! 


L IB R J^ R Y 


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eological Seminary, 




PRINCETON, N. J. 


Cas< 


BS 540 .G62 1877 


Shi'/ 

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God's word, man's light and 


Boot 


guide 



God's Y7ord 

MAN'S LIGHT AND GUIDE. 

A COURSE OF 

Lectures on the Bible, 

BEFORE THE 

New York Sunday School Association, 



BY 



REV.DRS. TA YLOR, BRIGGS, STORRS, CROSBY, BOOTH, \ 

PORTER, BOARDMAN, WASHBURN, AND \ 

SIMPSON. ■ 



AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY, 

ISO NASSAU STREET, NEW YORK. 



COPYRIGHT, 1877, 
BY AMERICAN TRACT SOCIETY. 



PREFACE 



The Course of Lectures comprising this volume was 
given before the New York Sunday-School Association, 
during the past winter, i^'j^-'j. At the commencement 
no thought of their publication was entertained ; it be- 
came apparent, however, very early in the course, that 
the interest awakened by them could not be satisfied by 
their delivery only : and in answer to the frequent and 
urgent requests of the Sunday-school public, application 
was made to the authors fer their manuscripts for publi- 
cation. The result is seen in the present volume, which 
is put forth with the confident expectation that not only 
many who were unable to hear the lectures, but a large 
number of those who did, will desire to preserve this vol- 
ume among their choice reading. 

It should be stated, in justice to those whose names 
are annexed to the lectures, that each is held responsible 
only for the opinions expressed by himself. 

E. C. WILDER, 

President N. Y. S. S. Association. 



CONTENTS, 



-THE INSPIRA TIOiV OF THE SCRIPTURES - page 5 

REV. WM. M. TAYLOR, D. D. 

THE LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE 37 

REV. CHARLES A. BRIGG3, D. D. 

THE UNITY AND THE VARIETY OF THE BIBLE jy 

REV. R. S. STORRS, D. D. 

ANCIENT HISTORY IN ITS CONNECTION WITH THE 

OLD TESTAMENT - 117 

REV. HOV/ARD CROSBY, D. D. 

THE ADAPTATION OF THE BIBLE TO THE UNIVER- 
SAL NEEDS OF THE SOUL, AND THE WITNESS OF 
CHRISTIAN MEN TO ITS DIVINE AUTHORITY AND 
POWER - -- 145 

REV. ROBERT RUSSELL BOOTH, D. D. 

'MIRACLES AND PROPHECIES WHICH SHOW THE 

BIBLE DIVINE - i6g 

REV. NOAH PORTER, D. D. 

METHOD OF JESUS CHRIST AS TEACHER 201 

REV. GEO. D. BOARDMAN, D. D. 

THE RIGHT AND RESPONSIBILITY OF THE CHRIS- 
TIAN CONSCIENCE IN THE STUDY OF THE SCRIP- 
TURES - 221 

REV. E. A. WASHBURN, D. D. 

'MAJESTY AND HOLINESS OF THE BIBLE 251 

REV. M. SIMPSON, D. D.,LL.D. 



THE 



Inspiration of the Scriptures. 



REV, WILLIAM M. TAYLOR, D, D,, 

PASTOR OF THE BROADWAY TABERNACLE CHURCH, NEW YORK. 



THE INSPIRATION 



OF 



THE SCRIPTURES 



In entering upon the consideration of the inspiration 
of the Scriptures, it is essential that we have first a clear 
idea of the place which that subject holds in the order of 
a logical investigation into the claims and characteristics 
of the Old and New Testaments. The existence and 
personality of God is the great postulate of the soul; and 
that being granted, it is at once seen to be both a possi- 
ble and a probable thing that He should communicate in 
some way with man in his state of conscious guilt and 
spiritual helplessness. The Bible claims to be such a 
communication ; and we can trace it up through the cen- 
turies to the dates at v/hich its several component parts 
were written ; we can establish that its books were writ- 
ten by the men whose names they bear ; and that in 
their Greek and Hebrew forms they have come down to 
us with wonderful accuracy, so that we have more cer- 
tainty that we have Paul's epistles as he wrote them, 
than we have that the letters of Cicero to his friend At- 
ticus are preserved in their original form. All these 
things are settled for the sacred books precisely as we 



8 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

settle the genuineness and authenticity of other ancient 
writings ; and the next topic of inquiry is the credibility 
of Scripture. Allowing that we have here genuine an- 
cient books, and that they were written by the men 
whose names are attached to them, may we believe their 
statements ? Here we are met by the first serious an- 
tagonism in the shape of a denial of the possibility of 
the supernatural. It is alleged that miracles are impos- 
sible, and therefore that the books containing the rec- 
ords of them are incredible. So the whole subject of 
the possibility, credibility, and evidential value of mira- 
cles falls to be considered at this point; and it is only 
after the miracles have been proved to be real, and the 
miracle-workers to be thus divinely attested and en- 
dorsed, that we advance to the question of inspiration. 

In the arrangements for this course of lectures, and 
when I undertook to treat this very important and diffi- 
cult subject, I expected that this order would have been 
observed ; but as each lecturer had to be taken in the 
week when he could be got, it was found to be impossi- 
ble to carry out this design ; and so it is all the more 
needful that I should point out to you the proper logical 
sequence of the different themes that are to be discussed 
before you. I shall have to take for granted that one 
writer has proved to you the genuineness and authen- 
ticity of the sacred books, and that another has estab- 
lished to your satisfaction the truth of the miracles, 
and the reality of the Deity of our Lord and the divin- 
ity of the commission of the prophets and apostles. And 



INSPIRATION OF THE SCIUTTURES. 9 

with these things held as settled, I am to inquire into the 
subject of the inspiration of the Scriptures. 

The term rendered in 2 Tim. 3 : 16, ** given by inspi- 
ration of God," signifies literally " God-breathed ;" and it 
implies that the writings of the Old Testament, of which 
Paul is there speaking, were the result of a certain influ- 
ence exerted by God upon their authors, who, as Peter 
has it, " spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." 
The word, then, may be held as intimating that the Holy 
Ghost was especially and miraculously present with and 
in the writers, revealing to them truths which they did 
not know before, and guiding them alike in their record 
of these truths, and of the transactions of which they 
were eye and ear witnesses, so that they were enabled to 
present them with substantial accuracy to the minds of 
others. 

The peculiarity of this definition lies in the word 
" miraculously." Many would say all the rest, but would 
falter over that. They conceive inspiration to be only a 
higher degree of genius, and deny that there is anything 
supernatural and peculiar in the case of the writers of 
the Bible. But in opposition to that opinion we cite the 
declarations of the men themselves, who stand before us 
as men divinely endorsed by miracle, and who must be 
held to be the best witnesses in the case. When David 
said, " The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and his word 
was in my tongue," he meant something more than the 
apostrophe to the muse with which the Iliad begins, or 
even than the prayer to the Spirit which forms the gem 



lo INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

of Paradise Lost. When Isaiah and his brethren said, 
*' Thus saith the Lord/' they claimed something higher 
than that they were speaking under the stirrings of po- 
etic rapture ; and when Paul said to the Corinthians, 
*' Which things we speak, not in the words which man's 
wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth," 
he used language to which you will find no parallel in 
the literature of- mere human genius. And no man of 
candor or intelligence can pass from the writings even 
of the unapproachable Shakespeare into the perusal of 
the Bible without feeling that the difference between the 
two is one not simply of degree, but of kind ; he has not 
merely ascended to a loftier outlook in the same human 
dwelling, but he has gone into a new region altogether. 
There is what we may call a certain " unknown quality" 
in this book which clearly distinguishes it from others ; 
and if we may take its own explanation of the matter, 
that unknown quality is divine inspiration. 

Now it may clear away much of the obscurity which 
has been thrown around this subject if we distinguish 
between things that differ, and it may serve to render 
our remarks more memorable if we group them under a 
few appropriate headings. 

I. In the first place, then, you will observe that Scrip- 
ture is entirely silent as to the manner in which the divine 
influence wrought upon the minds of the authors, or the 
kind of agency of which they were the subjects. God never 
answers the question " How .^" When in regard to the 
new birth Nicodemus asked, "How can these things be .'*" 



INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. ii 

he received for answer a reiteration of its necessity. And 
when men ask into the " how" of gravitation or cohesion, 
they are met with the same silence. So in regard to in- 
spiration, we have no information whatever as to the 
mode of its action ; we are pointed only to results. We 
must not allow ourselves therefore to wander beyond the 
record, and speculate with Dick, Doddridge, and others, 
on degrees of inspiration, such as superintendence, ele- 
vation, or suggestion, All such attempts are ensnaring, 
and tend only to confuse us in regard to a subject which 
is mysterious enough in itself. 

2. In the second place, we must distinguish between 
inspiration and revelation. The most cursory perusal of 
the Bible will show that it consists of two different kinds 
of records : first, those of truths directly and imme- 
diately imparted to the mind of the writer by God, and 
which he could have learned in no other manner ; and 
second, those of events that occurred before the writer's 
own observation, and of sayings that fell upon his own 
ears. Thus Paul received the account of the institution 
of the Lord's Supper " by revelation," and he went up to 
Jerusalem "by revelation ;" but when he is narrating the 
incidents connected with his interview with Peter at 
Antioch, he is telling facts which were as well known to 
others as they were to him. There is therefore a very 
apparent distinction between these two things ; but in- 
spiration touches the written accounts of them both, and 
it is the same for them both. Its province is to secure 
accuracy in the transmission of truth, whether that truth 



12 INSPIRATION OF I HE SCRIPTURES. 

be a revelation directly received from God, or the history 
of something which has occurred before the eyes of men 
on earth. Hence though the whole Scripture is inspired, 
it does not stamp with divine authority every sentiment 
which it reports as uttered by the men of whom it speaks, 
or mark with the divine approval every action which is 
related in it as performed by those whose biographies it 
contains. In the Book of Job, for example, inspiration 
gives with equal accuracy the language of Jehovah, the 
words of Satan, and the speeches of Job and his three 
friends ; but it does not therefore place them all on the 
same level of authority. Each speaker is responsible for 
his own utterances, and neither Job nor Bildad nor Zo- 
phar nor Eliphaz nor Elihu spoke by inspiration of God. 
They gave utterance to their own opinions, and all that 
inspiration vouches for is that no one of them is misrep- 
resented, but that each spoke the sentiments that are 
here attributed to him. This may seem so evident as to 
be a mere truism ; but even such a thinker as Coleridge 
has charged the advocates of the verbal theory of inspi- 
ration (and if his charge is true at all, it is equally so of 
the plenary theory which we adopt) with the palpable 
absurdity of making God responsible for all the half- 
truths uttered by those ancient debaters ; and so it be- 
comes us, holding as we do to the fact that inspiration 
guarantees the accuracy of the report, to repudiate and 
expose the ridiculous perversion of the truth which is 
industriously attributed to us. Because a sentence of 
Satan's is recorded in Job, and also in the history of our 



INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 13 

Lord's temptation, and because I believe that Satan has 
been in both instances correctly rejDresented, it does not 
follow that I must also believe that he spoke by inspiration. 
And the same is true of every interlocutor introduced 
into the sacred narratives. Claudius Lysias was not in- 
spired to write his letter to Felix because that letter is 
preserved in the book of the Acts ; but the inspiration 
of Luke vouches for the accuracy of the representation 
which he has given of the letter — that is all. So, again, 
the fact that David's cruelty to the Ammonites is re- 
corded in the Book of Kings does not imply that God 
approved it. The inspiration of the book vouches only 
for the accuracy of the record. Only when he who 
speaks is speaking in God's name, and is a recognized 
prophet or apostle, have we any right to regard his utter- 
ances as of divine authority. This distinction between 
revelation and inspiration must be clearly understood, for 
some of the most plausible objections to the common 
theory have arisen from the fact that by many it has 
been either unrecognized or ignored. 

3. In the third place, we must distinguish between 
inspiration and verbal dictation. The Holy Spirit did 
not employ the writers as copying machines. He used 
the men themselves, and spoke through their individual- 
ity to others. He wrought in and with and through 
their spirits, so as to preserve their individuality, while 
yet he transmitted his truth. The gold was his ; the 
mould was theirs. If you ask me whether inspiration 
affected the words, I must answer Yes, for it could not 



14 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

insure the correct transmission of thought, without in 
some way affecting the words ; but it affected the words 
not directly and immediately by dictating them in the 
ears of the writers, but mediately, through working on 
their minds, and producing there such vivid and clear 
ideas of thoughts and facts, that the writers could easily 
find words fitted to their purpose. The Spirit employed 
the attention, the investigation, the memory, the educa- 
tion, the fancy, the logic, in a word, all the characteristics 
of the writer, and wrought through these. Hence we 
find Luke, in his introduction to his Gospel, affirming 
that he had made dihgent investigation of all things from 
the very beginning of Christ's ministry. Hence also, we 
have peculiarities of style in the productions of each of the 
sacred penmen. We can see a difference between the 
manner of Moses and that of Matthew ; between the 
songs of David and the epigrammatic proverbs of his 
son ; between the mystic grandeur of Ezekiel and the 
simple majesty of Isaiah ; between the intellectual 
acuteness of Paul and the keen spiritual intuition of 
John. We must conclude therefore, that while from the 
divine side the Holy Spirit gave through men clearly 
and faithfully that which he wished to communicate, 
from the humaia side that communication came forth 
in language such as the men themselves would nat- 
urally have chosen. I am aware that many would sneer 
at this as an impossibility, and would allege that if 
the words are affected by inspiration at all, there must 
have been dictation. But the " must " is a '' non seqniturr 



,^ 



INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 15 

It is admitted by all that God works out his own pur- 
poses in the government of the world, through the ordi- 
nary actions of men, while yet no violence is done to their 
personal freedom. It is admitted, also, that God, through 
the gracious operations of his Spirit, works in the hearts 
of his people so as to develop the new man in each of 
them, while yet the individuality of each is preserved, 
and the type of piety is just as distinct in each Christian 
as the style is in each of the sacred writers. These 
cases are so nearly parallel to that before us, as to sug- 
gest that all denials of the possibility of inspiration with- 
out the destruction of individual characteristics, are as 
unphilosophical as they are arrogant. 

4. In the fourth place, I remark that, in the repro- 
duction of discourses, inspiration is not verbatim re- 
porting. This follows from what I have already said, for 
reporting would have been a mere mechanical operation; 
but the Spirit used the memories, the intuitions, the 
judgments, and indeed, the idiosyncrasies of the writers, 
so that while each gives that of the discourse which, as I 
may so express it, adhered to himself, he was enabled to 
give it with substantial accuracy. No one of the sacred 
writers professes to give a complete account of every- 
thing that Jesus said on any one occasion, f-or John is 
careful to declare that if such a thing had been attempt- 
ed, " the world itself could not contain the books that 
should be written." But the Spirit so wrought in them, 
and through them, that what they did write w^as in sub- 
stance true. Thus, in the case of the title over the cross, 



1 6 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

each of the four evangeHsts gives different words. In 
Matthew it stands thus : " This is Jesus, the King of the 
Jews." In Mark, thus : *' The King of the Jews." In 
Luke, thus : " This is the King of the Jews." In John, 
thus : " Jesus of Nazareth the King of the Jesus." Now 
if inspiration had been mere verbatim reporting, then 
these four would have been alike; but since the Holy 
Spirit used the memories of the evangelists, there are 
verbal differences, while in the great matter which fas- 
tened itself on the memory of each, namely, that Pilate 
had acknowledged the royalty of Jesus, they are all alike. 
That was the substance of the title, and in conveying 
that, accuracy is secured. Now let it be observed that 
by using the sacred penmen thus, the Holy Spirit has 
let us see the Saviour's history from four different stand- 
points, and by so much the more has increased our 
knowledge of him. Hugh Miller, in one of the most in- 
teresting of his writings,* has remarked, concerning the 
imitative faculty, that he has seen it rendered valuable 
by being set in the literary attainment of a newspaper 
reporter, so that he has had to estimate at a different 
value, the respective reports- of gentlemen of the press, 
equal in their powers of memory and in general acquire- 
ment, and unequal merely in the degree in which they 
possessed the imitative faculty. In the reports of the 
one class, he had found only the meaning of the speakers, 
in those of the other, both the meaning and the speakers 
too. Now this difference in men reproducing the sub- 
* " First Impressions of England," page 282. 



INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 17 

stance of what others have said in our own day, may en- 
able us to understand how it is that through the eyes of 
John's intuitional character we see in his Gospel so 
much more of Christ's deeper nature, than we do through 
Matthew's narrative ; and how in the Gospel of ]\Iark 
we are made so much better acquainted with the Lord's 
looks and gestures, than we are in that of Luke. Each 
took all that his own individuality, and the purpose 
which he had in view in writing, attracted to him ; but 
it is not professed that either one of them by himself, or 
the whole of them put together, give a perfectly com- 
plete account of every word the Saviour spoke on any 
one occasion, far less of all the words he uttered in his 
public ministry. Yet what each gives is, so far as it 
goes, a correct representation of. the Lord. If each had 
given simply a full verbatim report of the discourses 
which he heard, then whenever they came upon the same 
address, they would have been only reproductions of each 
other, like the several pages in a manifold writer, and it 
would have been said at once that the fourfold testimony 
was virtually only one. But as it is, not only have we 
four views of Christ, taken from so many different 
points, but we have four independent human witnesses, 
by whose testimony the truth of the facts of the gospel 
may be established. 

5. I remark in the fifth place, that inspiration is not 
sanctification. The possession of this gift was no proof 
of the personal holiness of him who had it. Balaam was 
inspired, and Saul prophesied with the students at Ramah, 

2* 



1 8 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

and so we must distinguish between the inspiration and the 
holiness of the man. All gifts are not graces. Inspiration 
is a gift, sanctification is a grace. The one is no guar- 
antee of the other. Yet, obvious as this distinction is, it 
has been often overlooked. Thus one of the most ingen- 
ious of the modern opponents to the common view of in- 
spiration has said, " We all know that Peter reasoned 
very perversely about the circumcision, and that Paul at 
once vanquished him in argument." But we know noth- 
ing of the kind. What we do know is that Peter acted 
in a manner inconsistent with his own avowed views. 
Neither his teachings nor his reasonings were at fault. 
It was his conduct that was blameworthy. Not his in- 
spiration as a teacher, but his sanctification as a Chris- 
tian, was defective. 

6. Finally, the inspiration of Scripture does not in- 
volve in it the infallible guidance of all the copyists and 
translators of the sacred books. In the early Christian 
centuries, and on till the period of the invention of print- 
ing, copies could be multiplied only by transcription ; 
and that must have caused many inaccuracies which only 
a continuous miracle, such as we have no warrant to 
expect, could have prevented. Again, the translation 
from the original language into our own tongue and into 
other tongues was a human work, and like everything 
purely human is marred by imperfections. We must 
therefore be on our guard against charging inspiration 
with such mistakes as have arisen from either of these 
causes ; while from the progress made in recent times 



INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 19 

in the sciences of Biblical criticism and philology, we 
may expect that we shall come nearer and nearer to the 
sacred autographs and so minimize the difficulties that 
have heretofore pressed on every theory which has been 
advanced regarding inspiration. 

But now, having attempted to show you what inspira- 
tion is, by a process of differentiation which has made 
manifest to you what it is not, I proceed to the proof 
that the word of God is -authoritatively inspired. There 
are many lines of induction on which we might travel to 
that conclusion, but as it is impossible to take more than 
one on an occasion like the present, I select the testi- 
mony of the Lord Jesus himself. Remember, we have 
on other grounds arrived at the conviction that he is to 
be received as the Son of God, the Saviour of the world, 
and so we are not reasoning in a circle when we call him 
as a witness. Now on the very face of the Gospel nar- 
ratives it appears that he was in the habit of appealing 
to the Old Testament in such a way as implied that it 
was of divine origin and authority. Of the law he 
affirmed that not one jot or tittle should in any wise pass 
from it till all was fulfilled. When he quoted from Da- 
vid he affirmed that the psalmist "spake in the Spirit," 
or "by the Holy Ghost." He declared that "the Scrij> 
tures must be fulfilled." He exhorted his hearers to 
"search the Scriptures," and he made one of his argu- 
ments turn on the declaration that " the Scripture cannot 
be broken." And if we may take the words of those who 
as apostles were his daily companions for years, or were 



2 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

specially instructed by himself, as representing his 
views, then the manner in which Peter quoted from the 
ancient Scripture on the day of Pentecost and the fact 
that he declares that holy men of old spake as they 
were moved by the Holy Ghost ; the assertion of Paul 
that all Scripture is given by inspiration of God, and 
the method in which that apostle constantly treats the 
Old Testament in his epistles ; the allegation of the 
author of the Epistle to the Hebrews, that God spoke 
to the fathers by the prophets, and the formula by which 
the same writer cites from the book of Psalms, saying, 
"wherefore as the Holy Ghost saith," all indicate that 
in the view of our Lord and his apostles the Old Testa- 
ment was given by inspiration of God, and is of infalli- 
ble authority. We cannot therefore give up the authori- 
ty of the Old Testament, without compromising that of 
the New ; and in that fact you have the reason why so 
many assailants of Christianity direct their first batteries 
against Moses and the prophets. We hang the Old 
Testament on the neck of the Saviour. It has the en- 
dorsement and imprimatur of the Son of God, and we 
receive it as inspired on his authority. 

But what of that of the New } We reply that we 
receive that also on the word of Christ, because of 
the promises which he gave to his apostles, with refer- 
ence to their public work in the organizing of the early 
church, and the giving to it of the word of the truth 
of the gospel. There are two classes of promises given 
to the apostles, involving in them the assurance 



INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 21 

plenary inspiration. The first is to be found exclu- 
sively in the three earliest" gospels, and of these the 
passage Matt. 10:19-20 may be taken as an example: 
" When they deliver you up, take no thought how or 
what ye shall speak : for it shall be given you in that 
same hour what ye shall speak. For it is not ye that 
speak, but the Spirit of your Father which speaketh 
in you." Now if these words mean anything at all they 
imply, that on all public occasions on which the apostles 
should be called to defend themselves, whether before 
councils or synagogues, before governors and kings, they 
would be infallibly guided by the Holy Ghost, as to what 
and how they should speak. The second class of passa- 
ges is to be found in the farewell discourse which John 
has preserved for us in the fourteenth, fifteenth, and six- 
teenth chapters of his Gospel, and which are as follows : 
"But the Comforter, which is the Holy Ghost, whom the 
Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, 
and bring all things to your remembrance, whatsoever I 
have said unto you." " When the Comforter is come, whom 
I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of 
truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify 
of me: and ye also shall bear witness, because ye have 
been with me from the beginning." "Howbeit when he, 
the Spirit of truth, is come, he will guide you into all 
truth : for he shall not speak of himself ; but whatsoever 
he shall hear, that shall he speak: and he will show you 
things to come. He shall glorify me : for he shall re- 
ceive of mine, and shall show it unto you." Now that 



2 2 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

the apostles understood these words to mean both reve- 
lation and inspiration is manifest from many statements 
incidentally made in the Acts of the Apostles, and from 
expressions employed by Peter and Paul in their epistles. 
When the vision came to Peter on the housetop at Joppa, 
he recognized it as a fulfilment of Christ's promise, and 
said" regarding the truth* then taught him, "The Lord 
hath showed me." So Paul, speaking of certain matters 
which he narrates, says, " I have received of the Lord, that 
which also I delivered unto you ;" and of a journey which 
he took to Jerusalem he remarks, " I went up by revela- 
tion." Again, iji regard to his teaching, he says, " which 
things we speak not in the words which man's wisdom 
teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth." Again, 
when he declares that the church is built upon the foun- 
dation of the apostles and prophets, he asserts by impli- 
cation, that the New Testament apostles occupy a coor- 
dinate place with the Old Testament prophets, and as the 
latter spoke by the Holy Ghost, so also must it have been 
with the former; while Peter, in referring to Paul's 
writings and classing them with the other Scriptures, 
plainly implies that they also were given by inspiration 
of God. I might here greatly enlarge and bring togeth- 
er passages which have underlying them the claim on 
the part of their authors to be received as inspired. But 
I forbear. I wish to show you that as we receive the 
Old Testament on the word of Christ's endorsement, so 
we receive the New on the word of his promise to his 
apostles. In the one case he was looking back and 



INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 23 

stamping with his authority what had been already 
written ; in the other he was looking forward, and giving 
his assurance that in producing all that was necessary 
for the initiation and perpetuation of his church, his 
apostles would be guided by infallible inspiration. Thus 
on Christ's word we rest the whole Bible, and because 
we believe in him, we accept it as divinely inbreathed. 

But it may be well to look for a little at some of the 
objections which have been raised against the plenary in- 
spiration of the Scriptures. Of course it will be under- 
stood that I cannot take up all the difficulties which have 
been suggested. To do that would require, not a lecture, 
but many volumes ; still, classifying them under three 
heads, I may give you a few general principles bearing 
upon each of them. 

I. Take, then, the assertion that the view which we 
have presented is inconsistent with the existence of 
apparent discrepancies in the narratives which the sacred 
writers give of the same occurrences. Now without 
entering upon individual cases, it is pertinent to remind 
you here of what I have already said, that inspiration 
does not guarantee the infallibility of copyists, and it is 
undeniable that many of these seeming inconsistencies 
may be traced to the carelessness of scribes. Many of 
the much-talked-of discrepancies between the books of 
Kings and Chronicles, as well as a few of those presented 
in the New Testament are at once accounted for in that 
way ; for the slightest change in a letter or a word, such 
as a weary transcriber after a long day's work would be 



24 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES, 

very liable to make, accounts for the disagreement, ana 
the emendation being made, harmony is at once restored. 
This is especially the case in those statements in the Old 
Testament which relate to numbers ; for as in the Hebrew 
language there were no numerals, but the letters of the 
alphabet were made to do duty for figures, and as some 
of these letters differ from others only by the merest 
hair-stroke, it is easy to see how in the process of trans- 
cription errors have crept in ; but now that the science of 
Biblical criticism is so far advanced, we may hope to get 
nearer the original readings, and the more that hope is 
realized, the fewer will such discrepancies become. 

Again I would recall what I said regarding the differ- 
ence between inspiration and verbatim reporting, and that 
will help to remove much of the difficulty arising from 
the existence of these apparent differences, while it leaves 
the infallibility of the books intact. For the Spirit using 
men, did not intend to give a complete account of all that 
was said or done on any occasion. He helped each to 
give what he saw or heard, so that he gave that correctly ; 
and as no one man could see everything that was con- 
nected with even one incident, or comprehend all that 
was implied in even one saying of Christ, it could not 
but be that differences should arise. You may take four 
photographic views of one face which shall seem as in- 
consistent with each other as the four gospels are, and 
yet they shall be all correct, because they are taken 
from different angles. The records are not exhaus- 
tive; if they had been, they would have been too volu- 



INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 25 

minoiis to be of service ; but because they are not, we 
must be content to accept them, with certain lacunar 
which look Hke discrepancies, but which could be so fill- 
ed as to remove all perplexity. Now in regard to these, 
all that is needed is the suggestion of a probable solution. 
The burden of proof lies here on the assailant, and he is 
required to show, not only the appearance of inconsis- 
tency, but also the impossibility of removing it, and that 
I take it, will be impossible, for the hardest thing to do 
is to prove a negative. 

Further, we must not forget, that in the process 
of investigation, many of these difficulties have been 
fully removed, and the fact, that every new discovery 
among the monumental records of antiquity has tended 
to corroborate the Scriptures, is not without its signifi- 
cance in this regard. He would be a fool, who should 
think of giving up the Bible as a divine book, because 
he does not certainly know the unrecorded third fact, 
that is needed to put the account of the suicide of Judas 
in Matthew into harmony with the words used by Peter 
in the first chapter of the Acts. Both accounts are in- 
complete, yet both correct in what they state. If we could 
have put either Matthew or Peter under cross-examina- 
tion, the first question might have elicited the solution ; 
but as that is now impossible, we may leave it as it is, 
. believing both are right, and remembering that an inspir- 
ed record is one thing and an exhaustive history is quite 
another, and is, in so many words disclaimed by the 
author of the fourth gospel, for himself and brethren. 

3 



26 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

II. Another class of objections is that which is 
brought by those who allege that the sacred writers are 
in some of their narratives inconsistent with ancient his- 
torians. Now here it is pertinent to say, that inspiration 
altogether apart, we have just as much reason to believe 
in the accuracy of Luke or of the Chronicles of the 
Kings, as we have to accept the statements of Josephus 
or Berosus. We cannot therefore condemn too severely 
the conduct of these who when they find that Josephus 
is silent on any matter, or says something regarding it, 
which is different from the sacred books, therefore they 
must be wrong and he must be right. As Alford has 
said, "Josephus teems with inaccuracies," so we cannot 
admit his infallibility, and let that be employed as an 
engine against the Bible. Further, in some recent in- 
stances the truth of the sacred narrative has been vindi- 
cated in a remarkable manner. I need only refer to two, 
namely, the discovery from the inscription on the great 
Babylonian cylinder that the eldest son of Nabonnedus 
was named Bel-shareser, and that he had been admitted 
by his father to a share in the government, a key which 
enables us to unlock the difficulty created by the frag- 
ment of Berosus preserved by Josephus from which it 
appeared that Nabonnedus the king fled to Borsippa and 
there was captured by Cyrus. Thus both statements are 
seen to be correct. Again the minute accuracy of Luke 
which was apparently compromised by the fact that he 
had called Sergius Paulus the drQ^Trarof, or proconsul of 
Cyprus, while it was alleged the proper title was procura- 



INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 27 

tor, has been fully vindicated by the discovery of some 
coins bearing the effigy of the Emperor Claudius, and in 
the centre reverse occurs the word Kvirpiuv, of the Cypri- 
ans, while the surrounding legend gives the title used by 
Luke to a person who must have been the immediate 
successor or predecessor of Sergius Paulus. Now with 
these and many similar cases before us, we need not be 
disturbed by the occasional appearance of discrepancy 
between the sacred and profane historians. All we have 
to do is to wait, and give a liberal assistance to those 
who are diligently exploring Eastern lands, with the full 
assurance that whatever " records leap to light," not only 
will the glory of the Bible "not be shamed," but its 
authority will be vindicated. 

III. A third class of objections is connected with the 
discoveries of modern science. It is alleged that its au- 
thors could not have been inspired, because their state- 
ments are declared to be inconsistent with the facts 
which science has discovered. Now, in answer to this, 
the following things have to be noted : 

1. The Bible was not given to be a revelation of phys- 
ical science ; and so whatever references it makes to 
things in that department are incidental. 

2. In these references its writers employ the language 
of the common people of their age. They must have 
done so, or they would have been unintelligible to those 
to whom they spoke or wrote. A book which is to in- 
struct men must employ their vocabulary. Hence, even 
in speaking of God, the inspired writers refer to Him in 



28 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

terms which are fully appropriate only to men. Now on 
the same principle as we account for the anthropomor- 
phisms used by the prophets and apostles when speaking 
of God, so we explain the use of common and current lan- 
guage by them on scientific subjects. There were no 
other forms of speech then in use, and they had to ac- 
commodate themselves to the vocabulary of the times, 
just as in teaching your child you have to confine your- 
self as nearly as possible to terms he understands. Had 
they done otherwise, their words would have been reject- 
ed by the men of their own age just for containing that 
which our modern scientists complain that they omit. 

