting an eclipse of the sun. Certain typical miracles, like the resurrection of Lazarus, refuse to be classed as events within the realm of nature, in the sense in which the term nature is ordinarily used.

Our Lord, moreover, seems clearly to exclude such a theory as this, when he says: “If I by the finger of God cast out demons” ( Luke 11:20); Mark 1:41 — “I will; be thou made clean.” The view of Babbage is inadequate, not only because it fails to recognize any immediate exercise of will in the miracle, but also because it regards nature as a mere machine which can operate apart from God — a purely deistic method of conception. On this view, many of the products of mere natural law might be called miracles. The miracle would be only the occasional manifestation of a higher order of nature, like the comet occasionally invading the solar system. William Elder, ldeas from Nature: “The century plant which we have seen growing from our childhood may not unfold its blossoms until our old age comes upon us, but the sudden wonder is natural notwithstanding.” If, however, we interpret nature dynamically, rather than mechanically, and regard it as the regular working of the divine will instead of the automatic operation of a machine, there is much in this view which we may adopt. Miracle may be both natural and supernatural. We may hold, with Babbage, that it has natural antecedents, while at the same time we hold that it is produced by the immediate agency of God. We proceed therefore to an alternative and preferable definition, which in our judgment combines the merits of both that have been mentioned. On miracles as already defined, see Mozley, Miracles, preface, ix — xxvi, 7, 143-160; Bushnell. Nature and Supernatural, 338-3 A; Smith’s and Hastings’ Diet, of Bible, art.; Miracles; Abp. Temple, Bampton Lectures for 1884:193-221; Shedd, Dogm. Theology. 1:541, 542.

B. Alternative and Preferable Definition. — A miracle is an event in nature, so extraordinary in itself and so coinciding with the prophecy or command of’ a religions teacher or leader, as fully to warrant the conviction, on the part of those who witness it, that God has wrought it with the design of certifying that this teacher or leader has been commissioned by him.

This definition has certain marked advantages as compared with the preliminary definition given above: (a) It recognizes the immanence of God and his immediate agency in nature, instead of assuming an antithesis between the laws of nature and the will of God. (b) It regards the miracle as simply an extraordinary act of that same God who is already present in all-natural operations and who in them is revealing his general plan. (c) It holds that natural law, as the method of God’s regular activity, in no way precludes unique exertions of his power when these will best secure his purpose in creation. (d) It leaves it possible that all miracles may have their natural explanations and may hereafter be traced to natural causes, while both miracles and their natural causes may be only names for the one and selfsame will of God. (e) It reconciles the claims of both science and religion: of science, by permitting any possible or probable physical antecedents of the miracle; of religion, by maintaining that these very antecedents together with the miracle itself are to be interpreted as signs of God’s special commission to him under whose teaching or leadership the miracle is wrought.

Augustine, who declares that “Dei voluntas rerum natura est,” defines the miracle in De Civitate Dei, 2:8 — “Portentum ergo fit non contra naturam, sed contra quam est nota natura.” He says also that a birth is more miraculous than a resurrection because it is more wonderful that something that never was should begin to be, than that something that was and ceased to be should begin again. E.G. Robinson, Christ. Theology, 104 — “The natural is God’s work. He originated it. There is no separation between the natural and the supernatural. The natural is Supernatural. God works on everything. Every end, even though attained by mechanical means, is God’s end as truly as if he wrought by miracle.”

Shaler, Interpretation of Nature, 141, regards miracle as something exceptional, yet under the control of natural law; the latent in nature suddenly manifesting itself; the revolution resulting from the slow accumulation of natural forces. In the Windsor Hotel fire, the heated and charred woodwork suddenly burst into flame. Flame is very different from mere heat, but it may be the result of a regularly rising temperature.

Nature may be God’s regular action, miracle its unique result. God’s regular action may be entirely free, and yet its extraordinary result may be entirely natural. With these qualifications and explanations, we may adopt the statement of Biedermann, Dogmatik, 581-591 — “Everything is miracle, — therefore faith sees God everywhere; Nothing is miracle, — therefore science sees God nowhere.”

Miracles are never considered by the Scripture writers as infractions of law. Bp. Southampton, Place of Miracles,18 — “The Hebrew historian or prophet regarded miracles as only the emergence into sensible experience of that divine force which was all along, though invisibly, controlling the course of nature.” Hastings, Bible Pictionar; 4:117 — “The force of a miracle to us, arising from our notion of law, would not be felt by a Hebrew, because he had no notion of natural law.” Psalm 77:19,20 — “Thy way was in the sea, And thy paths in the great waters, And thy footsteps were not known” = They knew not, and we know not, by what precise means the deliverance was wrought, or by what precise track the passage through the Red Sea was effected; all we know is that “Thou leddest thy people like a flock, By the hand of Moses and Aaron.”

J.M. Whiton, Miracles and Supernatural Religion; “The supernatural is in nature itself, at its very heart, at its very life...not an outside power interfering within the course of nature, but an inside power vitalizing nature and operating through it.” Griffith-Jones, Ascent through Christ,35 — “Miracle, instead of spelling ‘monster’, as Emerson said, simply bears witness to some otherwise unknown or unrecognized aspect of the divine character.” Shedd, Dogmn. Theol., 1:533 — “To cause the sun to rise and to cause Lazarus to rise, both demand omnipotence; but the manner in which omnipotence works in one instance is unlike the manner in the other.”

Miracle is an immediate operation of God; but, since all natural processes are also immediate operations of God, we do not need to deny the use of these natural processes, so far as they will go, in miracle. Such wonders of the Old Testament as the overthrow of Sodom and Gomorrah, the partings of the Red Sea and of the Jordan, the calling down of fire from heaven by Elijah and the destruction of the army of Sennacherib, are none the less works of God when regarded as wrought by the use of natural means. In the New Testament Christ took water to make wine, and took the five loaves to make bread, just as in ten thousand vineyards to-day he is turning the moisture of the earth into the juice of the grape, and in ten thousand fields is turning carbon into corn. The virgin birth of Christ may be an extreme instance of parthenogenesis which Professor Loeb of Chicago has just demonstrated to take place in other than the lowest forms of life and which he believes to be possible in all. Christ’s resurrection may be an illustration of the power of the normal and perfect human spirit to take to itself a proper body, and so may be the type and prophecy of that great change when we too shall lay down our life and take it again.

The scientist may yet find that his disbelief is not only disbelief in Christ, but also disbelief in science. All miracle may have its natural side, though we now are not able to discern it; and, if this were true, the Christian argument would not one whit be weakened, for still miracle would evidence the extraordinary working of the immanent God, and the impartation of his knowledge to the prophet or apostle who was his instrument.

This view of the miracle renders entirely unnecessary and irrational the treatment accorded to the Scripture narratives by some modern theologians. There is a credulity of skepticism, which minimizes the miraculous element in the Bible and treats it as mythical or legendary, in spite of clear evidence that it belongs to the realm of actual history.

Pfleiderer, Philos. Relig.,1:295 — “Miraculous legends arise in two ways, partly out of the idealizing of the real, and partly out of the realizing of the ideal. ...Every occurrence may obtain for the religious judgment the significance of a sign as proof of the world-governing power, wisdom, justice or goodness of God...Miraculous histories are a poetic realizing of religious ideas.” Pfleiderer quotes Goethe’s apothegm: “Miracle is faith’s dearest child.” Foster, Finality of the Christian Religion, 128-138 — We most honor biblical miraculous narratives when we seek to understand them as poesies.” Ritschl defines miracles as “those striking natural occurrences with which the experience of God’s special help is connected.” He leaves doubtful the bodily resurrection of Christ, and many of his school deny it; see Mead, Ritschl’s Place in the History of Doctrine,11. We do not need to interpret Christ’s resurrection as a mere appearance of his spirit to the disciples. Gladden, Seven Puzzling Books, 202 — “In the hands of perfect and spiritual man, the forces of nature are pliant and tractable as they are not in ours. The resurrection of Christ is only a sign of the superiority of the life of the perfect spirit over external conditions. It may be perfectly in accordance with nature.” Myers, Human Personality, 2:288 — “I predict that, in consequence of the new evidence, all reasonable men, a century hence, will believe the resurrection of Christ.”

We may add that Jesus himself intimates that the working of miracles is hereafter to be a common and natural manifestation of the new life which he imparts: John 14:12 — “He that believeth on me, the works that I do shall he do also; and greater works than these shall he do, because I go unto the Father.”

We append a number of opinions, ancient and modern, with regard to miracles, all tending to show the need of so defining them as not to conflict with the just claims of science. Aristotle: “Nature is not full of episodes, like a bad tragedy.” Shakespeare, All’s Well that Ends Well, 2:3:1 — “They say miracles are past; and we have out philosophical persons to make modern and familiar things supernatural and causeless.

Hence it is that we make trifles of terrors, ensconsing ourselves into seeming knowledge, when we should submit ourselves to an unknown fear.” Keats, Lamia: “There was an awful rainbow once in heaven; We know her woof, her texture: she is given in the dull catalogue of common things.” Hill, Genetic Philosophy, 334 — “Biological and psychological science unite in affirming that every event, organic or psychic, is to be explained in the terms of its immediate antecedents, and that it can be so explained. There is therefore no necessity; theme is even no room, for interference. If the existence of a Deity depends upon the evidence of intervention and supernatural agency, faith in the divine seems to be destroyed in the scientific mind.” Theodore Parker: “No whim in God, — therefore no miracle in nature.” Armour, Atonement and Law, 15-33 — “The miracle of redemption, like all miracles, is by intervention of adequate power, not by suspension of law. Redemption is not ‘the great exception.’ It is the fullest revelation and vindication of law.” Gore, in Lux Mundi, 320 — “Redemption is not natural but supernatural — supernatural, that is, in view of the false nature which man made for himself by excluding God. Otherwise, the work of redemption is only the reconstitution of the nature which God had designed.” Abp. Trench: “The world of nature is throughout a witness for the world of spirit, proceeding from the same hand, growing out of the same root, and being constituted for this very end. The characters of nature which everywhere meet the eye are not a common but a sacred writing, — they are the hieroglyphics of God.” Pascal: “Nature is the image of grace.” President Mark Hopkins: “Christianity and perfect Reason are identical.” See Mend, Supernatural Revelation, 97-123; art.; Miracle, by Bernard, in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible. The modern and improved view of the miracle is perhaps best presented by T.H. Wright, The Finger of God; and by W.N. Rice, Christian Faith in an Age of Science, 336. 2. Possibility of Miracle.

An event in nature may be caused by an agent in nature yet above nature.

This is evident from the following considerations: (a) Lower forces and laws in nature are frequently counteracted and transcended by the higher (as mechanical forces and laws by chemical, and chemical by vital), while yet the lower forces and laws are not suspended or annihilated, but are merged in the higher, and made to assist in accomplishing purposes to which they are altogether unequal when left to themselves.

By nature we mean nature in the proper sense — not ‘everything that is not God,’ but everything that is not God or made in the image of God’; see Hopkins, Outline Study of Man, 258, 259. Man’s will does not belong to nature, but is above nature. On the transcending of lower forces by higher, see Murphy, Habit and Intelligence, 1:88. James Robertson, Early Religion, of Israel,23 — “Is it impossible that there should be unique things in the world? Is it scientific to assert that there are not?” Ladd, Philosophy of Knowledge, 406 — “Why does not the projecting part of the coping-stone fall, in obedience to the law of gravitation, from the top of yonder building? Because, as physics declares, the forces of cohesion, acting under quite different laws, thwart and oppose for the time being the law of gravitation...But now, after a frosty night, the coping-stone actually breaks off and tumbles to the ground; for that unique law which makes water forcibly expand at 32deg Fahrenheit has contradicted the laws of cohesion and has restored to the law of gravitation its temporarily suspended rights over this mass of matter.” Come, Incarnation,48 — “Evolution views nature as a progressive order in which there are new departures, fresh levels won, phenomena unknown before. When organic life appeared, the future did not resemble the past. So when man came.

Christ is a new nature — the creative Word made flesh. It is to be expected that, as new nature, he will exhibit new phenomena. New vital energy will radiate from him, controlling the material forces. Miracles are the proper accompaniments of his person.” We may add that, as Christ is the immanent God, be is present in nature while at the same the he is above nature, and he whose steady will is the essence of all natural law can transcend all past exertions of that will. The infinite One is not a being of endless monotony. William Elder, Ideas from Nature, 156 — “God is not bound hopelessly to his process, like Ixion to his wheel.” (b) The human will acts upon its physical organism, and so upon nature, and produces results which nature left to herself never could accomplish, while yet no law of nature is suspended or violated. Gravitation still operates upon the axe, even while man holds it at the surface of the water — for the axe still has weight (cf. 2Kings 6:5-7). Versus Flume, Philos. Works, 4:130 — “A miracle is a violation of the laws of nature.” Christian apologists have too often needlessly embarrassed their argument by accepting Hume’s definition. The stigma is entirely undeserved. If man can support the axe at the surface of the water while gravitation still acts upon it, God can certainly, at the prophet’s word, make the iron to swim, while gravitation still acts upon it.

But this last is miracle. See Mansel, Essay on Miracles, in Aids to Faith,26,27: After the greatest wave of the season has landed its pebble high up on the beach, I can move the pebble a foot further without altering the force of wind or wave or climate in a distant continent. Fisher, Supernat.

Origin of Christianity, 471; Hamilton, Autology, 685-690; Bowen, Metaph. and Ethics, 445; Row, Bampton Lectures on Christian Evidences, 54-74; A. A. Hodge: Pulling out a new stop of the organ does not suspend the working or destroy the harmony of the other stops. The pump does not suspend the law of gravitation, nor does our throwing a ball into the air. If gravitation did not act, the upward velocity of the ball would not diminish and the ball would never return.

Gravitation draws iron down. But the magnet overcomes that attraction and draws the iron up. Yet here is no suspension or violation of law, but rather a harmonious working of two laws, each in its sphere. Death and not life is the order of nature. But men live notwithstanding.

Life is supernatural. Only as a force additional to mere nature works against nature does life exist. So spiritual life uses and transcends the laws of nature” (Sunday school Times). Gladden, What Is Left? 60 — “Wherever you find thought, choice, love, you find something that is not under the dominion of fixed law. These are the attributes of a free personality.” William James: “We need to substitute the personal view of life for the impersonal and mechanical view. Mechanical rationalism is narrowness and partial induction of facts, — it is not science.” (c) In all free causation, there is an acting without means. Man acts upon external nature through his physical organism, but, in moving his physical organism, he acts directly upon matter. In other words, the human will can cause use means, only because it has the power of acting initially without means.

See Hopkins, on Prayer-gauge, 10, and in Princeton Review, Sept. 1882:188. A. J. Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 311 — “Not Divinity alone intervenes in the world of things. Each living soul, in its measure and degree, does the same.” Each soul that acts in any way on its surroundings does so on the principle of the miracle. Phillips Brooks, Life, 2:350 — “The making of all events miraculous is no more an abolition of miracle than the flooding of the world with sunshine is an extinction of the sun.” George Adam Smith, on Isaiah 33:14 — “devouring fire everlasting burnings”: “If we look at a conflagration through smoked glass, we see buildings collapsing, but we see no fire. So science sees results, but not the power which produces them; sees cause and effect, but does not see God.” P. S. Henson: “The current in an electric wire is invisible so long as it circulates uniformly. But cut the wire and insert pieces of carbon between the two broken ends, and at once you have an arc light that drives away the darkness. So miracle is only the momentary interruption in the operation of uniform laws, which thus gives light to the ages,” — or, let us say rather, the momentary change on the method of their operation whereby the will of God takes a new form of manifestation. Pfleiderer, Grundriss, 100 — “Spinoza leugnete ihre metaphysiche Moglichkeit, Hume ihre geschichtliche Erkennbarkeit, Kant ihre practische Brauchbarkeit, Schleiermacher ihre religiose Bedeutsamkeit, Hegel ihre geistige Beweiskraft, Fichte ihre wahre Christlichkeit, und die kritische Theologie ihre wahre Geschichtlichkeit” (d) What the human will, considered as a supernatural force, and what the chemical and vital forces of nature itself, are demonstrably able to accomplish, cannot be regarded as beyond the power of God, so long as God dwells in and controls the universe. If man’s will can act directly upon matter in his own physical organism, God’s will can work immediately upon the system which he has created and which he sustains. In other words, if there be a God, and if he be a personal being, miracles are possible. The impossibility of miracles can be maintained only upon principles of atheism or pantheism.

See Westcott, Gospel of the Resurrection, 19; Cox, Miracles, an Argument and a Challenge: “Anthropomorphism is preferable to hylomorphism.” Newman Smyth, Old Faiths in a New Light, ch. 1 — “A miracle is not a sudden blow struck in the face of nature, but a use of nature, according to its inherent capacities, by higher powers.” See also Gloatz, Wunder und Naturgesetz, in Studien und Kritiken, 1886:403-546; Gunsaulus, Transfiguration of Christ,18,19,26; Andover Review, on “Robert Elsmere,” 1888:303; W.E. Gladstone, in Nineteenth Century, 1888:766-788; Dubois, on Science and Miracle, in New Englander, July, 1889:1-32 — Three postulates: (1) Every particle attracts every other in the universe; (2) Man’s will is free; (2) Every volition is accompanied by corresponding brain action. Hence every volition of ours causes changes throughout the whole universe; also, in Century Magazine, Dec. 1894: — Conditions are never twice the same in nature; all things are the results of will, since we know that the least thought of ours shakes the universe; miracle is simply the action of will in unique conditions; the beginning of life, the origin of consciousness, these are miracles, yet they are strictly natural; prayer and the mind that frames it are conditions which the Mind in nature cannot ignore. Cf . Ps 115:3 — “Our God is in the heavens: He hath done whatsoever he pleased’ = his almighty power and freedom do away with all a priori objections to miracles. If God is not a mere force, but a person, then miracles are possible. (e) This possibility of miracles becomes doubly sure to those who see in Christ none other than the immanent God manifested to creatures. The Logos or divine Reason who is the principle of all growth and evolution can make God known only by means of successive new impartations of his energy. Since all progress implies increment, and Christ is the only source of life, the whole history of creation is a witness to the possibility of miracle.

See A.H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 163-166 — “This conception of evolution is that of Lotze. That great philosopher, whose influence is more potent than any other in present thought, does not regard the universe as a plenum to which nothing can be added in the way of force. He looks upon the universe rather as a plastic organism to which new impulses can be imparted from him of whose thought and will it is an expression. These impulses, once imparted, abide in the organism and are thereafter subject to its law. Though these impulses come from within, they come not from that finite mechanism but from the immanent God. Robert Browning’s phrase, ‘All’s love but all’s law,’ must be interpreted as meaning that the very movements of the planets and all the operations of nature are revelations of a personal and present God, but it must not be interpreted as meaning that God runs in a rut, that he is confined to mechanism, that he is incapable of unique and startling manifestations of power. “The idea that gives to evolution its hold upon thinking minds is the idea of continuity. But absolute continuity is inconsistent with progress. If the future is not simply a reproduction of the past, there must be some new cause of change. In order to progress there must be either a new force, or a new combination of forces, and only some new force that causes the combination can explain the new combination of forces. This new force, moreover, must be intelligent force, if the evolution is to be toward the better instead of toward the worse. The continuity must be continuity not of forces but of plan. The forces may increase, nay; they must increase, unless the new is to be a mere repetition of the old. There must be additional energy imparted, the new combination brought about, and all this implies purpose and will. But through all there runs one continuous plan, and upon this plan the rationality of evolution depends. “A man builds a house. In laying the foundation he uses stone and mortar, but he makes the walls of wood and the roof of tin. In the superstructure he brings into play different laws from those which apply to the foundation. There is continuity, not of material, but of plan. Progress from cellar to garret requires breaks here and there, and the bringing in of new forces; in fact, without the bringing in of these new forces the evolution of the house would be impossible. Now substitute for the foundation and superstructure living things like the chrysalis and the butterfly; imagine the power to work from within and not from without; and you see that true continuity does not exclude but involves new beginnings. “Evolution, then, depends on increments of force plus continuity of plan.

New creations are possible because the immanent God has not exhausted himself. Miracle is possible because God is not far away, but is at hand to do whatever the needs of his moral universe may require. Regeneration and answers to prayer are possible for the very reason that these are the objects for which the universe was built, if we were deists, believing in a distant God and a mechanical universe, evolution and Christianity would be irreconcilable. But since we believe in a dynamical universe, of which the personal and living God is the inner source of energy, evolution is but the basis, foundation and background of Christianity, the silent and regular working of him who, in the fullness of time, utters his voice in Christ and the Cross.”

Lotze’s own statement of his position may be found in his Microcosmos, 2:479 sq. Professor James Ten Broeke has interpreted him as follows: “He makes the possibility of the miracle depend upon the close and intimate action and reaction between the world and the personal Absolute, in consequence of which the movements of the natural world are carried on only through the Absolute, with the possibility of a variation in the general course of things, according to existing facts and the purpose of the divine Governor.” 3. Probability of Miracles.

A. We acknowledge that, so long as we confine our attention to nature, there is a presumption against miracles. Experience testifies to the uniformity of natural law. A general uniformity is needful, in order to make possible a rational calculation of the future, and a proper ordering of life.

See Butler, Analogy, part ii, chap. ii; F. W. Farrar, Witness of History to Christ, 3-45; Modern Skepticism, 1:179-227; Chalmers, Christian Revelation, 1:47. G. D. B. Pepper: “Where there is no law, no settled order, there can be no miracle. The miracle presupposes the law, and the importance assigned to miracles is the recognition of the reign of law. But the making and launching of a ship may be governed bylaw, no less than the sailing of the ship after it is launched. So the introduction of a higher spiritual order into a merely natural order constitutes a new and unique event.” Some Christian apologists have erred in affirming that the miracle was antecedently as probable as any other event, whereas only its antecedent improbability gives it value as a proof of revelation. Horace: “Nec deus intersit, nisi dignus vindice nodus Inciderit.”

B. But we deny that this uniformity of nature is absolute and universal. (a) It is not a truth of reason that can have no exceptions, like the axiom that a whole is greater than its parts. (b) Experience could not warrant a belief in absolute and universal uniformity, unless experience was identical with absolute and universal knowledge. (c) We know, on the contrary, from geology, that there have been breaks in this uniformity, such as the introduction of vegetable, animal and human life, which cannot be accounted for, except by the manifestation in nature of a supernatural power. (a) Compare the probability that the sun will rise tomorrow morning with the certainty that two and two make four. Huxley, Lay Sermons, 158, indignantly denies that there is any ‘must’ about the uniformity of nature: “No one is entitled to say a priori that any given so called miraculous event is impossible.” Ward, Naturalism and Agnosticism, 1:84 — “There is no evidence for the statement that the mass of the universe is a definite and unchangeable quantity”; 108, 109 — “Why so confidently assume that a rigid and monotonous uniformity — is the only, or the highest, indication of order, the order of an ever living Spirit, above all? How is it that we depreciate machine made articles, and prefer those in which the artistic impulse, or the fitness of the individual case, is free to shape and to make what is literally manufactured, handmade?

Dangerous as teleological arguments in general may be, we may at least safely say the world was not designed to make science easy...To call the verses of a poet, the politics of a statesman, or the award of a judge mechanical, implies, as Lotze has pointed out, marked disparagement, although it implies, too, precisely those characteristics — exactness and invariability — in which Maxwell would have us see a token of the divine.” Surely then we must not insist that divine wisdom must always run in a rut, must never repeat itself, must never exhibit itself in unique acts like incarnation and resurrection. See Edward Hitchcock, in Bibliotheca Sacra, 20:489-561, on “The Law of Nature’s Constancy Subordinate to the Higher Law of Change”; Jevons, Principles of Science, 2:430-438; Mozley, Miracles,26. (b) S.T. Coleridge, Table Talk, 18 December, 1831 — “The light which experience gives us is a lantern on the stern of the ship, which shines only on the waves behind us.” Hobbes: “Experience concludeth nothing universally.” Brooks, Foundations of Zoology, 131 — “Evidence can tell us only what has happened, and it can never assure us that the future must be like the past; 132 — Proof that all nature is mechanical would not be inconsistent with the belief that everything in nature is immediately sustained by Providence, and that my volition counts for something in determining the course of events.” Royce, World and Individual, 2:264 — “Uniformity is not absolute. Nature is a vaster realm of life and meaning, of which we men form a part, and of which the final unity is in God’s life.

The rhythm of the heartbeat has its normal regularity yet its limited persistence. Nature may be merely the habits of free will. Every region of this universally conscious world may be a center whence issues new conscious life for communication to all the worlds.” Principal Fairbairn: “Nature is Spirit.” We prefer to say: “Nature is the manifestation of spirit, the regularities of freedom.” (c) Other breaks in the uniformity of nature are the coming of Christ and the regeneration of a human soul. Harnack, What is Christianity, 18, holds that though there are no interruptions to the working of natural law, natural law is not yet fully known. While there are no miracles, there is plenty of the miraculous. The power of mind over matter is beyond our present conceptions. Bowne, Philosophy of Theism, 210 — The effects are no more consequences of the laws than the laws are consequences of the effects = both laws and effects are exercises of divine will. King, Reconstruction in Theology, 56 — We must hold, not to the uniformity of law, but to the universality of law; for evolution has successive stages with new laws coming in and becoming dominant that had not before appeared. The new and higher stage is practically a miracle from the point of view of the lower. See British Quarterly Review, Oct. 1881:154; Martineau, Study, 2:200, 203, 209.

C. Since the in-working of the moral law into the constitution and course of nature shows that nature exists, not for itself, but for the contemplation and use of moral beings, it is probable that the God of nature will produce effects aside from those of natural law, whenever there are sufficiently important moral ends to be served thereby.

Beneath the expectation of uniformity is the intuition of final cause; the former may therefore give way to the latter. See Porter, Human Intellect, 592-615 — Efficient causes and final causes may conflict, and then the efficient give place to the final. This is miracle. See Hutton, in Nineteenth Century, Aug. 1883, and Channing, Evidences of Revealed Religion, quoted in Shedd, Dogmatic Theology, 1:534, 535 — “The order of the universe is a means, not an end, and like all other means must give way when the end can be best promoted without it. It is the mark of a weak mind to make an idol of order and method; to cling to established forms of business when they clog instead of advancing it.” Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 357 — “The stability of the heavens is in the sight of God of less importance than the moral growth of the human spirit.” This is proved by the Incarnation. The Christian sees in this little earth the scene of Gods greatest revelation. The superiority of the spiritual to the physical helps us to see our true dignity in the creation, to rule our bodies, to overcome our sins. Christ’s suffering shows us that God is no indifferent spectator of human pain. He subjects himself to our conditions, or rather in this subjection reveals to us God’s own eternal suffering for sin. The atonement enables us to solve the problem of sin.

D. The existence of moral disorder consequent upon the free acts of man’s will, therefore, changes the presumption against miracles into a presumption in their favor. The nonappearance of miracles, in this case, would be the greatest of wonders.

Stearns, Evidence of Christian Experience, 331-4335 — So a man’s personal consciousness of sin and above all his personal experience of regenerating grace, will constitute the best preparation for the study of miracles. “Christianity cannot be proved except to a bad conscience.” The dying Vinet said well: “The greatest miracle that I know of is that of my conversion. I was dead, and I live; I was blind, and I see; I was a slave, and l am free: I was an enemy of God, and I love him; prayer, the Bible, the society of Christians, these were to me a source of profound ennui; whilst now it is the pleasures of the world that are wearisome to me, and piety is the source of all my joy. Behold the miracle! And if God has been able to work that one, there are none of which he is not capable.”

Yet the physical and the moral are not “sundered as with an axe.” Nature is but the lower stage or imperfect form of the revelation of God’s truth and holiness and love. It prepares the way for the miracle by suggesting, though more dimly, the same essential characteristics of the divine nature.

Ignorance and sin necessitate a larger disclosure. G.S. Lee, The Shadow Christ, 84 — “The pillar of cloud was the dim night lamp that Jehovah kept burning over his infant children, to show them that he was there.

They did not know that the night itself was God.” Why do we have Christmas presents in Christian homes? Because the parents do not love their children at other times?

No, but because the mind becomes sluggish in the presence of merely regular kindness, and special gifts are needed to wake it to gratitude. So our sluggish and unloving minds need special testimonies of the divine mercy. Shall God alone be shut up to dull uniformities of action? Shall the heavenly Father alone be unable to make special communications of love?

Why then are not miracles and revivals of religion constant and uniform?

Because uniform blessings would be regarded simply as workings of a machine. See Mozley, Miracles, preface, xxiv; Turner, Wish and Will, 291-315; N. W. Taylor, Moral Government, 2:388-423.

E. As belief in the possibility of miracles rests upon our belief in the existence of a personal God, so belief in the probability of miracles rests upon our belief that God is a moral and benevolent being. He who has no God but a God of physical order will regard miracles as an impertinent intrusion upon that order. But he, who yields to the testimony of conscience and regards God as a God of holiness, will see that man’s unholiness renders God’s miraculous interposition most necessary to man and most becoming to God. Our view of miracles will therefore be determined by our belief in a moral, or in a non-moral, God.

Philo, in his Life of Moses, 1:88, speaking of the miracles of the quails and of the water from the rock, says, “all these unexpected and extraordinary things are amusements or playthings of God.” He believes that there is room for arbitrariness in the divine procedure. Scripture however represents miracle as an extraordinary, rather than as an arbitrary, act. It is “his work, his strange work ...his act, his strange act” ( Isaiah 28:21). God’s ordinary method is that of regular growth and development. Chadwick, Unitarianism, 72 — “Nature is economical. If she wants an apple, she develops a leaf; if she wants a brain, she develops a vertebra. We always thought well of backbone; and, if Goethe’s was a sound suggestion, we think better of it now.”

It is commonly, but very erroneously, taken for granted that miracle requires a greater exercise of power than does God’s upholding of the ordinary processes of nature. But to an omnipotent Being our measures of power have no application. The question is not a question of power, but of rationality and love. Miracle implies self-restraint, as well as selfunfolding, on the part of him who works it. It is therefore not God’s common method of action; it is adopted only when regular methods will not suffice; it often seems accompanied by a sacrifice of feeling on the part of Christ ( Matthew 17:17 — “O faithless and perverse generation, how long shall I be with you? how long shall I bear with you?

Bring him hither to me”; Mark 7:34 — “looking up to heaven, he sighed, and saith unto him, Ephphatha, that is, Be opened”; cf. Matthew 12:39 — “An evil and adulterous generation seeketh after a sign; and there shall no sign be given to it but the sign of Jonah the prophet.”

F. From the point of view of ethical monism the probability of miracle becomes even greater. Since God is not merely the intellectual but the moral Reason of the world, the disturbances of the world order which are due to sin are the matters which most deeply affect him. Christ, the life of the whole system and of humanity as well, must suffer; and, since we have evidence that he is merciful as well as just, it is probable that he will rectify the evil by extraordinary means, when merely ordinary means do not avail.

Like creation and providence, like inspiration and regeneration, miracle is a work in which God limits himself, by a new and peculiar exercise of his power, — limits himself as part of a process of condescending love and as a means of teaching sense-environed and sin burdened humanity what it would not learn in any other way. Self limitation, however, is the very perfection mind glory of God, for without it no self sacrificing love would be possible (see page 9. F.). The probability of miracles is therefore argued not only from God’s holiness but also from his love. His desire to save men from their sins must be as infinite as his nature. The incarnation, the atonement, the resurrection, when once made known to us, commend themselves, not only as satisfying our human needs, but also as worthy of a God of moral perfection.

An argument for the probability of the miracle might be drawn from the concessions of one of its chief modern opponents. Thomas H. Huxley. He tells us in different places that the object of science is “the discovery of the rational order that pervades the universe,” which in spite of his professed agnosticism is an unconscious testimony to Reason and Will at the basis of all things. He tells us again that there is no necessity in the uniformity of nature: “When we change ‘will’ into ‘must,’ we introduce an idea of necessity which has no warrant in the observed facts, and has no warranty that I can discover elsewhere.” He speaks of “the infinite wickedness that has attended the course of human history.” Yet he has no hope in man’s power to save himself: “I would as soon adore a wilderness of apes,” as the Pantheist’s rationalized conception of humanity. He grants that Jesus Christ is “the noblest ideal of humanity which mankind has yet worshiped.” Why should he not go further and concede that Jesus Christ most truly represents the infinite Reason at the heart of things, and that his purity and love, demonstrated by suffering and death, make it probable that God will use extraordinary means for man’s deliverance? It is doubtful whether Huxley recognized his own personal sinfulness as fully as he recognized the sinfulness of humanity in general. If he had done so, he would have been willing to accept miracle upon even a slight preponderance of historical proof. As a matter of fact, he rejected miracle upon the grounds assigned by Hume, which we now proceed to mention. 4. The amount of testimony necessary to prove a miracle is no greater than that which is requisite to prove the occurrence of any other unusual but confessedly possible event.

Hume, indeed, argued that a miracle is so contradictory of all human experience that it is more reasonable to believe any amount of testimony false than to believe a miracle to be true.

The original form of the argument can be found in Hume’s Philosophical Works, 4:124-150. See also Bibliotheca Sacra, Oct. 1887:615. For the most recent and plausible statement of it, see Supernatural Religion, 1:55- 94, The argument maintains for substance that things are impossible because improbable. It ridicules the credulity of those who “thrust their fists against the posts, And still insist they see the ghosts,” and holds with the German philosopher who declared that he would not believe in a miracle, even it he saw one with his own eyes. Christianity is so miraculous that it takes a miracle to make one believe it.

The argument is fallacious, because (a) It is chargeable with a petitio prineip ii, in making our own personal experience the measure of all human experience. The same principle would make the proof of any absolutely mew fact impossible. Even though God should work a miracle, he could never prove it. (b) It involves a self-contradiction, since it seeks to overthrow our faith in human testimony by adducing to the contrary the general experience of men, of which we know only from testimony. This general experience, moreover, is merely negative, and cannot neutralize that, which is positive, except upon principles which would invalidate all testimony whatever. (c) It requires belief in a greater wonder than those that it would escape do. That multitudes of intelligent and honest men should against all their interests unite in deliberate and persistent falsehood, under the circumstances narrated in the New Testament record, involves a change in the sequences of nature far more incredible than the miracles of Christ and his apostles. (a) John Stuart Mill, Essays on Theism, 216-241, grants that, even if a miracle were wrought, it would be impossible to prove it. In this he only echoes Hume, Miracles, 112 — “The ultimate standard by which we determine all disputes that may arise is always derived from experience and observation.” But here our own personal experience is made the standard by which to judge all human experience. Whately, Historic Doubts relative to Napoleon Bonaparte, shows that the same rule would require us to deny the existence of the great Frenchman, since Napoleon’s conquests were contrary to all experience, and civilized nations had never before been so subdued. The London Times for June 18, 1888, for the first time in at least a hundred years or in 31,200 issues, was misdated, and certain pages read June 17, although June 17 was Sunday. Yet the paper would have been admitted in a court of justice as evidence of a marriage. The real wonder is not the break in experience, but the continuity without the break. (b) Lyman Abbott: “If the Old Testament told the story of a naval engagement between the Jewish people and a pagan people, in which all the ships of the pagan people were absolutely destroyed and not a single man was killed among the Jews, all the skeptics would have scorned the narrative. Every one now believes it, except those who live in Spain.”

There are people who in a similar way refuse to investigate the phenomena of hypnotism, second sight, clairvoyance, and telepathy, declaring a priori that all these things are impossible. Prophecy, in the sense of prediction, is discredited. Upon the same principle wireless telegraphy might be denounced as an imposture. The son of Erin charged with murder defended himself by saying: “Your honor, I can bring fifty people who did not see me do it.” Our faith in testimony cannot be due to experience. (c) On this point, see Chalmers, Christian Revelation, 3:70; Starkie on Evidence, 739; De Quincey, Theological Essays, 1:162-188; Thornton, Old Fashioned Ethics, 143-153; Campbell on Miracles. South’s sermon on The Certainty of our Savior’s Resurrection had stated and answered this objection long before Hume propounded it. 5. Evidential force of Miracles. (a) Miracles are the natural accompaniments and attestations of new communications front God. The great epochs of miracles — represented by Moses, the prophets, the first and second comings of Christ — are coincident with the great epochs of revelation. Miracles serve to draw attention to new truth, and cease when this truth has gained currency and foothold.

Miracles are not scattered evenly over the whole course of history. Few miracles are recorded during the 2500 years from Adam to Moses. When the N.T. Canon is completed and the internal evidence of Scripture has attained its greatest strength, the external attestations by miracle are either wholly withdrawn or begin to disappear. The spiritual wonders of regeneration remain, and for these the way has been prepared by the long progress from the miracles of power wrought by Moses to the miracles of grace wrought by Christ. Miracles disappeared because newer and higher proofs rendered them unnecessary. Better things than these are now in evidence. Thomas Fuller: “Miracles are the swaddling clothes of the infant church.” John Foster: “Miracles are the great bell of the universe, which draws men to God’s sermon.” Henry Ward Beecher: “Miracles are the midwives of great moral truths; candles lit before the dawn but put out after the sun has risen.” Illingworth, in Lux Mundi, 210 — “When we are told that miracles contradict experience, we point to the daily occurrence of the spiritual miracle of regeneration and ask: ‘Which is easier to say, Thy sins are forgiven; or to say, Arise and walk?’ ( Matthew 9:5).”

Miracles and inspiration go together; if the former remain in the church, the latter should remain also; see Marsh, in Bap. Quar. Rev., 1887:225- 242. On the cessation of miracles in the early church, see Henderson, Inspiration, 443-490; Buckmann, in Zeitsch. f. luth. Theol. u. Kirche, 1878:216. On miracles in the second century, see Barnard. Literature of the Second Century, 139-180. A.J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 167 — “The apostles were commissioned to speak for Christ till the N.T.

Scriptures, his authoritative voice, were completed. In the apostolate we have a provisional inspiration; in the N.T. a stereotyped inspiration; the first being endowed with authority ad interim to forgive sins, and the second having this authority in perpetuo.” Dr. Gordon draws an analogy between coal, which is fossil sunlight, and the New Testament, which is fossil inspiration. Sabatier, Philos. Religion,74 — “The Bible is very free from the senseless prodigies of oriental mythology. The great prophets, Isaiah, Amos, Micah, Jeremiah, John the Baptist, work no miracles.

Jesus’ temptation in the wilderness is a victory of the moral consciousness over the religion of mere physical prodigy.” Trench says that miracles cluster about the foundation of the theocratic kingdom under Moses and Joshua, and about the restoration of that kingdom under Elijah and Elisha. In the O.T., miracles confute the gods of Egypt under Moses, the Phoenician Baal under Elijah and Elisha, and the gods of Babylon under Daniel. See Diman, Theistic Argument, 376, and art.; Miracle, by Bernard, in Hastings’ Bible Dictionary. (b) Miracles generally certify to the truth of doctrine, not directly, but indirectly; otherwise a new miracle must needs accompany each new doctrine taught. Miracles primarily and directly certify to the divine commission and authority of a religious teacher, and therefore warrant acceptance of his doctrines and obedience to his commands as the doctrines and commands of God, whether these be communicated at intervals or all together, orally or in written documents.

The exceptions to the above statement are very few, and are found only in cases where the whole commission and authority of Christ, and not some fragmentary doctrine are involved. Jesus appeals to his miracles as proof of the truth of his teaching in Matthew 9:5,6 — “Which is easier to say, Thy sins are forgiven; or to say, Arise and walk? But that we may know that the Son of man hath authority on earth to forgive sins (then saith he to the sick of the palsy), Arise, and take up thy bed, and go unto thy house” 12:28 — “if I by the spirit of God cast out demons, then is the Kingdom of God come upon you.” So Paul in Romans 1:4, says that Jesus “was declared to be the Son of God with power...by the resurrection from the dead.” Mair, Christian Evidences, 223, quotes from Natural Religion, 181 — “It is said that the Theo-philanthropist Larevellier- Lepeaux once confided to Talleyrand his disappointment at the ill success of his attempt to bring into vogue a sort of improved Christianity, a sort of benevolent rationalism which he had invented to meet the wants of a benevolent age. ‘His propaganda made no way.’ he said. ‘What was he to do?’ he asked. The ex-bishop Talleyrand politely condoled with him, feared it was a difficult task to found a new religion, more difficult than he had imagined, so difficult that he hardly knew what to advise. ‘Still,’ — so he went on after a moment’s reflection, — ‘there is one plan which you might at least try: I should recommend you to he crucified, and to rise again the third day.” Sec also Murphy, Scientific Bases of Faith, 147- 167; Farrar, Life of Christ, 1:168-172. (c) Miracles, therefore, do not stand alone as evidences. Power alone cannot prove a divine commission. Purity of life and doctrine must go with the miracles to assure us that a religious teacher has come from God. The miracles and the doctrine in this manner mutually support each other, and form parts of one whole. The internal evidence for the Christian system may have greater power over certain minds and over certain ages than the external evidence.

Pascal’s aphorism that “doctrines must be judged by miracles, miracles by doctrine,” needs to be supplemented by Mozley’s statement that “a supernatural fact is the proper proof of a supernatural doctrine, while a supernatural doctrine is not the proper proof of a supernatural fact.” E.G.

Robinson, Christian Theology, 107, would “defend miracles, but would not buttress up Christianity by them...No amount of miracles could convince a good man of the divine commission of a known bad man; nor, on the other hand, could any degree of miraculous power suffice to silence the doubts of an evil minded man...The miracle is a certification only to him who can perceive its significance...The Christian church has the resurrection written all over it. Its very existence is proof of the resurrection. Twelve men could never have founded the church, if Christ had remained in the tomb. The living church is the burning bush that is not consumed.” Gore, Incarnation,57 — “Jesus did not appear after his resurrection to unbelievers, but to believers only, — which means that this crowning miracle was meant to confirm an existing faith, not to create one where it did not exist.”

Christian Union, July 11, 1891 — “If the anticipated resurrection of Joseph Smith were to take place, it would add nothing whatever to the authority of the Mormon religion.” Schurman, Agnosticism and Religion,57 — “Miracles are merely the bells to call primitive peoples to church.

Sweet as the music they once made, modern ears find them jangling and out of tune, and their dissonant notes scare away pious souls who would fain enter the temple of worship.” A new definition of miracle which recognizes their possible classification as extraordinary occurrences in nature, yet sees in all nature the working of the living God, may do much to remove this prejudice. Bishop of Southampton, Place of Miracle,53 — “Miracles alone could not produce conviction. The Pharisees ascribed them to Beelzebub. Though Jesus had done so many signs, yet they believed not...Though miracles were frequently wrought, they were rarely appealed to as evidence of the truth of the gospel. They are simply signs of God’s presence in his world. By itself a miracle had no evidential force.

The only test for distinguishing divine from Satanic miracles is that of the moral character and purpose of the worker; and therefore miracles depend for all their force upon a previous appreciation of the character and personality of Christ (79). The earliest apologists make no use of miracles. They are of no value except in connection with prophecy.

Miracles are the revelation of God, not the proof of revelation.” Versus Supernatural Religion, 1:23, and Stearns, in New Englander, Jan. 1882:80. See Mozley, Miracles,15; Nicoll, Life of Jesus Christ, 133; Mill, Logic, 374-382; H.B. Smith. Int. to Christ. Theology, 167-169; Fisher, in Journ. Christ. Philos., April, 1863:270-283. (d) Yet the Christian miracles do not lose their value as evidence in the process of ages. The loftier the structure of Christian life and doctrine the greater need that its foundation be secure. The authority of Christ as a teacher of supernatural truth rests upon his miracles, and especially upon the miracle of his resurrection. That one miracle to which the church looks back as the source of her life carries with it irresistibly all the other miracles of the Scripture record; upon it alone we may safely rest the proof that the Scriptures are an authoritative revelation from God.

The miracles of Christ are simple correlates of the Incarnation — proper insignia of his royalty and divinity. By mere external evidence however we can more easily prove the resurrection than the incarnation. In our arguments with skeptics, we should not begin with the ass that spoke to Balaam, or the fish that swallowed Jonah, but with the resurrection of Christ; that conceded, all other Biblical miracles will seem only natural preparations, accompaniments, or consequences. G.F. Wright, in Bibliotheca Sacra, 1889:707 — “The difficulties created by the miraculous character of Christianity may be compared to those assumed by a builder when great permanence is desired in the structure erected. It is easier to lay the foundation of a temporary structure than of one which is to endure for the ages.” Pressense: “The empty tomb of Christ has been the cradle of the church, and if in this foundation of her faith the church has been mistaken, she must needs lay herself down by the side of the mortal remains, I say, not of a man, but of a religion.”

President Schurman believes the resurrection of Christ to be “an obsolete picture of an eternal truth — the fact of a continued life with God.”

Harnack, Wesen des Christenthums, 102, thinks no consistent union of the gospel accounts of Christ’s resurrection can be attained; apparently doubts a literal and bodily rising; yet traces Christianity back to an invincible faith in Christ’s conquering of death and his continued life. But why believe the gospels when they speak of the sympathy of Christ, yet disbelieve them when they speak of his miraculous power? We have no right to trust the narrative when it gives us Christ’s words “Weep not” to the widow of Nain, ( Luke 7:13), and then to distrust it when it tells us of his raising the widow’s son. The words “Jesus wept” belong inseparably to a story of which “Lazarus, come forth!” forms a part ( John 11:35,43). It is improbable that the disciples should have believed so stupendous a miracle as Christ’s resurrection, if they had not previously seen other manifestations of miraculous power on the part of Christ. Christ himself is the great miracle. The conception of him as the risen and glorified Savior can be explained only by the fact that he did so rise. E.G. Robinson, Christ. Theology, 109 — “The Church attests the fact of the resurrection quite as much as the resurrection attests the divine origin of the church. Resurrection, as an evidence, depends on the existence of the church which proclaims it.” (e) The resurrection of our Lord. Jesus Christ — by which we mean his coming forth from the sepulchre in body as well as in spirit — is demonstrated by evidence as varied and as conclusive as that, which proves to us any single fact of ancient history. Without it Christianity itself is inexplicable, as is shown by the failure of all modern rationalistic theories to account for its rise and progress.

In discussing the evidence of Jesus’ resurrection, we are confronted with three main rationalistic theories:

I. The Swoon theory of Strauss. This holds that Jesus did not really die. The cold and the spices of the sepulchre revived him. We reply that the blood and water, and the testimony of the centurion ( Mark 15:45), proved actual death (see Bibliotheca Sacra, April, 1839:228; Forrest, Christ of History and Experience. 137-170). The rolling away of the stone, and Jesus’ power immediately after, are inconsistent with immediately preceding swoon and suspended animation. How was his life preserved? Where did he go? When did he die? His not dying implies deceit on his own part or on that of his disciples.

II. The Spirit theory of Keim. Jesus really died, but only his spirit appeared.

The spirit of Jesus gave the disciples a sign of his continued life, a telegram from heaven. But we reply that the telegram was untrue, for it asserted that his body had risen from the tomb. The tomb was empty and the linen cloths showed an orderly departure. Jesus himself denied that he was a bodiless spirit: “a spirit hath not flesh and bones, as ye see me having” ( Luke 24:39). Did “his flesh see corruption” ( Acts 2:31)? Was the penitent thief raised from the dead as much as he? Godet, Lectures in Defense of the Christian Faith, lect. i: A dilemma for those who deny the fact of Christ’s resurrection: Either his body remained in the hands of his disciples, or it was given up to the Jews. If the disciples retained it, they were impostors but, this is not maintained by modern rationalists. If the Jews retained it, why did they not produce it as conclusive evidence against the disciples?

III. The Vision theory of Renan. Jesus died, and there was no objective appearance even of his spirit. Mary Magdalene was the victim of subjective hallucination, and her hallucination became contagious. This was natural because the Jews expected that the Messiah would work miracles and would rise from the dead. We reply that the disciples did not expect Jesus’ resurrection. The women went to the sepulchre, not to see a risen Redeemer, but to embalm a dead body. Thomas and those at Emmaus had given up all hope. Four hundred years had passed since the days of miracles; John the Baptist did no miracle” ( John 10:41); the Sadducees said, “there is no resurrection” ( Matthew 22:23). There were thirteen different appearances, to: 1. the Magdalen; 2. other women; 3. Peter; 4. Emmaus; 5. the Twelve; 6. the Twelve after eight days; 7. Galilee seashore; 8. Galilee mountain; 9. Galilee five hundred; 10. James; 11 . ascension at Bethany; 12. Stephen; 13. Paul on way to Damascus.

Paul describes Christ’s appearance to him as something objective, and he implies that Christ’s previous appearances to others were objective also: “last of all [these bodily appearances]...he appeared to me also” ( 1 Corinthians 15:8). Bruce, Apologetics, 396 — “Paul’s interest and intention in classing the two together was to level his own vision [of Christ] up to the objectivity of the early Christophanies. He believed that the eleven, that Peter in particular, had seen the risen Christ with the eye of the body, and he meant to claim for himself a vision of the same kind.” Paul’s was a sane, strong nature.

Subjective visions do not transform human lives; the resurrection molded the apostles; they did not create the resurrection (see Gore, Incarnation,76).

These appearances soon ceased, unlike the law of hallucinations, which increase in frequency and intensity. It is impossible to explain the ordinances, the Lord’s day, or Christianity itself, if Jesus did not rise from the dead.

The resurrection of our Lord teaches three important lessons: (1) It showed that his work of atonement was completed and was stamped with the divine approval; (2) It showed him to be Lord of all and gave the one sufficient external proof of Christianity; (3) It furnished the ground and pledge of our own resurrection, and thus “brought life and immortality to light” ( 2 Timothy 1:10). It must be remembered that the resurrection was the one sign upon which Jesus himself staked his claims — “the sign of Jonah” ( Luke 11:29); and that the resurrection is proof, not simply of God’s power, but of Christ’s own power: John 10:18 — “I have power to lay it down, and I have power to take it again”; 2:19 — “Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up”...21 — “he spake of the temple of his body.” See Alexander, Christ and Christianity, 9, 158-224, 302; Mill, Theism, 216; Auberlen, Div. Revelation, 56; Boston Lectures, 203-239; Christlieb. Modern Doubt and Christian Belief, 448-503; Row, Bampton Lectures, 1887:358-423; Hutton, Essays, 1:119; Schaff, in Princeton Rev., May, 1880; 411-419 Fisher, Christian Evidences, 41-46, 82-85; West, in Defense and Conf. of Faith, 80-129; also special works on the Resurrection of our Lord, by Milligan, Morrison.

Kennedy, J. Baldwin Brown. 6. Counterfeit Miracles.

Since only an act directly wrought by God can properly be called a miracle, it follows that surprising events brought about by evil spirits or by men, through the use of natural agencies beyond our knowledge, are not entitled to this appellation. The Scriptures recognize the existence of such, but denominate them “lying wonders” ( 2 Thessalonians 2:9).

These counterfeit miracles in various ages argue that the belief in miracles is natural to the race, and that somewhere there must exist the true. They serve to show that not all supernatural occurrences are divine, and to impress upon us the necessity of careful examination before we accept them as divine.

False miracles may commonly be distinguished from the true by (a) theft accompaniments of immoral conduct or of doctrine contradictory to truth already revealed — as in modern spiritualism; (b) their internal characteristics of inanity and extravagance — as in the liquefaction of the blood of St. Januarius, or the miracles of the Apocryphal New Testament; (c) the insufficiency of the object which they are designed to further — as in the case of Apollonius of Tyana, or of the miracles said to accompany the publication of the doctrines of the immaculate conception and of the papal infallibility; (d) their lack of substantiating evidence — as in medieval miracles, so seldom attested by contemporary and disinterested witnesses; (e) their denial or undervaluing of God’s previous revelation of himself in nature — as shown by the neglect of ordinary means, in the cases of Faith cure and of so called Christian Science.

Only what is valuable is counterfeited. False miracles presuppose the true.

Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation, 283 — “The miracles of Jesus originated faith in him, while medieval miracles follow established faith.

The testimony of the apostles was given in the face of incredulous Sadducees. They were ridiculed and maltreated on account of it. It was no the for devout dreams and the invention of romances.” The blood of St. Januarius at Naples is said to be contained in a vial, one side of which is of thick glass, while the other side is of thin. A similar miracle was wrought at Hales in Gloucestershire. St. Alban, the first martyr of Britain, after his head is cut off, carries it about in his hand. In Ireland the place is shown where St. Patrick in the fifth century drove all the toads and snakes over a precipice into the nether regions. The legend however did not become current until some hundreds of years after the saint’s bones had crumbled to dust at Saul, near Downpatrick (see Hemphill, Literature of the Second Century, 180-182). Compare the story of the book of Tobit (6- 8), which relates the expulsion of a demon by smoke from the burning heart and liver of a fish caught in the Tigris, and the story of the Apocryphal New Testament (I, Infancy), which tells of the expulsion of Satan in the form of a mad dog from Judas by the child Jesus. On counterfeit miracles in general, see Mozley, Miracles,15, 161; F. W.

Farrar, Witness of History to Christ,72; A.S. Farrar, Science and Theology, 208; Tholuck, Vermischte Schriften, 1:27; Hodge, Systematic Theology, 1:630; Presb. Rev., 1881:687-719.

Some modern writers have maintained that the gift of miracles still remains in the church. Bengel: “The reason why many miracles are not now wrought is not so much because faith is established, as because unbelief reigns.” Christlieb: “It is the want of faith in our age which is the greatest hindrance to the stronger and more marked appearance of that miraculous power which is working here and there in quiet concealment.

Unbelief is the final and most important reason for the retrogression of miracles.” Edward Irving, Works, 5:464 — “Sickness is sin apparent in the body, the presentiment of death, the forerunner of corruption. Now, as Christ came to destroy death, and will yet redeem the body from the bondage of corruption, if the church is to have a first fruits or earnest of this power, it must be by receiving power over diseases that are the first fruits and earnest of death.” Dr. A.T. Gordon, in his Ministry of Healing, held to this view. See also Boys, Proofs of the Miraculous in the Experience of the Church; Bushnell, Nature and the Supernatural, 446- 492; Review of Gordon, by Vincent, in Presb. Rev., 1883:473-502; Review of Vincent, in Presb. Rev., 1884:49-79.

In reply to the advocates of faith cure in general, we would grant that nature is plastic in God’s hand; that he can work miracle when and where it pleases him; and that he has given promises which, with certain Scriptural and rational limitations encourage believing prayer for healing in cases of sickness. But we incline to the belief that in these later ages God answers such prayer, not by miracle, but by special providence, and by gifts of courage, faith and will, thus acting by his Spirit directly upon the soul and only indirectly upon the body. The laws of nature are generic volition of God, and to ignore them and disuse means is presumption and disrespect to God himself. The Scripture promise to faith is always expressly or impliedly conditioned upon our use of means: we are to work omit our own salvation, for the very reason that it is God who works in us: it is vain for the drowning man to pray, so long as he refuses to lay hold of the rope that is thrown to him. Medicines and physicians are the rope thrown to us by God; we cannot expect miraculous help, while we neglect the help God has already given us; to refuse this help is practically to deny Christ’s revelation in nature. Why not live without eating, as well as recover from sickness without medicine? Faith feeding is quite as rational as faith healing. To except cases of disease from this general rule as to the use of means has no warrant either in reason or in Scripture. The atonement has purchased complete salvation, and some day salvation shall be ours. But death and depravity still remain, not as penalty, but as chastisement. So disease remains also. Hospitals for Incurables, and the deaths even of advocates of faith cure, show that they too are compelled to recognize some limit to the application of the New Testament promise.

In view of the preceding discussion we must regard the so-called Christian Science as neither Christian nor scientific. Mrs. Mary Baker G. Eddy denies the authority of all that part of revelation which God has made to man in nature, and holds that the laws of nature may be disregarded with impunity by those who have proper faith; see U.F. Wright, in Bibliotheca Sacra April, 1899:375. Bishop Lawrence of Massachusetts: “One of the errors of Christian Science is its neglect of accumulated knowledge, of the fund of information stored up for these Christian centuries. That knowledge is just as much God’s gift as is the knowledge obtained from direct revelation. In rejecting accumulated knowledge and professional skill, Christian Science rejects the gift of God.” Most of the professed cures of Christian Science are explicable by the influence of the mind upon the body, through hypnosis or suggestion; (see A. A. Bennett, in Watchman, Feb. 13, 1903). Mental disturbance may make the mother’s milk a poison to the child; mental excitement is a common cause of indigestion; mental depression induces bowel disorders; depressed mental and moral conditions render a person more susceptible to grippe, pneumonia, typhoid fever. Reading the account of an accident in which the body is torn or maimed, we ourselves feel pain in the same spot; when the child’s hand is crushed, the mother’s hand, though at a distance, becomes swollen the medieval stigmata probably resulted from continuous brooding upon the sufferings of Christ (see Carpenter, Mental Physiology, 676-690).