3. Considering that these two things are so, the lan- 
guage of the Scriptures on certain scientific facts is very 
striking, and tends to the establishment of the fact that 
the Bible, though never in advance of the science of any 
age, is, when rightly interpreted, always abreast of sci- 
ence. It has been so constructed as not to anticipate 
modern discoveries by a divine revelation of the things 
discovered ; and yet as science advances, the Bible is 
found, on closer study, to be in harmony with it. In this 
we have not only a successful reply to all objections, but 
also a clear proof of the inspiration of Scripture along 
another line ; for as one has acutely said, " Only one see- 
ing the end from the beginning could so adjust the lan- 
guage used as on the one hand to make it tell the men 
of the existing generation no more than they otherwise 
knew of astronomical or geological or any other natural 
truth, and yet on the other to make it such that the men 



INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 29 

of all future generations should be able, in the long run, 
and without violence, to explain it satisfactorily in the 
light of their clearer and fuller information and their 
more advanced and accurate science."* In verifica- 
tion of this take a few illustrations. In that part 
of the Book of Job which is the direct utterance of Je- 
hovah, (38:12,) we have the following passage: "Hast 
thou commanded the morning since thy days ; and caus- 
ed the dayspring to know his place ; that it might take 
hold of the ends of the earth, that the wicked might be 
shaken out of it .'* It is turned as clay to the seal ; and 
they stand as a garment." Now there is nothing here 
to reveal to men the rotatory motion of the earth ; yet 
that being discovered, how harmonious with it is the de- 
scription, " It is turned as clay to the seal ;" for the mo- 
tion of the clay on the cylinder as it takes the impres- 
sion, like that of the modern printing-press, is precisely 
analogous to that of the earth as it receives the day- 
spring. Again, in Ecclesiastes i :6, we read, "The wind 
goeth toward the south, and turneth about unto the 
north ; it whirleth about continually ; and the wind re- 
turneth again according to his circuits." This does not 
indeed announce beforehand the rotatory law of storms ; 
but the words are perfectly in harmony with that law, 
and accurately describe the motion of cyclones, as that 
has been discovered by recent meteorological observers. 
In the same chapter (verse 7) we have words which, with- 
out describing the process of evaporation, yet imply all 

* "Reason and Revelation," by R. S. Candlish, D. D., pp. S0-S3. 

3* 



30 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

that we now mean by that phrase : " All the rivers run 
into the sea ; yet the sea is not full ; unto the place from 
whence the rivers come, thither they return again." And 
Amos has employed language which clearly presupposes 
that which modern investigations have ascertained 
when he says, " Seek him that maketh the seven stars, 
and Orion, and turneth the shadow of death into the 
morning, and maketh the day dark with night ; that call- 
eth for the waters of the sea, and poureth them out upon 
the face of the earth; the Lord is his name." (Amos 
5 : 8.) So again, when the Lord Jesus, in defending him- 
self (John 5:17) from the accusation of Sabbath-break- 
ing, says, " My Father worketh hitherto, and I work," he 
says nothing directly about the length of the days in the 
Creation week ; but if the view which regards them as 
long periods be accepted, see what force it gives to his 
argument, as we amplify it thus : "We are living now in 
the seventh day of the Creation week. This is the time 
of Jehovah's rest. We have now no work of creation 
going on ; no special additions have been made to the 
various orders of plants and animals on the surface of 
the earth since man appeared; and in that sense God 
has been resting. But though he has not called any- 
thing new into existence, he has been continuously at 
work in upholding all that he has made, and he has put 
forth special remedial efforts for the restoration of man 
to the state in which he was formed at first, and from 
which he fell by his own sin. If, therefore, during the 
Sabbath of Creation's week, and while God is resting, he 



INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 31 

can yet put forth special exertions for the redemption 
and education of men, I am only following in the same 
line when, on the Sabbath of an ordinary week, and while 
I am resting from labor in the ordinary sense of that 
term, I put forth my energy in the restoration of an im- 
potent man to health. My Father worketh hitherto, and 
I work." If the Sabbath of Creation's week has lasted 
for nearly six thousand years, and for anything we can 
see may last for thousands of years to come, there is not 
only no incongruity, but also perfect consistency, in sup- 
posing that each of the other days was a period long 
enough for all the requirements of modern science. 

And, to take only one example more, when Paul in 
his argument on the resurrection, says, (i Cor. 15:40, 
41,) "There are also celestial bodies and bodies terres- 
trial : but the glory of the celestial is one, and the glory 
of the terrestrial is another. There is one glory of the 
sun, and another glory of the stars ; for one star differeth 
from another star in glory," he is not referring to de- 
grees of glory among the saints in heaven, but illustra- 
ting the truth that the resurrection-body will be fitted 
for the resurrection-life, even as the body of the fish is 
for swimming, and that of the bird for flying, and as the 
physical composition of each heavenly body is adapted 
to its place in the universe. We had to take all that on 
his word until recent times ; but now, by the invention 
and application of the spectroscope, astronomical observ- 
ers, by their analysis of the varying lines in the spectrum 
of each, declare that it is indeed true that " one star dif- 



32 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

fereth from another star in glory." Thus the latest science 
casts its light upon the words of Paul, whose writing 
here is abreast of the revelations of the spectroscope, 
but by no means an anticipation of them. These in- 
stances must suffice, but are enough to reassure us, and 
to make us feel that the word of God has everything to 
hope and nothing to fear from the advance of science. 

For the rest, it may do good service to point out where 
precisely the alleged discrepancies between the Word of 
God and science begin to emerge. " The scientific man 
believes in the infallibility of nature ; the theologian be- 
lieves in the infallibility of Scripture ; and the differ- 
ences, of which so much is made in these days, lie not 
between nature and revelation in themselves, but be- 
tween human interpretations of them. The man of sci- 
ence interprets his facts in a certain way, and makes cer- 
tain deductions from them. These interpretations and 
deductions, however, are not infallible ; they are not yet 
unquestioningly -received by scientific men themselves. 
It is too soon, therefore, to speak and reason as if they 
were absolutely correct. 

"Again, the theologian's interpretations of Scripture 
are by no means infallible. Many of them which were 
accepted in past days, have been disproved, and others 
substituted for them ; and of many more it must be said 
that they are still unsettled. For instance, he would be 
a rash man who should assert that he has discovered 
with infallible accuracy, the meaning of the first chapter 
of Genesis ; or should affirm that he can satisfactorily 



INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 33 

unravel the chronology of the early chapters of that 
book. These questions, and many others like them, are 
still sub jiidice, and the wise course for all parties to this 
modern misunderstanding is to wait, with mutual respect 
for each other, until God, in his providence and by his 
Spirit, shall lead to such interpretations of nature on the 
one hand, and of Scripture on the other, as shall make 
manifest their perfect harmony. Let the man of science 
go on with perseverance, and let him not take any mis- 
chievous delight in flinging his hypotheses at the Word 
of God. Let the theologian also prosecute his inquiries 
with diligence and devoutness, and let him give over 
calling men of science by evil names. They seem often 
to be working against each other; but they are in reality 
working for each other and for the truth. In the forma- 
tion of the tunnel though Mont Cenis, the workmen be- 
gan at opposite ends, and approached each other mth 
drilling machines apparently directed against each other, 
but met at length in the middle to congratulate each 
other on the completion of their great undertaking, be- 
cause they were working under the same supervision. 
So it will be with our theologians and men of science. 
God, the great architect of providence, is superintending 
both ; and by-and-by, through the labors of both, the 
mountain of difficulty will be tunnelled through, no more 
to form a barrier in the inquirer's way. 

" Much also may be done in this matter by calling at- 
tention to such principles as these, namely, that the Bi- 
ble was not designed to be a revelation of physical 



34 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

science ; that its references to all such subjects are 
merely incidental, and made in popular language ; that, 
if it had alluded to such subjects in other than popular 
language, it would have been unintelligible to those to 
whom it was first given, and would have been rejected by 
them as containing that which some modern philosophers 
complain that it does not contain ; that, considering the 
fact that it refers only incidentally to these topics, its 
language concerning some of them is occasionally very 
striking, and fully in harmony with modern discoveries ; 
and finally, that considering the course of things in the 
past, and how what seemed at one time to be in hopeless 
antagonism to God's Word is now held intelligently and 
consistently with it, the wise course will be for both 
sides to wait before the one tries to prove that there is 
contradiction, or the other to enforce a harmony. 

" Moreover, we should not allow it to be forgotten that, 
all advances of modern science notwithstanding, there 
will ever be deejD, solemn, all-important experiences in 
the human soul which only God's gospel can meet ; and 
if we dig down to these we shall go so much lower than 
science, that the water which she has apparently drawn 
from our well will return into our spring. There will 
still be the poison of sin, which no earthly antidote can 
neutralize, and which can be counteracted only by the 
blood of the Redeemer's cross. There will still be the 
sorrow of bereavement, to be solaced only by the vision 
of the angel at the door of the sepulchre, and the hearing 
of his soothing words, 'Why seek ye the living among 



INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 35 

the dead ? He is not here ; he is risen as he said ; come 
see the place where the Lord lay.* There will still be 
the sense of lonesomeness stealing over the heart, even 
amid the bustle, and business, and prosperity of the 
world, to be dispelled only by the consciousness of the 
Saviour's presence. There will still be the spirit-shud- 
der at the thought of death, which only faith in Christ 
can change into the desire to depart and to be with him, 
which is far better. For these things science has no 
remedy, and philosophy no solace, and, strong in its adap- 
tation to these irrepressible necessities of the human 
heart, the gospel of Christ will outlive all philosophical 
attack, and survive every form of scientific unbelief. 

" But though all that is true, I would not have you 
speak of religion and science as if they were antagonists. 
They are elder and younger sister in the same family ; 
and though occasionally they may seem to be at vari- 
ance, yet let but some deep grief enter into the home, or 
some heavy calamity fall upon the dwelling, and all mis 
understanding between them will disappear ; they will 
lock themselves in each other's arms, and science will 
find her resting-place on the bosom of religion. You can 
afford, therefore, to bid science God-speed. Her tri- 
umphs will in the end contribute to the gospel's advance- 
ment. Is it not written, 'All things are yours '.^ And 
you may rest assured that truth in one department can 
never falsify that which, on its own evidence, has been 
already ascertained to be true in another."* 

* "The Ministry of the Word ;" W. M. Taylor, D. D., pp. 301-305. 



36 INSPIRATION OF THE SCRIPTURES. 

And now, beloved friends and fellow-laborers, if all 
this be true, what new importance does it give to your 
work as Sabbath-school teachers ! You are handling the 
Word of God. See that you do not handle it deceitfully ; 
but " as of sincerity, but as of God, in the sight of God, 
speak ye in Christ." Do not corrupt it by your own 
additions, or explain it away by your own misinterpreta- 
tions of its meaning, but let it be your ambition always 
to let it speak for itself, for its power is in itself. " Is 
not my word like as a fire } saith the Lord, and like a 
hammer that breaketh the rock in pieces T 

And remember also the responsibility which is con- 
nected with the reading of it for yourselves. It is, in 
one sense, a precious privilege to have the Bible, but its 
possession involves also a fearful peril. Improved, it 
may be the means of securing an entrance into glory. 
Neglected, it may be the millstone round our necks to 
sink us deeper in perdition. It is the glory of our age 
that it has been produced at a price that puts it within 
the reach of all ; but we may not forget the awful truth 
which Michael Bruce has expressed in these Hues, which 
were found after his death on the fly-leaf of his copy of 
the Scriptures : 

" 'T is very vain of me to boast 
How small a price this Bible cost; 
The day of judgment will make clear 
'T was very cheap or very dear." 



THE I 

i 



Languages of the Bible. 



REV. CHARLES A. BRIGGS, D. D. 

PROFESSOR OF HEBREW AND COGNATE LANGUAGES, UNION THEOLOGICAL 
SEMINARY, NEW YORK. 



THE 



Languages of the Bible, 



PART I 



The languages of the Bible were prepared by Divine 
Providence as the most suitable ones for declarins; the 
divine revelation to mankind. Belonging, as they do, to 
the two great families of speech, the Shemitic and the 
Indo-Germanic, which have been the bearers of civiliza- 
tion, culture, and the noblest products of human thought 
and emotion, they are themselves the highest and most 
perfect developments of those families, presenting, it is 
true, their contrasted features, but yet combining in a 
higher unity on the principles of Pentecost, in order to 
give us the complete divine revelation. Having accom- 
plished this their highest purpose, they soon afterwards 
became stereotyped in form, or, as they are commonly 
called, dead languages, so that henceforth all successive 
generations, and indeed all the families of earth, might 
resort to them and find the common, divine revelation 
in the same fixed and Jiiialierable forms. 

Language is the product of the human mind, as 



40 LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE, 

thought and emotion are the products of man's soul ; 
and therefore it depends uj^on the constitution of that 
soul, the historical experiences of the family or race 
speaking it, especially the internal experiences in culture, 
civilization, morals, and religion. The connection be- 
tween language and thought is not a loose one, but an 
essential connection. Language is not merely a dress 
that thought may put on or off at its pleasure ; it is the 
body of which thought is the soul ; it is the flesh and 
rounded form of which thought is the life and energy. 
Hence it is that language is moulded by thought and 
emotion, by experience and culture ; it is, as it were, the 
speaking face of the race employing it, and it becomes 
the historical moimment of the experience of that race ; 
so that in many nations that have perished, and whose 
early history is lost in primeval darkness, their language 
gives us the key to their history and experience as truly 
as the Parthenon tells us of the Greek mind, and the 
Pyramids of the Egyptian. It is not a matter of indiffer- 
ence, therefore, as to the languages that were to bear the 
divine revelation ; for although the divine revelation was 
designed for all races, and may be conveyed in all the 
languages of earth, yet, inasmuch as it was delivered in 
advancing historical development, certain particular lan- 
guages must be employed as most suitable for the pur- 
pose, and indeed those which could best become the 
fountains for enriching the various languages of the earth. 
Hence it is that we can confidently claim that there are 
no languages — not even the English and the German, 



LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE. 41 

which have drunk deepest from the classic springs of the 
Hebrew and the Greek — that there are no languages that 
could so adequately convey the divine revelation in its 
simplicity, grandeur, fulness and variety, power and im- 
pressiveness, as those selected by Divine Providence for 
the purpose. Hence it is that no translation can ever 
take the place of the original Scriptures ; for a transla- 
tion is, at the best, the work of uninspired men, who, 
though holy and faithful, and guided by the Spirit of 
God, are yet unable to do more than give us their own 
interpretation of the sacred oracles. They must enter 
into the very spirit and atmosphere of the original text ; 
they must think and feel with the original authors ; their 
hearts must throb with the same emotion ; their minds 
must move in the same lines of thinking ; they must 
adapt themselves to the numerous types of character 
coming from various and widely different periods of di- 
vine revelation, in order to correctly apprehend the 
thought and make it their own, and then reproduce it in 
a foreign tongue. A mere external, grammatical, and 
lexicographical translation is worthless. Unless the 
spirit of the original has been not only apprehended, but 
conveyed, it is no translation at all. Hence it is requi- 
site that all-sided men should be chosen for this work, 
or at least a body of men so selected as to embrace the 
various types and phases of human experience and char- 
acter. But even then the translation can only express 
the theological, ethical, and practical conceptions of the 

holiest and most learned men of the particular age ; and 

4^ 



42 LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE, 

inasmuch as the divine revelation is an inspired revela- 
tion, given through holy men who spake not only from 
their own time and for their own time, but from and for 
the timeless Spirit, the eternal ideas for all time, so the 
advancing generations will ever need to understand the 
word of God better than their fathers, and must, if they 
are faithful, continually improve in their knowledge of the 
original Scriptures, in their power of apprehending them, 
of digesting them, and of reproducing them in speech 
and life. How important, therefore, how essential it is, 
if the church is to maintain a living connection with the 
sacred Scriptures, and enter ever deeper into their spirit 
and mysterious hidden life, that it should encourage a 
considerable portion of its youth to pursue these studies, 
and at all events insist that its ministry, who are to train 
it in the things of God, should have not merely a super- 
ficial knowledge of the Bible, such as any layman may 
readily attain, but a deep and thorough acquaintance 
with the original perennial fountains of truth ; otherwise, 
as church history has already sufficiently shown, these 
uninspired versions will assume the place of the original 
inspired zvord, and the interpretations of a particular 
generation will become the stereotyped dogmas of many 
generations, and the life of a Christian people will be cut 
off from its only source of spiritual growth, and a barren 
scholasticism, with its stereotyped dogmas, mechanical 
institutions, and opera operata, ivill assume the place and 
importance of the divine zvord and living communion 
with God. 



LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE, 



43 



The languages of the Bible being the only adequate 
means of conveying and perpetuating the divine revela- 
tion, it is important that we should learn them not merely 
from the outside, with grammar and lexicon, but also 
from the inside, from a proper conception of the genius 
and life of these tongues as employed by the ancient 
saints, and especially of the historical genius of the lan- 
guages as the sacred channels of the Spirit's thought 
and life. For language is a living thing, and has its 
birth, its growth, its maturity, its decline, and its death. 
Language is born, not as a system of roots or detached 
words, that gradually come together by natural selection 
into sentences ; for while plants may grow from roots 
after they have been cut down, but do not have their 
birth in roots, but in the seed-germ which contains the 
plant in embryo ; so language, although it may be ana- 
lyzed into roots, yet was not born in roots and never ex- 
isted in roots, but came into being as sentences, (Sayce, 
Principles of Comp. Philology, p. 136, seq., 2d ed., Lon- 
don, 1875,) as thought is ever a sentence, and not a 
word. Then as the mind develops, thought is developed 
with its body, language, and thus the language grows 
with the culture of a people. All languages that have 
literary documents can be traced in their historical de- 
velopment. Especially is this the case with the lan- 
guages of the Bible ; they have a long history back of 
them ; centuries of literary development were required 
to produce them. 



44 LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE, 

I. THE HEBREW LANGUAGE. 

The Hebrew language was long supposed to be the 
original language of mankind ; but this view can no lon- 
ger be held by any philologist, for the Hebrew language, 
as it appears to us in its earliest forms in the sacred 
Scriptures, bears upon its face the traces of a long-pre- 
vious literary development. (Ewald, Gesch. des Volkes 
Israel, 3te Ausg. Gott., 1864, s. 'jZ, seq. Ewald, Ausf. 
Lehrb. des Heb. Sprache, /te Ausg. Gott, 1863, s. 23.) 
This is confirmed by comparing it with the other lan- 
guages of the same family. Thus the Shemitic family 
may be divided into four groups : i. The Southern 
group — Arabic, Ethiopic, etc. 2. The Aramaic group — 
Syriac, Chaldee, etc. 3. The Hebrew group — the Phoe- 
nician, Hebrew, etc. 4. The Assyrian and Babylonian. 
Now these languages are more closely related to one 
another than those of the Indo-Germanic family, the peo- 
ple speaking them having been confined to comparatively 
narrow limits, and crowded on the north by the Indo- 
Germanic tongues, and on the south by the Turanian. 
Again, these languages have, for the most part, given us 
a considerable literature ; they were spoken by cultivated 
nations of the ancient world, mediating between the great 
centres of primitive Turanian culture — the Euphrates 
and the Nile. Everything seems to indicate that they 
all emigrated from a common centre in the desert on the 
south of Babylonia, (vide Schrader, Die Abstammunp. 
der Chaldiier und die Ursitze der Semiten, Zeitschrift d. 



LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE. 45 

Deutsch. M. G., 1873,) the Arabic group separating 
first, next the Aramaic, then the Hebrew, while the 
Babylonian gained ultimately the mastery of the original 
Accadian of Babylonia, and the Assyrian founded the 
great empire on the Tigris. Now the book of Genesis 
(11 131) represents Abram as going forth from this cen- 
tral seat of Ur of the Chaldees, going first northward 
into Mesopotamia, and then emigrating to Canaan, just 
as we learn from other sources the Canaanites had done 
before him. The monuments of Ur reveal that about 
this time, 2,000 b. c, it was the seat of a great literary 
development, (The Chaldean Account of Genesis, etc., p. 
29, seq. Geo. Smith, New York, 1876;) so that the old 
objection that Abram and his children did not know how 
to read and write has been for ever exploded. The father 
of the faithful, whose origin was in that primitive seat of 
culture, Ur, and who lived as a chieftain of military 
prowess (Gen. 14) and exalted religious and moral char- 
acter among the cultivated nations of Canaan, and who 
was received at the court of Pharaoh — that other great 
centre of primitive culture — on friendly terms, could not 
but have, to some extent at least, made himself acquaint- 
ed with their literature and culture. Still further, the 
old and vexed question, whether Abraham adopted the 
language of the Canaanites, or brought the Hebrew with 
him from the East, must now be regarded as unimpor- 
tant, for the ancient Assyrian and Babylonian are nearer 
to the Hebrew and Phoenician than they are to the other 
Shemitic families, (Sayce, Assyrian Grammar, p. i, seq. 



45 LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE. 

London, 1872;) so that if the languages, as now pre- 
sented to us, differ less than the Romance languages — > 
the daughters of the Latin — in their earlier stages in the 
time of Abraham, their difference could scarcely have 
been more than dialectic. Now the ancient Phoenician, 
the nearest akin to the Hebrew, was the language of 
commerce and intercourse between the nations, as the 
Aramaic, which took its place after the fall of Tyre, and 
the Greek after the conquest of Alexander. Thus the 
Hebrew language, as a dialect of the Canaanite and its 
closely related Babylonian, had already a considerable 
historical literary development prior to the entrance of 
Abram into the Holy Land. Hence the old idea that 
Egypt was the mother of Hebrew civilization and culture 
has been utterly disproved ; for it is one of the most re- 
markable facts of history that the Hebrews should remain 
for so long a period in Egyptian bondage, and yet retain 
their Eastern civilization, culture, and language, so that 
at the Exodus they shook off at once all connection with 
the Egyptian civilization and culture as utterly alien and 
antagonistic to their own. For the very peculiarities of 
the Hebrew language, literature, and civilization, are 
those of the Babylonian. The biblical traditions of the 
Creation, of the Deluge, of the Tower of Babel, are those 
of the Assyrians and Babylonians. The sacred rest-day, 
with the significance of the number seven, the months, 
seasons, and years, the weights and measures, coins — 
all are of the same origin. Still further, that most stri- 
king feature of Hebrew poetry — the parallelism of mem- 



LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE. 47 

bers — is already in the oldest Accadian hymns. Ves, the 
very temptation of the Hebrews to the worship of Ash- 
toreth and Baal, of Chemosh and Moloch, are those that 
have ruined the other branches of their common race. 
(Vide Schrader, Semitismiis und Babylonismus. Jahrb. 
V. Prot. Theol., 1875.) How shall we account for these 
things unless we suppose that they were brought with 
him by Abram in his emigration to Canaan ? Fixing 
our attention upon the single feature of the parallelism 
of members, how could the Hebrews have retained it as 
the essential feature of their poetry, if they had no poetic 
treasures preserved among them, and the poetic spirit 
had remained undeveloped with them ? Without ven- 
turing upon an opinion with reference to the amount of 
literature to be attributed to these early times, but taking 
the Pentateuch as it is, we see therein a language admi- 
rably adapted for its purpose, the product of previous 
literary development. Whether Moses wrote the entire 
Pentateuch or not, yet all will admit a considerable Mo- 
saic nucleus. This being true, the principles of language 
seem to require either that the ancient records have been 
improved by later editors, or that there must have been 
a large body of sacred literature to give the language 
that stable character that marks it throughout the entire 
sacred Scriptures ; for while there is certainly a develop- 
ment in the Hebrew language of the Bible, and three 
periods may be readily distinguished, yet the differences 
between the earlier and the classic period are but slight, 
the chief distinguishing features being in the later wri- 



48 LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE. 

tings of the Chronicler, of Ecclesiastes, Daniel, and the 
post-exile prophets, all showing a decline from the classic 
models and an approximation to the Aramaic. Sacred 
books give languages a permanence such as no other 
literature can give them. This is evident not only from 
the German Bible of Luther, and King James' English 
version, which have kept these great languages compar- 
atively stationary, but also from the Koran, which has 
kept the Arabic so fixed to its classic style that it has 
taken a thousand years for the vulgar Arabic to reach 
that stage of linguistic development presented in the 
earliest Hebrew of the Bible. Hence we contend that 
unless the language of the writings of Moses has been 
changed by later editors — an incredible supposition — at 
least a considerable portion of the Pentateuch must be 
assigned to his times. Moses is certainly the father of 
the Hebrew language and literature, as Luther is of the 
German. He moulded its fundamental types, and start- 
ed it in those directions that it has ever since maintained. 
As Abraham had gone forth from the culture of Babylo- 
nia to enter upon the pilgrim life of believing communion 
with El Skaddai, so Moses went forth from the culture 
of Egypt to become the representative of yahveh, and 
organize a kingdom of priests, a holy nation, a theocracy 
the vital principles of which became reverential fear and 
worship of the personal God of the covenant. 

Thus the Hebrew language became, in its essential 
spirit and genius, a religions language, the holy tongue 
of the holy people of God, and Moses laid its foundations 



LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE. 



49 



in a literature of sacred history, poetry, and prophecy. 
The history of the books of Moses is the fountain of all 
subsequent history. The grand hymn, Exod. 15, the 
prayer, Psa. 90, the prophetic didactic poem, Deut. 32, 
are the great boughs of lyric i^oetry upon which the 
Psalter subsequently burst forth in all its glory; and his 
prophetic discourses in Deuteronomy are the sources, as 
they give the key to all subsequent prophecy. 

Looking now at the language as religious according 
to its genius, and considering it in its fundamental types 
and their historical development, we observe the follow- 
ing as some of its most prominent characteristics. 

I. It is remarkably siuiple and natural. This is in- 
deed a common feature of the Shemitic family. As 
compared with the Indo-Germanic, they represent an 
earlier stage in the development of mankind, the child- 
hood of the race. Theirs is an age of perception, con- 
templation, and observation, not of conception, reflec- 
tion, and reasoning. Things are apprehended accord- 
ing to their appearance as phenomena, and not accord- 
ing to their internal character as nownena. The form, 
the features, the expressions of things are seen and 
most nicely distinguished, but not their inward being; 
the effects are observed, but these are not traced through 
a series of causes, but only either to the immediate cause 
or else by a leap to the ultimate cause. Hence the lan- 
guage that expresses such thought is simple and natural. 
We see this in its sounds, which are simple and mani- 
fold, disliking diphthongs and compound letters ; in its 



50 LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE. 

roots uniformly of three consonants, generally accompa- 
nied by a vowel; in its inflections, mainly by internal 
modifications ; in its simple arrangement of clauses in 
the sentence, with a limited number of conjunctions. 
Thus the conjunction vav plays a more important part in 
the language than all conjunctions combined, distinguish- 
ing by a simple modification of vocalization, accentua- 
tion, or position, between clauses coordinate, circumstan- 
tial, or subordinate, and in the latter between those indi- 
cating purpose or result. This is the most remarkable 
feature of the language, without a parallel in any other 
tongue. And so the poetry is constituted on the simple 
principle of the parallelism of members, these being syn- 
thetic, antithetic, or progressive ; and in the latter case 
advancing, like the waves of the sea, in the most beauti- 
ful and varied forms. The only other principle of He- 
brew poetry is the play of the tone, the force of which 
has not yet been sufficiently determined, but certainly 
had striking effects in the living language. (Reuss, Heb. 
Poesie, Herzog. Real. Encyk., V., s. 607.) Hence it is 
that the Hebrew language is the easiest to render into a 
foreign tongue, and that Hebrew poetry can readily be 
made the common property of mankind. 

2. We observe a striking correspondence of the lan- 
guage to the thought. This rests upon a radical differ- 
ence between the Shemitic and Indo-Germanic family in 
their relative appreciation of the material and the form 
of language. (Vid. Grill, ilber d. Verhaltniss d. indogerm. 
u. d. semit. Sprachwurzeln in the Zeitschrift f. d. m. G. 



LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE. 51 

1873.) The form, the artistic expression, is to the He- 
brew a very small affair. The idea, the thought, and 
emotion, flow forth freely and embody themselves with- 
out any external restraint in the speech. This is clear 
from the method of inflection, which is mostly by inter- 
nal changes in the root, expressing the passive by chan- 
ging the clear vowel into the dull vowel, the intensive by 
doubling the second radical, the pure idea of the root by 
the extreme shortness of the infinitive and the segholate, 
the causative and the reflexive by lengthening the stem 
from without, and, as far as cases and moods exist, ex- 
pressing them harmoniously by the three radical short 
vowels. 

How beautiful in form, as well as sense, is the ab- 
stract plural of intensity by which EloJilm expresses the 
fulness of the idea of God conceived as the one to be 
revered ; by which cJiayyiin expresses the fulness of life, 
and which is employed in such passages as Eccles. 5 : 8, 
where the exaltation of God over all earthly judges would 
be represented, 

" For high over high watcheth 
The highest over them." 

So in the dependence of the construct relation, and the 
use of the suffixes. But perhaps this feature is most 
striking in Hebrew poetry where the absence of an ar- 
tistic form is most apparent. We see, with a general 
harmony of lines and strophes, that without any rule, but 
with the utmost freedom, the proportion in length and 
number is frequently broken through. And though the 



52 LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE. 

Hebrew poet uses the refrain, yet he likes to modify it, 
as in the lament of David over Jonathan, 2 Sam. i : 19- 
27, the 80th Psalm, and the magnificent prophecy, Isaiah 
40-66. Again, though the Hebrew poet uses the alpha- 
bet to give his lines or strophes a sort of regularity in 
order, using it as so many stairs up which to climb in 
praise, in pleading, in lamentation, and in advancing in- 
struction, yet he by no means binds himself to an equal 
number of lines, or even measure of length ; and, apparent- 
ly without necessity at times, breaks through his alpha- 
bet itself. Free as the ocean is the poet's emotion, rising 
like the waves in majestic strivings, heaving as an agi- 
tated sea, ebbing and flowing like the tide in solemn and 
measured antithesis, sporting like the wa\'T2lets upon a 
sandy beach. 

3. The Hebrew language has a wonderful majesty and 
sublimity. This arises partly from its original religious 
genius, but chiefly from the sublime materials of its 
thought. God, the only true God, Jahveh, the Holy Re- 
deemer of his people, is the central theme of the Hebrew 
language and literature, a God not apart from nature and 
not involved in nature, no Pantheistic God, no mere De- 
istic God, but a God who enters into sympathetic rela- 
tions with his creatures, who is recognized and praised, 
as well as ministered unto by the material creation. 
Hence there is a realism in the Hebrew language that 
can nowhere else be found to the same extent. The 
Hebrew people were as realistic as the Greek were ideal- 
istic. Their God is not a God thought out, reasoned out 



LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE. 53 

as an ultimate cause, or chief of a Pantheon, but a per- 
sonal God, known by them in his association with them 
by a proper name, Jahveh. Hence the so-called anthropo- 
morphisms and anthropopathisms of the Old Testament, 
so alien to the Indo-Germanic mind that an Occidental 
theology must explain them away, from an incapacity to 
enter into that bold and sublime realism of the Hebrews. 
Thus, again, man is presented to us in all his naked real- 
ity, in his weakness and sins, in his depravity and wretch- 
edness, as well as in his bravery and beauty, his holiness 
and wisdom. In the Hebrew heroes we see men of like 
passions with ourselves, and feel that their experience is 
the key to the joys and sorrows of our life. So also in 
their conception of nature. Nature is to the Hebrew 
poet all aglow with the glory of God, and intimately asso- 
ciated with man in his origin, history, and destiny. There 
is no such thins: as science ; that was for the Indo-Ger- 
manic mind ; but they give us that v/nich science never 
gives, that which science is from its nature unable to 
present us : namely, those concrete relations, those ex- 
pressive /t'^Z/z/ri" of nature that declare to man their Mas- 
ter's mind and character, and claim human sympathy and 
protection as they yearn with man for the Messianic fu- 
ture. Now the Hebrew language manifests this realism 
on its very face. Its richness in synonyms is remarkable. 
It is said that the Hebrew language has, relatively to the 
English, ten times as many roots and ten times fewer 
words, (Grill, in 1. c. ;) and that while the Greek language 

has 1,800 roots to 100,000 words, the Hebrew has 2,000 

5^ 



54 LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE. 

roots to 10,000 words. (Bottcher, Ausf. Lehrbiich d. 
Heb. Sprache, I, s. 8. Leipzig, 1866.) This richness in 
synonyms is appalling to the Indo-Germanic scholar who 
comes to the Hebrew from the Latin and the Greek, 
where the synonyms are more or less accurately defined. 
But nothing of the kind has yet been done by any She- 
mitic scholar, so far as I know. What will you do with 
a language that has fifty-five words for destroy, sixty for 
break, and seventy-four for take? (Girdlestone, Synonyms 
of the Old Test., p. 15. London, 1871.) It is exceed- 
ingly doubtful whether this richness of synonyms can be 
reduced to a system and the terms sharply and clearly 
defined ; the differences are like those of the peculiar 
gutturals of the Shemitic tongues, so delicate and subtle 
that they can hardly be mastered by the Western tongue 
or ear. So these synonyms can hardly be apprehended 
and conveyed into languages so poor when compared 
with such wealth. 

This richness of synonym is connected with a cor- 
responding richness of expression in the synonymous 
clauses that play such an important part in Hebrew 
poetry, and indeed are the reason of its wonderful rich- 
ness and majesty of thought. Thus the sacred poet and 
prophet plays upon his theme as upon a many-stringed 
instrument, bringing out a great variety of tone and mel- 
ody, advancing in graceful steppings or stately march- 
ings to the climax, or dwelling upon the theme with an 
inexhaustible variety of expression and coloring. The 
Hebrew language is like the rich and glorious verdure of 



LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE. 



55 



Lebanon, or as the lovely face of the Shunamite, dark as 
the tents of Kedar, yet rich in color as the curtains of 
Solomon, or her graceful form, which is so rapturously 
described as she discloses its beauties in the dance of the 
hosts. (Song of Songs 1:5; 7 : 1-7.) It is true that 
Hebrew literature is not as extensive as the Greek ; it is 
confined to history, lyric poetry, and prophecy; but in 
these departments it presents the grandest productions of 
the human soul. Its history gives us the origin and des- 
tiny of our race, unfolds the story of redemption, dealing 
now with the individual, then with the family and nation, 
and at times widening so as to take into its field of repre- 
sentation the most distant nations of earth ; it is a his- 
tory in which God is the great actor, in which sin and 
holiness are the chief factors. Its poetry stirs the heart 
of mankind with hymns and prayers, with sentences of 
wisdom ; and in the heroic struggles of a Job, and the 
conquering virtue of a Shunamite, there is imparted 
strength to the soul and vigor to the character of man 
and woman transcending the influence of the godlike 
Achilles or the chaste Lucretia ; while the second half 
of Isaiah presents the sublimest aspirations of man. 
Where shall we find such images of beauty, such wealth 
of illustration, such grandeur of delineation, such majes- 
tic representations } It seems as if the prophet grasped 
in his tremendous soul the movements of the ages, and 
saw the very future mirrored in the mind of God. 

4. The Hebrew language is remarkable for its life 
2J\^ fervor. This is owing to the emotional and hearty 



56 LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE. 

character of the people. There is an artlessness, self- 
abandonment, and whole-souledness in the Hebrew 
tongue ; it is transparent as a glass, so that we see through 
it as into the very souls of the people. There is none of 
that reserve, that cool and calm deliberation, that self- 
consciousness, that characterize the Greek. (Ewald, 
s. 33 ; Bottcher, s. 9. Bertheau, in Herzog. Real. Ency- 
clopadie, v. s. 613.) The Hebrew language is distin- 
guished by the strength of its consonants and the weak- 
ness of its vowels ; so that the consonants give the word 
a stability of form in which the vowels have the greatest 
freedom of movement. The vowels circulate in the 
speech as the blood of the language. Hence the free- 
dom in the varying expressions of the same root and the 
fervor of its full-toned forms. And if we can trust the 
Masoretic system of accentuation and vocalization, the 
inflection of the language depends upon the dislike of 
the recurrence of two vowelless consonants, and hence 
the vocal sJieva and the half-open syllable ; and on the 
power of the accent over the vocalization not only of the 
accented syllable, but also of the entire word, and hence 
the pretonic kdinctz. This gives the language a won- 
derful flexibility and elasticity. In the Hebrew tongue 
the emotions overpower the thoughts and carry them on 
in the rushing stream to the expression. Hence their 
literature has a power over the souls of mankind. The 
language is as expressive of emotion as the face of a 
modest and untutored child, and the literature is but the 
speaking face of the heart of the Hebrew people. The 



LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE. 57 

Psalms of David touch a chord in every soul, and inter- 
pret the experience of all the world. The wise sentences 
of Solomon come to us as the home-truths, as the social 
and political maxims that sway our minds and direct our 
lives. The prophets present to us the objective omnipo- 
tent truth, which, according to the beautiful story of Ze- 
rubbabel, is the mightiest of all, flashing conviction like 
the sun and cutting to the heart as by a sharp two-edged 
sword. So with the history ; it presents to us the simple 
facts of the lives of individuals and of nations in the light 
of the Divine countenance, speaking to our hearts and 
photographing upon us pictures of real life. 

These are some of the most striking features of the 
Hebrew language, which have made it the most suitable 
of all to give to mankind the elementary religious truths 
and facts of divine revelation. The great body of the 
Bible, four-fifths of the sum total of God's word, is in this 
tongue. It is no credit to a Christian people that the 
I^brew language has no place at all in the most of our 
colleges and universities, so called ; that its study has 
been confined, for the most part, to theological semina- 
ries and the students for the ministry. It is not strange 
that the Old Testament has been neglected in the pul- 
pit, the Sabbath-school, and the family, so that many 
minds, even of the ministry, have doubted whether it was 
any longer to be regarded as the word of God. It is not 
strange that Christian scholars, prejudiced by their train- 
ing in the languages and literature of Greece and Rome, 
should be unable to enter into the spirit and appreciate 



58 LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE. 

the peculiar features of the Hebrew language and litera- 
ture, and so fail to understand the elements of a divine 
revelation. Separating the New Testament and the 
words and work of Jesus and his apostles from their 
foundation and their historical preparation, they have 
not caught the true spirit of the gospel, nor apprehended 
it in its unity and variety as the fulfilment of the law 
and the prophets. But this is not all, for I shall now 
attempt to show you that the other languages of the 
Bible, the Aramaic and the Greek, have been moulded 
and transformed by the theological conceptions and 
moral ideas that had been developing in the Hebrew 
Scriptures, and which, having been ripened under the 
potent influence of the Divine Spirit, were about to burst 
forth into bloom and eternal fruitfulness in these tongues 
prepared by Divine Providence for the purpose. The 
Hebrew language is, as we have seen, the language of 
religion, and moulded entirely by religious and moral 
ideas and emotions. The Greek and the Aramaic are*of 
an entirely different character; they were not, as the 
Hebrew, cradled and nursed, trained from infancy to 
childhood, armed and equipped in their heroic youth with 
divine revelation, but they were moulded outside of the 
realm of divine revelation, and only subsequently adapt- 
ed for the declaration of sacred truth. And first this 
was the case with the Aramaic. 



PART II. 

THE ARAMAIC AND THE GREEK LANGUAGES, 
AND CONCLUSION. 



THE ARAMAIC LANGUAGE 

Goes back in its history to the most primitive times. 
It is the farthest developed of the Shemitic family, 
showing a decline, a decrepitude in its poverty of forms 
and vocalization, in its brevity and abruptness, in its 
pleonasm and incorporation of a multitude of foreign 
words. It was the language of those races of Syria and 
Mesopotamia that warred with the Egyptians and Assyr- 
ians, and perhaps, as Gladstone suggests, took part in 
the Trojan war, (Gladstone's Homeric Synchronism, N. 
Y.* 1876, p. 173,) who, according to Sayce, (The Hama- 
thite Inscriptions, Trans. Society of Bib. Archaeology, 
London, 1876, p. 30,) used the earliest system of writing, 
and were the agents through whom both the Hebrew and 
the Greek alphabets were conveyed to those peoples. At 
all events the Aramaic became the language of commerce 
and intercourse between the nations during the Persian 
period, taking the place of the Phoenician, as it was in 
turn supplanted by the Greek. The children of Judah 
having been carried into captivity and violently separated 
from their sacred places and the scenes of their history, 



6o LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE. 

gradually acquired this commercial and common lan- 
guagre of intercourse, so that ere lon^^ it became the Ian- 
guage of the Hebrew people, the knowledge of the ancient 
Hebrew being confined to the learned and the higher 
ranks of society. Hence even in the books of Ezra and 
Daniel, considerable portions were written in Aramaic. 

This Aramaic is called the Biblical Chaldee, to dis- 
tinguish it from the Chaldee of the Targums, but really 
gives us an older type of the language. The Aramaic 
continued to be the language of the Jews during the 
Persian, Greek, and Roman periods, and was the com- 
mon speech of Palestine in the times of our Lord, 
(Schiirer Neutestament. Zeitgesch., s. 372, Leipzig, 1874,) 
although it had long ceased to be the language of com- 
merce and intercourse, the Greek having taken its 
place, and gradually penetrated from the commercial 
and official circles even to the lowest ranks of society. 
Thus there was a mingling of a Greek population with 
the Shemitic races, not only in the Greek colonies of 
the Decapolis and the cities of the seacoast of Palestine, 
but also in the great centres of Tiberias, Samaria, and 
even in Jerusalem itself. Greek manners and customs 
were, under the influence of the Herodians and the Saddu- 
cees, pressing upon the older Aramaic and Hebrew, not 
without the stout resistance of the Pharisees. The 
language of our Saviour, however, in which he delivered 
his discourses and instructions, was undoubtedly the 
-Aramaic, although we could hardly deny him the knowl- 
edge and use of the Greek. For not only do the Ara- 



LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE. 61 

maic terms that he used, which are retained at times by 
the evangelists, and the proper names of his disciples, 
but also the very structure and style of his discourses, 
show the Aramaic characteristics. For our Saviour's 
methods of delivery and style of instruction were essential- 
ly the same as those of the Rabbins of his time. Hence we 
should not think it strange, that from this Aramaic liter- 
ature alone we can bring forward parallels to the wise 
sentences and moral maxims of the Sermon on the 
Mount, the rich and beautiful parables, by which he 
illustrated his discourses, and the fiery zeal of his denun- 
ciation of hypocrisy, together with the profound depths of 
his esoteric instruction. Our Saviour used the Aramaic 
language and methods, in order thereby to reach the 
people of his times, and place in the prepared Aramaic 
soil the precious seeds of heavenly truth. Now it is the 
providential significance of the Aramaic language that it 
thus prepared the body for the thought of our Saviour. 
It is a language admirably adapted, by its simplicity, per- 
spicuity, precision, and definiteness, with all its awk- 
wardness, for the associations of every-day life. It is the 
language for the lawyer and the scribe, the pedagogue 
and the pupil ; indeed, the English language of the She- 
mitic family. (Volck Herzog. Real Encyklopaedie, new 
edition, i, 603.) Thus the earlier Aramaic of the Bible 
gives us only official documents, letters, and decrees, or 
else simple narrative. And as moulded by the Jewish 
people after the return from exile, it was through the 
giving of the soisc of the original Hebrew Scriptures. 



6^ LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE. 

(Neh. 8 : 8.) The whole life of the Jewish people, subse- 
quent to the exile, was in this giving the sense of the 
Hebrew Scriptures, both in the Halacha, of the rabbini- 
cal schools, and the Hagada of the synagogue and the 
social circle. It is true that the Halacha was developed 
in the rival schools of Shamniai and Hillel into the most 
subtle questions of casuistry, and our Saviour often se- 
verely reproved the Pharisaic spirit for its subtlety and 
scholasticism ; yet not unfrequently he employed their 
methods, to the discomfiture of his opponents. (Weiz- 
acker, Untersuchungen Uber die ev. Geschichte, s. 358 seq. 
Gotha, 1864,) as in Matt. 22 : .15-46, although his own 
spirit was rather that of the old prophets than of the 
scribes. The Hagada was developed by the rabbins into 
a great variety of forms of ethical wisdom and legend. 
This we see already in the apocryphal books of Wisdom, 
in the stories of Zerubbabel, of Judith, of Susanna, and of 
Tobith. (Zunz, die Gottesdienstlichen Vortrage, der 
Juden, Berlin, 1832, s. 42 ; s. 100 ; s. 120 ; Etheridge, In- 
troduction to Hebrew Literature, London, 1856, p. \Q2,seq}) 
This latter method was the favorite one of our Sav- 
iour, as calculated for the common people, and to it we 
may attribute the parables, and the sweet sentences of 
the Sermon on the Mount, which, though after the man- 
ner of the scribes, (Hausrath, Die Zeit Jesus, Heidel- 
berg, 1868, s. 90,) have yet a clearness and transparency as 
the atmosphere of the Holy Land itself, a richness and 
simplicity as the scarlet flower of the fields he loved so 
well, a calm majesty and profound mystery as the great 



LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE. 63 

deep, for he was the expositor of the divine mind, heart, 
and being, to mankind. (John i : 18.) 

The office of the Aramaic language was still further 
to mediate between the old world and the new — the He- 
brew and the Greek ; for the Greek language was the 
chosen one to set forth the divine revelation in its com- 
pletion. 

THE GREEK LANGUAGE 

Was born and grew to full maturity outside of the sphere 
of the divine revelation, and yet was predestined, to use 
the words of my colleague, (Schaff, Hist, of the Apostolic 
Church, p. 145, New York, 1859,) "as the most beauti- 
ful, rich, and harmonious language ever spoken or writ- 
ten" "to form the pictures of silver in which the golden 
apple of the gospel should be preserved for all genera- 
tions." 

For as Alexander the Great broke in pieces the Ori- 
ental world-monarchies that fettered the kingdom of 
God, and prepared a theatre for its world-wide expan- 
sion, so did the Greek language and literature that his 
veterans carried with them prove more potent weapons 
than their swords and spears for transforming the civili- 
zation of the East and preparing a language for the uni- 
versal gospel. The Greek language is the beautiful 
flower, the elegant jewel, the most finished masterpiece 
of Indo-Germanic thought. In its early beginning we 
see a number of dialects spoken by a brave and warlike 
people, struggling with one another, as well as with ex- 



64 LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE. 

ternal foes, maintaining themselves successfully against 
the Oriental and African civilizations, while at the same 
time they appropriated those elements of culture which 
they could incorporate into their own original thought 
and life ; a race of heroes such as the earth has nowhere 
else produced, fighting their way upward into light and 
culture until they attained the towering summits of an 
art, a literature, and a philosophy, that has even been 
the admiration and wonder of mankind. As Pallas 
sprang forth in full heroic stature from the head of her 
father Zeus, so Greek literature sprang into historical 
existence in the matcJiless Iliad. Its classic period was 
constituted by the heroism and genius of the Athenian 
republic, which worked even more mightily in language, 
literature, and art, than in the fields of politics and war, 
producing the histories of Thucydides and Xenophon, 
the tragedies of an ^schylus and Sophocles, the philos- 
ophy of a Socrates and Plato, the oratory of a Demos- 
thenes and ^schines. Looking at the Greek language 
before it became the world-language, and so the language 
of a divine revelation, we observe that its characteristic 
features are in strong contrast with those of the Hebrew 
tongue. 

I. The Greek language is complex and artistic. As 
the Hebrew mind perceives and contemplates, the Greek 
conceives and reflects. Hence the Greek etymology is 
elaborate in its development of forms from a few roots, 
in the declensions and cases of nouns, in the conjuga- 
tions, tenses, and moods of the verb, giving the idea a 



LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE. 65 

great variety of modifications. Hence the syntax is ex- 
ceedingly complex in the varied use of the conjunctions 
and particles, the intricate arrangement of the sentences 
as they may be combined into grand periods, which re- 
quire the closest attention of a practised mind to follow 
in their nice discriminations and adjustments of the 
thought. (Curtius, Griech. Gesch., Berlin, 1868, 3d Aufl. 
.11. s. 19, 20.) Hence the complex and delicate rules of 
prosody, with the great variety of metres and rhythms. 
The Greek mind would wrestle with the external world, 
would search out and explore the reason of things, not 
being satisfied with XXiq pheno7neTia, but grasping for the 
noiimena. Thus a rich and varied literature was devel- 
oped, complex in character, the epos, the drama, the phi- 
losophical treatise, and scientific discussion, which are 
purely Greek, and could have little place among the 
Hebrews. (Donaldson, The New Cratylus, 3d ed., p. 

I53-) 

2. The Greek language is characterized by its atten- 
tion to the form or style of its speech, not to limit the 
freedom of the movement of thought and emotion, but 
to direct them in the channels of clear, definite, logical 
sentences, and beautiful, elegant, and artistic rhetorical 
figures. The Greek was a thorough artist ; and as the 
palaces of his princes, the temples of his gods, the im- 
ages of his worship, his clothing and his armor, must 
be most perfect in form and exquisite in finished decora- 
tion, so the language, as the palace, the dress of his 
thought, must be symmetrical and elegant. (Curtius, 



66 LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE. 

Griech. Gesch., I., p. 20, 21.) Hence there is no lan- 
guage that has such laws of euphony, involving changes 
in vocalization and the transposition and mutation of let- 
ters ; for their words must be musical, their clauses harino- 
nioKS, their sentences and periods symmetrical. And so 
they are combined in the most exquisite taste in the dia- 
logues of the philosophers, the measures of the poet, the 
stately periods of the historian and the orator. The sen- 
tences, as Pres. Adams beautifully expresses it, (Charge, 
on occasion of the induction of Dr. Shedd as Professor 
of Bib. Literature; New York, 1864, p. 10,) "are intri- 
cate, complex, involved like an ivory cabinet, till the dis- 
covery of its nominative gives you the key for unlocking 
the mechanism and admiring the ingenuity and beauty 
of its rhetoric." 

3. The Greek language is thus beautiful diwd finished. 
The Greek mind was essentially ideal, not accepting the 
external world as its own, but transforming it to suit its 
genius and its taste. This was owing to its original /m- 
manizing genius and its central theme, man as the heivic, 
man as the ideally perfect. (Schaff, Apostolic Church, p. 
145 ; Zezschwitz, Profangriicitat und biblischer Sprachge- 
ist. Leipzig, 1 869, p. 1 3.) As the language and literature of 
the Hebrews was inspired to describe " the righteous acts 
of yahveJis dominion in Israel and the victories of his holy 
arm," (Judg. 5:11; Psa. 98:1,) and thus was majestic 
and stLblime ; so the language and literature of the 
Greeks were inspired to sing the exploits of the godlike 
Achilles, the crafty Ulysses, and the all-conquering Her- 



LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE. 67 

cules ; to paint the heroic struggles of the tribes at Ther 
mopylas, Salamis, and Platea, to conceive a model repub- 
lic and an ideal human world, and thus was bcaiUifiil, 
stately, and cJiaruiing. Its gods are idealized virtues and 
vices and powers of nature, and conceived after the fash- 
ion of heroic men and women, arranged in a mythology 
which is a marvel of taste and genius. Nature is ideal- 
ized, and every plant and tree and fountain becomes a 
living being. Indeed, everything that the Greek mind 
touched it clothed with its own ideals of beauty. Hence 
the drama is the most appropriate literature for such a 
people, and the dialogue the proper method of its philos- 
ophy. (Curtius, Griech. Gesch., III., s. 508.) 

4. The Greek language has remarkable strength and 
vigor. Its stems have been compressed, vowel and con- 
sonant compacted together. Its words are complete in 
themselves, ending only in vowels and the consonants ;/, 
r, and s ; they have a singular independence, as the 
Greek citizen and warrior, and are protected from muti- 
lation and change. (Curtius, Griech. Gesch., I., s. 18.) 
It is true it has a limited number of roots, yet it is capa- 
ble of developing therefrom an infinite variety of words, 
(Jelfs. Greek Gram., 4th ed., Oxford, 1864, p. 330;) so 
that although it cannot approach the wealth of synonym 
of the Hebrew, yet its words are trained as the athlete, 
and capable of a great variety of movements and striking 
effects. Its syntax is organized on the most perfect sys- 
tem, all its parts compacted into a solid mass, in which 
the individual is not lost, but gives his strength to impart 



68 LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE. 

to the whole the zveight and invincible push of the///«- 
lanx. Hence the Greek language is peculiarly the lan- 
guage of oratory that would sway the mind and conquer 
with invincible argument. It is the language of a De- 
mosthenes, the model orator for the world. It wrestles 
with the mind, it parries and thrusts, it conquers as an 
armed host. 

Such was the language with which Alexander went 
forth to subdue the world, and which he made the com- 
mon speech of the nations for many generations. It is 
true that the Greek was required to forfeit somewhat of 
its elegance and refinement in its collision with so many 
barbarous tongues, but it lost none of its essential char- 
acteristics when it was adopted by the Egyptian, the 
Syrian, and the Jew. The Jews were scattered widely 
in the earth, engaged in commercial pursuits that re- 
quired them, above all others, to master the common 
speech of the nations. Hence those of Europe, Asia 
Minor, and Africa, easily adopted the Greek as their 
vernacular, and it gradually became more and more the 
language of Syria and Palestine. This was furthered by 
the translation of the Hebrew Scriptures into the Greek, 
at Alexandria, the centre of the Greek culture of the 
times, a translation which shows upon its face the diffi- 
culties of rendering for the first time foreign conceptions 
into a strange tongue, (Reuss, Hellenistisches Idiom, in 
Herzog, Realencyklopadie, V., s. 709,) but which never- 
theless became of incalculable importance in preparing 
the vvay for the New Testament writers. The original 



LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE. 69 

productions of the Jews of Alexandria and Palestine, 
many of which are preserved in the apocryphal books of 
the Old Testament, combined to produce the same re- 
sult. Gradually the Jewish mind was modified by the 
Greek thought and culture, and the Greek language was, 
on the other hand, adapted to the expression of Hebrew 
and Aramaic conceptions. The apostles of our Lord, 
if they were to carry on a work and exert an influence 
world-wide and enduring, were required, from the very 
circumstances of the times, to use the Greek ; for the 
Aramaic would have had but a narrow and ever-dimin- 
ishing influence, even if their labors had been confined 
to the synagogues of the dispersed Jews. Hence we are 
not surprised that, without an exception, so far as we 
know, the New Testament writers composed their works 
in Greek, yes, even gave us the Aramaic discourses of 
our Saviour in the Greek tongue. Nor was this without 
its Providential purpose ; for though our Saviour deliv- 
ered his discourses in Aramaic, yet they were not taken 
down by the evangelists as they heard them in that 
tongue, but were subsequently recalled to their minds by 
the Holy Spirit, who, in accordance with the promise of 
our Lord, brought all things to their remembrance ; so 
that they recalled the ideas, rather than the language, 
and gave the ideas therefore the Greek embodiment ; so 
we have no translation of the words of Jesus, but the 
words of Jesus as they pass through the Hellenistic con- 
ception of the evangelists, colored by their minds and 
human characteristics, (Winer, New. Test. Gr-.m. Thay- 



70 LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE. 

er's edit., Andover, 1872, p. 27; Bleek's Einleit. in d. N. 
T., 2d Auf]., Berlin, 1866, s. "jG') for it was evidently the 
design of God that the Saviour's words, as well as acts 
and his glorious person, should be presented to the world 
through those four typical evangelists, who appropriately 
represent the four chief phases of human character and 
experience. 

The New Testament writers used the common Greek 
of their time, yet as men who had been trained in the 
Hebrew Scriptures and in the Aramaic methods of ex- 
position, but above all as holy men who spoke as they 
were moved by the Holy Ghost. Hence, as the Greek 
language had now to perform a work for which it had 
providentially been preparing, and yet one which it had 
never yet attempted, namely, to convey the divine reve- 
lation to mankind, so it must be remoulded and shaped 
by the mind of the Spirit to express ideas that were new 
both to the Greek and the Jew, but which had been de- 
veloping in the languages and literature of both nations, 
for each in its way prepared for the gospel of Christ. 
(Schaff, Apostolic Church, p. 146.) Hence we are not 
surprised that the Biblical Greek should be distinguish- 
ed not only from the classic models, but also from the 
literary Greek of the time, although it must be confessed 
that, when compared with the Greek of the Septuagint 
and the Apocrypha, it approximates more to the literary 
Greek of the times, being, as Reuss states it, "not the 
slavish idiom of a translation, but a free, language-crea- 
ting idiom, without, however, denying its cradle." (Reuss, 



LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE. 71 

Hellenistisches Idiom, in Herzog, V., s. 710 ; Winer, New 
Test. Gram., p. 39.) It is true that much of its elegance 
and artistic finish has been lost, and the nicely-rounded 
sentences and elaborate periods, with their delicately- 
shaded conceptions, have disappeared, yet its distin- 
guishing characteristics, especially its strength and beau- 
ty, its perspicuity, and its logical and rhetorical power, 
have been preserved, while to these have been added the 
simplicity and richness, the ardor and glow of the Ara- 
maic style ; but over and above all these, the language 
has been employed by the Spirit of God, and transformed 
and transfigured, yes, glorified, with a light and sacred- 
ness that the classic literature has never possessed. 

It is true that the writings of the New Testament are 
not all on the same level of style and language. (Im- 
mer, Hermeneutik des Neuen Testaments, Wittemberg, 
1S73, s. io5 f.) The gospels of Matthew and Mark, and 
the epistles of Peter and James, together with the Apoc- 
alypse, have stronger Aramaic coloring, which disturbs 
the Greek lines of beauty, the Greek form being over- 
powered by the life and glow of the Aramaic emotion ; 
yet in the writings of Luke and John, but especially of 
Paul and the Epistle to the Hebrews, the strength and 
excellence of the Greek unite with the peculiarities of the 
Aramaic and the Hebrew in striving, under the potent 
influence of the Holy Spirit, to convey the new religion 
in the most adequate and appropriate language and 
style. 

Here the humanizing and idealistic tendencies of the 



72 LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE. 

Greek combine with the theological and realistic tenden- 
cies of the Hebrew and the Aramaic : for to these New 
Testament writers the person of Christ assumes the 
central and determining position and influence, as yah- 
vch the one God did to the Old Testament writers. 
Christ became the emperor of the Scriptures, to use 
Luther's expression, and his person irradiated its lan- 
guage and literature with his own light and glory. Thus 
when the mind now strove to conceive no longer the 
simple idea of the one God yaJiveJi, but the complex 
idea of the person of Christ and the Trinity therein in- 
volved, the Hebrew language was entirely inadequate ; 
and the Greek, as the most capable, must be strained 
and tried to the utmost to convey the idea of the Logos, 
who was in the beginning, was with God, and was God, 
and yet became the Word i]icarnate, the God-?;/^;/, the 
interpreter in complete humanity of the fulness of the 
Deity dwelling in him ; for notwithstanding the histori- 
cal preparation for this conception in the theophanies of 
the Hebrews, the no2ts of Plato, the logos of Philo, and 
the wisdom of Solomon and Sirach, it was yet an entire- 
ly //^w conception, which, notwithstanding the prepara-' 
tion of the Hebrew and the Greek, the world could not 
appropriate without the transforming and enlightening 
influence of the Spirit of God. (Dorner, Entiwickelungs- 
geschichte der Lehre von der Person Christi. Stuttgart 
1845, I -J s. 6\\ Schaff, in Lange's Com. on John, N. Y . p. 
55.) So in its anthropology the apostle Paul combmcs 
the Hebrew and Greek conceptions in order to produce a 



LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE. 



73 



new and perfect conception. Taking the psychology of 
the Greek as a system, he gave the central place to the 
Hebrew ruach or spirit, finding, to use the words of 
Zezschwitz, its "undisturbed centralization in living 
union with the Spirit of God." (Zezschwitz, Profangrii- 
citiit, &c. s. 36, f.) He then brings out the strife of 
the cap^ or flesh, with the m'tvifi or spirit, and the false 
position of the psychical nature -^vxh over against the 
spirit. So also for the first he gives to the world the 
true conception of the conscience awk^riaLq as "the remnant 
of the spirit in the psychical man," " the divine voice," the 
consciousness of which Socrates felt as the " summit of 
the knowledge of the true wisdom by the Greek spirit." 
(Zezschwitz, s. 55-57.) Hence the development of the 
doctrine of sin with its technical terms, and of holiness 
with its new ideas and language. How infinitely deeper and 
higher than the Greek are these conceptions of the New 
Testament language, as the Person of Christ, presented 
by the Omnipotent Spirit convinces the world of sin, of 
righteousness, and of judgment. (John 16:8.) Jesus, as 
" the only-begotten of the Father full of grace and truth," 
assumes the place not only of the heroic ideal man of the 
Greeks, but even of the unapproachable holy yahveJi of th^ 
Hebrews. Hence the elevation of the graces of meekness,' 
patience, long-suffering, self-sacrifice, and the dethrone- 
ment of the Greek virtues of strength, beauty, bravery, 
manhood. And so in all departments of Christian thought, 
there was a corresponding elevation, and degradation 
of terms and conceptions. We can only mention re- 



74 LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE. 

generation, atonement, reconciliation, justification, sanc- 
tification, life and death, heaven and hell, the church, 
the kingdom of God, repentance, faith. Christian love, 
baptism, the Lord's Supper, the Lord's day, the advent, 
the judgment, the new Jerusalem, everlasting glory. 
(Bleeks. Einleitung s. 71; Immer Hermeneutik, s. 105; 
Cremer. Bib. theol. Worterbuch der Neu-testament. 
Gracitat and Trench, New Testament synonyms, under 
the respective words.) Truly a new world was disclosed by 
the Greek language, and the literature of the New Testa- 
ment, as the Hebrew and the Aramaic, and the Greek 
combined their energies and capacities in the grasp of 
the Divine creating and shaping Spirit, who transformed 
the Greek language and created a new and holy Greek 
literature, as the earth heaves and subsides into new 
forms and shapes under the energy of the great forces 
of its advancing epochs. 

The especial literary development of the New Tes- 
tament is in the sermon and the theological tract. We 
trace these from the first beginning on the day of Pen- 
tecost through the discourses of the Book of Acts, and 
parallel therewith the epistles of Peter and Paul and 
John. Looking at the sermons we observe that they 
are no longer on the Aramaic model as are the dis- 
courses of our Lord, but we see the Greek orator as well 
as the Aramaic rabbin. So with the epistles, especially of 
Paul, although he reminds us of the Rabbinical schools 
in his use of the halacha and hagada methods, (Gal. 4 :22, 
seq.; Rom. 3 : i seq., etc.,) yet they exhibit rather the dia- 



LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE. 75 

Icctic methods of the Greek philosopher. Thus the 
Greek orator and philosopher prepared the language and 
style of Paul the preacher and theologian no less than 
the Hebrew prophet and wise man gave him the funda- 
mental principles of his wisdom and experience. And 
although the Greek literature of the New Testament has 
no Demosthenes' " On the crown," or Plato's Republic, as 
it has no Iliad or Prometheus ; yet it lays the foundation of 
the sermon and the theological tract — those forms of 
literature which, however little they may appeal to the 
aesthetic taste, have yet been the literary means of a 
world-transforming power as, from the pulpit and the 
chair, Christian ministers have stirred the hearts and 
minds of mankind, and lead the van of progress of 
the Christian world — for the sermon combines the 
prophetic message of the Hebrew, with the oratorical 
force of the Greek; as it not only fires the heart, but 
strives in the council chamber of the intellect and pleads 
at the bar of the conscience, while the theological 
treatise combines the sententious wisdom of the He- 
brew with the dialectic philosophy of the Greek, in order 
to mould and fashion the souls of men and of nations, 
by great vital and comprehensive principles, that consti- 
tute the invincible forces of Christian history, so that 
theology reigns queen of the sciences never to be de- 
throned by the timorous cries of baby Christians, or the 
clamors of conceited philosophers and scientists, who 
suppose that the discoveries of their minds are to over- 
throw the verities ol the mind of God. 



76 LANGUAGES OF THE BIBLE. 

" Where is the wise ? Where is the scribe ? Where 
is the disputer of this world ? Hath not God made 
foolish the wisdom of this world ? For after that in the 
wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it 
pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them 
that believe. For the Jews require a sign, and the 
Greeks seek after wisdom : but we preach Christ cru- 
cified, unto the Jews a stumbling-block, and unto the 
Greeks foolishness : but unto them which are called, 
both Jews and Greeks, Christ, the power of God, and 
the wisdom of God." i Cor. i : 20-24. 



THE UNITY 



The Variety of the Bible, 



EEV. R. S. STOMRS, D. D., 

PASTOR OF THE CHURCH OF THE PILGRIMS, BROOKLYN, N. Y. 



THE UNITY 



AND 



The Variety of the Bible, 



Mr. President, Friends, and Fellow-workers : It is 
a large and beautiful subject which we have before us 
this evening; and I am more than usually sensible of my 
incompetence to treat it fitly, in the rapidity and imper- 
fection of extemporaneous remark, within the limits of 
the hour. Indeed, I was not aware, until the very close 
of last week, of the importance and the prominence of 
the service which I had rashly undertaken to perform 
here. 