But mental states may help as well as harm the body. Mental expectancy facilitates cure in cases of sickness. The physician helps the patient by inspiring hope and courage. Imagination works wonders, especially in the case of nervous disorders. The diseases said to be cured by Christian Science are commonly of this sort. In every age fakirs, mesmerists, and quacks have availed themselves of these underlying mental forces. By inducing expectancy, imparting courage, rousing the paralyzed will, they have indirectly caused bodily changes, which have been mistaken for miracle. Tacitus tells us of the healing of a blind man by the Emperor Vespasian. Undoubted cures have been wrought by the royal touch in England. Since such wonders have been performed by Indian medicine men, we cannot regard them as having any specific Christian character, and when, as in the present case, we find them used to aid in the spread of false doctrine with regard to sin Christ, atonement, and the church, we must class them with the “lying wonders” of which we are warned in 2Thess. 2:9. See Harris, Philosophical Basis of Theism, 381-386; Buckley, Faith Healing, and in Century Magazine, June, 1886:221-236; Bruce, Miraculous Element in Gospels, lecture 8; Andover Review, 1887:249-264.

IV. PROPHECY AS ATTESTING A DIVINE REVELATION.

We here consider prophecy in its narrow sense of mere prediction, reserving to a subsequent chapter the consideration of prophecy, as interpretation of the divine will in general. 1. Definition. Prophecy is the foretelling of future events by virtue of direct communication from God — a foretelling, therefore, which, though not contravening any laws of the human mind, those laws, if fully known, would not, without this agency of God, be sufficient to explain.

In discussing the subject of prophecy, we are met at the outset by the contention that there is not, and never has been, any real foretelling of future events beyond that which is possible to natural prescience. This is the view of Kuenen, Prophets and Prophecy in Israel. Pfleiderer, Philos.

Relig., 2:42, denies any direct prediction. Prophecy in Israel, he intimates, was simply the consciousness of God’s righteousness, proclaiming its ideals of the future, and declaring that the will of God is the moral ideal of the good and the law of the world’s history, so that the fates of nations are conditioned by their bearing toward this moral purpose of God: “The fundamental error of the vulgar apologetics is that it confounds prophecy with heathen soothsaying — national salvation without character.” W.

Robertson Smith, in Encyc. Britannica, 19:821, tells us that “detailed prediction occupies a very secondary place in the writings of the prophets; or rather indeed what seem to be predictions in detail are usually only free poetical illustrations of historical principles, which neither received nor demanded exact fulfillment.”

As in the case of miracles, our faith in an immanent God, who is none other than the Logos or larger Christ, gives us a point of view from which we may reconcile the contentions of the naturalists and super-naturalists.

Prophecy is an immediate act of God; but since all natural genius is also due to God’s energizing, we do not need to deny the employment of man’s natural gifts in prophecy. The instances of telepathy, presentiment, and second sight which the Society for Psychical Research has demonstrated to be facts show that prediction, in the history of divine revelation, may be only an intensification, under the extraordinary impulse of the divine Spirit, of a power that is in some degree latent in all men. The author of every great work of creative imagination knows that a higher power than his own has possessed him. In all human reason there is a natural activity of the divine Reason or Logos, and he is “the light which lighteth every man” ( John 1:9). So there is a natural activity of the Holy Spirit, and he who completes the circle of the divine consciousness completes also the circle of human consciousness gives selfhood to every soul, makes available to man the natural as well as the spiritual gifts of Christ; cf . John 16:14 — “he shall take of mine, and shall declare it unto you” The same Spirit who in the beginning “brooded over the face of the waters” ( Genesis 1:2) also broods over humanity, and it is he who, according to Christ’s promise, was to “declare unto you the things that are to come” ( John 16:13). The gift of prophecy may have its natural side like the gift of miracles, yet may be finally explicable only as the result of an extraordinary working of that Spirit of Christ who to some degree manifests himself in the reason and conscience of every man; cf. 1 Peter 1:11 — “searching what time or what manner of the Spirit of Christ which was in them did point unto, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that should follow them.” See Myers, Human Personality, 2:262-292.

A.B. Davidson, in his article on Prophecy and Prophets, in Hastings’ Bible Dictionary, 4:120, 121, gives little weight to this view that prophecy is based on a natural power of the human mind: “The arguments by which Giesebrecht, Berufsgabung, 13 ff., supports the theory of a ‘faculty of presentiment’ have little cogency. This faculty is supposed to reveal itself particularly on the approach of death (Gen. 28 and 49). The contemporaries of most great religious personages have attributed to them a prophetic gift. The answer of John Knox to those who credited him with such a gift is worth reading: ‘My assurances are not marvels of Merlin, nor yet the dark sentences of profane prophecy. But first, the plain truth of God’s word; second, the invincible justice of the everlasting God; and third, the ordinary course of his punishments and plagues from the beginning, are my assurances and grounds.’” While Davidson grants the fulfillment of certain specific predictions of Scripture, to be hereafter mentioned, he holds that “such presentiments as we can observe to be authentic are chiefly products of the conscience or moral reason. True prophecy is based on moral rounds. Everywhere the menacing future is connected with the evil past by ‘therefore’ ( Micah 3:12; Isaiah 5:13; Amos 1:2).” We hold with Davidson to the moral element in prophecy, but we also recognize a power in normal humanity, which he would minimize or deny. We claim that the human mind even in its ordinary and secular working gives occasional signs of transcending the limitations of the present. Believing in the continual activity of the divine Reason in the reason of man, we have no need to doubt the possibility of an extraordinary insight into the future, and such insight is needed at the great epochs of religious history. Expositor’s Gk. Test., 2:34 — “Savonarola foretold as early as 1496 the capture of Rome, which happened in 1527, and he did this not only in general terms but in detail; his words were realized to the letter when the sacred churches of St. Peter and St. Paul became, as the prophet foretold, stables for the conquerors’ horses.” On the general subject, see Payne-Smith, Prophecy a Preparation for Christ; Alexander, Christ and Christianity; Farrar, Science and Theology, 106; Newton on Prophecy; Fairbairn on Prophecy. 2. Relation of Prophecy to Miracles. Miracles are attestations of revelation proceeding from divine power; prophecy is an attestation of revelation proceeding from divine knowledge. Only God can know the contingencies of the future. The possibility and probability of prophecy may be argued upon the same grounds upon which we argue the possibility and probability of miracles. As an evidence of divine revelation, however, prophecy possesses two advantages over miracles, namely: (a) The proof, in the case of prophecy, is not derived from ancient testimony, but is under our eyes. (b) The evidence of miracles cannot become stronger, whereas every new fulfillment adds to the argument from prophecy. 3. Requirements in Prophecy, considered as an Evidence of Revelation) (a) The utterance must be distant from the event (b) Nothing must exist to suggest the event to merely natural prescience. (c) The utterance must be free from ambiguity. (d) Yet it must not be so precise as to secure its own fulfillment. (e) It must be followed in due the by the event predicted.

Hume: “All prophecies are real miracles, and only as such can be admitted as proof of any revelation.” See Wardlaw, Systematic Theology, 1:347. (a) Hundreds of years intervened between certain of the O.T. predictions and their fulfillment. (b) Stanley instances the natural sagacity of Burke, which enabled him to predict the French Revolution. But Burke also predicted in 1793 that France would be partitioned like Poland among a confederacy of hostile powers.

Canning predicted that South American colonies would grow up as the United States had grown. D’Israeli predicted that our Southern Confederacy would become an independent nation. Ingersoll predicted that within ten years there would be two theaters for one church. (c) Illustrate ambiguous prophecies by the Delphic oracle to Crúsus: “Crossing the river, thou destroyest a great nation” — whether his own or his enemy’s the oracle left undetermined. “Ibis et redibis nunquam peribis in bello.” (d) Strauss held that O.T. prophecy itself determined either the events or the narratives of the gospels. See Greg, Creed of Christendom, chap. 4. (e) Cardan, the Italian mathematician, predicted the day and hour of his own death, and committed suicide at the proper time to prove the prediction true.

Jehovah makes the fulfillment of his predictions the proof of his deity in the controversy with false gods: Isaiah 41:23 — “ Declare the things that are to come hereafter, that we may know that ye are gods”; 42:9 — “Behold, the former things are come to pass and new things do I declare: before they spring forth I tell you of them.” 4. General Features of Prophecy in the Scriptures. (a) Its large amount — occupying a great portion of the Bible, and extending over many hundred years. (b) Its ethical and religious nature — the events of the future being regarded as outgrowths and results of men’s present attitude toward God. (c) Its unity in diversity — finding its central points in Christ the true servant of God and deliverer of his people. (d) Its actual fulfillment as regards many of its predictions — while seeming non-fulfillment is explicable from its figurative and conditional nature.

A.B. Davidson, in Hastings’ Bible Dictionary, 4:125, has suggested reasons for the apparent non-fulfillment of certain predictions. Prophecy is poetical and figurative; its details are not to be pressed: they are only draperies, needed for the expression of the idea. In Isaiah 13:16 — “Their infants shall be dashed in pieces... and their wives ravished” — the prophet gives an ideal picture of the sack of a city; these things did not actually happen, but Cyrus entered Babylon “in peace.” Yet the essential truth remained that the city fell into the enemy’s hands. The prediction of Ezekiel with regard to Tyre, Ecclesiastes 26:7-14, is recognized in Ezekiel 29:17-20 as having been fulfilled not in its details but in its essence — the actual event having been the breaking of the power of Tyre by Nebuchadnezzar. Isaiah 17: — “Behold, Damascus is taken away from being a city, and it shall be a ruinous heap” — must be interpreted ‘as predicting the blotting out of its dominion, since Damascus has probably never ceased to be a city. The conditional nature of prophecy explains other seeming non-fulfillment.

Predictions were often threats, which might be revoked upon repentance. Jeremiah 26:13 — “amend your ways...and the Lord will repent him of the evil which he hath pronounced against you. Jonah 3:4 — “Yet forty days, and Nineveh shall be overthrown...10 — “God saw their works, that they turned from their evil way; and. God repented of the evil, which he said he would do unto them; and he did it not”; cf . Jeremiah 18:8; 26:19.

Instances of actual fulfillment of prophecy are found, according to Davidson, in Samuel’s prediction of some things that would happen to Saul, which the history declares did happen (1 Samuel 1 and 10).

Jeremiah predicted the death of Hannah within the year, which took place (Jeremiah 28). Micaiah predicted the defeat and death of Ahab at Ramoth-Gilead (1 Kings 22). Isaiah predicted the failure of the northern coalition to subdue Jerusalem (Isaiah 7): the overthrow in two or three years of Damascus and Northern Israel before the Assyrians (Isaiah 8 and 17); the failure of Sennacherib to capture Jerusalem, and the melting away of his army ( Isaiah 37:34-37). “And in general, apart from details, the main predictions of the prophets regarding Israel and the nations were verified in history, for example, Amos 1 and 2. The chief predictions of the prophets relate to the imminent downfall of the kingdoms of Israel and Judah; to what lies beyond this, namely, the restoration of t h e kingdom of God; and to the state of the people in their condition of final felicity.” For predictions of the exile and the return of Israel, see especially Amos 9:9 — “For, lo, I will command, and I will sift the house of Israel among all the nations, like as grain is sifted in a sieve, yet shall not the least kernel fall upon the earth...14 — And I will bring again the captivity of my people Israel, and they shall build the waste cities and inhabit them.” Even if we accept the theory of composite authorship of the book of Isaiah, we still have a foretelling of the sending back of the Jews from Babylon, and a designation of Cyrus as God’s agent, in Isaiah 44:28 — “that saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd, and shall perform all my pleasure: even saying of Jerusalem She shall be built; and of the temple, Thy foundation shall he laid”; see George Adam Smith, in Hastings’ Bible Dictionary, 2:493. Frederick the Great said to his chaplain: “Give me in one word a proof of the divine origin of the Bible”; and the chaplain well replied: “The Jews, your Majesty.” In the case of the Jews we have even now the unique phenomena of a people without a land, and a land without a people, — yet both these were predicted centuries before the event. 5. Messianic Prophecy in general. (a) Direct predictions of events — as in Old Testament prophecies of Christ’s birth, suffering and subsequent glory. (b) General prophecy of the Kingdom in the Old Testament, and of its gradual triumph. (c) Historical types in a nation and in individuals — as Jonah and David. (d) Prefigurations of the future in rites and ordinances — as in sacrifice, circumcision, and the Passover. 6. Special Prophecies uttered by Christ. (a) As to his own death and resurrection. (b) As to events occurring between his death and the destruction of Jerusalem (multitudes of impostors; wars and rumors of wars; famine and pestilence). (c) As to the destruction of Jerusalem and the Jewish polity (Jerusalem compassed with armies; abomination of desolation in the holy place; flight of Christians; misery; massacre; dispersion). (d) As to the worldwide diffusion of his gospel (the Bible already the most widely circulated book in the world).

The most important feature in prophecy is its Messianic element; see Luke 24:7 — “Beginning from Moses and from all the prophets, he interpreted to them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself”; Acts 10:43 — “to him bear all the prophets witness”; Revelation 19:10 — “the testimony of Jesus is the spirit of prophecy.” Types are intended resemblances, designed prefigurations: for example, Israel is a type of the Christian church; outside nations are types of the hostile world; Jonah and David are types of Christ. The typical nature of Israel rests upon the deeper fact of the community of life. As the life of God the Logos lies at the basis of universal humanity and interpenetrates it in every part, so out of this universal humanity grows Israel in general; out of Israel as a nation springs the spiritual Israel, and out of spiritual Israel Christ according to the flesh, — the upward rising pyramid finds its apex and culmination in him. Hence the predictions with regard to “the servant of Jehovah” ( Isaiah 42:1-7), and “the Messiah” ( Isaiah 61:1; John 1:41), have partial fulfillment in Israel, but perfect fulfillment only in Christ; so Delitzsch, Oehler, and Cheyne on Isaiah, 2:253.

Sabatier, Philos. Religion,59 — “If humanity were not potentially and in some degree Emmanuel, God with us, there would never have issued from its bosom he who bore and revealed this blessed name.” Gardiner, O.T. and N.T. in their Mutual Relations, 170-194.

In the O.T., Jehovah is the Redeemer of his people. He works through judges, prophets, kings, but he himself remains the Savior; “it is only the Divine in them that saves”; “Salvation is of Jehovah” ( Jonah 2:9).

Jehovah is manifested in the Davidic King under the monarchy; in Israel, the Servant of the Lord, during the exile; and in the Messiah, or Anointed One, in the post-exillian period. Because of its conscious identification with Jehovah, Israel is always a forward looking people. Each new judge, king, prophet is regarded as heralding the coming reign of righteousness and peace. These earthly deliverers are saluted with rapturous expectation; the prophets express this expectation in terms that transcend the possibilities of the present; and, when this expectation fails to be fully realized, the Messianic hope is simply transferred to a larger future. Each separate prophecy has its drapery furnished by the prophet’s immediate surroundings, and finds its occasion in some event of contemporaneous history. But by degrees it becomes evident that only an ideal and perfect King and Savior can fill out the requirements of prophecy. Only when Christ appears, does the real meaning of the various Old Testament predictions become manifest. Only then mere men able to combine the seemingly inconsistent prophecies of a priest who is also a king (Psalm 110), and of a royal but at the same the a suffering Messiah (Isaiah 53). It is not enough for us to ask what the prophet himself meant, or what his earliest hearers understood, by his prophecy. This is to regard prophecy as having only a single, and that a human, author. With the spirit of man cooperated the Spirit of Christ, the Holy Spirit ( 1 Peter 1:11 — “the Spirit of Christ which was in them”; 1 Peter 1:21 — “no prophecy ever came by the will of man; but men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit”). All prophecy has a twofold authorship, human and divine; the same Christ who spoke through the prophets brought about the fulfillment of their words.

It is no wonder that he who through the prophets uttered predictions with regard to himself should, when he became incarnate, be the prophet par excellence ( Deuteronomy 18:15; Acts 3:22 — “Moses indeed said, A prophet shall the Lord God raise up from among your brethren, like unto me; to him shall ye hearken”). In the predictions of Jesus we find the proper key to the interpretation of prophecy in general, and the evidence that while no one of the three theories — the preterist, the continuist, the futurist — furnishes an exhaustive explanation, each one of these has its element of truth. Our Lord made the fulfillment of the prediction of his own resurrection a test of his divine commission: it was “the sign of Jonah the prophet” ( Matthew 12:39). He promised that his disciples should have prophetic gifts: John 15:15 — No longer do I call you servants; for the servant knoweth not what his lord doeth: but I have called you friends; for all things that I heard from my Father I have made known unto you”; 16:13 — “the Spirit of truth...he shall declare unto you the things that are to come.” Agabus predicted the famine and Paul’s imprisonment ( Acts 11:28; 21:10); Paul predicted heresies ( Acts 20:29,30), shipwreck ( Acts 27:10, 21-26), “the man of sin ( Thessalonians 2:3), Christ’s Second Coming, and the resurrection of the saints ( 1 Thessalonians 4:15-17). 7. On the double sense of Prophecy. (a) Certain prophecies apparently contain a fullness of meaning, which is not exhausted by the event to which they most obviously and literally refer.

A prophecy, which had a partial fulfillment at a time not remote from its utterance, may find its chief fulfillment in an event far distant. Since the principles of God’s administration find ever recurring and ever enlarging illustration in history, prophecies that have already had a partial fulfillment may have whole cycles of fulfillment yet before them.

In prophecy there is an absence of perspective; as in Japanese pictures the near and the far appear equally distant; as in dissolving views, the immediate future melts into a future immeasurably far away. The candle that shines through a narrow aperture sends out its light through an ever increasing area; sections of the triangle correspond to each other, but the more distant are far greater than the near. The chalet on the mountainside may turn out to be only a black cat on the woodpile, or a speck upon the windowpane. “A hill which appears to rise close behind another is found on nearer approach to have receded a great way from it.” The painter, by foreshortening, brings together things or parts that are relatively distant from each other. The prophet is a painter whose fore shortenings are supernatural; he seems freed from the law of space and time, and, rapt into the timelessness of God, he views the events of history “sub specie eternitatis.” Prophecy was the sketching of an outline map. Even the prophet could not fill up the outline. The absence of perspective in prophecy may account for Paul’s being misunderstood by the Thessalonians, and for the necessity of his explanations in <530201> Thessalonians 2:1, 2. In Isaiah 10 and 11, the fall of Lebanon (the Assyrian) is immediately connected with the rise of the Branch (Christ); in Jeremiah 51:41, the first capture and the complete destruction of Babylon are connected with each other, without notice of the interval of a thousand years between them. Instances of the double sense of prophecy may be found in Isaiah 7:14-16; 9:6, 7 — “a virgin shall conceive and bear a son...unto us a son is given” — compared with Matthew 1:22,23, where the prophecy is applied to Christ (see Meyer, in loco ); Hosea 11:1 — “I...called my son out of Egypt” — refering originally to the calling of the nation out of Egypt — is in Matthew 2:15 referred to Christ, who embodied and consummated the mission of Israel; <19B822> Psalm 118:22,23 — “The stone which the builders rejected is become the head of the corner” — which primarily referred to the Jewish nation, conquered, carried away, and flung aside as of no use, but divinely destined to a future of importance and grandeur, is in Matthew 21:42 referred by Jesus to himself, as the true embodiment of Israel. William Arnold Stevens, on The Man of Sin, in Bap. Quar. Rev., July, 1889:328- 360 — As in Daniel 11:36, the great enemy of the faith, who “shall exalt himself, and magnify himself above every god,” is the Syrian King, Antiochus Epiphanes, so “the man of lawlessness” described by Paul in 2 Thessalonians 2:3 is the corrupt and impious Judaism of the apostolic age. This had its seat in the temple of God, but was doomed to destruction when the Lord should come at the fall of Jerusalem. But even this second fulfillment of the prophecy does not preclude a future and final fulfillment. Broadus on Matthew, page 480 — In Isaiah 41:8 to chapter 53, the predictions with regard to “the servant of Jehovah” make a gradual transition from Israel to the Messiah, the former alone being seen in 41:8, the Messiah also appearing in 42:1 sq ., and Israel quite sinking out of sight in chapter 53.

The most marked illustration of the double sense of prophecy however is to be found in Matthew 24 and 25, especially 24:34 and 25:31, where Christ’s prophecy of the destruction of Jerusalem passes into a prophecy of the end of the world. Adamson, The Mind in Christ, 183 — “To him history was the robe of God, and therefore a constant repetition of positions really similar, kaleidoscopic combining of a few truths, as the facts varied in which they were to be embodied.” A.J. Gordon: “Prophecy has no sooner become history, than history in turn becomes prophecy.”

Lord Bacon: “Divine prophecies have springing and germinate accomplishment through many ages, though the height or fullness of them may refer to some one age.” In a similar manner there is a manifoldness of meaning in Dante’s Divine Comedy. C. E. Norton, Inferno, xvi — “The narrative of the poet’s spiritual journey is so vivid and consistent that it has all the reality of an account of an actual experience; but within and beneath runs a stream of allegory not less consistent and hardly less continuous than the narrative itself.” A.H. Strong, The Great Poets and their Theology. 116 — “Dante himself has told us that there are four separate senses which he intends his story to convey. There are the literal, the allegorical, the moral, and the anagogical. In <19B401> Psalm 114:1 we have the words, ‘When Israel went forth out of Egypt.’ This, says the poet, may be taken literally, of the actual deliverance of God’s ancient people; or allegorically, of the redemption of the world through Christ; or morally, of the rescue of the sinner from the bondage of his sin; or anagogically, of the passage of both soul and body from the lower life of earth to the higher life of heaven. So from Scripture Dante illustrates the method of his poem.” See further our treatment of Eschatology. See also Dr. Arnold of Rugby, Sermons on the Interpretation of Scripture, Appendix A, pages 441-454; Aids to Faith, 449-462; Smith’s Bible Dict., 4:2727. Per contra, see Elliott, Hoær Apocalypticæ, 4:662. Gardiner. O.T. and N.T., 262-274, deny double sense, but affirms manifold applications of a single sense. Broadus, on Matthew 24:1, denies double sense, but affirms the use of types. (b) The prophet was not always aware of the meaning of his own prophecies ( 1 Peter 1:11). It is enough to constitute his prophecies a proof of divine revelation, if it can be shown that the correspondences between them and the actual events are such as to indicate divine wisdom and purpose in the giving of them — in other words, it is enough if the inspiring Spirit knew their meaning, even though the inspired prophet did not It is not inconsistent with this view, but rather confirms it, that the near event, and not the distant fulfillment, was often chiefly, if not exclusively, in the mind of the prophet when he wrote. Scripture declares that the prophets did not always understand their own predictions: 1 Peter 1:11 — “searching what time or what manner of the Spirit of Christ which was in them did point unto, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glories that should follow them.” Emerson: “Himself from God he could not free; he builded better than he knew.” Keble: “As little children lisp and tell of heaven, So thoughts beyond their thoughts to those high bards were given.” Westcott: Preface to Com. on Hebrews, vi — “No one would limit the teaching of a poet’s words to that which was definitely present to his mind. Still less can we suppose that he who is inspired to give a message of God to all ages sees himself the completeness of the truth which all life serves to illuminate.” Alexander McLaren: “Peter teaches that Jewish prophets foretold the events of Christ’s life and especially his sufferings; that they did so as organs of God’s Spirit; that they were so completely organs of a higher voice that they did not understand the significance of their own words, but were wiser than they knew and had to search what were the date and the characteristics of the strange things which they foretold; and that by further revelation they learned that ‘the vision is yet for many days ( Isaiah 24:22; Daniel 10:14). If Peter was right in his conception of the nature of Messianic prophecy, a good many learned men of today are wrong.” Matthew Arnold, Literature and Dogma: “Might not the prophetic ideals be poetic dreams, and the correspondence between them and the life of Jesus, so far as real, only a curious historical phenomenon?” Bruce, Apologetics, 359, replies: “Such skepticism is possible only to those who have no faith in a living God who works out purposes in history.” It is comparable only to the unbelief of the materialist who regards the physical constitution of the universe as explicable by the fortuitous concourse of atoms. 8. Purpose of Prophecy — so far as it is yet unfulfilled. (a) Not to enable us to map out the details of the future; but rather (b) To give general assurance of God’s power and foreseeing wisdom, and of the certainty of his triumph; and (c) To furnish, after fulfillment, the proof that God saw the end from the beginning. Daniel 12:8,9 — “And I heard, but I understood not; then said I, O my Lord, what shall be the issue of these things? And he said, Go thy way, Daniel; for the words are shut up and sealed till the of the end”; 1 Peter 1:19 — prophecy is “a lamp shining in a dark place, until the day dawn” not until day dawns can distant objects be seen; 20 — “no prophecy of scripture is of private interpretation” only God, by the event, can interpret it. Sir Isaac Newton: “God gave the prophecies, not to gratify men’s curiosity by enabling them to foreknow things, but that after they were fulfilled they might be interpreted by the event, and his own providence, not the interpreter’s, be thereby manifested to the world.”

Alexander McLaren: “Great tracts of Scripture are dark to us till life explains them, and then they come on us with the force of a new revelation, like the messages which of old were sent by a strip of parchment coiled upon a b‚ton and then written upon, and which were unintelligible unless the receiver had a corresponding b‚ton to wrap them round.” A.H. Strong, The Great Poets and their Theology, 23 — “Archilochus, a poet of about 700 B. C., speaks of ‘a grievous scytale — the scytail being the staff on which a strip of leather for writing purposes was rolled slantwise, so that the message inscribed upon the strip could not be read until the leather was rolled again upon another staff of the same size; since only the writer and the receiver possessed staves of the proper size, the scytale answered all the ends of a message in cipher.”

Prophecy is like the German sentence, — it can be understood only when we have read its last word. A.J. Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 48 — “God’s providence is like the Hebrew Bible; we must begin at the end and read backward, in order to understand it.” Yet Dr. Gordon seems to assert that such understanding is possible even before fulfillment: “Christ did not know the day of the end when here in his state of humiliation; but he does know now. He has shown his knowledge in the Apocalypse, and we have received ‘The Revelation of Jesus Christ, which God gave him to show unto his servants, even the things which must shortly come to pass’ ( Revelation 1:1).” A study however of the multitudinous and conflicting views of the so called interpreters of prophecy leads us to prefer to Dr. Gordon’s view that of Briggs, Messianic Prophecies,49 — “The first advent is the resolver of all Old Testament prophecy...the second advent will give the key to New Testament prophecy. It is ‘the Lamb that hath been slain’ ( Revelation 5:12)...who alone opens the sealed book, solves the riddles of time, and resolves the symbols of prophecy.”

Nitzsch: “It is the essential condition of prophecy that it should not disturb man’s relation to history.” In so far as this is forgotten, and it is falsely assumed that the purpose of prophecy is to enable us to map out the precise events of the future before they occur, the study of prophecy ministers to a diseased imagination and diverts attention from practical Christian duty. Calvin: “Aut insanum inveniet aut faciet”; or, as Lord Brougham translated it: “The study of prophecy either finds a man crazy, or it leaves him so.” Second Adventists do not often seek conversions. Dr. Cumming warned the women of his flock that they must not study prophecy so much as to neglect their household duties. Paul has such in mind in 2 Thessalonians 2:1,2 — “touching the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ... that ye be not quickly shaken from your mind...as that the day of the Lord is just at hand; 3:11 — “For we hear of some that walk among you disorderly.” 9. Evidential force of Prophecy — so far as it is fulfilled. Prophecy, like miracles, does not stand alone as evidence of the divine commission of the Scripture writers and teachers. It is simply a corroborative attestation, which unites with miracles to prove that a religious teacher has come from God and speaks with divine authority. We cannot, however, dispense with this portion of the evidences, — for unless the death and resurrection of Christ are events foreknown and foretold by himself, as well as by the ancient prophets, we lose one main proof of his authority as a teacher sent front God.

Stearns, Evidence of Christian Experience, 338 — “The Christian’s own life is the progressive fulfillment of the prophecy that whoever accepts Christ’s grace shall be born again, sanctified, and saved. Hence the Christian can believe in God’s power to predict, and in God’s actual predictions.” See Stanley Leathes, O.T. Prophecy, xvii — “Unless we have access to the supernatural, we have no access to God.” In our discussions of prophecy, we are to remember that before making the truth of Christianity stand or fall with any particular passage that has been regarded as prediction, we must be certain that the passage is meant as prediction, and not as merely figurative description. Gladden, Seven Puzzling Bible Books, 195 — “The book of Daniel is not a prophecy, — it is an apocalypse...The author [of such books] puts his words into the mouth of some historical or traditional writer of eminence. Such are the Book of Enoch, the Assumption of Moses, Baruch,1 and 2 Esdras, and the Sibylline Oracles. Enigmatic form indicates persons without naming them, and historic events as animal forms or as operations of nature...The book of Daniel is not intended to teach us history. It does not look forward from the sixth century before Christ, but backward from the second century before Christ. It is a kind of story which the Jews called Haggada.

It is aimed at Antiochus Epimanes, who from his occasional fits of melancholy, was called Epimanes, or Antiochus the Mad.”

Whatever may be our conclusion as to the authorship of the book of Daniel, we must recognize in it an element of prediction, which has been actually fulfilled. The most radical interpreters do not place its date later than 163 B. C. Our Lord sees in the book clear reference to himself ( Matthew 26:64 — “the Son of man, sitting at the right hand of Power and coming on the clouds of heaven”; cf. Daniel 7:13); and he repeats with emphasis certain predictions of the prophet which were yet unfulfilled ( Matthew 24:15 — “When ye see the abomination of desolation, which was spoken of through Daniel the prophet”; cf. Daniel 9:27; 11:31; 12:11). The book of Daniel must therefore be counted profitable not only for its moral and spiritual lessons, but also for its actual predictions of Christ and of the universal triumph of his kingdom ( Daniel 2:45 — “a stone cut out of the mountain without hands”). See on Daniel, Hastings’ Bible Dictionary; Farrar, in Expositor’s Bible. On the general subject see Annotated Paragraph Bible, Introduction to Prophetical Books; Cairns, on Present State of Christian Argument from Prophecy, in Present Day Tracts, 5: no. 27; Edersheim, Prophecy and History; Briggs, Messianic Prophecy; Redford, Prophecy, its Nature and Evidence; Willis J. Beecher, the Prophet and the Promise; Orr, Problem of the O.T., 455-465.

Having thus removed the presumption originally existing against miracles and prophecy, we may now consider the ordinary laws of evidence and determine the rules to be followed in estimating the weight of the Scripture testimony.

V. PRINCIPLES OF HISTORICAL EVIDENCE APPLICABLE TO THE PROOF OF A DIVINE REVELATION

(mainly derived from Greenleaf, Testimony of the Evangelists, and from Starkie on Evidence). 1. As to documentary evidence. (a) Documents apparently ancient, not bearing upon their face the marks of forgery, and found in proper custody, are presumed to be genuine until sufficient evidence is brought to the contrary. The New Testament documents, since they are found in the custody of the church, their natural and legitimate depository, must by this rule are presumed to be genuine.

The Christian documents were not found, like the Book of Mormon, in a cave, or in the custody of angels. Martineau, Seat of Authority, 322 — “The Mormon prophet, who cannot tell God from devil close at hand, is well up with the history of both worlds, and commissioned to get ready the second promised land.” Washington Gladden, Who wrote the Bible? — “An angel appeared to Smith and told him where he would find this book; he went to the spot designated and found in a stone box a volume six inches thick, composed of thin gold plates, eight inches by seven, held together by three gold rings; these plates were covered with writing, in the ‘Reformed Egyptian tongue’; with this book were the ‘Urim and Thummim, a pair of supernatural spectacles, by means of which he was able to read and translate this ‘Reformed Egyptian language.” Sagebeer, The Bible in Court, 113 — “If the ledger of a business firm has always been received and regarded as a ledger, its value is not at all impeached if it is impossible to tell which particular clerk kept this ledger...The epistle to the Hebrews would be no less valuable as evidence, if shown not to have been written by Paul.” See Starkie on Evidence, 480 sq.; Chalmers, Christian Revelation, in Works, 3:147-171. (b) Copies of ancient documents, made by those most interested in their faithfulness, are presumed to correspond with the originals, even although those originals no longer exist. Since it was the church’s interest to have faithful copies, the burden of proof rests upon the objector to the Christian documents.

Upon the evidence of a copy of its own records, the originals having been lost, the House of Lords decided a claim to the peerage; see Starkie on Evidence, 51. There is no manuscript of Sophocles earlier than the tenth century, while at least two manuscripts of the N.T. go back to the fourth century. Frederick George Kenyon, Handbook to Textual Criticism of N.T.: “We owe our knowledge of most of the great works of Greek and Latin literature — Æschylus, Sophocles, Thucydides, Horace, Lucretius, Tacitus, and many more — to manuscripts written from 900 to years after their authors’ deaths; while of the N.T. we have two excellent and approximately complete copies at an interval of only 250 years.

Again, of the classical God writers we have as a rule only a few score of copies (often less), of which one or two stand out ‘is decisively superior to all the rest; but of the N.T. we have more than 3000 copies (besides a very large number of versions), and many of these have distinct and independent value.” The mother of Tischendorf named him Lobgott, because her fear that her babe would be born blind had not come true. No man ever had keener sight than he did. He spent his life in deciphering old manuscripts, which other eyes could not read. The Sinaitic manuscript which he discovered takes us back within three centuries of the of the apostles. (c) In determining matters of fact, after the lapse of considerable the, documentary evidence is to be allowed greater weight than oral testimony.

Neither memory nor tradition can long be trusted to give absolutely correct accounts of particular facts. The New Testament documents, therefore, are of greater weight in evidence than tradition would be, even if only thirty years had elapsed since the death of the actors in the scenes they relate.

See Starkie on Evidence, 51, 730. The Roman Catholic Church, in its legends of the saints, shows how quickly mere tradition can become corrupt. Abraham Lincoln was assassinated in 1865, yet sermons preached today on the anniversary of his birth make him out to be Unitarian, Universalist, or Orthodox, according as the preacher himself believes. 2. As to testimony in general. (a) In questions as to matters of fact, the proper inquiry is not whether it is possible that the testimony may be false, but whether there is sufficient probability that it is true. It is unfair, therefore, to allow our examination of the Scripture witnesses to be prejudiced by suspicion, merely because their story is a sacred one.

There must be no prejudice against, there must be open-mindedness to, truth; there must be a normal aspiration after the signs of communication from God. Telepathy, forty days fasting, parthenogenesis, all these might once have seemed antecedently incredible. Now we see that it would have been more rational to admit their existence on presentation of appropriate evidence. (b) A proposition of fact is proved when its truth is established by competent and satisfactory evidence. By competent evidence is meant such evidence as the nature of the thing to be proved admits. By satisfactory evidence is meant that amount of proof, which ordinarily satisfies an unprejudiced mind beyond a reasonable doubt. Scripture facts are therefore proved when they are established by that kind and degree of evidence, which would, in the affairs of ordinary life, satisfy the mind and conscience of a common man. When we have this kind and degree of evidence it is unreasonable to require more.

In matters of morals and religion competent evidence need not be mathematical or even logical. The majority of cases in criminal courts are decided upon evidence that is circumstantial. We do not determine our choice of friends or of partners in life by strict processes of reasoning.

The heart as well as the head must be permitted a voice, And competent evidence includes considerations arising from the moral needs of the soul.

The evidence, moreover, does not require to be demonstrative. Even a slight balance of probability, when nothing more certain is attainable, may suffice to constitute rational proof and to bind our moral action. (c) In the absence of circumstances, which generate suspicion, every witness is to be presumed credible, until the contrary is shown; the burden of impeaching his testimony lying upon the objector. The principle, which leads men to give true witness to facts, is stronger than that which leads them to give false witness. It is therefore unjust to compel the Christian to establish the credibility of his witnesses before proceeding to adduce their testimony, and it is equally unjust to allow the uncorroborated testimony of a profane writer to outweigh that of a Christian writer. Christian witnesses should not be considered interested, and therefore untrustworthy for they became Christians against their worldly interests, and because they could not resist the force of testimony. Varying accounts among them should be estimated as we estimate the varying accounts of profane writers.

John’s account of Jesus differs from that of the synoptic gospels; but in a very similar manner, and probably for a very similar reason, Plato’s account of Socrates differs from that of Xenophon. Each saw and described that side of his subject which he was by nature best fitted to comprehend, — compare the Venice of Canaletto with the Venice of Turner, the former the picture of an expert draughtsman, the latter the vision of a poet who sees the palaces of the Doges glorified by air and mist and distance. In Christ there was a “hiding of his power” ( Habakkuk 3:4); “how small a whisper do we hear of him!” ( Job 26:14); he, rather than Shakespeare, is “the myriad minded”; no one evangelist can be expected to know or describe him except “in part” ( Corinthians 13:12). Frances Power Cobbe, Life, 2:405 — “All of us human beings resemble diamonds, in having several distinct facets to our characters; and, as we always turn one of those to one person and another to another, there is generally some fresh side to be seen in a particularly brilliant gem.” E. P. Tenet, Coronation, 45 — “The secret and powerful life he [the hero of the story] was leading was like certain solitary streams, deep, wide, and swift, which run unseen through vast and unfrequented forests. So wide and varied was this man’s nature, that whole courses of life might thrive in its secret places, — and his neighbors might touch him and know him only on that side on which he was like them.” (d) A slight amount of positive testimony, so long as it is uncontradicted, outweighs a very great amount of testimony that is merely negative. The silence of a second witness, or his testimony that he did not see a certain alleged occurrence, cannot counterbalance the positive testimony of a first witness that he did see it. We should therefore estimate the silence of profane writers with regard to facts narrated in Scripture precisely as we should estimate it if the facts about which they are silent were narrated by other profane writers, instead of being narrated by the writers of Scripture.

Egyptian monuments make no mention of the destruction of Pharaoh and his army: but then, Napoleon’s dispatches also make no mention of his defeat at Trafalgar. At the tomb of Napoleon in the Invalides of Paris, the walls are inscribed with names of a multitude of places where his battles were fought, but Waterloo, the scene of his great defeat, is not recorded there. So Sennacherib, in all his monuments, does not refer to the destruction of his army in the time of Hezekiah. Napoleon gathered 450,000 men at Dresden to invade Russia. At Moscow the soft falling snow conquered him. In one night 20,000 horses perished with cold. Not without reason at Moscow, on the anniversary of the retreat of the French, the exaltation of the prophet over the fall of Sennacherib is read in the churches. James Robertson, Early History of Israel, 395, note — “Whately, in his Historic Doubts, draws attention to the fact that the principal Parisian journal in 1814, on the very day on which the allied armies entered Paris as conquerors, makes no mention of any such event.

The battle of Poictiers in 732, which effectually checked the spread of Mohammedanism across Europe, is not once referred to in the monastic annals of the period. Sir Thomas Browne lived through the Civil Wars and the Commonwealth, yet there is no syllable in his writings with regard to them. Sale says that circumcision is regarded by Mohammedans as an ancient divine institution, the rite having been in use many years before Mohammed yet it is not so much as once mentioned in the Koran.”

Even though we should grant that Josephus does not mention Jesus, we should have a parallel in Thucydides, who never once mentions Socrates, the most important character of the twenty years embraced in his history.

Wieseler, however, in Jahrbuch f. d. Theologie, 23:98, maintains the essential genuineness of the commonly rejected passage with regard to Jesus in Josephus, Antiq., 18:3:3, omitting, however, as interpolations, the phrases: “if it be right to call him man”; “this was the Christ”; “he appeared alive the third day according to prophecy “; for these, if genuine, would prove Josephus a Christian, which he, by all ancient accounts, was not. Josephus lived from A. D. 34 to possibly 114. He does elsewhere speak of Christ; for he records (20:9:1) that Albinus “assembled the Sanhedrim of judges, and brought before them the brother of Jesus who was called Christ, whose name was James, and some others...and delivered them to be stoned.” See Niese’s new edition of Josephus: also a monograph on the subject by Gustav Adolph Muller, published at Innsbruck, 1890. Rush Rhees, Life of Jesus of Nazareth,22 — “To mention Jesus more fully would have required some approval of his life and teaching. This would have been a condemnation of his own people whom he desired to commend to Gentile regard, and he seems to have taken the cowardly course of silence concerning a matter more noteworthy, for that generation, than much else of which line writes very fully.” (e) ‘The credit due to the testimony of witnesses depends upon: first, their ability; secondly, their honesty; thirdly, their number and the consistency of their testimony; fourthly, the conformity of their testimony with experience; and fifthly, the coincidence of their testimony with collateral circumstances.” We confidently submit the New Testament witnesses to each and all of these tests.

See Starkie on Evidence, 726.

CHAPTER 2. POSITIVE PROOFS THAT THE SCRIPTURES ARE A DIVINE REVELATION.

I. THE GENUINENESS OF THE CHRISTIAN DOCUMENTS,

or proof that the books of the Old and New Testaments were written at the age to which they are assigned and by the men or class of men to whom they are ascribed.

Our present discussion comprises the first part and only the first part, of the doctrine of the Canon (kanw>n, a measuring reed; hence, a rule, a standard). It is important to observe that the determination of the Canon, or list of the books of sacred Scripture, is not the work of the church as an organized body. We do not receive these books upon the authority of Fathers or Councils. We receive them, only as the Fathers and Councils received them, because we have evidence that they are the writings of the men, or class of men, whose names they bear, and that they are also credible and inspired. If the previous epistle alluded to in Corinthians 5:9 should be discovered and be universally judged authentic, it could be placed with Paul’s other letters and could form part of the Canon, even though it has been lost for 1800 years. Bruce, Apologetics, 321 — “Abstractly the Canon is an open question. It can never be anything else on the principles of Protestantism, which forbid us to accept the decisions of church councils, whether ancient or modern, as final. But practically the question of the Canon is closed.” The Westminster Confession says that the authority of the word of God “does not rest upon historic evidence; it does not rest upon the authority of Councils; it does not rest upon the consent of the past or the excellence of the matter; but it rests upon the Spirit of God bearing witness to our hearts concerning its divine authority.” Clarke, Christian Theology, 24 — “The value of the Scriptures to us does not depend upon our knowing who wrote them. In the O.T. half its pages are of uncertain authorship. New dates mean new authorship. Criticism is a duty, for dates of authorship give means of interpretation. The Scriptures have power because God is in them, and because they describe the entrance of God into the life of man.”

Saintine, Picciola, 782 — “Has not a feeble reed provided man with his first arrow, his first pen, his first instrument of music?” Hugh Macmillan: “The idea of stringed instruments was first derived from the twang of the well strung bow, as the archer shot his arrows; the lyre and the harp which discourse the sweetest music of peace were invented by those who first heard this inspiring sound in the excitement of battle. And so there is no music so delightful amid the jarring discord of the world, turning everything to music and harmonizing earth and heaven, as when the heart rises out of the gloom of anger and revenge, and converts its bow into a harp, and sings to it the Lord’s song of infinite forgiveness.” George Adam Smith, Mod. Criticism and Preaching of O.T., 5 — “The church has never renounced her liberty to revise the Canon. The liberty at the beginning cannot be more than the liberty thereafter. The Holy Spirit has not forsaken the leaders of the church. Apostolic writers nowhere define the limits of the Canon, any more than Jesus did. Indeed, they employed extra-canonical writings. Christ and the apostles nowhere bound the church to believe all the teachings of the O.T. Christ discriminates, and forbids the literal interpretation of its contents. Many of the apostolic interpretations challenge our sense of truth. Much of their exegesis was temporary and false. Their judgment was that much in the O.T. was rudimentary. This opens the question of development in revelation, and justifies the attempt to fix the historic order. The N.T. criticism of the O.T. gives the liberty of criticism, and the need, and the obligation of it.

O.T. criticism is not, like Baur’s of the N.T., the result of a Priori Hegelian reasoning. From the time of Samuel we have real history. The prophets do not appeal to miracles. There is more gospel in the book of Jonah, when it is treated as a parable. The O.T. is a gradual ethical revelation of God. Few realize that the church of Christ has a higher warrant for her Canon of the O.T. than she has for her Canon of the N.T.

The O.T. was the result of criticism in the widest sense of that word. But what the church thus once achieved, the church may at any the revise.”

We reserve to a point somewhat later the proof of the credibility and the inspiration of the Scriptures. We now show their genuineness, as we would show the genuineness of other religious books, like the Koran, or of secular documents, like Cicero’s Orations against Catiline. Genuineness, in the sense in which we use the term, does not necessarily imply authenticity (i.e., truthfulness and authority); see Blunt, Dict. Doct. and Hist. Theol., art.: Authenticity. Documents may be genuine which persons other than they whose names they bear, provided these persons belong to the same class write in whole or in part. The Epistle to the Hebrews, though not written by Paul, is genuine, because it proceeds from one of the apostolic class. The addition of Deuteronomy 34, after Moses’ death, does not invalidate the genuineness of the Pentateuch; nor would the theory of a later Isaiah, even if it were established, disprove the genuineness of that prophecy; provided, in both cases, that the additions were made by men of the prophetic class. On the general subject of the genuineness of the Scripture documents, see Alexander, McIlvaine, Chalmers, Dodge, and Peabody, on the Evidences of Christianity; also Archibald, The Bible Verified. 1. Genuineness of the Books of the New Testament.

We do not need to adduce proof of the existence of the books of the New Testament as far back as the third century, for we possess manuscripts of them which are at least fourteen hundred years old, and, since the third century, references to them have been in-woven into all history and literature. We begin our proof, therefore, by showing that these documents not only existed, but also were generally accepted as genuine, before the close of the second century.

Origen was born as early as 186 A. D.; yet Tregelles tells us that Origen’s works contain citations embracing two-thirds of the New Testament.

Hatch, Hibbert Lectures, 12 — “The early years of Christianity were in some respects like the early years of our lives...Those early years are the most important in our education. We learn then, we hardly know how, through effort and struggle and innocent mistakes, to use our eyes and ears, to measure distance and direction, by a process which ascends by unconscious steps to the certainty which we feel in our maturity...It was in some such unconscious way that the Christian thought of the early centuries gradually acquired the form which we find when it emerges as it were into the developed manhood of the fourth century.”

A. All the books of the New Testament, with the single exception of Peter, were not only received as genuine, but were used in more or less collected form, in the latter half of the second century. These collections of writings, so slowly transcribed and distributed, imply the long continued previous existence of the separate books, and forbid us to fix their origin later than the first half of the second century. (a) Tertullian (160-230) appeals to the ‘New Testament’ as made up of the ‘Gospels’ and ‘Apostles.’ He vouches for the genuineness of the four gospels, the Acts, 1 Peter, 1 John, thirteen epistles of Paul, and the Apocalypse, in short, to twenty-one of the twenty-seven books of our Canon.

Sanday, Bampton Lectures for 1893, is confident that the first three gospels took their present shape before the destruction of Jerusalem. Yet he thinks the first and third gospels of composite origin, and probably the second. Not later than 125 A. D. the four gospels of our Canon had gained a recognized and exceptional authority. Andover Professors, Divinity of Jesus Christ,40 — “The oldest of our gospels was written about the year 70. The earlier one, now lost, a great part of which is preserved in Luke and Matthew, was probably written a few years earlier. (b) The Muratorian Canon in the West and the Peshito Version in the East (having a common date of about 160) in their catalogues of the New Testament writings mutually complement each other’s slight deficiencies, and together witness to the fact that at that time every book of our present New Testament, with the exception of 2 Peter, was received as genuine.

Hovey, Manual of Christian Theology, 50 — “The fragment on the Canon, discovered by Muratori in 1738, was probably written about A. D., in Greek. It begins with the last words of a sentence, which must have referred to the Gospel of Mark, and proceeds to speak of the Third Gospel as written by Luke the physician, who did not see the Lord, and then of the Fourth Gospel as written by John, a disciple of the Lord, at the request of his fellow disciples and his elders.” Bacon, N.T. Introduction, 50, gives the Muratorian Canon in full; 30 — “Theophilus of Antioch (181-190) is the first to cite a gospel by name, quoting John 1:1 as from ‘John, one of those who were vessels of the Spirit.” On the Muratorian Canon, see Tregelles, Muratorian Canon. On the Peshito Version, see Schaff, Introduction to Rev. Gk.-Eng. N.T., xxxvii; Smith’s Bible Dict., pp. 3388, 3389. (c) The Canon of Marcion (140), though rejecting all the gospels but that of Luke, and all the epistles but ten of Paul’s, shows, nevertheless, that at that early day “apostolic writings were regarded as a complete original rule of doctrine.” Even Marcion, moreover, does not deny the genuineness of those writings, which for doctrinal reasons he rejects.

Marcion, the Gnostic, was the enemy of all Judaism, and regarded the God of the O.T. as a restricted divinity, entirely different from the God of the N.T. Marcion was “ipso Paulo paulinior” — “plus loyal que le roi.”

He held that Christianity was something entirely new, and that it stood in opposition to all that went before it. His Canon consisted of two parts: the “Gospel” (Luke, with its text curtailed by omission of the Hebraistic elements) and the Apostolicon (the epistles of Paul). The epistle to Diognetus by an unknown author, and the epistle of Barnabas, shared the view of Marcion. The name of the Deity was changed from Jehovah to Father, Son, and Holy Ghost. If Marcion’s view had prevailed, the Old Testament would have been lost to the Christian Church. God’s revelation would have been deprived of its proof from prophecy. Development from the past, and divine conduct of Jewish history would have been denied.

But without the Old Testament, as H. W. Beecher maintained, the New Testament would lack background; our chief source of knowledge with regard to God’s natural attributes of power, wisdom, and truth would be removed: the love and mercy revealed in the New Testament would seem characteristics of a weak being, who could not enforce law or inspire respect. A tree has as much breadth below ground as there is above; so the O.T. roots of God’s revelation are as extensive and necessary as are its N.T. trunk and branches and leaves. See Allen, Religious Progress, 81; Westcott Hist. N.T. Canon, and art.; Canon, in Smith’s Bible Dictionary.

Also Reuss, History of Canon; Mitchell, Critical Handbook, part I.

B. The Christian and Apostolic Fathers who lived in the first half of the second century not only quote from these books and allude to them, but testify that they were written by the apostles themselves. We are therefore compelled to refer their origin still further back, namely, to the first century, when the apostles lived. (a) Irenæus (120-200) mentions and quotes the four gospels by name, and among them the gospel according to John: “Afterwards John, the disciple of the Lord, who also leaned upon his breast, he likewise published a gospel, while he dwelt in Ephesus in Asia.” And Irenæus was the disciple and friend of Polycarp (80-166), who was himself a personal acquaintance of the Apostle John. The testimony of Irenæus is virtually the evidence of Polycarp, the contemporary and friend of the Apostle, that each of the gospels was written by the person whose name it bears/ To this testimony it is objected that Irenæus says there are four gospels because there are four quarters of the world and four living creatures in the cherubim. But we reply that Irenæus is here stating, not his own reason for accepting four and only four gospels, but what he conceives to be God’s reason for ordaining that there should be four. We are not warranted in supposing that he accepted the four gospels on any other ground than that of testimony that they were the productions of apostolic men.

Chrysostom, in a similar manner, compares the four gospels to a chariot and four: When the King of Glory rides forth in it, he shall receive the triumphal acclamations of all peoples. So Jerome: God rides upon the cherubim, and since there are four cherubim there must be four gospels.

All this however is an early attempt at the philosophy of religion, and not an attempt to demonstrate historical fact. L. L Paine, Evolution of Trinitarianism, 319-367, presents the radical view of the authorship of the fourth gospel. He holds that John the apostle died A. D. 70, or soon after, and that Irenæus confounded the two Johns whom Papias so clearly distinguished — John the Apostle and John the Elder. With Harnack, Paine supposes the gospel to have been written by John the Elder, a contemporary of Papias. But we reply that the testimony of Irenæus implies a long continued previous tradition. H. W. Dale. Living Christ and Four Gospels, 145 — “Religious veneration such as that with which Irenæus regarded these books is of slow growth. They must have held a great place in the Church as far back as the memory of living men extended.” See Hastings’ Bible Dictionary, 2:695. (b) Justin Martyr (died 148) speaks of ‘memoirs ajpomnhmoneu>mata of Jesus Christ’ and his quotations, though sometimes made from memory are evidently cited from our gospels.

To this testimony it is objected: (1) that Justin Martyr uses the term ‘memoirs’ instead of gospels.’ We reply that he elsewhere uses the term ‘gospels’ and identifies the ‘memoirs’ with them: Apol., 1:66 — “The apostles, in the memoirs composed by them, which are called gospels,” i.e., not memoirs, but gospels, was the proper title of his written records. In writing his Apology to the heathen Emperors, Marcus Aurelius and Marcus Antoninus, he chooses the term ‘memoirs’, or ‘memorabilia’, which Xenophon had used as the title of his account of Socrates, simply in order that he may avoid ecclesiastical expressions unfamiliar to his readers and may commend his writing to lovers of classical literature. Notice that Matthew must be added to John, to justify Justin’s repeated statement that there were “memoirs” of our Lord “written by apostles,” and that Mark and Luke must be added to justify his further statement that these memoirs were compiled by “his apostles and those who followed them.” Analogous to Justin’s use of the word ‘memoirs’ is his use of the term ‘Sunday’, instead of Sabbath: Apol. 1:67 — “On the day called Sunday, all who live in cities or in the country gather together to one place, and the memoirs of the apostles or the writings of the prophets are read.” Here is the use of our gospels in public worship, as of equal authority with the O.T.

Scriptures; in fact, Justin constantly quotes the words and acts of Jesus’ life from a written source, using the word ge>graptai. See Morison, Com. on Matthew, ix; Hemphill, Literature of Second Century, 234.

To Justin’s testimony it is objected: (2) That in quoting the words spoken from heaven at the Savior’s baptism, he makes them to be: “My son, this day have I begotten thee,” so quoting Psalm 2:7, and showing that he was ignorant of our present gospel, Matthew 3:17. We reply that this was probably a slip of the memory, quite natural in a day when the gospels existed only in the cumbrous form of manuscript rolls. Justin also refers to the Pentateuch for two facts, which it does not contain; but we should not argue from this that he did not possess our present Pentateuch. The plays of Terence are quoted by Cicero and Horace, and we require neither more nor earlier witnesses to their genuineness, — yet Cicero and Horace wrote a hundred years after Terence. It is unfair to refuse similar evidence to the gospels. Justin had a way of combining into one the sayings of the different evangelists — a hint which Tatian, his pupil, probably followed out in composing his Diatessaron. On Justin Martyr’s testimony, see Ezra Abbot, Genuineness of the Fourth Gospel,49, note. B. W. Bacon, Introduction to N.T., speaks of Justin as “writing circa 155 A. D.” (c) Papias (80-164), whom Irenæus calls a ‘hearer of John,’ testifies that Matthew “wrote in the Hebrew dialect the sacred oracles ta loga> ,” and that “Mark, the interpreter of Peter, wrote after Peter, uJsteron Petrw| [or under Peter’s direction], an unsystematic account ouj ta>xei ” of the same events and discourses.

To this testimony it is objected: (1) That Papias could not have had our gospel of Matthew, for the reason that this is Greek. We reply, either with Bleek, that Papias erroneously supposed a Hebrew translation of Matthew, which he possessed, to be the original; or with Weiss, that the original Matthew was in Hebrew, while our present Matthew is an enlarged version of the same. Palestine, like modern Wales, was bilingual: Matthew, like James, might write both Hebrew and Greek.

While B.W. Bacon gives to the writing of Papias a date so late as 145-160 A.D., Lightfoot gives that of 130 A.D. At this latter date Papias could easily remember stories told him so far back as 80 A.D., by men who were youths at the time when our Lord lived, died, rose and ascended. The work of Papias had for its title Logi>wn kuriakw~n ejxh>ghsiv — “ Exposition of Oracles relating to the Lord” Commentaries on the Gospels. Two of these gospels were Matthew and Mark. The view of Weiss mentioned above has been criticized upon the ground that the quotations from the O.T. in Jesus’ discourses in Matthew are all taken from the Septuagint and not from the Hebrew. Westcott answers this criticism by suggesting that, in translating his Hebrew gospel into Greek, Matthew substituted for his own oral version of Christ’s discourses the version of these already existing in the oral common gospel. There was a common oral basis of true teaching, the “deposit” — paraqh>khn — committed to Timothy ( 1 Timothy 6:20; 2 Timothy 1:12,14), the same story told many times and getting to be told in the same way. The narratives of Matthew, Mark and Luke are independent versions of this apostolic testimony. First came belief; secondly, oral teaching; thirdly, written gospels. That the original gospel was in Aramaic seems probable from the fact that the Oriental name for ‘tares” zawan, ( Matthew 13:25) has been transliterated into Greek, ziza>nia . Morison, Com. on Matthew, thinks that Matthew originally wrote in Hebrew a collection of Sayings of Jesus Christ, which the Nazarenes and Ebionites added to, partly from tradition, and partly from translating his full gospel, till the result was the so called Gospel of the Hebrews; but that Matthew wrote his own gospel in Greek after he had written the Sayings in Hebrew, Professor W. A. Stevens thinks that Papias probably alluded to the original autograph which Matthew wrote in Aramaic, but which he afterwards enlarged and translated into Greek. See Hemphill, Literature of the Second Century, 267.

To the testimony of Papias it is also objected: (2) that Mark is the most systematic of all evangelists, presenting events as a true annalist, in chronological order. We reply that while, so far as chronological order is concerned, Mark is systematic, so fain as logical order is concerned he is the most unsystematic of the evangelists, showing little of the power of historical grouping which is so discernible in Matthew. Matthew aimed to portray a life, rather than to record a chronology. He groups Jesus’ teachings in chapters 5, 6, and 7; his miracles in chapters 8 and 9; his directions to the apostles in chapter 10; chapters 11 and 12 describe the growing opposition; chapter 13 meets this opposition with his parables; the remainder of the gospel describes our Lord’s preparation for his death, his progress to Jerusalem, the consummation of his work in the Cross and in the resurrection. Here is true system, a philosophical arrangement of material, compared with which the method of Mark is eminently unsystematic. Mark is a Froissart, while Matthew has the spirit of J. R. Green. See Bleek, Introduction to N.T., 1:108, 126; Weiss, Life of Jesus, I:27-39. (d) The Apostolic Fathers, — Clement of Rome (died 101), Ignatius of Antioch (martyred 115), and Polycarp (80-166), — companions and friends of the apostles, have left us in their writings over one hundred quotations from or allusions to the New Testament writings, and among these every book, except four minor epistles (2 Peter, Jude, 2 and 3 John) is represented.

Although these are single testimonies, we must remember that they are the testimonies of the chief men of the churches of their day, and that they express the opinion of the churches themselves. “Like banners of a hidden army, or peaks of a distant mountain range, they represent and are sustained by compact, continuous bodies below.” In an article by P. W.

Calkins, McClintock and Strong’s Encyclopædia, 1:315-317, quotations from the Apostolic Fathers in great numbers are put side by side with the New Testament passages from which they quote or to which they allude.

An examination of these quotations and allusions convinces us that these Fathers were in possession of all the principal books of our New Testament. See Ante-Nicene Library of T. and T. Clark; Thayer, in Boston Lectures for 1871:324; Nash, Ethics and Revelation, 11 — “Ignatius says to Polycarp: ‘The times call for thee, as the winds call for the pilot.’ So do the times call for reverent, fearless scholarship in the church.” Such scholarship, we are persuaded, has already demonstrated the genuineness of the N.T. documents. (e) In the synoptic gospels, the omission of all mention of the fulfillment of Christ’s prophecies with regard to the destruction of Jerusalem is evidence that these gospels were written before the occurrence of that event. In the Acts of the Apostles, universally attributed to Luke, we have an allusion to ‘the former treatise’, or the gospel by the same author, which must, therefore, have been written before the end of Paul’s first imprisonment at Rome, and probably with the help and sanction of that apostle. Acts 1:1 — “The former treatise I made, O Theophilus, concerning all that Jesus began both to do and to teach.” If the Acts was written A. D. 63, two years after Paul’s arrival at Rome, then “the former treatise,” the gospel according to Luke, can hardly be dated later than 60; and since the destruction of Jerusalem took place in 70, Matthew and Mark must have published their gospels at least as early as the year 68, when multitudes of men were still living who had been eye-witnesses of the events of Jesus’ life. Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation, 180 — “At any considerably later date [than the capture of Jerusalem] the apparent conjunction of the fall of the city and the temple with the Parousia would have been avoided or explained...Matthew, in its present form, appeared after the beginning of the mortal struggle of the Romans with the Jews, or between 65 and 70. Mark’s gospel was still earlier. The language of the passages relative to the Parousia, in Luke, is consistent with the supposition that he wrote after the fall of Jerusalem, but not with the supposition that it was long after.” See Norton, Genuineness of the Gospels; Alford, Greek Testament, Prolegomena, 30, 31, 36, 45-47.

C. It is to be presumed that this acceptance of the New Testament documents as genuine, on the part of the Fathers of the churches, was for good and sufficient reasons, both internal and external, and this presumption is corroborated by the following considerations: (a) There is evidence that the early churches took every care to assure themselves of the genuineness of these writings before they accepted them.

Evidences of care are the following: — Paul, in 2 Thessalonians 2:2, urged the churches to use care, “to the end that ye be not quickly shaken from your mind, nor yet be troubled, either by spirit, or by word, or by epistle as from us” 1 Corinthians 5:9 — “I wrote unto you in my epistle to have no company with fornicators”; Colossians: 16 — “when this epistle hath been read among you, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans; and that ye also read the epistle from Laodicea.” Melito (169), Bishop of Sardis, who wrote a treatise on the Revelation of John, went as far as Palestine to ascertain on the spot the facts relating to the Canon of the O.T., and as a result of his investigations excluded the Apocrypha. Ryle, Canon of O.T., 203 — “Melito, the Bishop of Sardis, sent to a friend a list of the O.T. Scriptures which he professed to have obtained from accurate inquiry, while traveling in the East, in Syria. Its contents agree with those of the Hebrew Canon, save in the omission of Esther.” Serapion, Bishop of Antioch (191-213, Abbot), says: “We receive Peter and other apostles as Christ, but as skillful men we reject those writings which are falsely ascribed to them.” Geo. H. Ferris, Baptist Congress, 1899:94 — “Serapion, after permitting the reading of the Gospel of Peter in public services, finally decided against it, not because he thought there could be no fifth gospel, but because he thought it was not written by Peter.” Tertullian (160-230) gives an example of the deposition of a presbyter in Asia Minor for publishing a pretended work of Paul; see Tertullian, De Baptismo, referred to by Godet on John, Introduction; Lardner, Works, 2:304, 305; McIlvaine, Evidences. 92. (b) The style of the New Testament writings, and their complete correspondence with all we know of the lands and times in which they profess to have been written, affords convincing proof that they belong to the apostolic age.

Notice the mingling of Latin and Greek, as in spekoula>twr ( Mark 6:27) and kenturi>wn ( Mark 15:39); of Greek and Aramæan, as in prasiai< prasiai> ( Mark 6:40) and ejrhmw>sewv ( Matthew 24:15); this could hardly have occurred after the first century. Compare the anachronisms of style and description in Thackeray’s “Henry Esmond,” which, in spite of the author’s special studies and his determination to exclude all words and phrases that had originated in his own century, was marred by historical errors that Macaulay, in his most remiss moments, would hardly have made. James Russell Lowell told Thackeray that “different to” was not a century old. “Hang it, no!” replied Thackeray. In view of this failure, on the part of an author of great literary skill, to construct a story purporting to be written a century before his time and that could stand the test of historical criticism, we may well regard the success of our gospels in standing such tests as a practical demonstration that they were written in, and not after, the apostolic age.

See Alexander, Christ and Christianity, 27-37; Blunt, Scriptural Coincidences, 244-354. (c) The genuineness of the fourth gospel is confirmed by the fact that Tatian (155-170), the Assyrian, a disciple of Justin, repeatedly quoted it without naming the author, and composed a Harmony of our four gospels which he named the Diatessaron; while Basilides (130) and Valentinus (150), the Gnostics, both quote from it.

The skeptical work entitled “Supernatural Religion” said in 1874: “No one seems to have seen Tatian’s Harmony, probably for the very simple reason that there was no such work” and “There is no evidence whatever connecting Tatian’s Gospel with those of our Canon.” In 1876, however, there was published in a Latin form in Venice the Commentary of Ephraem Syrus on Tatian, and the commencement of it was: “In the beginning was the Word” ( John 1:1). In 1888, the Diatessaron itself was published in Rome in the form of an Arabic translation made in the eleventh century from the Syriac. J. Rendel Harris. in Contemp. Rev., 1893:800 sq., says that the recovery of Tatian’s Diatessaron has indefinitely postponed the literary funeral of St. John. Advanced critics, he intimates, are so called, because they run ahead of the facts they discuss.

The gospels must have been well established in the Christian church when Tatian undertook to combine them. Mrs. A.S. Lewis, in SS Times, Jan. 23, 1904 — “The gospels were translated into Syriac before AD 160. It follows that the Greek document from which they were translated was older still, and since the one includes the gospel of St. John, so did the other.” Hemphill, Literature of the Second Century, 183-231, gives the birth of Tatian about 120, and the date of his Diatessaron as 172 AD The difference in style between the Revelation and the gospel of John is due to the fact that the Revelation was written during John’s exile in Patmos, under Nero, in 67 or 68, soon after John had left Palestine and had taken up his residence at Ephesus. He had hitherto spoken Aramæan, and Greek was comparatively unfamiliar to him. The gospel was written thirty years after, probably about 97, when Greek had become to him like a mother tongue. See Lightfoot on Galatians, 343, 347; per contra, see Milligan, Revelation of St. John. Phrases and ideas, which indicate a common authorship of the Revelation and the gospel, are the following: “the Lamb of God.” “the Word of God,” “the True” as an epithet applied to Christ, “the Jews” as enemies of God, “manna,” “him whom they pierced” see Elliott, Horæ Apocalypticæ, 1:4,5. In the fourth gospel we have ajmno>v , in Apoc. ajrni>on, perhaps better to distinguish “the Lamb” from the diminutive to< qhri>on, “the best.” Common to both Gospel and Revelations are poiei~n , “to do” [the truth]; peripatei~n, of moral conduct; ajlhqino>v, “genuine”; diya~|n peina~|n, of the higher wants of the soul; skhnou~n ejn poimai>nein oJdhgei~n ; also ‘overcome,’ ‘testimony,’ ‘Bridegroom,’ ‘Shepherd,’ ‘Water of Life.’ In the Revelation there are grammatical solecisms: nominative for genitive, 1:4 — ajpov ; accusative for nominative, 20:2 — tokonta oJ o]fiv . Similarly, we have in Romans 12:5 — to< de< kaq ei]v instead of to< de< kaq e]na, where kata< has lost its regimen — a frequent solecism in later Greek writers; see Godet on John, 1:269, 270. Emerson reminded Jones Very that the Holy Ghost surely writes good grammar. The Apocalypse seems to show that Emerson was wrong.

The author of the fourth gospel speaks of John in the third person, “and scorned to blot it with a name.” But so does Caesar speak of himself in his Commentaries.

Harnack regards both the fourth gospel and the Revelation as the work of John the Presbyter or Elder, the former written not later than about AD; the latter from 93 to 96, but being a revision of one or more underlying Jewish apocalypses. Vischer has expounded this view of the Revelation; and Porter holds substantially the same, in his article on the Book of Revelation in Hastings’ Bible Dictionary, 4:239-266. “It is the obvious advantage of the Vischer — Harnack hypothesis that it places the original work under Nero and its revised and Christianized edition under Dalmatian.” (Sanday, Inspiration, 371, 372, nevertheless dismisses this hypothesis as raising worse difficulties than it removes. He dates the Apocalypse between the death of Nero and the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus.) Martineau, Seat of Authority, 227, presents the moral objections to the apostolic authorship, and regards the Revelation, from chapter 4:1 to 22:5, as a purely Jewish document of the date 66-70, supplemented and revised by a Christian, and issued not earlier than 136: “How strange that we should ever have thought it possible for a personal attendant upon the ministry of Jesus to write or edit a book mixing up fierce Messianic conflicts, in which, with the sword, the gory garment, the blasting flame, the rod of iron, as his emblems, he leads the war march, and treads the winepress of the wrath of God until the deluge of blood rises to the horses’ bits, with the speculative Christology of the second century, without a memory of his life, a feature of his look, a word from his voice, or a glance back at the hillsides of Galilee, the courts of Jerusalem, the road to Bethany, on which his image must be forever seen.

The force of this statement, however, is greatly broken if we consider that the apostle John, in his earlier days, was one of the “Boanerges, which is Sons of thunder” ( Mark 3:17), but became in his later years the apostle of love: 1 John 4:7 — “Beloved, let us love one another for love is of God.” The likeness of the fourth gospel to the epistle, which latter was undoubtedly the work of John the apostle, indicates the same authorship for the gospel. Thayer remarks that “the discovery of the gospel according to Peter sweeps away half a century of discussion. Brief as is the recovered fragment, it attests indubitably all four of our canonical books.’’ Riddle, in Popular Com., 1:25 — “If a forger wrote the fourth gospel, then Beelzebub has been casting out devils for these eighteen hundred years.” (in the genuineness of the fourth gospel, see Bleek, Introduction to New Testament, 1:250; Fisher, Essays on Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 33, also Beginnings of Christianity, 320- 362, and Grounds of Theistic and Christian Belief, 245-309; Sanday, Authorship of the Fourth Gospel, Gospels in the Second Century and Criticism of the Fourth Gospel; Ezra Abbott, Genuineness of the Fourth Gospel,52, 80-87; Row, Bampton Lectures on Christian Evidences, 249- 287; British Quarterly, Oct. 1872:216; Godet, in Present Day Tracts, 5: no. 25; Westcott, in Bib. Com, on John’s Gospel, Introduction xxviii — xxxii; Watkins, Bampton Lectures for 1890; W.L. Ferguson, in Bibliotheca Sacra, 1896:1-27. (d) The epistle to the Hebrews appears to have been accepted during the first century after it was written (so Clement of Rome, Justin Martyr, and the Peshito Version witness). Then for two centuries, especially in the Roman and North African churches, and probably because its internal characteristics were inconsistent with the tradition of a Pauline authorship, its genuineness was doubted (so Tertullian, Cyprian, Irenæus, Muratorian Canon). At the end of the fourth century, Jerome examined the evidence and decided in its favor; Augustine did the same; the third Council of Carthage formally recognized it (397); from that time the Latin churches united with the East in receiving it, and thus the doubt was finally and forever removed.

The Epistle to the Hebrews, the style of which is so unlike that of the Apostle Paul, was possibly written by Apollos, who was an Alexandrian Jew, “a learned man” and “mighty in the Scriptures’ ( Acts 18:24); but it may notwithstanding have been written at the suggestion and under the direction of Paul, and so be essentially Pauline. A. C. Kendrick, in American Commentary on Hebrews, points out that while the style of Paul is prevailingly dialectic, and only in rapt moments becomes rhetorical or poetic, the style of the Epistle to the Hebrews is prevailingly rhetorical, is free from anacoloutha, and is always dominated by emotion, he holds that these characteristics point to Apollos as its author. Contrast also Paul’s method of quoting the Old Testament: “it is written” ( Romans 11:8; 1 Corinthians 1:31; Galatians 3:10) with that of the Hebrews: “he saith” (8:5, 13), “he hath said” (4:4).

Paul quotes the Old Testament fifty or sixty times, but never in this latter way. Hebrews 2:3 — “which having at the first been spoken by the Lord, was confirmed unto us by them that heard” — shows that the writer did not receive the gospel at first hand. Luther and Calvin rightly saw in this a decisive proof that Paul was not the author, for he always insisted on the primary and independent character of his gospel. Harnack formerly thought the epistle written by Barnabas to Christians at Rome, AD 8-96.

More recently however he attributes it to Priscilla, the wife of Aquila, or to their joint authorship. The majesty of its diction, however, seems unfavorable to this view. William T.C. Hanna: “The words of the author… are marshaled grandly, and move with the tread of an army, or with the swell of a tidal wave”; see Franklin Johnson, Quotations in New Testament from Old Testament, xii. Plumptre, Introduction to New Testament, 37, and in Expositor, Vol. I, regards the author of this epistle as the same with that of the Apocryphal Wisdom of Solomon, the latter being composed before, the former after the writer’s conversion to Christianity. Perhaps our safest conclusion is that of Origen: “God only knows who wrote it.” Harnack however remarks: “The time in which our ancient Christian literature, the New Testament included, was considered as a web of delusions and falsifications is past. The oldest literature of the church is, in its main points, and in most of its details, true and trustworthy.” See articles on Hebrews in Smith’s and in Hastings’ Bible Dictionaries, (e) As to 2 Peter, Jude, and 2 and 3 John, the epistles most frequently held to be spurious, we may say that although we have no conclusive external evidence earlier than AD 160, and in the case of 2 Peter none earlier than AD 230-250, we may fairly urge in favor of their genuineness not only their internal characteristics of literary style and moral value, but also the general acceptance of them all since the third century as the actual productions of the men or class of men whose names they bear.

Firmilianus (250), Bishop of Cæsarea in Cappadocia, is the first clear witness to 2 Peter. Origen (230) names it, but in naming it, admits that its genuineness is questioned. The Council of Laodicea (372) first received it into the Canon. With this very gradual recognition and acceptance of Peter, compare the loss of the later works of Aristotle for a hundred and fifty years after his death, and their recognition as genuine so soon as they were recovered from the cellar of the family of Neleus in Asia; DeWette’s first publication of certain letters of Luther after the lapse of three hundred years, yet without occasioning doubt as to their genuineness, or the concealment of Milton’s Treatise on Christian Doctrine, among the lumber of the State Paper Office in London, from 1677 to 1823; see Mair, Christian Evidences, 95. Sir William Hamilton complained that there were treatises of Cudworth, Berkeley and Collier, still lying unpublished and even unknown to their editors, biographer’s and fellow metaphysicians, but yet of the highest interest and importance; see Mansel, Letters, Lectures and Reviews. 381; Archibald, The Bible Verified, 27. 2 Peter was probably sent from the East shortly before Peter’s martyrdom; distance and persecution may have prevented its rapid circulation in other countries. Sagebeer, The Bible in Court, 114 — “A ledger may have been lost, or its authenticity for a long time doubted, but when once it is discovered and proved, it is as trustworthy as any other part of the res gestú .” See Plumptre, Epistles of Peter. Introduction, 73-81; Alford on Peter, 4: Prolegomena, l57; Westcott, on Canon, in Smith’s Bib.

Dictionary, 1:370, 373; Blunt, Dictionary Doct. and Hist. Theol., art.:

Canon.

Those who doubt the genuineness of 2 Peter that the epistle speaks of “your apostles” urge it (3:2), just as Jude 17 speaks of “the apostles,” as if the writer did not number himself among them. But 2 Peter begins with “Simon Peter, a servant and apostle of Jesus Christ,’’ and Jude, “brother of James” (verse 1) was a brother of our Lord, but not an apostle. Hovey, Introduction to New Testament, xxxi — “The earliest passage manifestly based upon 2 Peter appears to be in the so-called Second Epistle of the Roman Clement, 16:3, which however is now understood to be a Christian homily from the middle of the second century.” Origen (born 186) testifies that Peter left one epistle, “amid perhaps a second, for that is disputed.” he also says: “John wrote the Apocalypse, and an epistle of very few lines; and, it may be, a second and a third; since all do not admit them to be genuine.” He quotes also from James and from Jude, adding that their canonicity was doubted.

Harnack regards 1 Peter, 2 Peter, James, and Jude, as written respectively about 160, 170, 130, and 130, but not by the men to whom they are ascribed — the ascriptions to these authors being later additions. Hort remarks: “If I were asked, I should say that the balance of the argument was against 2 Peter, but the moment I had done so I should begin to think I might be in the wrong.” Sanday, Oracles of God,73 note, considers the arguments in favor of 2 Peter unconvincing, but also the arguments against. He cannot get beyond a non liquet. He refers to Salmon, Introduction to New Testament, 529-559, ed. 4, as expressing his own view. But the later conclusions of Sanday are more radical. In his Bampton Lectures on Inspiration, 348, 399, he says: 2 Peter “is probably at least to this extent a counterfeit that it appears under a name, which is not that of its true author.”

Chase, in Hastings’ Bib. Dictionary, 3:806-817, says that “the first piece of certain evidence as to 2 Peter is the passage from Origen quoted by Eusebius, though it hardly admits of doubt that the Epistle was known to Clement of Alexandria… We find no trace of the epistle in the period when the tradition of apostolic days was still living… It was not the work of the apostle but of the second century… put forward without any sinister motive… the personation of the apostle an obvious literary device rather than a religious or controversial fraud. The adoption of such a verdict can cause perplexity only when the Lord’s promise of guidance to his Church is regarded as a charter of infallibility.” Against this verdict we would urge the dignity and spiritual value of 2 Peter — internal evidence which in our judgment causes the balance to incline in favor of its apostolic authorship. (f) Upon no other hypothesis than that of their genuineness can the general acceptance of these four minor epistles since the third century and of all the other books of the New Testament since the middle of the second century, be satisfactorily accounted for. If they had been mere collections of floating legends, they could not have secured wide circulation as sacred books for which Christians must answer with their blood. If they had been forgeries, the churches at large could neither have been deceived as to their previous nonexistence, nor have been induced unanimously to pretend that they were ancient and genuine. Inasmuch, however, as other accounts of their origin, inconsistent with their genuineness, are now current, we proceed to examine more at length the most important of these opposing views.

The genuineness of the New Testament as a whole would still be demonstrable, even if doubt should still attach to one or two of its books.

It does not matter that Plato, or Pericles did not write 2nd Alcibiades by Shakespeare. The Council of Carthage in 397 gave a place in the Canon to the Old Testament Apocrypha but the Reformers tore it out. Zwingli said of the Revelation: “It is not a Biblical book,” and Luther spoke slightingly of the Epistle of James. The judgment of Christendom at large is trustworthier than the private impressions of any single Christian scholar. To hold the books of the New Testament to be written in the second century by other than those whose names they bear is to hold, not simply to forgery, but to a conspiracy of forgery. There must have been several forgers at work and since their writings wonderfully agree, there must have been collusion among them. Yet these able men have been forgotten, while the names of far feebler writers of the second century have been preserved.

G.F. Wright, Scientific Aspects of Christian Evidences, 343 — “In civil law there are ‘statutes of limitations’ which provide that the general acknowledgment of a purported fact for a certain period shall be considered as conclusive evidence of it. If, for example, a man has remained in undisturbed possession of land for a certain number of years, it is presumed that he has a valid claim to it, and no one is allowed to dispute his claim.” Mair, Evidences, 99 — “We probably have not a tenth part of the evidence upon which the early churches accepted the New Testament books as the genuine productions of their authors. We have only their verdict” Wynne, in Literature of the Second Century, 58 — “Those who gave up the Scriptures were looked on by their fellow Christians as ‘traditores,’ traitors, who had basely yielded up what they ought to have treasured as dearer than life. But all their books were not equally sacred.

Some were essential, and some were nonessential to the faith. Hence arose the distinction between canonical and non-canonical. The general consciousness of Christians grew into a distinct registration.” Such registration is entitled to the highest respect, and lays the burden of proof upon the objector. See Alexander, Christ and Christianity, introduction; Hovey, General Introduction to American Commentary on New Testament.

D. Rationalistic Theories as to the origin of the gospels. These are attempts to eliminate the miraculous element from the New Testament records, and to reconstruct the sacred history upon principles of naturalism.

Against them we urge the general objection that they are unscientific in their principle and method. To set out in an examination of the New Testament documents with the assumption that all history is a mere natural development, and that miracles are therefore impossible, is to make history a matter, not of testimony, but of a priori speculation. It indeed renders any history of Christ and his apostles impossible, since the witnesses whose testimony with regard to miracles is discredited can no longer be considered worthy of credence in their account of Christ’s life or doctrine.

In Germany, half a century ago, “a man was famous according as he had lifted up axes upon the thick trees” ( Psalm 74:5, A.V.), just as among the American Indians he was not counted a man who could not show his scalps. The critics fortunately scalped each other; see Tyler, Theology of Greek Poets, 79 — on Homer. Nicoll, The Church’s One Foundation, — “Like the mummers of old, skeptical critics send one before them with a broom to sweep the stage clear of everything for their drama. If we assume at the threshold of the gospel study that everything of the nature of miracle is impossible, then the specific questions are decided before the criticism begins to operate in earnest.” Matthew Arnold: “Our popular religion at present conceives the birth, ministry and death of Christ as altogether steeped in prodigy, brimful of miracle, — and miracles do not happen.” This presupposition influences the investigations of Kuenen, and of A. E. Abbott, in his article on the Gospels in the Encyclopedia Britannica. We give special attention to four of the theories based upon this assumption. 1st . The Myth-theory of Strauss (1808-1874).

According to this view, the gospels are crystallization into story of messianic ideas, which had for several generations filled the minds of imaginative men in Palestine. The myth is a narrative in which such ideas are unconsciously clothed, and from which the element of intentional and deliberate deception is absent.

This early view of Strauss, which has become identified with his name, was exchanged in late years for a more advanced view which extended the meaning of the word ‘myths’ so as to include all narratives that spring out of a theological idea, and it admitted the existence of ‘pious frauds’ in the gospels. Baur, he says, first convinced him that the author of the fourth gospel had “not infrequently composed mere fables, knowing them to be mere fictions.” The animating spirit of both the old view and the new is the same. Strauss says: “We know with certainty what Jesus was not and what he has not done, namely, nothing superhuman and supernatural.” “No gospel can claim that degree of historic credibility that would be required in order to make us debase our reason to the point of believing in miracles.” He calls the resurrection of Christ “ein weltgeschichtlicher Humbug .” “If the gospels are really historical documents, we cannot exclude miracle from the life story of Jesus; “see Strauss, Life of Jesus,17; New Life of Jesus,1: preface, xii. Vatke, Einleitung in A.T., 210, 211, distinguishes the myth from the saga or legend: The criterion of the pure myth is that the experience is impossible, while the saga is a tradition of remote antiquity; the myth has in it the element only of belief, the saga has in it an element of history. Sabatier, Philos. Religion,37 — “A myth is false in appearance only. The divine Spirit can avail himself of the fictions of poetry as well as of logical reasoning. When the heart was pure, the veils of fable always allowed the face of truth to shine through and does not childhood run on into maturity and old age?”

It is very certain that childlike love of truth was not the animating spirit of Strauss. On the contrary, his spirit was that of remorseless criticism and of uncompromising hostility to the supernatural. It has been well said that he gathered up all the previous objections of skeptics to the gospel narrative and hurled them in one mass, just as if some Sadducee at the time of Jesus’ trial had put all the taunts and gibes, all the buffetings and insults, all the shame and spitting, into one blow delivered straight into the face of the Redeemer. An octogenarian and saintly German lady said unsuspectingly that “somehow she never could get interested” in Strauss’s Leben Jesu, which her skeptical son had given her for religious reading.

The work was almost altogether destructive, only the last chapter suggesting Strauss’s own view of what Jesus was.

If Luther’s dictum is true that “the heart is the best theologian,” Strauss must be regarded as destitute of the main qualification for his task.

Encyclopedia Britannica, 22 592 — “Strauss’s mind was almost exclusively analytical and critical, without depth of religious feeling, or philosophical penetration, or historical sympathy. His work was rarely constructive and, save when he was dealing with a kindred spirit, he failed as a historian, biographer, and critic, strikingly illustrating Goethe’s profoundly true principle that loving sympathy is essential for productive criticism.” Pfleiderer, Strauss’s Life of Jesus, xix — “Strauss showed that the church formed the mythical traditions about Jesus out of its faith in him as the Messiah; but he did not show how the church came by the faith that Jesus of Nazareth was the Messiah.” See Carpenter, Mental Physiology, 362; Grote, Plato, 1:249.

We object to the Myth theory of Strauss, that (a) The time between the death of Christ and the publication of the gospels was far too short for the growth and consolidation of such mythical histories. Myths, on the contrary, as the Indian, Greek, Roman and Scandinavian instances bear witness, are the slow growth of centuries. (b) The first century was not a century when such formation of myths was possible. Instead of being a credulous and imaginative age, it was an age of historical inquiry and of Sadduceeism in matters of religion.

Horace, in Odes 1:34 and 3:6, denounces the neglect and squalor of the heathen temples, and Juvenal, Satire 2:150, says that “Esse aliquid manes et subterranea regna Nec pueri credunt .” Arnold of Rugby: “The idea of men writing mythic histories between the times of Livy and of Tacitus, and of St. Paul mistaking them for realities!” Pilate’s skeptical inquiry, “What is truth?” ( John 18:38), better represented the age. “The mythical age is past when an idea is presented abstractly — apart from narrative.” The Jewish sect of the Sadducees shows that the rationalistic spirit was not confined to Greeks or Romans. The question of John the Baptist, Matthew 11:3 — “Art thou he that cometh, or look we for another?” and our Lord’s answered, Matthew 11:4,5 — “Go and tell John the thing which ye hear and see: the blind receive their sight… the dead are raised up.” show that the Jews expected miracles to be wrought by the Messiah; yet John 10:41 — “John indeed did no sign” shows also no irresistible inclination to invest popular teachers with miraculous powers; see B.G. Robinson, Christian Evidences, 22; Westcott, Com. on John 10:41; Rogers, Superhuman Origin of the Bible,61; Cox, Miracles,50. (c) The gospels cannot be a mythical outgrowth of Jewish ideas and expectations, because, in their main features, they run directly counter to these ideas and expectations. The sullen and exclusive nationalism of the Jews could not have given rise to a gospel for all nations, nor could their expectations of a temporal monarch have led to the story of a suffering Messiah.

The Old Testament Apocrypha shows how narrow was the outlook of the Jews. 2 Esdras 6:55, 56 says the Almighty has made the world “for our sakes”; other peoples, though they “also come from Adam,” to the Eternal “are nothing, but be like unto spittle.” The whole multitude of them are only, before him, “like a single foul drop that oozes out of a cask” (C.

Geikie, in S. S. Times). Christ’s kingdom differed from that which the Jews expected, both in its spirituality and its universality (Bruce, Apologetics, 8). There was no missionary impulse in the heathen world; on the other hand, it was blasphemy for an ancient tribesman to make known his god to an outsider (Nash, Ethics and Revelation, 106). The Apocryphal gospels show what sort of myths the New Testament age would have elaborated: Out of a demoniac young woman Satan is said to depart in the form of a young man (Bernard, in Literature of the Second Century, 99-136). (d) The belief and propagation of such myths are inconsistent with what we know of the sober characters and self-sacrificing lives of the apostles. (e) The mythical theory cannot account for the acceptance of the gospels among the Gentiles, who had none of the Jewish ideas and expectations. (f) It cannot explain Christianity itself, with its belief in Christ’s crucifixion and resurrection, and the ordinances, which commemorate these facts. (d) Witness Thomas’s doubting, and Paul’s shipwrecks and scourgings. Cf . 1 Peter 1:16 — ouj ganoiv mu>qoiv ejxakolouqh>santev = “we have not been on the false track of myths artificially elaborated.” See F. W. Farrar, Witness of History to Christ, 49-88. (e) See the two books entitled: If the Gospel Narratives are Mythical, — What Then? and But How? — if the Gospels are Historic? (f) As the existence of the American Republic is proof that there was once a Revolutionary War, so the existence of Christianity is proof of the death of Christ. The change from the seventh day to the first, in Sabbath observance, could never have come about in a nation so Sabbatarian. had not the first day been the celebration of an actual resurrection. Like the Jewish Passover and our own Independence Day, Baptism and the Lords Supper cannot be accounted for, except as monuments and remembrances of historical facts at the beginning of the Christian church. See Muir, on the Lord’s Supper an abiding Witness to the Death of Christ, in Present Day Tracts, 6: no. 36. On Strauss and his theory, see Hackett, in Christian Rev., 48; Weiss, Life of Jesus, 155-163; Christlieb, Mod. Doubt and Christ. Belief, 379-425; Maclear, in Strivings for the Faith, 1-136; H. B. Smith, In Faith and Philosophy, 442- 468; Bayne, Review of Strauss’s New Life, in Theol. Eclectic, 4:74; Row, in Lectures on Modern Skepticism, 305-360; Bibliotheca Sacra, Oct. 1871: art, by Prof. W.A. Stevens; Burgess, Antiquity and Unity of Man, 263, 264; Curtis on Inspiration, 62-67; Alexander, Christ and Christianity, 92-126; A.P.

Peabody, in Smith’s Bible Dictionary, 2:954-958. 2nd . The Tendency theory of Baur (1792-1860).

This maintains that the gospels originated in the middle of the second century, and were written under assumed names as a means of reconciling opposing Jewish and Gentile tendencies in the church. “These great national tendencies find their satisfaction, not in events corresponding to them, but in the elaboration of conscious fictions.”

Baur dates the fourth gospel at 160-170 AD; Matthew at 130; Luke at 150; Mark at 150-160. Baur never inquires who Christ was. He turns his attention from the facts to the documents. If the documents be proved unhistorical, there is no need of examining the facts, for there are no facts to examine. He indicates the presupposition of his investigations, when he says: “The principal argument for the later origin of the gospels must forever remain this, that separately, and still more when taken together, they give an account of the life of Jesus which involves impossibilities” — i.e., miracles. He would therefore remove their authorship far enough from Jesus’ time to permit regarding the miracles as inventions. Baur holds that in Christ were united the universalistic spirit of the new religion, and the particularistic form of the Jewish Messianic idea; some of his disciples laid emphasis on the one, some on the other; hence first conflict, but finally reconciliation; see statement of the Tubingen theory and of the way in which Baur was led to it, in Bruce, Apologetics, 360.

E.G. Robinson interprets Baur as follows: “Paul = Protestant; Peter = sacramentarian; James = ethical; Paul + Peter + James = Christianity.

Protestant preaching should dwell more on the ethical — cases of conscience — and less on mere doctrine, such as regeneration and justification.”

Baur was a stranger to the needs of his own soul, and so to the real character of the gospel. One of his friends and advisers wrote, after his death, in terms that were meant to be laudatory: “His was a completely objective nature. No trace of personal needs or struggles is discernible in connection with his investigations of Christianity.” The estimate of posterity is probably expressed in the judgment with regard to the Tubing en school by Harnack: “The possible picture it sketched was not the real, and the key with which it attempted to solve all problems did not suffice for the most simple….The Tubingen views have indeed been compelled to undergo very large modifications. As regards the development of the church in the second century, it may safely be said that the hypotheses of the Tubingen School have proved themselves everywhere inadequate, very erroneous, and are today held by only a very few scholars.” See Baur, Die kanonischen Evangelien; Canonical Gospels (Eng. transl.), 530; Supernatural Religion, 1:212-444 and vol. 2: Pfleiderer, Hibbert Lectures for 1885. For accounts of Baur’s position, see Herzog, Encyclopædie. art.: Baur; Clarke’s translation of Hase’s Life of Jesus, 34-36; Farrar, Critical History of Free Thought, 227, 228.

We object to the Tendency theory of Baur, that (a) The destructive criticism to which it subjects the gospels, if applied to secular documents, would deprive us of any certain knowledge of the past, and render all history impossible.

The assumption of artifice is itself unfavorable to a candid examination of the documents. A perverse acuteness can descry evidences of a hidden animus in the most simple and ingenuous literary productions. Instance the philosophical interpretation of “Jack and Jill.” (b) The antagonistic doctrinal tendencies, which it professes to find in the several gospels, are more satisfactorily explained as varied but consistent aspects of the one system of truth held by all the apostles.

Baur exaggerates the doctrinal and official differences between the leading apostles. Peter was not simply a Judaizing Christian, but was the first preacher to the Gentiles. and his doctrine appears to have been subsequently influenced to a considerable extent by Paul’s (see Plumptre on 1 Pet., 68-60). Paul was not an exclusively Hellenizing Christian, but invariably addressed the gospel to the Jews before he turned to the Gentiles. The evangelists give pictures of Jesus from different points of view. As the Parisian sculptor constructs his bust with the aid of a dozen photographs of his subject, all taken from different points of view, so from the four portraits furnished us by Matthew, Mark, Luke and John we are to construct the solid and symmetrical life of Christ. The deeper reality, which makes reconciliation of the different views possible, is the actual historical Christ. Marcus Dods, Expositor’s Greek Testament, 1:675 — “They are not two Christs, but one, which the four Gospels depict: diverse as the profile and front face, but one another’s complement rather than contradiction.”

Godet, Introduction to Gospel Collection, 272 — Matthew shows time greatness of Jesus — his full-length portrait; Mark his indefatigable activity; Luke his beneficent compassion; John his essential divinity.

Matthew first wrote Aramæn Logia. This was translated into Greek and completed by a narrative of the ministry of Jesus for the Greek churches founded by Paul. This translation was not made by Matthew and did not make use of Mark (217-224). E.D. Burton: Matthew = fulfillment of past prophecy; Mark = manifestation of present power. Matthew is argument from prophecy; Mark is argument from miracle. Matthew, as prophecy, made most impression on Jewish readers; Mark, as power, was best adapted to Gentiles. Prof. Burton holds Mark to be based upon oral tradition alone; Matthew upon his Logia (his real earlier Gospel) and other fragmentary notes; while Luke has a fuller origin in manuscripts and in Mark. See Aids to the Study of German Theology, 148-155; F. W.

Farrar, Witness of History to Christ,61. (c) It is incredible that productions of such literary power and lofty religious teaching as the gospels should have sprung up in the middle of the second century, or that, so springing up, they should have been published under assumed names and for covert ends.

The general character of the literature of the second century is illustrated by Ignatius’s fanatical desire for martyrdom, the value ascribed by Hermas to ascetic rigor, the insipid allegories of Barnabas, Clement of Rome’s belief in the phúnix, and the absurdities of the Apocryphal Gospels. The author of the fourth gospel among the writers of the second century would have been a mountain among molehills. Wynne, Literature of the Second Century, 60 — “The apostolic and the subapostolic writers differ from each other as a nugget of pure gold differs from a block of quartz with vein of the precious metal gleaming through it.” Dorner, Hist.

Doct. Person Christ, 1:1:92 — “Instead of the writers of the second century marking an advance on the apostolic age, or developing the germ given them by the apostles, the second century shows great retrogression — its writers were not able to retain or comprehend all that had been given them.” Martineau, Seat of Authority, 291 — “Writers not only barbarous in speech and rude in art, but too often puerile in conception, passionate in temper, and credulous in belief. The legends of Papias, the visions of Hermas, the imbecility of Irenæus, the fury of Tertullian, the rancor and indelicacy of Jerome, the stormy intolerance of Augustine, cannot fail to startle and repel the student; and, if he turns to the milder Hippolytus, he is introduced to a brood of thirty heresies which sadly dissipate his dream of the unity of the church.” We can apply to the writers of the second century the question of R.G. Ingersoll in the Shakespeare-Bacon controversy: “Is it possible that Bacon left the best children of his brain on Shakespeare’s doorstep, and kept only the deformed ones at home? “On the Apocryphal Gospels, see Cowper, in Strivings for the Faith, 73-108. (d) The theory requires us to believe in a moral anomaly, namely, that a faithful disciple of Christ in the second century could be guilty of fabricating a life of his master, and of claiming authority for it on the ground that the author had been a companion of Christ or his apostles. “A genial set of Jesuitical religionists” — with mind and heart enough to write the gospel according to John, and who at the same time have coldblooded sagacity enough to keep out of their writings every trace of the developments of church authority belonging to the second century. The newly discovered “Teaching of the Twelve Apostles,” if dating from the early part of that century, shows that such a combination is impossible.

The critical theories assume that one who knew Christ as a man could not possibly also regard him as God. Lowrie, Doctrine of St. John, 12 — “If St. John wrote, it is not possible to say that the genius of St. Paul foisted upon the church a conception which was strange to the original apostles.”

Fairbairn has well shown that if Christianity had been simply the ethical teaching of the human Jesus, it would have vanished from the earth like the sects of the Pharisees and of the Sadducees; if on the other hand it had been simply the Logos doctrine, the doctrine of a divine Christ, it would have passed away like the speculations of Plato or Aristotle; because Christianity unites the idea of the eternal Son of God with that of the incarnate Son of man, it is fitted to be and it has become an universal religion; see Fairbairn, Philosophy of the Christian Religion,4,15 — “Without the personal charm of the historical Jesus, the ecumenical creeds would never have been either formulated or tolerated, and without the metaphysical conception of Christ the Christian religion would long ago have ceased to live… It is not Jesus of Nazareth who has so powerfully entered into history; it is the deified Christ who has been believed, loved and obeyed as the Savior of the world… The two parts of Christian doctrine are combined in the one name ‘Jesus Christ.’” (e) This theory cannot account for the universal acceptance of the gospels at the end of the second century, among widely separated communities where reverence for writings of the apostles was a mark of orthodoxy, and where the Gnostic heresies would have made new documents instantly liable to suspicion and searching examination.

Abbot, Genuineness of the Fourth Gospel, 52, 80, 88, 89. The Johannine doctrine of the Logos, if first propounded in the middle of the second century, would have ensured the instant rejection of that gospel by the Gnostics, who ascribed creation, not to the Logos, but to successive “Æons.” How did the Gnostics, without “peep or mutter,” come to accept as genuine what had only in their own time been first sprung upon the churches? While Basilides (130) and Valentinus (150), the Gnostics, both quote from the fourth gospel, they do not dispute its genuineness or suggest that it was of recent origin. Bruce, in his Apologetics, says of Baur “He believed in the all sufficiency of The Hegelian theory of development through antagonism. He saw tendency everywhere. Anything additional, putting more contents into the person and teaching of Jesus than suits the initial stage of development, must be reckoned spurious. If we find Jesus in any of the gospels claiming to be a supernatural being, such texts can with the utmost confidence be set aside as spurious, for such a thought could not belong to the initial stage of Christianity.” But such a conception certainly existed in the second century, and it directly antagonized the speculations of the Gnostics. F.V. Farrar, on Hebrews 1:2 — “The word úon was used by the later Gnostics to describe he various emanations by which they tried at once to widen and to bridge over the gulf between the human and the divine. Over that imaginary chasm John threw the arch of the Incarnation, when he wrote: ‘The Word became flesh’ John 1:14).” A document which so contradicted the Gnostic teachings could not in the second century have been noted by the Gnostics themselves without dispute as to its genuineness, if it had not been long recognized in the churches as a work of the apostle John. (f) The acknowledgment by Baur that the epistles to the Romans, Galatians and Corinthians were written by Paul in the first century is fatal to his theory, since these epistles testify not only to miracles at the period at which they were written, but to the main events of Jesus’ life and to the miracle of his resurrection, as facts already long acknowledged in the Christian church.

Baur, Paulus der Apostel, 276 — “There never has been the slightest suspicion of authenticity cast on these epistles (Galatians 1 and 2, Corinthians, Romans), and they bear so incontestably the character of Pauline originality, that there is no conceivable ground for the assertion of critical doubts in their case.” Baur, in discussing the appearance of Christ to Paul on the way to Damascus, explains the outward from the inward:

Paul translated in tense and sudden conviction of the truth of the Christian religion into an outward scene. But this cannot explain the hearing of the outward sound by Paul’s companions. On the evidential value of the epistles here mentioned, see Lorimer, in Strivings for the Faith, 109-144; Howson, in Present Day Tracts, 4: no. 24; Row, Bampton Lectures for 1877:289-356. On Baur and his theory in general, see Weiss, Life of Jesus, 1:157 sq .; Christlieb, Mod. Doubt and Christ. Belief, 504-549; Hutton, Essays, 1:176-215; Theol. Eclectic, 5:1-42; Auberlen, Div.

Revelation; Bibliotheca Sacra, 19:75; Answers Supernatural Religion, in Westcott, Mist. New Testament Canon, 4th ed., Introduction; Lightfoot, in Contemporary Rev., Dec. 1874, and Jan. 1875; Salmon, Introduction to New Testament, 6-31; A. B. Bruce, in Present Day Tracts, 7: no. 38. 3d . The Romance theory of Renan (1823-1892).

This theory admits a basis of truth in the gospels and holds that they all belong to the century following Jesus’ death. “According to” Matthew, Mark, etc., however, means only that Matthew, Mark, etc., wrote these gospels in substance. Renan claims that the facts of Jesus’ life were so sublimated by enthusiasm, and so overlaid with pious fraud, that the gospels in their present form cannot be accepted as genuine — in short, the gospels are to be regarded as historical romances which have only a foundation in fact.

The animus of this theory is plainly shown in Renan’s Life of Jesus, preface to 13th ed. — “If miracles and the inspiration of certain books are realities, my method is testable. If miracles and the inspiration of books are beliefs without reality, my method is a good one. But the question of the supernatural is decided for us with perfect certainty by the single consideration that there is no room for believing in a thing which the world offers no experimental trace.” “On the whole,” says Renan, “1 admit as authentic the four canonical gospels. All, in my opinion, date from the first century, and the authors are, generally speaking, those to whom they are attributed.” He regards Galatians 1,2 Corinthians and Romans as “indisputable and undisputed.” He speaks of them as “being texts of an absolute authenticity, of complete sincerity, and without legends” (Les Ap‚tres, xxix; Les …vangiles, xi). Yet he denies to Jesus “sincerity with himself”; attributes to him “innocent artifice” and the toleration of pious fraud, as for example in the case of the stories of Lazarus and of his own resurrection. “To conceive the good is not sufficient; it must be made to succeed; to accomplish this, less pure paths must be followed… Not by any fault of his own, his conscience lost somewhat of its original purity, — his mission overwhelmed him… Did he regret his too lofty nature, and, victim of his own greatness, mourn that he had not remained a simple artisan?” So Renan “pictures Christ’s later life as a misery and a lie, yet he requests us to bow before this sinner and before his superior, Sakya-Mouni, as demigods” (see Nicoll, The Church’s One Foundation,62,63). Of the highly wrought imagination of Mary Magdalene, he says: “O divine power of love! Sacred moments, in which the passion of one whose senses were deceived gives us a resuscitated God!” See Renan, Life of Jesus,21.

To this Romance-theory of Renan, we object that (a) It involves an arbitrary and partial treatment of the Christian documents. The claim that one writer not only borrowed from others, but also interpolated ad libitum, is contradicted by the essential agreement of the manuscripts as quoted by the Fathers, and as now extant.

Renan, according to Mair, Christian Evidences, 153, dates Matthew at AD; Mark at 76; Luke at 94; John at 125. These dates mark a considerable retreat from the advanced positions taken by Baur. Mair, in his chapter on Recent Reverses in Negative Criticism, attributes this result to the late discoveries with regard to the Epistle of Barnabas, Hippolytus’s Refutation of all Heresies, the Clementine Homilies, and Tatian’s Diatessaron: “According to Baur and his immediate followers, we have less than one quarter of the New Testament belonging to the first century. According to Hilgenfeld, the present head of the Baur School, we have somewhat less than three-quarters belonging to the first century do, while substantially the same thing may be said with regard to Holzmann.

According to Renan, we have distinctly more than three-quarters of the New Testament falling within the first century, and therefore within the apostolic age. This surely indicates a very decided and extraordinary retreat since the time of Baur’s grand assault, that is, within the last fifty years.” We may add that the concession of authorship within the apostolic age renders nugatory Renan’s hypothesis that the New Testament documents have been so enlarged by pious fraud that they cannot be accepted as trustworthy accounts of such events as miracles. The oral tradition itself had attained so fixed a form that the many manuscripts used by the Fathers were in substantial agreement in respect to these very events, and oral tradition in the East hands down without serious alteration much longer narratives than those of our gospels. The Pundita Ramabai can repeat, after the lapse of twenty years, portions of the Hindu sacred books exceeding in amount the whole contents of our Old Testament. Many cultivated men in Athens knew by heart all the Iliad and the Odyssey of Homer. Memory and reverence alike kept the gospel narratives free from the corruption, which Renan supposes. (b) It attributes to Christ and to the apostles an alternate fervor of romantic enthusiasm and a false pretense of miraculous power which are utterly irreconcilable with the manifest sobriety and holiness of their lives and teachings. If Jesus did not work miracles, he was an impostor.

On Ernest Renan, His Life and the Life of Jesus, see A.H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 332363, especially 356 — “Renan attributes the origin of Christianity to the predominance in Palestine of a constitutional susceptibility to mystic excitements. Christ is to him the incarnation of sympathy and tears, a being of tender impulses and passionate ardor, whose native genius it was to play upon the hearts of men. Truth or falsehood made little difference to him; anything that would comfort the poor, or touch the finer feelings of humanity, he availed himself of; ecstasies, visions, melting moods, these were the secrets of his power.

Religion was a beneficent superstition, a sweet delusion — excellent as a balm and solace for the ignorant crowd, who never could be philosophers if they tried. And so the gospel river, as one has said, is traced back to a fountain of weeping men and women whose brains had oozed out at their eyes, and the perfection of spirituality is made to be a sort of maudlin monasticism… How different from the strong and holy love of Christ, which would save men only by bringing them to the truth, and which claims men’s imitation only because, without hove for God and for the soul, a man is without truth. How inexplicable from this view the fact that a pure Christianity has everywhere quickened the intellect of the nations, and that every revival of it, as at the Reformation, has been followed by mighty forward leaps of civilization. Was Paul a man carried away by mystic dreams and irrational enthusiasms? Let the keen dialectic skill of his epistles and his profound grasp of the great matters of revelation answer. Has the Christian church been a company of puling sentimentalists? Let the heroic deaths for the truth suffered by the martyr’s witness. Nay, he must have a low idea of his kind, and a yet lower idea of the God who made them, who can believe that the noblest spirits of the race have risen to greatness by abnegating will and reason, and have gained influence over all ages by resigning themselves to semiidiocy.” (c) It fails to account for the power and progress of the gospel, as a system directly opposed to men’s natural tastes and prepossessions — a system which substitutes truth for romance and law for impulse.

A.H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 353 — “And if the later triumphs of Christianity are inexplicable upon the theory of Renan, how can we explain its founding? The sweet swain of Galilee, beloved by women for his beauty, fascinating the unlettered crowd by his gentle speech and his poetic ideals, giving comfort to the sorrowing and hope to the poor, credited with supernatural power which at first he thinks it not worth while to deny and finally gratifies the multitude by pretending to exercise, roused by opposition to polemics and invective until the delightful young rabbi becomes a gloomy giant, an intractable fanatic, a fierce revolutionist, whose denunciation of the powers that be brings him to the Cross, — what is there in him to account for the moral wonder which we call Christianity and the beginnings of its empire in the world? Neither delicious pastorals like those of Jesus’ first period, nor apocalyptic fevers like those of his second period, according to Renan’s gospel, furnish any rational explanation of that mighty movement which has swept through the earth and has revolutionized the faith of mankind.”

Berdoe, Browning, 47 — “If Christ were not God, his life at that stage of the world’s history could by no possibility have had the vitalizing force and love compelling power that Renan’s pages everywhere disclose.

Renan has strengthened faith in Christ’s deity while laboring to destroy it.”

Renan, in discussing Christ’s appearance to Paul on the way to Damascus, explains the inward from the outward, thus precisely reversing the conclusion of Baur. A sudden storm, a flash of lightning, a sudden attack of ophthalmic fever, Paul took as an appearance from heaven. But we reply that so keen an observer and reasoner could not have been thus deceived. Nothing could have made him the apostle to the Gentiles but a sight of the glorified Christ and the accompanying revelation of the holiness of God, his own sin, the sacrifice of the Son of God, its universal efficacy, the obligation laid upon him to proclaim it to the ends of the earth. For reviews of Renan, see Hutton, Essays, 261-281, and Contemp.

Thought and Thinkers, 1:227-234; H. B. Smith, Faith and Philosophy, 401-441: Christlieb, Mod. Doubt, 425-447; Pressense, in Theol. Eclectic. 1:199; Uhlhorn, Mod. Representations of Life of Jesus, 1-33; Bibliotheca Sacra, 22:207; 23:353-529; Present Day Tracts, 3: no. 16, and 4: no. 21; E.G. Robinson, Christian Evidences 43-48; A.H. Strong, Sermon before Baptist World Congress, 1905. 4th . The Development theory of Harnack (born 1851).

This holds Christianity to be a historical development from germs, which were devoid of both dogma and miracle. Jesus was a teacher of ethics, and the original gospel is most clearly represented by the Sermon on the Mount. Greek influence, and especially that of the Alexandrian philosophy, added to this gospel a theological and supernatural element, and so changed Christianity from a life into a doctrine.

Harnack dates Matthew at 70-75; Mark at 65-70: Luke at 78-93; the fourth gospel as 50-110. He regards both the fourth gospel and the book of Revelation as the works not of John the Apostle, but of John the Presbyter. He separates the prologue of the fourth gospel from the gospel itself, and considers the prologue as a preface added after its original composition in order to enable the Hellenistic reader to understand it. “The gospel itself,” says Harnack, “contains no Logos idea; it did not develop out of a Logos idea, such as flourished at Alexandria; it only connects itself with such an idea. The gospel itself is based upon the historic Christ; he is the subject of all its statements. This historical trait can in no way be dissolved by any kind of speculation. The memory of what was actually historical was still too powerful to admit at this point any Gnostic influences. The Logos idea of the prologue is the Logos of Alexandrine Judaism, the Logos of Philo, and it is derived ultimately from the ‘Son of man’ in the book of Daniel… The fourth gospel, which does not proceed from the Apostle John and does not so claim, cannot be used as a historical source in the ordinary sense of that word… The author has managed with sovereign freedom; has transposed occurrences and has put them in a light that is foreign to them; has of his own accord composed the discourses, and has illustrated lofty thoughts by inventing situations for them. Difficult as it is to recognize, an actual tradition in his work is not wholly lacking. For the history of Jesus, however, it can hardly anywhere be taken into account; only little can he taken from it, and that with caution… On the other hand, it is a source of the first rank for the answer of the question what living views of the person of Jesus, what light and what warmth, the gospel has brought into being.” See Harnack’s article in Zeitschrift fur Theol. u. Kirche, 2:189-231, and his Wesen des Christenthums 13. Kaftan also, who belongs to the same Ritschlian school with Harnack, tells us in his Truth of the Christian Religion, 1:97, that as the result of the Logos speculation the center of gravity, instead of being placed in the historical Christ who founded the kingdom of God, is placed in the Christ who as eternal Logos of God was the mediator in the creation of the world.” This view is elaborated by Hatch in his Hibbert Lectures for 1888, on the Influence of Greek Ideas and Usages upon the Christian Church.

We object to the Development theory of Harnack, that (a) The Sermon on the Mount is not the sum of the gospel, nor its original form. Mark is the most original of the gospels, yet Mark omits the Sermon on the Mount, and Mark is preeminently the gospel of the miracle worker. (b) All four gospels lay the emphasis, not on Jesus’ life and ethical teaching, but on his death and resurrection. Matthew implies Christ’s deity when it asserts his absolute knowledge of the Father (11:27), his universal judgeship (25:32), his supreme authority (28:18), and his omnipresence (28:20), while the phrase “Son of man” implies that he is also “Son of God.” Matthew 11:27 — “All things have been delivered unto me of my Father: and no one knoweth the Son, save the Father: neither doth any know the Father, save the Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal him”; 25:32 — “and before him shall be gathered all the nations: and he shall separate them one from another, as the shepherd separateth the sheep from the goats”:28:18 — “All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth”; 28:20 — “Lo, I am with you always, even unto the end of the world.” These sayings of Jesus in Matthew’s gospel show that the conception of Christ’s greatness was not peculiar to John: “I am” transcends time; “with you” transcends space. Jesus speaks “sub specie eternitatis”; his utterance is equivalent to that of John 8:58 — “Before Abraham was born, I am,” and to that of Hebrews 13:8 — “Jesus Christ is the same yesterday and to-day, yea and forever.” He is, as Paul declares in Ephesians 1:23, one “that filleth all in all,” that is, who is omnipresent.

A.H. Strong, Philos. and Religion, 206 — The phrase “Son of man” intimates that Christ was more than man: “Suppose I were to go about proclaiming myself ‘Son or man.’ Who does not see that it would be mere impertinence, unless I claimed to be something more. ‘Son of Man? But what of that? Cannot every human being call himself the same?’” When one takes the title ‘Son of man’ for his characteristic designation, as Jesus did, he implies that there is something strange in his being Son of man; that this is not his original condition and dignity; that it is condescension on his part to be Son of man. In short, when Christ calls himself Son of man, it implies that he has come from a higher level of being to inhabit this low earth of ours. And so, when we are asked “What think ye of the Christ? Whose son is He?” we must answer, not simply, He is Son of man, but also, He is Son of God.” On Son of man, see Driver, On Son of God; see Sanday, both in Hastings’ Dictionary of the Bible. Sanday, “The Son is so called primarily as incarnate. But that which is the essence of the Incarnation must needs be also larger than the Incarnation. It must needs have its roots in the eternity of the Godhead.” Gore, Incarnation,65,73 — “Christ, the final Judge, of the synoptic, is not dissociable from the divine, eternal Being, of the fourth gospel.” (c) The preexistence and atonement of Christ cannot be regarded as accretions upon the original gospel, since these find expression in Paul who wrote before any of our evangelists, and in his epistles anticipated the Logos doctrine of John. (d) We may grant that Greek influence, through the Alexandrian philosophy, helped the New Testament writers to discern what was already present in the life and work and teaching of Jesus; but, like the microscope which discovers but does not create, it added nothing to the substance of the faith.