I accept for myself, and echo with all my heart, the 
tender and solemn words of the prayer just offered, with 
its request that God would give me clearness of thought 
and readiness of expression in exhibiting, as far as I may, 
this vast and attractive theme. 

Of course we cannot fix rules which Omniscience 
shall follow in making a revelation of truth to the world. 
We cannot tell beforehand what methods God will be 
pleased in his wisdom to adopt in order to make that rev- 



So UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIBLE. 

elation most worthy of his mind, and most impressive in 
its appeal to the minds and hearts of mankind. Edward 
Irving says somewhere that for man to attempt to criti- 
cise or prefigure the plans of Providence, is as if the 
little blind mole, running his tiny galleries underground, 
were to undertake to interpret the marchings and coun- 
ter-marchings of mighty armies overhead. It would be, 
if possible, still more impossible, more absurd, for finite 
intelligences to say how God shall make the revelation of 
himself and of his will to the world which needs it, but 
which mentally and morally is unsuited to receive it. 
Yet there are some things which aj^pear self-evident con- 
cerning this, and which we may confidently afifirm before- 
hand in regard to such a revelation. 

We may affirm, for example, with entire certainty, 
that it will be an intelligible revelation ; such that a man 
can, by suitable study, reflection, and thought, and by 
bringing his own mind into spiritual sympathy with the 
mind from which it comes, understand that which it de- 
clares to him. Otherwise it would be no revelation at 
all, but a mere vague thunder in the air, communicating 
no articulate thought, exciting simple astonishment in 
the hearer, which could be neither quickening nor puri- 
fying to intellect or to heart. 

We may affirm also, with equal certainty, that such a 
revelation will be marked with holiness, in its discoveries 
of God, and its requirements of man. Otherwise it will 
not be consistent either with his character from whom 
it comes, or with the welfare of the man to whom it is 



UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIB IE. 8i 

given. If we find in it, therefore, any tolerance of iniq- 
uity, if it commands or if it allows slander, perjury, ly- 
ing, lust, then, no matter by what extraordinary evidence 
it appears to be attested, we should know beforehand 
that it cannot be from Him whose mind searches evil in 
its roots and relations, and whose heart is immutably 
pure and true. Even miracles themselves could not force 
us to attribute an impure, selfish, sensual rule of life to 
Him whose holiness is the glory and the guard of the 
intelligent creation. 

We may affirm, too, beforehand, that it will be in its 
structure a majestic revelation. God will not bend and 
part the heavens that he may bring to the world a story 
or a song. He will not send into the earth, upon the 
minds of those who are to testify for him, the supreme 
power of his Divine Spirit, that he may give a mere argu- 
ment or narrative, a maxim or a jest, to the thought of 
mankind. It must be an intelligible and a holy revela- 
tion ; it must be also a majestic revelation, which God 
shall make of himself and his thought, whenever, and in 
what special form soever, it shall seem best to his wis- 
dom and love to give that to the world. We cannot be 
mistaken in expecting these as chai-acteristics of any 
book with which He shall condescend to teach, guide, 
and inspire mankind. 

And we may go further, and affirm that it must be a 
revelation marked by unity within itself : containing a 
statement of doctrine, continuous, progressive perhaps, 
but essentially one, from beginning to end ; even as the 



82 UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIBIE. 

mind of God is one, and cannot possibly be self-contra- 
dictory. It will be, probably, we may say — though per- 
haps without the same certain assurance with which we 
affirm the other propositions — a revelation manifold in 
form, made through a great variety of instruments, since 
this corresponds as well with the needs of man as with 
the eternal opulence of the Divine mind. — In the con- 
struction of the planefGod gives to us not merely the 
soil on the surface, or the stone beneath it, or the gold 
or the silver hidden in their veins, or the wood of the 
forest, or the grasses and flowers ; he gives them all. 
He gives not merely the air enveloping the earth, but 
the light shining through it, and the lightnings which 
pierce it, and the waters which rise as mists and roll as 
rivers. He braids the light itself, in its apparent golden 
simplicity, of a strand of colors, woven so intimately to- 
gether that the separate hues are lost in the beauty of 
the perfect beam. Everywhere his mind reveals itself 
in his works in an abounding variety of means and forces. 
We shall expect it so to reveal itself in any revelation 
which he makes of his truth. All the more we shall ex- 
pect it because by such ever-changing variety of instru- 
ment and of method he will be able to accomplish most 
perfectly, so far as we can conjecture or foresee, his work 
upon the minds of those whom he addresses. Not a mon- 
otone, but a harmony, in which different but agreeing 
sounds conspire, is that which the soul of man craves 
and answers. 

Therefore we anticipate unity of truth in any revela- 



UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIB IE. S3 

tion which God shall make, with variety of method and 
manifold instruments. If we do not find these charac- 
teristics in the word which purports to be his, we shall 
surely be surprised. If we do find them, they will cer- 
tainly seem harmonious with his mind, and with his works 
as we elsewhere explore these. And if we find them ap- 
pearing under circumstances which in themselves would 
seem unfavorable to their presence, they will excite a 
strong- presumption, they will fairly justify it, that the 
word is from God. Then, if they conspire with other 
evidences of the same sublime and amazing proposition, 
they will help to make that certain to us ; so certain, that 
every argument against it becomes ineffectual, and shiv- 
ers its force when it strikes the strength of our convic- 
tion. The evidence of God's handiwork in the Bible, 
derived from its own character and structure, will be to 
us complete, and supremely inspiring. 

Let us look, then, at the Bible before us this evening, 
and ask ourselves whether it clearly presents these two 
marks which I have last specified as proper marks of its 
origin in God's mind : namely, Unity of doctrine, with 
Variety in method, and a divine Manifoldness in the in- 
struments employed. 

First, consider it in regard to its Unity. 

At first sight, certainly, the Bible appears to us as 
little likely to possess a' true and positive interior unity 
as any book which exists in the world. We have in it 
sixty and more separate pamphlets, some of them longer 
and some shorter, written by nearly forty different per- 



84 UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE lUBIE. 

sons, in widely different stages of civilization and periods 
of time ; some of them separated from each other by as 
long an interval as that which separates us to-night from 
the day of the Druids. We have these pamj^hlets writ- 
ten in three different languages, in different lands, among 
hostile peoples, and comprising the greatest possible dif- 
ferences of literary style, and of general or special intel- 
lectual culture. These pamphlets, stitched together by 
the hand of the binder, appear at first sight to possess no 
possible unity whatever, except that which is purely me- 
chanical, given them by the workman who has put them 
into the same collection. They seem as diverse as any 
books carelessly intermingled on library-shelves. 

Yet, when we examine them, we are impressed by 
the positive oneness of doctrine which is found perva- 
ding them, from the beginning to the end, and really 
manifest in every part. 

It is a vast unity, of course ; as it must be to corre- 
spond with the mind of God. It is the unity of a cathe- 
dral, not of a hut ; of an immense mechanism, not of a 
billet of wood, or of the walking-stick which one carries 
in his hand ; the unity of a great book, crowded with 
immense thoughts and precepts, not that of a song or 
a particular argument. So, too, it is an organic and a 
progressive unity, not to be wholly searched out or 
comprehended until we have finished the entire volume 
through which we have traced it. 

And yet how positive a unity it is ! recognized by the 
finest, the most careful, and most judicious of the minds 



UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIBLE. 85 

of the world which have given themselves to the study 
of the Scriptures; recognized by ourselves, and not suc- 
cessfully opposed, to any one who has once discerned it, 
by any argument of any skeptic. The ingenious un- 
believer may find, or try to find, some apparent discrep- 
ancies between Paul's doctrine of faith and James' doc- 
trine of works ; between the narrative given by John and 
the narratives given by the earlier evangelists. But even 
these apparent and wholly superficial discrepancies turn 
out, when examined, to be mere hooks wherewith to hold 
the attention of the reader more closely to the books in 
which they occur; so that study and examination, more 
searching and more critical, may be given to these books, 
and so that the ultimate harmony between them may be 
made more plainly to appear. There is no line of con- 
flict, which the most ingenious skeptic has discovered, 
between prophet and psalmist, between evangelist and 
lawgiver, between apostle and evangelist — no line of 
cleavage, even, where unity is broken, and where a different 
and a divergent doctrine comes in to succeed that which 
had been announced. We trace but one doctrine, as I 
have said, always onward from the beginning to the 
transcendent end. Observe how clear its outlines are — 
as the outline of a coast towering above the waves at its 
foot, or as that of a range of mountains on the continent ! 
The book begins with the instant and clear revelation 
of God : in his oneness, his personality, his holiness of 
character; in his infinitude of power, wisdom, dominion ; 
in his eternity, of underived and sovereign existence. It 



86 UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIBLE, 

shows him as Creator, and shows all things dependent 
for form and force on his supreme omnific will. It shows 
further his moral government, exercised constantly over 
men ; with its law of perfect holiness ; with its penalties 
and its promises, each appropriate to the majesty and 
purity of the law which is to be enforced, and in which 
is the reflection of his character, as well as the utterance 
of his will to mankind. Then, it declares man's revolt 
against God, under the power and in the fierce habit of 
sin ; his spiritual alienation from this holy intelligence 
from whom his moral being comes, and by whom this 
government is exercised over him. It gives illustration 
of this rebellion, this central alienation of the human 
will from God's will ; not merely in flagrant, private 
offences, but in great public procedures of iniquity ; in 
the devastation of territories, the subjugation of nations, 
the bloody destructions of public hope, the terrific idola- 
tries overspreading the earth with their licentious and 
ribald rites. 

In contrast with these, it reveals God's purpose to 
form a spiritual kingdom in the world, submissive to his 
government, obedient to his law, and to gather the mem- 
bers and the citizens of this kingdom out of all countries 
and peoples of the earth — a conception that was not pos- 
sible to either Greek or Egyptian, and that certainly was 
not more possible to the Jew, except as he was enlight- 
ened concerning it by that Divine mind which was opera- 
ting upon him through its ministers and messages. It 
reveals at length the Head of this kingdom, personal and 



UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIBLE. 8} 

transcendent, unique and supreme in both character and 
power. At first, foreshadowed from the distance and 
darkness of remote ages, he is more and more distinctly 
brought to view, through continually increasing radiance 
of prophecy; through the voices of psalmists, through 
the solemn and significant ritual of the temple, through 
the office of the priesthood, through the royal majesty 
and supremacy of kings. More and more definite become 
the prophecies concerning him. First, he is the seed of 
the woman ; then he is of the seed of Abraham ; then he 
is the descendant of Jacob ; then he is of the tribe of 
Judah ; then he is the son of David ; until prophecy 
begins to focus itself at last upon the very time when he 
shall appear, as in Daniel, upon the very place where he 
is to appear, as in Micah, upon the very office and char- 
acter which he is to fulfil and to exhibit, as in Isaiah, in 
those words of prophecy which have this evening been 
read in our hearing ; till the Old Testament closes, with 
the latest voice of its prophecy, through Malachi, predict- 
ting the rising of this Sun of Righteousness, predicting 
the sudden coming of this Lord, preceded by the prophet 
who is to prepare the way before him. The long series 
of prophecies closes here : and we are left, looking on to 
the histories — if such there shall be — in which these 
predictions shall be fulfilled. 

Then comes a gap of time, but not an interruption in 
the sequence of thought, extending over four hundred 
years, and the New Testament takes up its office of 
divine instruction. It presents to us this king, who has 



88 UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIBLE, 

been foreshadowed from the beginning of human history, 
in a constantly brightening clearness of prediction. He 
now comes into the world, welcomed by the angelic song, 
yet coming as a babe in Bethlehem ; growing then into 
maturity; accomplishing then his works of wonder, 
scattering miracles around his path, speaking divinest 
thoughts to men in human utterance, expressing before 
them the absolute beauty of love in life, fulfilling at last 
his office of priest through his sacrifice of himself, then 
arising froni the dead, and ascending into heaven, king 
of the saints, predestined and glorious king of the world. 

It shows the Spirit who comes afterward to represent 
this king in the world, and to testify of him through all 
ages. It conveys to us the instructions of the apostles, 
inspired by that Spirit to testify of Christ ; instructions 
in truth, and in practical duty, which are to continue the 
law of the members of this spiritual kingdom, while they 
and it continue to exist. And finally it gives us the 
prophetic vision of the amazing closing book, the book of 
the Revelation, in which is shown the consummation of 
this kingdom, with the crash of conflict in air and earth, 
the tumultuous collisions and overthrow of nations, 
through which it marches to its ultimate assured univer- 
sality in the world. 

This is the book. All these separate writings, as I 
said, from different persons, lands, ages, are gathered in 
the compass of this one volume; and when examined 
they are found to be pervaded, from first to last, by this 
extraordinary unity of doctrine. Law and story, prophecy 



UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIBLE. Sg 

and psalm, point forward to and interlink with the narra- 
tive and argument of the later Testament. The last 
verse of the Bible, "The grace of our Lord Jesus Christ 
be with you all," and the first verse of the Bible, " In the 
beginning God created the heavens and the earth," are 
just points in the perimeter of the golden ring within 
which all the collected contents of this volume are com- 
prised. It is one in its law, one in its doctrine, as God 
is one. And you cannot parallel that phenomenon in 
any literature of any people. Gather up so many wri- 
tings as are here, from so many authors, disconnected by 
such vast intervals of time, such differences of language, 
such contrarieties of civilization, and put them together 
into a volume, and you have a collection of teachings 
discordant, divergent, and heterogeneous. Here the 
unity of the teaching shows that it came, in the final 
analysis, from a single mind. Why, even the Oratorio 
requires the presence of one supreme and regulating mind, 
so that harp and viol, flute and trumpet, the echoing 
drum and the "terrible trombone," may all conspire in 
the perfect ultimate musical harmony. Here the differ- 
ent writers — whether consciously or not — were certainly 
under the superintendence of one supreme mind, invisi- 
ibly operating on each, and in him, bringing them into a 
spiritual accord which they themselves may not have 
anticipated, and could scarcely understand: in its final 
result bringing from them all that great harmonious voice 
of the Scripture, which is at length to fill the world. 
The unity of the Scriptures is as evident as is the 

8^ 



90 



UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIBLE. 



unity of the planet. As I said, it is not the unity of a 
garden, but that of a continent. It is as the unity of the 
globe itself, with all these various and seemingly contra- 
dictory elements compacted into its enduring organic 
oneness. And when I believe that man has shaped the 
planet which we live on, I may believe that man unaided 
has shaped the Bible, and wrought into unity its many 
complex and separated parts. 

But then we are to go still further, and observe the 
variety which constantly appears in connection with, 
and as tributary to, this majestic, astonishing, and unpar- 
alleled unity. 

Observe at the outset the difficulties in the face of 
which such variety is secured ; difficulties of language, 
which must be overcome; difficulties in the minds of 
the writers of the Book. The Hebrew language is no- 
ble and energetic, but it is rugged, rigid, and narrow, not 
fitted apparently for numerous distinct and delicate vari- 
eties of literary form. The Greek of the New Testa- 
ment is a distinct and noble coordinate dialect of the 
incomparable Greek language, but it lacks the Ionic 
grace, the Attic purity; it is not so transparent and 
musical a medium of thought as is the language in which 
Plato wrote, or in which Homer sang. Remember, too, 
that the men who wrote, in these languages, the stories 
and the letters which we have in the Scriptures, were 
not for the most part highly educated men. They were 
not cosmopolitan in training or culture. As a general 
thing, especially in the Old Testament times, they were 



UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIB IE. 91 

men who dwelt apart from conversation with the world 
outside of Judea, who knew nothing of its literature, who 
had not been trained to variety, vivacity, flexibility of 
mind, by its schools or its commerce, and who would 
seem as unapt as any series of men to be found upon 
the earth to adopt from others or produce for themselves 
any great variety of literary form. 

But, at the same time, observe how immense and in- 
cessant that variety is ! 

What form of literature is most attractive, most in- 
structive, to the larger part of mankind ? Undoubtedly 
we should say, Narrative — narrative in the form of his- 
tory, tracing great public procedures, or narrative in the 
form of personal biography, giving portraits of character, 
outlining the striking, tragic, or fortunate events which 
have occurred in the career and experience of persons. 
Such narrative, either in the more general form of his- 
tory, or in the more vivid form of biography, is that 
which first and most naturally attracts the attention of 
men, and interests their minds. Then Poetry; especially 
as that poetry is simple and natural, and is not artificial 
or elaborate in its form. It will then commend itself to 
the mind of the child. It will be sung in the nursery, on 
the street, in the fields. Those far out on the sea will 
recall it ; those travelling by the wayside will find it still 
haunting the memory, and stirring the heart. To the 
man and the woman, of a sensitive nature, it will be 
equally dear. The most mature will love it like the child. 
It will prolong youth in the heart of the aged. 



92 UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIBLE. 

Then, Law impresses men — the authoritative expres- 
sion of moral truth and moral duty, commending itself 
to the general conscience, grappling that conscience, 
calling out responses from the moral sensibility which 
is inherent, indestructible, in all men. Then, Proverbs ; 
maxims of duty, maxims of prudence, which are so brief 
that the memory holds them without an effort; which 
we carry with us wherever we go, yet out of which, as 
we reflect upon them, come ever larger and more lumin- 
ous lessons, of practical duty, and of beauty in character. 
Then, further on in the series, perhaps, fictitious litera- 
ture has its place ; presenting truth under the guise of 
incidents which may not actually have occurred, but 
which are entirely probable in themselves, and which 
might reasonably have been expected to occur in the 
circumstances described in the allegory or the parable. 

These are some of the species of literature with 
which we are familiar, and by which we see that men 
are impressed; and to them may be added argumenta- 
tive discussion, the clear dialectical exhibition of truth, 
with reasons that convince men, and an eloquence that 
persuades them. All these are important literary forrns 
for conveying thought from one mind to others ; and 
while we might not look to find them in untrained He- 
brews, we may see how useful and desirable they would 
be in any revelation made to the world by God its 
author. We shall not expect arithmetical calculations 
in such a revelation ; we shall not expect the minute 
exactness and the severe finish of scientific statement ; 



UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIBIE. 



93 



nor any other of those special forms of literary work- 
manship which are not intimately and naturally associa- 
ted with the utterance of moral and spiritual truth. But 
whatever may be thus associated, we have perhaps a 
right to expect, certainly to desire, in a revelation which 
comes, or which at least purports to come to us, from 
God. We may anticipate beforehand that he will not 
put a degrading discredit upon any form of literary 
accomplishment which is natural to the mind, whose 
powers he has designed and ordained. Wq may expect 
that he will touch the soul in man by every force that 
is apt for the purpose, when he seeks to instruct, to 
exalt, to renew it. 

Take up then the constitution of the Bible, and care- 
fully observe it ! At least three-fourths of it are narra- 
tive, that is the fact which strikes us first; narrative in 
the form of a general historical story, which tells of the 
public transactions of nations, of the intrigues, councils, 
and wars of princes, the devastation of countries, the 
establishment, the enlargement, or the overthrow of em- 
pires, the rising of powers against each other, their 
alliances, their conflicts, their commercial interactions, 
with the results which followed from all to the kingdom 
of God ; or narrative in the form of personal portraiture, 
recording events, depicting characters, of which and of 
whom we should know nothing except from it. In this 
regard, this Bible of ours becomes a mirror of human 
life, the value of which we cannot overstate, the perfec- 
tion of which is utterly unique. What scores and hun- 



94 UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIBLE. 

dreds of persons there are, brought to Hght by it, in the 
most various circumstances possible, in the most various 
exhibitions of character, who become in their names, 
persons, figures, as famihar to us as if we had walked 
and talked with them freely in our most impressible 
years ! Abraham, Jacob, Esau, Joseph, Moses and 
Aaron, Joshua and Samuel, Deborah and Ruth, David 
and Solomon, Elijah and his more gentle successor, 
Ahab and his superb and fierce Phenician queen : what 
multitudes there are ! We cannot count them. A fig- 
ure stands out from the dimness of the past, only for r^n 
instant ; but there it stands before us for ever ! It is not 
painted, as a portrait. It is photographed, on a plate from 
which the impression can never be discharged, by the 
smiting on it of a radiance from on high. One's casual 
words, as of Isaac or Nehemiah, spoken upon the im- 
pulse of a moment, are eternized in the record ; they will 
continue to be repeated while the planet exists. An 
eloquent writer has aptly said that the Scriptures are 
full of life-like portraits which are " like intaglios — mas- 
terpieces of artistic skill, on a field of microscopic dimen- 
sions." So the truth is incarnated. So the law is illus- 
trated, shown in the punishment which it inflicts, if not 
in the fulfilment of its rules. And so, to all persons, the 
Bible has a constant attraction, by reason of the narra- 
tive which is in it so amply, of this personal portraiture 
in which it so continually abounds. 

Observe how utterly fearless it is ! It puts its inci- 
dental historical narratives by the side of ancient records, 



UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIBIE. 95 

wherever these are found, on brick cylinders, graven in 
rocks, traced upon the parchments, carved upon obelisks, 
built into imperial structures ; and it challenges compari- 
son ! No matter how other records have come to us, the 
Scripture puts its record beside them, asserts this true, 
and waits for centuries for its vindication. The ancient 
historians tell us, for example, that the king of Babylon, 
when that city was taken and destroyed by the Persians, 
was not Belshazzar, but Nabonadius, or Labynetus, as the 
names are given differently in different languages ; that he 
was not captured in the city, or killed, but that he escaped 
from it ; that he fought a battle, after the capture, outside 
of the city ; that he was defeated, and was then taken 
prisoner; that he was made satrap under the conqueror; 
that he lived for years afterwards, unmolested, lived in 
abundance, and died in peace. Berosus and Abydenus 
agree in most of this ; and history laughs at the story as 
told in the book of Daniel. It is an unhistoric legend, 
idle, worthless, because contrary to the facts. The book 
of Daniel puts forward its record, and patiently waits. 
Twenty years ago, there were dug up the cylinders from 
the remains of the ancient Ur of the Chaldees, from the 
mounds which mark the almost forgotten site of that 
renowned city of the East, which explain at a glance the 
seeming inconsistency. They show that Belshazzar was 
the son of Nabonadius, and the Regent under him ; that 
Daniel's record is therefore as true as was that probably 
of Herodotus or Berosus. They were simply writing of 
different persons. 



96 UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIBLE. 

So the Scripture fearlessly challenges historians, and 
puts its records alongside of theirs — a characteristic 
which belongs to it only among the sacred books of the 
world. There is no other which treats so fearlessly the 
events of the past, and which faces such imminent con- 
tinual risk of being demonstrated as untrue, if that is 
possible. It tells its story, amid whatever din of con- 
tradictions, and waits to be accepted, with a divine cour- 
age, imperturbable as God. 

But of course the Bible is not narrative only. Re- 
member the marvellous poetry of it, at which all the world 
wonders : so majestic, so pathetic, in contents so various, 
in its mass so vast, in its spiritual beauty so unequalled ! 
It is poetry unshackled by the fetters of rhyme, where 
the image becomes instinct with the spirit of song, where 
the thoughts chime as words cannot. It sings itself, there- 
fore, through the mind alike of child and man. It utters 
itself in hymns and psalms, and spiritual songs, to which 
it has given its impulse and meaning, in all languages of 
the world. It becomes the source, and constant inspira- 
tion, of the great historical liturgies of the church, of 
which it has been computed that two-thirds are drawn 
directly from the sacred volume ! It quickens the fancy, 
stirs the imagination, soothes, solaces, or animates the 
heart ; and though not forming so large a part, it forms 
as important and as memorable a part, in the structure of 
the Bible ; it contributes as much to its power and spir- 
itual impression, as do narratives and history. 

Then Law addresses men, with its precise authorita- 



UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIBLE. 97 

tive instruction, its disclosures of duty, its penalties and 
its promises. It is inscribed on these pages in lines 
almost as fiery as if it were written in lightnings on the 
sky. It becomes almost as impressive, in its divine 
authorization, as if God's signature, traced in lightnings, 
were blazing in the heaven, beneath vast visible lines of 
flame. Then proverbs come, such multitudes of them, 
familiar to the thought of the educated world, wherever 
the Bible has been read, each one containing the choice 
treasures of practical wisdom. Argumentative discus- 
sions are not wanting, like those of Paul, which the 
most alert and studious mind, the most disciplined intel- 
ligence, has to bring its utmost power to examine, that 
it may understand their invincible force, that it may 
develop their fair conclusions ; that it may brace and 
invigorate itself by contact with the mind which has ut- 
tered its thought in this majestic sweep of argument. 
Great luminous discourses are here as well — like those 
which flowed from the serene lips of the Son of God ; 
discourses of time, and also of eternity, of life upon the 
earth and life in the heavens, of the soul of man, of the 
beauty of God, of the redemption by the cross, of the sanc- 
tification by the Divine. Spirit. No feature of the Bible 
is so impressive as these interpreting and transcendent 
discourses, which use no logic and require no argument, 
.which impress themselves, as the sun on the sod which 
it sprinkles with flowers, on the spiritual sense of every 
one who attentively reads and inwardly ponders them. 
Even fiction, you observe, is not overlooked in this as- 



98 UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIB IE. 

tonishing literary apparatus employed in the Bible. The 
parables give narratives, fictitious in form, but pre- 
senting incidents that are probable in themselves, and 
deriving lessons from those incidents which could not 
be so distinctly illustrated, or so impressed upon the mind, 
by any other mode of communicating thought. 

In fact, it may truly be said that there is no species 
of literary workmanship, which is appropriate to the rev- 
elation of spiritual truth, of which the finest examples 
that we possess are not to be found in this ancient book. 
All other books are narrow in comparison, and restricted 
in range. They are books upon one key, and this upon 
many. They are books which impress truth, so far as 
they impress it, through one form of instrumentality, 
and this through a multitude. We should anticipate the 
oneness of the Bible, if it comes to us from God. We 
should anticipate a certain abundant and charming vari- 
ety in the forms of the Bible, if it be his. The suprem- 
acy of his mind, the prodigal inexhaustible force of 
his will, as well as his certain wish and purpose if he 
should give a revelation at all to give it in a form to attract 
wide attention, and impress powerfully the minds of 
mankind — all these impel us to look for variety in its 
structure. But that which we find well-nigh surpasses 
our largest possible expectation ! 

Now, observe the important consequences of this 
constant variety in the literary structure of the Bible. 

It becomes, by reason of it, a universal book ; since 
there is no tribe or nation that does not enjoy story, 



UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIBLE. 



99 



song, parable, eloquence ; that does not therefore wel- 
come the Bible, as opening to it new realms of thought, 
presenting that thought in the most engaging and fasci- 
nating forms, and giving the mind intellectual gratifica- 
tion, while tending all the time to irradiate and renew the 
moral nature. There is almost no other Oriental book 
which is valued and sought in the Western world. But 
this is just as familiar to the Western mind, as congenial 
to it, as if it had been prepared in Europe. There is no 
other book, read studiously in Europe, which is read with 
equal interest and gladness in the Society Islands, in In- 
dia, China, and among the barbarians of South Africa, 
just emerging from their dense darkness. But the Bible 
goes to the African as to the European ; goes to the Isl- 
ander of the sea, to the Chinaman and the Hindoo, to 
the Indian and the Arab, as well as to the citizen trained 
by schools, expert in business, in these United States. 
There is, of course, a certain local color in it which makes 
the missionary wdio reads it in the East, and who inter- 
prets it into the Arabic — which makes the traveller, read- 
ing it in the East, among the localities where its writings 
first found their life and form — appreciate the beauty and 
the wonder of it the more. But it is, beyond all others, 
a universal book ; and largely by reason of this amazing 
many-sidedness of its literary constitution. 

Then it is, also, a comprehensive and commanding 
book, as addressed to any individual student ; because it 
appeals to each faculty of the mind, interests all, and 
leaves none unchallenged. It appeals to men in all moods 



loo UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIBLE, 

of their feeling. It appeals to them in all stages of their 
life, from childhood onward, through maturity, until the 
extremest limit of age. It appeals to them thus, not 
merely by reason of the substance of the truth which it 
communicates, but also of this variety of means by which 
it conveys it — in song and story, in law and proverb, in 
parable, argument, mighty vision. Every faculty of the 
mind is therefore addressed by it, and is gratified by it. 
We are sometimes in trouble because certain parts or 
passages of the Bible are less interesting to us, at least 
in certain moods of feeling, than they have been before ; 
are not as interesting to us now as they were when we 
were children ; or have lost the celestial glow which was 
upon them when we read them with tears and with tri- 
umph in our grief. But the Bible is intended to furnish 
something for every mood, the most sorrowful and the 
most cheerful, when the soul is sunken in grief, and when 
it is rising in new-born ecstacy of strength and hope. It 
has parts for the little child, and parts for the aged, It 
is the only book in the world, because it is the only one 
which has this marvellous completeness of constitution, 
which the little child and the venerable grandparent will 
gladly sit down and read together ; which is at home in 
the Sunday-school, and equally at home in the highest 
university ; which the most disciplined mind can never 
exhaust, yet which the youngest and rfiost immature can 
find full of attraction, instruction, inspiration. This, by 
reason of the marvellous manifoldness of its literary 
structure, as well as by reason of the grandeur and the 



UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIBLE. loi 

glory of that system of truth which is evermore contained 
within it. 

Observe, too, what an educating book it becomes, by 
reason of this astonishing variety in its constitution. It 
requires a man to match one part against another ; to 
read the poem in the light of the narrative ; to interpret 
th*e argument by the light of that revelation of the Son 
of God which is given in the four matchless, divine biog- 
raphies of Him ; to interpret the primitive precept, even, 
'under the radiance of that final vision of Judgment which 
dashes its startling splendor on us from the great white 
throne ; to interpret Christ's declaration of forgiveness 
by the miracles which he works, and the doctrine of sanc- 
tification by the Spirit by the crystalline sheen of the 
golden streets of the new Jerusalem. We are to analyze, 
and combine, and reconcile parts, to bring one into a 
close comparison with another, so that out of all we may 
derive the ultimate truth which God would give us in the 
Scripture. The flower and the oak, the forest and the 
stream, the continent and the ocean, are alike parts in 
this manifold whole ; and we cannot fully comprehend 
one without considering all. So it comes to be a book 
which educates the mind as no other can ; which tasks 
every faculty in it ; which requires in its student a moral 
state sympathetic with His from whom it comes, and 
which requires our careful perusal, from end to end, in 
order that we may wholly understand it. 

I can understand a proposition, logically stated, wheth- 
er I sympathize in temper or not with the man who de- 

9* 



I02 UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIBLE. 

clares it ; but I cannot understand such an outpouring as 
this claims to be from the mind of the Most High, so va- 
rious, so vast, so full of side-lights as it is, so covered 
here and there with shadows, so delicate, so tender, so 
majestic, so holy — I cannot understand it -until my soul 
is also bathed in the effulgence of God's own light, until 
I am in the spirit of my soul sympathetic with him. If 
the Bible were intended only to give a scheme of intel- 
lectual gymnastics, to thoughtful readers, it would be the 
most wonderful book in the world. A perfect system of 
physical gymnastics is that which develops and trains 
each muscle, which quickens and educates every nerve, 
which makes each limb and member act in perfect ac- 
cord with every other, which gives its due proportion of 
power to every part of this sensitive, organized human 
frame. A true system of mental gymnastics is that 
which touches, reaches, educates every faculty, every 
sensibility. And the Bible does it, by reason of its man- 
ifold and amazing constitution. At the same time, how- 
ever, that it does this, it -makes the essential truth shine 
from it, as the light of the diamond shines from each one 
of its scores of facets. 