Gore, Incarnation,62 — “The divinity, incarnation, resurrection of Christ were not an accretion upon the original belief of the apostles and their first disciples, for these are all recognized as uncontroverted matters of faith in the four great epistles of Paul, written at a date when the greater part of those who had seen the risen Christ were still alive.” The Alexandrian philosophy was not the source of apostolic doctrine, but only the form in which that doctrine was cast, the light thrown upon it which brought out its meaning. A.H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 146 — “When we come to John’s gospel, therefore, we find in it the mere unfolding of truth that for substance had been in the world for at least sixty years… If the Platonizing philosophy of Alexandria assisted in this genuine development of Christian doctrine, then the Alexandrian philosophy was a providential help to inspiration. The microscope does not invent; it only discovers. Paul and John did not add to the truth of Christ; their philosophical equipment was only a microscope which brought into clear view the truth that was there already.”

Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:126 — “The metaphysical conception of the Logos, as immanent in the world and ordering it according to law, was filled with religious and moral contents. In Jesus the cosmical principle of nature became a religious principle of salvation” See Kilpatrick’s article on Philosophy, in Hastings’ Bible Dictionary. Kilpatrick holds that Harnack ignores the self-consciousness of Jesus; does not fairly interpret the Acts in its mention of the early worship of Jesus by the church before Greek philosophy had influenced it; refers to the intellectual peculiarities of the New Testament writers conceptions which Paul insists are simply the faith of all Christian people as such; forgets that the Christian idea of union with God secured through the atoning and reconciling work of a personal Redeemer utterly transcended Greek thought, and furnished the solution of the problem after which Greek philosophy was vainly groping. (e) Though Mark says nothing of the virgin birth because his story is limited to what the apostles had witnessed of Jesus’ deeds, Matthew apparently gives us Joseph’s story and Luke gives Mary’s story — both stories naturally published only after Jesus’ resurrection. (f) The larger understanding of doctrine after Jesus’ death was itself predicted by our Lord ( John 16:12). The Holy Spirit was to bring his teachings to remembrance, and to guide into all the truth (16:13), and the apostles were to continue the work of teaching which he had begun ( Acts 1:1). John 16:12,13 — “I have yet many things to say unto you, but ye cannot bear them now. Howbeit, when he, the Spirit of truth, is come, he shall guide you into all the truth”; Acts 1:1 — “The former treatise I made, O Theophilus, concerning all that Jesus began to do and to teach.”

A.H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 140 — “That the beloved disciple, after a half century of meditation upon what he had seen and heard of God manifest in the flesh, should have penetrated more deeply into the meaning of that wonderful revelation is not only not surprising, — it is precisely what Jesus himself foretold.

Our Lord had many things to say to his disciples, but then they could not bear them. He promised that the Holy Spirit should bring to their remembrance both himself and his words, and should lead them into all the truth. And this is the whole secret of what are called accretions to original Christianity. So far as they are contained in Scripture, they are inspired discoveries and unfoldings, not mere speculations and inventions.

They are not additions, but elucidations, not vain imaginings, but correct interpretations… When the later theology, then, throws out the supernatural and dogmatic, as coming not from Jesus but from Paul’s epistles and from the fourth gospel, our claim is that Paul and John are only inspired and authoritative interpreters of Jesus, seeing themselves and making us see the fullness of the Godhead that dwelt in him.”

While Harnack, in our judgment, errs in his view that Paul contributed to the gospel elements which it did not originally possess, he shows us very clearly many of the elements in that gospel which he was the first to recognize. In his Wesen des Christenthums, 111, he tells us that a few years ago a celebrated Protestant theologian declared that Paul, with his Rabbinical theology, was the destroyer of the Christian religion. Others have regarded him as the founder of that religion. But the majority has seen in him the apostle who best understood his Lord and did the most to continue his work. Paul, as Harnack maintains, first comprehended the gospel definitely: (1) as an accomplished redemption and a present salvation — the crucified and risen Christ as giving access to God and righteousness and peace therewith; (2) as something new, which does away with the religion of the law; (3) as meant for all, and therefore for Gentiles also, indeed, as superseding Judaism; (4) as expressed in terms which are not simply Greek but also human, — Paul made the gospel comprehensible to the world. Islam, rising in Arabia, is an Arabian religion still. Buddhism remains an Indian religion. Christianity is at home in all lands. Paul put new life into the Roman Empire, and inaugurated the Christian culture of the West. He turned a local into a universal religion.

His influence however, according to Harnack, tended to the undue exaltation of organization and dogma and Old Testament inspiration — points in which, in our judgment, Paul took sober middle ground and saved Christian truth for the world. 2. Genuineness of the Books of the Old Testament Since nearly one half of the Old Testament is of anonymous authorship and certain of its books may be attributed to definite historic characters only by way of convenient classification or of literary personification, we here mean by genuine honesty of purpose and freedom from anything counterfeit or intentionally deceptive so far as respects the age or the authorship of the documents.

We show the genuineness of the Old Testament books: (a) From the witness of the New Testament, in which all but six books of the Old Testament are either quoted or alluded to as genuine.

The New Testament shows coincidences of language with the Old Testament Apocryphal books, but it contains only one direct quotation from them; while, with the exception of Judges, Ecclesiastes, Canticles, Esther, Ezra, and Nehemiah, every book in the Hebrew canon is used either for illustration or proof. The single apocryphal quotation is found in Jude 14 and is in all probability taken from the book of Enoch. Although Volkmar puts the date of this book at 132 AD, and although some critics hold that Jude quoted only the same primitive tradition of which the author of the book of Enoch afterwards made use, the weight of modern scholarship inclines to the opinion that the book itself was written as early as 170-70 BC, and that Jude quoted from it; see Hastings’ Bible Dictionary, Book of Enoch; Sanday, Bampton Lect. on Inspiration, 95, “If Paul could quote from Gentile poets ( Acts 17:28; Titus 1:12), it is hard to understand why Jude could not cite a work which was certainly in high standing among the faithful”; see Schodde, Book of Enoch,41, with the Introduction by Ezra Abbot. While Jude 14 gives us the only direct and express quotation from an Apocryphal book, Jude and 9 contain allusions to the Book of Enoch and to the Assumption of Moses; see Charles, Assumption of Moses,62. In Hebrews 1:3, we have words taken from Wisdom 7:26; and Hebrews 11:34-38 is a reminiscence of 1 Maccabees. (b) From the testimony of Jewish authorities, ancient and modern, who declare the same books to be sacred, and only the same books that are now comprised in our Old Testament Scriptures.

Josephus enumerates twenty-two of these books “which are justly accredited” (qei~a — Niese, and Hastings’ Dictionary, 3:607). Our present Hebrew Bible makes twenty four, by separating Ruth from Judges, and Lamentations from Jeremiah; See Josephus, Against Apion, 1:8; Smith’s Bible Dictionary, article on the Canon, 1:359, 360. Philo (born 20 BC) never quotes an Apocryphal book, although he does quote from nearly all the books of the Old Testament; see Ryle, Philo and Holy Scripture. George Adam Smith, Modern Criticism amid Preaching,7 — “The theory which ascribed the Canon of the Old Testament to a single decision of the Jewish church in the days of its inspiration is not a theory supported by facts. The growth of the Old Testament Canon was very gradual. Virtually it began in 621 BC, with the acceptance by all Judah of Deuteronomy, and the adoption of the whole Law, or first five books of the Old Testament under Nehemiah in 445 BC Then came the prophets before 200 BC, and the Hagiographa from a century to two centuries later. The strict definition of the last division was not complete by the time of Christ. Christ seems to testify to the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalm s; yet neither Christ nor his apostles make any quotation from Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Canticles, or Ecclesiastes, the last of which books were not yet recognized by all the Jewish schools. But while Christ is the chief authority for the Old Testament, he was also its first critic. He rejected some parts of the Law and was indifferent to many others. He enlarged the sixth and seventh commandments, and reversed the eye for an eye, and the permission of divorce: touched the leper, and reckoned all foods lawful; broke away from literal observance of the Sabbath day; left no commands about sacrifice, temple worship, circumcision, but, by institution of the New Covenant, abrogated these sacraments of the Old.

The apostles appealed to extra-canonical writings.” Gladden, Seven Puzzling Bible Books, 68-96 — “Doubts were entertained in our Lord’s day as to the canonically of several parts of the Old Testament, especially Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, Esther.” (c) From the testimony of the Septuagint translation, dating from the first half of the third century, or from 280 to 180 BC MSS.

of the Septuagint contain, indeed, the Old Testament Apocrypha, but the writers of the latter do not recognize their own work as on a level with the canonical Scriptures, which they regard as distinct from all other books (Ecclesiasticus, prologue, and 48:24; also 24:23-27; 1 Mac. 12:9; Maccabbees 6:23; 1 Esdras1:28; 6:1; Baruch 2:21). So both ancient and modern Jews. See Bissell, in Lange’s Commentary on the Apocrypha, Introduction, 44. In the prologue to the apocryphal book of Ecclesiasticus, we read of “the Law and the Prophets and the rest of the books,” which shows that as early as 130 BC, the probable date of Ecclesiasticus, a threefold division of the Jewish sacred books was recognized. That the author, however, did not conceive of these books as constituting a completed canon seems evident from his assertion in this connection that his grandfather Jesus also wrote. 1 Mac. 12:9 (80-90 BC) speaks of “the sacred books which are now in our hands.” Hastings, Bible Dictionary, 3:611 — “The Old Testament was the result of a gradual process which began with the sanction of the Hexateuch by Ezra and Nehemiah, and practically closed with the decisions of the Council of Jamnia” — Jamnia is the ancient Jabneh, 7 miles south by west of Tiberias, where met a council of rabbins at some time between 90 to 118 AD This Council decided in favor of Canticles and Ecclesiastes and closed the Old Testament Canon.

The Greek version of the Pentateuch which forms a part of the Septuagint is said by Josephus to have been made in the reign and by the order of Ptolemy Philadelphus, King of Egypt, about 270 or 280 BC “The legend is that it was made by seventy two persons in seventy two days. It is supposed, however, by modern critics that this version of the several books is the work not only of different hands but of separate times. It is probable that at first only the Pentateuch was translated, and the remaining books gradually; but the translation is believed to have been completed by the second century BC” (Century Dictionary, in voce). It therefore furnishes an important witness to the genuineness of our Old Testament documents. Driver, Introduction to Old Testament Lit., xxxi — “For the opinion, often met with in modern books, that the Canon of the Old Testament was closed by Ezra, or in Ezra’s time, there is no foundation in antiquity whatever… All that can reasonably be treated as historical in the accounts of Ezra’s literary labors is limited to the Law,” (d) From indications that soon after the exile, and so early as the times of Ezra and Nehemiah ( 500-450 BC), the Pentateuch together with the book of Joshua was not only in existence but was regarded as authoritative. 2 Mac. 2:13-15 intimates that Nehemiah founded a library, and there is a tradition that a “Great Synagogue” was gathered in his time to determine the Canon. But Hastings’ Dictionary, 4:644, asserts that “the Great Synagogue was originally a meeting, and not an institution. It met once for all, and all that is told about it, except what we read in Nehemiah, is pure fable of the later Jews.” In like manner no dependence is to be placed upon the tradition that Ezra miraculously restored the ancient Scriptures that had been lost during the exile. Clement of Alexandria says: “Since the Scriptures perished in the Captivity of Nebuchadnezzar, Esdras (the Greek form of Ezra) the Levite, the priest, in the time of Artaxerxes, King of the Persians, having become inspired in the exercise of prophecy, restored again the whole of the ancient Scriptures.” But the work now divided into I and 2 Chronicles, Ezra and Nehemiah, mentions Darius Codomannus (Neh.12:22), whose date is 336 BC The utmost the tradition proves is that about 300 BC the Pentateuch was in some sense attributed to Moses; see Bacon, Genesis of Genesis, 35; Bibliotheca Sacra, 1863:381, 660, 799; Smith, Bible Dictionary, art., Pentateuch; Theological Eclectic, 6:215; Bissell, Hist. Origin of the Bible, 398-403.

On the Men of the Great Synagogue, see Wright, Ecclesiastes, 5-12, 475- 477. (e) From the testimony of the Samaritan Pentateuch, dating from the time of Ezra and Nehemiah (500-450 BC).

The Samaritans had been brought by the king of Assyria from “Babylon, and from Cuthah and from Avva, and from Hamath and Sepharvaim” ( 2 Kings 17:6,24,26), to take the place of the people of Israel whom the king had carried away captive to his own land. The colonists had brought their heathen gods with them, and the incursions of wild beasts, which the intermission of tillage occasioned gave rise to the belief that the God of Israel was against them. One of the captive Jewish priests was therefore sent to teach them “the law of the god of the land” and he “taught them how they should fear Jehovah” ( 2 Kings 17:27,28). The result was that they adopted the Jewish ritual, but combined the worship of Jehovah with that of their graven images (verse 33). When the Jews returned from Babylon and began to rebuild the walls of Jerusalem, the Samaritans offered their aid, but this aid was indignantly refused (Ezra and Nehemiah 4). Hostility arose between Jews and Samaritans — a hostility which continued not only to the time of Christ ( John 4:9), but even to the present day. Since the Samaritan Pentateuch substantially coincides with the Hebrew Pentateuch, it furnishes us with a definite past date at which it certainly existed in nearly its present form. It witnesses to the existence of our Pentateuch in essentially its present form as far back as the time of Ezra and Nehemiah.

Green, Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch,44,45 — “After being repulsed by the Jews, the Samaritans, to substantiate their claim of being sprung from ancient Israel, eagerly accepted the Pentateuch which was brought them by a renegade priest.” W. Robertson Smith, in Encyclopedia Brit., 21:244 — “The priestly law, which is throughout based on the practice of the priests of Jerusalem before the captivity, was reduced to form after the exile, and was first published by Ezra as the law of the rebuilt temple of Zion. The Samaritans must therefore have derived their Pentateuch from the Jews after Ezra’s reforms, i.e. , after 444 BC Before that time Samaritanism cannot have existed in a form at all similar to that which we know; but there must have been a community ready to accept the Pentateuch.” See Smith’s Bible Dictionary, art., Samaritan Pentateuch; Hastings, Bible Dictionary, art., Samaria; Stanley Leathes, Structure of the Old Testament, 1-41. (f) From the finding of “the book of the law” in the temple, in the eighteenth year of King Josiah, or in 621 BC 2 Kings 22:8 — “And Hilkiah the high priest said unto Shaphan the scribe, I have found the book of the law in the house of Jehovah.” 23:2 — “The book of the covenant” was read before the people by the king and proclaimed to be the law of the land. Curtis, in Hastings’ Bible Dictionary, 3:596 — “The earliest written law or book of divine instruction of whose introduction or enactment an authentic account is given, was Deuteronomy or its main portion, represented as found in the temple in the 18th year of King Josiah (BC 621) and proclaimed by the king as the law of the land. From that time forward Israel had a written law which the pious believer was commanded to ponder day and night ( Joshua 1:8; Psalm I:2); and thus the Torah, as sacred literature, formally commenced in Israel. This law aimed at a right application of Mosaic principles.” Ryle, in Hastings’ Bible Dictionary, 1:602 — “The law of Deuteronomy represents an expansion and development of the ancient code contained in Exodus 20-23, and precedes the final formulation of the priestly ritual, which only received its ultimate form in the last period of revising the structure of the Pentateuch.”

Andrew Harper, on Deuteronomy, in Expositor’s Bible: “Deuteronomy does not claim to have been written by Moses. He is spoken of in the third person in the introduction and historical framework, while the speeches of Moses are in the first person. In portions where the author speaks for himself, the phrase ‘beyond Jordan’ means east of Jordan; in the speeches of Moses the phrase ‘beyond Jordan’ means west of Jordan; and the only exception is Deuteronomy 3:8, which cannot originally have been part of the speech of Moses. But the style of both parts is the same, and if the 3rd person parts are by a later author, the 1st person parts are by a later author also. Both differ from other speeches of Moses in the Pentateuch.

Can the author be a contemporary writer who gives Moses’ words, as John gave the words of Jesus? No, for Deuteronomy covers only the book of the Covenant, Exodus 20-23. It uses JE but not P, with which JE is interwoven. But JE appears in Joshua and contributes to it an account of Joshua’s death. JE speaks of kings in Israel ( Genesis 36:31-39).

Deuteronomy plainly belongs to the early centuries of the Kingdom, or to the middle of it.”

Bacon, Genesis of Genesis, 43-40 — “The Deuteronomic law was so short that Shaphan could read it aloud before the king ( 2 Kings 22:10) and the king could read “the whole of it” before the people (23:2); compare the reading of the Pentateuch for a whole week ( Job 8:2-18).

It was in the form of a covenant; it was distinguished by curses; it was an expansion and modification, fully within the legitimate province of the prophet, of a Torah of Moses codified from the traditional form of at least a century before. Such a Torah existed, was attributed to Moses, and is now incorporated as ‘the book of the covenant in Exodus 20 to 24. The year 620 is therefore the terminus a quo of Deuteronomy. The date of the priestly code is 444 BC” Sanday, Bampton Lectures for 1893, grants “ (1) the presence in the Pentateuch of a considerable element which in its present shape is held by many to be not earlier than the captivity; (2) the composition of the book of Deuteronomy, not long, or at least not very long, before its promulgation by King Josiah in the year 621, which thus becomes a pivot date in the history of Hebrew literature.” (g) From references in the prophets Hosea (BC 743-737) and Amos (759- 745) to a course of divine teaching and revelation extending far back of their day. Hosea 8:12 — “I wrote for him the ten thousand things of my law”; here is asserted the existence prior to the time of the prophet, not only of a law, but of a written law. All critics admit the book of Hosea to be a genuine production of the prophet, dating from the eighth century BC; see Green, in Presb. Rev., 1886:585- 608. Amos 2:4 — “they have rejected the law of Jehovah, and have not kept his statutes”; here is proof that, more than a century before the finding of Deuteronomy in the temple, Israel was acquainted with God’s law. Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation, 26, 27 — “The lofty plane reached by the prophets was not reached at a single bound… There must have been a taproot extending far down into the earth.” Kurtz remarks that “the later books of the Old Testament would be a tree without roots, if the composition of the Pentateuch were transferred to a later period of Hebrew history.” If we substitute for the word ‘Pentateuch’ the words ‘Book of the covenant,’ we may assent to this dictum of Kurtz. There is sufficient evidence that, before the times of Hosea and Amos, Israel possessed a written law — the law embraced in Exodus 20-24 — but the Pentateuch as we now have it, including Leviticus, seems to date no further back than the time of Jeremiah, 445 BC The Levitical law however was only the codification of statutes and customs whose origin lay far back in the past and which were believed to be only the natural expansion of the principles of Mosaic legislation.

Leathes, Structure of Old Testament, 54 — “Zeal for the restoration of the temple after the exile implied that it had long before been the center of the national polity, that there had been a ritual and a law before the exile.”

Present Day Tracts, 3:52 — Levitical institutions could not have been first established by David. It is inconceivable that he “could have taken a whole tribe, and no trace remain of so revolutionary a measure as the dispossessing them of their property to make them ministers of religion.”

James Robertson, Early History of Israel: “The varied literature of 850- 750 BC implies the existence of reading and writing for some time before.

Amos and Hosea hold, for the period succeeding Moses, the same scheme of history which modern critics pronounce late and unhistorical. The eighth century BC was a time of broad historic day, when Israel had a definite account to give of itself and of its history. The critics appeal to the prophets, but they reject the prophets when these tell us that other teachers taught the same truth before them, and when they declare that their nation had been taught a better religion and had declined from it, in other words, that there had been law long before their day. The kings did not give law. The priests presupposed it. There must have been a formal system of law much earlier than the critics admit, and also an earlier reference in their worship to the great events which made them a separate people.” And Dillman goes yet further back and declares that the entire work of Moses presupposes “a preparatory stage of higher religion in Abraham.” (h) From the repeated assertions of Scripture that Moses himself wrote a law for his people, confirmed as these are by evidence of literary and legislative activity in other nations far antedating his time. Exodus 24:4 — “And Moses wrote all the words of Jehovah”; 34:27 — “And Jehovah said unto Moses, Write thou these words: for after the tenor of these words I have made a covenant with thee and with Israel”; Numbers 33:2 — “And Moses wrote their goings out according to their journeys by the commandment of Jehovah”; Deuteronomy 31:9 — “And Moses wrote this law, and delivered it unto the priests the sons of Levi, that bare the ark of the covenant of Jehovah, and unto all the elders of Israel” 22 — “So Moses wrote this song the same day, and taught it the children of Israel”; 24-26 — “And it came to pass, when Moses had made an end of writing the words of this law in a book, until they were finished, that Moses commanded the Levites, that bare the ark of the covenant of Jehovah, saying, Take this book of the law, and put it by the side of the ark of the covenant of Jehovah your God, that it may be there for a witness against thee.” The law here mentioned may possibly be only ‘the book of the covenant (Exodus 20-24), and the speeches of Moses in Deuteronomy may have been orally handed down. But the fact that Moses was “instructed in all the wisdom of the Egyptians” ( Acts 7:22), together with the fact that the art of writing was known in Egypt for many hundred years before his time, make it more probable that a larger portion of the Pentateuch was of his own composition.

Kenyon, in Hastings’ Dictionary, art., Writing, dates the Proverbs of Ptah-hotep, the first recorded literary composition in Egypt, at 3580-3536 BC, and asserts the free use of writing among the Sumerian inhabitants of Babylonia as early as 4000 BC The statutes of Hammurabi king of Babylon compare for extent with those of Leviticus, yet they date back to the time of Abraham, 2200 BC, — indeed Hammurabi is now regarded by many as the Amraphel of Genesis 14:1. Yet these statutes antedate Moses by 700 years. It is interesting to observe that Hammurabi professes to have received his statutes directly from the Sun god of Sippar, his capital city. See translation by Winckler, in Der alte Orient, 97; Johns, The Oldest Code of Laws; Kelso, in Princeton Theol. Rev., July, 1905:399-412 — Facts “authenticate the traditional date of the Book of the Covenant, overthrow the formula Prophets and Law, restore the old order Law and Prophets, and put into historical perspective the tradition that Moses was the author of the Sinaitic legislation.”

As the controversy with regard to the genuineness of the Old Testament books has turned of late upon the claims of the Higher Criticism in general, and upon the claims of the Pentateuch in particular, we subjoin separate notes upon these subjects. The Higher Criticism in general. Higher Criticism does not mean criticism in any invidious sense, any more than Kant’s Critique of Pure Reason was an unfavorable or destructive examination. It is merely a dispassionate investigation of the authorship, date and purpose of Scripture books, in the light of their composition, style and internal characteristics. As the Lower Criticism is a text critique, the Higher Criticism is a structure critique. A bright Frenchman described a literary critic as one who rips open the doll to get at the sawdust there is in it. This can be done with a skeptical and hostile spirit, and there can be little doubt that some of the higher critics of the Old Testament have begun their studies with prepossessions against the super-natural, which have vitiated all their conclusions. These presuppositions are often unconscious, but none the less influential. When Bishop Colenso examined the Pentateuch and Joshua, he disclaimed any intention of assailing the miraculous narrative as such; as if he had said: “My dear little fish, you need not fear me; I do not wish to catch you; I only intend to drain the pond in which you live.” To many scholars the waters at present seem very low in the Hexateuch and indeed throughout the whole Old Testament.

Shakespeare made over and incorporated many old Chronicles of Plutarch and Holinshed, and many Italian tales and early tragedies of other writers; but Pericles and Titus Andronicus still pass current under the name of Shakespeare. We speak even now of “Gesenius’ Hebrew Grammar,” although of its twenty seven editions the last fourteen have been published since his death, and more of it has been written by other editors than Gesenius ever wrote himself. We speak of “Webster’s Dictionary,” though there are in the “Unabridged” thousands of words and definitions that Webster never saw. Francis Brown: “A modern writer masters older records and writes a wholly new book. Not so with eastern historians. The latest comer, as Renan says, ‘absorbs his predecessors without assimilating them, so that the most recent has in its belly the fragments of the previous works in a raw state.’ The Diatessaron of Tatian is a parallel to the composite structure of the Old Testament books. One passage yields the following: Matthew 21:12a; John 2:14a; Matthew 21:12b: John 2:14b, 15; Matthew 21:12c, 13; John 2:16; Mark 11:16; John 2:17-22; all succeeding each other without a break.” Gore, Lux Mundi, 853 — “There is nothing materially untruthful, though there is something uncritical, in attributing the whole legislation to Moses acting under the divine command. It would be only of a piece with the attribution of the collection of Psalm s to David, and of Proverbs to Solomon.”

The opponents of the Higher Criticism have much to say in reply. Sayce, Early History of the Hebrews, holds that the early chapters of Genesis were copied from Babylonian sources, but he insists upon a Mosaic or pre-Mosaic date for the copying. Hilprecht however declares that the monotheistic faith of Israel could never have proceeded “from the Babylonian Mountain of gods — that charnel house full of corruption and dead men’s bones.” Bissell, Genesis Printed in Colors, Introduction, iv — “It is improbable that so many documentary histories existed so early, or if existing that the compiler should have attempted to combine them.

Strange that the earlier should be J and should use the word ‘Jehovah,’ while the later P should use the word ‘Elohim’, when ‘Jehovah’ would have far better suited the Priests’ Code… xiii — The Babylonian tablets contain in a continuous narrative the more prominent facts of both the alleged Elohistic and Jehovistic sections of Genesis, and present them mainly in the Biblical order. Several hundred years before Moses what the critics call two were already one . It is absurd to say that the unity was due to a redactor at the period of the exile, 444 BC He who believes that God revealed himself to primitive man as one God, will see in the Akkadian story a polytheistic corruption of the original monotheistic account.” We must not estimate the antiquity of a pair of boots by the last patch, which the cobbler has added; nor must we estimate the antiquity of a Scripture book by the glosses and explanations added by later editors. As the London Spectator remarks on the Homeric problem: “It is as impossible that a first-rate poem or work of art should be produced without a great mastermind which first conceives the whole, as that a fine living bull should be developed out of beef sausages.” As we shall proceed to show, however, these utterances overstate the unity of the Pentateuch and ignore some striking evidences of its gradual growth and composite structure. The Authorship of the Pentateuch in particular. Recent critics, especially Kuenen and Robertson Smith, have maintained that the Pentateuch is Mosaic only in the sense of being a gradually growing body of traditional law, which was codified as late as the time of Ezekiel, and, as the development of the spirit and teachings of the great lawgiver, was called by a legal fiction after the name of Moses and was attributed to him. The actual order of composition is therefore: (1) Book of the Covenant (Exodus 20-23); (2) Deuteronomy; (3) Leviticus. Among the reasons assigned for this view are the facts (a) that Deuteronomy ends with an account of Moses’ death, and therefore could not have been written by Moses; (b) that in Leviticus Levites are mere servants to the priests, while in Deuteronomy the priests are officiating Levites, or, in other words, all the Levites are priests; (c) that the books of Judges and of I Samuel, with their record of sacrifices offered in many places, give no evidence that either Samuel or the nation of Israel had any knowledge of a law confining worship to a local sanctuary. See Kuenen, Prophets and Prophecy in Israel; Wellhausen, Geschichte Israels, Band 1; and art.; Israel, in Encyclopedia Brit., 1:1:398, 399, 415; W.

Robertson Smith, Old Testament in Jewish Church, 306, 386, and Prophets of Israel; Hastings, Bible Dictionary, arts.; Deuteronomy, Hexateuch, and Canon of the Old Testament It has been urged in reply, (1) that Moses may have written, not autographically, but through a scribe (perhaps Joshua), and that this scribe may have completed the history in Deuteronomy with the account of Moses’ death; (2) that Ezra or subsequent prophets may have subjected the whole Pentateuch to recension, and may have added explanatory notes; (3) that documents of previous ages may have been incorporated, in course of its composition by Moses, or subsequently by his successors; (4) that the apparent lack of distinction between the different classes of Levites in Deuteronomy may be explained by the fact that, while Leviticus was written with exact detail for the priests, Deuteronomy is the record of a brief general and oral summary of the law, addressed to the people at large and therefore naturally mentioning the clergy as a whole; (5) that the silence of the book of Judges as to the Mosaic ritual may be explained by the design of the book to describe only general history, and by the probability that at the tabernacle a ritual was observed of which the people in general were ignorant. Sacrifices in other places only accompanied special divine manifestations, which made the recipient temporarily a priest. Even if it were proved that the law with regard to a central sanctuary was not observed, it would not show that the law did not exist, any more than violation of the second commandment by Solomon proves his ignorance of the decalogue, or the mediæval neglect of the New Testament by the Roman church proves that the New Testament did not then exist. We cannot argue that “where there was transgression, there was no law” (Watts, New Apologetic, 843, and The Newer Criticism).

In the light of recent research, however, we cannot regard these replies as satisfactory. Woods, in his article on the Hexateuch, Hastings’ Dictionary, 2:365, presents a moderate statement of the results of the higher criticism, which commends itself to us as more trustworthy. He calls it a theory of stratification, and holds that “certain more or less independent documents, dealing largely with the same series of events were composed at different periods, or, at any rate, under different auspices, and were afterwards combined, so that our present Hexateuch, which means our Pentateuch with the addition of Joshua, contains these several different literary strata… The main grounds for accepting this hypothesis of stratification are (1) that the various literary pieces, with very few exceptions, will be found on examination to arrange themselves by common characteristics into comparatively few groups; (2) that an original consecution of narrative may be frequently traced between what in their present form are isolated fragments. “This will be better understood by the following illustration. Let us suppose a problem of this kind: Given a patchwork quilt, explain the character of the original pieces out of which the bits of stuff composing the quilt were cut. First, we notice that, however well the colors may blend, however nice and complete the whole may look, many of the adjoining pieces do not agree in material, texture, pattern, color, or the like. Ergo, they have been made up out of very different pieces of stuff… But suppose we further discover that many of the bits, though now separated, are like one another in material, texture, etc., we may conjecture that these have been cut out of one piece. But we shall prove this beyond reasonable doubt if we find that several bits when unpicked fit together, so that the pattern of one is continued in the other: and, moreover, that if all of like character are sorted out, they form, say, four groups, each of which was evidently once a single piece of stuff, though parts of each are found missing, because, no doubt, they have not been required to make the whole. But we make the analogy of the Hexateuch even closer, if we further suppose that in certain parts of the quilt the bits belonging to, say, two of these groups are so combined as to form a subsidiary pattern within the larger pattern of the whole quilt, and had evidently been sewed together before being connected with other parts of the quilt; and we may make it even closer still, if we suppose that, besides the more important bits of stuff, smaller embellishments, borderings, and the like, had been added so as to improve the general effect of the whole.”

The author of this article goes on to point out three main portions of the Hexateuch, which essentially differ from each other. There are three distinct codes: the Covenant code (C = Exodus 20:22 to 23:33, and 24:3-8), the Deuteronomic code (D) , and the Priestly code (P) . These codes have peculiar relations to the narrative portions of the Hexateuch.

In Genesis, for example, “the greater part of the book is divided into groups of longer or shorter pieces, generally paragraphs or chapters, distinguished respectively by the almost exclusive use of Elohim or Jehovah as the name of God.” Let us call these portions J and E. But we find such close affinities between C and JE, that we may regard them as substantially one. “We shall find that the larger part of the narratives, as distinct from the laws, of Exodus and Numbers belong to JE; whereas, with special exceptions, the legal portions belong to P. in the last chapters of Deuteronomy and in the whole of Joshua we find elements of JE. In the latter book we also find elements which connect it with D. “It should be observed that not only do we find here and there separate pieces in the Hexateuch, shown by their characters to belong to these three sources, JE, D, and P, but the pieces will often be found connected together by an obvious continuity of subject when pieced together, like the bits of patchwork in the illustration with which we started. For example, if we read continuously Genesis 11:27-32; 12:4b, 5; 13:6a, 11b, 12a; 16:1a, 3, 15, 16; 17; 19:29; 21:1a, 2b — 5; 23; 25:7-11a — passages mainly, on other grounds, attributed to P. we get an almost continuous and complete, though very concise, account of Abraham’s life.” We may concede the substantial correctness of the view thus propounded. It simply shows God’s actual method in making up the record of his revelation. We may add that any scholar who grants that Moses did not himself write the account of his own death and burial in the last chapter of Deuteronomy, or who recognizes two differing accounts of creation in Genesis 1 and 2, has already begun an analysis of the Pentateuch and has accepted the essential principles of the higher criticism.

In addition to the literature already referred to mention may also be made of Driver’s Introduction to Old Testament, 118-150, and Deuteronomy, Introduction: W.R. Harper, in Hebraica, Oct. — Dec. 1888, and W.H.

Green’s reply in Hebraica, Jan. — Apl. 1889; also Green, The Unity of the Book of Genesis, Moses and the Prophets, Hebrew Feasts, and Higher Criticism of the Pentateuch; with articles by Green in Presb. Rev., Jan. 1882 and Oct. 1886; Howard Osgood, in Essays on Pentateuchal Criticism, and in Bibliotheca Sacra, Oct. 1888, and July, 1893; Watts, The Newer Criticism, and New Apologetic, 83; Presb. Rev., arts. by H.P.

Smith, April, 1882, and by F. L. Patton, 1883:341-410; Bibliotheca Sacra, April, 1882:291-344, and by G. F. Wright, July, 1898:515-525; Brit. Quar., July, 1881:123; Jan. 1884:135-143; Mead, Supernatural Revelation, 373-385; Stebbins, A Study in the Pentateuch; Bissell, Historic Origin of the Bible, 277-342, and The Pentateuch, its Authorship and Structure; Bartlett, Sources of History in the Pentateuch, 180-216, and The Veracity of the Hexateuch; Murray, Origin and Growth of the Psalm s, 58; Payne-Smith, in Present Day Tracts, 3: no. 15; Edersheim, Prophecy and History; Kurtz, Hist. Old Covenant, 1:46; Perowne, in Contemp. Rev., Jan. and Feb. 1888; Chambers, Moses and his Recent Critics; Terry, Moses and the Prophets; Davis, Dictionary of the Bible, art., Pentateuch; Willis J. Beecher, The Prophets and the Promise; Orr, Problem of the Old Testament, 326-329.

II. CREDIBILITY OF THE WRITERS OF THE SCRIPTURES.

We shall attempt to prove this only of the writers of the gospels; for if they are credible witnesses, the credibility of the Old Testament, to which they bore testimony, follows as a matter of course. 1. They are capable or competent witnesses, — that is, they possessed actual knowledge with regard to the facts they professed to relate. (a) They had opportunities of observation and inquiry. (b) They were men of sobriety and discernment, and could not have been themselves deceived. (c) Their circumstances were such as to impress deeply upon their minds the events of which they were witnesses. 2. They are honest witnesses. This is evident when we consider that: (a) Their testimony imperiled all their worldly interests. (b) The moral elevation of their writings, and their manifest reverence for truth and constant inculcation of it, show that they were not willful deceivers, but good men. (c) There are minor indications of the honesty of these writers in the circumstantiality of their story, in the absence of any expectation that their narratives would be questioned, in their freedom from all disposition to screen themselves or the apostles from censure.

Lessing says that Homer never calls Helen beautiful, but he gives the reader an impression of her surpassing loveliness by portraying the effect produced by her presence. So the evangelists do not describe Jesus’ appearance or character, but lead us to conceive the cause that could produce such effects. Gore, Incarnation, 77 — “Pilate, Caiaphas, Herod, Judas, are not abused, — they are photographed. The sin of a Judas and a Peter is told with equal simplicity. Such fairness, wherever you find it, belongs to a trustworthy witness.” 3. The writings of the evangelists mutually support each other. We argue their credibility upon the ground of their number and of the consistency of their testimony. While there is enough of discrepancy to show that there has been no collusion between them, there are concurrences enough to make the falsehood of them all infinitely improbable. Four points under this head deserve mention: (a) The evangelists are independent witnesses. This is sufficiently shown by the futility of the attempts to prove that any one of them has abridged or transcribed another. (b) The discrepancies between them are none of them irreconcilable with the truth of the recorded facts, but only present those facts in new lights or with additional detail. (c) That these witnesses were friends of Christ does not lessen the value of their united testimony, since they followed Christ only because they were convinced that these facts were true. (d) While one witness to the facts of Christianity might establish its truth, the combined evidence of four witnesses gives us a warrant for faith in the facts of the gospel such as we possess for no other facts in ancient history whatsoever. The same rule, which would refuse belief in the events, recorded in the gospels “would throw doubt on any event in history.”

No man does or can write his own signature twice precisely alike. When two signatures, therefore, purporting to be written by the same person, are precisely alike, it is safe to conclude that one of these is a forgery.

Compare the combined testimony of the evangelists with the combined testimony of our five senses. “Let us assume,” says Dr. C. E. Rider, “that the chances of deception are as one to ten when we use our eyes alone, one to twenty when we use our ears alone, and one to forty when we use our sense of touch alone; what are the chances of mistake when we use all these senses simultaneously? The true result is obtained by multiplying these proportions together. This gives one to eight thousand.” 4. The conformity of the gospel testimony with experience. We have already shown that, granting the fact of sin and the need of an attested revelation from God, miracles can furnish no presumption against the testimony of those who record such a revelation, but, as essentially belonging to such a revelation, miracles may be proved by the same kind and degree of evidence as is required in proof of any other extraordinary facts. We may assert, then, that in the New Testament histories there is no record of facts contrary to experience, but only a record of facts not witnessed in ordinary experience — of facts, therefore, in which we may believe, if the evidence in other respects is sufficient. 5. Coincidence of this testimony with collateral facts and circumstances.

Under this head we may refer to (a) the numberless correspondences between the narratives of the evangelists and contemporary history; (b) the failure of every attempt thus far to show that the sacred history is contradicted by any single fact derived from other trustworthy sources; (c) the infinite improbability that this minute and complete harmony should ever have been secured in fictitious narratives. 6. Conclusion from the argument for the credibility of the writers of the gospels. These writers having been proved to be credible witnesses, their narratives, including the accounts of the miracles and prophecies of Christ and his apostles, must be accepted as true. But God would not work miracles or reveal the future to attest the claims of false teachers. Christ and his apostles must, therefore, have been what they claimed to be, teachers sent from God, and their doctrine must be what they claimed it to be, a revelation from God to men.

On the whole subject, see Ebrard, Wissensch. Kritik der evang.

Geschichte; Greenleaf, Testimony of the Evangelists,30,31; Starkie on Evidence, 734; Whately, Historic Doubts as to Napoleon Buonaparte; Haley, Examination of Alleged Discrepancies; Smith’s Voyage and Shipwreck of St. Paul; Paley, Horæ Paulinæ; Birks, in Strivings for the Faith, 37-72 — “Discrepancies are like the slight diversities of the different pictures of the stereoscope.” Renan calls the land of Palestine a fifth gospel. Weiss contrasts the Apocryphal Gospels, where there is no historical setting and all is in the air, with the evangelists, where time and place are always stated.

No modern apologist has stated the argument for the credibility of the New Testament with greater clearness and force than Paley, — Evidences, chapters 8 and 10 — “No historical fact is more certain than that the original propagators of the gospel voluntarily subjected themselves to lives of fatigue, danger, and suffering, in the prosecution of their undertaking. The nature of the undertaking, the character of the persons employed in it, the opposition of their tenets to the fixed expectations of the country in which they at first advanced them, their undissembled condemnation of the religion of all other countries, their total want of power, authority, or force, render it in the highest degree probable that this must have been the ease. “The probability is increased by what we know of the fate of the Founder of the institution, who was put to death for his attempt, and by what we also know of the cruel treatment of the converts to the institution within thirty years after its commencement — both which points are attested by heathen writers, and, being once admitted, leave it very incredible that the primitive emissaries of the religion who exercised their ministry first amongst the people who had destroyed their Master, and afterwards amongst those who persecuted their converts, should themselves escape with impunity or pursue their purpose in ease and safety. “This probability, thus sustained by foreign testimony, is advanced, I think, to historical certainty by the evidence of our own books, by the accounts of a writer who was the companion of the persons whose sufferings he relates, by the letters of the persons themselves, by predictions of persecutions, ascribed to the Founder of the religion, which predictions would not have been inserted in this history, much less, studiously dwelt upon, if they had not accorded with the event, and which, even if falsely ascribed to him, could only have been so ascribed because the event suggested them; lastly, by incessant exhortations to fortitude and patience, and by an earnestness, repetition and urgency upon the subject which were unlikely to have appeared, if there had not been, at the time, some extraordinary call for the exercise of such virtues. It is also made out, I think, with sufficient evidence, that both the teachers and converts of the religion, in consequence of their new profession, took up a new course of life and conduct. “The next great question is, what they did this for. It was for a miraculous story of some kind, since for the proof that Jesus of Nazareth ought to be received as the Messiah, or as a messenger for God, they neither had nor could have anything but miracles to stand upon… If this be so, the religion must be true. These men could not be deceivers. By only not bearing testimony, they might have avoided all these sufferings and lived quietly. Would men in such circumstances pretend to have seen what they never saw, assert facts, which they had no knowledge of, go about lying to teach virtue, and though not only convinced of Christ’s being an impostor, but having seen the success of his imposture in his crucifixion, yet persist in carrying it on, and so persist as to bring upon themselves, for nothing, and with a full knowledge of the consequences, enmity and hatred, danger and death?”

Those who maintain this, moreover, require us to believe that the Scripture writers were “villains for no end but to teach honesty, and martyrs without the least prospect of honor or advantage.” Imposture must have a motive. The self-devotion of the apostles is the strongest evidence of their truth, for even Hume declares that “we cannot make use of a more convincing argument in proof of honesty than to prove that the actions ascribed to any persons are contrary to the course of nature, and that no human motives, in such circumstances, could ever induce them to such conduct.”

III. THE SUPERNATURAL CHARACTER OF THE SCRIPTURE TEACHING.

1. Scripture teaching in general.

A. The Bible is the work of one mind. (a) In spite of its variety of authorship and the vast separation of its writers from one another in point of time, there is a unity of subject, spirit, and aim throughout the whole.

We here begin a new department of Christian evidences. We have thus far only adduced external evidence. We now turn our attention to internal evidence. The relation of external to internal evidence seems to be suggested in Christ’s two questions in Mark 8:27,29 — “Who do men say that I am?… who say ye that I am?” The unity in variety displayed in Scripture is one of the chief internal evidences, This unity is indicated in our word “Bible,” in the singular number. Yet the original word was “Biblia,” a plural number. The world has come to see a unity in what were once scattered fragments: the many “Biblia” have become one “Bible.” In one sense R.W, Emerson’s contention is true: “The Bible is not a book, — it is a literature.” But we may also say, and with equal truth: “The Bible is not simply a collection of books, — it is a book.” The Bible is made up of sixty six books, by forty writers, of all ranks, — shepherds, fishermen, priests, warriors, statesmen, kings, — composing their works at intervals through a period of seventeen centuries. Evidently no collusion between them is possible. Skepticism tends ever to ascribe to the Scriptures greater variety of authorship and date, but all this only increases the wonder of the Bible’s unity. If unity in a half dozen writers is remarkable, in forty it is astounding. “The many diverse instruments of this orchestra pay one perfect tune: hence we feel that they are led by one master and composer.” Yet it takes the same Spirit who inspired the Bible to teach its unity. The union is not an external or superficial one, but one that is internal and spiritual. (b) Not one moral or religious utterance of all these writers has been contradicted or superseded by the utterances of those who have come later, but all together constitute a consistent system.

Here we must distinguish between time external form and the moral and religious substance. Jesus declares in Matthew 5:21,22,27,28,33,34,38,39,43,44, “Ye have heard that it was said to them of old time… but I say unto you,” and then he seems at first sight to abrogate certain original commands. But he also declares in this connection, Matthew 5:17,18 — “Think not I am came to destroy the law or the prophets: I came not to destroy but to fulfill. For verily I say unto you, till heaven and earth pass away, one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law, till all things be accomplished.” Christ’s new commandments only bring out the inner meaning of the old. He fulfills them not in their literal form but in their essential spirit, So the New Testament completes the revelation of the Old Testament and makes the Bible a perfect unity, In this unity the Bible stands alone. Hindu, Persian and Chinese religious books contain no consistent system of faith. There is progress in revelation from the earlier to the later books of the Bible, but this is not progress through successive steps of falsehood; it is rather progress from a less to a more clear and full unfolding of the truth. The whole truth lay germinally in the protevangelium uttered to our first parents ( Genesis 3:15 — the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent’s head). (c) Each of these writings, whether early or late, has represented moral and religious ideas greatly in advance of the age in which it has appeared, and these ideas still lead the world.

All our ideas of progress, with all the forward-looking spirit of modern Christendom, are due to Scripture. The classic nations had no such ideas and no such spirit, except as they caught them from the Hebrews. Virgil’s prophecy, in his fourth Eclogue, of a coming virgin and of the reign of Saturn and of the return of the golden age, was only the echo of the Sibylline books and of the hope of a Redeemer with which the Jews had leavened the whole Roman world; see A.H. Strong, The Great Poets and their Theology, 94-96. (d) It is impossible to account for this unity without supposing such a supernatural suggestion and control that the Bible, while in its various parts written by human agents, is yet equally the work of a superhuman intelligence.

We may contrast with the harmony between the different Scripture writers the contradictions and refutations which follow merely human philosophies — e.g., the Hegelian idealism and the Spencerian materialism. Hegel is “a name to swear at, as well as to swear by.” Dr. Stirling, in his Secret of Hegel, “kept all the secret to himself, if he ever knew it.” A certain Frenchman once asked Hegel if he could not gather lip and express his philosophy in one sentence for him, “No,” Hegel replied, “at least not in French.” If Talleyrand’s maxim be true that whatever is not intelligible is not French, Hegel’s answer was a correct one. Hegel said of his disciples: “There is only one man living who understands me, and he does not.”

Goesehel, Gabler, Daub, Marheinecke, Erdmann, are Hegel’s right wing, or orthodox representatives and followers in theology; see Sterrett, Hegel’s Philosophy of Religion. Hegel is followed by Alexander and Bradley in England, but is opposed by Seth and Schiller. Upton, Hibbert Lectures, 279-300, gives a valuable estimate of his position and influence:

Hegel is all thought and no will, Prayer has no effect on God, — it is a purely psychological phenomenon. There is no freewill, and man’s sin as much as man’s holiness is a manifestation of the Eternal. Evolution is a fact, but it is only fatalistic evolution. Hegel notwithstanding did great service by substituting knowledge of reality for the oppressive Kantian relativity, and by banishing the old notion of matter as a mysterious substance wholly unlike and incompatible with the properties of mind. He did great service also by showing that the interactions of matter and mind are explicable only by the presence of the Absolute Whole in every part, though he erred greatly by carrying that idea of the unity of God and man beyond its proper limits, and by denying that God has given to the will of man any power to put itself into antagonism to His Will. Hegel did great service by showing that we cannot know even the part without knowing the whole, but he erred in teaching, as T.H. Green did, that the relations constitute the reality of the thing. He deprives both physical and psychical existences of that degree of selfhood or independent reality, which is essential to both science and religion. We want real force, and not the mere idea of force; real will, and not mere thought.

B. This one mind that made the Bible is the same mind that made the soul, for the Bible is divinely adapted to the soul. (a) It shows complete acquaintance with the soul.

The Bible addresses all parts of man’s nature, There are Law and Epistles for man’s reason; Psalm s and Gospels for his affections; Prophets and Revelations for his imagination. Hence the popularity of the Scriptures.

Their variety holds men. The Bible has become interwoven into modern life. Law, literature, art, all show its molding influence. (b) It judges the soul — contradicting its passions, revealing its guilt, and humbling its pride.

No product of mere human nature could thus look down upon human nature and condemn it. The Bible speaks to us from a higher level. The Samaritan woman’s words apply to the whole compass of divine revelation; it tells us all things that ever we did ( John 4:29). The Brahmin declared that Romans 1, with its description of heathen vices, must have been forged after the missionaries came to India. (c) It meets the deepest needs of the soul — by solutions of its problems, disclosures of God’s character, presentations of the way of pardon consolations and promises for life and death.

Neither Socrates nor Seneca sets forth the nature, origin and consequences of sin as committed against the holiness of God, nor do they point out the way of pardon and renewal. The Bible teaches us what nature cannot, viz.: God’s creatorship, the origin of evil, the method of restoration, the certainty of a future state, and the principle of rewards and punishments there. (d) Yet it is silent upon many questions for which writings of merely human origin seek first to provide solutions.

Compare the account of Christ’s infancy in the gospels with the fables of the Apocryphal New Testament; compare the scant utterances of Scripture with regard to the future state with Mohammed’s and Swedenborg’s revelations of Paradise. See Alexander McLaren’s sermon on The Silence of Scripture, in his book entitled: Christ in the Heart, 131- 141. (e) There are infinite depths and inexhaustible reaches of meaning in Scripture, which difference it from all other books, and which compel us to believe that its author must be divine.

Sir Walter Scott, on his deathbed: “Bring me the Book!” “What book?” said Lockhart, his son-in- law. “There is but one book!” said the dying man. Reville concludes an Essay in the Revue des deux Mondes (1864): “One day the question was started, in an assembly, what book a man condemned to lifelong imprisonment, and to whom but one book would be permitted, had better take into his cell with him. The company consisted of Catholics, Protestants, philosophers and even materialists, but all agreed that their choice would fall only on the Bible.

On the whole subject, see Garbett, God’s Word Written, 3-56; Luthardt, Saving Truths, 210; Rogers, Superhuman Origin of Bible, 155-181; W.

L. Alexander, Connection and Harmony of Old Testament and New Testament; Stanley Leathes, Structure of the Old Testament; Bernard, Progress of Doctrine in the New Testament; Rainy, Delivery and Development of Doctrine; Titcomb, in Strivings for the Faith; Immer, Hermeneutics, 91; Present Day Tracts, 4: no.23; 5: no. 28; 6 no. 31; Lee on Inspiration, 26-32. 2. Moral System of the New Testament.

The perfection of this system is generally conceded. All will admit that it greatly surpasses any other system known among men. Among its distinguishing characteristics may be mentioned: (a) Its comprehensiveness, — including all human duties in its code, even the most generally misunderstood and neglected, while it permits no vice whatsoever.

Buddhism regards family life as sinful. Suicide was commended by many ancient philosophers. Among the Spartans to steal was praiseworthy, — only to be caught stealing was criminal. Classic times despised humility.

Thomas Paine said that Christianity cultivated “the spirit of a spaniel,” and John Stuart Mill asserted that Christ ignored duty to the state. Yet Peter urges Christians to add to their faith manliness, courage, heroism ( 2 Peter 1:5 — in your faith supply virtue”), and Paul declares the state to be God’s ordinance ( Romans 13:1 — “Let every soul be in subjection to the higher powers: for there is no power but of God; and the powers that be are ordained of God”). Patriotic defense of a nation’s unity and freedom has always found its chief incitement and ground in these injunctions of Scripture. E.G. Robinson: “Christian ethics do not contain a particle of chaff, — all is pure wheat.” (b) Its spirituality, — accepting no merely external conformity to right precepts, but judging all action by the thoughts and motives from which it springs.

The superficiality of heathen morals is well illustrated by the treatment of the corpse of a priest in Siam: the body is covered with gold leaf, and then is left to rot and shine. Heathenism divorces religion from ethics. External and ceremonial observances take the place of purity of heart. The Sermon on the Mount on the other hand pronounces blessing only upon inward states of the soul. Psalm 51:6 — “Behold, thou desirest truth in the inward parts, and in the hidden part thou wilt make me to know wisdom”; Micah 6:8 — “what doth Jehovah require of thee, but to do justly, and to love kindness, and to walk humbly with thy God?” (c) Its simplicity, — inculcating principles rather than imposing rules; reducing these principles to an organic system; and connecting this system with religion by summing up all human duty in the one command of love to God and man.

Christianity presents no extensive code of rules, like that of the Pharisees or of the Jesuits. Such codes break down of their own weight. The laws of the State of New York alone constitute a library of themselves, which only the trained lawyer can master. It is said that Mohammedanism has recorded sixty five thousand special instances in which the reader is directed to do right. It is the merit of Jesus’ system that all its requisitions are reduced to unity. Mark 12:23-31 — “Hear, O Israel; the Lord our God, the Lord is one: and thou shalt love the Lord thy God with all thy heart, and with all thy soul, and with all thy mind, and with all thy strength. The second is this: Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself.

There is none other commandment greater than these.” Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:384-814, calls attention to the inner unity of Jesus’ teaching.

The doctrine that God is a loving Father is applied with unswerving consistency. Jesus confirmed whatever was true in the Old Testament, and he set aside the unworthy. He taught not so much about God, as about the kingdom of God, and about the ideal fellowship between God and men.

Morality was the necessary and natural expression of religion. In Christ teaching and life were perfectly blended. He was the representative of the religion, which he taught. (d) Its practicality, — exemplifying its precepts in the life of Jesus Christ; and, while it declares man’s depravity and inability in his own strength to keep the law, furnishing motives to obedience, and the divine aid of the Holy Spirit to make this obedience possible.

Revelation has two sides: Moral law, and provision for fulfilling the moral law that has been broken. Heathen systems can incite to temporary reformations, and they can terrify with fears of retribution. But only God’s regenerating grace can make the tree good, in such a ‘way that its fruit will be good also ( Matthew 12:33). There is a difference between touching the pendulum of the clock and winding it up, — the former may set it temporarily swinging, but only the latter secures its regular and permanent motion. The moral system of the New Testament is not simply law, — it is also grace: John 1:17 — the law was given through Moses; grace and truth came through Jesus Christ.” Dr. William Ashmore’s tract represents a China man in a pit. Confucius looks into the pit and says: “If you had done as I told you, you would never have gotten in.” Buddha looks into the pit and says: If you were up here I would show you what to do.” So both Confucius and Buddha pass on. But Jesus leaps down into the pit and helps the poor China man out.

At the Parliament of Religions in Chicago there were many ideals of life propounded, but no religion except Christianity attempted to show that there ‘was any power given to realize these ideals. When Joseph Cook challenged the priests of the ancient religions to answer Lady Macbeth’s question: “How cleanse this red right hand?” the priests were dumb. But Christianity declares that “the blood of Jesus his Son cleanseth us from all sin” ( 1 John 1:7). E.G. Robinson: Christianity differs from all other religions in being (1) a historical religion; (2) in turning abstract law into a person to be loved; (3) in furnishing a demonstration of God’s love in Christ; (4) in providing atonement for sin and forgiveness for the sinner; (5) in giving a power to fulfil the law and sanctify the life. Bowne, Philos. of Theism, — “Christianity, by making the moral law the expression of a holy Will, brought that law out of its impersonal abstraction, and assured its ultimate triumph. Moral principles may be what they were before, but moral practice is forever different. Even the earth itself has another look, now that it has heaven above it.” Frances Power Cobbe, Life, 92 — “The achievement of Christianity was not the inculcation of a new, still less of a systematic, morality; out the introduction of a new spirit into morality; as Christ himself said, a leaven into the lump.”

We may justly argue that a moral system so pure and perfect, since it surpasses all human powers of invention and runs counter to men’s natural tastes and passions, must have had a supernatural, and if a supernatural, then a divine, origin.

Heathen systems of morality are in general defective, in that they furnish for man’s moral action no sufficient example, rule, motive, or end. They cannot do this, for the reason that they practically identify God with nature, and know of no clear revelation of his holy will. Man is left to the law of his own being, and since he is not conceived of as wholly responsible and free, the lower impulses are allowed sway as well as the higher, and selfishness is not regarded as sin. As heathendom does not recognize man’s depravity, so it does not recognize his dependence upon divine grace, and its virtue is self-righteousness. Heathenism is man’s vain effort to lift himself to God; Christianity is God’s coming down to man to save him; see Gunsaulus, Transfig. of Christ,11,12. Martineau, 1:15, 16, calls attention to the difference between the physiological ethics of heathendom and the psychological ethics of Christianity. Physiological ethics begins with nature; and, finding in nature the uniform rule of necessity and the operation of cause and effect, it comes at last to man and applies the same rule to him, thus extinguishing all faith in personality, freedom, responsibility, sin and guilt. Psychological ethics, on the contrary, wisely begins with what we know best, with man; and finding in him free will and a moral purpose, it proceeds outward to nature and interprets nature as the manifestation of the mind and will of God, “Psychological ethics are altogether peculiar to Christendom… Other systems begin outside and regard the soul as a homogeneous part of the universe, applying to the soul the principle of necessity that prevails outside of it… In the Christian religion, on the other hand, the interest, the mystery of the world are concentrated in human nature… The sense of sin — a sentiment that left no trace in Athens — involves a consciousness of personal alienation from the Supreme Goodness; the aspiration after holiness directs itself to a union of affection and will with the source of all Perfection; the agency for transforming men from their old estrangement to new reconciliation is a Person, in whom the divine and human historically blend; and the sanctifying Spirit by which they are sustained at the height of their purer life is a living link of communion between their minds and the Soul of souls… So Nature, to the Christian consciousness, sank into the accidental and the neutral.” Measuring ourselves by human standards, we nourish pride; measuring ourselves by divine standards, we nourish humility. Heathen nations, identifying God with nature or with man, are unprogressive. The flat architecture of the Parthenon, with its lines parallel to the earth, is the type of heathen religion; the aspiring arches of the Gothic cathedral symbolize Christianity.