Observe, also, that by reason of this it becomes the 
great power which it is in civilization ; not merely by 
reason of the truth which it contains — though by reason 
of that primarily — but by reason also of the singular va- 
riety of form through which that truth is declared to man- 
kind. It touches the historical research which explores 
the old world, at every point. It stimulates inquiry. It 



UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIBLE. 103 

invites comment. It invites even criticism, expects it, 
challenges it, offers it every possible opportunity, says 
nothing in reply, but simply lets it die if it is persistent 
and malicious. Therefore it is that the commentaries 
written upon the Scripture form libraries of themselves, 
so numerous they are, and so extensive. It touches art, 
science, poetry, every department oE human thought and 
of intellectual achievement, by reason also of this variety 
of its constitution. Of course we are familiar with this : 
but it is really amazing to see how the poetry of the 
world, for example, takes its themes and its impulses 
from the Bible ; how sculpture and painting find' both 
their, subjects and their inspiration in these ancient sto- 
ries, and primitive songs ; how pencil, chisel, and the 
skill of the architect, are made to carry the tidings and 
the treasures of the life of the Lord to distant lands, and 
through all time ; how everywhere the thought of the 
world is stimulated, its intelligence attracted, its power 
educated, through its contact with this marvellous book 
of God. 

So it becomes the power which it is in civilization. 
It works itself into the life of each people, and builds up 
nations into order and greatness. See how it has built 
up the English people out of Saxons and Danes : ta- 
king our ancestors, who used to burn their captives of 
war in wicker baskets, as a sacrifice to their gods, and 
making of them the free enlightened nations which now 
we find, on that side of the Atlantic and on this. Be- 
cause of this variety, in what may be called the physical 



I04 UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIB IE. 

constitution of the Bible, it gets access to every nation 
in the world, as it could not otherwise : and because of 
this it blesses each nation as no book of narrower com- 
pass could. 

Thus too it becomes an inexhaustible book, because 
not exhibiting thought alone, but action, character, human 
life. Life in its nature is inexhaustible. One may follow 
carefully a proposition in logic until he knows it altogeth- 
er. It has no contents which he has not considered. 
But one never searches out a human life, in personal 
presence, or as presented in the vivid and life-like por- 
traiture of the Bible, until he knows it as completely. 
Always there are secrets hidden within it, unfathomable 
recesses, shadowy tendencies, great abysses ; there are 
jDassions, weaknesses, high aspirations, singular attain- 
ments, which another cannot compass. The Bible be- 
comes inexhaustible as the heavens, because there is so 
much of personal life crowded into its thousand-fold 
story ; while yet its whole spiritual lesson may be com- 
pressed into a text, and a sentence may give the sub- 
tance of revelation. So Micah gives us the complete 
summing up of the ancient economy in his words : " What 
doth God require of thee, O man, but to do justly, and to 
love mercy, and to walk humbly with thy God !" So in 
the New Testament the whole Bible is put into that one 
sentence, which a child can remember: "God so loved 
the world that he gave his only-begotten Son, that who- 
soever believeth in him should not perish but have eter- 
nal life." The origin of redemption, in the eternal love of 



UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIB IE. 105 

God ; the unique glory and place in the universe of the 
Son of God, who came as Redeemer ; the one condition 
of eternal life, in our faith in this Redeemer ; the misery 
and the peril on the one hand, the vital glory and felici- 
ty on the other, which follow men's different relations to 
Christ — all are here compacted into a sentence. If all 
the rest of the Bible were lost, that sentence surviving 
would perpetuate its substance. 

It is one of the illustrations of the divine wisdom in 
the surpassing constitution of the Scripture, that it is so 
inexhaustible, and yet that in parts it is so transparently 
and entirely simple. Compressed into a text, it fills a 
volume with infinite variations on its one supreme theme. 
So it enters into the life of nations. So it stimulates lit- 
erature, quickens invention, fosters art. So it trains and 
ennobles all faculties of the soul. So it revolutionizes 
society peacefully, exalts it permanently, and sheds con- 
tinuous force and blessing on every nation into whose 
possession it has come. 

Observe too, still further, how, through this remarka- 
ble constitution of the Bible, it becomes really incapable 
of being perverted, by the interpolation of texts, by the 
extraction of texts which stand properly in their places, 
so that the revelation shall be made to teach another 
doctrine than that which it ought to bring from God. 
We do not think of this, perhaps, as often as we should. 

We hear so much said of this suspected text, and that 
doubtful passage, of this probable interpolation from the 
margin, and of the long quarrel which scholars have 



ic6 UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIBLE, 

waged over that Greek letter, mark, or accent, that we 
sometimes forget that God, in his constitution of the Bi- 
ble has made it impossible to seriously pervert it. Of 
course there will be erroneous transcriptions. The hand 
of the scribe is not inspired. Of course, there may be 
here and there insertions, of a marginal note, written into 
the text. Of course there may be a word dropped out, or a 
vowel omitted, in one passage or another. The eye of 
the scribe will sometimes fail to discern distinctly what 
it sees or what it omits ; and there must be of necessity 
more or less liability to minute error in making copies of 
so many writings. But the great course of doctrine can- 
not be eliminated from the Scripture, except as you tear 
the whole fabric into tatters. It is interwoven, every part 
with every other — story, law, precept, proverb, the biogra- 
phies of Christ by the evangelists, and the argument of 
Christ by the apostles, and the vision of Christ in the 
Apocalypse ; until, if you throw away one part, you must 
equally throw away many others. You may get rid of 
the story of Balaam ; though, if you do, you will miss one 
of the most picturesque and impressive stories in all the 
Old Testament. But what then will you do with the ref- 
erences to him, in Micah, in Peter, and in the Revelation } 
You may get rid, perhaps, of the miracle in the passage of 
the Red sea, and suppose a mere shift of the wind when 
Pharaoh's army was divinely destroyed. But what then 
are you to do with the song of Moses and of Miriam t and 
what with the 76th psalm, and the io6th, and the 1 14th } 
and what with the *' song of Moses and the Lamb" in the 



UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIBLE. 107 

crowning book of the Apocalypse ? They are inter- 
braided, like threads that have been woven so closely to- 
gether that you cannot tear them apart except by de- 
stroying the entire fabric. You cannot extract one and 
leave the rest, with any ingenuity or by any force. 

Thus it fares with the difficulties in the Biblical text, 
of which skeptics have sometimes made so much. Ne- 
cessarily, always, by the manifold constitution of the 
Scripture, they must amount to very little. They are 
like scratches on the stones of the Milan cathedral ; like 
the breaking of a single pane of its pictured glass, or the 
breaking off of a finger, or possibly a fore-arm, from one 
of its five thousand statues. The great structure stands 
unimpaired, shining, imperial, in the serene Italian air. 
The Bible stands, majestic, unfractured, in the same way. 
You may take away a vowel here, or throw away an ac- 
cent there ; you may pick up a word which has been 
dropped, or throw out a word which has been added ; but 
God in his wisdom has made it so multiform, so many- 
sided and various in its parts, and has inwoven each part 
so perfectly with all the others, that you cannot destroy 
it, except by annihilating its whole structure. The Jewish 
counting of words and letters insured extraordinary ac- 
curacy to its copies. But no inaccuracy could touch its 
life, unless it were repeated hundreds of times. 

Observe, still further, how it holds the attention of the 
world to itself, to its own text, by reason of this special 
structure of it. It does not allow any equal paraphrase. 
Erasmus, that beautiful scholar of the Reformation-pe- 



io8 UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIBLE. 

riod, wrote an eloquent paraphrase of the New Testa- 
ment, which was early translated by Coverdale into Eng- 
lish, a copy of which was ordered by the Government, I 
think, to be placed in every parish church of England, 
Who now ever reads it ? Who ever hears of it, except as 
a famous curiosity of literature ? You may possibly find 
it in some secondhand bookshop, or on the shelves of 
some bibliomaniac ; but you scarcely ever, probably never, 
see it used by one who is trying to ascertain the sense 
of the Scripture. Doddridge, pastor, preacher, theolo- 
gian — pure, lovely, admirable, famous in all these offices — 
wrote a paraphrase of the New Testament. Who reads 
that to-day ? Sometimes you may look at it for a pas- 
sage, or a sentence, to see if you can get new light upon 
a Scripture concerning which you are in darkness. But 
who would undertake to read it through, leaving the text 
of the New Testament, and going to this paraphrase of 
even so eminent, so devout a man as Philip Doddridge, 
the perfume of whose spirit would make any work fra- 
grant which he undertook } 

No ! you cannot paraphrase the Bible, for the reason 
that the multiform structure of it cannot be reproduced 
by any one mind. You must take the forty minds that 
made it, if you want to make another like it ; and then 
you must have the superintending, inspiring force of the 
one Divine Spirit to keep them in harmony, and to keep 
them at that supreme exaltation of feeling and thought 
in which they wrote. It is this alone which gives to 
their words such perennial, fruitful power. If one man 



UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIBIE, 109 

were at the same time all poet and all logician, all histo- 
rian and all lawgiver, all prophet and all biographer, all 
ethical philosopher and all maker of parables ; if he were 
then filled to the full with the mind of God, and made 
equal to the Son of God — he might make another Scrip- 
ture. But until then, no possible paraphrase of the Bible 
can ever satisfy the thought and the heart of the world. 

The text of the Scripture holds the mind to itself, 
and out of itself propels its own energy and beauty into 
every treatise that would expound it, into every system 
that is vitally derived from it. It keeps theology itself 
from becoming as dry as the "ribbed sea-sand," and 
makes it, as far as it adheres to the letter of God's word, 
and is in harmony with its spirit, fresh and green, -full of 
force and full of grace. It is the one Scripture which 
never grows old, with fountains sparkling amid its gran- 
ite, and harebells wreathed around its cliffs. 

And yet, by reason of this constitution, see also how 
capable it is of being translated into each language ; not 
only incapable of being destroyed by mutilation or addi- 
tion, or of being supplanted by any paraphrase, but capa- 
ble of being physically transferred into each foreign 
tongue, as is no other book on the earth. Reading the 
best translation of a foreign work is usually like looking 
at the painted windows of the chapel or cathedral from 
the outside. You see merely the general outline, per- 
haps only vague and clashing blotches of color ; you do 
not see the fine inestimable touches and traits, the har- 
monious beauty of delicate lines, the glory of the golden 

10 



iro UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIBLE. 

crown, the rich crimson and bkie of the robes. You see 
them only darkly tinted, perhaps distorted. But the 
Bible is capable of indefinite translation into all human 
tongues, because each tongue has in it of necessity the 
terms of narrative, of poetry, of law, of biography, and 
of parable ; ^nd these make up so much of the Scrip- 
ture ! Then, if you find that there is a final poverty in 
the language — which never has had the Scripture ideas 
as yet expressed in it — a poverty of terms to express the 
great facts of justification, regeneration, of redemption 
by Christ, and of the disciples' inner experience, language 
itself, when it has taken the Bible into it, becomes ex- 
panded, ennobled, spiritualized. It enlarges itself to the 
compass of the new treasure, it exalts itself to the height 
of the recent acquisition.. The language is regenerated, 
as well as the spirit of the people who use it. It be- 
comes heavenlier, as does their society. So it was that 
Eliot could take this immense and magnificent book, 
made by so many writers in so many ages, under the 
superintendence of one supreme mind, and put it into 
the sterile and narrow Algonquin tongue, that never be- 
fore had held a conception of any one of all the facts, of 
any one of all the elements of spiritual experience, which 
the Scripture brings to light. So it is that it can go to- 
day into the language of the Chinaman, of the Japanese, 
the New-Zealander, the Esquimaux, the Tamil people or 
the Tartars, or the Bushmen of South Africa. It can 
go, as it has gone, into more than two hundred languages 
of the earth. It can go into all, by reason of the fact 



UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIBLE, iii 

that it is so carefully and variously made up, of story, song, 
law, proverb. You cannot translate other books in like 
manner, as I have said. ThejEact that this book can be 
thus translated, as it indeed has been, and can be made 
the property of the world — the fact that we have this 
wonderful modern gift of tongues, through these transla- 
tions of the Scripture into so many languages and dia- 
lects of mankind — is owing to its marvellous literary con- 
stitution. No language will fail to give some part of it 
clearly and fully ; and each part by itself, when fully re- 
ceived, will be found to be instinct with the life of the 
whole. 

But observe, yet further, that from that whole, so va- 
rious, so vast, so complete as it is, we gather a final, total 
impression of the truth which it brings, which is far more 
sufficient and far more impressive than we otherwise 
could have had ; because we see that truth at so many 
angles, from so many points, and through the medium of 
so many styles. The Bible is like a diamond that has 
not one, but fifty faces, from each of which the radiance 
flashes. It is like a great palace, not like a wall. Many 
books are like walls, thin, perpendicular, alike on both 
sides, which are only attractive when thoroughly masked 
under trellis and vine. Here is a palace, with many 
fronts, with hospitable doorways, storied roofs, far-reach- 
ing outlooks ; its whole exterior broken into different 
angles and gables, hanging balconies, oriel windows ; its 
vast interior rich in saloons, music-halls, galleries, libra- 
ries, the theatre, the throne-room, all the apartments for 



112 UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIBLE. 

work and for rest, for study and for pleasure, for public 
ceremonial, and for serene domestic joy. Such is the 
Bible. And from this manifoldness of its structure we 
get a final impression of its truth, which is richer and 
more powerful than could possibly have been made if in 
its constitution it had been narrower and more limited. 

One of our American artists, wishing to perfect for 
himself a portrait and a bust of Shakespeare, took the 
death-mask from the face of the poet, and had twenty or 
thirty photographs made, from every possible angle of 
vision, that he might get the fullest light on every point 
of face and head ; then came the portrait on the can- 
vas, and then the stately head in marble. So we look 
at the figure and face of Christ, as these are given us in 
the Bible : from the earliest prophecy, from the law, from 
the ritual, from the psalm and the song, from the evan- 
gelical prophecies of Isaiah, from the story of Matthew, 
and the other of Mark, and the other of Luke, and the 
wonderful spiritual story of John, from the argument of 
Paul, the exhortation of Peter, and the great vision at 
last of the King in the heavens — when the garden, with 
which the race began, has become the eternal city of 
God, and when the babe-prince is the Lord of the saints — 
we take all these, and from them all we get such a transcen- 
dent image of the Son of God as no one writer could 
have given. It takes forty writers, even under the inspi- 
ration of God, to portray for us that sympathizing Sove- 
reign, that bleeding Conqueror, that crucified King, 
whom we are by-and-by to see, with the pierced bands 



UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIBLE. 113 

holding the sceptre, with the many diadems where was 
of old the crown of thorns ! 

So it is, Friends and Fellow-workers, that this variety 
in the structure of the Scripture vindicates the book in 
which it is found as coming from God ; designed in his 
wisdom, accomplished by the impulse and the influence 
of his Spirit. It makes the book universal in its range, 
adapted to all men. It makes it comprehensive in its 
appeal to each individual student of it. It makes it the 
most educating book in the world, to him who would mas- 
ter all its contents ; makes it the grandest power in civil- 
ization, by which inquiry is challenged and thought is 
stirred, on every side, which becomes the germ of arts 
and of sciences, of universities and libraries, of generous 
literatures, social ameliorations, enlightened governments. 
Because it is formed as it is, it is made impossible to 
destroy its integrity, or to make it teach another doctrine 
than that in which all its parts concur ; impossible to 
paraphrase, yet easy to translate it, into every tongue. 
Because it is framed as it is, we get from it such an ulti- 
mate impression and conception of the truth, so complete 
and" so powerful, as could not otherwise have been con- 
veyed. And all the time it is one in its substance, in its 
truth, in its law, in its clear revelation of God and his 
government, of man and his needs, of Christ the Lord, 
the King of the world, and of the Divine spiritual king- 
dom in which he is the head, and into which all who 
believe in him are thereby gathered. It has a vast, mul- 
tiform oneness ; not like that of Paradise Lost, or of 

10* 



1 14 UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIBLE, 

Plato's Republic, or even of the Koran, which is one by 
limitation, because the utterance of a single mind. This 
is a oneness compacted out of all the varieties of experi- 
ence, power, spiritual culture, in many separate and 
widely scattered writers. It is a unity built of variety ; 
and it makes the Bible the supreme phenomenon of the 
literary world. It is like the earth. It is a book for the 
earth, and, as I said before, it corresponds with it : one 
planet, but with rivers, meadows, and mountain ranges, 
assembled in it ; with seas and islands, the narrow isth- 
mus, the outstretch of continents ; with monitory fires 
underneath, and the great solemn stars above; with the 
moon walking the sky, as to-night, in placid brightness, 
and the sun shedding the splendor of day across the 
lands that are glad in his coming. So is the Bible. It 
has parable and psalm, brief story and vast legislation, 
mighty argument, charming incident, curt admonition. 
It too has its Sun of Righteousness ; its Old Testament 
and its New, like answering hemispheres, what is latent 
in the one being patent in the other. Before the threat of 
its penalties the earth throbs. The unsearchable splen- 
dor of its promises gilds the skies. 

Assuredly it is the Book of God. When you can 
prove to me that man has built the mountains of brick- 
work, and has covered the earth with a mud which he has 
manufactured for soil — when you can convince me that 
he has adjusted the planet in its poise, and set the stars 
upon their courses — then you may prove to me that the 
Bible, with its oneness and its infinite variety, its produc- 



UNITY AND VARIETY OF THE BIB IE. 115 

tioii extending over fifteen hundred years, and with its 
last verse answering to its first across the dreary drift of 
ages, has come to us from man ! 

Let us study it, then, my friends, with eager reverence. 
Let us consider it with such thoroughness of examina- 
tion as is suitable to a book which comes to us from such 
a source ! Let us count it our grandest privilege to 
study it ; our beautiful duty to teach its wondrous truths 
to others, and to spread the knowledge of itself and its 
contents around the world. What a mission it is to 
make it known ! We sound again the harp of David, 
and put to our modern lips the golden trumpet of Isaiah ; 
we speak again with Paul in the jostling streets of Ephe- 
sus or of Corinth, or under the matchless temples of the 
Acropolis ; we speak with Moses, fresh from the thunder 
and lightnings of the mount, and with his face yet shi- 
ning with a gleam from the glory of God ; yea, reverently 
we may say it, we speak again with the Lord himself, at 
the well-side, at the supper, from the cross on which he 
died, from the throne on which he reigns — when we send 
this Bible around the world ! 

No other office is so grand. No other privilege, 
supreme as this, can meet us until we reach the higher 
levels of the universe which we dwell in, and enter the 
felicities which wait for those who, having loved the Lord 
on earth, as he is here revealed in his w^ord, at last for 
ever stand before him, and do his work, and see his glory, 
face to face ! 



ANCIENT HISTORY 



IN ITS CONNECTION 



With the Old Testament. 



REV. HOWARD CROSBY, D. D., 

PASTOR OF THE FOURTH AVENUE PRESBYTERIAN CHURCH, NEW YORK. 



This Lecture of Dr. Crosby's \vas delivered ^AT-ith 
constant reference to charts and maps, ^vhich -will | 

account for the "want of finish and apparent con- l 

nection in some of its parts. It is printed entirely ; 

from the stenographer's notes. ! 



ANCIENT HISTORY 



IN ITS CONNECTION 



With the Old Testament 



We have had of late a great many apologies for the 
Bible from invertebrate Christians, and the form of the 
apology has been, " The Bible was not intended to teach 
us science !" Now, if the Bible is not to be trusted in 
its science, it is not to be trusted in its religion. What 
would you think of an inspired man who would come to 
you and tell you that he came from God to teach you, and 
should begin his address by informing you that when 
Abraham Lincoln was assassinated, George Washington 
succeeded to the Presidential chair ? Would you have 
any confidence in his inspiration ? Where the Bible 
teaches cosmogony, it teaches the truth ; and where it 
teaches history, it teaches the truth ; and Satan knows 
well that if he can undermine the truth of the science 
of the Scriptures, he can make all the Scriptures doubt- 
ful. The first and tenth chapters of Genesis are chap- 
ters of great similarity. The first chapter is a declara- 



120 HISTORY AND THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

tion from God concerning the palaeology, I may call it, 
of the earth on which we live, and the second chapter is 
just such a declaration of the palaeology of our race. 
Neither of those chapters could have been written by 
untutored man. There was no science in the Mosaic 
age that could have been the guide of Moses in his nar- 
rations in either of those chapters, and yet in that first 
chapter we find a detailed order of creation which the 
careful and searching geology of our own time has proved 
to be the exact order, and the last link in the proof was 
only obtained three years ago. The Mosaic account puts 
the creation of plants before the creation of animals; but 
Geology, four years ago, had found that animals came 
first in the book of rocks, and plants were above them in 
the carboniferous stratum ; so tJicre was a varying, and 
the Bible, you see, was wrong ; but '* the Bible was not 
meant to teach us science" — that was the answer four 
years ago. But three years ago, down below the ani- 
mals, was found an immense amount of graphite, or 
plumbago, which is the result of the decomposition of 
vegetable matter; and now the link is complete and the 
stories are parallel — the one told by Moses, and the other 
by geologists of to-day. 

Let us be, therefore, a little careful of our readiness to 
apologize for the mistakes of the Scripture by saying " the 
Scripture was not made to teach us science." The tenth 
chapter of Genesis is a story told by Moses of the distri- 
bution of the races of men. No ethnology in his period, 
no history, no philology, could have taught that to Mo- 



HISTORY AND THE OLD TESTAMENT. 121 

ses ; but now the historian, helped by all the monuments 
of Babylon, Assyria, Egypt, and Palestine, and the phi- 
lologist and the ethnologist all agree, after their marvel- 
lous researches in this century, that the tenth chapter of 
Genesis exactly describes the distribution of the race. 
Where did Moses get these chapters from ? He did not 
get them from science. He got them from God ! 

I purpose this evening, in the hour you give me, 
briefly — but I hope as interestingly as a dry subject may 
be treated — to put before you some of the illustrations 
of the history of the Old Testament that have been 
brought before our notice by the discoveries in the Mes- 
opotamian Valley during the last tvi^enty-five years, but 
especially in the last ten years, and, indeed, some of 
them within the last twelve months. 

We all knew a great deal about Greece and Rome up 
to twenty-five or thirty years ago, but we knew very little 
indeed about Egypt, and still less about the great Meso- 
potamian Valley. With regard to the latter we had a 
few fragments of Greek writers, and some slight allu- 
sions in the history of Herodotus, but beyond this we 
were in the dark, only having the references that are 
made in the Scripture, unsupported by any other evi- 
dence. For example, what did we know of the old 
Assyrian, Babylonian, and Chaldean empires } They 
»were all in confusion. The account of Ctesias, who 
was the court physician of Artaxerxes Mnemon, was a 
confused account. It left us in doubt both as to times 

and places, and made us quite confident, when we got 

11 



122 HISTORY AND THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

through the record, that we had been reading a romance. 
Of the whole Assyrian empire of a thousand years, he 
only mentions one or two royal personages, e. g., Ninus, 
the founder, and Semiramis ; and one of these, Semira- 
mis, builds cities everywhere, and all of them are a mile 
high and one hundred miles square, and all filled with 
about a million of people, and she scatters them all over 
the country in a most remarkable, Aladdin-like way. 
That is all the story we have of Assyria from the old 
sources, nothing that we could believe in except that 
there was a great queen, Semiramis. Now, the whole 
story of the Mesopotamian Valley has been dug up out 
of that valley, the excavations beginning thirty-three 
years ago, when, in 1843, Mr. Botta, the son of the histo- 
rian of the American Revolution, and relative of my hon- 
ored friend. Professor Botta of this city, first began the 
explorations in the Mound of Koyunjik, opposite Mosul. 
He was followed by Layard, who made still more remark- 
able discoveries ; and since that we have had a number 
who have engaged in this work of exploration, not only 
of the locality, but of the language and the history of 
that remarkable people. And now we have the history 
of ancient Chaldea and its successor, Assyria, almost as 
clearly put before us as the history of mediaeval Germany 
and France. A library has been found in the piles at 
Nineveh of one of the last princes of Assyria, who died 
about 640 years b. c.,.and that library was discovered to 
be full of books of all kinds — arithmetics, geographies, 
histories, spelling-books, dictionaries, and every style of 



HISTORY AND THE OLD TESTAMENT. 123 

work that the authors of those ancient days wrote. They 
had been preserved by the falHng in of these brick build- 
ings, carefully preserved by the destroyer, and now a 
large quantity of the contents of this library have been 
carried to the museums of Europe, the largest part, per- 
haps, going to the British Museum. Men have been 
enabled not only to find out the meaning of the remark- 
able cuneiform character, but also to bring out from its 
grave a language — nay, two, three languages — that were 
altogether dead, of which not one single word or syllable 
was known to us before ; and now those languages have 
their grammars and their dictionaries and their reading- 
books, and we can study them in our homes as we can 
study Hebrew or Greek. There is the Assyrian language 
especially, of which there is now found an immense liter- 
ature, the Hterature especially of the kings of Assyria, a 
language which is the old parent of the Hebrew — the 
Sanscrit, so to speak, of the Semitic dialects ; and there 
is the Akkad language, as it is called, or one of the Tu- 
ranian stock, belonging to Southern Babylonia ; and 
then, also, there is the Median language ; and these three 
languages, that thirty years ago were not known to exist, 
have now their full development in grammar and dic- 
tionary. 

In these remarkable remains have been found the 
tablets written with the cuneiform character by kings 
some of whom reigned 2,000 years before Christ, in the 
time of Abraham and before him ; and in some of these 
tablets we have long and particular records of all the 



124 HISTORY AND THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

events of their reigns; and it is interesting for us, in 
examining these records, to find at times the mention of 
Palestine and the kings with whose names we are so fa- 
miUar in Holy Writ. If I take up the Bible, then, and 
look through it in its order, the first thing that I would 
call your attention to is the very name of the Southern 
country ; and this leads me to a brief episode to explain 
the rough map I have put upon the blackboard. Here I 
have meant to portray the long straight range of the 
Taurus Mountains that run along the northern side of 
the Mediterranean Sea, north of Cilicia and Pamphylia, 
and run eastward until they come to the neighborhood 
of Mount Ararat in Armenia. Here is the Masius spur 
of this range. Here is the Zagros range running along 
east of the Tigris and Persian Gulf. This Mesopotamian 
plain has an elevation, perhaps, at the highest of not 
more than three hundred feet above the level of the sea ; 
but when you get up these mountains, then the great 
plateau of Media and Persia runs far into the desert in 
Chinese territory, and instead of being only three hun- 
dred feet at its highest, is three thousand feet above the 
sea ; so that a totally different climate and country is 
found east of this broad range, or, rather, six ranges. 

West of the Euphrates you come to the Arabian des- 
ert, where but few can find subsistence ; but between the 
Arabian desert and the Zagros Mountains you have the 
rich Mesopotamian Valley, watered by the twin rivers, 
the Euphrates and the Tigris, the first running westerly 
from Ararat, and as if about to empty into the Mediter- 



HISTORY AND THE OLD TESTAMENT. 125 

ranean, then suddenly turning and coming east until it 
is within twenty-five miles of the Tigris, and then pass- 
ing out until it is one hundred miles away from the Ti- 
gris again, and then joining the Tigris and entering with 
it the Persian Gulf ; the Tigris, not so long by four or 
five hundred miles, starting only six miles from the river 
Euphrates, and then pursuing a southeasterly course and 
then a southerly course, until it comes within twenty-five 
miles of the Euphrates, then again is found one hundred 
miles from it, joins it here and enters the Persian Gulf. 
Though the Tigris is the narrower river and the shorter, 
it carries double the amount of water into the joint riv- 
ers that the Euphrates does, because the latter has hardly 
any tributaries. There are two here, you see ; and besides 
that, from the time the Chabour enters the Euphrates, 
the river, so to speak, slops over and its water goes out 
into the desert, so that there is much less water in the 
desert down here than there is three hundred or four 
hundred miles farther north. I have drawn a line here 
to show that there is a difference between the countries 
south and the countries north. The country south of 
this line is rich alluvial. Three crops a year, each bear- 
ing two or three hundred-fold, are obtained in that rich- 
est of all countries on the face of the earth, even richer 
than the Nile valley. Formerly, in historic periods, the 
Persian Gulf came up one hundred and twenty miles far- 
ther north than now, and the two rivers entered by dif- 
ferent mouths. These one hundred and twenty miles 

have been formed since historic periods, for Ur of the 

11* 



126 HISTORY AND THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

Chaldees, whence Abraham came, was a maritime city 
on the Persian Gulf, and is now one hundred and twenty 
miles away. Now that rich country we call Babylonia, 
or Chaldea. The country north of it, which is a some- 
what different formation and is slightly higher, is Assyria, 
and the northern part of Assyria bears marks of volcanic 
action. This natural division between Babylonia and 
Assyria helps to account for some of the historic facts 
connected with the two countries. 

But what was the name of this lower country, as 
given by the inhabitants themselves } It was not *' Bab- 
ylonia ;" it was not even " Chaldea," although one of the 
tribes of men that lived down here was called in the old 
inscriptions, " Chald ;" but the name of the country was 
Gun-duni. When God placed Adam and Eve upon the 
earth he placed them in a country that was called Gan- 
Eden, and that is the Garden of Eden, as we translate it; 
and Gan-Edcn is nothing but this Gun-duni — this south- 
ern part of the Euphrates and Tigris Valley. It was very 
natural that the Semitic people, seeing the word " Eden," 
should liken it to their own word Eden, which meant 
pleasure, and call it the " Garden of Pleasure." That is 
the way all nations do with foreign words ; they make 
them like their own. You know just north of London 
there is a village called " Shotover." That is almost the 
right name. The French, who called it so, spelt it "Cha- 
teau-vert," which signifies the " Green-castle ;" but the 
English called it " Shotover," which was as near as they 
could get it. So with the Giin-diini of this country. 



HISTORY AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 127 

which was an Akkad word. The Semitic people did not 
know what Gim-dimi meant, and so they gave it the 
name of the Garden of Pleasure, which was a very nice 
name to give it. So we have from the very beginning 
found among the old remains the name of the country 
the Garden of Eden, and it puts an end to all the contest 
as to where that garden was. It was not in Armenia, 
nor in India, as some thought, but there it was — the 
lower portion of the Tigris and the Euphrates. 

Now, in the tenth chapter one of the most remark- 
able personages we find was Nimrod, who was a mighty 
hunter before the Lord. Do you find anything about 
Nimrod there ? We find his very name existing right 
here at Babylon. At ancient Borsippa there is a hill 
bearing still the name of Nimrod. Up here, south of 
Nineveh not many miles, where the Little Zab joins the 
Tigris, there is a village which is named '' Nim-rud." So 
Nimrod's name continues there yet from those old times 
shortly after the Deluge. More than that, we find that 
the principal god among the ancient Babylonians was 
Bel- (or lord) Nipnt, or Merodach, for now they are be- 
lieved to be the same god. Bel means the lord, or god, 
and Nipru is nothing but what the Septuagint transla- 
tors of the Bible called Nimrod. They write it this way : 
'' Nebroth." His other name is another transformation : 
•' J/>;W-ach." 

We have, then, in the greatest god of Babylon — the 
one who was above all others distinguished, the one that 
through all its history stood really at the head of the 



128 HISTORY AND THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

Pantheon — Nimrod himself, the founder of the Babylo- 
nian monarchy. And, what is very curious, Bel-Mero- 
dach, or Bel-Nimrod, the great god of Babylon, is repre- 
sented always as having four splendid hunting-dogs. 
There is the " mighty hunter before the Lord." We are 
told in that tenth chapter that the beginning of his king- 
dom was Babel, or Babylon, Erech, Akkad, and Calneh, 
and we find the ruins of all those four cities now ; and 
after a careful examination we find that the very names 
of some of Nimrod's successors of that old Nimrodian 
dynasty are still upon the bricks of those old ruins. I 
cannot stop to describe them. I have to pass rapidly 
over them. Here is Babylon, with its wild ruins, upon 
the river Euphrates ; here is Erech ; here is Akkad, or 
Ur of the Chaldees, whence Abraham came ; and here 
is Calneh, or Nipur, the same as Nipru, another Nimrod- 
town found in Nimrod's old country. Out of that land — 
out of Babylonia, out of Chaldea, out of Gan-eden — went 
Ashur and built four cities : Nineveh, the city Rehoboth, 
Calah, and Resen ; and we find now the ruins of Nine- 
veh brought out to view by Botta. Twenty miles below 
we find Calneh. We are not sure but that still farther 
south, that which was known in the older periods by the 
name of Ashur, is the city Rehoboth. Now, what is that 
story } It is simply this, that Ashur — that is a Semitic 
race, for Ashur was the child of Shem — was driven out 
of this lower country by the Nimrodian race, and they 
went north and settled up here in the northern part of 
the Mesopotamian valley and laid the foundations of the 



JUSTORY AND THE OLD TESTAMENT. 129 

Assyrian kingdom, which was a Semitic kingdom, while 
the old Chaldean was not, but a Turanian kingdom. 

Let me explain here, for the benefit of those who are 
not thoroughly familiar with these ethnological terms, 
that there are three, as philologists say, distinct races 
upon the earth : the Aryan, to which we belong, and 
which some would consider to be the descendants of 
Japheth ; then the Semitic race, including the Hebrews 
and the Arabs, the descendants of Shem ; and the Tura- 
nian race, which may be the descendants of Ham or may 
not be. But these Turanians — not the Aryans nor the 
Semitic people, but the other branch of the races — occu- 
pied the southern country ; and it was the driving out of 
the Semitic people which is described in those few words. 
Ashur went out and built those four cities at the north; 
and just as we find Nimrod in the form of Bel-Nipru or 
Bel-Merodach, the great god of Babylonia, we find Ashur 
the great god of Assyria. 

Another interesting fact : We find on all the ancient 
remains of this southern country, away back 2,000 years 
before Christ, that the kings are always called the kings 
of Sumir and Akkad, and they embrace the people of the 
plains and mountains. The latter were the people of the 
mountains, and the former of the plains. But the name 
of the people of the plain, as given in their own lan- 
guage, for Sumir is a Semitic word, was Kengi. Now 
Noah had a grandson whose name, if we wrote it in Eng- 
lish exactly, would be Kenagan, or we call him Canaan, 
but the guttural Ayin is in there which corresponds to 



I30 HISTORY AND THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

the "g" in Kenagan. It shows these people of the plain 
were old Canaanites before, long before, this land was 
occupied by them. They were the old descendants of 
Ham, and that accounts for what Herodotus tells us, that 
all these people here on the Mediterranean coast came 
over from the Persian Gulf. So these Kenagan were 
afterwards driven out by the Semitic people, and they 
found their way over here to Canaan and became the 
Canaanites there. The word Kenagan signifies "the 
people of the plain," or "■ the low country," which would 
not have been the name given to them if Palestine had 
been their first habitation, which is a very high country. 
So we see from these discoveries where our old friends 
the Canaanites came from. We find also in these re- 
mains long accounts of the fall of man with much detail, 
and long accounts of the Deluge. The Deluge is called 
the overflowing flood of Na, and there is Noah. In the 
Deluge we read of the dove being sent out upon the sev- 
enth day and its returning, and of the raven being sent 
out and never coming back. We find also that the Sab- 
bath was regularly observed. They were Sabbath peo- 
ple in old Babylonia. Every seventh day was a holy day 
before their gods. All these are interesting illustrations 
of Scriptural truth. 

Now, if we come down to Abraham's day, say 2,000 
B. c, or about that, we find in the Bible a statement given 
us of a very remarkable raid made upon the cities of the 
plain by four confederate monarchs, one of whom was 
Chedorlaomer, and he had with him Amraphel, king of 



HISTORY AND THE OLD TESTAMENT. 131 

Shinar, and Arioch, king of Ellasar, and Tidal, king of 
Nations (Goim). These were the four. Until these dis- 
coveries we knew nothing about them except their names 
but now we find it recorded that a dynasty, came down 
from the mountains of Elam, conquered the whole plain 
and made the kings of the plain subject to it. This was 
the king of Elam, and here on the map you see Elam 
lying here between the mountains and the sea. The 
king of Shinar was the king of Northern Babylonia ; 
the king of Ellasar was the king of Southern Babylonia ; 
the king of Nations was the king of the wandering tribes 
here on the skirts of the Arabian Desert. These kings 
formed just the combination we should have expected at 
that time to make that wonderful raid up there through 
the Euphrates and down through Lebanon into Sodom. 
Further we find Chedorlaomer, or rather, one of his fam- 
ily, on the records. We find Lagamer quite frequently as 
one of the gods of the nation and we find Kedor, in the 
form of Kedor-mabuk, and whether it is the same as 
Chedorlaomer we cannot tell ; but what is very strange 
he calls himself Apda Mardu, or the Conqueror of the 
West ; and so it may be that this very Kedor-mabuk is 
the Chedorlaomer of whom we read in Genesis. We find 
the name of Arioch, his confederate, or rather, an earlier 
Arioch on the old clay tablets and the old bricks. Now 
what is very interesting is this : that the first of these 
Kedors brings to view a name which historians have 
been searching for for centuries, and tells us something 
which the world has been wanting to know for many 



132 HISTORY AND THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

generations. We find that the first of these Kedors that 
came down from the mountains and conquered the whole 
of the Babylonian territory sometime before the day of 
Abraham, perhaps lOO years, had this name, " Kudur 
Nakhunta." Now that is an Aryan word, and when it is 
translated into the Semitic language, "Kudur" means 
the seed or the child. "Nakhunta" is the name of the 
goddess Ishtar or Venus. If we translate the first into 
the Semitic, we have " Ziru," which means the seed, and 
the second Ishtar ; so we have Ziru-Ishtar, which we gen- 
erally write in English, " Zoroaster." And so the first of 
those princes that came down into Babylonia was the old 
Zoroaster, the founder of the Zoroastrian religion, which 
was the religion of the Persians and Medes, who came 
down 1,500 years later, and took possession of the Mes- 
opotamian plain. 

From this period we hear nothing more in the Bible 
of this Mesopotamian country until 1,200 years later, 
when the kings of Israel are brought into contact with 
the later kings of Assyria ; but meanwhile we have men- 
tion made of Egypt in the time of the Egyptian bond- 
age. I will not dwell long on that Egyptian matter. I 
will just say that there are some names on which much 
light is shed by the knowledge we have lately obtained 
from Egypt by logical research. For example, how often 
we have wondered in our childhood, and perhaps when 
we grew older, at that strange name that Pharaoh or the 
people of Egypt gave to Joseph, which certainly was not 
as musical or easy to pronounce as the name that Rach- 



HISTORY AND THE OLD TESTAMENT. 133 

el gave him — "Zaphnath paaneah ;" and yet, when you 
come to translate that name, as we are now able to do 
with perfect safety, see what a beautiful name they gave 
him: " Zaf-nt-p-anch " is the name. "Zaf" meant 
"bread;" "nt" meant "of;" "p" is the article "the," 
and the last, " anch," means life ; and so Joseph was 
called " the bread of life." [Applause.] 

Moses' name in the Hebrew is " Mosheh," but now 
there -is a Hebrew word " Mashah " of which " Mosheh " 
is the active participle, which means to draw out ; and so 
when we read in the Scriptures about the birth of Moses 
and the name given to him by Pharaoh's daughter the 
skeptics had a grand occasion to find fault with the 
science of the Bible. Thus it is : " And she called his name 
Mosheh, and she said, Because I vioshah him out of the 
water" — that is, " I drew him out of the water," and they 
say, "That is a made-up thing because mosheh is the 
active participle and could not mean 'drawn out' but 
* drawing out,' and is not the passive participle * drawn 
out ' } She would take the passive participle only and 
not say mosheh. It is a clumsy affair altogether, and 
shows how full of errors the Bible is." 

Well we went to work, then, and said the Bible was 

not meant to teach us science, but only religion. Since 

then, however, we have learned something more. We 

have discovered that the daughter of Pharaoh did not 

give her son a Hebrew name at all. She very naturally 

gave her son an Egyptian name, and we find an Egyptian 

.word, the passive participle of which is "Mosu," and 

12 



T34 HISTORY AND THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

that was the name given to Moses. Mosu means two 
things — first, ' drawn out,' but it secondly means ' brought 
forth' and is the name given to a child ; and so Pharaoh's 
daughter, wanting to call this her child, although it was 
not her own child and she could not designate it in the 
sense of the word 'brought forth,' could call it in the 
other sense of the word 'drawn out' because it was drawn 
out ; and she said, " I drew him out of the water and 
have a right to call him that, although it is the common 
name to give to one's own child." And so there was a sort 
of pun in the thing, but the Egyptian language gives us 
exactly the original name. 

So with Moses' son, who was called " Ger-shom," 
"Ger" means ''a stranger" and "shom" means "there," 
and " Gershom," which is " a stranger there," was a very 
harsh compound and no Hebrew would have thought of 
giving his child that name when the interpretation is " I 
am a stranger in a strange land." He never would have 
called him "a stranger there." But now we find that 
Moses gave his son an Egyptian name, and " Ger" means 
"stranger" and "shom" "a strange land;" and so it is 
just what it is called in the Bible, " a stranger in a strange 
land." One other of these words and I will go to the 
later history of Assyria. When Joseph was made grand 
vizier and the robes and grandeur of the vizier's office 
were put upon him, one went before and called out to the 
people as he rode through the streets of the city, as it is 
in our version, " Bow the knee !" Now the Hebrew word 
is " Abrech," and nobody knew exactly what it did mean, 



HISTORY AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 135 

and some thought it was from the words meaning '* ten- 
der father," but the truth is, it is not a Hebrew word at 
all, but it is the imperative of the Egyptian word " to re- 
joice." So they went ahead of Joseph's chariot, crying^ 
" Rejoice ! Rejoice ! Here is the bread of life !" 

What is a very remarkable thing is this, that from the 
time of Moses to the time of Rehoboam, 500 years, or 
from 147 1 to 971, we find that Egypt did not in any way 
trouble the children of Israel, and yet, after the time of 
Moses, some of the most powerful of Egypt's monarchs 
were reigning. Now what is the reason of this, when 
such remarkable monarchs as Thothmes 3d and Ame- 
noph 2d, etc., were extending their sway all over the east- 
ern world and making conquests even here in Assyria } 
Why is it that little Palestine was not harmed, and that 
we see nothing about that at all in the records of God's 
holy people 1 The answer is found, in the first place, in 
the fact that it was Assyria that was the great adversary 
of Egypt, and it was against Assyria that they directed 
all their energies when they came eastward ; and more 
than this, we are let into the secret by a little passage in 
I Chron. 4: 17, where we find that the son of Ezra mar- 
ried Bithiah, the daughter of Pharaoh. So Pharaoh mar- 
ried his daughter into that noble house of Caleb, the 
Northumberland House of Palestine, and we find that 
Amenoph the 3d, one of these magnificent monarchs 
after the Exodus, married a Jewess. We see from these 
facts, that there was a close amity between Egypt and 
Palestine through all that period of Judges, and it was 



136 HISTORY AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 

good policy for Egypt to keep Palestine its friend as a 
natural barrier to prevent any raids from the East down 
into Egypt. Now, the last 200 years of that 500 years 
it is interesting to find in the records of Egypt and As- 
syria, (for Babylonia had been crushed and brought into 
subjection to Assyria,) that very weak princes sat upon 
the throne and those two empires were very much 
depressed ; as if God had purposed it so, so that this 
Israelitish Empire could rise under David and Solomon, 
and under Solomon it was far superior in wealth, power, 
and fame to those old monarchies of Assyria and of 
Egypt. Now, the first notice we have of the successors 
of David and Solomon upon the throne of Israel in these 
Oriental records is the name of Ahab, that good husband 
of the good Jezebel, and we find that Shalmaneser the 
2d, in his story, tells us that Ahab, king of Israel* 
joined with Benhadad the king of Damascus and four 
others, and made a confederacy, and Shalmaneser went 
over with his troops and crushed him. And further on in 
these records we find the same Shalmaneser a few years 
after coming over and making the monarch of Israel pay 
him tribute. We find the monarch's name was Jehu, and 
so we have Ahab and Jehu, and their story is told us by 
the old records dug up at Nineveh. In the account in 
the Kings of the reign of Amaziah it is said that his 
kingdom was confirmed, which is a phrase only used 
when a kingdom is tributary to another kingdom ; and 
that shows that Amaziah, king of Judah, was under the 
orders of the king of Assyria about that time. 



HISTORY AND THE OLD TESTAMENT. 137 

Now a little later in the year 770, b. c. we find the first 
Assyrian monarch mentioned by name. He comes as 
Pal, and he fights against Menahem, and brings him into 
tribute to Assyria. Now, Pul is identified with a monarch 
whos3 name is found on the records very often, and his 
name is Vul lush, and the most remarkable thing about 
him in history is that his wife is the only woman whose 
name is found in all these multitudinous records of As- 
syria and Babylon. Wherever Vul lush's name is put, 
this name of his wife is put with him, and her name was 
Semiramis. Babylonia was a restless province, all the 
while rebelling, and Pul married her and had her name 
put with his on the public records. Then after Pul 
come^ ig lath Pileser, and he, you know, at the invitation 
of Ahaz, comes over and conquers Syria. After him 
comes Shalmanezer and fights against Hoshea, the last 
king of Israel, and now we see that Shalmanezer besieged 
Samaria and in the third year he took it. Shalmanezer 
is not said to take it, but in the third year " the king of 
Assyria " took it, and we find in that very year Shalma- 
nezer was succeeded by a usurper called Sargon. And 
that is the reason why the Bible is so exact and says not 
Shalmanezer but the " king of Assyria" took it. We find 
at the same time that Hoshea tried to get help from the 
Egyptian king, and his name we find upon the Egyptian 
records with all he did. Now a very curious thing is 
found. When the people of Northern Palestine were 
taken away by the Assyrian king and put away up 
this river Chabor, he put a large number of people from 

12* 



138 HISTORY AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 

Babylonia in their place. Why did he take them from 
Babylonia ? Simply because it was such a troublesome 
province. It remembered that it was an empire long be- 
fore Assyria was, and so there was a constant insurrec- 
tion, almost, in Babylonia. He took, therefore, a large 
number of people from Babylonia, those that were most 
troublesome, and put them in the place of the Israelites 
whom he placed over in Assyria. Many thousands, it 
says, of the people of Babylon whom he put over there 
worship a goddess whom they called Succoth-benoth. 
These are two Hebrew names and mean the Booths of 
the daughters. The goddess they worship was the great 
goddess of Babylon, Zir-banit. They have written it 
Succoth-benoth. We see how they made the second 
mistake, but how Zir became Succoth is more difficult to 
comprehend. Zir means " lady " and Zar means " booths." 
They thought it was Zar, and translated it *' booths," while 
the real name is " Lady Creator." She was the wife of 
Nimrod, and her name was Zir-banit, or the deity which 
these Babylonians worshipped in Palestine when the 
kingdom of the north was destroyed. 

Those names which occur at that time in the sacred 
record are not names of individuals, but of offices. Tar- 
tan was generalissimo ; Rab-saris was the first eunuch ; 
Rab-shakeh was the chief cup-bearer ; Rab-mag was the 
chief priest ; and so we are to translate those words. 

Now, we come to Hezekiah's day. We find him, in 
the first place, making favor with Merodach-baladan, the 
king cf Babylon, and we find from the record of that day 



HISTORY AND THE OLD TESTAMENT 139 

that Merodach Baladan rose up against the Assyrian pow- 
er, threw off the yoke, called upon his countrymen in the 
name of their old glory and reestablished the Babylonian 
power. Hezekiah thinks now, "This is a nice thing for 
me ; I will play Babylon against Assyria. I am threatened 
by Sargon, the king of Assyria, and I will ally myself 
with Merodach Baladan." So they engage in friendship; 
but it turns out a very poor speculation, for you know 
soon after Sennacherib, Sargon's son, came and attacked 
Hezekiah ; and the Bible says he took all the fenced 
cities of Hezekiah and shut up Hezekiah himself and 
made him pay a tribute of thirty talents of gold and three 
hundred talents of silver. But hear Sennacherib's own 
account. He says : 

" In the course of my expedition I captured and sub- 
dued the spoil of his cities. Hezekiah, king of Judah, did 
not submit to my yoke. Forty-six of his cities, strong 
fortresses, and cities of their territory which were with- 
out number, I besieged, I captured and plundered as 
spoil. Hezekiah himself I made as a caged bird in the 
city of Jerusalem. In addition to previous taxes I im.. 
posed upon them a donation. 

*'The fear of the approach of my majesty overwhelmed 
him and his own soldiers whom he had caused to enter 
Jerusalem. He consented to the payment of tribute — 
thirty talents of gold ; eight hundred talents of silver." 

There is a difference there between 800 and 300, but 
how remarkable this story is ! And then he goes on to 
say how he overthrew Merodach Baladan, the friend of 



140 HISTORY AND THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

Hezekiah. Also on the second expedition when he was 
down here at Libnah he sent Rabshakeh to shake his 
fists at Hezekiah. You will remember the king of Ethio- 
pia was coming against him, and he said, " Tell Hezekiah 
not to trust to these Egyptians." We find now two 
Egyptian kings. So or Sabaco is mentioned by name and 
Pharaoh. In the book of Isaiah these words of Sennach- 
erib are written " Do n't you, Hezekiah, think Pharaoh 
is going to do you any good. He is a broken reed that 
will pierce the hand that leans upon it ;" and we find that 
Pharaoh Sethos and others of that dynasty had a broken 
rred as their emblem, so that you see what a beautiful 
allusion that is, and what a remarkably neat historic 
coincidence is presented by it. Sennacherib says : " This 
Pharaoh has a broken reed as his emblem. He is noth- 
ing but a broken reed, and you, Hezekiah, had better not 
trust him." And what is very curious is that when 
Rabshakeh begins to talk to them on the wall the Jews 
cry out : " Do n't talk in the Jewish language. Talk in 
the Syrian language 1" Why Syrian } Why not Assy- 
rian } Now we find, since the Assyrian language has 
been disentombed and explained, that the Assyrian lan- 
guage is the old Aramean. The Aramean language was 
the old original language of Assyria. Another curious 
thing occurred after that, when Manasseh was carried cap- 
tive to Babylon. Manasseh was the son of Hezekiah and 
it was a pity that when Hezekiah was advised of his own 
coming death he should have obtained a respite and had 
fifteen years added to his life by the Lord. He had bet- 



HISTORY AND THE OLD TESTAMENT. 141 

ter have died, for Manasseh was born in that fifteen 
years and became a scourge, but when Manasseh was 
carried captive to Babylon, what a mistake the sacred 
writer made there! The idea of the king of Assyria, 
who reigned at Nineveh, carrying his captives to Baby- 
lon ! It is absurd, and you will find fifty commentators 
who will tell you it is absurd. The idea of an Assyrian 
prince carrying his captives to Babylon ! He ought to 
have carried them to Nineveh. Undoubtedly he ought. 
Within the last few years we find the whole story of 
Esar-haddon's life written by himself, and he tells us 
that when his father Sennacherib died, Babylon was in 
such a ferment that he felt it a necessity just to go down 
there and live among them ; and so, besides his palace 
at Nineveh he built a palace at Babylon and made it his 
headquarters during all his reign. Now we see why 
Manasseh was carried there. It was just for that reign, 
not before and not afterwards, that the king was to be 
found at Babylon. 

I had a good many other allusions to make, but I will 
rapidly close with mentioning two or three. We find the 
son of Esar-haddon — Asshur-bani-pal, the original of the 
name Sardanapalus— reigning forty years with wonderful 
power in Assyria, although it was the flaming up of the 
light in the socket, for his son only reigned one year, and 
was the real one that was burned up in the palace with 
his wife. Sardanapalus did not die that way, but it was 
his son, whose tragic death is given in the story of Sar- 
danapalus. Sardanapalus had a brother that he put in 



T42 HISTORY AND THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

his father, Esar-haddon's, place in Babylon. He did not 
want Babylon out of the control of the royal family, so 
he reigned in Nineveh, and let his brother, whose name 
was Saul-mugina, reign in Babylon. Saul-mugina took 
up the cause of the Babylonians and revolted against 
his brother, and a fearful conflict took place, which re- 
sulted in a victory for Sardanapalus. And what did he 
do .'^ He heated 2^ fiery furnace and burned his brother 
up there. He put his chief generals into a den of lions ; 
and there you have, one hundred years before the time 
of Daniel, just those punishments, in vogue which you 
find in the Book of Daniel, and against which infidels 
have again and again turned their bitter scorn as incon- 
sistent with true history. 

In Nebuchadnezzar's day, when the Assyrian empire 
was overthrown, and the Babylonish empire reinstated — 
and it was a glorious reign of forty years — we find in the 
record he gives of his own reign this remarkably entry. 
After giving an account of the magnificent palaces he 
built, and the hanging gardens and the walls — and no 
wonder his nature was proud : there has never been a 
monarch like him on the face of the earth — we find this 
strange record. He suddenly says : " And now I took 
no pleasure in building. I took no pleasure in the tem- 
ples. I took no pleasure in walking or in riding. I took 
no pleasure in anything for a term of years ;" and then 
he goes on with what he did afterwards. What was that.'* 
Why, it was the seven years when he was like a beast 
upon the earth and ate grass like an ox ; and that is the 



JIISTORY AND THE OLD TESTAMENT. 



143 



way Nebuchadnezzar refers to it in that rather delicate 
manner in his own record. 

Now after these empires— the old Babylonian lasting 
until 1,300 years before Christ, and the Assyrian to about 
625 before Christ, and then the new Babylonian of Neb- 
^uchadnezzar s, which only lasted eighty years — we come 
down to the sixth century before Christ, and then we 
find these mountaineers coming down from their moun- 
tains and sweeping over the country and taking posses- 
sion of all ; and Cyrus is their leader, or, rather, they 
have two leaders. One is Darius, and the other is Cy- 
rus ; Darius, or Astyages, an old man, and Cyrus, a young 
man. They come and sweep over that empire of 1,500 
years' duration, and they find in the midst of it a people 
by millions called Israel. They make them a grand ex- 
ception to their work of extermination. They treat 
them with favor and load them with riches and blessings. 
They send back all of them that want to go to Jerusalem 
with a grand army escort. Why all this honor upon the 
poor captive Jews > These were the people that believed 
in the old Zoroastrian creed — that there was but one 
God. They hated polytheism ; they allowed no statues 
or pictures of gods. Only one God they worshipped. 
These mountaineers came down to exterminate the pa- 
gans, and they were charmed when they found in their 
midst a people that, like them, worshipped one true" God. 
They were friends of the Jews. God raised up these peo- 
ple to come down and send his people back to their own 
land. These were the Persians. It is very true that 



144 HISTORY AND THE OLD TESTAMENT. 

there was a ritualistic wing of the Persians that tried to 
take away the old Zoroastrian creed, and did succeed a 
little. For example : after Cyrus had died and his son 
Cambyses had died, these ritualistic Medes gained the 
throne, and as soon as they gained the throne they stop- 
ped the building of Jerusalem. That we find recorded 
in the Book of Ezra. They had not a love for the Jews 
like the real true Persians ; but as soon as the Magians 
were set aside, and after a civil war of some years, Darius 
became a king of Persia, and he sent word to the Jews to 
go on with the building of the city, and renewed his in- 
terest in them that his great predecessor, Cyrus the 
Great, had. 

My friends, I have given you thus far a very desul- 
tory story. I have tried to leave out details that would 
be uninteresting except to those that are constantly 
studying details ; and perhaps there has not been the 
connection that there ought to have been in an historic 
lecture, but I have thrown out such facts as may lead 
you to further study, and confirm to your hearts the glo- 
rious truth of the Scripture of God. 



THE 



Adaptation of the Bible, 



TO THE 



UNIVERSAL NEEDS OF THE SOUL, 



WITNESS OF CHRISTIAN MEN 



DIVINE AUTHORITY AND POWER. 



ROBERT RUSSELL BOOTH, D. Z>., 

PASTOR OF THE UNIVERSITY PLACE CHURCH, NEW YORK. 



13 



THE 



Bible and Man's Needs; 

Testimonies to its Power. 



The subject proposed as our theme, at this point in 
the course, is in importance second to no other, and in 
some respects might well claim the precedence. After 
we have established to our satisfaction the authority, the 
inspiration, and the oneness of the Bible, as revealing 
redemption ; after we have studied the languages in whicli 
it is written, and have scrutinized the facts of ancient 
history which correspond to its statements, the question 
of its adaptation still remains to be tried. Is it a vol- 
ume which meets man's necessities, and which can ac- 
complish the work in him and for him, which a Divine 
revelation must be presumed to intend.'* As a matter of 
fact, it will generally be found true that there is more 
conviction and power in this line of argument than in any 
other. There are many questions which common minds 
cannot find time to investigate, many lines of argument of 
which they cannot remember the successive steps ; but 
whenever the fact of an adaptation on the part of the 



148 THE BIBLE AND AIAN' S NEEDS; 

Bible to personal need is brought home to the conscious- 
ness, there is a sense of conviction which is established 
on immovable ground, and which justifies one in saying, 
concerning the Bible, what the blind man said of Christ 
to the Pharisees : " Whether he be a sinner or no, I know 
not ; one thing I know : that, whereas I was blind, now I 
see." It may be fairly asked, therefore, whether the 
highest kind of proof which can be adduced to support 
the claims of God's word is not that which is derived 
from its " adaptation to the universal needs of the soul." 
When you find a key fitting exactly to the wards of an in- 
tricate lock ; when you find the clew to an otherwise un- 
solvable puzzle; when you find the lever which at' a touch 
starts the motions of some vast piece of machinery, you 
have found enough to satisfy you that the connection in- 
volves the clearest proof of design and intended adjust- 
ment. Thus the truth of the Bible, to the inner sense of 
the soul, the consciousness that it is the source of light, of 
comfort and life, is a power against which the doubts of the 
skeptic and the arguments of the infidel make no head- 
way whatever. We may illustrate the value of this kind of 
proof by that remarkable statement of the grounds of his 
belief in Christianity which Mr. Coleridge has given in the 
Biographia Literaria : " Its consistency with right reason 
I consider as the outer court of the temple, the common 
area within which it stands. The miracles with and 
through which the religion was first revealed and attested 
I regard as the steps, the vestibule and the portal of the 
temple. The sense, the inward feeling in the soul of 



TESTIMONIES TO ITS POWER. 149 

each believer of its exceeding desirableness, the experi- 
ence that he needs something, joined with the strong 
foreboding that the redemption and the grace propound- 
ed to us in Christ, are what he needs — this I hold to be 
the true foundation of the spiritual edifice. But it is the 
experience derived from a practical conformity to the 
conditions of the gospel ; it is the opening eye, the dawn- 
ing light, the terrors and the promises of spiritual growth, 
the blessedness of loving God as God, the nascent sense 
of sin hated as sin, and of the incapability of attaining 
either without Christ ; it is the sorrow which still rises 
up from beneath, and the consolation that meets it from 
above ; in a word, it is the actual trial of the faith in 
Christ, with its accompaniments and results, that must 
form the arched roof, and faith itself is the completing 
keystone." 

Now it is precisely to this test of experience that we 
are led when we consider the Bible in the light of its 
adaptation to the universal needs of the soul. Does it 
meet the demand made upon it by our complex nature } 
Is it the source of truth for the mind, of peace for the 
conscience, of light for the valley of the shadow of death } 
Does it lay hold of man's fallen nature with power to lift 
him out of the defilement of sin and raise him into the 
presence of God 1 Does man find, when he comes to this 
book in the attitude of an inquirer and learner, that it 
answers his deepest questions, enlightens his darkest 
hours, and puts a new joy into his heart t If this is its 
influence, if it is thus "adapted" to the needs of his soul, 

13* 



ISO 



THE BIBLE AND MAN'S NEEDS, 



he has solid and unimpeachable ground for his conviction 
that God is its author, and that in obeying its precepts he 
is walking in a road which is the way of life everlasting. 
To confirm you in that confidence, I am to place be- 
fore you this evening the leading features of this adapta- 
tion. And for the purpose of centralizing our thought on 
this great theme, we may fix upon an expression found 
in the Bible itself, an expression employed by St. Paul to 
set forth the very point we are about to consider. In the 
fourth verse of the fifteenth chapter of the Epistle to the 
Romans he makes use of this phrase to declare the value 
and power of the Old Testament Scriptures : "For what- 
soever things were written aforetime were written for our 
learning, that we through patience and comfort of the 
Scriptures might have hope.'' Taking this inspired word 
of the apostle as the equivalent of the subject before us, 
let us consider those characteristics of the word of God 
which enable it to become a comfort to the souls of men, 
and thereby to impart the consolations of a hope which 
maketh not ashamed. The fitness of this phase of the 
apostle to our present theme becomes the more apparent 
when we observe that, in the original, the teaching and 
assistance of the Holy Spirit are essentially connected 
with his meaning. He uses the genitive case of the word 
paraklesisy which in New Testament Greek carries with 
it, almost without exception, a reference to the agency 
and presence of the blessed Comforter, "the Paraclete" 
whose office-work it is to lead men into the knowledge 
of the truth in Jesus. In this sense, then, " the comfort 



. TESTIMONIES TO ITS POWER. 151 

of the Scriptures" is their adaptation, under the minis- 
trations of the Holy Spirit, to the several faculties and 
varied needs of the soul, as the result of which the light 
of hope shines bright and strong upon man's earthly 
pathway. 

As a preliminary to the question thus stated, we should 
naturally ask, "What are the universal needs of the 
soul ?■' Without covering a field so extensive as this, may 
it not suffice for us to say that, first of all, the soul needs 
to find, in any system or word which addresses it, tJie ev- 
idence of aiitJiority, so that it can rest on its revelations 
with confidence. Following this, it seems clear that the 
soul needs to find in the revelation itself such substance 
and point as shall provide for it a resc?ce from that curse 
of sin which man in all ages has felt to be his sorest ca- 
lamity. But it must also be recognized as a need of the 
soul, that the revelation presented should be adapted to 
individual men in their various phases of character and in 
the manifold conditions of tJicir eartJily lot. And finally, 
it should be able to afford a support and a light when 
they pass, as all men must pass, from these scenes of 
time into the presence of the eternal realities. 

In the line of these widely-recognized needs of the 
soul, let us seek the adaptation which may commend the 
word of God to our souls. 

First, the solid basis of " the comfort of the Scriptures " 
is the clear and sufficient evidence of tJieir Divine author- 
ity as the only and final revelation of the luill of God to 
man, " The word of the Lord is tried," wrote the Psalmist. 



152 THE BIBLE AND MAN'S NEEDS; 

In view of the careful scrutiny, the long-continued inves- 
tigation, the accumulated experience, which has attended 
the history of that word from David's time till ours, we 
may connect our confident assertion with his inspired 
testimony, and say with the deepest emphasis of an as- 
sured conviction, "Yea, it is tried and proved." This 
fact lies at the foundation of the comforting and hope- 
inspiring influence of the Holy Scripture, for without 
this they could not speak to man with the authority of 
God. However valuable they might be as records of the 
remotest history of the human race, however interesting 
in their narratives of personal experience, however grand 
and inspiring in their sublimity of sentiment and prom- 
ise, the essential feature, " the one thing needful," would 
be lacking, unless we could turn to them with the assu- 
rance that they contain a special revelation from the God 
that made us, and are " able to make us wise unto salva- 
tion." 

But what are the grounds of this assurance } Can 
we forget that there are many eminent in scholarship, 
exalted in position, affluent in attainments, who join issue 
with us at this point, and while conceding antiquity, 
sublimity, and moral power in an unusual degree, do still 
refuse to unite in the confession that the Scriptures are 
the special word of God to man } Certainly no one who 
reads or listens in these days can be ignorant that the 
old conflict is still carried on around this citadel of faith 
and hope, and that peculiar and startling methods of as- 
sault are used to overthrow it. But we remember, too» 



TESTIMONIES TO ITS POWER. 153 

the history of such assaults in former ages : what sieges 
of criticism and scholastic opposition this Bible has en- 
countered, what hurricanes of enmity and opposition it 
has withstood, what new defences of evidence and moral 
power it has acquired from age to age, and we abate "no 
jot of heart or hope" amid the present conflicts of human 
reason with the word of God. It stands before us, in 
this present age, in an attitude so peculiar, so imposing, 
so utterly unlike that of every other volume, that it car- 
ries with it its own evidence, and commends itself to 
every conscience in the sight of God. 