Sterrett, Studies in Hegel, 33, says that Hegel characterized the Chinese religion as that of Measure, or temperate conduct; Brahmanism as that of Phantasy, or inebriate dream life: Buddhism as that of Self involvement; that of Egypt as the imbruted religion of Enigma, symbolized by the Sphynx; that of Greece, as the religion of, Beauty; the Jewish as that of Sublimity; and Christianity as the Absolute religion, the fully revealed religion of truth and freedom. In all this Hegel entirely fails to grasp the elements of Will, Holiness, Love, Life, which characterize Judaism and Christianity, and distinguish them from all other religions. R.H. Hutton: “Judaism taught us that Nature must be interpreted by our knowledge of God, not God by our knowledge of Nature.” Lyman Abbott: “Christianity is not a new life, but a new power; not a summon s to a new life, but an offer of new life; not a reenactment of the old law, but a power of God unto salvation; not love to God and man, but Christ’s message that God loves us, and will help us to the life of love.”

Beyschlag, New Testament Theology, 5, 6 — “Christianity postulates an opening of the heart of the eternal God to the heart of man coming to meet him. Heathendom shows us the heart of man blunderingly grasping the hem of God’s garment, and mistaking Nature, his majestic raiment, for himself. Only in the Bible does man press beyond God’s external manifestations to God himself.” See Wuttke, Christian Ethics, 1:37-173; Porter, in Present Day Tracts, 4: no. 19, pp. 33-64: Blackie, Four Phases of Morals; Faiths of the World (St. Giles Lectures, second series); J.F.

Clarke, Ten Great Religions, 2:280-317; Garbett, Dogmatic Faith; Farrar, Witness of History to Christ, 134, and Seekers after God, 181, 182, 320; Curtis on Inspiration, 288. For denial of the all comprehensive character of Christian Morality, see John Stuart Mill, on Liberty; per contra, see Review of Mill, in Theol. Eclectic, 6:508-512: Row, in Strivings for the Faith, pub. by Christian Evidence Society 181-220; also, Bampton Lectures. 1877:130-176; Fisher, Beginnings of Christianity, 28-38, In contrast with the Christian system of morality the defects of heathen systems are so marked and fundamental, that they constitute a strong corroborative evidence of the divine origin of the Scripture revelation. We therefore append certain facts and references with regard to particular heathen systems.

1. CONFUCIANISM. Confucius (Kung-fu-tse), BC 551-478, contemporary with Pythagoras and Buddha. Socrates was born ten years after Confucius died. Mencius (371-278) was a disciple of Confucius.

Matheson, in Faiths of the World (St. Giles Lectures), 73-108, claims that Confucianism was “an attempt to substitute a morality for theology.”

Legge, however, in Present Day Tracts, 3: no. 18, shows that this is a mistake. Confucius simply left religion where he found it. God, or Heaven, is worshiped in China, but only by the Emperor. Chinese religion is apparently a survival of the worship of the patriarchal family. The father of the family was its only head and priest. In China, though the family widened into the tribe, and the tribe into the nation, the father still retained his sole authority, and, as the father of his people, the Emperor alone officially offered sacrifice to God. Between God and the people the gulf has so widened that the people may be said to have no practical knowledge of God or communication with him. Dr. W.A.P. Martin: “Confucianism has degenerated into a pantheistic medley, and renders worship to an impersonal ‘anima mundi,’ under the leading forms of visible nature.”

Dr. William Ashmore, private letter: “The common people of China have: (1) Ancestor worship, and the worship of deified heroes: (2) Geomancy, or belief in the controlling power of the elements of nature; but back of these, and antedating them, is (3) the worship of Heaven and Earth, or Father and Mother, a very ancient dualism; this belongs to the common people also, though once a year the Emperor, as a sort of high priest of his people, offers sacrifice on the altar of Heaven; in this he acts alone. ‘Joss’ is not a Chinese word at all. It is the corrupted form of the Portuguese word ‘Deos.’ The word ‘pidgin’ is similarly an attempt to say ‘business’ (big-i-ness or bidgin). ‘Joss-pidgin’ therefore means simply ‘divine service,’ or service offered to Heaven and Earth, or to spirits of any kind, good or bad. There are many gods, a Queen of Heaven, King of Hades, God of War, god of literature, gods of the hills, valleys, streams, a goddess of smallpox, of childbearing, and all the various trades have their gods. The loftiest expression the Chinese have is ‘Heaven,’ or ‘Supreme Heaven,’ or ‘Azure Heaven.’ This is the surviving indication that in the most remote times they had knowledge of one supreme, intelligent and personal Power who ruled over all.” Mr. Yugoro Chiba has shown that the Chinese classics permit sacrifice by all the people. But it still remains true that sacrifice to “Supreme Heaven” is practically confined to the Emperor, who like the Jewish high priest offers for his people once a year.

Confucius did nothing to put morality upon a religious basis. In practice, the relations between man and man are the only relations considered.

Benevolence, righteousness, propriety, wisdom, sincerity, are enjoined, but not a word is said with regard to man’s relations to God. Love to God is not only not commanded — it is not thought of as possible. Though man’s being is theoretically an ordinance of God, man is practically a law to himself. The first commandment of Confucius is that of filial piety. But this includes worship of dead ancestors, and is so exaggerated as to bury from sight the related duties of husband to wife and of parent to child.

Confucius made it the duty of a son to slay his father’s murderer, just as Moses insisted on a strictly retaliatory penalty for bloodshed; see J. A.

Farrer, Primitive Manners and Customs, 80. He treated invisible and superior beings with respect, but held them at a distance. He recognized the “ Heaven” of tradition; but, instead of adding to our knowledge of it, he stifled inquiry. Dr. Legge: “I have been reading Chinese books for more than forty years, and any general requirement to love God, or the mention of any one as actually loving him, has yet to come for the first time under my eye.”

Ezra Abbot asserts that Confucius gave the golden rule in positive as well as negative form; see Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 222. This however seems to be denied by Dr. Legge, Religions of China, 1-58. Wu Ting Fang, former Chinese minister to Washington, assents to the statement that Confucius gave the golden rule only in its negative form, and he says this difference is the difference between a passive and an aggressive civilization, which last is therefore dominant. The golden rule, as Confucius gives it, is: “Do not unto others that which you would not they should do unto you.” Compare with this, Isocrates: “Be to your parents what you would have your children be to you… Do not to others the things which make you angry when others do them to you”; Herodotus: “What I punish in another man, I will myself, as far as I can, refrain from”; Aristotle: “We should behave toward our friends as we should wish them to behave toward us”; Tobit, 4:15 — “What thou hatest, do to no one”; Philo: “What one hates to endure, let him not do”; Seneca bids us “give as we wish to receive”: Rabbi Hillel: “Whatsoever is hateful to you, do not to another; this is the whole law, and all the rest is explanation.”

Broadus, in Am. Com. on Matthew, 161 — “The sayings of Confucius, Isocrates, and the three Jewish teachers, are merely negative; that of Seneca is confined to giving, and that of Aristotle to the treatment of friends. Christ lays down a rule for positive action, and that toward all men.” He teaches that I am bound to do to others all that they could rightly desire me to do to them. The golden rule therefore requires a supplement, to show what others can rightly desire, namely, God’s glory first, and their good as second and incidental thereto. Christianity furnishes this divine and perfect standard; Confucianism is defective in that it has no standard higher than human convention. While Confucianism excludes polytheism, idolatry, and deification of vice, it is a shallow and tantalizing system, because it does not recognize the hereditary corruption of human nature, or furnish any remedy for moral evil except the “doctrines of the sages.” “The heart of man,” it says, “is naturally perfectly upright and correct.” Sin is simply “a disease, to be cured by self discipline; a debt, to be canceled by meritorious acts; an ignorance, to be removed by study and contemplation.” See Bibliotheca Sacra, 1883:292, 293; N. Englander, 1883:565; Marcus Dods, in Erasmus and other Essays, 239.

2. THE INDIAN SYSTEMS.

Brahmanism, as expressed in the Vedas, dates back to 1000-1500 BC As Caird (in Faiths of the World, St. Giles Lectures, lecture 1) has shown, it originated in the contemplation of the power in nature apart from the moral Personality that works in and through nature. Indeed we may say that all heathenism is man’s choice of a non-moral in place of a moral God. Brahmanism is a system of pantheism, “a false or illegitimate consecration of the finite.” All things are a manifestation of Brahma. Hence evil is deified as well as good. And many thousand gods are worshiped as partial representations of the living principle, which moves through all. “How many gods have the Hindus?” asked Dr. Duff of his class. Henry Drummond thought there were about twenty-five. “Twenty five?” responded the indignant professor; “twenty five millions of millions!” While the early Vedas present a comparatively pure nature-worship, later Brahmanism becomes a worship of the vicious and the vile, of the unnatural and the cruel. Juggernaut and the suttee did not belong to original Hindu religion.

Bruce, Apologetics, 15 — “Pantheism in theory always means polytheism in practice.” The early Vedas are hopeful in spirit; later Brahmanism is a religion of disappointment. Caste is fixed and consecrated as a manifestation of God. Originally intended to express, in its four divisions of priest, soldier, agriculturist, slave, the different degree of unworldliness and divine indwelling, it becomes an iron fetter to prevent all aspiration and progress. Indian religion sought to exalt receptivity, the unity of existence, and rest from self-determination and its struggles. Hence it ascribed to its gods the same character as nature-forces. God was the common source of good and of evil. Its ethics is an ethics of moral indifference. Its charity is a charity for sin, and the temperance it desires is a temperance that will let the intemperate alone. Mozoomdar, for example, is ready to welcome everything in Christianity but its reproof of sin and its demand for righteousness. Brahmanism degrades woman, but it deifies the cow. Buddhism, beginning with Buddha, 600 BC, “recalls the mind to its elevation above the finite,” from which Brahmanism had fallen away.

Buddha was in certain respects a reformer. He protested against caste, and proclaimed that truth and morality are for all. Hence Buddhism, through its possession of this one grain of truth, appealed to the human heart, and became, next to Christianity, the greatest missionary religion.

Notice then, first, its universalism. But notice also that this is a false universalism for it ignores individualism and leads to universal stagnation and slavery. While Christianity is a religion of history, of will, of optimism, Buddhism is a religion of illusion. of quietism, of pessimism; see Nash, Ethics and Revelation, 107-109. In characterizing Buddhism as a missionary religion, we must notice secondly, its element of altruism.

But this altruism is one, which destroys the self instead of preserving it.

The future Buddha, out of compassion for a famished tiger, permits the tiger to devour him. “Incarnated as a hare, he jumps into the fire to cook himself for a meal for a beggar — having previously shaken himself three times, so that none of the insects in his fur should perish with him”; see William James, Varieties of Religious Experience, 283. Buddha would deliver man, not by philosophy, nor by asceticism, but by selfrenunciation.

All isolation and personality are sin, the guilt of which rests, however, not on man, but on existence in general.

While Brahmanism is pantheistic, Buddhism is atheistic in its spirit.

Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:285 — “The Brahmanic Akosmism, that had explained the world as mere seeming, led to the Buddhistic Atheism.”

Finiteness and separateness are evil, and the only way to purity and rest is by ceasing to exist. This is essential pessimism. The highest morality is to endure that which must be, and to escape from reality and from personal existence as soon as possible. Hence the doctrine of Nirvana. Rhys Davids, in his Hibbert Lectures, claims that early Buddhism meant by Nirvana, not annihilation, but the extinction of the self life, and that this was attainable during man’s present mortal existence. But the term Nirvana now means, to the great mass of those who use it, the loss of all personality and consciousness, and absorption into the general life of the universe. Originally the term denoted only freedom from individual desire, and those who had entered into Nirvana might again come out of it; see Ireland, Blot on the Brain, 238. But even in its original form, Nirvana was sought only from a selfish motive. Self-renunciation and absorption in the whole was not the enthusiasm of benevolence, — it was the refuge of despair. It is a religion without god or sacrifice. Instead of communion with a personal God, Buddhism has in prospect only an extinction of personality, as reward for untold ages of lonely self-conquest, extending through many transmigrations. Of Buddha it has been truly said “That all the all he had for needy man Was nothing, and his best of being was But not to be.” Wilkinson, Epic of Paul, 296 — “He by his own act dying all the time, In ceaseless effort utterly to cease, Will willing not to will, desire desiring To be desire no more, until at last The fugitive go free, emancipate But by becoming naught.” Of Christ Bruce well says: “What a contrast this Healer of disease and Preacher of pardon to the worst, to Buddha, with his religion of despair!”

Buddhism is also fatalistic. It inculcates submission and compassion — merely negative virtues. But it knows nothing of manly freedom, or of active love — the positive virtues of Christianity. It leads men to spare others, but not to help them. Its morality revolves around self, not around God. It has in it no organizing principle, for it recognizes no God, no inspiration, no soul, no salvation, no personal immortality. Buddhism would save men only by inducing them to flee from existence. To the Hindu, family life involves sin. The perfect man must forsake wife and children. All gratification of natural appetites and passions is evil.

Salvation is not from sin, but from a desire, and from this men can be saved only by escaping from life itself. Christianity buries sin, but saves the man; Buddha would save the man by killing him. Christianity symbolizes the convert’s entrance upon a new life by raising him from the baptismal waters; the baptism of Buddhism should be immersion without emersion. The fundamental idea of Brahmanism, extinction of personality, remains the same in Buddhism; the only difference being that the result is secured by active atonement in the former, by passive contemplation in the latter. Virtue, and the knowledge that everything earthly is a vanishing spark of the original light, delivers man from existence and from misery.

Prof. G.H. Palmer, of Harvard, in The Outlook. June 19, 1897 — “Buddhism is unlike Christianity in that it abolishes misery by abolishing desire; denies personality instead of asserting it; has many gods, but no one God who is living and conscious; makes a shortening of existence rather than a lengthening of it to be the reward of righteousness.

Buddhism makes no provision for family, church, state, science, or art. It give us a religion that is little, when we want one that is large.” Dr. E.

Benjamin Andrews: “Schopenhauer and Spencer are merely teachers of Buddhism. They regard the central source of all as unknowable force, instead of regarding it as a Spirit, living and holy. This takes away all impulse to scientific investigation. We need to start from a Person, and not from a thing.”

For comparison of the sage of India, Sakya Muni, more commonly called Buddha (properly “the Buddha” = the enlightened; but who, in spite of Edwin Arnold’s “Light of Asia,” is represented as not pure from carnal pleasures before he began his work), with Jesus Christ, see Bibliotheca Sacra, July, 1882:458-498; W.C. Wilkinson, Edwin Arnold, Poetizer and Paganizer; Kellogg, The Light of Asia and the Light of the World.

Buddhism and Christianity are compared in Presb. Rev., July, 1883:505- 548; Wuttke, Christian Ethics, 1:47-54; Mitchell, in Present Day Tracts 6: no. 33. See also Oldenberg, Buddha; Lilile, Popular Life of Buddha; Beal, Catena of Buddhist Scriptures, l53 — “Buddhism declares itself ignorant of any mode of personal existence compatible with the idea of spiritual perfection, and so far it is ignorant of God”; 157 — “The earliest idea of Nirvana seems to have included in it no more than the enjoyment of a state of rest consequent on the extinction of all causes of sorrow.”

The impossibility of satisfying the human heart with a system of atheism is shown by the fact that the Buddha himself has been apotheosized to furnish an object of worship. Thus Buddhism has reverted to Brahmanism.

Monier Williams: “Mohammed has as much claim to be ‘the Light of Asia’ as Buddha has. What light from Buddha? Not about the heart’s depravity, or the origin of sin, or the goodness, justice, holiness, fatherhood of God, or the remedy for sin, but only the ridding self from suffering by ridding self from life — a doctrine of merit, of self-trust, of pessimism, and annihilation of personality.” Christ, himself personal, loving and holy, shows that God is a person of holiness and love. Robert Browning: “He that created love, shall not he love?” Only because Jesus is God, have we a gospel for the world. The claim that Buddha is “the Light of Asia” reminds one of the man who declared the moon to be of greater value than the sun, because it gives light in the darkness when it is needed, while the sun gives light in the daytime when it is not needed.

3. THE GREEK SYSTEMS.

Pythagoras (584-504) based morality upon the principle of numbers. “Moral good was identified with unity; evil with multiplicity; virtue was harmony of the soul and its likeness to God. The aim of life was to make it represent the beautiful order of the Universe.

The whole practical tendency of Pythagoreanism was ascetic, and included a strict self control and an earnest culture.” Here already we seem to see the defect of Greek morality in confounding the good with the beautiful, and in making morality a mere self-development. Matheson, Messages of the Old Religions: Greece reveals the intensity of the hour, the value of the present life, the beauty of the world that now is. Its religion is the religion of beautiful humanity. It anticipates the new heaven and the new earth. Rome on the other hand stood for union, incorporation, and a universal kingdom. But its religion deified only the Emperor, not all humanity. It was the religion, not of love, but of power, and it identified the church with the state. Socrates (469-400) made knowledge to be virtue. Morality consisted in subordinating irrational desires to rational knowledge. Although here we rise above a subjectively determined good as the goal of moral effort, we have no proper sense of sin. Knowledge, and not love, is the motive. If men know the right, they will do the right. This is a great overvaluing of knowledge. With Socrates, teaching is a sort of midwifery — not depositing information in the mind, but drawing out the contents of our own inner consciousness. Lewis Morris describes it as the life work of Socrates to “doubt our doubts away.” Socrates holds it right to injure one’s enemies. He shows proud self praise in his dying address. He warns against pederasty, yet compromises with it. He does not insist upon the same purity of family life, which Homer describes in Ulysses and Penelope. Charles Kingsley, in Alton Locke, remarks that the spirit of the Greek tragedy was ‘man mastered by circumstance’; that of modern tragedy is ‘man mastering circumstance.’ But the Greek tragedians, while showing man thus mastered, do still represent him as inwardly free, as in the case of Prometheus, and this sense of human freedom and responsibility appears to some extent in Socrates. Plato (430-348) held that morality is pleasure in the good, as the truly beautiful, and that knowledge produces virtue. The good is likeness to God, — here we have glimpses of an extra-human goal and model. The body, like all matter, being inherently evil, is a hindrance to the soul, — here we have a glimpse of hereditary depravity. But Plate “reduced moral evil to the category of natural evil.” He failed to recognize God as creator and master of matter; failed to recognize man’s depravity as due to his own apostasy from God; failed to found morality on the divine will rather than on man’s own consciousness. He knew nothing of a common humanity, and regarded virtue as only for the few. As there was no common sin, so there was no common redemption. Plato thought to reach God by intellect alone, when only conscience and heart could lead to him.

He believed in a freedom of the soul in a preexistent state where a choice was made between good and evil, but he believed that, after that antemundane decision had been made, the fates determined men’s acts and lives irreversibly. Reason drives two horses, appetite and emotion, but their course has been predetermined.

Man acts as reason prompts. All sin is ignorance. There is nothing in this life but determinism. Martineau, Types, 13, 48, 49, 78, 88 — Plato in general has no proper notion of responsibility; he reduces moral evil to the category of natural evil. His Ideas with one exception are not causes.

Cause is mind, and mind is the Good. The Good is the apex and crown of Ideas. The Good is the highest Idea, and this highest Idea is a Cause.

Plato has a feeble conception of personality, whether in God or in man.

Yet God is a person in whatever sense man is a person, and man’s personality is reflective self-consciousness. Will in God or man is not so clear. The Right is dissolved into the Good. Plato advocated infanticide and the killing off of the old and the helpless. Aristotle (384-322) leaves out of view even the element of God-likeness and ante-mundane evil which Plato so dimly recognized, and makes morality the fruit of mere rational self-consciousness. He grants evil proclivities, but he refuses to call them immoral. He advocates a certain freedom of will, and he recognizes inborn tendencies, which war against this freedom, but how these tendencies originated he cannot say or how men may be delivered from them. Not all can be moral; the majority must be restrained by fear. He finds in God no motive, and love to God is not so much as mentioned as the source of moral action. A proud, composed, self-centered, and self-contained man is his ideal character. See Nicomachean Ethics, 7:6, and 10:10; Wuttke, Christian Ethics. i:92 — I26. Alexander, Theories of Will, 39-54 — Aristotle held that desire and reason are the springs of action. Yet he did not hold that knowledge of itself would make men virtuous. He was a determinist. Actions are free only in the sense of being devoid of external compulsion. He viewed slavery as both rational and right. Butcher, Aspects of Greek Genius, 76 — “While Aristotle attributed to the State a more complete personality than it really possessed, he did not grasp the depth and meaning of the personality of the individual.” A.H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 289 — Aristotle had no conception of the unity of humanity. His doctrine of unity did not extend beyond the State. “He said that ‘the whole is before the parts,’ but he meant by ‘the whole’ only the pan-Hellenic world, the commonwealth of Greeks; he never thought of humanity, and the word ‘mankind’ never fell from his lips. He could not understand the unity of humanity, because he knew nothing of Christ, its organizing principle.”

On Aristotle’s conception of God, see James Ten Broeke, in flap. Quar.

Rev., Jan. 1892 — God is recognized as personal, yet he is only the Greek Reason, and not the living, loving, providential Father of the Hebrew revelation. Aristotle substitutes the logical for the dynamical in his dealing with the divine causality. God is thought, not power. Epicurus (342-270) regarded happiness, the subjective feeling of pleasure, as the highest criterion of truth and good. A prudent calculating for prolonged pleasure is the highest wisdom. He regards only this life.

Concern for retribution and for a future existence is folly. If there are gods, they have no concern for men. “Epicurus, on pretense of consulting for their ease, complimented the gods, and bowed them out of existence.”

Death is the falling apart of material atoms and the eternal cessation of consciousness. The miseries of this life are due to imperfection in the fortuitously constructed universe. The more numerous these undeserved miseries, the greater our right to seek pleasure. Alexander, Theories of the Will, 55-75 — The Epicureans held that the soul is composed of atoms, yet that the will is free. The atoms of the soul are excepted from the law of cause and effect. An atom may decline or deviate in the universal descent, and this is the Epicurean idea of freedom. This indeterminism was held by all the Greek skeptics, materialists though they were. Zeno, the founder of the Stoic philosophy ( 340-264), regarded virtue as the only good. Thought is to subdue nature. The free spirit is selflegislating, self- dependent, self-sufficient. Thinking, not feeling, is the criterion of the true and the good. Pleasure is the consequence, not the end of moral action. There is an irreconcilable antagonism of existence. Man cannot reform the world, but he can make himself perfect. Hence an unbounded pride in virtue. The sage never repents. There is not the least recognition of the moral corruption of mankind. There is no objective divine ideal, or revealed divine will. The Stoic discovers moral law only within and never suspects his own moral perversion. Hence he shows selfcontrol and justice, but never humility or love. He needs no compassion or forgiveness, and he grants none to others. Virtue is not an actively outworking character, but a passive resistance to irrational reality. Man may retreat into himself. The Stoic is indifferent to pleasure and pain, not because he believes in a divine government, or in a divine love for mankind, but as a proud defiance of the irrational world. He has no need of God or of redemption. As the Epicurean gives himself to enjoyment of the world, the Stoic gives himself to contempt of the world. In all afflictions, each can say, “The door is open.” To the Epicurean, the refuge is intoxication; to the Stoic, the refuge is suicide: If the house smokes, quit it.” Wuttke, Christian Ethics, 1:62-161, from whom much of this account of the Greeks systems is condensed, describes Epicureanism and Stoicism as alike making morality subjective, although Epicureanism regarded spirit as determined by nature, while Stoicism regarded nature as determined by spirit.

The Stoics were materialists and pantheists. Though they speak of a personal God, this is a figure of speech. False opinion is at the root of all vice. Chrysippus denied what we now call the liberty of indifference, saying that there could not be an effect without a cause. Man is enslaved to passion. The Stoics could not explain how a vicious man could become virtuous. The result is apathy. Men act only according to character, and this a doctrine of fate. The Stoic indifference or apathy in misfortune is not a bearing of it at all, but rather a cowardly retreat from it. It is in the actual suffering of evil that Christianity finds “the soul of good.” The office of misfortune is disciplinary and purifying; see Seth, Ethical Principles, 417. “The shadow of the sage’s self, projected on vacancy, was called God, and, as the sage had long since abandoned interest in practical life, he expected his Divinity to do the same.”

The Stoic reverenced God just because of his unapproachable majesty.

Christianity sees in God a Father, a Redeemer, a carer for our minute wants, a deliverer from our sin. It teaches us to see in Christ the humanity of the divine, affinity with God, God’s supreme interest in his handiwork.

For the least of his creatures Christ died. Kinship with God gives dignity to man. The individuality that Stoicism lost in the whole, Christianity makes the end of the creation. The State exists to develop and promote it.

Paul took up and infused new meaning into certain phrases of the Stoic philosophy about the freedom and royalty of the wise man, just as John adopted and glorified certain phrases of Alexandrian philosophy about the Word. Stoicism was lonely and pessimistic. The Stoics said that the best thing was not to be born; the next best thing was to die. Because Stoicism had no God of helpfulness and sympathy, its virtue was mere conformity to nature, majestic egoism and self-complacency. In the Roman Epictetus (89), Seneca (65), and Marcus Aurelius (121-180), the religious element comes more into the foreground, and virtue appears once more as Godlikeness; but it is possible that the later Stoicism was influenced by Christianity. On Marcus Aurelius, see New Englander, July, 1881:415- 431; Capes, Stoicism.

4. SYSTEMS OF WESTERN ASIA.

Zoroaster (1000 BC?), the founder of the Parsees, was a duelist, at least so far as to explain the existence of evil and of good by the original presence in the author of all things of two opposing principles. Here is evidently a limit put upon the sovereignty and holiness of God. Man is not perfectly dependent upon him, nor is God’s will an unconditional law for his creatures. As opposed to the Indian systems, Zoroaster’s insistence upon the divine personality furnished a far better basis for a vigorous and manly morality. Virtue was to be won by hard struggle of free beings against evil. But then, on the other hand, this evil was conceived as originally due, not to finite beings themselves, but either to an evil deity who warred against the good, or to an evil principle in the one deity himself. The burden of guilt is therefore shifted from man to his maker. Morality becomes subjective and unsettled. Not love to God or imitation of God, but rather self-love and self-development, furnish the motive and aim of morality. No fatherhood or love is recognized in the deity, and other things besides God (e.g., fire) are worshiped. There can be no depth to the consciousness of sin, and no hope of divine deliverance.

It is the one merit of Parseeism that it recognizes the moral conflict of the world: its error is that it carries this moral conflict into the very nature of God. We can apply to Parseeism the words of the Conference of Foreign Mission Boards to the Buddhists of Japan: “All religions are expressions of man’s sense of dependence, but only one provides fellowship with God.

All religions speak of a higher truth, but only one speaks of that truth as found in a loving personal God, our Father. All religions show man’s helplessness, but only one tells of a divine Savior, who offers to man forgiveness of sin, and salvation through his death, and who is now a living person, working in and with all who believe in him, to make them holy and righteous and pure.” Matheson, Messages of Old Religions, says that Parseeism recognize an obstructive element in the nature of God himself. Moral evil is reality; but there is no reconciliation, nor is it shown that all things work together for good. See Wuttke, Christian Ethics, 1:47- 54; Faiths of the World (St. Giles Lectures), 109-144; Mitchell, in Present Day Tracts, 8: no. 25; Whitney on the Avesta, in Oriental and Linguistic Studies. Mohammed (570-632 AD), the founder of Islam, gives us in the Koran a system containing four dogmas of fundamental immorality, namely, polygamy, slavery, persecution, and suppression of private judgement.

Mohammedanism is heathenism in monotheistic form. Its good points are its conscientiousness and its relation to God. It has prospered because it has preached the unity of God, and because it is a book-religion. But both these it got from Judaism and Christianity. It has appropriated the Old Testament saints and even Jesus. But it denies the death of Christ and sees no need of atonement. The power of sin is not recognized. The idea of sin, in Moslems, is emptied of all positive content. Sin is simply a falling short, accounted for by the weakness and shortsightedness of man, inevitable in the fatalistic universe, or not remembered in wrath by the indulgent and merciful Father. Forgiveness is indulgence, and the conception of God is emptied of the quality of justice. Evil belongs only to the individual, not to the race. Man attains the favor of God by good works, based on prophetic teaching. Morality is not a fruit of salvation, but a means. There is no penitence or humility, but only selfrighteousness; and this self-righteousness is consistent with great sensuality, unlimited divorce, and with absolute despotism in family, civil and religious affairs. There is no knowledge of the fatherhood of God or of the brotherhood of man. In all the Koran, there is no such declaration as that “God so loved the world” ( John 3:16).

The submission of Islam is submission to an arbitrary will, not to a God of love. There is no basing of morality in love. The highest good is the sensuous happiness of the individual. God and man are external to one another. Mohammed is a teacher but not a priest. Mozley, Miracles, 140, 141 — “Mohammed had no faith in human nature. There were two things which he thought men could do, and would do, for the glory of God — transact religious forms, and fight, and upon these two points he was severe; but within the sphere of common practical life, where man’s great trial lies, his code exhibits the disdainful laxity of a legislator who accommodates his rule to the recipient, and shows his estimate of the recipient by the accommodation which he adopts… ‘Human nature is weak,’ said he.” Lord Houghton: The Koran is all wisdom, all law, all religion, for all time. Dead men bow before a dead God. “Though the world rolls on from change to change, and realms of thought expand, The letter stands without expanse or range, Stiff as a dead man’s hand.”

Wherever Mohammedanism has gone, it has either found a desert or made one. Fairbairn, in Contemp. Rev., Dec. 1882:866 — “The Koran has frozen Mohammedan thought; to obey is to abandon progress.” Muir, in Present Day Tracts, 3: no. 14 — “Mohammedanism reduces men to a dead level of social depression, despotism, and semi-barbarism. Islam is the work of man; Christianity of God.” See also Faiths of the World (St. Giles Lectures, Second Series), 361-396; J.F. Clarke, Ten Great Religions, 1:448-488; 280-317; Great Religions of the World, published by the Harpers; Zwemer, Moslem Doctrine of God. 3. The person and character of Christ.

A. The conception of Christ’s person as presenting deity and humanity indissolubly united, and the conception of Christ’s character, with its faultless and all-comprehending excellence, cannot be accounted for upon any other hypothesis than that they were historical realities.

The stylobate of the Parthenon at Athens rises about three inches in the middle of the 101 feet of the front, and four inches in the middle of the 228 feet of the flanks. A nearly parallel line is found in the entablature.

The axes of the columns lean inward nearly three inches in their height of 34 feet, thus giving a sort of pyramidal character to the structure. Thus the architect overcame the apparent sagging of horizontal lines, and at the same time increased the apparent height of the edifice; see Murray, Handbook of Greece, 5th ed., 1884, 1:308-309; Ferguson, Handbook of Architecture, 268-270. The neglect to counteract this optical illusion has rendered the Madeleine in Paris a stiff and ineffective copy of the Parthenon. The Galilean peasant who should minutely describe these peculiarities of the Parthenon would prove, not only that the edifice was a historical reality but also that he had actually seen it. Bruce, Apologetics, 343 — “In reading the memoirs of the evangelists, you feel as one sometimes feels in a picture gallery. Your eye alights on the portrait of a person whom you do not know. You took at it intently for a few moments and then remark to a companion: ‘That must be like the original — it is so life-like.’” Theodore Parker: “It would take a Jesus to forge a Jesus.” See Row, Bampton Lectures, 1877:178-219, and in Present Day Tracts, 4: no. 22; F. W. Farrar, Witness of History to Christ; Barry, Boyle Lecture on Manifold Witness for Christ. (a) No source can be assigned from which the evangelists could have derived such a conception. The Hindu avatars were only temporary unions of deity with humanity. The Greeks had men half-deified, but no unions of God and man. The monotheism of the Jews found the person of Christ a perpetual stumbling block. The Essenes were in principle more opposed to Christianity than the Rabbinists.

Herbert Spencer, Data of Ethics, 279 — “The coexistence of a perfect man and an imperfect society is impossible; and could the two coexist, the resulting conduct would not furnish the ethical standard sought.” We must conclude that the perfect manhood of Christ is a miracle, and the greatest of miracles. Bruce, Apologetics, 346, 351 — When Jesus asks: ‘Why callest thou me good?’ he means: ‘Learn first what goodness is, and call no man good till you are sure that he deserves it.’ Jesus’ goodness was entirely free from religious scrupulosity; it was distinguished by humanity; it was full of modesty and lowliness… Buddhism has flourished 2000 years, though little is known of its founder. Christianity might have been so perpetuated, but it is not so. I want to be sure that the ideal has been embodied in an actual life. Otherwise it is only poetry, and the obligation to conform to it ceases.” For comparison of Christ’s incarnation with Hindu, Greek, Jewish. and Essene ideas, see Dorner, Hist. Doct. Person of Christ. Introduction. On the Essenes, see Herzog, Encyclop., art.: Essener; Pressense. Jesus Christ, Life, Times and Work, 84-87; Lightfoot on Colossians, 349-419; Godet, Lectures in Defense of the Christian Faith. (b) No mere human genius, and much less the genius of Jewish fishermen, could have originated this conception. Bad men invent only such characters as they sympathize with. But Christ’s character condemns badness. Such a portrait could not have been drawn without supernatural aid. But such aid would not have been given to fabrication. The conception can be explained only by granting that Christ’s person and character were historical realities.

Between Pilate and Titus 30,000 Jews are said to have been crucified around the walls of Jerusalem. Many of these were young men. What makes one of them stand out on the pages of history? There are two answers: The character of Jesus was a perfect character, and, He was God as well as man. Gore, Incarnation,63 — “The Christ of the gospels, if he be not true to history, represents a combined effort of the creative imagination without parallel in literature. But the literary characteristics of Palestine in the first century make the hypothesis of such an effort morally impossible.” The Apocryphal gospels show us what mere imagination was capable of producing. That the portrait of Christ is not puerile, inane, hysterical, selfishly assertive, and self-contradictory, can be due only to the fact that it is the photograph from real life.

For a remarkable exhibition of the argument from the character of Jesus, see Bushnell, Nature and the Supernatural, 270-332. Bushnell mentions the originality and vastness of Christ’s plan, yet its simplicity and practical adaptation; his moral traits of independence, compassion, meekness, wisdom, zeal, humility, patience; the combination in him of seemingly opposite qualities. With all his greatness, he was condescending and simple; he was unworldly, yet not austere; he had strong feelings, yet was self-possessed; he had indignation toward sin, yet compassion toward the sinner; he showed devotion to his work, yet calmness under opposition; universal philanthropy, yet susceptibility to private attachments; the authority of a Savior and Judge, yet the gratitude and the tenderness of a son; the most elevated devotion, yet a life of activity and exertion. See chapter on The Moral Miracle, in Bruce, Miraculous Element of the Gospels, 43-78.

B. The acceptance and belief in the New Testament descriptions of Jesus Christ cannot be accounted for except upon the ground that the person and character described had an actual existence. (a) If these descriptions were false, there were witnesses still living who had known Christ and who would have contradicted them. (b) There was no motive to induce acceptance of such false accounts, but every motive to the contrary. (c) The success of such falsehoods could be explained only by supernatural aid, but God would never have thus aided falsehood. This person and character, therefore, must have been not fictitious but real; and if real, then Christ’s words are true, and the system of which his person and character are a part is a revelation from God. “The counterfeit may for a season deceive the wide earth; but the lie waxing great comes to labor, and truth has its birth.” Matthew Arnold, The Better Part: “Was Christ a man like us? Ah, let us see, If we then too can be such men as he!” When the blatant skeptic declared: “I do not believe that such a man as Jesus Christ ever lived,” George Warren merely replied: “I wish I were like him!” Dwight L. Moody was called a hypocrite, but the stalwart evangelist answered: “Well, suppose I am.

How does that make your case any better? I know some pretty mean things about myself; but you cannot say anything against my Master.”

Goethe: “Let the culture of the spirit advance forever; let the human spirit broaden itself as it will; yet it will never go beyond the height and moral culture of Christianity, as it glitters and shines in the gospels.”

Renan, Life of Jesus: “Jesus founded the absolute religion, excluding nothing, determining nothing, save its essence… The foundation of the true religion is indeed his work. After him, there is nothing left but to develop and fructify.” And a Christian scholar has remarked: “It is an astonishing proof of the divine guidance vouchsafed to the evangelists that no man, of their time or since, has been able to touch the picture of Christ without debasing it.” We may find an illustration of this in the words of Chadwick, Old and New Unitarianism, 207 — “Jesus’ doctrine of marriage was ascetic, his doctrine of property was communistic, his doctrine of charity was sentimental, his doctrine of non-resistance was such as commends itself to Tolstoi, but not to many others of our time.

With the example of Jesus, it is the same as with his teachings. Followed unreservedly, would it not justify those who say: ‘The hope of the race is in its extinction’; and bring all our joys and sorrows to a sudden end?” To this we may answer in the words of Huxley, who declares that Jesus Christ is “the noblest ideal of humanity which mankind has yet worshiped.” Gordon, Christ of Today, 179 — “The question is not whether Christ is good enough to represent the Supreme Being, but whether the Supreme Being is good enough to have Christ for his representative. John Stuart Mill looks upon the Christian religion as the worship of Christ, rather than the worship of God, and in this way he explains the beneficence of its influence.”

John Stuart Mill, Essays on Religion, 254 — “The most valuable part of the effect on the character which Christianity has produced, by holding up in a divine person a standard of excellence and a model for imitation, is available even to the absolute unbeliever, and can never more be lost to humanity. For it is Christ rather than God whom Christianity has held up to believers as the pattern of perfection for humanity. It is the God incarnate, more than the God of the Jews or of nature, who, being idealized, has taken so great and salutary hold on the modern mind. And whatever else may be taken away from us by rational criticism. Christ is still left: a unique figure, not more unlike all his precursors than all his followers, even those who had the direct benefit of his personal preaching… Who among his disciples, or among their proselytes, was capable of inventing the sayings ascribed to Jesus, or of imagining the life and character revealed in the Gospels?… About the life and sayings of Jesus there is a stamp of personal originality combined with profundity of insight which, if we abandon the idle expectation of finding scientific precision where something very different was aimed at, must place the Prophet of Nazareth, even in the estimation of those who have no belief in his inspiration, in the very first rank of the men of sublime genius of whom our species can boast. When this preeminent genius is combined with the qualities of probably the greatest moral reformer and martyr to that mission who ever existed upon earth, religion cannot be said to have made a bad choice in pitching on this man as the ideal representative and guide of humanity: nor even now would it be easy, even for an unbeliever, to find a better translation of the rule of virtue from the abstract into the concrete than the endeavor so to live that Christ would approve our life.

When to this we add that, to the conception of the rational skeptic, it remains a possibility that Christ actually was a man charged with a special, express and unique commission from God to lead mankind to truth and virtue, we may well conclude that the influences of religion on the character, which will remain after rational criticism has done its utmost against the evidences of religion, are well worth preserving, and that what they lack in direct strength as compared with those of a firmer belief is more than compensated by the greater truth and rectitude of the morality they sanction.” See also Ullmann, Sinlessness of Jesus; Alexander, Christ and Christianity, 129-157; Schaff, Person of Christ; Young, The Christ in History; George Dana Boardman, The Problem of Jesus. 4. The testimony of Christ to himself — as being a messenger from God and as being one with God.

Only one personage in history has claimed to teach absolute truth, to be one with God, and to attest his divine mission by works such as only God could perform.

A. This testimony cannot be accounted for upon the hypothesis that Jesus was an intentional deceiver: for (a) the perfectly consistent holiness of his life; (b) the unwavering confidence with which he challenged investigation of his claims and staked all upon the result; (c) the vast improbability of a lifelong lie in the avowed interests of truth; and (d) the impossibility that deception should have wrought such blessing to the world, — all show that Jesus was no conscious impostor.

Fisher, Essays on the Supernat. Origin of Christianity, 515-538 — Christ knew how vast his claims were, yet he staked all upon them. Though others doubted, he never doubted himself. Though persecuted unto death, he never ceased his consistent testimony. Yet he lays claim to humility: Matthew 11:29 — “I am meek and lowly in heart.” How can we reconcile with humility his constant self-assertion? We answer that Jesus’ self-assertion was absolutely essential to his mission, for he and the truth were one: he could not assert the truth without asserting himself, and he could not assert himself without asserting the truth. Since he was the truth, he needed to say so, for men’s sake and for the truth’s sake, and he could be meek and lowly in heart in saying so. Humility is not selfdepreciation, but only the judging of ourselves according to God’s perfect standard. ‘Humility’ is derived from ‘humus’. It is the coming down from airy and vain self-exploitation to the solid ground, the hardpan, of actual fact.

God requires of us only so much humility as is consistent with truth. The self-glorification of the egotist is nauseating, because it indicates gross ignorance or misrepresentation of self. But it is a duty to be self-asserting, just so far as we represent the truth and righteousness of God. There is a noble self-assertion, which is perfectly consistent with humility. Job must stand for his integrity. Paul’s humility was not of the Uriah Heep variety.

When occasion required, he could assert his manhood and his rights, as at Philippi and at the Castle of Antonia. So the Christian should frankly say out the truth that is in him. Each Christian has an experience of his own, and should tell it to others. In testifying to the truth he is only following the example of “Christ Jesus, who before Pontius Pilate witnessed the good confession” ( 1 Timothy 6:13).

B. Nor can Jesus’ testimony to himself be explained upon the hypothesis that he was self-deceived: for this would argue (a) a weakness and folly amounting to positive insanity. But his whole character and life exhibit a calmness, dignity, equipoise, insight, selfmastery, utterly inconsistent with such a theory. Or it would argue (b) a self-ignorance and self-exaggeration which could spring only from the deepest moral perversion. But the absolute purity of his conscience, the humility of his spirit the self-denying beneficence of his life, show this hypothesis to be incredible.

Rogers, Superhuman Origin of the Bible,39 — If he were man, then to demand that all the world should bow down to him would be worthy of scorn like that which we feel for some straw-crowned monarch of Bedlam.

Forrest, The Christ of History and of Experience, 22, 76 — Christ never united with his disciples in prayer. He went up into the mountain to pray but not to pray with them: Luke 9:18 — “as he was alone praying, his disciples were with him.” The consciousness of preexistence is the indispensable precondition of the total demand, which he makes in the Synoptics. Adamson, The Mind in Christ, 81,82 — We value the testimony of Christians to their communion with God. Much more should we value the testimony of Christ. Only one who, first being divine, also knew that he was divine, could reveal heavenly things with the clearness and certainty that belong to the utterances of Jesus. In him we have something very different from the momentary flashes of insight which leave us in all the greater darkness.

Nash, Ethics and Revelation, 5 — “Self-respect is bottomed upon the ability to become what one desires to be; and, if the ability steadily falls short of the task, the springs of self-respect dry up; the motives of happy and heroic action wither. Science, art, generous civic life, and especially religion, come to man’s rescue,” — showing him his true greatness and breadth of being in God. The State is the individual’s larger self.

Humanity, and even the universe, are parts of him. It is the duty of man to enable all men to be men. It is possible for men not only truthfully but also rationally to assert themselves, even in earthly affairs. Chatham to the Duke of Devonshire: “My Lord, I believe I can save this country, and that no one else can.” Leonardo da Vinci, in his thirtieth year, to the Duke of Milan: “I can carry through every kind of work in sculpture, in clay, marble, and bronze; also in painting I can execute everything that can be demanded, as well as any one whosoever.”

Horace: “Exegi monumentum ære perennius.” Savage, Life beyond Death, 209 — A famous old minister said once, when a young and zealous enthusiast tried to get him to talk, and failing, burst out with, “Have you no religion at all?” “None to speak of,” was the reply. When Jesus perceived a tendency in his disciples to self-glorification, he urged silence; but when he saw the tendency to introspection and inertness, he bade them proclaim what he had done for them ( Matthew 8:4; Mark 5:19). It is never right for the Christian to proclaim himself; but, if Christ had not proclaimed himself, the world could never have been saved. Rush Rhees, Life of Jesus of Nazareth, 235-237 — “In the teaching of Jesus, two topics have the leading place — the Kingdom of God, and himself. He sought to be Lord, rather than Teacher only. Yet the Kingdom is not one of power, national and external, but one of fatherly love and of mutual brotherhood.”

Did Jesus do anything for effect, or as a mere example? Not so. His baptism had meaning for him as a consecration of himself to death for the sins of the world, and his washing of the disciples’ feet was the fit beginning of the paschal supper and the symbol of his laying aside his heavenly glory to purify us for the marriage supper of the Lamb. Thomas · Kempis: “Thou art none the holier because thou art praised, and none the worse because thou art censured. What thou art, that thou art, and it avails thee naught to be called any better than thou art in the sight of God.” Jesus’ consciousness of his absolute Sinlessness and of his perfect communion with God is the strongest of testimonies to his divine nature and mission. See Theological Eclectic, 4:37; Liddon, Our Lord’s Divinity, 153; J. S. Mill, Essays on Religion, 253; Young, Christ of History; Divinity of Jesus Christ, by Andover Professors, 37-62.

If Jesus, then, cannot be charged with either mental or moral unsoundness, his testimony must be true, and he himself must be one with God and the revealer of God to men.

Neither Confucius nor Buddha claimed to be divine, or the organs of divine revelation, though both were moral teachers and reformers.

Zoroaster and Pythagoras apparently believed themselves charged with a divine mission, though their earliest biographers wrote centuries after their death. Socrates claimed nothing for himself, which was beyond the power of others. Mohammed believed his extraordinary states of body and soul to be due to the action of celestial beings; he gave forth the Koran as “a warning to all creatures,” and sent a summons to the King of Persia and the Emperor of Constantinople, as well as to other potentates, to accept the religion of Islam; yet he mourned when he died that he could not have opportunity to correct the mistakes of the Koran and of his own life. For Confucius or Buddha, Zoroaster or Pythagoras, Socrates or Mohammed to claim all power in heaven and earth, would show insanity or moral perversion. But this is precisely what Jesus claimed. He was either mentally or morally unsound, or his testimony is true. See Baldensperger.

Selbstbewusstsein Jesu: E. Ballentine Christ his own Witness

IV. THE HISTORICAL RESULTS OF THE PROPAGATION OF SCRIPTURE DOCTRINE.

1. The rapid progress of the gospel in the first centuries of our era shows its divine origin.

A. That Paganism should have been in three centuries supplanted by Christianity, is an acknowledged wonder of history.

The conversion of the Roman Empire to Christianity was the most astonishing revolution of faith and worship ever known. Fifty years after the death of Christ, there were churches in all the principal cities of the Roman Empire. Nero (37-68) found (as Tacitus declares) an “ingens multitudo” of Christians to persecute. Pliny writes to Trajan (52-117) that they “pervaded not merely the cities but the villages and country places, so that the temples were nearly deserted.” Tertullian (160-230) writes: “We are but of yesterday, and yet we have filled all your places, your cities, your islands, your castles, your towns, your council-houses, even your camps, your tribes, your senate, your forum. We have left you nothing but your temples.” In the time of the emperor Valerian (253-268), the Christians constituted half the population of Rome. The conversion of the emperor Constantine (272-337) brought the whole empire, only years after Jesus’ death, under the acknowledged sway of the gospel. See McIlvaine and Alexander, Evidences of Christianity.

B. The wonder is the greater when we consider the obstacles to the progress of Christianity: (a) The skepticism of the cultivated classes; (b) the prejudice and hatred of the common people; and (c) the persecutions set on foot by government. (a) Missionaries even now find it difficult to get a hearing among the cultivated classes of the heathen. But the gospel appeared in the most enlightened age of antiquity — the Augustan age of literature and historical inquiry. Tacitus called the religion of Christ “exitiabilis superstitio” — “quos per flagitia invisos vulgus Christianos appellabat.”

Pliny: “Nihil aliud inveni quam superstitionem pravam et immodicam.” If the gospel had been false, its preachers would not have ventured into the centers of civilization and refinement; or if they had, they would have been detected. (b) Consider the interweaving of heathen religions with all the relations of life. Christians often had to meet the furious zeal and blind rage of the mob, — as at Lystra and Ephesus. (c) Rawlinson, in his Historical Evidences, claims that the Catacombs of Rome comprised nine hundred miles of streets and seven million graves within a period of four hundred years — a far greater number than could have died a natural death — and that vast multitudes of these must have been massacred for their faith. The Encyclopædia Britannica, however, calls the estimate of De Marchi, which Rawlinson appears to have taken as authority, a great exaggeration. Instead of nine hundred miles of streets, Northcote has three hundred fifty. The number of interments to correspond would be less than three million. The Catacombs began to be deserted by the time of Jerome. The times when, they were universally used by Christians could have been hardly more than two hundred years. They did not begin in sandpits. There were three sorts of tufa: (1) rocky, used for Quarrying and too hard for Christian purposes; (2) sandy, used for sandpits, too soft to permit construction of galleries and tombs; (3) granular, that used by Christians. The existence of the catacombs must have been well known to the heathen. After Pope Damasus the exaggerated reverence for them began. They were decorated and improved.

Hence many paintings are of later date than 400, and testify to papal polity, not to that of early Christianity. The bottles contain, not blood, but wine of the Eucharist celebrated at the funeral.

Fisher, Nature and Method of Revelation, 256-258, calls attention to Matthew Arnold’s description of the needs of the heathen world, yet his blindness to the true remedy: “On that hard pagan world disgust And secret loathing fell: Deep weariness and sated lust Made human life a hell.

In his cool hail, with haggard eyes, The Roman noble lay; He drove abroad, in furious guise, Along the Appian Way: He made a feast, drank fierce and fast. And crowned his hair with flowers, — No easier nor no quicker passed The impracticable hours.” Yet with mingled pride and sadness, Mr. Arnold fastidiously rejects more heavenly nutriment. Of Christ he says: “Now he is dead I Far hence he lies, In the lorn Syrian town, And on his grave, with shining eyes, The Syrian stars look down.”

He sees that the millions “Have such need of joy, And joy whose grounds are true, And joy that should all hearts employ As when the past was new!” The want of the world is: “One mighty wave of thought and joy, Lifting mankind amain.” But the poet sees no ground of hope: “Fools I that so often here, Happiness mocked our prayer, I think might make us fear A like event elsewhere, — Make us not fly to dreams, But moderate desire.” He sings of the time when Christianity was young: “Oh, had I lived in that great day, How had its glory new Filled earth and heaven, and caught away My ravished spirit too!” But desolation of spirit does not bring with it any lowering of self-esteem, much less the humility, which deplores the presence and power of evil in the soul, and sighs for deliverance. “They that are whole have no need of a physician, hut they that are sick” ( Matthew 9:12). Rejecting Christ, Matthew Arnold embodies In his verse “the sweetness, the gravity, the strength, the beauty, and the languor of death” (Hutton, Essays, 302).

C. The wonder becomes yet greater when we consider the natural insufficiency of the means used to secure this progress. (a) The proclaimers of the gospel were in general unlearned men, belonging to a despised nation. (b) The gospel, which they proclaimed, was a gospel of salvation through faith in a Jew who had been put to an ignominious death. (c) This gospel was one which excited natural repugnance, by humbling men’s pride, striking at the root of their sins, and demanding a life of labor and self-sacrifice. (d) The gospel, moreover, was an exclusive one, suffering no rival and declaring itself to be the universal and only religion. (a) The early Christians were more unlikely to make converts than modern Jews are to make proselytes, in vast numbers, in the principal cities of Europe and America. Celsus called Christianity “a religion of the rabble.” (b) The cross was the Roman gallows — the punishment of slaves. Cicero calls it “servitutis extremum summumque supplicium.” (c) There were many bad religions why should the mild Roman Empire have persecuted the only good one? The answer is in part: Persecution did not originate with the official classes; it proceeded really from the people at large.

Tacitus called Christians “haters of the human race.” Men recognized in Christianity a foe to all their previous motives, ideals, and aims. Altruism would break up the old society, for every effort that centered in self or in the present life was stigmatized by the gospel as unworthy. (d) Heathenism, being without creed or principle, did not care to propagate itself. “A man must be very weak,” said Celsus, “to imagine that Greeks and barbarians, in Asia, Europe, and Libya, can ever unite under the same system of religion.” So the Roman government would allow no religion which did not participate in the worship of the State. “Keep yourselves from idols,” “We worship no other God,” was the Christian’s answer. Gibbon, Hist. Decline and Fall, 1: chap. 15, mentions as secondary causes: (1) the zeal of the Jews; (2) the doctrine of immortality; (3) miraculous powers; (4) virtues of early Christians; (5) privilege of participation in church government.

But these causes were only secondary, and would have been insufficient without an invincible persuasion of the truth of Christianity. For answer to Gibbon, see Perrone, Prelectiones Theologiæ, 1:133.

Persecution destroys falsehood by leading its advocates to investigate the grounds of their belief; but it strengthens and multiplies truth by leading its advocates to see more clearly the foundations of their faith. There have been many conscientious persecutors: John 16:2 — “They shall put you out of the synagogues: yea, the hour cometh, that whosoever killeth you shall think that he offereth service unto God.” The Decretal of Pope Urban II reads: “For we do not count them to be homicides, to whom it may have happened, through their burning zeal against the excommunicated, to put any of them to death.” St. Louis, King of France, urged his officers “not to argue with the infidel, but to subdue unbelievers by thrusting the sword into them as far as it will go.” Of the use of the rack in England on a certain occasion, it was said that it was used with all the tenderness, which the nature of the instrument would allow. This reminds us of Isaak Walton’s instruction as to the use of the frog: “Put the hook through his mouth and out at his gills and, in so doing, use him as though you loved him.”

Robert Browning, in his Easter Day, 275-288, gives us what purports to be A Martyr’s Epitaph, inscribed upon a wall of the Catacombs, which furnishes a valuable contrast to the skeptical and pessimistic strain of Matthew Arnold: “I was born sickly, poor and mean, A slave: no misery could screen The holders of the pearl of price From Caesar’s envy: therefore twice I fought with beasts, and three times saw My children suffer by his law; At length my own release was earned: I was some time in being burned, But at the close a Hand came through The fire above my head, and drew My soul to Christ, whom now I see. Sergius, a brother, writes for me This testimony on the wall — For me, I have forgot it all.”

The progress of a religion so unprepossessing and uncompromising to outward acceptance and dominion, within the space of three hundred years, cannot be explained without supposing that divine power attended its promulgation, and therefore that the gospel is a revelation from God.

Stanley, Life and Letters, 1:527 — “In the Kremlin Cathedral, whenever the Metropolitan advanced from the altar to give his blessing, there was always thrown under his feet a carpet embroidered with the eagle of old Pagan Rome, to indicate that the Christian Church and Empire of Constantinople had succeeded and triumphed over it.” On this whole section, see F. W. Farrar, Witness of History to Christ, 91; McIlvaine, Wisdom of Holy Scripture, 139. 2. The beneficent influence of the Scripture doctrines and precepts, wherever they have had sway, shows their divine origin. Notice:

A. Their influence on civilization in general, securing a recognition of principles which heathenism ignored, such as Garbett mentions: (a) the importance of the individual; (b) the law of mutual love; (c) the sacredness of human life; (d) the doctrine of internal holiness; (e) the sanctity of home; (f) monogamy, and the religious equality of the sexes; (g) identification of belief and practice.

The continued corruption of heathen lands shows that this change is not due to any laws of merely natural progress. The confessions of ancient writers show that it is not due to philosophy. Its only explanation is that the gospel is the power of God.

Garbett, Dogmatic Faith, 177-186; F. W. Farrar, Witness of History to Christ, chap. on Christianity and the Individual; Brace, Gesta Christi, preface, vi — “Practices and principles implanted, stimulated or supported by Christianity, such as regard for the personality of the weakest and poorest; respect for woman; duty of each member of the fortunate classes to raise up the unfortunate; humanity to the child, the prisoner, the stranger, the needy, and even to the brute; unceasing opposition to all forms of cruelty, oppression and slavery; the duty of personal purity, and the sacredness of marriage; the necessity of temperance; obligation of a more equitable division of the profits of labor, and of greater cooperation between employers and employed; the right of every human being to have the utmost opportunity of developing his faculties, and of all persons to enjoy equal political and social privileges; the principle that the in jury of one nation is the injury of all, and the expediency and duty of unrestricted trade and intercourse between all countries; and finally, a profound opposition to war, a determination to limit its evils when existing, and to prevent its arising by means of international arbitration.”

Max Muller: “The concept of humanity is the gift of Christ.” Guizot, History of Civilization, 1: Introduction, tells us that in ancient times the individual existed for the sake of the State; in modern times the State exists for the sake of the individual. “The individual is a discovery of Christ.” On the relations between Christianity and Political Economy, see A.H. Strong, Philosophy and Religion, pages 443-460; on the cause of the changed view with regard to the relation of the individual to the State, see page 207 — “What has wrought the change? Nothing but the death of the Son of God. When it was seen that the smallest child and the lowest slave had a soul of such worth that Christ left his throne and gave up his life to save it, the world’s estimate of values changed, and modern history began.” Lucian, the Greek satirist and humorist, 160 AD, said of the Christians: “Their first legislator [Jesus] has put it into their heads that they are all brothers.”