The simplest test of origin or authorship in any work 
is its accordance with the character or genius of him to 
whom it is ascribed. By this test try the Bible. What 
thing so Godlike does the world contain .? He is the liv- 
ing God. This is the living word, a transcript of his holi- 
ness, an unfolding of his power, a demonstration of his 
love. " Older than all human histories, it has come down 
to us leaving a thousand fallen empires in its track. It 
has foretold the ruin of Eg3^pt, Babylon, Persia, Greece, 
and Rome, and yet it still survives. While nations, kings, 
philosophies, systems, and institutions, have died away, 
the Bible now engages men's attention, is studied by the 
keenest intellects, is reverenced by the purest hearts, 
keeps progress with the advancing civilization of the 
world, originates the institutions of philanthropy, im- 
parts ideas of law and liberty, reforms and elevates the 
fallen, sustains the faith of those who rest upon it, and 
utilizes every new invention and discovery to overrun the 



154 THE BIBLE AND MAN'S NEEDS; 

earth."* Thus it survives all changes, itself unchanged ; 
it moves all minds, and yet is moved by none ; it sees all 
things decay, and yet is incorruptible ; it sees myriads of 
other books ingulfed in the stream of time, but it is borne 
along triumphantly upon the wave. It is, in this grand 
demonstration of vitality, its own sufficient evidence. 
"A bad heart," said the Earl of Rochester to Bishop 
Burnet, "is the great argument against this holy book." 
It is the book of books for man. " It has God for its 
author, eternity for its object, salvation for its end, and 
truth, without any admixture of error, for its subject 
matter."! " The word of the Lord is tried," and " the 
word of the Lord endureth for ever." Thus by the abun- 
dant evidence for its authority it is adapted to satisfy our 
need of certainty as to the foundation upon which it 
rests. But still more impressive is the proof which is 
presented. 

Secondly, By a consideratioji of the great theme zvhich 
it presents to maii s atte7ttion ; wJiich is the tidings and offer 
of redemption. One of the most learned and eminent of 
English lawyers in the seventeenth century was John 
Selden. Some days before his death he sent for Arch- 
bishop Usher, and said to him, " I have surveyed most of 
the learning that is among the sons of men, yet at this 
moment I can recall nothing in them on which to rest 
my soul, save one from the Sacred Scriptures, which 
rises much on my mind. It is this : ' The grace of God 
which bringeth salvation, hath appeared unto all men, 

* An unknown author. t John Locke. 



TESTIMONIES TO ITS POWER. 155 

teaching us that denying ungodliness and worldly lusts, 
we should live soberly, righteously, and godly in this 
present world, looking for that blessed hope and the 
glorious appearing of the great God and our Saviour 
Jesus Christ, who gave himself for us that he might re- 
deem us unto himself a peculiar people zealous of good 
works.' " 

In the same tone as this utterance of the English ju- 
rist was the confession of one of the greatest of Ameri- 
can theologians,* when lying on his deathbed in a neigh- 
boring town. Few men of his profession or of his time 
had been more deeply interested in the religious contro- 
versies of the day, or had studied the Scriptures more 
profoundly. But when one asked him, in that sunset of 
his life, some question concerning one of the points of 
doctrine which he had earnestly supported, he made this 
memorable answer : " Here I find that all my theology is 
reduced to this : 'Jesus Christ came into the world to save 
sinners, of whom I am chief.' " 

In these simple, earnest utterances of these eminent 
and gifted men, we find that central theme of comfort 
which the Bible offers to a fallen race, and by which it is 
adapted to their deepest need. Manifold as is the method 
of its revelation, the theme is always one. It is Christ 
Jesus the Redeemer, " the way, the truth, and the life," 
the sinner's advocate and intercessor, the sacrifice by 
which God's justice is reconciled with mercy, the ref- 
uge of the soul when burdened by its sins or trembling 

* Dr. Archibald Alexander of Princeton. 



156 THE BIBLE AND MAN'S NEEDS; 

in prospect of the judgment. From first to last the Bi- 
ble is the history of His infinite fuhiess, of his ineffable 
compassion, of his sufficient power to save. It holds his 
person and his work envisaged on its myriad pages. His 
presence shines through all its parts like a glorious sun giv- 
ing light to the worlds that circle around it. Everything in 
the Bible points to Christ, and helps to hold him up before 
the world. Its revelation of redeeming love is like the 
progressive shining of the day-dawn on the world which 
slumbers in thick darkness — at first the faintest tint of 
light thrown on the blackness of the sky, then the broad 
belt of blue and gold encircling the mountain summits, 
and then the radiance of the risen sun pouring down into 
the valleys and filling all the firmament with light. Thus, 
from page to page, progressively, the Bible is illuminated 
with the glory of the cross. The single ray, which shone 
in the first darkness of the fall, grows ever brighter to the 
perfect day. The voice which whispered comfort to the 
sinner flying from the Eden forfeited by sin, grows clear- 
er, fuller, sweeter, as the ages pass, until from Calvary's 
height the Son of God cries, " It is finished," and until 
the message which that finished offering authorizes is 
published to the world in the last of apocalyptic visions 
by the ascended and triumphant Jesus : " Whosoever 
will, let him come and take the water of life freely." 
Now this specific declaration of God's love in Christ is 
the deep fulness of ''the comfort of the Scriptures." 
This is their blessed adaptation to the burdened, guilty 
soul of man. Until this thou.srht of God's infinite and 



TESTUIONIES TO ITS POWER. 157 

all-embracing love in Christ is known, man lives in dark- 
ness and in fear. 

" Like one that on a lonesome road 
Doth walk in fear and dread, 
Because he knows some ghastly fiend 
Doth still behind him tread." s. t. coleridge. 

But with this revelation, the loneliness and gloom are 
lifted from the soul. In Christ the mystery is solved. 

"God's thoughts are love; and Jesus is 
The loving voice they find. 
His love lights up the vast abyss 

Of the eternal mind." t. d. burns' vision of prophecy-. 

In him the promises of God are "yea." There is assu- 
rance of redeeming love when we " behold the Lamb of 
God." To read this tidings in the Bible is to understand 
the book. To read it, and receive it as a personal expe- 
rience, is to know " the peace of God which passeth under- 
standing." In his old age William Wilberforce uttered 
these words: "I never knew happiness till I found 
Christ, as a Saviour. Read the Bible. Read the Bible ! 
Through all my perplexities and distresses I never read 
any other book, I never knew the want of any other. It 
has been my hourly study and all my knowledge of the 
doctrines, all my acquaintance with the experience and 
realities of religion, I have derived from the Bible only. 
Books about religion are well enough, but will not do 
instead." To this impressive testimony of the great 
English philanthropist to the soul-sustaining influence 
of the essential theme of the Bible, I may add that of 
Arthur Hallam, the gifted young man to whom the poet 

14 



158 THE BIBLE AND MAN'S NEEDS; 

laureate of England inscribes his " In Memoriam." " I 
find," he writes, "in the doctrine of the cross a peculiar 
and inexhaustible treasure for the affections, the idea of 
the theanthropos, the God whose goings-forth have been 
from everlasting, becoming visible to men for their re- 
demption, as an earthly temporal creature ; living, acting 
and suffering among themselves, and what is more im- 
portant transferring to the unseen place of his spiritual 
agency the same humanity he wore on earth, so that the 
lapse of generations can in no way affect the conception 
of his identity ; this is the most powerful thought that 
ever addressed itself to the human imagination. It was 
the Txov GTu which alone was wanted to move the world." 
And we may say in turning from this part of our subject, 
it has moved the world as nothing else in the long course 
of history has done. Addressing man through the affec- 
tions, revealing unto him the Holy One " who for us men 
and our salvation was incarnate and suffered on the 
cross to atone for sin," bearing to all guilty, burdened 
hearts the invitation of the Son of God — which none has 
ever tested to be disappointed of its promise — " Come unto 
me, all ye that labor and are heavy laden, and I will give 
you rest," — this book is the holy manna of the world : it 
is the chart of a river in which whosoever washes is 
healed of the leprosy of sin and made meet for the in- 
heritance of the saints in light. Milton grandly describes 
the archangel Uriel descending to the earth in a sunbeam. 
The revelation of the Bible is a beam in which the High 
and Lofty One who inhabiteth eternity descends to change 



TESTIMONIES TO ITS TO WER. 



59 



the night of nature into the daydawn of redemption and 
to draw the nations to the brightness of its rising. 

But third, wJicn zve look beyond the basis and the snb- 
jcct-viatter of the word of God, we are at once impressed 
with that element of comfort in the Scriptures ivhich 
springs from their adaptation to the varying individuality 
of mankind. In constructing the Bible in its own pecuUar 
form God has had special reference to the structure of 
the mind of man. The all-important message of salvation 
is commended to us and made especially attractive by 
the mode in which it is presented. In the compositions 
of human ingenuity and wisdom upon the subject of 
religion, we find a narrowness of adaptation which makes 
them interesting only to a single class of minds. The 
treatise of Plato upon immortality is attractive to a 
scholar, but obscure and dull to an unlettered man. The 
Rig- Veda of the Hindoo contains some striking passages, 
but as a whole it is unintelligible. The Koran is said to 
be a sealed book to the great majority of those who 
acknowledge its authority. Man-made books speak to 
the thoughts of those who are in the intellectual sphere 
of their composers. It is the characteristic of the highest 
genius that it can reach the minds of diverse multitudes 
and portray the passions which are stirring on that harp 
of many strings, the soul of man. Homer, Dante, Shake- 
speare, Virgil, Goethe, these were many-sided writers; 
and yet how much of human life, and need, and destiny, 
they left untouched. In contrast with all other books, 
the Bible fills the whole circumference of man's endow- 



i6o THE BIBLE AND MAN'S NEEDS; 

ment It touches every spring of thought and feeling 
in this deep humanity. It is adapted to instruct the 
savage, to inspire the sage, to interest and guide the lit- 
tle child. It not only deals with all subjects which are 
related to man's duty and destiny in time and in eternity ; 
but it deals with them in such a manner that every style 
of thought and feeling may find within its pages the nu- 
triment or stimulus it needs. Some come to it for prac- 
tical instruction : it gives them precepts of the most intense 
directness, proverbs which condense the meaning of a 
treatise into a single line. Some come to it with tran- 
sient curiosity : it gives them narratives of thrilling interest 
and opens up before them questions which arouse the 
dullest minds. Some come to it with the cultivated taste 
which seeks rhetorical and poetic beauty : it gives them 
passages of the loftiest grandeur, conceptions of majesty 
and sublime significance which rise above the common 
range of human thought as the everlasting hills tower 
high above the valleys. Some come to it with careworn 
anxious, trembUng hearts : it gives them messages of 
sympathy and tenderness which greet them as a mother's 
comfort soothes a timid child. In one word, not to extend 
details of a subject so exhaustless, the Bible comes to 
every one who will receive it, as a book which finds him 
out, and meets his wants, and guides his thoughts to 
duty and to God. And so, it has been said of it, " It is 
the king's best copy, the magistrate's best rule, the house- 
wife's best guide, the servant's best direction, the young 
man's best companion. It is the schoolboy's best story- 



TESTIMONIES TO ITS POWER. i6i 

book and the scholar's masterpiece. It contains a gram- 
mar for the novice and a mystery for the sage." " I see," 
wrote Hallam, "that the Bible fits into every fold and 
crevice of the human heart. I am a man ; and I believe 
that this is God's book, because it is man's book." It is this 
far-reaching adaptation to the complex being, man; this 
infinite variety in the alluring power with which it draws 
the fallen creature to its central truth and promise, which 
makes the Bible the book of God for all men everywhere 
and gives it power to make its blessing known "far as 
the curse is found." 

Fourth, let us add to this fact that otJier dement of the 
comfort of the Scriptures which is discovered in their 
relatioji to all the changing conditions of mans estate on 
earth. Not only does the Bible meet the individuality of 
man, with truth adapted to all special needs or tastes, it 
also comes into direct connection with his circumstances 
and understands them and helps him whatever they may 
be to find through them a way to God. This is no less an 
element of comfort than the facts already mentioned. 
Diverse and startling as are the changes which pass over 
human life in its progressive periods, there is a deep 
necessity that God should spread his guiding and sus- 
taining truth before mankind in comprehensive fulness, 
so that in each event of life the mind may know his will, 
and the heart may feel his consolation. This is the 
marvellous adaptation of the word of God to man's estate, 
whether it be one of trial or prosperity. "When thou 
goest it shall lead thee, when thou sleepest it shall keep 

14* 



i62 THE BIBLE AND MAN'S NEEDS; 

thee, when thou wakest it shall talk with thee; for the 
commandment is a lamp and the law is light." In this 
relation of " the comfort of the Scriptures," think how 
they are adapted to the common duties and the great 
emergencies of life. Here in this place to-night are 
gathered hundreds of human souls in all the various ex- 
perience of joy or sorrow, of poverty and wealth, of exul- 
tation and depression, of burden-bearing and of ease. 
What human word or work could possibly provide the 
guidance or rebuke or consolation for so many diverse 
wants } But God's word comes to each just as he needs 
it. The all-fitting, all foreseeing truths of the Bible pro- 
vide the antidote in temptation, the guide to duty, the 
corrective in prosperity, the solace in affliction. In your 
prosperity, it shows you how to use the gifts of God, so 
that they may promote his glory and your spiritual wealth. 
In your friendlessness, it tells you of "a friend that 
sticketh closer than a brother." In your anxiety for 
earthly goods, it teaches you that your Father knoweth 
that you have need of all these things. In your sharp 
conflicts with the world, it bids you be of good cheer foi 
Christ has "overcome the world." In your bereavement 
it whispers, " For a little while I tried thee as a father his 
child, for thy good ; yea, in faithfulness and love have I 
stricken thee." Oh, it is marvellous what leaves innu- 
merable hang on this "tree of life" for the healing of the 
nations. No circumstances can surpass, no depth of 
trial can exhaust " the comfort of the Scriptures." One 
of the subjects often chosen by the great painters of the 



TESTIMONIES TO ITS TO WER. 163 

middle ages was taken from the legend of Sebastian 
standing against a rock pierced through and through 
with arrows. The rock sustained him though the arrows 
drank his blood. So stands the man who leans upon the 
word of God. " When thou passeth through the waters 
I will be with thee and through the rivers they shall not 
overflow thee." " In all these things we are more than 
conquerors." " The comfort of the Scriptures " suits each 
event of life. " It is this universal applicability of the 
Bible," says Robertson, "which has made its influence 
universal. This book has held spell-bound the hearts of 
nations in a way in which no other book has ever held men 
before. States have been founded on its principles. 
Kings rule by a contract based upon it. Men hold it in 
their hands when they prepare to give solemn evidence 
affecting life or death. Its prayers and its psalms are 
the language which we use when we speak to God. If 
there ever has been a prayer or a hymn enshrined in the 
heart of a nation you are sure to find its basis in the 
Bible." To the same effect is the assertion of Sir William 
Jones, second in scholarship and learning to none who 
has lived during the present century. "The Scriptures 
contain more true sublimity, more exquisite beauty, more 
pure morality, more important history, and finer strains of 
poetry and eloquence, than could be collected from all 
other books that were ever composed in any age or in 
any idiom." In this vast affluence of power and beauty, 
with principles and truth which embody the thoughts of 
God, concerning all the diverse circumstances of his 



1 64 THE BIBLE AND MAN'S NEEDS; 

creatures, the Bible has the right to claim the recogni- 
tion of the world as the true instrument of progress, cul- 
ture, and reform. That scene which Robert Burns has 
protrayed in his poem on "The Cotter's Saturday 
Night," is one which vindicates the influence of the 
Bible in every house and every land where it is found : 

" From scenes like this old Scotia's grandeur springs, 
That makes her loved at home, revered abroad." 

When a pagan ambassador asked Queen Victoria the 
reason for the greatness of her realm, she gave him a 
Bible saying, " That is the secret of the greatness of Eng- 
land." And in that same strain was that sentence in 
the centennial letter of the President of the United 
States to the Sunday-schools of the land : " Hold fast 
to the Bible as the sheet-anchor of your liberties, write 
its precepts in your heart, practise them in your lives. 
To the influence of this book we are indebted for all the 
progress made in true civilization, and to it we must look 
as our guide in the future." On the basis of such an adap- 
tation to the conditions of man our confidence in the 
hold of the Bible on the generations to come may be 
supreme. Kingdoms may be shaken, thrones pass away, 
customs and languages change ; but so long as the earth 
endures, the morality, the doctrines, the precepts and 
promises of the Bible shall continue as the seed of the 
world's life and the lamp of the world's light, until the full 
harvest of the earth shall be reaped. It is hard to refrain 
from comparing with all this fulness of achievement and 
promise on the part of the Bible, the utter failure of 



TESTIMONIES TO ITS POWER. 165 

infidelity and slcepticism in this field. In the language 
of a recent writer* we may ask, "As for skepticism 
what has it done ? What immoral man has it reformed ? 
What savage has it reclaimed ? What barbarous tribe 
has it civilized ? What wilderness has it transformed 
into an Eden ? Over what continent has it poured out 
its philanthropies to ameliorate the mass of the people ? 
What has it accomplished by its questionings, its gloom, 
its despair for the deliverance of our race from its sin 
and misery ?" To ask the question is to answer it. " By 
their fruits ye shall know them." 

Fifth. A few words only may be uttered in closing, 
concerning that great question which stature leaves well 
nigh tmsolved, and yet npon which all the interest?* of our 
being centre. I mean the fiiture of existence and the support 
which is demanded by the soul in passing from things 
seen and temporal, to tilings 2inscen and eternal. Do you 
remember the story of the closing hours of Sir Walter 
Scott } He asked his friend Lockhardt to read to him. 
" What shall I read from .?" " There is but one book for 
a man in my condition." Thus more and more clearly, 
as one reflects upon the mystery of life and death, upon 
the transient present and the great hereafter ; as he 
desires assurance that in the rending and dissolving of 
this earthly tabernacle there shall remain a " building 
, of God," for his eternal home; is he directed towards 
" the comfort of the Scriptures," for his hope. I do not 
say that nature does not tell us of a future life, but it is cer- 

* Rev. William MacDill of Ireland. 



1 66 THE BIBLE AND MAN'S NEEDS; 

tain that science, the so-called interpreter of nature, does 
in these days seem to verge more and more towards a 
denial of the soul and immortality. At any rate it is 
only in the light of revelation that one can move with an 
unfaltering trust towards the dark stream of death ; join- 
ing in the song of the conquering saints of old : " O death, 
where is thy sting ? O grave, where is thy victory ?" The 
comfort of the Scriptures shines like a star of hope when 
the last shadows of life's transient day are falling, and all 
about that star extends the firmament of light and love, 
in which the living God has opened worlds of life as 
mansions for the soul. 

Now here is an element of adaptation which is con- 
spicuous and unparalleled. Familiar, and even trite, as 
the subject of deathbed experience is, it is, after all, rec- 
ognized on all hands as a fact that, when death comes, it 
is " a test of the man and a test of his principles." And 
that system or truth which affords support and consola- 
tion to one who stands on that last low verge of earth, 
is by that very fact commended to the confidence of the 
race. " Go where you will throughout our dying world, 
consult the saint, the savage, or the sage, and you will 
find, from the experience of them all, that faith in the 
word of our Lord Jesus Christ, who is himself ' the res- 
urrection and the life,' is the only power that can take 
the sting from death and from the grave its victory." 
There is not a deathbed like that of Dudley Tyng or 
Alfred Cookman in the whole world outside the Bible. 
Compare the last end of Hume, Voltaire, Mirabeau, 



TESTIMONIES TO ITS POWER. 167 

Aaron Burr, or Stuart Mill, with that of Rutherford, or 
Payson, or Simeon Calhoun, or Henry B. Smith ! We 
challenge the whole host of infidelity to show a single 
instance, well authenticated, of an intelligent man who, 
on infidel principles, has enjoyed real happiness in life 
and peace in death. And on the other hand, no fact in 
history is better attested than that individuals of every 
people and nation, of every age and rank, of every grade 
of intelligence and culture, of every period, from the 
bloom of youth to the decrepitude of age, have, through 
the faith of the Bible, enjoyed a happiness which the 
world never gave and could not take away; and have 
encountered death with a triumphant joy, which was a 
prophecy and foretaste of "the joy of the home-life of 
the better land" to which they knew that they were go- 
ing. And thus at the supremest point of trial we find 
the adaptation of the Bible to man's need complete, and 
for the confirmation of our hope we hear the cadence 
of innumerable voices crying, as they pass the bounda- 
ries of this lower life, "Thanks be unto God which 
giveth us the victory through our Lord Jesus Christ." 
Here is the book which has brought life and immortality 
to light. This is the record that " God has given unto 
us eternal life, and this life is in his Son." 

But we have reached our limit, and with this partial 
presentation of a theme so grand and so exhaustless, that 
to do it justice would demand an angel's pen, we leave 
it only summing up the matter now presented. ' 

The adaptation of the Bible to the universal needs o^ 



1 68 THE BIBLE AND MAN'S NEEDS. 

the soul is evidenced when we consider its solid basis, 
the authority of God ; its precious message, the tidings 
of salvation by the love and blood of Jesus ; its marvel- 
lous and varied diversity, which makes it a voice to every 
heart ; its comprehensive scope and range, which touches 
life at all its points ; its soul-sustaining hope, which shines 
upon the sepulchre and makes the grave " a pathway to 
the skies." Here is the "comfort of the Scriptures," 
which fills the soul with hope. Oh that it might be made 
a positive experience to all who hear me now, through the 
teaching of the HoJy Ghost ! Receiving the Bible, thus 
adapted to your needs, it will become God's message of 
salvation to your soul. The teaching of the Scriptures 
will make you wise unto salvation. The comfort of the 
Scriptures will go with you in every scene of toil and 
trial. The God of the Bible will be your guide even unto 
death. 

** Oh grant us grace, almighty Lord, 
To read and mark thy holy word, 
Its truths with meekness to receive, 
And by its holy preqepts live." 



Miracles and Prophecies 



WHICH 



SHOW THE BIBLE DIVINE. 



REV. NOAH PORTER, D. B., 

PRESIDENT OF YALE COLLEGE, NEW HAVEN, CONN. 



15 



MIRACLES 



AND 



Modern Thought 



That "the age of miracles is past" is one of the 
tritest of commonplaces. That the age in which men 
believe that miracles were ever wrought is fast passing 
away, is the confident assertion of many who profess to 
discern the tendencies of modern thinking and to predict 
the end to which they lead. Many who assume to speak 
for science say that the belief in miracles has become 
thoroughly unscientific. Critics who beHeve in no other 
inspiration or prophecy seem inspired to discern and pro- 
phetically to declare that the moving narrations of the 
Christian miracles will soon be read only for the gentle- 
ness and pathos which they symbolize, but have parted 
for ever with the sacredness of truth. Materialists will 
of course believe in the reports of no miracles, except of 
the sudden rushing of nebulous matter into a newly-cre- 
ated star, or the burning out of some star into a cloud of 
thickening mist. They will credit no stories of healing 



172 MIRACLES AND MODERN THOUGHT, 

of the sick, except by some newly-discovered elixir of 
life, and no raising of the dead, except through the evolu- 
tion of unorganized matter into organic life. Spiritual- 
ists will say they find miracles enough in " the blowing 
clover " and " the falling rain," in the tenderness of 
spring, the glory of summer, the sadness of autumn and 
the sternness of winter, and in the ever-renewed revela- 
tions of the spirit of the universe to the ever-interpret- 
ing and ever-worshipping spirit of man. Men who know 
the world, and claim to test the Christian story by men 
as they find them, explain the belief in the miraculous, 
partly by the warm imaginations and partly by the cre- 
dulity of mystical and admiring believers. Men who 
aspire to penetrate the secret of all great souls, venture 
with bold analysis, if not with inimitable effrontery, to 
explain the successive steps by which the greatest mira- 
cle of all — that Being whose eyes of mingled majesty 
and pity have hitherto searched the hearts of men like 
a flame of fire — was mistaken as to his own Messiahship 
and his divine right to save and to rule the sinning and 
the lost. The time was when miracles were esteemed 
the strongest defence of the Christian system, The 
time is fast coming, it is said, when the miracles will be 
a decisive objection against its claims to confidence as 
supernatural. 

All these classes of persons agree in rejecting the 
Christian miracles as in their nature impossible, and 
the Christian histories concerning them as therefore so 
far incredible. Most of them agree that, did not these nar- 



MIRACLES AND MODERN THOUGHT. 173 

ratives contain the record that Christ healed the sick and 
raised the dead, and himself rose from the dead, they 
would be as worthy of credence in every particular as 
the life of Socrates ; in other respects, they are as well, 
if not better, supported in every particular as any nar- 
ratives whatever, as of Caesar or Napoleon. But still 
they reason they cannot be true because they narrate 
events which could not possibly have taken place as they 
record them. Some of you will perhaps think that I 
have forgotten that a certain class of writers question 
whether the four Gospels, in the form in which we have 
them, were writt-en in the first century. For our argu- 
ment, this point is of minor importance. For no man 
questions that we have one document, namely, Paul's 
First Epistle to the Corinthians, which was written in 
the year 59, twenty-six years after Christ was cruci- 
fied — only nine years longer than since Fort Sumter 
was bombarded — and written by a man who affirms that 
for more than twenty years previous he had believed 
and preached that Christ was risen from the dead, and 
was just the being in supernatural power and miracu- 
lous works that these Gospels represent him to have 
been. Moreover, he says that not only was Christ raised 
from the dead twenty-six years before, but that nearly 
five hundred men were then living who had seen him 
after his resurrection. i Cor. 15 : 1-8. There is no 
denying the fact that the stories of these miracles of 
Christ were believed as early. as one or two years after 
Christ was put to dcalli, by several hundreds and even 

If)* 



174 MIRACLES AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

thousands of persons. This is not all. The ablest wri- 
ter of the present century against the supernatural in 
Christianity, F. C. Baur, gives this as his opinion : 
" While historical criticism has nothing to do with the 
inquiry what the resurrection was in fact, it must hold 
fast to the assertion that in the belief of the first dis- 
ciples it had becomiC an established and incontroverti- 
ble certainty. In this belief Christianity had gained a 
firm ground for its historical development. What we 
must assume as the necessary foundation for this history 
is not the fact that Jesus rose from the dead, but the fact 
that it was believed that he had risen. However we may 
explain the faith, the resurrection had become to the first 
Christians a fact of conviction, and had for them all the 
reality of an historic fact."* 

He might well say this. For it is notorious that just 
at this time there arose such a change in the thoughts 
and plans and faiths and affections of men in all the Ro- 
man empire, as could be best accounted for by their faith 
in just such miracles as are said to have been performed 
by such a human being as Jesus of Nazareth. We 
might add, that while we hold with this writer that the 
Christian church can only be accounted for by its belief 
in this miracle of the Resurrection, we also hold that 
the belief in the miracle itself can only be accounted for 
by its having actually taken place. Why does not this 
writer and all who agree with him adopt this explana- 
tion } Because he is a Pantheist, and believes a miracle 

* Baur's " History of the Christian Church." 



MIRACLES AND MODERN THOUGHT. 175 

to be impossible. Those who are not Pantheists, but foi 
other reasons reject miracles as impossible, are in the 
same dilemma. They concede that the early Christian 
church believed in miracles — that Christ must have be- 
lieved himself to be the Messiah and endowed with su- 
pernatural powers ; but must hold that both were mista- 
ken. But how can this mistake of both be explained ? 
So far as Christ is concerned, it is neither easy nor pleas- 
ant to attempt such an explanation ; very few make the 
experiment ; of those who do, no two give the same the- 
ory. So far as his disciples are concerned, they assert 
that they could not discriminate between miracles and 
extraordinary events ; that they had no fixed scientific 
views such as we have attained in respect to the laws of 
nature, and the clearly impossible and incredible ; that 
they were very imaginative, good, honest people enough, 
very fond of their Master, who was a wonderful man for 
piety and spiritual insight and enthusiasm ; in short, a 
sort of man in regard to whom good sort of people might 
believe anything, much as piously-disposed Mormons do 
of their apostles. 

That which gives plausibility to this theory is the 
fact that the first disciples had not attained to any scien- 
tific or fixed ideas in respect to the laws of nature, and 
that some of them believed in magic and divination. We 
do not question the assertion that the early Christians 
believed that sorcerers could work very wonderful deeds. 
But, on the other hand, it is just as clear from the nar- 
rative that the miracles of Christ were recognized as im- 



1 7 6 MIR A CLES AND MODERN THO UGHT, 

measurably superior to any works of sorcery. The early 
believers had common sense enough to say, as one is re- 
ported to have said, " Rabbi, we know that thou art a 
teacher come from God, for no man can do these \i. e.y 
siic/i] miracles except God be with him." The people, 
who were half convinced, inquired, "When Christ cometh, 
will he do more miracles than these i*" The first disci- 
ples were not scientific men indeed ; but it did not re- 
quire much science to enable plain and even credulous 
people to know that since the world began " was it not 
heard that any man opened the eyes of one that was 
born blind." They believed implicitly in divination ; and 
they knew enough of it to be certain that a devil could 
not open the eyes of the blind. They had abundant and 
sad experience of the hopelessness of long-continued pa- 
ralysis and leprosy, and were as well persuaded as Mr. 
Huxley can be that the gates of the tomb had never 
given back a single victim under natural laws. If we 
read the narratives carefully, we shall find that not only 
the enemies of Christ were critical in respect to the mir- 
acles which they saw, but that his friends were also. It is 
said that Christ or his disciples, one or both, were morally 
great, but intellectually weak, and so one or both were 
unconscious deceivers or innocently deceived. How, 
then, can it be explained that forth from that generation 
came the loftiest and the loveliest, the simplest, yet the 
most complex ideal of a master, friend, example. Saviour 
of human kind, that the world has ever conceived ; an 
ideal that, since it was furnished to man in the record. 



MIRACLES AND MODERN THOUGHT. 177 

has never been altered except for the worse ; a picture 
that no genius can retouch except to mar; a gem that no 
poHsher can try to cut except to break it ; able to guide 
the oldest and to sooth the youngest of mankind ; to add 
lustre to our brightest joys and to dispel our darkest 
fears ? There must certainly have been intellectual power 
somewhere in a generation which brought into definite 
form the conception of Jesus, which, whether realized in 
fact or regarded only as an ideal, is the greatest miracle 
of all the ages. 