It is this spirit of common brotherhood, which has led in most countries to the abolition of cannibalism, infanticide, widow burning, and slavery.

Prince Bismarck: “For social well-being I ask nothing more than Christianity without phrases” — which means the religion of the deed rather than of the creed. Yet it is only faith in the historic revelation of God in Christ which has made Christian deeds possible. Shaler, Interpretation of Nature, 232-278 — Aristotle, if he could look over society today, would think modern man a new species, in his going out in sympathy to distant peoples. This cannot be the result of natural selection, for self-sacrifice is not profitable to the individual. Altruistic emotions owe their existence to God. Worship of God has flowed back upon man’s emotions and has made them more sympathetic. Self-consciousness and sympathy, coming into conflict with brute emotions, originate the sense of sin. Then begins the war of the natural and the spiritual. Love of nature and absorption in others is the true Nirvana. Not physical science but the humanities are most needed in education.

H. E. Hersey, Introduction to Browning’s Christmas Eve,19 — “Sidney Lanier tells us that the last twenty centuries have spent their best power upon the development of personality. Literature, education, government, and religion, have learned to recognize the individual as the unit of force.

Browning goes a step further. He declares that so powerful is a complete personality that its very touch gives life and courage and potency. He turns to history for the inspiration of enduring virtue and the stimulus for sustained effort, and he finds both in Jesus Christ.” J.P. Cooke, Credentials of Science,43 — The change from the ancient philosopher to the modern investigator is the change from self-assertion to self-devotion, and the great revolution can be traced to the influence of Christianity and to the spirit of humility exhibited and inculcated by Christ. Lewes, Hist.

Philos., I:408 — Greek morality never embraced any conception of humanity; no Greek ever attained to the sublimity of such a point of view.

Kidd, Social Evolution, 165, 287 — It is not intellect that has pushed forward the world of modern times: it is the altruistic feeling that originated in the cross and sacrifice of Christ. The French Revolution was made possible by the fact that humanitarian ideas had undermined the upper classes themselves, and effective resistance was impossible.

Socialism would abolish the struggle for existence on the part of individuals. What security would be left for social progress? Removing all restrictions upon population ensures progressive deterioration. A nonsocialist community would outstrip a socialist community where all the main wants of life were secure. The real tendency of society is to bring all the people into rivalry, not only on a footing of political equality, but on conditions of equal social opportunities. The State in future will interfere and control, in order to preserve or secure free competition, rather than to suspend it. The goal is not socialism or State management, but competition in which all shall have equal advantages. The evolution of human society is not primarily intellectual but religious. The winning races are the religious races. The Greeks had more intellect, but we have more civilization and progress. The Athenians were as far above us as we are above the Negro race. Gladstone said that we are intellectually weaker than the men of the middle ages. When the intellectual development of any section of the race has for the time being outrun its ethical development, natural selection has apparently weeded it out, like any other unsuitable product. Evolution is developing reverence, with its allied qualities, mental energy, resolution, enterprise, prolonged and concentrated application, simple-minded and single-minded devotion to duty. Only religion can overpower selfishness and individualism and ensure social progress.

B. Their influence upon individual character and happiness, wherever they have been tested in practice. This influence is seen (a) in the moral transformations they have wrought — as in the case of Paul the apostle, and of persons m every Christian community; (b) in the self-denying labors for human welfare to which they have, led — as in the case of Wilberforce and Judson; (c) in the hopes they have inspired in times of sorrow and death.

These beneficent fruits cannot have their source in merely natural causes: apart from the truth and divinity of the Scriptures; for in that case the contrary beliefs would be accompanied by the same blessings. But since we find these blessings only in connection with Christian teaching, we may justly consider this as their cause. This teaching, then, must he true, and the Scriptures must be a divine revelation. Else God has made a lie to be the greatest blessing to the race.

The first Moravian missionaries to the West Indies walked six hundred miles to take ship, worked their passage, and then sold themselves as slaves, in order to get the privilege of preaching to the Negroes… The father of John G. Paton was a stocking weaver. The whole family, with the exception of the very small children, worked from 6 a.m. to 10 p.m., with one hour for dinner at noon and a half-hour each for breakfast and supper. Yet family prayer was regularly held twice a day. In these breathing spells for daily meals John G. Paton took part of his time to study the Latin Grammar, that he might prepare himself for missionary work. When told by an uncle that, if he went to the New Hebrides, the cannibals would eat him, he replied: “You yourself will soon be dead and buried, and I had as lief be eaten by cannibals as by worms.” The Aneityumese raised arrowroot for fifteen years and sold it to pay the £1200 required for printing the Bible in their own language. Universal church attendance and Bible study make those South Sea Islands the most heavenly place on earth on the Sabbath day.

In 1839, twenty thousand Negroes in Jamaica gathered to begin a life of freedom. Into a coffin were put the handcuffs and shackles of slavery, relics of the whipping post and the scourge. As the clock struck twelve at night, a preacher cried with the first stroke: “The monster is dying: “and so with every stroke until the last, when he cried: “The monster is dead:” Then all rose from their knees and sang: “Praise God front whom all blessings flow!”… “What do you do that for? “said the sick China man whom the medical missionary was tucking up in bed with a care which the patient had never received since he was a baby. The missionary took the opportunity to tell him of the love of Christ… The aged Australian mother, when told that her two daughters, missionaries in China, had both of them been murdered by a heathen mob, only replied: “This decides me; I will go to China now myself, and try to teach those poor creatures what the love of Jesus means.”… Dr. William Ashmore: “Let one missionary die, and ten come to his funeral.” A shoemaker, teaching neglected boys and girls while he worked at his cobbler’s bench, gave the impulse to Thomas Guthrie’s life of faith.

We must judge religions not by their ideals, but by their performances.

Omar Khayyam and Mozoomdar give us beautiful thoughts, but the former is not Persia, nor is the latter India. “When the microscopic search of skepticism, which has hunted the heavens and sounded the seas to disprove the existence of a Creator, has turned its attention to human society and has found on this planet a place ten miles square where a decent man can live in decency, comfort, and security, supporting and educating his children, unspoiled and unpolluted; a place where age is reverenced, infancy protected manhood respected, womanhood honored, and human life held in due regard — when skeptics can find such a place ten miles square on this globe, where the gospel of Christ has not gone and cleared the way and laid the foundations and made decency and security possible, it will then be in order for the skeptical literati to move thither and to ventilate their views. But so long as these very men are dependent upon the very religion they discard for every privilege they enjoy, they may well hesitate before they rob the Christian of his hope and humanity of its faith in that Savior who alone has given that hope of eternal life which makes life tolerable and society possible, and robs death of its terrors and the grave of its gloom.” On the beneficent influence of the gospel, see Schmidt, Social Results of Early Christianity; D. J. Hill, The Social Influence of Christianity.

CHAPTER 3. INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES.

I. DEFINITION OF INSPIRATION.

Inspiration is that influence of the Spirit of God upon the minds of the Scripture writers which made their writings the record of a progressive divine revelation, sufficient, when taken together and interpreted by the same Spirit who inspired them, to lead every honest inquirer to Christ and to salvation.

Notice the significance of each part of this definition: 1. Inspiration is an influence of the Spirit of God. It is not a merely naturalistic phenomenon or psychological vagary, but is rather the effect of the in working of the personal divine Spirit. 2. Yet inspiration is an influence upon the mind, and not upon the body.

God secures his end by awakening man’s rational powers, and not by an external or mechanical communication. 3. The writings of inspired men are the record of a revelation. They are not themselves the revelation. 4. The revelation and the record are both progressive, neither one is complete at the beginning. 5. The Scripture writings must be taken together. Each part must be viewed in connection with what precedes and with what follows. 6. The same Holy Spirit who made the original revelations must interpret to us the record of them, if we are to come to the knowledge of the truth. 7. So used and so interpreted, these writings are sufficient, both in quantity and in quality, for their religious purpose. 8. That purpose is, not to furnish us with a model history or with the facts of science, but to lead us to Christ and to salvation. (a) Inspiration is therefore to be defined, not by its method, but by its result. It is a general term including all those kinds and degrees of the Holy Spirit’s influence which were brought to bear upon the minds of the Scripture writers, in order to secure the putting into permanent and written form of the truth best adapted to man’s moral and religious needs. (b) Inspiration may often include revelation, or the direct communication from God of truth to which man could not attain by his unaided powers. It may include illumination, or the quickening of man’s cognitive powers to understand truth already revealed. Inspiration, however, does not necessarily and always include either revelation or illumination. It is simply the divine influence which secures a transmission of needed truth to the future, and, according to the nature of the truth to be transmitted, it may be only an inspiration of superintendence, or it may be also and at the same time an inspiration of illumination or revelation. (c) It is not denied, but affirmed, that inspiration may qualify for oral utterance of truth, or for wise leadership and daring deeds. Men may be inspired to render external service to God’s kingdom, as in the cases of Bezalel and Samson; even though this service is rendered unwillingly or ‘unconsciously, as in the cases of Balaam and Cyrus. All human intelligence, indeed, is due to the in- breathing of that same Spirit who created man at the beginning. We are now concerned with inspiration, however, only as it pertains to the authorship of Scripture. Genesis 2:7 — “And Jehovah God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul”; Exodus 31:2,3 — “I have called by name Bezalel… and I have filled him with the Spirit of God… in all manner of workmanship”; Judges 13:24,25 — “called his name Samson: and the child grew, and Jehovah blessed him And the Spirit of Jehovah began to move him”; Numbers 23:5 — “And Jehovah put a word in Balaam’s mouth, and said, Return unto Balak, and thus shalt thou speak”; 2 Chronicles 36:22 — “Jehovah stirred up the spirit of Cyrus”; Isaiah 44:28 — “that saith of Cyrus, He is my shepherd”; 45:5 — “I will gird thee, though thou best not known me”; Job 32:8 — “there is a spirit in man, and the breath of the Almighty giveth them understanding.” These passages show the true meaning of 2 Timothy 3:16 — “Every scripture inspired of God.” The word qeo>pnenstov is to be understood as alluding, not to the flute player’s breathing into his instrument, but to God’s original in breathing of life. The flute is passive, but man’s soul is active. The flute gives out only what it receives, but the inspired man under the divine influence is a conscious and free originator of thought and expression.

Although the inspiration of which we are to treat is simply the inspiration of the Scripture writings, we can best understand this narrower use of the term by remembering that all real knowledge has in it a divine element, and that we are possessed of complete consciousness only as we live, move, and have our being in God. Since Christ, the divine Logos or Reason, is “the light which lighteth every man”( John 1:9), a special influence of “the spirit of Christ which was in them” ( 1 Peter 1:11) rationally accounts for the fact that “men spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit” ( 1 Peter 1:21).

It may help our understanding of terms above employed if we adduce instances of (1) Inspiration without revelation, as in Luke or Acts, Luke 1:1-3; (2) Inspiration including revelation, as in the Apocalypse, Revelations 1:1, 11; (3) Inspiration without illumination, as in the prophets, 1 Peter 1:11; (4) Inspiration including illumination, as in the case of Paul, Corinthians 2:12; (5) Revelation without inspiration, as in God’s words from Sinai, Exodus 20:1,22; (6) Illumination without inspiration, as in modern preachers, Ephesians 2:20.

Other definitions are those of Park: “Inspiration is such an influence over the writers of the Bible that all their teachings which have a religious character are trustworthy”; of Wilkinson: “Inspiration is help front God to keep the report of divine revelation free from error Help to whom? No matter to whom, so the result is secured. The final result, viz.: the record or report of revelation, this must be free from error. Inspiration may affect one or all of the agents employed”; of Hovey: “Inspiration was an influence of the Spirit of God on those powers of men which are concerned in the reception, retention and expression of religious truth — an influence so pervading and powerful that the teaching of inspired men was according to the mind of God. Their teaching did not in any instance embrace all truth in respect to God, or man, or the way of life; but it comprised just so much of the truth on any particular subject as could be received in faith by the inspired teacher and made useful to those whom he addressed. In this sense the teaching of the original documents composing our Bible may be pronounced free from error”; of G. B. Foster: “Revelation is the action of God in the soul of his child, resulting in divine self-expression there. Inspiration is the action of God in the soul of his child, resulting in apprehension and appropriation of the divine expression. Revelation has logical but not chronological priority”; of Horton, Inspiration and the Bible, 10-13 — “We mean by Inspiration exactly those qualities or characteristics which are the marks or notes of the Bible.

We call our Bible inspired by which we mean that by reading and studying it we find our way to God, we find his will for us, and we find how we can conform ourselves to his will.”

Fairbairn, Christ in Modern Theology, 496, while nobly setting forth the naturalness of revelation, has misconceived the relation of inspiration to revelation by giving priority to the former: “The idea of a written revelation may be said to be logically involved in the notion of a living God. Speech is natural to spirit; and if God is by nature spirit, it will be to him a matter of nature to reveal himself. But if he speaks to man, it will be through men; and those who hear best will be most possessed of God.

This possession is termed ‘inspiration.’ God inspires, man reveals: revelation is the mode or form — word, character, or institution — in which man embodies what he has received. The terms, though not equivalent, are co-extensive, the one denoting the process on its inner side, the other on its outer.” This statement, although approved by Sanday, Inspiration, 124, 125, seems to us almost precisely to reverse the right meaning of the words. We prefer the view of Evans, Bib. Scholarship and Inspiration,54 — “God has first revealed himself, and then has inspired men to interpret, record and apply this revelation. In redemption, inspiration is the formal factor, as revelation is the material factor. The men are inspired, as Prof. Stowe said. The thoughts are inspired, as Prof.

Briggs said. The words are inspired, as Prof. Hodge said. The warp and woof of the Bible is pneu~ma : “the words that I have spoken unto you are spirit” ( John 6:63). Its fringes run off, as was inevitable, into the secular, the material, and the psychic. Phillips Brooks. Life, 2:351 — “If the true revelation of God is in Christ, the Bible is not properly a revelation, but the history of a revelation. This is not only a fact, but a necessity, for a person cannot be revealed in a book, but must find revelation, if at all, in a person. The center and core of the Bible must therefore be the gospels, as the story of Jesus.”

Some, like Priestley, have held that the gospels are authentic but not inspired. We therefore add to the proof of the genuineness and credibility of Scripture, the proof of its inspiration. Chadwick, Old and New Unitarianism, II — “Priestley’s belief in supernatural revelation was intense. He had an absolute distrust of reason as qualified to furnish an adequate knowledge of religious things, and at the same time a perfect confidence in reason as qualified to prove that negative and to determine the contents of the revelation.” We might claim the historical truth of the gospels, even if we did not call them inspired. Gore, in Lux Mundi, — “Christianity brings with it a doctrine of the inspiration of the Holy Scriptures, but is not based upon it.” Warfield and Hodge, Inspiration, — “While the inspiration of the Scriptures is true, and being true is fundamental to the adequate interpretation of Scripture, it nevertheless is not, in the first instance, a principle fundamental to the truth of the Christian religion.”

On the Idea of Revelation, see Ladd, in Journ. Christ. Philos., Jan. 1883:156-178; on Inspiration, ibid ., Apr. 1883:225-248. See Henderson on Inspiration (2nd ed.), 58, 205, 249, 303, 810. For other works on the general subject of Inspiration, see Lee, Bannerman, Jamieson, Macnaught; Garbett, God’s Word Written; Aids to Faith, essay on Inspiration. Also, Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 1:205; Westcott, introd. to Study of the Gospels, 27-65; Bibliotheca Sacra, 1:97; 4:154; 12:217; 15:29, 314; 25:192-198; Dr. Barrows, in Bibliotheca Sacra, 1867:593; 1872:428; Farrar. Science in Theology, 208; Hodge and Warfield, in Presb. Rev., Apr. 1881:225-261; Manly, The Bible Doctrine of Inspiration; Watts, inspiration; Mead, Supernatural Revelation, 350; Whiton, Gloria Patti, 136; Hastings. Bible Dictionary, 1:296-299; Sanday, Bampton Lectures on Inspiration.

II. PROOF OF INSPIRATION.

1. Since we have shown that God has made a revelation of himself to man, we may reasonably presume that he will not trust this revelation wholly to human tradition and misrepresentation, but will also provide a record of it essentially trustworthy and sufficient; in other words, that the same Spirit who originally communicated the truth will preside over its publication, so far as is needed to accomplish its religious purpose.

Since all natural intelligence, as we have seen, presupposes God’s indwelling, and since in Scripture the all-prevailing atmosphere, with its constant pressure and effort to enter every cranny and corner of the world, is used as an illustration of the impulse of God’s omnipotent Spirit to vivify and energize every human soul ( Genesis 2:7; Job 32:8), we may infer that, but for sin, all men would be morally and spiritually inspired ( Numbers 11:29) “Would that all Jehovah’s people were prophets, that Jehovah would put his Spirit upon them!” Isaiah 59:2 — “your iniquities have separated between you and your God”. We have also seen that God’s method of communicating his truth in matters of religion is presumably analogous to his method of communicating secular truth, such as that of astronomy or history. There is an original delivery to a single nation, and to single persons in that nation, that it may through them be given to mankind. Sanday, Inspiration, 140 — “There is a ‘purpose of God according to selection’ ( Romans 9:11); there is an ‘election’ or ‘selection of grace’; and the object of that selection was Israel and those who take their name from Israel’s Messiah. If a tower is built In ascending tiers, those who stand upon the lower tiers are yet raised above the ground, and some may be raised higher than others, but the full and unimpeded view is reserved for those who mount upward to the top. And that is the place destined for us if we will take it.”

If we follow the analogy of God’s working in other communications of knowledge, we shall reasonably presume that he will preserve the record of his revelations in written and accessible documents, handed down from those to whom these revelations were first communicated, and we may expect that these documents will be kept sufficiently correct and trustworthy to accomplish their religious purpose, namely, that of furnishing to the honest inquirer a guide to Christ and to salvation.

The physician commits his prescriptions to writing; the Clerk of Congress records its proceedings; the State Department of our government instructs our foreign ambassadors, not orally, but by dispatches. There is yet greater need that revelation should be recorded, since it is to be transmitted to distant ages; it contains long discourses; it embraces mysterious doctrines. Jesus did not write himself; for he was the subject, not the mere channel, of revelation. His unconcern about the apostles’ immediately committing to writing what they saw and heard is inexplicable, if he did not expect that inspiration would assist them.

We come to the discussion of Inspiration with a presumption quite unlike that of Kuenen and Wellhausen, who write in the interest of almost avowed naturalism. Kuenen, in the Opening sentences of his Religion of Israel, does indeed assert the rule of God in the world. But Sanday, Inspiration, 117, says well that “Kuenen keeps this idea very much in the background. He expended a whole volume of 593 large octavo pages (Prophets and Prophecy in Israel, London, 1877) in proving that the prophets were not moved to speak by God, but that their utterances were all their own.” The following extract, says Sanday, indicates the position, which Dr. Kuenen really held: “We do not allow ourselves to be deprived of God’s presence in history. In the fortunes and development of nations, and not least clearly in those of Israel, we see Him, the holy and all wise Instructor of his human children. But the old contrasts must be altogether set aside. So long as we derive a separate pan of Israel’s religious life directly from God, and allow the supernatural or immediate revelation to intervene in even one single point, so long also our view of the whole continues to be incorrect, and we see ourselves here and there necessitated to do violence to the well authenticated contents of the historical documents. It is the supposition of a natural development alone which accounts for all the phenomena” (Kuenen, Prophets and Prophecy in Israel, 585). 2. Jesus, who has been proved to be not only a credible witness, but a messenger from God, vouches for the inspiration of the Old Testament, by quoting it with the formula; “It is written”; by declaring that “one jot or one tittle” of it “shall in no wise pass away,” and that “the Scripture cannot be broken.”

Jesus quotes from four out of the five books of Moses, and from the Psalm s, Isaiah, Malachi, and Zechariah, with the formula, “it is written’: see Matthew 4:4,6,7; 11:10; Mark 14:27 Luke 4:4-12. This formula among the Jews indicated that the quotation was from a sacred book and was divinely inspired. Jesus certainly regarded the Old Testament with as much reverence as the Jews of his day. He declared that “one jot or one tittle shall in no wise pass away from the law” ( Matthew 5:18). He said that “the scripture cannot be broken” ( John 10:35) “the normative and judicial authority of the Scripture cannot be set aside; notice here [in the singular, hJ grafh> ] the idea of the unity of Scripture” (Meyer). And yet our Lord’s use of Old Testament Scripture was wholly free from the superstitious literalism, which prevailed among the Jews of his day. The phrases “word of God” ( John 10:35; Mark 7:13), “wisdom of God” ( Luke 11:49) and “oracles of God” Romans 3:2) probably designate the original revelations of God and not the record of these in Scripture; cf. Samuel 9:27; 1 Chronicles 17:3; Isaiah 40:8; Matthew 13:19; Luke 3:2; Acts 8:25. Jesus refuses assent to the Old Testament law respecting the Sabbath ( Mark 2:27 sq.), external defilement ( Mark 7:15), divorce ( Mark 10:2 sq.). He “came not to destroy but to fulfill”( Matthew 5:17); yet he fulfilled the law by bringing out its inner spirit in his perfect life, rather than by formal and minute obedience to its precepts; see Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 2:5-35.

The apostles quote the Old Testament as the utterance of God ( Ephesians 4:8 — dio< le>gei qeo>v . Paul’s insistence upon the form of even a single word, as in Galatians 3:16, and his use of the Old Testament for purposes of allegory, as in Galatians 4:21-31, show that in his view the Old Testament text was sacred. Philo, Josephus and the Talmud, in their interpretations of the Old Testament, fail continually into a “narrow and unhappy literalism.” “The New Testament does not indeed escape Rabbinical methods, but even where these are most prominent they seem to affect the form far more than the substance. And through the temporary and local form the writer constantly penetrates to the very heart of the Old Testament teaching;” see Sanday, Bampton Lectures on Inspiration, 87; Henderson, Inspiration, 254. 3. Jesus commissioned his apostles as teachers and gave them promises of a supernatural aid of the Holy Spirit in their teaching, like the promises made to the Old Testament prophets. Matthew 28:19,20 — “Go ye… teaching… and lo, I am with you.”

Compare promises to Moses ( Exodus 3:12), Jeremiah ( Jeremiah 1:5-8), Ezekiel (Ezekiel 2 and 3). See also Isaiah 44:3 and Joel 2:28 — “I will pour my Spirit upon thy seed” Matthew 10:7 — “as ye go, preach”; 19 — “be not anxious how or what ye shall speak”; John 14:26 — “the Holy Spirit… shall teach you all things”; 15:26, 27 — “the Spirit of truth shall bear witness of me: and ye also bear witness” — the Spirit shall witness in and through you; 16:13 — “he shall guide you into all the truth” — (1) limitation — all the truth of Christ, i.e., not of philosophy or science, but of religion; (2) comprehension — all the truth within this limited range, i.e., sufficiency of Scripture as rule of faith and practice (Hovey); 17:8 — “the words which thou gavest me I have given unto them”; Acts 1:4 — “he charged them… to wait for the promise of the Father”; John 20:22 — “he breathed on them, and saith unto them, Receive ye the Holy Spirit” Here was both promise and communication of the personal Holy Spirit. Compare Matthew 10:19,20 — “it shall be given you in that hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your Father that speaketh in you.” See Henderson, Inspiration, 247, 248.

Jesus’ testimony here is the testimony of God. In Deuteronomy 18:18, it is said that God will put his words into the mouth of the great Prophet.

In John 12:49,50, Jesus says: “I spake not from myself, but the Father that sent me, he hath given me a commandment, what I should say, and what I should speak. And I know that his commandment is life eternal; the things therefore which I speak, even as the Father hath said unto me, so I speak.” John 17:7,8 — “all things whatsoever thou hast given me are from thee: for the words which thou gavest me I have given unto them.” John 8:40 — “a man that hath told you the truth, which I heard from God.” 4. The apostles claim to have received this promised Spirit, and under his influence to speak with divine authority, putting their writings upon a level with the O.T.

Scriptures. We have not only direct statements that both the matter and the form of their teaching were supervised by the Holy Spirit, but we have indirect evidence that this was the case in the tone of authority which pervades their addresses and epistles. Statements — 1 Corinthians 2:10,13 — “unto us God revealed them through the Spirit… Which things also we speak, not in words which mans wisdom teacheth, but which the Spirit teacheth”; 11:23 — “I received of the Lord that which also I delivered unto you”; 12:8, 28 — the logo>v so>fiav was apparently a gift peculiar to the apostles; 14:37, — “the things which I write unto you… they are the commandment of the Lord”; Galatians 1:12 — “neither did I receive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came to me through revelation of Jesus Christ’; Thessalonians 4:2, 8 — ye know what charge we gave you through the Lord Jesus… Therefore he that rejecteth, rejecteth not man, but God, who giveth his Holy Spirit unto you.” The following passages put the teaching of the apostles on the same level with Old Testament Scripture: Peter 1:11, 12 — “Spirit of Christ which was in them” [Old Testament prophets]; — [New Testament preachers] “preached the gospel unto you by the Holy Spirit”; 2 Peter 1:21 — Old Testament prophets “spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit”; 3:2 — “remember the words which were spoken before by the holy prophets” [Old Testament], “and the commandment of the Lord and Savior through your apostles” [New Testament]; 16 — “wrest [Paul’s Epistles], as they do also the other scriptures, unto their own destruction.” 67. Exodus 4:14-16; 7:1. Implications : — 2 Timothy 3:16 — “Every scripture inspired of God is also profitable — a clear implication of inspiration, though not a direct statement of it — there is a divinely inspired Scripture. In Corinthians 5:3-5, Paul, commanding the Corinthian church with regard to the incestuous person, was arrogant if not inspired. There are more imperatives in the Epistles than in any other writings of the same extent.

Notice the continual asseveration of authority, as in Galatians 1:1,2, and the declaration that disbelief of the record is sin, as in 1 John 5:10,11. Jude 3 — “the faith which was once for all a[pax delivered unto the saints.” See Kahnis, Dogmatik, 3:122; Henderson, Inspiration (2nd ed.), 34, 234; Conant, Genesis, Introduction, xiii, note; Charteris, New Testament Scriptures: They claim truth, unity, and authority.

The passages quoted above show that inspired men distinguished inspiration from their own unaided thinking. These inspired men claim that their inspiration is the same with that of the prophets. Revelations 22:6 — “the Lord, the God of the spirits of the prophets, sent his angel to show unto his servants the things which must shortly come to pass’ — inspiration gave them supernatural knowledge of the future. As inspiration in the Old Testament was the work of the pre-incarnate Christ, so inspiration in the New Testament is the work of the ascended and glorified Christ by his Holy Spirit. On the Relative Authority of the Gospels, see Gerhardt, In Am. Journ. Theol., Apl. 1899:275-294, who shows that not the words of Jesus in the gospels are the final revelation, but rather the teaching of the risen and glorified Christ in the Acts and the Epistles. The Epistles are the posthumous works of Christ. Pattison, Making of the Sermon, 23 — “The apostles, believing themselves to be inspired teachers, often preached without texts; and the fact that their successors did not follow their example shows that for themselves they made no such claim. Inspiration ceased, and henceforth authority was found in the use of the words of the now complete Scriptures.” 5. The apostolic writers of the New Testament, unlike professedly inspired heathen sages and poets, gave attestation by miracles or prophecy that they were inspired by God, and there is reason to believe that the productions of those who were not apostles, such as Mark, Luke, Hebrews, James, and Jude, were recommended to the churches as inspired, by apostolic sanction and authority.

The twelve wrought miracles ( Matthew 10:1). Paul’s “signs of an apostle” ( 2 Corinthians 13:12) = miracles. Internal evidence confirms the tradition that Mark was the “interpreter of Peter,” and that Luke’s gospel and the Acts had the sanction of Paul. Since the purpose of the Spirit’s bestowment was to qualify those who were to be the teachers and founders of the new religion, it is only fair to assume that Christ’s promise of the Spirit was valid not simply to the twelve but to all who stood in their places, and to these not simply as speakers, but, since in this respect they had a still greater need of divine guidance, to them as writers also.

The epistle to the Hebrews, with the letters of James and Jude, appeared in the lifetime of some of the twelve, and passed unchallenged; and the fact that they all, with the possible exception of 2 Peter, were very early accepted by the churches founded and watched over by the apostles, is sufficient evidence that the apostles regarded them as inspired productions. As evidences that the writers regarded their writings as of universal authority, see 1 Corinthians 1:2 — “unto the church of God which is at Corinth… with all that call upon the name of our Lord Jesus Christ in every place,” etc.; 7:17 — “so ordain I in all the churches”; Colossians 4:16 — “And when this epistle hath been read among you, cause that it be read also in the church of the Laodiceans”; 1 Peter 3:15,16 — “our beloved brother Paul also, according to the wisdom given to him, wrote unto you.” See Bartlett, in Princeton Rev., Jan. 1880:23-57; Bibliotheca Sacra Jan. 1884:204, 205.

Johnson, Systematic Theology, 40 — “Miraculous gifts were bestowed at Pentecost on many besides apostles. Prophecy was not an uncommon gift during the apostolic period.” There is no antecedent improbability that inspiration should extend to others than to the principal leaders of the church, and since we have express instances of such inspiration in oral utterances ( Acts 11:28; 21:9, 10) it seems natural that there should have been instances of inspiration in written utterances also. In some cases this appears to have been only an inspiration of superintendence.

Clement of Alexandria says only that Peter neither forbade nor encouraged Mark in his plan of writing the gospel. Irenæus tells us that Mark’s gospel was written after the death of Peter. Papias says that Mark wrote down what he remembered to have heard from Peter. Luke does not seem to have been aware of any miraculous aid in his writing, and his methods appear to have been these of the ordinary historian. 6. The chief proof of inspiration, however, must always be found in the internal characteristics of the Scriptures themselves, as the Holy Spirit discloses these to the sincere inquirer. The testimony of the Holy Spirit combines with the teaching of the Bible to convince the earnest reader that this teaching is as a whole and in all essentials beyond the power of man to communicate, and that it must therefore have been put into permanent and written form by special inspiration of God.

Foster, Christian Life and Theology, 105 — “The testimony of the Spirit is an argument from identity of effects — the doctrines of experience and the doctrines of the Bible — to identity of cause… God-wrought experience proves a God-wrought Bible … This covers the Bible as a whole, if not the whole of the Bible. It is true so far as I can test it. It is to be believed still further if there is no other evidence.” Lyman Abbott, in his Theology of an Evolutionist, 105, calls the Bible “a record of man’s laboratory work in the spiritual realm, a history of the dawning of the consciousness of God and of the divine life in the soul of man.” This seems to us unduly subjective. We prefer to say that the Bible is also God’s witness to us of his presence and working in human hearts and in human history — a witness which proves its divine origin by awakening in us experiences similar to those, which it describes, and which are beyond the power of man to originate.

G. P. Fisher, in Mag. of Christ. Lit. Dec. 1892:239 — “Is the Bible infallible? Not In the sense that all its statements extending even to minute in matters of history and science are strictly accurate. Not in the sense that every doctrinal and ethical statement in all these books is incapable of amendment. The whole must sit in judgment on the parts. Revelation is progressive. There is a human factor as well as a divine. The treasure is in earthen vessels. But the Bible is infallible in the sense that whoever surrenders himself in a docile spirit to its teaching will fall into no hurtful error in matters of faith and charity. Best of all, he will find in it the secret of a new, holy and blessed life, hidden with Christ in God ( Colossians 3:3). The Scriptures are the witness to Christ… Through the Scriptures he is truly and adequately made known to us.” Denney, Death of Christ, — “The unity of the Bible and its inspiration are correlative terms. If we can discern a real unity in it — and I believe we can when we see that it converges upon and culminates in a divine love bearing the sin of the world — then that unity and its inspiration are one and the same thing.

And it is not only inspired as a whole; it is the only book that is inspired.

It is the only book in the world to which God sets his seal in our hearts when we read in search of an answer to the question, How shall a sinful man be righteous with God? The conclusion of our study or inspiration should be the conviction that the Bible gives us a body of doctrine — a ‘faith which was once for all delivered unto the saints’ (Jude 3).”

III. THEORIES OF INSPIRATION.

1. The Intuition theory.

This holds that inspiration is but a higher development of that natural insight into truth which all men possess to some degree; a mode of intelligence in matters of morals and religion which gives rise to sacred books, as a corresponding mode of intelligence in matters of secular truth gives rise to great works of philosophy or art. This mode of intelligence is regarded as the product of man’s own powers, either without special divine influence or with only the in working of an impersonal God.

This theory naturally connects itself with Pelagian and rationalistic views of man’s independence of God, or with pantheistic conceptions of man as being himself the highest manifestation of an all-pervading but unconscious intelligence. Morell and F. W. Newman in England, and Theodore Parker in America, are representatives of this theory. See Morell, Philos. of Religion, 127-179, “Inspiration is only a higher potency of what every man possesses in some degree.” See also Francis W.

Newman (brother of John Henry Newman), Phases of Faith ( = phases of unbelief); Theodore Parker, Discourses of Religion, and Experiences as a Minister: “God is infinite; therefore he is immanent in nature, yet transcending it; immanent in spirit, yet transcending that. He must fill each point of spirit, as of space; matter must unconsciously obey; man, conscious and free, has power to a certain extent to disobey, but obeying, the immanent God acts in man as much as in nature” — quoted in Chadwick, Theodore Parker, 271. Hence Parker’s view of Inspiration: If the conditions are fulfilled, inspiration comes in proportion to man’s gifts and to his use of those gifts. Chadwick himself, in his Old and New Unitarianism, 68, says, “the Scriptures are inspired just so far as They are inspiring, and no more.”

W.C. Gannett, Life of Ezra Stiles Gannett, 196 — “Parker’s spiritualism affirmed, as the grand truth of religion, the immanence of an infinitely perfect God in matter and mind, and his activity in both spheres.”

Martineau, Study of Religion, 2:178-180 — “Theodore Parker treats the regular results of the human faculties as an immediate working of God, and regards the Principia of Newton as inspired… What then becomes of the human personality? He calls God not only omnipresent, but omniactive. Is then Shakespeare only by courtesy author of Macbeth? If this were more than rhetorical, it would be unconditional pantheism.”

Both nature and man were other names for God. Martineau is willing to grant that our intuitions and ideals are expressions of the Deity in us, but our personal reasoning and striving, he thinks, cannot be attributed to God. The word nou~v has no plural: intellect, in whatever subject manifested, being all one, just as a truth is one and the same, in however many persons’ consciousness it may present itself; see Martineau, Seat of Authority, 403. Palmer, Studies in Theological Definition, 27 — “We can draw no sharp distinction between the human mind discovering truth, and the divine mind imparting revelation.” Kuenen belongs to this school.

With regard to this theory we remark: (a) Man has, indeed, a certain natural insight into truth, and we grant that inspiration uses this, so far as it will go, and makes it an instrument in discovering and recording facts of nature or history.

In the investigation, for example, of purely historical matters, such as Luke records, merely natural insight may at times have been sufficient.

When this was the case, Luke may have been left to the exercise of his own faculties, inspiration only inciting and supervising the work. George Harris, Moral Evolution, 413 — “God could not reveal himself to man, unless he first revealed himself in man. If it should be written in letters on the sky: ‘God is good,’ — the words would have no meaning, unless goodness had been made known already in human volition. Revelation is not by an occasional stroke, but by a continuous process. It is not superimposed, but inherent… Genius is inspired; for the mind which perceives truth must be responsive to the Mind that made things the vehicles of thought.” Sanday, Hampton Lectures on Inspiration: “In claiming for the Bible inspiration, we do not exclude the possibility of other lower or more partial degrees of inspiration in other literatures. The Spirit of God has doubtless touched other hearts and other minds… in such a way as to give insight into truth, besides those which could claim descent from Abraham.” Philo thought the LXX translators, the Greek philosophers, and at times even himself, to be inspired. Plato he regards as “most sacred” iJerw>tatov, but all good men are in various degrees inspired. Yet Philo never quotes as authoritative any but the Canonical Books. He attributes to them an authority unique in its kind. (b) In all matters of morals and religion, however, man’s insight into truth is vitiated by wrong affections, and, unless a supernatural wisdom can guide him, he is certain to err himself, and to lead others into error. 1 Corinthians 2:14 — “Now the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God: for they are foolishness unto him; and he cannot know them, because they are spiritually judged”; 10 — “But unto us God revealed them through the Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God.” See quotation from Coleridge, in Shairp, Culture and Religion, 114 — “Water cannot rise higher than its source; neither can human reasoning”; Emerson, Prose Works, 1:474; 2:418 — “T is curious we only believe as deep as we live”; Ullmann, Sinlessness of Jesus, 183, 184. For this reason we hold to a communication of religious truth, at least at times, more direct and objective than is granted by George Adam Smith, Com. on Isaiah, 1:372 — “To Isaiah inspiration was nothing more nor less than the possession of certain strong moral and religious convictions, which he felt he owed to the communication of the Spirit of God, and according to which he interpreted, and even dared to foretell, the history of his people and of the world. Our study completely dispels, on the evidence of the Bible itself, that view of inspiration and prediction so long held in the church.” If this is meant as a denial of any communication of truth other than the internal and subjective, we set over against it Numbers 12:6-8 — “if there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make myself known unto him in a vision, I will speak with him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so; he is faithful in all my house: with him will I speak mouth to mouth, even manifestly, and not in dark speeches; and the form of Jehovah shall he behold.” (c) The theory in question, holding as it does that natural in sight is the only source of religious truth, involves a self-contradiction; — if the theory be true, then one man is inspired to utter what a second is inspired to pronounce false. The Vedas, the Koran and the Bible cannot be inspired to contradict each other.

The Vedas permit thieving, and the Koran teaches salvation by works; these cannot be inspired and the Bible also. Paul cannot be inspired to write his epistles, and Swedenborg also inspired to reject them. The Bible does not admit that pagan teachings have the same divine endorsement with its own. Among the Spartans to steal was praiseworthy; only to be caught stealing was criminal. On the religious consciousness with regard to the personality of God, the divine goodness, the future life, the utility of prayer, in all of which Miss Cobbe, Mr. Greg and Mr. Parker disagree with each other, see Bruce, Apologetics, 143, 144. With Matheson, we may grant that the leading idea of inspiration is “the growth of the divine through the capacities of the human,” while yet we deny that inspiration confines itself to this subjective enlightenment of the human faculties, and also we exclude from the divine working all those perverse and erroneous utterances which are the results of human sin. (d) It makes moral and religions truth to be a purely subjective thing — a matter of private opinion — having no objective reality independently of men’s opinions regarding it.

On this system truth is what men ‘trow’; things are what men ‘think’ — words representing only the subjective. “Better the Greek ajlh>qeia = ‘the unconcealed’ (objective truth)” — Harris, Philos. Basis of Theism, 182. If there be no absolute truth, Lessing’s ‘search for truth’ is the only thing left to us. But who will search, if there is no truth to be found? Even a wise cat will not eternally chase its own tail. The exercise within certain limits is doubtless useful, but the cat gives it up so soon as it becomes convinced that the tail cannot be caught. Sir Richard Burton became a Roman Catholic, a Brahmin, and a Mohammedan, successively, apparently holding with Hamlet that “there is nothing either good or bad, but thinking makes it so.” This same skepticism as to the existence of objective truth appears in the sayings: “Your realization is good for you, and mine for me”; One man is born an Augustinian, and another a Pelagian.” See Dix, Pantheism, Introd, 12. Richter: “It is not the goal, but the course, that makes us happy.” (e) It logically involves the denial of a personal God who is truth and reveals truth, and so makes man to be the highest intelligence in the universe. This is to explain inspiration by denying its existence; since, if there be no personal God, inspiration is but a figure of speech for a purely natural fact.

The animus of this theory is denial of the supernatural like the denial of miracles, it can be maintained only upon grounds of atheism or pantheism.

The view in question, as Hutton in his Essays remarks, would permit us to say that the word of the Lord came to Gibbon, amid the ruins of the Coliseum, saying: “Go, write the history of the Decline and Fall!” But, replies Hutton: Such a view is pantheistic. Inspiration is the voice of a living friend, in distinction from the voice of a dead friend, i.e., the influence of his memory, the inward impulse of genius. Shakespeare’s for example, is not properly denominated inspiration. See Row, Hampton Lectures for 1877:428-474; Rogers, Eclipse of Faith,73 sq. and 283 sq.; Henderson, Inspiration (2nd ed.), 443-469, 481-490. The view of Martineau, Seat of Authority, 302, is substantially this. See criticism of Martineau, by Rainy, in Critical Rev., 1:5-20. 2. The Illumination Theory.

This regards inspiration as merely an intensifying and elevating of the religious perceptions of the Christian, the same in kind, though greater in degree, with the illumination of every believer by the Holy Spirit. It holds not that the Bible is, but that it contains, the word of God, and that not the writings, but only the writers, were inspired. The illumination given by the Holy Spirit, however, puts the inspired writer only in full possession of his normal powers, but does not communicate objective truth beyond his ability to discover or understand.

This theory naturally connects itself with Arminian views of mere cooperation with God. It differs from the Intuition theory by containing several distinctively Christian elements: (1) the influence of a personal God; (2) an extraordinary work of the Holy Spirit; (3) the Christological character of the Scriptures, putting into form a revelation of which Christ is the center ( Revelation 19:10).

But while it grants that the Scripture writers were “moved by the Holy Spirit”(fero>menoi — 1 Peter 1:21), it ignores the complementary fact that the Scripture itself is “inspired of God” (qeo>pneustov — Timothy 3:16). Luther’s view resembles this; see Dorner, Gesch. Prot.

Theol., 236, 237. Schleiermacher, with the more orthodox Neander, Tholuck and Cremer, holds it: see Essays by Tholuck, in Herzog, Encylopadie, and in Noyes, Theological Essays; Cremer, Lexicon New Testament, qeo>pneustov , and in Herzog and Hauck, Realencye., 9:183- 203. In France, Sabatier, Philos. Religion, 90, remarks: “Prophetic inspiration is piety raised to the second power” — it differs from the piety of common men only in intensity and energy. See also Godet, in Revue Chretienne, Jan. 1878.

In England Coleridge propounded this view in his Confessions of an Inquiring Spirit (Works, 5:669) — “Whatever finds me bears witness that it has proceeded from a Holy Spirit; in the Bible there is more that finds me than I have experienced in all other books put together.” [Shall we then call Baxter’s “Saints’ Rest” inspired, while the Books of Chronicles are not?] See also F. W. Robertson, Sermon I; Life and Letters, letter 53, vol. 1:270; 2:143-150 — “The other way, some twenty or thirty men in the world’s history have had special communication, miraculous and from God; in this way, all may have it, and by devout and earnest cultivation of the mind and heart may have it illimitably increased.” Frederick W.H.

Myers. Catholic Thoughts on the Bible and Theology, 10-20, emphasizes the idea that the Scriptures are, in their earlier parts, not merely inadequate, but partially untrue, and subsequently superseded by fuller revelations. The leading thought is that of accommodation; the record of revelation is not necessarily infallible. Allen, Religious Progress, 44, quotes Bishop Thirlwall: “If that Spirit by which every man spoke of old is a living and present Spirit, its later lessons may well transcend its earlier”; — Pascal’s ‘colossal man’ is the race: the first men represented only infancy; we are ‘the ancients’, and we are wiser than our fathers. See also Farrar, Critical History of Free Thought, 473, note 50; Martineau, Studies in Christianity: “One Gospel in Many Dialects.”

Of American writers who favor this view, see J.F. Clarke, Orthodoxy, its Truths and Errors, 74; Curtis, Human Element in Inspiration; Whiton, in N. Eng., Jan. 1882:63-72; Ladd, in Andover Review, July, 1885, in What is the Bible? and in Doctrine of Sacred Scripture, 1:759 — “a large proportion of its writings inspired”; 2:178, 275, 497 — “that fundamental misconception which identifies the Bible and the word of God”; 2:488 — “Inspiration, as the subjective condition of Biblical revelation and the predicate of the word of God, is specifically the same illumining, quickening, elevating and purifying work of the Holy Spirit as that which goes on in the persons of the entire believing community.” Professor Ladd therefore pares down all predictive prophecy, and regards Isaiah 53, not as directly and solely, but only as typically, Messianic. Clarke, Christian Theology, 35-44 — “Inspiration is exaltation, quickening of ability, stimulation of spiritual power; it is uplifting and enlargement of capacity for perception, comprehension and utterance; and all under the influence of a thought, a truth, or an ideal that has taken possession of the soul… Inspiration to write was not different in kind from the common influence of God upon his people… Inequality in the Scriptures is plain… Even if we were convinced that some book would better have been omitted from the Canon, our confidence in the Scriptures would not thereby be shaken.

The Canon did not make Scripture, but Scripture made the Canon. The inspiration of the Bible does not prove its excellence, but its excellence proves its inspiration. The Spirit brought the Scriptures to help Christ’s work, but not to take his place. Scripture says with Paul: ‘Not that we have lordship over your faith, but are helpers of your joy: for in faith ye stand fast’ ( 2 Corinthians 1:24)” E.G. Robinson: “The office of the Spirit in inspiration is not different from that which he performed for Christians at the time the gospels were written… When the prophets say: ‘Thus saith the Lord,’ they mean simply that they have divine authority for what they utter.” Calvin E.

Stowe, History of Books of Bible,19 — “It is not the words of the Bible that were inspired. It is not the thoughts of the Bible that were inspired. It was the men who wrote the Bible who were inspired.” Thayer, Changed Attitude toward the Bible,63 — “It was not before the polemic spirit became rife in the controversies which followed the Reformation that the fundamental distinction between the word of God and the record of that word became obliterated, and the pestilent tenet gained currency that the Bible is absolutely free from every error of every sort.” Principal Cave, in Homiletical Review, Feb. 1892, admitting errors but none serious in the Bible, proposes a mediating statement for the present controversy, namely, that Revelation implies inerrancy, but that Inspiration does not.

Whatever God reveals must be true, but many have become inspired without being rendered infallible. See also Mead, Supernatural Revelation, 291 sq .

With regard to this theory we remark: (a) There is unquestionably an illumination of the mind of every believer by the Holy Spirit, and we grant that there may have been instances in which the influence of the Spirit, in inspiration, amounted only to illumination.

Certain applications and interpretations of Old Testament Scripture, as for example, John the Baptist’s application to Jesus of Isaiah’s prophecy ( John 1:29 — “Behold, the Lamb of God, that taketh away [margin ‘beareth’] the sin of the world”), and Peter’s interpretation of David’s words ( Acts 2:27 — “thou wilt not leave my soul unto Hades, Neither wilt thou give thy Holy One to see corruption”), may have required only the illuminating influence of the Holy Spirit. There is a sense in which we may say that the Scriptures are inspired only to those who are themselves inspired. The Holy Spirit must show us Christ before we recognize the work of the Spirit in Scripture. The doctrines of atonement and of justification perhaps did not need to be newly revealed to the New Testament writers; illumination as to earlier revelations may have sufficed. But that Christ existed before his incarnation, and that there are personal distinctions in the Godhead, probably required revelation Edison says that “inspiration is simply perspiration” Genius has been defined as unlimited power to take pains.” But it is more — the power to do spontaneously and without effort what the ordinary man does by the hardest. Every great genius recognizes that this power is due to the in flowing into him of a Spirit greater than his own — the Spirit of divine wisdom and energy. The Scripture writers attribute their understanding of divine things to the Holy Spirit; see next paragraph. On genius, as due to “subliminal up-rush, “see F.W.H. Myer’s, human Personality, 1:70-120. (b) But we deny that this was the constant method of inspiration, or that such an influence can account for the revelation of new truth to the prophets and apostles. The illumination of the Holy Spirit gives no new truth, but only a vivid apprehension of the truth already revealed. Any original communication of truth must have required a work of the Spirit different, not in degree, but in kind.

The Scriptures clearly distinguish between revelation, or the communication of new truth, and illumination, or the quickening of loan’s cognitive powers to perceive truth already revealed. No increase in the power of the eye or the telescope will do more than to bring into clear view what is already within its range. Illumination will not lift the veil that hides what is beyond. Revelation, on the other hand, is an ‘unveiling’ — the raising of a curtain, or the bringing within our range of what was hidden before. Such a special operation of God is described in 2 Sam. 23:2, 3 — “The Spirit of Jehovah spake by me, And His word was upon my tongue. The God of Israel said. The Rock of Israel spake to me” Matthew 10:20 — “For it is not ye that speak, but the Spirit of your father that speaketh in you”; 1 Corinthians 2:9-13 — “Things which eye saw not, and ear heard not, And which entered not into the ear of man, Whatsoever things God prepared for them that love him. But unto us God revealed them through the Spirit: for the Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God. For who among men knoweth the things of man save the spirit of the man, which is in him? even so the things of God none knoweth, save the Spirit of God. But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is from God that we might know the things that were freely given to us of God.”

Clairvoyance and second sight, of which along with many eases of imposition and exaggeration there seems to be a small residuum of proved fact, show that there may be extraordinary operations of our natural powers. But, as in the ease of miracle, the inspiration of Scripture necessitated an exaltation of these natural powers such as only the special influence of the Holy Spirit can explain. That the product is inexplicable as due to mere illumination seems plain when we remember that revelation sometimes excluded illumination as to the meaning of that which was communicated, for the prophets are represented in 1 Peter 1:11 as “searching what time or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did point unto, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ, and the glories that should follow them” Since no degree of illumination can account for the prediction of “things that are to come” ( John 16:13), this theory tends to the denial of any immediate revelation in prophecy so-called, and the denial easily extends to any immediate revelation of doctrine. (c) Mere illumination could not secure the Scripture writers from frequent and grievous error. The spiritual perception of the Christian is always rendered to some extent imperfect and deceptive by remaining depravity.

The subjective element so predominates in this theory that no certainty remains even with regard to the trustworthiness of the Scriptures as a whole.

While we admit imperfections of detail in matters not essential to the moral and religious teaching of Scripture, we claim that the Bible furnishes a sufficient guide to Christ and to salvation. The theory we are considering, however, by making the measure of holiness to be the measure of inspiration, renders even the collective testimony of the Scripture writers an uncertain guide to truth. We point out therefore that inspiration is not absolutely limited by the moral condition of those who are inspired. Knowledge, in the Christian, may go beyond conduct.

Balaam and Caiaphas were not holy men, yet they were inspired ( Numbers 23:5; John 11:49-52). The promise of Christ assured at least the essential trustworthiness of his witnesses ( Matthew 10:7,19,20; John 14:26; 15:26, 27; 16:13; 17:8). This theory that inspiration is a wholly subjective communication of truth leads to the practical rejection of important parts of Scripture, in fact to the rejection of all Scripture that professes to convey truth beyond the power of man to discover or to understand. Notice the progress from Thomas Arnold (Sermons, 2:185) to Matthew Arnold (Literature and Dogma, 134, 137). Notice also Swedenborg’s rejection of nearly one-half the Bible (Ruth, Chronicles, Ezra, Nehemiah, Esther, Job, Proverbs, Ecclesiastes, Song of Solomon, and the whole of the New Testament, except the Gospels and the Apocalypse), connected with the claim of divine authority for his new revelation. “His interlocutors all Swedenborgize” (R. W. Emerson). On Swedenborg, see Hours with the Mystics, 2:230; Moehler, Symbolism, 436-466; New Englander, Jan. 1874:195; Baptist Review, 1883:143-157; Pond, Swedenborgianism; Ireland, The Blot on the Brain, 1-129. (d) The theory is logically indefensible, as intimating that illumination with regard to truth can be imparted without imparting truth itself whereas God must first furnish objective truth to be perceived before he can illuminate the mind to perceive the meaning of that truth.

The theory is analogous to the views that preservation is a continued creation: knowledge is recognition; regeneration is increase of light. In order to preservation, something must first be created which can be preserved; in order to recognition, something must be known which can be recognized or known again; in order to make increase of light of any use, there must first be the power to see. In like manner, inspiration cannot be mere illumination, because the external necessarily precedes the internal, the objective precedes the subjective, the truth revealed precedes the apprehension of that truth. In the case of all truth that surpasses the normal powers of man to perceive or evolve, there must be special communication from God; revelation must go before inspiration; inspiration alone is not revelation. It matters not whether this communication of truth be from without or from within. As in creation, God can work from within, yet the new result is not explicable as mere reproduction of the past. The eye can see only as it receives and uses the external light furnished by the sun, even though it be equally true that without the eye the light of the sun would be nothing worth.

Pfleiderer, Grundriss, 17-19, says that to Schleiermacher revelation is the original appearance of a proper religious life, which life is derived neither from external communication nor from invention and reflection, but from a divine impartation, which impartation can be regarded, not merely as an instructive influence upon man as an intellectual being, but as an endowment determining his whole personal existence — an endowment analogous to the higher conditions of poetic and heroic exaltation.

Pfleiderer himself would give the name “revelation” to “every original experience In which man becomes aware of, and is seized by, supersensible truth, truth which does not come from external impartation nor from purposed reflection, but from the unconscious and undivided transcendental ground of the soul, and so is received as an impartation from God through the medium of the soul’s human activity.” Kaftan, Dogmatik, 51 sq. — “We must put the conception of revelation in place of inspiration.

Scripture is the record of divine revelation. We do not propose a new doctrine of inspiration, in place of the old. We need only revelation, and, here and there, providence. The testimony of the Holy Spirit is given, not to inspiration, but to revelation — the truths that touch the human spirit and have been historically revealed.”

Allen, Jonathan Edwards, 182 — Edwards held that spiritual life in the soul is given by God only to his favorites and dear children, while inspiration may be thrown out as it were, to dogs and swine — a Balaam, Saul, and Judas. The greatest privilege of apostles and prophets was not their inspiration, but their holiness. Better to have grace in the heart, than to be the mother of Christ ( Luke 11:27,28). Maltbie D. Babcock, in S. S. Times, 1901:590 — “The man who mourns because infallibility cannot be had in a church, or a guide, or a set of standards, does not know when he is well off. How could God develop our minds, our power of moral judgment, if there were no ‘spirit to be tried’ ( 1 John 4:1), no necessity for discrimination, no discipline of search and challenge and choice? To give the right answer to a problem is to put him on the side of infallibility so far as that answer is concerned, but it is to do him an ineffable wrong touching his real education. The blessing of life’s schooling is not in knowing the right answer in advance, but in developing power through struggle.”

Why did John Henry Newman surrender to the Church of Rome? Because he assumed that an external authority is absolutely essential to religion, and, when such an assumption is followed, Rome is the only logical terminus. “Dogma was,” he says, “the fundamental principle of my religion.” Modern ritualism is a return to this medieval notion. “Dogmatic Christianity.” says Harnack. “is Catholic. It needs an inerrant Bible, and an infallible church to interpret that Bible. The dogmatic Protestant is of the same camp with the sacramental and infallible Catholic.” Lyman Abbott: “The new Reformation denies the infallibility of the Bible, as the Protestant Reformation denied the infallibility of the Church. There is no infallible authority. Infallible authority is undesirable… God has given us something far better, — life… The Bible is the record of the gradual manifestation of God to man in human experience, in moral laws and their applications, and in the life of Him who was God manifest in the flesh.”

Leighton Williams: “There is no inspiration apart from experience.

Baptists are not sacramental, nor creedal, but experimental Christians” — not Romanists, nor Protestants, but believers in an Inner Light. “Life, as it develops, awakens into self-consciousness. That self-consciousness becomes the most reliable witness as to the nature of the life of which it is the development. Within the limits of its own sphere, its authority is supreme. Prophecy is the utterance of the seal in moments of deep religious experience. The inspiration of Scripture writers is not a peculiar thing, — it was given that the same inspiration might be perfected in those who read their writings.” Christ is the only ultimate authority, and he reveals himself in three ways, through Scripture, the Reason, and the Church. Only Life saves, and the Way leads through the Truth to the Life.

Baptists stand nearer to the episcopal system of life than to the Presbyterian system of creed. Whiton, Gloria Patri, 136 — “The mistake is in looking to the Father above the world, rather than to the Son and the Spirit within the world, as the immediate source of revelation… Revelation is the unfolding of the life and thought of God within the world. One should not be troubled by finding errors in the Scriptures, any more than by finding imperfections in any physical work of God, as in the human eye.” 3. The Dictation theory.

This theory holds that inspiration consisted in such a possession of the minds and bodies of the Scripture writers by the Holy Spirit, that they became passive instruments or amanuenses — pens, not penmen, of God.

This theory naturally connects itself with that view of miracles which regards them as suspensions or violations of natural law. Dorner, Glaubenslehre, 1:624 (translation 2:186-189), calls it a “docetic view of inspiration. It holds to the abolition of second causes, and to the perfect passivity of the human instrument; denies any inspiration of persons, and maintains inspiration of writings only. This exaggeration of the divine element led to the hypothesis of a multiform divine sense in Scripture, and, in assigning the spiritual meaning, a rationalizing spirit led the way.”

Representatives of this view are Quenstedt, Theol. Didact., 1:76 — “The Holy Ghost inspired his amanuenses with those expressions which they would have employed, had they been left to themselves”; Hooker, Works, 2:383 — “They neither spake nor wrote any word of their own, but uttered syllable by syllable as the Spirit put it into their mouths”; Gaussen, Theopneusty, 61 — “The Bible is not a book which God charged men already enlightened to make under his protection; it is a book which God dictated to them”; Cunningham, Theol. Lectures, 349 — “The verbal inspiration of the Scriptures [which he advocates] implies in general that the words of Scripture were suggested or dictated by the Holy Spirit, as well as the substance of the matter, and this, not only in some portion of the Scriptures, but through the whole.” This reminds us of the old theory that God created fossils in the rocks as they would be had ancient seas existed.

Sanday, Bampton Lectures on Inspiration,74, quotes Philo as saying: “A prophet gives forth nothing at all of his own, but acts as interpreter at the prompting of another in all his utterances, and as long as he is under inspiration he is in ignorance, his reason departing from its place and yielding up the citadel of the soul, when the divine Spirit enters into it and dwells in it and strikes at the mechanism of the voice, sounding through it to the clear declaration of that which he prophesieth”; in Genesis 15:12 — “About the setting of the sun a trance came upon Abram” — the sun is the light of human reason which sets and gives place to the Spirit of God. Sanday, 78, says also: “Josephus holds that even historical narratives, such as those at the beginning of the Pentateuch which were not written down by contemporary prophets, were obtained by direct inspiration from God. The Jews from their birth regard their Scripture as ‘the decrees of God,’ which they strictly observe, and for which if need be they are ready to die.” The Rabbis said that “Moses did not write one word out of his own knowledge.”

The Reformers held to a much freer view than this. Luther said: “What does not carry Christ with it is not apostolic, even though St. Peter or St. Paul taught it. If our adversaries fall back on the Scripture against Christ, we fall back on Christ against the Scripture.” Luther refused canonical authority to books not actually written by apostles or composed, like Mark and Luke, under their direction. So he rejected from the rank of canonical authority Hebrews, James, Jude, 2 Peter and Revelation. Even Calvin doubted the Petrine authorship of 2 Peter, excluded the book of Revelation from the Scripture on which he wrote Commentaries, and also thus ignored the second and third epistles of John: see Prof. R. E.

Thompson, in S. S. Times, Dec. 3, 1898:803, 804. The dictation theory is post-Reformation. H.P. Smith, Bib. Scholarship and Inspiration, 85 — “After the Council of Trent, the Roman Catholic polemic became sharper.

It became the endeavor of that party to show the necessity of tradition and the untrustworthiness of Scripture alone. This led the Protestants to defend the Bible more tenaciously than before.” The Swiss Formula of Consensus in 1675 not only called the Scriptures “the very word of God,” but declared the Hebrew vowel-points to be inspired, and some theologians traced them back to Adam. John Owen held to the inspiration of the vowel points; see Horton, Inspiration and Bible,8. Of the age which produced the Protestant dogmatic theology, Charles Beard, in the Hibbert Lectures for 1883, says: “I know no epoch of Christianity to which I could more confidently point in illustration of the fact that where there is most theology, there is often least religion.”

Of this view we may remark: (a) We grant that there are instances when God’s communications were uttered in an audible voice and took a definite form of words, and that this was sometimes accompanied with the command to commit the words to writing.

For examples, see Exodus 3:4 — “God called unto him out of the midst of the bush, and said, Moses, Moses”; 20:22 — “Ye yourselves have seen that I have talked with you from heaven”; cf. Hebrews 12:19 — “the voice of words; which voice they that heard entreated that no word mere should be spoken unto them”; Numbers 7:89 — “And when Moses went into the tent of meeting to speak with him, then he heard the Voice speaking unto him from above the mercy seat that was upon the ark of the testimony, from between the two cherubim: and he spake unto him”; 8:1 — “And Jehovah spake unto Moses, saying,” etc.; Dan. 4:31 — “While the word was in the king’s mouth, there fell a voice from heaven, saying, O king Nebuchadnezzar, to thee it is spoken: The kingdom is departed from thee”; Acts 9:5 — “And he said, Who art thou, Lord? And he said, I am Jesus whom thou persecutest”; Revelations 19:9 — “And he saith unto me, Write, Blessed are they that are bidden to the marriage supper of the Lamb”; 21:5 “And he that sitteth on the throne said, Behold, I make all things new”; cf. 1:10, 11 — “and I heard behind me a great voice, as of a trumpet saying, What thou seest, write in a hook and send it to the seven churches” So the voice from heaven at the baptism and at the transfiguration, of Jesus ( Matthew 3:17, and 17:5; see Broadus, Amer. Com., on these passages). (b) The theory in question, however, rests upon a partial induction of scripture facts, — unwarrantably assuming that such occasional instances of direct dictation reveal the invariable method of God’s communications of truth to the writers of the Bible.

Scripture nowhere declares that this immediate communication of the words was universal. On 1 Corinthians 2:13 — oujk ejn didaktov ajnqrwpi>nhv sofi>av lo>goiv ajll ejn didaktoi~v pneu>matov, the text usually cited as proof of invariable dictation — Meyer says: “There is no dictation here; didaktoi~v excludes everything mechanical.” Henderson, Inspiration (2nd ed.), 333, 349 — “As human wisdom did not dictate word for word, so the Spirit did not.” Paul claims for Scripture simply a general style of plainness, which is due to the influence of the Spirit.

Manly: “Dictation to an amanuensis is not teaching.” Our Revised Version properly translates the remainder of the verse, 1 Corinthians 2:13 — “combining spiritual things with spiritual words.” (c) It cannot account for the manifestly human element in the Scriptures.

There are peculiarities of style, which distinguish the productions of each writer from those of every other, and there are variations in accounts of the same transaction, which are inconsistent with the theory of a solely divine authorship.

Notice Paul’s anacoloutha and his bursts of grief and indignation ( Romans 5:12sq., 2 Corinthians 11:1 sq.), and his ignorance of the precise number whom he had baptized ( 1 Corinthians 1:16). One beggar or two ( Matthew 20:30; cf. Luke 18:35); “about five and twenty or thirty furlongs” ( John 6:19); “shed for many ‘( Matthew 26:28 has peri>, Mark 14:24 and Luke 22:20 have uJpe>r ).

Dictation of words which were immediately to be lost by imperfect transcription? Clarke, Christian Theology, 33-37 — “We are under no obligation to maintain the complete inerrancy of the Scriptures. In them we have the freedom of life, rather than extraordinary precision of statement or accuracy of detail. We have become Christians in spite of differences between the evangelists. The Scriptures are various, progressive, free. There is no authority in Scripture for applying the word ‘inspired’ to our present Bible as a whole, and theology is not bound to employ this word in defining the Scriptures. Christianity is founded in history, and will stand whether the Scriptures are inspired or not. If special inspiration were wholly disproved, Christ would still be the Savior of the world. But the divine element in the Scriptures will never be disproved.” (d) It is inconsistent with a wise economy of means, to suppose that the Scripture writers should have had dictated to them what they knew already, or what they could inform themselves of by the use of their natural powers.

Why employ eyewitnesses at all? Why not dictate the gospels to Gentiles living a thousand years before? God respects the instruments he has called into being, and he uses them according to their constitutional gifts. George Eliot represents Stradivarius as saying: — “If my hand slacked, I should rob God — since he is fullest good — Leaving a blank instead of violins.

God cannot make Antonio Stradivari’s violins, Without Antonio.” Mark 11:3 — “The Lord hath need of him,” may apply to man as well as beast. (e) It contradicts what we know of the law of God’s working in the soul.

The higher and nobler God’s communications, the more fully is man in possession and use of his own faculties. We cannot suppose that this highest work of man under the influence of the Spirit was purely mechanical.

Joseph receives communication by vision ( Matthew 1:20): Mary, by words of an angel spoken in her waking moments ( Luke 1:28). The more advanced the recipient, the more conscious the communication.

These four theories might almost be called the Pelagian, the Arminian, the Docetic, and the Dynamical. Sabatier, Philos. Religion,41,42, 87 — “In the Gospel of the Hebrews, the Father says at the baptism to Jesus: ‘My Son, in all the prophets I was waiting for thee, that thou mightest come, and that I might rest in thee. For thou art my Rest.’ Inspiration becomes more and more internal, until in Christ it is continuous and complete.

Upon the opposite Docetic view, the most perfect inspiration should have been that of Balaam’s ass.” Semler represents the Pelagian or Ebionitic view, as Quenstedt represents this Docetic view. Semler localizes and temporalizes the contents of Scripture. Yet, though he carried this to the extreme of excluding any divine authorship, he did good service in leading the way to the historical study of the Bible. 4. The Dynamical Theory.

The true view holds, in opposition to the first of these theories, that inspiration is not simply a natural but also a supernatural fact, and that it is the immediate work of a personal God in the soul of man.

It holds, in opposition to the second, that inspiration belongs, not only to the men who wrote the Scriptures but also to the Scriptures, which they wrote, so that these Scriptures, when taken together, constitute a trustworthy and sufficient record of divine revelation.

It holds, in opposition to the third theory, that the Scriptures contain a human as well as a divine element, so that while they present a body of divinely revealed truth, this truth is shaped in human molds and adapted to ordinary human intelligence.

In short, inspiration is characteristically neither natural, partial, nor mechanical, but supernatural, plenary, and dynamical. Further explanations will be grouped under the head of The Union of the Divine and Human Elements in Inspiration, in the section which immediately follows.

If the small circle be taken as symbol of the human element in inspiration, and the large circle as symbol of the divine, then the Intuition theory would be represented by the small circle alone; the Dictation theory by the large circle alone; the Illumination theory by the small circle external to the large, and touching it at only a single point; the Dynamical theory by two concentric circles, the small included in the large. Even when inspiration is but the exaltation and intensification of man’s natural powers, it must be considered the work of God as well as of man. God can work from within as well as from without. As creation and regeneration are works of the immanent rather than of the transcendent God, so inspiration is in general a work within man’s soul, rather than a communication to him from without. Prophecy may be natural to perfect humanity. Revelation is an unveiling, and the Rontgen rays enable as to see through a veil. But the insight of the Scripture writers into truth so far beyond their mental and moral powers is inexplicable except by a supernatural influence upon their minds; in other words, except as they were lifted up into the divine Reason and endowed with the wisdom of God.

Although we propose this Dynamical theory as one which best explains the Scripture facts, we do not regard this or any other theory as of essential importance. No theory of inspiration is necessary to Christian faith. Revelation precedes inspiration. There was religion before the Old Testament, and an oral gospel before the New Testament. God might reveal without recording; might permit record without inspiration; might inspire without vouching for anything more than religious teaching and for the history, only so far as was necessary to that religious teaching.

Whatever theory of inspiration we frame, should be the result of a strict induction of the Scripture facts, and not an a priori scheme to which Scripture must be conformed. The fault of many past discussions of the subject is the assumption that God must adopt some particular method of inspiration, or secures an absolute perfection of detail in matters not essential to the religious teaching of Scripture. Perhaps the best theory of inspiration is to have no theory.

Warfield and Hodge, Inspiration,8 — “Very many religious and historical truths must be established before we come to the question of inspiration, as for instance the being and moral government of God, the fallen condition of man, the fact of a redemptive scheme, the general historical truth of the Scriptures, and the validity and authority of the revelation of God’s will which they contain, i.e., the general truth of Christianity and of its doctrines. Hence it follows that while the inspiration of the Scriptures is true, and being true is a principle fundamental to the adequate interpretation of Scripture, it nevertheless is not, in the first instance, a principle fundamental to the truth of the Christian religion.” Warfield, in Presb. and Ref. Rev., April, 1893:208 — “We do not found the whole Christian system on the doctrine of inspiration… Were there no such thing as inspiration, Christianity would be true, and all its essential doctrines would be credibly witnessed to us” — in the gospels and in the living church. F. L. Patton, Inspiration,22 — “I must take exception to the disposition of some to stake the fortunes of Christianity on the doctrine of inspiration. Not that I yield to any one in profound conviction of the truth and importance of the doctrine. But it is proper for us to bear in mind the immense argumentative advantage which Christianity has, aside altogether from the inspiration of the documents on which it rests.” So argue also Sanday, Oracles of God, and Dale, The Living Christ.

IV. THE UNION OF THE DIVINE AND HUMAN ELEMENTS IN INSPIRATION.

1. The Scriptures are the production equally of God and of man, and are therefore never to be regarded as merely human or merely divine.

The mystery of inspiration consists in neither of these terms separately, but in the union of the two, Of this, however, there are analogies in the interpenetration of human powers by the divine efficiency in regeneration and sanctification, and in the union of the divine and human natures in the person of Jesus Christ.

According to “Dalton’s law,” each gas is as a vacuum to every other: “Gases are mutually passive, and pass into each other as into vacua.”

Each interpenetrates the other. But this does not furnish a perfect illustration of our subject. The atom of oxygen and the atom of nitrogen, in common air, remain side by side but they do not unite. In inspiration the human and the divine elements do unite. The Lutheran maxim, “Mens humana capax divinæ” is one of the most important principles of a true theology. “The Lutherans think of humanity as a thing made by God for himself and to receive himself. The Reformed thinks of the Deity as ever preserving himself from any confusion with the creature. They fear pantheism and idolatry” (Bp. of Salisbury, quoted in Swayne, Our Lord’s Knowledge, xx).

Sabarier, Philos. Religion,66 — “That initial mystery, the relation in our consciousness between the individual and the universal element, between the finite and the infinite, between God and man, — how can we comprehend their coexistence and their union, and yet how can we doubt it? Where is the thoughtful man today who has not broken the thin crust of his daily life, and caught a glimpse of those profound and obscure waters on which floats our consciousness? Who has not felt within himself a veiled presence and a force much greater than his own? What worker in a lofty cause has not perceived within his own personal activity, and saluted with a feeling of veneration, the mysterious activity of a universal and eternal Power? ‘in Deo vivimus, movemur, et sumus… This mystery cannot be dissipated, for without it religion itself would no longer exist.” Quackenbos, in Harper’s Magazine, July, 1900:264, says that “hypnotic suggestion is but inspiration” The analogy of human influence thus communicated may at least help us to some understanding of the divine. 2. This union of the divine and human agencies in inspiration is not to be conceived of as one of external impartation and reception.

On the other hand, those whom God raised up and providentially qualified to do this work, spoke and wrote the words of God, when inspired, not as from without, but as from within, and that not passively, but in the most conscious possession and the most exalted exercise of their own powers of intellect, emotion, and will.

The Holy Spirit does not dwell in man as water in a vessel. We may rather illustrate the experience of the Scripture writers by the experience of the preacher who under the influence of God’s Spirit is carried beyond himself, and is conscious of a clearer apprehension of truth and of a greater ability to utter it than belong to his unaided nature, yet knows himself to be no passive vehicle of a divine communication, but to be as never before in possession and exercise of his own powers. The inspiration of the Scripture writers, however, goes far beyond the illumination granted to the preacher, in that it qualifies them to put the truth, without error, into permanent and written form. This inspiration, moreover, is more than providential preparation. Like miracles, inspiration may use man’s natural powers, but man’s natural powers do not explain it. Moses, David, Paul, and John were providentially endowed and educated for their work of writing Scripture, but this endowment and education were not inspiration itself, but only the preparation for it.

Beyschlag: “With John, remembrance and exposition had become inseparable.” E.G. Robinson: “Novelists do not create characters, — they reproduce with modifications material presented to their memories. So the apostles reproduced their impressions of Christ.” Hutton, Essays, 2:231 — “The Psalmists vacillate between the first person and the third, when they deliver the purposes of God. As they warm with their spiritual inspiration, they lose themselves in the person of Him who inspires them, and then they are again recalled to themselves.” Stanley, Life and Letters, 1:380 — “Revelation is not resolved into a mere human process because we are able to distinguish the natural agencies through which it was communicated”; 2:102 — “You seem to me to transfer too much to these ancient prophets and writers and chiefs our modern notions of divine origin… Our notion, or rather, the modern Puritanical notion of divine origin, is of a preternatural force or voice, putting aside secondary agencies, and separated from those agencies by an impassable gulf. The ancient, Oriental, Biblical notion was of a supreme Will acting through those agencies, or rather, being inseparable from them. Our notions of inspiration and divine communications insist on absolute perfection of fact, morals, and doctrine. The Biblical notion was that inspiration was compatible with weakness, infirmity, contradiction.” Ladd, Philosophy of Mind, 182 — “In inspiration the thoughts, feelings, purposes are organized into another One than the self in which they were themselves born. That other One is in themselves. They enter into communication with Him. Yet this may be supernatural, even though natural psychological means are used. Inspiration which is external is not inspiration at all.” This last sentence, however, seems to us a needless exaggeration of the true principle. Though God originally inspires from within, he may also communicate truth from without. 3. Inspiration, therefore, did not remove, but rather pressed into its own service, all the personal peculiarities of the writers, together with their defects of culture and literary style.

Every imperfection not inconsistent with truth in a human composition may exist in inspired Scripture. The Bible is God’s word, in the sense that it presents to us divine truth in human forms, and is a revelation not for a select class but for the common mind. Lightly understood, this very humanity of the Bible is a proof of its divinity.

Locke: “When God made the prophet, he did not unmake the man.” Prof.

Day: “The bush in which God appeared to Moses remained a bush, while yet burning with the brightness of God and uttering forth the majesty of the mind of God.” The paragraphs of the Koran are called ayat , or “sign,” from their supposed supernatural elegance. But elegant literary productions do not touch the heart. The Bible is not merely the word of God; it is also the word made flesh. The Holy Spirit hides himself, that he may show forth Christ ( John 3:8); he is known only by his effects — a pattern for preachers, who are ministers of the Spirit ( 2 Corinthians 3:6). See Conant on Genesis, 65.

The Moslem declares that every word of the Koran came by the agency of Gabriel from the seventh heaven, and that its very pronunciation is inspired. Better the doctrine of Martineau, Seat of Authority, 289 — “Though the pattern be divine, the web that bears it must still be human.”

Jackson, James Martineau, 255 “Paul’s metaphor of the ‘treasure in earthen vessels’ ( 2 Corinthians 4:7) you cannot allow to give you guidance; you want, not the treasure only, but the casket too, to come from above, and be of the crystal of the sky. You want the record to be divine, not only in its spirit, but also in its letter.” Charles Hodge, Systematic Theology, 1:157 — “When God ordains praise out of the mouths of babes, they must speak as babes, or the whole power and beauty of the tribute will be lost.”

Evans, Bib. Scholarship and Inspiration,16,25 — “The pneu~ma of a dead wind is never changed, as the Rabbis of old thought, into the pneu~ma of a living spirit. The raven that fed Elijah was nothing more than a bird. Nor does man, when supernaturally influenced, cease to be a man. An inspired man is not God, nor a divinely manipulated Automaton”; “In Scripture there may be as much imperfection as, in the parts of any organism, would be consistent with the perfect adaptation of that Organism to its destined end. Scripture then, taken together, is a statement of moral and religious truth sufficient for men’s salvation, or an infallible and sufficient rule of faith and practice.” J.S. Wrightnour: “Inspire means to breathe in, as a flute player breathes into his instrument. As different flutes may have their own shapes, peculiarities, and what might seem like defects, so here; yet all are breathed into by one Spirit. The same Spirit who inspired them selected those instruments, which were best for his purpose, as the Savior selected his apostles. In these writings therefore is given us, in the precise way that is best for us the spiritual instruction and food that we need. Food for the body is not always given in the most concentrated form, but in the form that is best adapted for digestion. So God gives gold, not in coin ready stamped, but in the quartz of the mine whence it has to be dug and smelted.” Remains of Arthur H. Hallam, in John Brown’s Rab and his Friends, 274 — “I see that the Bible fits in to every fold of the human heart. I am a man, and I believe it is God’s book, because it is man’s book.” 4. In inspiration God may use all right and normal methods of literary composition.

As we recognize in literature the proper function of history, poetry, and fiction; of prophecy, parable, and drama; of personification and proverb; of allegory and dogmatic instruction; and even of myth and legend; we cannot deny the possibility that God may use any one of these methods of communicating truth, leaving it to us to determine in any single case which of these methods he has adopted.

In inspiration, as in regeneration and sanctification, God works “in divers manners” ( Hebrews 1:1). The Scriptures, like the books of secular literature, must be interpreted in the light of their purpose. Poetry must not be treated as prose, and parable must not be made to “go on all fours,” when it was meant to walk erect and to tell one simple story.

Drama is not history, nor is personification to be regarded as biography.

There is a rhetorical overstatement, which is intended only as a vivid emphasizing of important truth. Allegory is a popular mode of illustration.

Even myth and legend may convey great lessons not otherwise apprehensible to infantile or untrained minds. A literary sense is needed in our judgments of Scripture, and much hostile criticism is lacking in this literary sense.

Denney, Studies in Theology, 218 — “There is a stage in which the whole contents of the mind, as yet incapable of science or history, may be called mythological. And what criticism shows us, in its treatment of the early chapters of Genesis, is that God does not disdain to speak to the mind, nor through it, even when it is at this lowly stage. Even the myth, in which the beginnings of human life, lying beyond human research, are represented to itself by the child mind of the race, may be made the medium of revelation… But that does not make the first chapter of Genesis science, nor the third chapter history. And what is of authority in these chapters is not the quasi-scientific or quasi-historical form, but the message, which through them comes to the heart, of God’s creative wisdom and power.”

Gore, in Lux Mundi, 356 — “The various sorts of mental or literary activity develop in their different lines out of an earlier condition in which they lie fused and undifferentiated. This we can vaguely call the mythical stage of mental evolution. A myth is not a falsehood; it is a product of mental activity, as instructive and rich as any later product, but its characteristic is that it is not yet distinguished into history and poetry and philosophy.” So Grote calls the Greek myths the whole intellectual stock of the age to which they belonged — the common root of all the history, poetry, philosophy, theology, which afterwards diverged and procceded from it. So the early part of Genesis may be of the nature of myth in which we cannot distinguish the historical germ, though we do not deny that it exists. Robert Browning’s Clive and Andrea del Sarto are essentially correct representations of historical characters, though the details in each poem are imaginary. 5. The inspiring Spirit has given the Scriptures to the world by a process of gradual evolution.

As in communicating the truths of natural science, God has communicated the truths of religion by successive steps, germinally at first, more fully as men have been able to comprehend them. The education of the race is analogous to the education of the child. First came pictures, object lessons, external rites, predictions; then the key to these in Christ, and their didactic exposition in the Epistles.

There have been “divers portions,” as well as “divers manners” ( Hebrews 1:1). The early prophets like that of Genesis 3:15 — the seed of the woman bruising the serpent’s head — were but faint glimmerings of the dawn. Men had to be raised up who were capable of receiving and transmitting the divine communications. Moses, David, Isaiah mark successive advances in recipiency and transparency to the heavenly light. Inspiration has employed men of various degrees of ability, culture and religious insight. As all the truths of the calculus lie germinally in the simplest mathematical axiom, so all the truths of salvation may be wrapped up in the statement that God is holiness and love. But not every scholar can evolve the calculus from the axiom. The teacher may dictate propositions which the pupil does not understand: he may demonstrate in such a way that the pupil participates in the process; or, best of all, he may incite the pupil to work out the demonstration for himself. God seems to have used all these methods. But while there are instances of dictation and illumination, and inspiration sometimes includes these, the general method seems to have been such a divine quickening of man s powers that he discovers and expresses the truth for himself.

A.J. Balfour, Foundations of Belief, 339 — “Inspiration is that, seen from its divine side, which we call discovery when seen from the human side… Every addition to knowledge, whether in the individual or the community, whether scientific, ethical or theological, is due to a cooperation between the human soul which assimilates and the divine power which inspires.

Neither acts, or could act, in independent isolation. For ‘unassisted reason’ is a fiction, and pure receptivity it is impossible to conceive. Even the emptiest vessel must limit the quantity and determine the configuration of any liquid with which it may be filled… Inspiration is limited to no age, to no country, to no people.” The early Semites had it, and the great Oriental reformers. There can be no gathering of grapes from thorns, or of figs from thistles. Whatever of true or of good is found in human history has come from God. On the Progressiveness of Revelation, see Orr, Problem of the Old Testament, 431-478. 6. Inspiration did not guarantee inerrancy in things not essential to the main purpose of Scripture.

Inspiration went no further than to secure a trustworthy transmission by the sacred writers of the truth they were commissioned to deliver. It was not omniscience. It was a bestowal of various kinds and degrees of knowledge and aid, according to need; sometimes suggesting new truth, sometimes presiding over the collection of preexisting material and guarding from essential error in the final elaboration. As inspiration was not omniscience, so it was not complete sanctification. It involved neither personal infallibility, nor entire freedom from sin.

God can use imperfect means. As the imperfection of the eye does not disprove its divine authorship, and as God reveals himself in nature and history in spite of their shortcomings, so inspiration can accomplish its purpose through both writers and writings in some respects imperfect.

God is, in the Bible as he was in Hebrew history, leading his people onward to Christ, but only by a progressive unfolding of the truth. The Scripture writers were not perfect men. Paul at Antioch resisted Peter, “because he stood condemned” ( Galatians 2:11). But Peter differed from Paul, not in public utterances, nor in written words, but in following his own teachings (cf . Acts 15:6-11); versus Norman Fox, in Bap.

Rev.. 1885:469-482. Personal defects do not invalidate an ambassador, though they may hinder the reception of his message. So with the apostles’ ignorance of the time of Christ’s second coming. It was only gradually that they came to understand Christian doctrines; they did not teach the truth all at once; their final utterances supplemented and completed the earlier; and all together furnished only that measure of knowledge which God saw needful for the moral and religious teaching of mankind. Many things are yet unrevealed, and many things which inspired men uttered, they did not when they uttered them, fully understand.

Pfleiderer, Grundriss, 63, 54 — “The word is divine-human in the sense that it has for its contents divine truth in human, historical, and individually conditioned form. The Holy Scripture contains the word of God in a way plain, and entirely sufficient to beget saving faith.” Frances Power Cobbe, Life, 87 — “Inspiration is not a miraculous and therefore incredible thing, but normal and in accordance with the natural relations of the infinite and finite spirit, a divine in-flowing of mental light precisely analogous to that moral influence which divines call grace. As every devout and obedient soul may expect to share in divine grace, so the devout and obedient souls of all the ages have shared, as Parker taught, in divine inspiration. And, as the reception of grace even in large measure does not render us impeccable, so neither does the reception of inspiration render us infallible.” We may concede to Miss Cobbe that inspiration consists with imperfection, while yet we grant to the Scripture writers an authority higher than our own. 7. Inspiration did not always, or even generally, involve a direct communication to the Scripture writers of the words they wrote.

Thought is possible without words, and in the order of nature precedes words. The Scripture writers appear to have been so influenced by the Holy Spirit that they perceived and felt even the new truths they were to publish, as discoveries of their own minds, and were left to the action of their own minds in the expression of these truths, with the single exception that they were supernaturally held back from the selection of wrong words, and when needful were provided with right ones. Inspiration is therefore not verbal, while yet we claim that no form of words which taken in its connections would teach essential error has been admitted into Scripture.

Before expression there must be something to be expressed. Thought is possible without language. The concept may exist without words. See experiences of deaf mutes, in Princeton Rev., Jan. 1881:104-128. The prompter interrupts only when the speaker’s memory fails. The writing master guides the pupil’s hand only when it would otherwise go wrong.

The father suffers the child to walk alone, except when it is in danger of stumbling. If knowledge be rendered certain, it is as good as direct revelation. But whenever the mere communication of ideas or the direction to proper material would not suffice to secure a correct utterance, the sacred writers were guided in the very selection of their words. Minute criticism proves more and more conclusively the suitableness of the verbal dress to the thoughts expressed; all Biblical exegesis is based, indeed, upon the assumption that divine wisdom has made the outward form a trustworthy vehicle of the inward substance of revelation. See Henderson, Inspiration (2nd ed.) 102, 114; Bibliotheca Sacra, 1872:428, 640; William James, Psychology, 1:266 sq .

Watts, New Apologetic, 40, 111, holds to a verbal inspiration: “The bottles are not the wine, but if the bottles perish the wine is sure to be spilled”; the inspiring Spirit certainly gave language to Peter and others at Pentecost, for the apostles spoke with other tongues; holy men of old not only thought, but “spake from God, being moved by the Holy Spirit” ( 1 Peter 1:21). So Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 171 — “Why the minute study of the words of Scripture, carried on by all expositors, their search after the precise shade of verbal significance, their attention to the minutest details of language, and to all the delicate coloring of mood and tense and accent?” Liberal scholars, Dr. Gordon thinks, thus affirm the very doctrine, which they deny. Rothe, Dogmatics, 238, speaks of “a language of the Holy Ghost.” Oetinger: “It is the style of the heavenly court.” But Broadus, an almost equally conservative scholar, in his Com. on Matthew 3:17, says that the difference between “This is my beloved Son,” and Luke 3:22 — “Thou art my beloved Son,” should make us cautious in theorizing about verbal inspiration, and he intimates that in some cases that hypothesis is unwarranted. The theory of verbal inspiration is refuted by the two facts:1. that the New Testament quotations from the Old Testament, in 99 cases, differ both from the Hebrew and from time LXX; 2. that Jesus’ own the different evangelists report words with variations; see Marcus Dods, The Bible, its Origin and Nature, chapter on Inspiration.

Helen Keller told Phillips Brooks that she had always known that there was a God but she had not known his name. Dr. Z.F. Westervelt, of the Deaf Mute Institute, had under his charge four children of different mothers. All of these children were dumb, though there was no defect of hearing and the organs of speech were perfect. But their mothers had never loved them and had never talked to them in the loving way that provoked imitation. The children heard scolding and harshness, but this did not attract. So the older members of the church in private and in the meetings for prayer should teach the younger to talk. But harsh and contentious talk will not accomplish the result, — it must be the talk of Christian love. William D. Whitney, in his review of Max Muller’s Science of Language, 26-31, combats the view of Muller that thought and language are identical. Major Bliss Taylor’s reply to Santa Anna: “General Taylor never surrenders!” was a substantially correct, though a diplomatic and euphemistic, version of the General’s actual profane words. Each Scripture writer uttered old truth in the new forms with which his own experience had clothed it. David reached his greatness by leaving off the mere repetition of Moses, and by speaking out of his own heart Paul reached his greatness by giving up the mere teaching of what he had been taught, and by telling what God’s plan of mercy was to all.

Augustine: “Scriptura est sensus Scripturæ” — “Scripture is what Scripture means .” Among the theological writers who admit the errancy of Scripture writers as to some matters unessential to their moral and spiritual teaching, are Luther, Calvin, Cocceius, Tholuck, Neander, Lange, Stier, Van Oosterzee, John Howe, Richard Baxter, Conybeare, Alford, Mead. 8. Yet, notwithstanding the ever-present human element, the all-pervading inspiration of the Scriptures constitutes these various writings an organic whole.

Since the Bible is in all its parts the work of God, each part is to be judged, not by itself alone, but in its connection with every other part. The Scriptures are not to be interpreted as so many merely human productions by different authors, but as also the work of one divine mind. Seemingly trivial things are to be explained from their connection with the whole. One history is to be built up from the several accounts of the life of Christ. One doctrine must supplement another. The Old Testament is part of a progressive system, whose culmination and key are to be found in the New. The central subject and thought which binds all parts of the Bible together, and in the light of which they are to be interpreted, is the person and work of Jesus Christ.

The Bible says: “There is no God” ( Isaiah 14:1); but then, this is to be taken with the context: “The fool hath said in his heart.” Satan’s “it is written,” (Mar. 4:6) is supplemented by Christ’s “It ms written again” ( Matthew 4:7). Trivialities are like the hair and nails of the body — they have their place as parts of a complete and organic whole; see Ebrard, Dogmatik, 1:40. The verse which mentions Paul’s cloak at Troas ( 2 Timothy 4:13) is (1) a sign or genuineness — a forger would not invent it; (2) an evidence of temporal need endured for the gospel; (3) an indication of time limits of inspiration, — even Paul must have books and parchments. Colossians 2:21 — “Handle not nor taste, nor touch” — is to be interpreted by the context in verse 20 — “why… do ye subject yourselves to ordinances?” and by verse 22 — “after the precepts and doctrines of men.” Hodge, Systematic Theology, 1:164 — “The difference between John’s gospel and the book of Chronicles is like that between man’s brain and the hair of his head; nevertheless the life of the body is as truly in the hair as in the brain.” Like railway coupons, Scripture texts are “Not good if detached.”

Crooker, Time New Bible and its New Uses, 137-144, utterly denies the unity of the Bible. Prof. A. B. Davidson of Edinburgh says that “A theology of the Old Testament is really an impossibility, because the Old Testament is not a homogeneous whole.” These denials proceed from an insufficient recognition of the principle of evolution in Old Testament history and doctrine. Doctrines in early Scripture are like rivers at their source; they are not yet fully expanded; many affluents are yet to come.

See Bp. Bull’s Sermon, in Works, xv:183; and Bruce, Apologetics, — “The literature of the early stages of revelation must share the defects of the revelation which it records and interprets… The final revelation enables us to see the defects of the earlier… We should find Christ in the Old Testament as we find the butterfly in the caterpillar, and man the crown of the universe in the fiery cloud.” Crane, Religion of Tomorrow, 224 — Every part is to be modified by every other part.

No verse is true out of the Book, but the whole Book taken together is true. Gore, in Lux Mundi, 350 — “To recognize the inspiration of the Scriptures is to put ourselves to school in every part of them.” Robert Browning, Ring and Book, 175 (Pope, 228) — “Truth nowhere lies, yet everywhere, in these; Not absolutely in a portion, yet Evolvable from the whole; evolved at last Painfully, held tenaciously by me.” On the Organic Unity of the Old Testament, see On, Problem of the Old Testament, 27- 51. 9. When the unity of the Scripture is fully recognized, the Bible, in spite of imperfections in matters non-essential to its religious purpose, furnishes a safe and sufficient guide to truth and to salvation.

The recognition of the Holy Spirit’s agency makes it rational and natural to believe in the organic unity of Scripture. When the earlier parts are taken in connection with the later, and when each part is interpreted by the whole, most of the difficulties connected with inspiration disappear. Taken together, with Christ as its culmination and explanation, the Bible furnishes the Christian rule of faith and practice.

The Bible answers two questions: What has God done to save me? and What must I do to be saved? The propositions of Euclid are not invalidated by the fact that he believed the earth to be flat. The ethics of Plato would not be disproved by his mistakes with regard to the solar system. So religious authority is independent of merely secular knowledge. — Sir Joshua Reynolds was a great painter, and a great teacher of his art. His lectures on painting laid down principles, which have been accepted as authority for generations. But Joshua Reynolds illustrates his subject from history and science. It was a day when both history and science were young. In some unimportant matters of this sort, which do not in the least affect his conclusions, Sir Joshua Reynolds makes an occasional slip; his statements are inaccurate. Does he, therefore, cease to be an authority in matters of his art? — The Duke of Wellington said once that no human being knew at what time of day the battle of Waterloo began. One historian gets his story from one combatant, and he puts the hour at eleven in the morning. Another historian gets his information from another combatant, and he puts it at noon. Shall we say that this discrepancy argues error in the whole account, and that we have no longer any certainty that the battle of Waterloo was ever fought at all?

Such slight imperfections are to be freely admitted, while at the same time we insist that the Bible, taken as a whole, is incomparably superior to all other books, and is “able to make thee wise unto salvation” ( Timothy 3:15). Hooker, Ecclesiastical Polity: “Whatsoever is spoken of God or things pertaining to God otherwise than truth is, though it seem an honor, it is an injury. And as incredible praises given unto men do often abate and impair the credit of their deserved commendation, so we must likewise take great heed lest, in attributing to Scripture more than it can have, the incredibility of that do cause even those things which it hath more abundantly to be less reverently esteemed.” Baxter, Works, 21:319 — “Those men who think that these human imperfections of the writers do extend further, and may appear in some passages of chronologies or history which are no part of the rule of faith and life, do not hereby destroy the Christian cause. For God might enable his apostles to an infallible recording and preaching of the gospel, even all things necessary to salvation, though he had not made them infallible in every by-passage and circumstance, any more than they were indefectible in life.”

The Bible, says Beet, “contains possible errors in small details or allusions, but it gives us with absolute certainty the great facts of Christianity, and upon these great facts, and upon these only, our faith is based.” Evans, Bib. Scholarship and Inspiration,15,18,65 — “Teach that the shell is part of the kernel and men who find that they cannot keep the shell will throw away shell and kernel together… This overstatement of inspiration made Renan, Bradlaugh and Ingersoll skeptics. … If in creation God can work out a perfect result through imperfection why cannot he do the like in inspiration? If in Christ God can appear in human weakness and ignorance, why not in the written word?”

We therefore take exception to the view of Watts, New Apologetic, 71 — “Let the theory of historical errors and scientific errors be adopted, and Christianity must share the fate of Hinduism. If its inspired writers err when they tell us of earthly things, none will believe when they tell of heavenly things.” Watts adduces instances of Spinoza ‘s giving up the form while claiming to hold the substance, and in this way reducing revelation to a phenomenon of naturalistic pantheism. We reply that no a priori theory of perfection in divine inspiration must blind us to the evidence of actual imperfection in Scripture. As in creation and in Christ, so in Scripture, God humbles himself to adopt human and imperfect methods of self-revelation. See Jonathan Edwards, Diary: “I observe that old men seldom have any advantage of new discoveries, because they are beside the way to which they have been so long used. Resolved, if ever I live to years, that I will be impartial to hear the reasons of all pretended discoveries, and receive them if rational, however long so ever I have been used to another way of thinking.”

Bowne, The Immanence of God, 109, 110 — “Those who would find the source of certainty and the seat of authority in the Scriptures alone, or in the church alone, or reason and conscience alone, rather than in the complex and indivisible co-working of all these factors, should be reminded of the history of religious thought. The stiffest doctrine of Scripture inerrancy has not prevented warring interpretations; and those who would place the seat of authority in reason and conscience are forced to admit that outside illumination may do much for both. In some sense the religion of the spirit is a very important fact, but when it sets up in opposition to the religion of a book, the light that is in it is apt to turn to darkness.” 10. While inspiration constitutes Scripture an authority more trustworthy than are individual reason or the creeds of the church, the only ultimate authority is Christ himself.

Christ has not so constructed Scripture as to dispense with his personal presence and teaching by his Spirit. The Scripture is the imperfect mirror of Christ. It is defective, yet it reflects him and leads to him. Authority resides not in it, but in him, and his Spirit enables the individual Christian and the collective church progressively to distinguish the essential from the nonessential, and so to perceive the truth as it is in Jesus. In thus judging Scripture and interpreting Scripture, we are not rationalists, but are rather believers in him who promised to be with us always even unto the end of the world and to lead us by his Spirit into all the truth.

James speaks of the law as a mirror ( James 1:23-25 — “like unto a man beholding his natural face in a mirror… looketh into the perfect law”); the law convicts of sin because it reflects Christ. Paul speaks of the gospel as a mirror ( 2 Corinthians 3:18 — we all, beholding as in a mirror the glory of the Lord”); the gospel transforms us because it reflects Christ. Yet both law and gospel are imperfect; they are like mirrors of polished metal, whose surface is often dim, and whose images are obscure; ( 1 Corinthians 13:12 — for now we see in a mirror, darkly; but then face to face”) even inspired men know only in part, and prophesy only in part. Scripture itself is the conception and utterance of a child, to be done away when that which is perfect is come, and we see Christ as he is.

Authority is the right to impose beliefs or to command obedience. The only ultimate authority is God, for he is truth, justice and love. But he can impose beliefs and command obedience only as he is known. Authority belongs therefore only to God revealed, and because Christ is God revealed, he can say: “All authority hath been given unto me in heaven and on earth.” ( Matthew 28:18). The final authority in religion is Jesus Christ. Every one of his revelations of God is authoritative. Both nature and human nature are such revelations. He exercises his authority through delegated and subordinate authorities, such as parents and civil government. These rightfully claim obedience so long as they hold to their own respective spheres and recognize their relation of dependence upon him. “The powers that be are ordained of God” ( Romans 13:1), even though they are imperfect manifestations of his wisdom and righteousness.

The decisions of the Supreme Court are authoritative even though the judges are fallible and come short of establishing absolute justice.

Authority is not infallibility, in the government either of the family or of the state.

The church of the middle ages was regarded as possessed of absolute authority. But the Protestant Reformation showed how vain were these pretensions. The church is an authority only as it recognizes and expresses the supreme authority of Christ. The Reformers felt the need of some external authority in place of the church. They substituted the Scripture.

The phrase “the word of God,” which designates the truth orally uttered or affecting the minds of men, came to signify only a book. Supreme authority was ascribed to it. It often usurped the place of Christ. While we vindicate the proper authority of Scripture, we would show that its authority is not immediate and absolute, but mediate and relative, through human and imperfect records, and needing a supplementary and divine teaching to interpret them. The authority of Scripture is not apart from Christ or above Christ, but only in subordination to him and to his Spirit.

He who inspired Scripture must enable us to interpret Scripture. This is not a doctrine of rationalism, for it holds to man’s absolute dependence upon the enlightening Spirit of Christ. It is not a doctrine of mysticism, for it holds that Christ teaches us only by opening to us the meaning of his past revelations. We do not expect any new worlds in our astronomy, nor do we expect any new Scriptures in our theology. But we do expect that the same Christ who gave the Scriptures will give us new insight into their meaning and will enable us to make new applications of their teachings.

The right and duty of private judgment with regard to Scripture belong to no ecclesiastical caste, but are inalienable liberties of the whole church of Christ and of each individual member of that church. And yet this judgment is, from another point of view, no private judgment. It is not the judgment of arbitrariness or caprice. It does not make the Christian consciousness supreme, if we mean by this term the consciousness of Christians apart from the indwelling Christ. When once we come to Christ, he joins us to himself, he seats us with him upon his throne, he imparts to us his Spirit, and he bids us use our reason in his service. In judging Scripture, we make not ourselves but Christ supreme, and recognize him as the only ultimate and infallible authority in matters of religion. We can believe that the total revelation of Christ in Scripture is an authority superior to individual reason or to any single affirmation of the church, while yet we believe that this very authority of Scripture has its limitation, and that Christ himself must teach us what this total revelation is. So the judgment which Scripture encourages us to pass upon its own limitations only induces a final and more implicit reliance upon the living and personal Son of God. He has never intended that Scripture should be a substitute for his own presence, and it is only his Spirit that is promised to lead us into all the truth.

On the authority of Scripture, see A.H. Strong, Christ in Creation, 113- 136 — “The source of all authority is not Scripture, but Christ… Nowhere are we told that the Scripture of itself is able to convince the sinner or to bring him to God. It is a glittering sword, but it is the sword of the Spirit’ ( Ephesians 6:17); and unless the Spirit use it, it will never pierce the heart. It is a heavy hammer, but only the Spirit can wield it so that it breaks in pieces the flinty rock. It is the type locked in the form, but the paper will never receive an impression until the Spirit shall apply the power. No mere instrument shall have the glory that belongs to God. Every soul shall feel its entire dependence upon him. Only the Holy Spirit can turn the outer word into an inner word. And the Holy Spirit is the Spirit of Christ. Christ comes into direct contact with the soul. He himself gives his witness to the truth. He bears testimony to Scripture, even more than Scripture bears testimony to him.” 11. The preceding discussion enables us at least to lay down three cardinal principles and to answer three common questions with regard to inspiration.

Principles : (a) The human mind can be inhabited and energized by God while yet attaining and retaining its own highest intelligence and freedom. (b) The Scriptures being the work of the one God, as well as of the men in whom God moved and dwelt, constitute an articulated and organic unity. (c) The unity and authority of Scripture as a whole are entirely consistent with its gradual evolution and with great imperfection in its non-essential parts.

Questions : (a) Is any part of Scripture uninspired? Answer: Every part of Scripture is inspired in its connection and relation with every other part. (b) Are there degrees of inspiration? Answer: There are degrees of value but not of inspiration. Each part in its connection with the rest is made completely true, and completeness has no degrees. (c) How may we know what parts are of most value and what is the teaching of the whole? Answer: The same Spirit of Christ who inspired the Bible is promised to take of the things of Christ, and, by showing them to us, to lead us progressively into all the truth.

Notice the value of the Old Testament, revealing as it does the natural attributes of God, as a basis and background for the revelation of mercy in the New Testament. Revelation was in many parts (polumerw~v — Hebrews 1:1) as well as in many ways. “Each individual oracle, taken by itself, was partial and incomplete” (Robertson Smith, Old Testament in Jewish Ch., 21). But the person and the words of Christ sum up and complete the revelation, so that, taken together and in their connection with him, the various parts of Scripture constitute an infallible and sufficient rule of faith and practice. See Browne, Inspiration of the New Testament; Bernard, Progress of Doctrine in the New Testament; Stanley Leathes, Structure of the Old Testament; Rainy, Delivery and Development of Doctrine. See A.H. Strong, on Method of Inspiration, in Philosophy and Religion, 148-155.

The divine influence upon the minds of post-biblical writers, leading to the composition of such allegories as Pilgrim’s Progress, and such dramas as Macbeth, is to be denominated illumination rather than inspiration, for the reasons that these writings contain error as well as truth in matters of religion and morals; that they add nothing essential to what the Scriptures give us; and that, even in their expression of truth previously made known, they are not worthy of a place in the sacred canon. W.H.P.

Faunce: “How far is Bunyan’s Pilgrim’s Progress true to present Christian experience? It is untrue: 1. In its despair of this world, The Pilgrim has to leave this world in order to be saved. Modern experience longs to do God’s will here, and to save others instead of forsaking them. 2. In its agony over sin and frightful conflict, Bunyan illustrates modern experience better by Christiana and her children who go through the Valley and the Shadow of Death in the daytime, and without conflict with Apollyon. 3. In the constant uncertainty of the issue of the Pilgrim’s fight, Christian enters Doubting Castle and meets Giant Despair, even after he has won most of his victories. In modern experience, “at evening time there shall be light” — ( Zechariah 14:7). 4. In the constant conviction of an absent Christ, Bunyan’s Christ is never met this side of the Celestial City. The Cross at which the burden dropped is the symbol of a sacrificial act, but it is not the Savior himself. Modern experience has Christ living in us and with us away, and not simply a Christ whom we hope to see at the end of the journey.”

Beyschlag, New Testament Theol., 2:18 — “Paul declares his own prophecy and inspiration to be essentially imperfect ( 1 Corinthians 13:9,10,12 cf. 1 Corinthians 12:10; 1 Thessalonians 5:19-21).

This admission justifies a Christian criticism even of his views. He can pronounce an anathema on those who preach ‘a different gospel’ ( Galatians 1:8,9), for what belongs to simple faith, the facts of salvation, are absolutely certain. But where prophetic thought and speech go beyond these facts of salvation, wood and straw may be mingled with the gold, silver and precious stones built upon the one foundation. So he distinguishes his own modest gnw>mh from the ejpitagh< kuri>ou` ( Corinthians 7:25, 40).” Clarke, Christian Theology, 44 — “The authority of Scripture is not one that binds, but one that sets free. Paul is writing of Scripture when he says: ‘Not that we have lordship over your faith, but are helpers of your joy: for in faith ye stand fast’ ( 2 Corinthians 1:24).”

Cremer, in Herzog, Realencyclopedia, 183-203 — “The church doctrine is that the Scriptures are inspired, but it has never been determined by the church how they are inspired.” Butler, Analogy, part ii, chap. iii — “The only question concerning the truth of Christianity is, whether it be a real revelation, not whether it be attended with every circumstance which we should have looked for; and concerning the authority of Scripture, whether it be what it claims to be, not whether it be a book of such sort, and so promulgated, as weak men are apt to fancy a book containing a divine revelation should. And therefore, neither obscurity, nor seeming inaccuracy of style, nor various readings, nor early disputes about the authors of particular parts, nor any other things of the like kind, though they had been much more considerable than they are, could overthrow the authority of the Scripture; unless the prophets, apostles, or our Lord had promised that the book containing the divine revelation should be secure from these things.” W. Robertson Smith: “If I am asked why I receive the Scriptures as the word of God and as the only perfect rule of faith and life, I answer with all the Fathers of the Protestant church: ‘Because the Bible is the only record of the redeeming love of God; because in the Bible alone I find God drawing nigh to men in Jesus Christ, and declaring his will for our salvation. And the record I know to be true by the witness of his Spirit in my heart, whereby I am assured that none other than God himself is able to speak such words to my soul.” The gospel of Jesus Christ is the a]pax lego>menon of the Almighty. See Marcus Dods, The Bible, its Origin and Nature: Bowne, The Immanence of God, 66-115.

V. OBJECTIONS TO THE DOCTRINE OF INSPIRATION.

In connection with a divine-human work like the Bible, insoluble difficulties may be expected to present themselves. So long, however, as its inspiration is sustained by competent and sufficient evidence, these difficulties cannot justly prevent our full acceptance of the doctrine, any more than disorder and mystery in nature warrant us in setting aside the proofs of its divine authorship. These difficulties are lessened with time; some have already disappeared; many may be due to ignorance, and may be removed hereafter; those which are permanent may be intended to stimulate inquiry and to discipline faith.

It is noticeable that the common objections to inspiration are urged, not so much against the religions teaching of the Scriptures, as against certain errors in secular matters, which are supposed to be interwoven with it. But if these are proved to be errors indeed, it will not necessarily overthrow the doctrine of inspiration; it will only compel us to give a larger place to the human element in the composition of the Scriptures, and to regard them more exclusively as a text-book of religion. As a rule of religious faith and practice, they will still be the infallible word of God. The Bible is to be judged as a book whose one aim is man’s rescue from sin and reconciliation to God, and in these respects it will still be found a record of substantial truth. This will appear more fully as we examine the objections one by one. “The Scriptures are given to teach us, not how the heavens go, but how to go to heaven.” Their aim is certainly not to teach science or history, except so far as science or history is essential to their moral and religious purpose. Certain of their doctrines, like the virgin birth of Christ and his bodily resurrection, are historical facts, and certain facts, like that of creation, are also doctrines. With regard to these great facts, we claim that inspiration has given us accounts that are essentially trustworthy, whatever may be their imperfections in detail. To undermine the scientific trustworthiness of the Indian Vedas is to undermine the religion, which they teach. But this only because their scientific doctrine is an essential part of their religious teaching. In the Bible, religion is not dependent upon physical science. The Scriptures aim only to declare the creator-ship and lordship of the personal God. The method of his working may be described pictorially without affecting this substantial truth. The Indian cosmogonies, on the other hand, polytheistic or pantheistic as they are, teach essential untruth, by describing the origin of things as due to a series of senseless transformations without basis of will or wisdom.

So long as the difficulties of Scripture are difficulties of form rather than substance, of its incidental features rather than its main doctrine, we may say of its obscurities as Isocrates said of the work of Heraclitus: “What I understand of it is so excellent that I can draw conclusions from it concerning what I do not understand.” “If Bengel finds things in the Bible too hard for his critical faculty, he finds nothing too hard for his believing faculty.” With John Smyth, who died at Amsterdam in 1612, we may say: “I profess I have changed, and shall be ready still to change, for the better”; and with John Robinson, in his farewell address to the Pilgrim Fathers: “I am verily persuaded that the Lord hath more truth yet to break forth from his holy word.” See Luthardt, Saving Truths, 205; Philippi, Glaubenslehre, 205 sq .; Bap. Rev., April, 1881: art. by O. P. Eaches; Cardinal Newman, in 19th Century, Feb. 1884. 1. Errors in matters of Science.

Upon this objection we remark: (a) We do not admit the existence of scientific error in the Scripture. What is charged as such is simply truth presented in popular and impressive forms.

The common mind receives a more correct idea of unfamiliar facts when these are narrated in phenomenal language and in summary form than when they are described in the abstract terms and in the exact detail of science.

The Scripture writers unconsciously observe Herbert Spencer’s principle of style: Economy of the reader’s or hearer’s attention, — the more energy is expended upon the form the less there remains to grapple with the substance (Essays, 1-47). Wendt, Teaching of Jesus, 1:130, brings out the principle of Jesus’ style: “The greatest clearness in the smallest compass.” Hence Scripture uses the phrases of common life rather than scientific terminology. Thus the language of appearance is probably used in Genesis 7:19 — “all the high mountains that were under the whole heaven were covered” — such would be the appearance, even if the deluge were local instead of universal; in Joshua 10:12,13 — “and the sun stood still” — such would be the appearance, even if the sun’s rays were merely refracted so as preternaturally to lengthen the day; in Psalm 93:1 — “The world also is established, that it cannot be moved” — such is the appearance, even though the earth turns on its axis and moves round the sun. In narrative, to substitute for “sunset” some scientific description would divert attention from the main subject. Would it be preferable, in the Old Testament, if we should read: “When the revolution of the earth upon its axis caused the rays of the solar luminary to impinge horizontally upon the retina. Isaac went out to meditate” ( Genesis 24:63)? ‘Le secret d’ennuyer est de tout dire.” Charles Dickens, in his American Notes, 72, describes a prairie sunset: “The decline of day here was very gorgeous, tinging the firmament deeply with red and gold, up to the very keystone of the arch above us” (quoted by Hovey, Manual of Christian Theology, 97). Did Dickens therefore believe the firmament to be a piece of solid masonry?

Canon Driver rejects the Bible story of creation because the distinctions made by modern science cannot be found in the primitive Hebrew. He thinks the fluid state of the earth’s substance should have been called “surging chaos,” instead of “waters” ( Genesis 1:2). “An admirable phrase for modern and cultivated minds,” replies Mr. Gladstone, “but a phrase that would have left the pupils of the Mosaic writer in exactly the condition out of which it was his purpose to bring them, namely, a state of utter ignorance and darkness, with possibly a little ripple of bewilderment to boot”; see Sunday School Times. April 26, 1890. The fallacy of holding that Scripture gives in detail all the facts connected with a historical narrative has led to many curious arguments. The Gregorian Calendar which makes the year begin in January was opposed by representing that Eve was tempted at the outset by an apple, which was possible only in case the year began in September; see Thayer, Change of Attitude towards the Bible,46. (b) It is not necessary to a proper view of inspiration to suppose that the human authors of Scripture had in mind the proper scientific interpretation of the natural events they recorded.

It is enough that this was in the mind of the inspiring Spirit. Through the comparatively narrow conceptions and inadequate language of the Scripture writers, the Spirit of inspiration may have secured the expression of the truth in such germinal form as to be intelligible to the times in which it was first published, and yet capable of indefinite expansion as science should advance. In the miniature picture of creation in the first chapter of Genesis, and in its power of adjusting itself to every advance of scientific investigation, we have a strong proof of inspiration.

The word “day” in Genesis 1 is an instance of this general mode of expression. It would be absurd to teach early races that deal only in small numbers, about the myriads of mind more of truth than elaborate and exact statement would convey.

Conant ( Genesis 2:10) says of the description of Eden and its rivers: “Of course the author’s object is not a minute topographical description, but a general and impressive conception as a whole.” Yet the progress of science only shows that these accounts are not less but more true than was supposed by those who first received them. Neither the Hindu Shasters nor any heathen cosmogony can bear such comparison with the results of science. Why change our interpretations of Scripture so often? Answer:

We do not assume to be original teachers of science, but only to interpret Scripture with the new lights we have. See Dana, Manual of Geology, 741-746; Guyot, in Bibliotheca Sacra, 1855:324: Dawson, Story of Earth and Man, 32.

This conception of early Scripture teaching as elementary and suited to the childhood of the race would make it possible, if the facts so required, to interpret the early chapters of Genesis as mythical or legendary. God might condescend to “Kindergarten formulas.” Goethe said that “We should deal with children as God deals with us: we are happiest under the influence of innocent delusions.” Longfellow: “How beautiful is youth! how bright it gleams, With its illusions, aspirations, dreams! Book of beginnings, story without end, Each maid a heroine, and each man a friend!” We might hold with Goethe and with Longfellow, if we only excluded from God’s teaching all essential error. The narratives of Scripture might be addressed to the imagination, and so might take mythical or legendary form, while yet they conveyed substantial truth that could in no other way be so well apprehended by early man; see Robert Browning’s poem, “Development,” in Asolando. The Koran, on the other hand, leaves no room for imagination, but fixes the number of the stars and declares the firmament to be solid. Henry Drummond: “Evolution has given us a new Bible… The Bible is not a book which has been made, — it has grown.”

Bagehot tells us that “One of the most remarkable of Father Newman’s Oxford sermons explains how science teaches that the earth goes round the sun, and how Scripture teaches that the sun goes round the earth; and it ends by advising the discreet believer to accept both.” This is mental bookkeeping by double entry; see Mackintosh in Am. Jour. Theology, Jan. 1899:41. Lenormant, in Contemp. Rev., Nov. 1879 — “While the tradition of the deluge holds so considerable a place in the legendary memories of all branches of the Aryan race, the monuments and original texts of Egypt, with their many cosmogonic speculations, have not afforded any, even distant, allusion to this cataclysm.” Lenormant here wrongly assumed that the language of Scripture is scientific language. If it is the language of appearance, then the deluge may be a local and not a universal catastrophe. G. F. Wright, Ice Age in North America, suggests that the numerous traditions of the deluge may have had their origin in the enormous floods of the receding glacier. In Southwestern Queensland, the standard gauge at the Meteorological Office registered l0.75, 20.0, 35.75, 10.75 inches of rainfall, in all 77.25 inches, in four successive days. (c) It may be safely said that science has not yet shown any fairly interpreted passage of Scripture to be untrue.

With regard to the antiquity of the race, we may say that owing to the differences of reading between the Septuagint and the Hebrew there is room for doubt whether either of the received chronologies has the sanction of inspiration. Although science has made probable the existence of man upon the earth at a period preceding the dates assigned in these chronologies, no statement of inspired Scripture is thereby proved fake.

Usher’s scheme of chronology, on the basis of the Hebrew, puts the creation 4004 years before Christ. Hales’s, on the basis of the Septuagint, puts it 5411 BC The Fathers followed the LXX. But the genealogies before and after the flood may present us only with the names of “leading and representative men.” Some of these names seem to stand, not for individuals, but for tribes, e. g .: Genesis 10:16 — where Canaan is said to have begotten the Jebusite and the Amorite; 29 — Joktan begot Ophir and Havilah. In Genesis 10:6, we read that Mizraim belonged to the sons of Ham. But Mizraim is a dual, coined to designate the two parts, Upper and Lower Egypt. Hence a son of Ham could not bear the name of Mizraim. Genesis 10:13 reads: “And Misraim begat Ludim.” But Ludim is a plural form. The word signifies a whole nation, and “begat” is not employed in a literal sense. So in verses 15, 16: “Canaan begat… the Jebusite,” a tribe; the ancestors of which would have been called Jesus.

Abraham, Isaac and Jacob, however, are names, not of tribes or nations, but of individuals; see Prof. Edward Konig, of Bonn, in S. S. nines, Dec. 14, 1901. E. G. Robinson: “We may pretty safely go back to the time of Abraham, but no further.” Bibliotheca Sacra, 1899:403 — “The lists in Genesis may relate to families and not to individuals.”

G. F. Wright, Ant, and Origin of Human Race, lect. II — “When in David’s time it is said that ‘Shebuel, the son of Gershom, the son of Moses, was ruler over the treasures’ ( 1 Chronicles 23:16; 26:24), Gershom was the immediate son of Moses, but Shebuel was separated by many generations from Gershom. So when Seth is said to have begotten Enosh when he was 105 years old (( Genesis 5:6), it is, according to Hebrew usage, capable of meaning that Enosh was descended from the branch of Seth’s line which set off at the 105th year, with any number of intermediate links omitted.” The appearance of completeness in the text may be due to alteration of the text in the course of centuries; see Bib.

Com., 1:30. In the phrase “Jesus Christ the son of David, the son of Abraham” ( Matthew 1:1) thirty-eight to forty generations are omitted.

It may be so in some of the Old Testament genealogies. There is room for a hundred thousand years, if necessary (Conant). W.H. Green, in Bibliotheca Sacra, April, 1890:303, and in Independent, June 18, 1891 — “The Scriptures furnish us with no data for a chronological computation prior to the life of Abraham. The Mosaic records do not fix, and were not intended to fix, the precise date of the Flood or of the Creation… They give a series of specimen lives, with appropriate numbers attached, to show by selected examples what was the original term of human life. To make them a complete and continuous record, and to deduce from them the antiquity of the race, is to put them to a use they were never intended to serve.”

Comparison with secular history also shows that no such length of time as 100,000 years for man’s existence upon earth seems necessary.

Rawlinson, in Jour. Christ. Philosophy, 1883:339-364, dates the beginning of the Chaldean monarchy at 2400 BC. Lenormant puts the entrance of the Sanskritic Indians into Hindustan at 2500 BC. The earliest Vedas are between 1200 and 1000 BC (Max Muller). Call of Abraham, probably 1945 BC. Chinese history possibly began as early as 2356 BC (Legge). The old Empire in Egypt possibly began as early as 2650 BC.

Rawlinson puts the flood at 3600 BC and adds 2000 years between the deluge and the creation, making the age of the world 1,886 + 3,600+ 2,000 = 7,486. S.R. Pattison, in Present Day Tracts, 3: no. 13, concludes that “a term of about 8000 years is warranted by deductions from history, geology, and Scripture.” See also Duke of Argyll, Primeval Man, 70-128; Cowles on Genesis, 49-80; Dawson, Fossil Men, 246; Hicks, in Bap.

Rev., July, 1884 (15,000 years): Zockler, Urgeschichte der Erde und des Menschen, 137-163. On the critical side, see Crooker, The New Bible and its Uses, 80-102.

Evidence of a geological nature seems to be accumulating, which tends to prove man’s advent upon earth at least ten thousand years ago. An arrowhead of tempered copper and a number of human bones were found in the Rocky Point mines, near Gilman, Colorado, 460 feet beneath the surface of the earth, embedded in a vein of silver bearing ore. More than a hundred dollars worth of ore clung to the bones when they were removed from the mine. On the age of the earth and the antiquity of man, see U.F.

Wright, Man and the Glacial Epoch, lectures iv and x, and in McClure’s Magazine, June, 1901, and Bibliotheca Sacra, 1903:31 — “Charles Darwin first talked about 300 million years as a mere trifle of geologic time. His son George limits it to 50 or 100 million; Croll and Young to or 70 million; Wallace to 28 million; Lord Kelvin to 24 million; Thompson and Newcomb to only 10 million.” Sir Archibald Geikie, at the British Association at Dover in 1899, said that 100 million years sufficed for that small portion of the earth’s history which is registered in the stratified rocks of the crust.

Shaler, Interpretation of Nature, 132, considers vegetable life to have existed on the planet for at least 100 million years. Warren Upham, in Pop. Science Monthly, Dec. 1893:153 — “How old is the earth? million years.” D. G. Brinton, in Forum, Dec. 1893:454, puts the minimum limit of man’s existence on earth at 50,000 years. G.F. Wright does not doubt that man’s presence on this continent was pre-glacial, say eleven or twelve thousand years ago. He asserts that there has been a subsidence of Central Asia and Southern Russia since man’s advent, and that Arctic seals are still found in Lake Baikal in Siberia. While he grants that Egyptian civilization may go back to 5000 BC, he holds that no more than 6,000 or 7,000 years before this are needed as preparation for history. Le Conte, Elements of Geology, 613 — “Men saw the great glaciers of the second glacial epoch, but there is no reliable evidence of their existence before the first glacial epoch. Deltas, implements, lake shores, waterfalls, indicate only 7,000 to 10,000 years.” Recent calculations of Prof. Prestwich, the most eminent living geologist of Great Britain, tend to bring the close of the glacial epoch down to within 10,000 or 15,000 years. (d) Even if error in matters of science were found in Scripture, it would not disprove inspiration, since inspiration concerns itself with science only so far as correct scientific views are necessary to morals and religion.

Great harm results from identifying Christian doctrine with specific theories of the universe. The Roman church held that the revolution of the sun around the earth was taught in Scripture, and that Christian faith required the condemnation of Galileo; John Wesley thought Christianity to be inseparable from a belief in witchcraft; opposers of the higher criticism regard the Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch as “articulus stantis vel cadentis ecclesiÆ.” We mistake greatly when we link inspiration with scientific doctrine. The purpose of Scripture is not to teach science, but to teach religion, and, with the exception of God’s creator-ship and preserving agency in the universe, no scientific truth is essential to the system of Christian doctrine. Inspiration might leave the Scripture writers in possession of the scientific ideas of their time, while yet they were empowered correctly to declare both ethical and religious truth. A right spirit indeed gains some insight into the meaning of nature, and so the Scripture writers seem to be preserved from incorporating into their production truth of the scientific error of their day. But entire freedom from such error must not be regarded as a necessary accompaniment of inspiration. 2. Errors in matters of History.

To this objection we reply: (a) What are charged as such are often mere mistakes in transcription, and have no force as arguments against inspiration, unless it can first be shown that inspired documents are by the very fact of their inspiration exempt from the operation of those laws which affect the transmission of other ancient documents.

We have no right to expect that the inspiration of the original writer will be followed by a miracle in the case of every copyist. Why believe in infallible copyists, more than in infallible printers? God educates us to care for his word, and for its correct transmission. Reverence has kept the Scriptures more free from various readings than are other ancient manuscripts. None of the existing variations endanger any important article of faith. Yet some mistakes in transcription there probably are. In 1 Chronicles 22:14, instead of 100,000 talents of gold and 1,000,000 talents of silver ( = $3,750,000,000), Josephus divides the sum by ten. Dr. Howard Osgood: “A French writer, Revillout, has accounted for the differing numbers in Kings and Chronicles, just as he accounts for the same differences in Egyptian and Assyrian later accounts, by the change in the value of money and debasement of issues. He shows the change all over Western Asia.” Per contra, see Bacon, Genesis of Genesis, 45.

In 2 Chronicles 13:3,17, where the numbers of men in the armies of little Palestine are stated as 400,000 and 800,000, and 500,000 are said to have been slain in a single battle, “some ancient copies of the Vulgate and Latin translations of Josephus have 40,000, 80,000, and 50,000”; see Annotated Paragraph Bible, in loco . In 2 Chronicles 17:14-19, Jehoshaphat’s army aggregates 1,160,000, besides the garrisons of his fortresses. It is possible that by errors in transcription these numbers have been multiplied by ten. Another explanation however, and perhaps a more probable one, is given under (d) below. Similarly, compare 1 Samuel 6:19, where 50,070 are slain, with the 70 of Josephus; 2 Samuel 8:4 — “1,700 horsemen,” with 1Chronicles 18:4 — “7,000 horsemen”; Esther 9:16-75,000 slain by the Jews, with LXX — 15,000. In Matthew 27:9, we have “Jeremiah” for “Zechariah” — this Calvin allows to be a mistake; and, if a mistake, then one made by the first copyist, for it appears in all the uncials, all the manuscripts and all the versions except the Syriac Peshito where it is omitted, evidently on the authority of the individual transcriber and translator. In Acts 7:16 — “the tomb that Abraham bought” — Hackett regards “Abraham” as a clerical error for “Jacob” (compare ( Genesis 33:18,19). See Bible Com., 3:165, 249, 251,317, (b) Other so called errors are to be explained as a permissible use of round numbers, which cannot be denied to the sacred writers except upon the principle that mathematical accuracy was more important than the general impression to be secured by the narrative.

In Numbers 25:9, we read that there fell in the plague 24,000; Corinthians 10:8 says 23,000. The actual number was possibly somewhere between the two. Upon a similar principle, we do not scruple to celebrate the Landing of the Pilgrims on December 22nd and the birth of Christ on December 25th. We speak of the battle of Bunker Hill, although at Bunker Hill no battle was really fought. In Exodus 12:40,41, the sojourn of the Israelites in Egypt is declared to be 430 years. Yet Paul, in Galatians 3:17, says that the giving of the law through Moses was 430 years after the call of Abraham, whereas the call of Abraham took place 215 years before Jacob and his sons went down into Egypt, and Paul should have said 645 years instead of 430. Franz Delitzsch: “The Hebrew Bible counts four centuries of Egyptian sojourn ( Genesis 15:13-16), more accurately, 430 years ( Exodus 12:40); but according to the LXX ( Exodus 12:40) this number comprehends the sojourn in Canaan and Egypt, so that 215 years come to the pilgrimage in Canaan, and 215 to the servitude in Egypt. This kind of calculation is not exclusively Hellenistic; it is also found in the oldest Palestinian Midrash. Paul stands on this side in Galatians 3:17, making, not the immigration into Egypt, but the covenant with Abraham the terminus a quo of the 430 years which end in the Exodus from Egypt and in the legislation”; see also Hovey, Com. on Galatians 3:17. It was not Paul’s purpose to write chronology, — so he may follow the LXX, and call the time between the promise to Abraham and the giving of the law to Moses 430 years, rather than the actual 600. If he had given the larger number, it might have led to perplexity and discussion about a matter, which had nothing to do with the vital question in hand.

Inspiration may have employed current though inaccurate statements as to matters of history, because they were the best available means of impressing upon men’s minds truth of a more important sort. In Genesis 15:13 the 430 years is called in round numbers 400 years, and so in Acts 7:6. (c) Diversities of statement in accounts of the same event so long as they touch no substantial truth, may be due to the meagerness of the narrative, and might be fully explained if some single fact, now unrecorded, were only known. To explain these apparent discrepancies would not only be beside the purpose of the record, but would destroy one valuable evidence of the independence of the several writers or witnesses.

On the Stokes trial, the judge spoke of two apparently conflicting testimonies as neither of them necessarily false. On the difference between Matthew and Luke as to the scene of the Sermon on the Mount ( Matthew 5:1; cf. Luke 6:17) see Stanley, Sinai and Palestine, 360. As to one blind man or two ( Matthew 20:30; cf. Luke 18:35) see Bliss, Com. on Luke, 275, and Gardiner, in Bibliotheca Sacra, July, 1879:513, 514; Jesus may have healed the blind men during a day’s excursion from Jericho, and it might be described as “when they went out,” or “as they drew nigh to Jericho.” Prof. M. B. Riddle: “ Luke 18:35 describes the general movement towards Jerusalem and not the precise detail preceding the miracle; Matthew 20:30 intimates that the miracle occurred during an excursion from the city, — Luke afterwards telling of the final departure”; Calvin holds to two meetings; Godet to two cities; if Jesus healed two blind men, he certainly healed one, and Luke did not need to mention more than one, even if he knew of both; see Broadus on Matthew 20:30. In Matthew 8:28, where Matthew has two demoniacs at Gadara and Luke has only one at Gerasa, Broadus supposes that the village of Gerasa belonged to the territory of the city of Gadara, a few miles to the Southeast of the lake, and he quotes the case of Lafayette: “In the year 1824 Lafayette visited the United States and was welcomed with honors and pageants. Some historians will mention only Lafayette, but others will relate the same visit as made and the same honors as enjoyed by two persons, namely, Lafayette and his son. Will not both be right?” On Christ’s last Passover, see Robinson, Harmony, 212; E.H.

Sears, Fourth Gospel, Appendix A; Edersheim. Life and Times of the Messiah, 2:507. Augustine: “Locutiones variæ, sed non contrariæ: diverstæ, sed non adversæ.”

Bartlett, in Princeton Rev., Jan. 1880:46, 47 gives the following modern illustrations: Winslow’s Journal (of Plymouth Plantation) speaks of a ship sent out “by Master Thomas Weston.” But Bradford in his far briefer narrative of the matter, mentions it as sent “by Mr. Weston and another.”

John Adams, in his letters, tells the story of the daughter of Otis about her father’s destruction of his own manuscripts. At one time he makes her say: “In one of his unhappy moments he committed them all to the flames”; yet, in the second letter, she is made to say that “he was several days in doing it.” One newspaper says: President Hayes attended the Bennington centennial; another newspaper says: the President and Mrs. Hayes; a third: the President and his Cabinet; a fourth: the President, Mrs. Hayes and a majority of his Cabinet. Archibald Forbes, in his account of Napoleon III at Sedan, points out an agreement of narratives as to the salient points, combined with “the hopeless and bewildering discrepancies as to details,” even as these are reported by eye-witnesses, including himself, Bismarck and General Sheridan who was on the ground, as well as others.

Thayer, Change of Attitude, 52, speaks of Luke’s “plump anachronism in the matter of Theudas” — Acts 5:36 — “For before those days rose up Theudas.” Josephus, Antiquities, 20:5:1, mentions an insurrectionary Theudas, but the date and other incidents do not agree with those of Luke.

Josephus however may have mistaken the date as easily as Luke, or he may refer to another man of the same name. The inscription on the Cross is given in Mark 15:26, as “The King of the Jews”; in Luke 23:38, as “This is the King of the Jews”; in Matthew 27:37, as This is Jesus the King of the Jews”; and in John 19:19, as “Jesus of Nazareth the King of the Jews.” The entire superscription, in Hebrew, Greek and Latin, may have contained every word given by the several evangelists combined, and may have read “This is Jesus of Nazareth, the King of the Jews,” and each separate report may be entirely correct so far as it goes.

See, on the general subject, Haley, Alleged Discrepancies; Fisher, Beginnings of Christianity, 406-412. (d) While historical and archeological discovery in many important particulars goes to sustain the general correctness of the Scripture narratives, and no statement essential to the moral and religious teaching of Scripture has been invalidated, inspiration is still consistent with much imperfection in historical detail and its narratives “do not seem to be exempted from possibilities of error.”

The words last quoted are those of Sanday. In his Bampton Lectures on Inspiration, 400, he remarks that “Inspiration belongs to the historical books rather as conveying a religious lesson, than as histories; rather as interpreting, than as narrating plain matter of fact. The crucial issue is that in these last respects they do not seem to be exempted from possibilities of error.” R. V. Foster, Systematic Theology, and (Cumberland Presbyterian): The Scripture writers “were not inspired to do otherwise than to take these statements as they found them.” Inerrancy is not freedom from misstatements, but from error defined as “that, which misleads in any serious or important sense.” When we compare the accounts of I and 2 Chronicles with those of 1 and 2 Kings we find in the former an exaggeration of numbers, a suppression of material unfavorable to the writer’s purpose, and an emphasis upon that which is favorable, that contrasts strongly with the method of the latter. These characteristics are so continuous that the theory of mistakes in transcription does not seem sufficient to account for the facts. The author’s aim was to draw out the religious lessons of the story, and historical details are to him of comparative unimportance.

H. P. Smith, Bib. Scholarship and Inspiration, 108 — “Inspiration did not correct the Chronicler’s historical point of view, more than it corrected his scientific point of view, which no doubt made the earth the center of the solar system. It therefore left him open to receive documents, and to use them, which idealized the history of the past, and described David and Solomon according to the ideas of later times and the priestly class.

David’s sins are omitted, and numbers are multiplied, to give greater dignity to the earlier kingdom.” As Tennyson’s Idylls of the King give a nobler picture of King Arthur, and a more definite aspect to his history, than actual records justify, yet the picture teaches great moral and religious lessons, so the Chronicler seems to have manipulated his material in the interest of religion Matters of arithmetic were minor matters. “Majoribus intentus est.”

E.G. Robinson: “The numbers of the Bible are characteristic of a semibarbarous age. The writers took care to guess enough. The tendency of such an age is always to exaggerate.” Two Formosan savages divide five pieces between them by taking two apiece and throwing one away. The lowest tribes can count only with the fingers of their hands; when they use their toes, it marks an advance in civilization. To the modern child a hundred is just as great a number as a million. So the early Scriptures seem to use numbers with a childlike ignorance as to their meaning.

Hundreds of thousands can be substituted for tens of thousands, and the substitution seems only a proper tribute to the dignity of the subject.

Gore, in Lux Mundi, 353 — “This was not conscious perversion, but unconscious idealizing of history, the reading back into past records of a ritual development which was really later. Inspiration excludes conscious deception, but it appears to be quite consistent with this sort of idealizing; always supposing that the result read back into the earlier history does represent the real purpose of God and only anticipates the realization…” There are some who contend that these historical imperfections are due to transcription and that they did not belong to the original documents.

Watts, New Apologetic, 71, 111, when asked what is gained by contending for infallible original autographs if they have been since corrupted, replies: “Just what we gain by contending for the original perfection of human nature, though man has since corrupted it. We must believe God’s own testimony about his own work. God may permit others to do what, as a holy righteous God, he cannot do himself.” When the objector declares it a matter of little consequence whether a pair of trousers were or were not originally perfect, so long as they are badly rent just now, Watts replies: “The tailor who made them would probably prefer to have it understood that the trousers did not leave his shop in their present forlorn condition. God drops no stitches and sends out no imperfect work.” Watts however seems dominated by an a priori theory of inspiration, which blinds him to the actual facts of the Bible.

Evans, Bib. Scholarship and Inspiration,40 — “Does the present error destroy the inspiration of the Bible as we have it? No. Then why should the original error destroy the inspiration of the Bible, as it was first given? There are spots on yonder sun; do they stop its being the sun?

Why, the sun is all the more a sun for the spots. So the Bible.” Inspiration seems to have permitted the gathering of such material as was at hand, very much as a modern editor might construct his account of an army movement from the reports of a number of observers; or as a modern historian might combine the records of a past age with all their imperfections of detail. In the case of the Scripture writers, however, we maintain that inspiration has permitted no sacrifice of moral and religious truth in the completed Scripture, but has woven its historical material together into an organic whole which teaches all the facts essential to the knowledge of Christ and of salvation.

When we come to examine in detail what purport to be historical narratives, we must be neither credulous nor skeptical, but simply candid and open-minded. With regard for example to the great age of the Old Testament patriarchs, we are no more warranted in rejecting the Scripture accounts upon the ground that life in later times is so much shorter, than we are to reject the testimony of botanists as to trees of the Sequoia family between four and five hundred feet high, or the testimony of geologists as to Saurians a hundred feet long, upon the ground that the trees and reptiles with which we are acquainted are so much smaller.

Every species at its introduction seems to exhibit the maximum of size and vitality. Weismann, Heredity, 6, 30 — “Whales live some hundreds of years; elephants two hundred — their gestation taking two years.

Giants prove that the plan upon which man is constructed can also be carried out on a scale far larger than the normal one.” E. Ray Lankester, Adv. of Science, 205-237, 286 — agrees with Weismann in his general theory. Sir George Cornewall Lewis long denied centenarism, but at last had to admit it.

Charles Dudley Warner, in Harper’s Magazine, Jan. 1895, gives instances of men 132; 140, and 192 years old. The German Hailer asserts that “the ultimate limit of human life does not exceed two centuries: to fix the exact number of years is exceedingly difficult.” J. Norman Lockyer, in Nature, regards the years of the patriarchs as lunar years. In Egypt, the sun being used, the unit of time was a year; but in Chaldea, the unit of time was a month, for the reason that the standard of time was the moon. Divide the numbers by twelve, and the lives of the patriarchs come out very much the same length with lives at the present day. We may ask, however, how this theory would work in shortening the lives between Noah and Moses. On the genealogies in Matthew and Luke, see Lord Harvey, Genealogies of our Lord, and his art. in Smith’s Bible Dictionary; per contra, see Andrews, Life of Christ,55 sq. On Quirinius and the enrollment for taxation ( Luke 2:2), see Pres. Woolsey, in New Englander, 1869. On the general subject, see Rawlinson, Historical Evidences, and essay in Modern Skepticism, published by Christian Evidence Society, 1:265; Crooker, New Bible and New Uses, 102-126. 3. Errors in Morality. (a) What are charged as such are sometimes evil acts and words of good men — words and acts not sanctioned by God. The inspired writers as simple matter of history narrate these, and subsequent results, or the story itself, are left to point the moral of the tale.

Instances of this sort are Noah’s drunkenness ( Genesis 9:20-27); Lot’s incest ( Genesis 19:30-38); Jacob’s falsehood ( Genesis 27:19-24); David’s adultery ( 2 Samuel 11:1-4); Peter’s denial ( Matthew 26:69-75). Sec Lee, Inspiration, 265, note. Esther’s vindictiveness is not commended, nor are the characters of the Book of Esther said to have acted in obedience to a divine command. Crane, Religion of To-morrow, 241 — “In law and psalm and prophecy we behold the influence of Jehovah working as leaven among a primitive and barbarous people.

Contemplating the Old Scriptures in this light, they become luminous with divinity, and which to discriminate between the divine and the human in the book furnishes us with the principle. Particularly in David do we see a rugged, half civilized, kingly man, full of gross errors, fleshly and impetuous, yet permeated with a divine Spirit that lifts him, struggling, weeping, and warring, up to some of the loftiest conceptions of Deity which the mind of man has conceived. As an angelic being, David is a caricature; as a man of God, as an example of God moving upon and raising up a most human man, he is a splendid example. The proof that the church is of God, is not its impeccability, but its progress.” (b) Where evil acts appear at first sight to be sanctioned, it is frequently some right intent or accompanying virtue, rather than the act itself, upon which commendation is bestowed.

As Rahab’s faith, not her duplicity ( Joshua 2:1-24: cf. Hebrews 11:31 and James 2:25); Jael’s patriotism, not her treachery ( Judges 4:17-22; cf. 5:24). Or did they cast in their lot with Israel and use the common stratagems of war (see next paragraph)? Herder: “The limitations of the pupil are also limitations of the teacher.” While Dean Stanley praises Solomon for tolerating idolatry, James Martineau, Study, 2:137, remarks: “It would be a ridiculous pedantry to apply the Protestant pleas of private judgment to such communities as ancient Egypt and Assyria… It is the survival of coercion, after conscience has been born to supersede it, that shocks and revolts us in persecution.” (c) Certain commands and deeds are sanctioned as relatively just — expressions of justice such as the age could comprehend, and are to be judged as parts of a progressively unfolding system of morality whose key and culmination we have in Jesus Christ. Exodus 20:25 — “1 gave then statutes that were not good” — as Moses’ permission of divorce and retaliation ( Deuteronomy 24:1; cf. Matthew 5:31,32; 19:7-9. Exodus 21:24; cf. Matthew 5:38,39). Compare Elijah’s calling down fire from heaven (2Kings 1:10-12) with Jesus’ refusal to do the same, and his intimation that the spirit of Elijah was not the spirit of Christ ( Luke 9:52-56); cf. Mattheson, Moments on the Mount, 253-255, on Matthew 17:8 — “Jesus only”: “The strength of Bliss paled before him. To shed the blood of enemies requires less strength than to shed one’s own blood, and to conquer by fire is easier than to conquer by love.” Hovey: “In divine revelation, it is first starlight, then dawn, finally day.” George Washington once gave directions for the transportation to the West Indies and the sale there of a refractory Negro who had given him trouble. This was not at variance with the best morality of his time, but it would not suit the improved ethical standards of today. The use of force rather than moral suasion is sometimes needed by children and by barbarians. We may illustrate by the Sunday School scholar’s unruliness, which was cured by his classmates during the week. “What did you say to him?” asked the teacher. “We didn’t say nothing; we just punched his head for him.” This was Old Testament righteousness. The appeal in the Old Testament to the hope of earthly rewards was suitable to a stage of development not yet instructed as to heaven and hell by the coming and work of Christ; compare Exodus 20:12 with Matthew 5:10; 25:46. The Old Testament aimed to fix in the mind of a selected people the idea of the unity and holiness of God; in order to exterminate idolatry, much other teaching was postponed. See Peabody, Religion of Nature,45; Mozley, Ruling Ideas of Early Ages; Green, in Presb. Quar., April, 1877:221-252; McIlvaine, Wisdom of Holy Scripture, 328-368; Brit. and For. Evang. Rev., Jan. 1878: l-32; Martineau, Study, 2:137.

When therefore we find in the inspired song of Deborah, the prophetess ( Judges 5:30) an allusion to the common spoils of war — “a damsel, two damsels to every man” or in Proverbs 31:6,7 — “Give strong drink unto him that is ready to perish, and wine unto the bitter in soul. Let him drink and forget his poverty, and remember his misery no more” — we do not need to maintain that these passages furnish standards for our modern conduct. Dr. Fisher calls the latter “the worst advice to a person in affliction, or dispirited by the loss of property.” They mark past stages in God’s providential leading of mankind. A higher stage indeed is already intimated in Proverbs 31:4 — “it is not for kings to drink wine, Nor for princes to say’ Where is strong drink?” We see that God could use very imperfect instruments and could inspire very imperfect men. Many things were permitted for men’s “hardness of heart” ( Matthew 19:8).

The Sermon on the Mount is a great advance on the law of Moses ( Matthew 5:21 — “Ye have heard that it was said to them of old time” cf. 22 — “But l say unto you”) Robert G. Ingersoll would have lost his stock in trade if Christians had generally recognized that revelation is gradual, and is completed only in Christ. This gradualness of revelation is conceded in the common phrase: “the new dispensation.” Abraham Lincoln showed his wisdom by never going far ahead of the common sense of the people. God similarly adapted his legislation to the capacities of each successive age. The command to Abraham to sacrifice his son ( Genesis 22:1-19) was a proper test of Abraham’s faith in a day when human sacrifice violated no common ethical standard because the Hebrew, like the Roman, “patria potestas” did not regard the child as having a separate individuality, but included the child in the parent and made the child equally responsible for the parent’s sin. But that very command was given only as a test of faith, and with the intent to make the intended obedience the occasion of revealing God’s provision of a substitute and so of doing away with human sacrifice for all future time. We may well imitate the gradualness of divine revelation in our treatment of dancing and of the liquor traffic. (d) God’s righteous sovereignty affords the key to other events. He has the right to do what he will with his own, and to punish the transgressor when and where he will; and he may justly make men the foretellers or executors of his purposes.

Foretellers, as in the imprecatory Psalm s (137:9; cf . Isaiah 13:16-18 and Jeremiah 50:16,29) executors, as in the destruction of the Canaanites ( Deuteronomy 7:2,16). In the former case the Psalm was not the ebullition of personal anger, but the expression of judicial indignation against the enemies of God. We must distinguish the substance from the form. The substance was the denunciation of God’s righteous judgments; the form was taken from the ordinary customs of war in the Psalmist’s time. See Park, in Bibliotheca Sacra, 1862:165; Cowles, Com. on Psalm 137; Perowne on Psalms, Introduction, 61; Presb. and Ref. Rev., 1897:490-505; cf. 2 Timothy 4:14 — “the Lord will render to him according to his works” = a prophecy, not a curse, ajpodw>sei , not ajpodw>h , as in A.V. In the latter case, an exterminating war was only the benevolent surgery that amputated the putrid limb, and so saved the religious life of the Hebrew nation and of the afterworld. See Dr. Thomas Arnold, Essay on the Right Interpretation of Scripture; Fisher, Beginnings of Christianity, 11-24.

Another interpretation of these events has been proposed, which would make them illustrations of the principle indicated in (e) above: E.G.

Robinson, Christian Theology, 45 — “It was not the imprecations of the Psalm that were inspired of God, but his purposes and ideas of which these were by the times the necessary vehicle; just as the adultery of David was not by divine command, though through it the purpose of God as to Christ’s descent was accomplished.” John Watson (Ian Maclaren), Cure of Souls, 143 — “When the massacre of the Canaanites and certain proceedings of David are flung in the face of Christians, it is no longer necessary to fall back on evasions or special pleading. It can now be frankly admitted that, from our standpoint in this year of grace, such deeds were atrocious, and that they never could have been according to the mind of God, but that they must be judged by their date, and considered the defects of elementary moral processes. The Bible is vindicated, because it is, on the whole, a steady ascent, and because it culminates in Christ.”

Lyman Abbott, theology of an Evolutionist, 56 — “Abraham mistook the voice of conscience, calling on him to consecrate his only son to God, an interpreted it as a command to slay his son as a burnt offering. Israel misinterpreted his righteous indignation at the cruel and lustful rites of the Canaanitish religion as a divine summons to destroy the worship by putting the worshipers to death; a people undeveloped in moral judgment could not distinguish between formal regulations respecting camp life and eternal principles of righteousness, such as, Thou shalt love thy neighbor as thyself, but embodied them in the same code, and seemed to regard them as of equal authority.” Wilkinson, Epic of Paul, 281 — “If so be such man, so placed… did in some part that utterance make his own, profaning it, To be his vehicle for sense not meant By the august supreme inspiring Will” — i.e., putting some of his own sinful anger into God’s calm predictions of judgment. Compare the stern last words of “Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada, the priest” when stoned to death in the temple court: “Jehovah look upon it and require it” ( 2 Chronicles 24:20-22), with the last words of Jesus: “Father, forgive them, for they know not what they do” Luke 23:34) and of Stephen: “Lord, lay not this sin to their charge” ( Acts 7:60). (e) Other apparent immoralities are due to unwarranted interpretations.

Symbol is sometimes taken for literal fact; the language of irony is understood as sober affirmation; the glow and freedom of Oriental description are judged by the unimpassioned style of Western literature; appeal to lower motives is taken to exclude, instead of preparing for, the higher.

In Hosea 1:2,3, the command to the prophet to marry a harlot was probably received and executed in vision, and was intended only as symbolic: compare Jeremiah 25:15-18 — “Take this cup… and cause all the nations… to drink.” Literal obedience would have made the prophet contemptible to those whom he would instruct, and would require so long a time as to weaken, if not destroy, the designed effect; see Ann.

Par. Bible, in loco. In 2Kings 6:19, Elisha’s deception, so called, was probably only ironical and benevolent; the enemy dared not resist, because they were completely in his power. In the Song of Solomon, we have, as Jewish writers have always held, a highly wrought dramatic description of the union between Jehovah and his people, which we must judge by Eastern and not by Western literary standards.

Francis W. Newman, in his Phases of Faith, accused even the New Testament of presenting low motives for human obedience. It is true that all right motives are appealed to, and some of these motives are of a higher sort than are others. Hope of heaven and fear of hell are not the highest motives, but they may be employed as preliminary incitements to action, even though only love for God and for holiness will ensure salvation. Such motives are urged both by Christ and by his apostles: Matthew 6:20 — “lay up for yourselves treasures in heaven”; 10:28 — “fear him who is able to destroy both soul and body in hell”; Jude — some save with fear, snatching them out of the fire.” In this respect the New Testament does not differ from the Old Testament George Adam Smith has pointed out that the royalists got their texts, “the powers that be” ( Romans 13:1) and “the king as supreme” ( 1 Peter 2:13), from the New Testament, while the Old Testament furnished texts for the defenders of liberty. While the Old Testament deals with national life, and the discharge of social and political functions, the New Testament deals in the main with individuals and with their relations to God. On the whole subject, see Hessey, Moral Difficulties of the Bible; Jellett, Moral Difficulties of the Old Testament; Faith and Free Thought (Lect. by Christ. Ev. Soc.), 2:173; Rogers, Eclipse of Faith; Butler, Analogy, part ii, chap. iii; Orr, Problem of the Old Testament, 465-483. 4. Errors of Reasoning. (a) What are charged as such are generally to be explained as valid argument expressed in highly condensed form. The appearance of error may be due to the suppression of one or more links in the reasoning.

In Matthew 22:32, Christ’s argument for the resurrection, drawn from the fact that God is the God of Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, is perfectly and obviously valid, the moment we put in the suppressed premise that the living relation to God which is here implied cannot properly be conceived as something merely spiritual, but necessarily requires a new and restored life of the body. If God is the God of the living, then Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob shall rise from the dead. See more full exposition, under Eschatology. Some of the Scripture arguments are enthymemes, and an enthymeme, according to Arbuthnot and Pope, is “a syllogism in which the major is married to the minor, and the marriage is kept secret.” (b) Where we cannot see the propriety of the conclusions drawn from given premises, there is greater reason to attribute our failure to ignorance of divine logic on our part, than to accommodation or ad hominem arguments on the part of the Scripture writers.

By divine logic we mean simply a logic whose elements and processes are correct, though not understood by us. In Hebrews 7:9,10 (Levi’s paying tithes in Abraham), there is probably a recognition of the organic unity of the family, which in miniature illustrates the organic unity of the race. In Galatians 3:20 — “a mediator is not a mediator of one; but God is one — the law, with its two contracting parties, is contrasted with the promise, which proceeds from the sole fiat of God and is therefore unchangeable. Paul’s argument here rests on Christ’s divinity as its foundation — otherwise Christ would have been a mediator in the same sense in which Moses was a mediator (see Lightfoot, in low). In Galatians 4:21-31, Hagar and Ishmael on the one hand, and Sarah and Isaac on the other, illustrate the exclusion of the bondmen of the law from the privileges of the spiritual seed of Abraham. Abraham’s two wives, and the two classes of people in the two sons, represent the two covenants (so Calvin). In John 10:34 — “I said, Ye are god;” the implication is that Judaism was not a system of mere monotheism, but of theism tending to theanthropism, a real union of God and man (Westcott, Bib. Com., in loco ). Godet well remarks that he who doubts Paul’s logic will do well first to suspect his own. (c) The adoption of Jewish methods of reasoning, where it could be proved, would not indicate error on the part of the Scripture writers, but rather an inspired sanction of the method as applied to that particular case.

In Galatians 3:16 — “He saith not, And to seeds, as of many; but as of one, And to thy seed, which is Christ.” Here it is intimated that the very form of the expression in Genesis 22:18, which denotes unity, was selected by the Holy Spirit as significant of that one person, Christ, who was the true seed of Abraham and in whom all nations were to be blessed.

Argument from the form of a single word is in this case correct, although the Rabbins often made more of single words than the Holy Spirit ever intended. Watts, New Apologetic, 69 — “F. W. Farrar asserts that the plural of the Hebrew or Greek terms for ‘seed’ is never used by Hebrew or Greek writers as a designation of human offspring. But see Sophocles, ådipus at Colonus, 599,600 — gh~v ejmh~v ajphla>qhn protwn — ‘ I was driven away from my own country by my own offspring.’” In 1 Corinthians 10:1-6 — “and the rock was Christ” — the Rabbinic tradition that the smitten rock followed the Israelites in their wanderings is declared to be only the absurd literalizing of a spiritual fact — the continual presence of Christ, as preexistent Logos, with his ancient people. Per contra, see Row, Rev, and Mod.

Theories, 98-128. (d) If it should appear however upon further investigation that Rabbinical methods have been wrongly employed by the apostles in their argumentation, we might still distinguish between the truth they are seeking to convey and the arguments by which they support it. Inspiration may conceivably make known the truth, yet leave the expression of the truth to human dialectic as well as to human rhetoric.

Johnson, Quotations of the New Testament from the Old Testament, 137, 138 — “ In the utter absence of all evidence to the contrary, we ought to suppose that the allegories of the New Testament are like the allegories of literature in general, merely luminous embodiments of the truth… If these allegories are not presented by their writers as evidences, they are none the less precious, since they illuminate the truth otherwise evinced, and thus render it at once clear to the apprehension and attractive to the taste.”

If however the purpose of the writers was to use these allegories for proof, we may still see shining through the rifts of their traditional logic the truth, which they were striving to set forth. Inspiration may have put them in possession of this truth without altering their ordinary scholastic methods of demonstration and expression. Horton, Inspiration, 108 — “Discrepancies and illogical reasonings were but inequalities or cracks in the mirrors, which did not materially distort or hide the Person” whose glory they sought to reflect. Luther went even further than this when he said that a certain argument in the epistle was “good enough for the Galatians.” 5. Errors in quoting or interpreting the Old Testament. (a) What are charged as such are commonly interpretations of the meaning of the original Scripture by the same Spirit who first inspired it.

In Ephesians 5:1 4, “arise from the dead, and Christ shall shine upon thee” is an inspired interpretation of Isaiah 60:1 — “Arise, shine; for thy light is come.” Psalm 68:18 — “Thou hast received gifts among men” — is quoted in Ephesians 4:8 as “gave gifts to men.” The words in Hebrew are probably a concise expression for “thou hast taken spoil which thou mayest distribute as gifts to men.” Ephesians 4:8 agrees exactly with the sense, though not with the words, of the Psalm . In Hebrews 11:21, “Jacob… worshiped, leaning upon the top of his staff” (LXX); ( Genesis 47:31 has “bowed himself upon the bed’s head.” The meaning is the same, for the staff of the chief and the spear of the warrior were set at the bed’s head. Jacob, too feeble to rise, prayed in his bed. Here Calvin says that “the apostle does not hesitate to accommodate to his own purpose what was commonly received, — they were not so scrupulous” as to details. Even Gordon, Ministry of the Spirit, 177, speaks of “a reshaping of his own words by the Author of them.” We prefer, with Calvin, to see in these quotations evidence that the sacred writers were insistent upon the substance of the truth rather than upon the form, the spirit rather than the letter. (b) Where an apparently false translation is quoted from the Septuagint, the sanction of inspiration is given to it, as expressing a part at least of the fullness of meaning contained in the divine original — a fullness of meaning which two varying translations do not in some cases exhaust. Psalm 4:4 — Hebrews: “Tremble, and sin not” ( = no longer); LXX: “Be ye angry, and sin not.” Ephesians 4:26 quotes the LXX. The words may originally have been addressed to David’s comrades, exhorting them to keep their anger within bounds. Both translations together are needed to bring out the meaning of the original. Psalm 40:6-8 — “Mine ears hast thou opened” is translated in Hebrews 10:5-7 — “a body didst thou prepare for me.” Here the Epistle quotes from the LXX.

But the Hebrew means literally: “Mine ears hast thou bored” — an allusion to the custom of pinning a slave to the door post of his master by an awl driven through his ear, in token of his complete subjection. The sense of the verse is therefore given in the Epistle: “Thou hast made me thine in body and soul — lo, I come to do thy will.” A. C. Kendrick: “David, just entering upon his kingdom after persecution, is a type of Christ entering on his earthly mission. Hence David’s words are put into the mouth of Christ. For ‘ears,’ the organs with which we hear and obey and which David conceived to be hollowed out for him by God, the author of the Hebrews substitutes the word ‘body,’ as the general instrument of doing God’s will” (Com. on Hebrews 10:5-7). (c) The freedom of these inspired interpretations, however, does not warrant us in like freedom of interpretation in the case of other passages whose meaning has not been authoritatively made known.

We have no reason to believe that the scarlet thread of Rahab (Josh. 2:18) was a designed prefiguration of the blood of Christ, nor that the three measures of meal in which the woman hid her leaven ( Matthew 13:33) symbolized Shem, Ham and Japheth, the three divisions of the human race. C.H.M., in his notes on the tabernacle in Exodus, tails us that “the loops of blue = heavenly grace; the taches of gold = the divine energy of Christ; the rams’ skins dyed red — Christ’s consecration and devotedness; the badgers’ skins — his holy vigilance against temptation”!

The tabernacle was indeed a type of Christ ( John 1:14 — ejskh>nwsen . 2:19, 21 — “in three days I will raise it up… but he spake of the temple of his body”); yet it does not follow that every detail of the structure was significant. So each parable teaches some one main lesson, — the particulars may be mere drapery; and while we may use the parables for illustration, we should never ascribe divine authority to our private impressions of their meaning. Matthew 25:1-13 — the parable of the five wise and the five foolish virgins — has been made to teach that the number of the saved precisely equals the number of the lost. Augustine defended persecution from the words in Luke 14:23 — “constrain them to come in.” The Inquisition was justified by Matthew 13:30 — “bind them in bundles to buns them.” Innocent III denied the Scriptures to the laity, quoting Hebrews 12:20 — “If even a beast touch the mountain, it shall be stoned.” A Plymouth Brother held that he would be safe on an evangelizing journey because he read in John 19:36 — “A bone of him shall not be broken.” — “they saw no one, save Jesus only” — has been held to mean that we should trust only Jesus. The Epistle of Barnabas discovered in Abraham’s 318 servants a prediction of the crucified Jesus, and others have seen in Abraham’s three days’ journey to Mount Moriah the three stages in the development of the soul. Clement of Alexandria finds the four natural elements in the four colors of the Jewish Tabernacle. All this is to make a parable “run on all fours.” While we call a hero a lion, we do not need to find in the man something to correspond to the lion’s mane and claws. See Toy, Quotations In the New Testament; Franklin Johnson, Quotations of the New Testament from the Old Testament; Crooker, The New Bible and its New Uses, 126-136. (d) While we do not grant that the New Testament writers in any proper sense misquoted or misinterpreted the Old Testament, we do not regard absolute correctness in these respects as essential to their inspiration. The inspiring Spirit may have communicated truth, and may have secured in the Scriptures as a whole a record of that truth sufficient for men’s moral and religious needs, without imparting perfect gifts of scholarship or exegesis.

In answer to Toy, Quotations in the New Testament, who takes a generally unfavorable view of the correctness of the New Testament writers, Johnson, Quotations of the New Testament from the Old Testament maintains their correctness. On pages x, xi, of his Introduction, Johnson remarks: “I think it just to regard the writers of the Bible as the creators of a great literature, and to judge and interpret them by the laws of literature. They have produced all the chief forms of literature, as history, biography, anecdote, proverb, oratory, allegory, poetry, fiction.

They have needed therefore all the resources of human speech, its sobriety and scientific precision on one page, its rainbow hues of fancy and imagination on another, its fires of passion on yet another. They could not have moved and guided men in the best manner had they denied themselves the utmost force and freedom of language; had they refused to employ its wide range of expressions, whether exact or poetic; had they not borrowed without stint its many forms of reason, of terror, of rapture, of hope, of joy, of peace. So also, they have needed the usual freedom of literary allusion and citation, in order to commend the gospel to the judgment, the tastes, and the feelings of their readers.” 6. Errors in Prophecy. (a) What are charged as such may frequently be explained by remembering that much of prophecy is yet unfulfilled.

It is sometimes taken for granted that the book of Revelation, for example, refers entirely to events already past. Moses Stuart, in his Commentary, and Warren’s Parousia, represent this preterist interpretation. Thus judged, however, many of the predictions of the book might seem to have failed. (b) The personal surmises of the prophets as to the meaning of the prophecies they recorded may have been incorrect while yet the prophecies themselves are inspired.

In 1 Peter 1:10,11, the apostle declares that the prophets searched “what time or what manner of time the Spirit of Christ which was in them did point unto, when it testified beforehand the sufferings of Christ and the glories that should follow them.” So Paul, although he does not announce it as certain seems to have had some hope that he might live to witness Christ’s second Coming. See 2 Corinthians 5:4 — “not for that we would be unclothed, but that we would be clothed upon” (ejpendu>sasqai — put on the spiritual body, as over the present one, without the intervention of death); 1 Thessalonians 4:15,17 — “we that are alive, that are left unto the coming of the Lord.” So Matthew 2:15 quotes from Hosea 11:1 — “Out of Egypt did I call my son,” and applies the prophecy to Christ, although Hosea was doubtless thinking only of the exodus of the people of Israel. (c) The prophet’s earlier utterances are not to be severed from the later utterances, which elucidate them, or from the whole revelation of which they form a part. It is unjust to forbid the prophet to explain his own meaning. 2 Thessalonians was written expressly to correct wrong inferences as to the apostle’s teaching drawn from his peculiar mode of speaking in the first epistle. In 2 Thessalonians 2:2-5 he removes the impression “that the day of the Lord is now present” or “just at hand”; declares that “it will not be, except the falling away come first, and the man of sin be revealed”; reminds the Thessalonians: “when I was yet with you, I told you these things.” Yet still, in verse 1, he speaks of “the coming of our Lord Jesus Christ, and our gathering together unto him.”

These passages, taken together, show: (1) that the two epistles are one in their teaching; (2) that in neither epistle is there any prediction of the immediate coming of the Lord; (3) that in the second epistle great events are foretold as intervening before that coming; (4) that while Paul never taught that Christ would come during his own lifetime, he hoped at least during the earlier part of his life that it might be so — a hope that seems to have been dissipated in his later years. (See Timothy 4:6 — “I am already being offered, and the time for my departure is come.”) We must remember, however, that there was a “coming of the Lord” in the destruction of Jerusalem within three or four years of Paul’s death.

Henry Van Dyke: “The point of Paul’s teaching in I and 2 then, is not that Christ is coming tomorrow, but that he is surely coming.” The absence of perspective in prophecy may explain Paul’s not at first defining the precise time of the end, and so leaving it to be misunderstood.

The second Epistle to the Thessalonians, therefore, only makes plainer the meaning of the first, and adds new items of prediction. It is important to recognize in Paul’s epistles a progress in prophecy, in doctrine, in church polity. The full statement of the truth was gradually drawn out, under the influence of the Spirit, upon occasion of successive outward demands and inward experiences. Much is to be learned by studying the chronological order of Paul’s epistles, as well as of the other New Testament books. For evidence of similar progress in the epistles of Peter, compare 1 Peter 4:7 with 1 Peter 3:4 sq. (d) The character of prophecy as a rough general sketch of the future, in highly figurative language, and without historical perspective, renders it peculiarly probable that what at first sight seem to be errors are due to a misinterpretation on our part, which confounds the drapery with the substance, or applies its language to events to which it had no reference. James 5:9 and Philippians 4:5 are instances of that large prophetic speech which regards the distant future as near at hand, because so certain to the faith and hope of the church. Sanday, Inspiration, 376-378 — “No doubt the Christians of the Apostolic age did live in immediate expectation of the Second Coming, and that expectation culminated at the crisis in which the Apocalypse was written. In the Apocalypse, as in every predictive prophecy, there is a double element, one part derived from the circumstances of the present and another pointing forwards to the future… All these things, in an exact and literal sense have fallen through with the postponement of that great event in which they center. From the first they were but meant as the imaginative pictorial and symbolical clothing of that event. What measure of real fulfillment the Apocalypse may yet be destined to receive we cannot tell. But in predictive prophecy, even when most closely verified, the essence lies less in the prediction than in the eternal laws of moral and religious truth which the fact predicted reveals or exemplifies.” Thus we recognize both the divinity and the freedom of prophecy, and reject the rationalistic theory, which would relate the fall of the Beaconsfield government in Matthew’s way: “That it might be fulfilled which was spoken by Cromwell, saying: ‘Get you gone, and make room for honest men!’” See the more full statement of the nature of prophecy, on pages 132-141. Also Bernard, Progress of Doctrine in the New Testament 7. Certain books unworthy of a place in inspired Scripture. (a) This charge may be shown, in each single case, to rest upon a misapprehension of the aim and method of the book, and its connection with the remainder of the Bible, together with a narrowness of nature or of doctrinal view, which prevents the critic from appreciating the wants of the peculiar class of men to which the book is especially serviceable.

Luther called James “a right strawy epistle.” His constant pondering of the doctrine of justification by faith alone made it difficult for him to grasp the complementary truth that we are justified only by such faith as brings forth good works, or to perceive the essential agreement of James and Paul. Prof. R. E. Thompson, in S. S. Times, Dec. 3, 1898:803, — “Luther refused canonical authority to books not actually written by apostles or composed (as Mark and Luke) under their direction. So he rejected from the rank of canonical authority Hebrews, James, Jude, Peter, Revelation. Even Calvin doubted the Petrine authorship of 2 Peter, excluded the book of Revelation from the Scripture on which he wrote Commentaries, and also thus ignored 2 and 3 John.” G. P. Fisher in S. S.

Times, Aug. 29, 1891 — “Luther, in his preface to the New Testament (Edition of 1522), gives a list of what he considers as the principal books of the New Testament These are John’s Gospel and First Epistle, Paul’s Epistles, especially Romans and Galatians, and Peter’s First Epistle. Then he adds that ‘St. James’ Epistle is a right strawy Epistle compared with them’ — ‘ein recht strohern Epistel gegen sie,’ thus characterizing it not absolutely but only relatively.” Zwingle even said of the Apocalypse: “It is not a Biblical book.” So Thomas Arnold, with his exaggerated love for historical accuracy and definite outline, found the Oriental imagery and sweeping visions of the book of Revelation so bizarre and distasteful that he doubted their divine authority. (b) The testimony of church history and general Christian experience to the profitableness and divinity of the disputed books is of greater weight than the personal impressions of the few who criticize them.

Instance the testimonies of the ages of persecution to the worth of the prophecies, which assure God’s people that his cause shall surely triumph. Denney, Studies in Theology, 226 — “It is at least as likely that the individual should be insensible to the divine message in a book, as that the church should have judged it to contain such a message if it did not do so.” Milton, Areopagitica: “The Bible brings in holiest men passionately murmuring against Providence through all the arguments of Epicurus.”

Bruce, Apologetics, 329 — “Old Testament religion was querulous, vindictive, philolevitical, hostile toward foreigners, morbidly self- conscious, and tending to self-righteousness. Ecclesiastes shows us how we ought not to feel. To go about crying Vanitas! is to miss the lesson it was meant to teach, namely, that the Old Covenant was vanity — proved to be vanity by allowing a son of the Covenant to get into so despairing a mood.” Chadwick says that Ecclesiastes got into the Canon only after it had received an orthodox postscript.

Pfleiderer, Philos. Religion, 1:193 — “Slavish fear and self-righteous reckoning with God are the unlovely features of this Jewish religion of law to which the ethical idealism of the prophets had degenerated, and these traits strike us most visibly in Pharsiaism… It was this side of the Old Testament religion, to which Christianity took a critical and destroying attitude, while it revealed a new and higher knowledge of God. For, says Paul, ‘ye received not the spirit of bondage again unto fear; but ye received the spirit of adoption’ ( Romans 8:15). In unity with God man does not lose his soul but preserves it. God not only commands but gives.”

Ian Maclaren (John Watson), Cure of Souls, 144 — “When the book of Ecclesiastes is referred to the days of the third century BC, then its note is caught, and any man who has been wronged and embittered by political tyranny and social corruption has his bitter cry included in the book of God.” (c) Such testimony can be adduced in favor of the value of each one of the books to which exception is taken, such as Esther, Job, Song of Solomon, Ecclesiastes, Jonah, James, Revelation.

Esther is the book, next to the Pentateuch, held in highest reverence by the Jews. “Job was the discoverer of infinity, and the first to see the bearing of infinity on righteousness. It was the return of religion to nature. Job heard the voice beyond the Sinai-voice” (Shadow-Cross, 89). Inge, Christian Mysticism, 43 — “As to the Song of Solomon, its influence upon Christian Mysticism has been simply deplorable. A graceful romance in honor of true love has been distorted into a precedent and sanction for giving way to hysterical emotions in which sexual imagery has been freely used to symbolize the relation between the soul and its Lord.” Chadwick says that the Song of Solomon got into the Canon only after it had received an allegorical interpretation. Gladden, Seven Puzzling Bible Books, 165, thinks it impossible that “the addition of one more inmate to the harem of that royal rake, King Solomon, should have been made the type of the spiritual affection between Christ and his church.

Instead of this, the book is a glorification of pure love. The Shulamite, transported to the court of Solomon, remains faithful to her shepherd lover, and is restored to him.”

Bruce, Apologetics, 321 — “The Song of Solomon, literally interpreted as a story of true love, proof against the blandishments of the royal harem, is rightfully in the Canon as a buttress to the true religion; for whatever made for purity in the relations of the sexes made for the worship of Jehovah — Baal worship and impurity being closely associated.”

Rutherford, McCheyne, and Spurgeon have taken more texts from the Song of Solomon than from any other portion of Scripture of like extent.

Charles G. Finney, Autobiography, 378 — “At this time it seemed as if my soul was wedded to Christ in a sense which I never had any thought or conception of before. The language of the Song of Solomon was as natural to me as my breath. I thought I could understand well the state he was in when he wrote that Song, and concluded then, as I have ever thought since, that that Song was written by him after he had been reclaimed from his great backsliding. I not only had all the fullness of my first love, but a vast accession to it. Indeed, the Lord lifted me up so much above anything that I had experienced before, and taught me so much of the meaning of the Bible, of Christ s relations and power and willingness, that I found myself saying to him: I had not known or conceived that any such thing was true.” On Jonah, see R.W. Dale, in Expositor, July, 1892, advocating the non-historical and allegorical character of the book.

Bibliotheca Sacra, 10:737-764 — “Jonah represents the nation of Israel as emerging through a miracle from the exile, in order to carry out its mission to the world at large. It teaches that God is the God of the whole earth; that the Ninevites as well as the Israelites are dear to him; that his threatening of penalty are conditional.” 8. Portions of the Scripture books written by others than the persons to whom they are ascribed.

The objection rests upon a misunderstanding of the nature and object of inspiration. It may be removed by considering that (a) In the case of books made up from preexisting documents, inspiration simply preserved the compilers of them from selecting in adequate or improper material. The fact of such compilation does not impugn their value as records of a divine revelation, since these books supplement each other’s deficiencies and together are sufficient for man’s religious needs.

Luke distinctly informs us that he secured the materials for his gospel from the reports of others who were eyewitnesses of the events he recorded ( Luke 1:1-4) The book of Genesis bears marks of having incorporated documents of earlier times. The account of creation which begins with Genesis 2:4 is evidently written by a different hand from that which penned 1:1-31 and 2:1-3. Instances of the same sort may be found in the books of Chronicles. In like manner, Marshall’s Life of Washington incorporates documents by other writers. By thus incorporating them, Marshall vouches for their truth. See Bible Com., 1:2, 22. Dorner, Hist. Prot. Theology, 1:243 — “Luther ascribes to faith critical authority with reference to the Canon. He denies the canonicity of James, without regarding it as spurious. So of Hebrews and Revelation, though later, in 1545, he passed a more favorable judgment upon the latter. He even says of a proof adduced by Paul in Galatians that it is too weak to hold. He allows that in external matters not only Stephen but also, even the sacred authors contain inaccuracies. The authority of the Old Testament does not seem to him invalidated by the admission that several of its writings have passed through revising hands. What would it matter, he asks, if Moses did not write the Pentateuch? The prophets studied Moses and one another. If they built in much wood, hay and stubble along with the rest, still the foundation abides; the fire of the great day shall consume the former; for in this manner do we treat the writings of Augustine and others. Kings is far more to be believed than Chronicles.