Christ's person doubtless gave wondrous dignity and 
character to the most trivial acts of healing, as well as to 
the majestic scenes of the transfiguration and the raising 
of Lazarus, and of the son of the widow of Nain. For 
this reason alone these deeds of wonder were marvellously 
superior to the tricks and jugglery and magic arts of the 
hireling and filthy conjurors which everybody suspected 
even when they dreaded them. Then the miracles of 
Christ were inspired by such love and pity as to force 
upon the stupid and ignorant the conviction that these 
wonders were the power of God, After the great mira- 
cle of the resurrection, the astounding visit of the Spirit 
which transformed the one hundred and twenty disciples 
into new men in insight and courage, and last but not 
least, the destruction of Jerusalem, the curtain falls over 
the scene and for two or three generations we have scanty 
means of knowing whether miracles were wrought any 
longer, or when or how they were withdrawn, for we have 
little definite and trustworthy history upon this or any 



1 78 MIRACLES AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

other question of f^cts. When we get sight of the churcli 
again, we find no positive evidence that such miracles 
were claimed to be wrought as had occurred in the days 
of Christ and the apostles. So far as we can see they 
would have done more harm than good. They were no 
longer needed, any more than we need them at this mo- 
ment. But we find proof enough of the inveterate longing 
after magic and wonders, which lurks in the hearts of all 
men. We find the church, then as now, more inclined to 
ask for the last news from wonder-land rather than to live 
the spiritual life which is hidden with Christ in God. It 
was well that miracles proper had ceased. It is very 
certain that the belief that they might occur, and now and 
then were performed in fact, did not cease, and that 
priests cherished and stimulated that belief, and that for 
century after century, side by side with much simple trust 
in Christ and humble imitation of his life, there was a 
horrid admixture of pretended miracle-working, such as 
makes us faint and sick to read of, and prepares us to 
understand the reaction which set in against all belief 
in the supernatural and miracles, when learning was re- 
vived and science began to be developed and the Refor- 
mation exalted Christ into the place which the church 
and the priesthood had usurped. Even protestantism 
retained not a few of old beliefs in respect to divination, 
and the line was not yet sharply drawn between the 
extraordinary and the miraculous. But as soon as physical 
science began to look into the material universe, and to 
test its theories by experiment, the separate forces of 



MIRACLES AND MODERN THOUGHT. 179 

nature made themselves manifest, and the laws of these 
forces were found to be capable of definite statement. 
As one new discovery after another was made, and- occur- 
rences deemed the most extraordinary and marvellous 
were explained by these forces and laws, men began to 
ask themselves whether the works of magic that were 
still practised and many of the so-called miracles of other 
times could not be explained by these newly-discovered 
agents and others like them. Bold men said Yes, and 
with good reason. The next question could not be long 
withheld, viz., whether the miracles of Christ and the 
apostles could endure the scrutiny of the new sciences 
of nature. With this suggestion began a formal attack 
upon the possibility of these miracles and the competence 
and honesty of those who reported them. These assaults 
were repeated for more than a century on various grounds, 
when David Hume first condensed the argument that 
had been somewhat loosely stated before into a compact 
and telling form, to which nothing new has been added 
up to the present time. All that metaphysical philosophy 
or physical science has been able to say in varied and 
imposing forms till this very moment is contained in this 
famous and oft-repeated argument. Briefly expressed it 
is this: "It is contrary to all experience that a miracle 
should be wrought. It is in accordance with all expe- 
rience, or it is not contrary to all experience, that men 
should lie or be imposed on. Therefore, when a miracle 
is reported to me, or I am myself a witness of one, I 
must strike the balance against the miracle." "But it 



i8o MIRACLES AND MODERN THOUGHT, 

does not follow," Hume adds with a sneer, " that we are 
forced to distrust the story of the Christian miracles, in- 
asmuch as we have the supernatural grace of faith which 
justifies us in making an exception in their favor." In 
other words, a miracle is utterly incredible, and any 
report of it must be regarded as untrue. This argument 
gave a momentary shock to the Chi-istian world. For a 
century previous, the contest had been earnest between 
the assailants and the defenders of the Christian faith, 
but these two or three short and direct sentences of 
Hume were a succession of stunning blows, which brought 
its defenders to a sudden pause. The reason why they 
were taken at a disadvantage and somewhat by surprise, 
is that they had committed their cause to a single line 
of defence. Instead of relying on the person of Christ, 
his work, and his message as adapted to the wants of 
man, the majesty of Christ's person, the superhuman 
in his very ideal, the truthfulness of his words, and the 
adaptation of himself, and his message to man as justi- 
fying and requiring the supernatural as their fitting sign 
and appropriate accompaniment, they considered the 
abstract question of testimony within the sphere of ordi- 
nary human intercourse and human history. Instead of 
testing the miracle by the doctrine and justifying the 
miracle by the doctrine, they lowered the Christian story 
to a level with an ordinary narration, and left it there to 
stand or fall by the number, the consistency, and the 
apparent honesty of the narrators. 

We contend that the argument of Hume was sound 



MIRACLES AND MODERN THOUGHT. i8i 

and ought to stand, if tried by these tests. In ordi- 
nary matters we apply it every day. Let a man tell 
me or you that in Union Square he saw a man raise a 
dead man to life, or heal a sick man by a word, I should 
at once reply, "I do not believe that what you say is 
true. I would not believe it on the testimony of a hun- 
dred honest men." Why } Because it is contrary to ex- 
perience — or, as we should say in these days, it is con- 
trary to the known laws of nature that such an event 
should take place. Why, then, it may be asked, do we 
not apply this rule to similar stories, the scene of which 
is Jerusalem or Bethany, and the time is some 1,850 
years ago .^ Simply because there were reasons then 
and there for the occurrence of events which violate the 
laws of nature, such as cannot be urged here or now. 
This is the answer which ought to have been given to 
Hume. It was not overlooked by many, if not by the 
most of the able men who replied to him, but it was not 
put forth as the decisive element in the argument. 
Thus Paley says, " Herein I remark a want of argu- 
mentative justice that, in describing the importance of 
miracles, he (Hume) suppresses all those circumstances 
of extenuation which result from our knowledge of the 
existence, power, and disposition of the Deity, his con- 
cern in the creation, the end answered by the miracles, 
the importance of that end, and its subserviency to the 
plan pursued in the work of nature." ''Evidences :'" In- 
troduction. 

It is the more singular that the opponents of Hume 

16 



i82 MIRACLES AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

should have failed to urge this decisive argument against 
him, after Locke had, many years before, stated it in 
words so clear and emphatic : 

" Though the common experience and the ordinary 
course of things have justly a mighty influence on the 
minds of men to make them give or refuse credit to any- 
thing proposed to their belief, yet there is one case 
wherein the strangeness of the fact lessens not the as- 
sent to a fair testimony given of it. For when such su- 
pernatural events are suitable to ends aimed at by him 
who has the power to change the course of nature, then 
under such circumstances they may be the fitter to pro- 
cure belief by how much the more they are beyond or 
contrary to ordinary observation. This is the proper 
case of miracles which, well attested, do not only find 
credit themselves, but give it to other truths which need 
such confirmation." Essay, b. 4, ch. 16, § 13. 

For their failure to do this, the relation of the mirac- 
ulous to experience has been exposed to more or less 
misconstruction. The reply of Campbell to Hume is a 
fair example of the way in which the force of his argu- 
ment was evaded. To the assertion that all miracles 
are contrary to experience, and therefore incapable of 
proof by testimony, Campbell urged that what we call 
experience is largely made up of human testimony, and 
so far is as untrustworthy as testimony ; but in this he 
overlooked the truth that in incorporating testimony into 
experience, every man tests the credibility of testimony 
by experience, as he throws out the testimony of one wit- 



MIRACLES A.\D MODERN THOUGHT. 1S3 

ness and modifies that of another. Another point made 
by Campbell was, that the argument of Hume against 
the Christian miracles would hold just as strongly against 
every narrative and all testimony concerning events that 
were simply extraordinary or not conformable to our ex- 
perience. For example, were the king of Siam informed 
that in London the river Thames would, of a night, be- 
come so solid as to support a train of vehicles and a pro- 
cession of men, he ought, on Mr. Hume's principles, to 
reject the testimony, having had, as was likely, very am- 
ple experience that men were given to lying. But that 
this position is not well taken is obvious to any man 
who reflects that the turning of water into ice could 
be explained as the result of a law of nature which the 
king of Siam could be made to understand, and there- 
fore is in no sense a miracle, but simply an unusual, and 
it may be, a very surprising event, the like of which oc- 
curs in the experience of every man. 

If in the time of Hume, then, his argument was irre- 
sistible as against all stories of miracles, except when a 
good reason can be given for their occurrence, its force 
has been increased a thousand-fold in modern times and 
in the present century. Thinking men, and especially 
men who have to do with physical science, have become 
more and more profoundly impressed with the inviolabil- 
ity of the laws of matter. Every time an eclipse occurs, 
of the sun or the moon ; on the rarer occasions on which 
Venus walks like a dark speck across the disk of the sun ; 
at the thousand times every day in which the navigator 



1 84 MIRACLES AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

finds his place on the limitless ocean by sextant and 
chronometer, or comes into port according to his calcu- 
lations, there is a new confirmation of the belief that the 
forces of nature are as fresh and strong as at the first, 
and are as true to the laws of nature as from the be2:in- 
ning. More and more completely does the conviction 
tgike complete possession of the imagination that in ordi- 
nary and material life an exception is never to be thought 
of. Every day some fresh force or new element is dis- 
covered, or some unexpected application of familiar agen- 
cies breaks out upon the eye of the astronomer as he 
searches into the remotest regions of space, or is mani- 
fested to the chemist as he unties the secret chains that 
have hitherto held in closely-locked embrace elements 
before unknown, or to the student of natural history as 
he reads the records of long-past ages in the hitherto un- 
interpreted hieroglyphics which nature has impressed or 
imbedded in her rocky tablets. Even the secrets of the 
weather, which till recently were hidden from all except 
the village prophets whose predictions were conspicuous 
for their failures, have now been almost mastered, and the 
prophecies so curiously and yet so confidently or so cau- 
tiously ventured, are made in an instant the property of 
the world. Every morning bulletin issued from the sig- 
nal-service, every cautionary signal that floats from head- 
land or tower, reiterates the truth that the laws and 
forces of nature remain unchanged. 

Nor is it alone in the sphere of matter that the reign 
of law extends itself more and more widely and asserts 



MIRACLES AND MODERN THOUGHT. 185 

itself with more and more positive authority. It pushes 
its way into spiritual phenomena as well, and asserts its 
right to be applied to the sciences of politics, of wealth, 
of manners, of culture, and of everything which we call 
human progress. These discoveries contribute to deepen 
the convictions of men in respect to the strength and 
the universality of law in that sphere which we call na- 
ture, including in nature spirit as truly as matter. 

The second position of Hume, that men are both 
credulous and false, especially in all matters that relate 
to the supernatural or miraculous, is also more and more 
confirmed by the experiences of modern life. Pretended 
miracles are every day explained by natural agencies. 
The new forms in which credulity and weakness bring out 
their wonders are sooner or later seen through and ex- 
posed. Men are more than ever disposed to scrutinize 
and suspect every species of overstatement, especially by 
persons in whom the aptitude for wonder is predomi- 
nant. I do not say that credulity is. not also rampant; 
nor that the boldest and the most unblushing of atheists 
in matters of religion are not sometimes the most cred- 
ulous in the matter of their private superstitions and 
hidden mysticisms, but that the age is, on the whole, 
characteristically and reasonably critical of all stories of 
the miraculous. 

The consequences of all these influences may be thus 
summed up : Disbelief in the possibility of miracles 
under any circumstances is now positively and openly 

avowed by a greater number of persons who command 

16* 



1 86 MIRACLES AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

respect in the name of science and philosophy, of criti- 
cisnj, of history and literature, and of the practical knowl- 
edge of man, than at any previous period. On the other 
hand, I believe it is true there was never a time in which 
the belief in the Christian miracles was capable of being' 
so triumphantly defended, on grounds of science, history, 
and criticism, as at the present moment. It is my task 
to show how a rational faith can justify itself by argu- 
ment against the more and more confident disbelief of 
the times. 

Of this argument I propose to give only a brief out- 
line. As a necessary preliminary to this argument, I must 
define somewhat carefully the conception of the miracles 
which Christianity proposes for our faith. 

First, the Christian miracles are more than very won- 
derful events or deeds. The word miracle means literally 
any event so extraordinary or strange as to excite wonder 
or astonishment. Every miracle is indeed worthy of 
wonder, but not every wonderful occurrence is a miracle. 
It follows that a miracle is more than a work of marvel- 
lous physical power or intellectual skill. Miracles are 
not infrequently called in the Scriptures mighty works or 
works of power. It does not follow that all events are 
miracles which illustrate the marvellous power or wisdom 
of God in nature or in history. When the Menai bridge 
was lifted to its place by half-hidden enginery, and depos- 
ited on abutment and pier as quietly and gently as a moth- 
er places her infant in its cradle, the wondering spectators 
might very naturally have shouted, "This is a miracle of 



MIRACLES AND MODERN THOUGHT. 187 

strength and skill." In other times, had the great engi- 
neer kept his secret to himself, he would have been re- 
garded as was Simon the Sorcerer, to whom a whole city 
gave heed, from the least to the greatest, saying, " This 
man is the great power of God." But in these times no 
one would call this marvellous feat a miracle, because it 
was known to be effected by scientific genius. When 
the telegraphic wires were stretched from Baltimore to 
Washington, the first message that was sent along the 
lines was. What hatJi God zuroiis'ht ! In these words the 
truth was recognized that a wonderful work of genius 
had been achieved by the agency of God in this extraor- 
dinary feat of human sagacity, but no man supposes that 
this Divine agency was miraculous. When the news of 
the surrender of Gen. Lee was flashed along these same 
lines to this city, the multitude of busy traffickers in 
Wall street gathered in the street, and with heads bowed 
and uncovered, acknowledged the hand of God in the sal- 
vation of this people, but no one believed that God saved 
this nation by a series of miracles because he wrought 
in his providence through the forces of nature and the 
minds of men. We may believe that God in some sense 
inspired Abraham Lincoln — to his wise candor, his gen- 
tle caution, his inflexible resolve and his faith in justice, 
as also to his words of matchless eloquence; but we pause 
before we assert that this inspiration was miraculous. 
There is nothing necessarily supernatural or miraculous 
in events like these. 

Next, a miracle must have a definite import ; it must 



1 88 MIRACLES AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

signify something to those for whom it is wrought. For 
this reason miracles are so often called signs in the Scrip- 
tures, whether they are false or true. Works that make 
man wonder, or that indicate power and skill, indicate 
something uncommon among men ; but a real miracle 
indicates an agency that is superhuman. It must em- 
phatically declare the presence and activity of a power 
above the forces and laws of matter or spirit. It must 
be an act which manifests a power that is superior to any 
force whatever and unbound by any law. It must even 
be more than an indisputable manifestation of poiver. 
Should the stars fly from their courses, or the sun fail to 
rise, and the universe be thrown into chaos, it would 
manifest a presence mightier than nature, and so far be 
a sign the import of which could not be misunderstood. 
But the miracles with which we have to do have a per- 
sonal and moral import. While they indicate and en- 
force the fact of God's direct and supernatural agency, 
they also convey some thought or feeling from God, and 
enforce some response of act or feeling upon man. For 
both these reasons they are preeminently signs or sig- 
nificant acts. A wonderful event that does not signify 
something is no miracle. 

Every miracle properly so called is also a matter of pub- 
lic concern, and therefore must be wrought in open day. 
It is not impossible that an act in all other respects mi- 
raculous should be performed in presence of a single 
individual and should even be to him a sign of God's pow- 
er or a vehicle of God's thoughts. But if the miracle 



MIRACLES AXD MODERN THOUGHT, 189 

makes any claims upon the public confidence, the act 
must be openly performed. This was the case with most 
of the Christian miracles. They challenged the criticism 
of open day, and were invariably performed in the sight 
of all the people. Whenever testimony, or the report of 
others, was substituted for the direct witness of a looker- 
on, reference was always made to bystanders, and the 
veracity of the reporter was supported if required by 
other miracles. When Paul told the story of how Jesus 
met him near Damascus he was ready to enforce his own 
veracity by miracles performed by himself in the name 
of Christ. 

I emphasize this point in order to distinguish the 
Christian miracles from the miserable imitations of later 
years, and from the more plausible counterfeits that gain 
the confidence of trusting souls. When I am told 
that Mormon elders can heal the sick and raise the 
dead in Utah, I have a right to ask them to do the same 
in New York, and when I am told that they can do 
and have done similar works in New York in some very 
private places and upon a person who is known to no 
one, I not only have a right to reject the story, but I 
am sacredly obliged to reject the story, because the act 
lacks openness to public scrutiny. When I hear of private 
manifestations of the Virgin Mary or of Christ himself to 
this or that person, and of wonderful cures by the touch 
of sacred persons and sacred garments, I say at once, 
these events are not done in public, and so far as the pub- 
lic faith in them or any endorsement of them is con- 



I90 MIRACLES AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

cerned, they should be treated as fables of imagination or 
impositions. When, too, a person of undoubted honesty, 
filled with the spirit of Christ, asserts that he or she was. 
healed of sickness or raised from the dead, by the direct 
power of God in answer to prayer, I am not forced to 
argue that perhaps he was mistaken, or that the event 
lacked some of the other criteria of a true miracle. I 
need not take time to argue that a wonder of heaUng is 
not a miracle of healing. I might concede that as be- 
tween himself and God the event was a miracle. But it 
is nothing to other men, because it was not done in open 
day. For this reason it is treasonable to the most sacred 
truth and the holiest cause to report it in public as a 
miracle. I go very much farther than many people in my 
views of what may happen of good to the souls and bodies 
of men in answer to prayer, but I protest in the name of 
all common sense and in the name of Christ himself against 
the insane desire manifested in some Christian people 
to exalt to the rank of miracles, events that are in no sense 
decisive of supernatural power and which lack the indis- 
pensable criterion of being done in the open day, and before 
the eyes of many lookers-on. I call the tendency insane, 
however well meant it may be. Its effects are fearfully 
pernicious in bringing into dishonor the most sacred and 
separate of all of God's acts to men. The Christian cause 
ought not to bear the burden of any of these reported 
works of wonder and power that are done in a corner. It 
follows that no action of the Holy Spirit upon the spirit 
of man, when most direct and powerful, can be properly 



MIRACLES AND MODERN THOUGHT. 191 

considered miraculous. Even if we allow that such ac- 
tion is supernatural and involves an arrest of the forces 
of nature, it lacks every one of the other elements of the 
miraculous. It may be as surprising and show as much 
or more of God, but it does not impart definite teaching 
by a public and open deed. 

Last and most essential of all, in every miraculous 
act there must be a worthy and sufficient occasion, if the 
act is to be accepted as miraculous. We cannot believe, 
and we ought not to believe, that the laws of nature will 
be broken, except for such a reason. Such a reason can 
only be furnished in the attainment of some end, which 
the observance of these laws cannot reach. I would not 
say that the only end conceivable is to accredit a messen- 
ger or a message from God. If a work of superhuman 
power is required to impress men vividly and effectively 
with the nearness of God, or the love of God, or the ten- 
derness of God to man, such a necessity, when made 
manifest, might justify the miraculous interposition of 
God, and my faith in such an interposition in fact. But 
I must believe that God will respect the forces of nature 
which he has made, and will conform to the laws of nature 
which he has imposed upon these forces, unless I discern 
some reason which requires him to show that he is great- 
er than these forces, and the master of these laws. This 
is so obvious a truth, that it seems surprising that it 
should ever have been overlooked. Even the aesthetic 
sense of propriety taught a pagan poet to say, who 
might be supposed to have no special respect for the 



192 MIRACLES AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

gods of the ancient mythology, that a god should 
never be introduced upon the stage in a play, unless 
there was an occasion that required and justified his 
presence. How much more must this be true of the 
living God, in whom we have a rational faith, and of 
whom our conceptions are ever more and more grand 
and reverential, the more we bring him home to our 
thoughts. 

Our definition of a miracle will have prepared us to ap- 
preciate the reasons for believing in the Christian mira- 
cles. First of all, such miracles "B^xq possible. Every man 
who believes in God must believe that he can suspend or 
override the forces which he upholds, and set aside the 
laws under which he causes them to act. The Atheist 
and the Pantheist alone can deny that a miracle is possi- 
ble ; the Atheist because there is no God, and the Pan- 
theist because his God is only another phrase for the 
finite forces and laws which make up the universe. 

There are Theists who object to the assumption that 
God can suspend or interrupt the laws of nature. They 
are so deeply possessed of the idea that law can never be 
broken, and that God is bound by his own prescriptions, 
that they explain the supernatural miracles by the dis- 
placement of one force by another, as when gravitation 
is overcome by muscular effort, or mental force acts 
against and overrules bodily tendencies. In like man- 
ner, they reason, God may have some unknown force or 
law in reserve, by which he brings to pass the most 
wonderful effects and signs. Others have gone farther, 



MIRACLES AND MODERN THOUGHT. 193 

and contended that there may be some provision in na- 
ture from the first, by which at the precise moment the 
hidden force required should come into action, as a 
clock might be supposed to play a tune once in thirty 
days, or a calculating machine to bring out a peculiar 
series of numbers at the millionth turn of a wheel. It 
is far more rational to say that the God who created the 
forces and laws of nature, never ceases to uphold its forces 
and enforce its laws. In this regard he is nearer to na- 
ture than the soul of man is to his body. He can there- 
fore override every force by a higher force ; but this high- 
er force is no created energy, but his creative fiat — his 
will — whose function is to suspend every other force, 
and to control every law. 

Every disturbance that might occur in consequence 
he can avoid by the same energy by which he suspends 
any natural force. Should he arrest a planet in its or- 
bit, he could provide all the compensations that might be 
required to avert or check or turn aside the results that 
might otherwise ensue. His hand is not only on the 
driving lever that starts and stops and regulates the en- 
gine, but his presence and spirit are in all the wheels, 
and pulsate in that vast organization which we call the 
universe of matter and spirit. For God to suspend a 
force or break a law, is, however, never a lawless or an 
unreasonable act. Every miracle is performed for some 
reason. No force of nature is ever suspended, no law is 
broken, except to reveal a present and personal God, and 
to enforce a sense of his presence which is yet above 

17 



194 MIRACLES AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

nature, by some manifestation through nature, in order 
that some impressive moral or spiritual lesson may be 
conveyed. 

It follows that a story of a miracle is credible when- 
ever a sufficient reason for its occurrence can be given 
or supposed. We believe that the laws of nature may 
and ought to be broken for the same reason that in 
ordinary cases we believe that they stand fast. This 
may sound like a paradox, but it is nevertheless true. 
The question is not put to the scientists of our time 
half so often as it should be, nor pressed with half the 
urgency which is warranted. What are the grounds on 
which you assume that the laws of nature are unbroken, 
or, in the language of Hume, that a miracle is contrary to 
experience } Hume himself confesses that he cannot an- 
swer this question. I give his own language : " If we ask 
what is the foundation of all conclusions from experience, 
this implies a new question which may be of more diffi- 
cult solution." The solution he gives in another passage, 
" experimental reasoning itself which we possess in com- 
mon with beasts, is nothing but a species of instinct or 
mechanical power that acts in us, unknown to ourselves." 
The atheist can give no answer than that these laws 
►never in fact have been broken. The materialistic evo- 
lutionist is in a worse plight, for on his particular theory 
he must assume an unbroken regularity of laws for bill- 
ions of ages, during which he asserts a great many 
things have taken place which are entirely contradicted 
by the experience of the post-historic period, which are 



MIRACLES AND MODERN THOUGHT. 195 

marvels if they are not miracles, and would scarcely 
stand the test of Hume's argument. The theist alone 
has a solution for his faith in the order of nature and the 
fixedness of law. That explanation is the absolute neces- 
sity of both for the harmony of the universe and the well- 
being of its sentient creatures, and for the possibility of 
science itself. Without such order we could neither cat 
nor sleep with any confidence ; we could neither light a 
fire nor provide our food ; we could gather no wisdom 
from the past and provide no stores for the future; we 
could exercise no prudence and achieve no philosophy. 
It is not because we have found by experience that these 
forces remain and these laws are unbroken that we rest 
in the conclusion that the order of nature is permanent, 
but it is because we believe that such order ought to 
be observed in a universe of reason and goodness. We 
do indeed find that what we know ought to be is actually 
realized in our verified experience ; but it is because of 
the reason why, rather than because of the fact observed, 
that we believe this permanent order under which our ri- 
sing and our rest, our business and our pleasure, so 
confidently proceed. 

I venture the remark by way of digression, that in 
point of fact this faith in law and order is the product of 
those conceptions of nature as related to God, which the 
Jewish and Christian theism have enforced upon the faith 
of the world by miracles. I find this doctrine in an old 
book: " For ever, O Lord, thy word is settled in heaven. 
Thy faithfulness is unto all generations, thou hast estab- 



196 MIRACLES AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

lished the earth and it abideth. They continue this day 
according to thine ordinances, for all are thy servants." I 
find also that the great physicists who developed and 
fixed our modern notions of the forces and laws of nature, 
and wrought out the theory of deduction on which modern 
science has been reared, were every one of them positive 
and even devout theists. Such were Bacon, Descartes, 
Leibnitz, Newton, and Locke. Very earnest efforts have 
been made of late to persuade the confiding if not the 
credulous public that Christian theology has always been 
the natural and persistent foe of science. It would be easy 
to show that the accepted theory of modern scientific 
research was the indirect result of that view of nature 
which theism implies, viz., the conception of a universe 
which was pervaded by order and law. In oth@r words, 
the theory of experimental physics was born of Christian 
theism. 

We return to our argument. We believe that a 
miracle is credible whenever it is required for any worthy 
end which God may propose, for the same reason that we 
believe in the unbroken reign of law in the ordinary 
routine of nature, because of the ends which this dominion 
of law will subserve. We believe that the laws of nature 
may be broken when the occasion requires, for the same 
reason that we believe them to be unbroken in the ordi- 
nary routine of life. 

Not only is a miracle credible, but it becomes prob- 
able, when the occasion justifies it. The end proposed 
in a miracle may not only justify our reason in believing 



MIRACLES AND MODERN THOUGHT. 197 

it, it may even require this faith of both reason and con- 
science. 

The occasion for the Christian miracles was to call 
attention to Christ's claims as the manifestation of God 
to man, and to enforce these claims by deeds and events 
that made them good. The attention of men must first 
be aroused and held fast. Belief must ensue, in order that 
Christ's words and life and death might gain man's obe- 
dience and love. If this is so, the one and only question 
which we need to ask is this, Has man any such occa- 
sion for a Being like Christ, as would justify His being 
introduced to man's dwelling-place and his history by 
events clearly supernatural } To every man who asks 
this question I would answer. Think of what man was 
without Christ and think of what he has become through 
faith in Christ, man as a community and man singly. 
Look squarely in the face the fact that man is a 
sinner and as such is self-condemned, and needs the assu- 
rance as clear as Christ's words and life and death can 
make it, that God is willing to forgive him — that man is 
weak and needs Christ's help and sympathy — that he is 
going into an unknown land, where nothing is definite but 
the darkness made visible by the wandering ghosts of his 
own sins waiting to shame and torment him, and that for 
these needs Christ is all — but no more than all — that he 
wants. Think what Christ has done for all honest be- 
lievers who have in good faith taken him to be the ruler 
and joy of their being. If man needs him so much 

and Christ is to man what his life and words declare him to 

17* 



198 MIRACLES AND MODERN THOUGHT. 

be, and what the simple behef in Christ, whether he be a 
fiction or a fact, tends to make of every man, then not only 
is it credible that he wrought the miracles that are re- 
ported, but the story of such a Christ would be incredi- 
ble without miracles. Once admit that man is in this 
need, and that Christ is, and brings this help, and the 
miracles in the history make the history itself more 
credible. They strengthen the story immensely. The 
Christian story without the miracles ought to be rejected 
as untrue. Should we lower man's need to a mere inci- 
dental ignorance or want of culture in morals and civili- 
zation, and Christ's mission to a desirable but not indis- 
pensable supplement to these wants, we ought to reject 
the miraculous in the history, embarrassing and impossi- 
ble as it confessedly is to give any rational explanation of 
how such a story came to be written or believed if it is 
false. 

We are brought, then, to this issue. Is what is usu- 
ally called nature the whole of the universe } Or if you 
enlarge the conception of nature, so as to take into it 
spiritual beings who are immortal, are all their interests 
limited to power, wealth, enjoyment, to social affection, 
culture, art, and civilization, and even to character — if 
you leave out of character responsibility to one's self and 
to God, with its results of confirmed sin or confirmed 
holiness — are these all that man should care for, or all 
that God does care for.^ If there is more, this out- 
weighs all the rest. If man is responsible, then he is 
guilty and weak, and needs forgiveness and help. He 



MIRACLES AND MODERN THOUGHT. 199 

also needs the assurance of both in such form that he 
cannot doubt the reality and cannot help being moved by 
the love. In one word, he needs the supernatural and 
the miraculous Christ, just the Christ of the gospel story, 
and he needs him more than anything and everything 
besides. If there is a living and loving God, shall he 
not supply this want } If, in order to supply it, he must 
meet man with such miraculous works as break through 
the order of nature in order to manifest his presence, shall 
we believe the story the less or the more because it re- 
cords supernatural deeds } Well might Coleridge say, 
" Evidences of Christianity ! I am weary of the phrase — 
make a man feel his need of Christianity, and give him 
right conceptions of what Christianity is, and he cannot 
but believe it to be from God, and this by a most natural 
and rational judgment." 

And here I leave the argument, with a single word of 
application to those who teach in Sunday-schools or Bible- 
classes. If you would relieve the difficulties which any 
members of your classes may feel concerning the subject 
of miracles, you can only do this by making them under- 
stand that they need Christ and that Christ can be some- 
thing to them. This conviction, this feeling of need, 
must be the background to every one of your arguments 
concerning the truth of the Christian story. To make 
these truths fresh and vivid to your pupils they must be 
always fresh and vivid to yourselves. Strive after this, 
for your own sake as well as for theirs. 



Method of Jesus Christ 



AS 



TEACHER 



REV. GEORGE DANA BOARDMAN, D. D., 

PASTOR OF THE FIRST BAPTIST CHURCH, PHILADELPHIA, PA. 



Method 



OF 

JESUS CHRIST AS TEACHER. 



" And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended these sayings, the peo- 
were astonished at his doctrine : for he taught them as one having au- 
thority, and not as the scribes." Matthew 7 : 28, 29. 

JESUS CHRIST A TEACHER. 

Such are the words with which the sacred chronicler 
closes his report of that group of matchless sayings 
to which the Christian world has given the title, '' The 
Sermon on the Mount." And yet this title is almost a 
misnomer. This group of sayings is not a discourse : it 
is neither an oration, nor an argumentation, nor an ex- 
postulation: it is strictly an instruction. "Seeing the 
multitudes, he went up into the mountain : and when he 
had sat down, [and sitting was the usual posture of the 
Jewish teacher,] he opened his mouth and taught them, 
saying." "And it came to pass, when Jesus had ended 
these sayings, the multitude were astonished at his doc- 
trine, /. e. teaching, for he taught them as one having 
authority, and not as the scribes." 



204 yESUS CIIJ^IST AS TEACHER, 

Nor is this the only occasion on which Jesus Christ is 
set before us as a teacher. Forty-four other times in the 
Gospels is the verb teach applied to him : ten other 
times are his sayings spoken of as a doctrine, i. e.y teach- 
ing : forty times is he mentioned as master, i. e., teacher : 
two hundred and twenty times are his followers called 
disciples, i. e., learners. A meaningful fact surely, fairly 
challenging study. May the Spirit of truth then espe- 
cially help us as we ponder the following theme : 

THEME : TPIE METHOD OF JESUS CHRIST AS TEACHER. 
THE TREATMENT PROPOSED. 

In treating this topic we probably cannot do better 
than to follow the order suggested by the text, treating 
it first negatively and then affirmatively. 

I. HOW JESUS CHRIST DID NOT TEACH. 

And first, negatively, the way in which Jesus Christ 
did not teach. 

HE DID NOT TEACH RABBINICALLY. 

Let the text itself suggest our first point : he did not 
teach rabbinically, i. e., as the scribes. 

The scribes, you hardly need be reminded, were the 
authorized teachers of the land. Their principal business 
was to interpret the Sacred Scriptures, particularly the 
Law of Moses. Springing up as a separate order about 
the time of the return from the Babylonian captivity, 
when the Hebrew speech was losing itself in the Ara- 



yESC/S CHRIST AS TEACHER. 205 

mean, they were originally a noble class of men, doing 
a noble service. But in the time of our Lord, they had 
become fearfully degenerate. In their idolatry of the 
letter they had lost sight of the spirit. Their interpre- 
tation had become superficial, technical, trivial, hollow, 
heartless. The religion of Abraham and Moses and 
David and Isaiah and Malachi, they had smothered be- 
neath the lumber of traditions and the dead weight of 
precedents. They had become wretched casuists, rais- 
ing questions ridiculously puerile, such, e. g., as this : *' If 
a man should be born with two heads, on which forehead 
must he wear the phylactery T Thus they were forever 
vexing the consciences of men by binding on their 
shoulders heavy burdens and grievous to be borne, subtly 
discriminating between swearing by the temple and by 
the gold of the temple, tithing mint and rue and anise 
and cummin and all manner of herbs, but passing over 
the weightier matters of the law, judgment, mercy, faith, 
and the love of God, straining out gnats, but swallow- 
ing camels, rejecting the commandment of God and 
making his word of none effect, that they might keep 
their own tradition. In short, beneath the teachinsf of 
these scribes, who had taken the seat of Moses, all had 
become formal, artificial, rigid, technical, arbitrary, pe- 
dantic, microscopic, rotative, slavish, hollow, icy : every 
duty duly labelled and pigeon-holed. 

Not so did Jesus Christ teach. No teaching was ever 
fresher or more vitalizing than his. So far was he from 
idolizing the letter that in his quotations from law or 

18 



2o6 yESUS CHRIST AS TEACHER. 

prophet he was generally content with quoting the 
thought rather than the word. He did not load down 
the memory of his pupils with citations of traditions 
from Hillel the Looser, or of precedents from Shammai 
the Binder. Nor did he oppress their consciences with 
numerous and tiny regulations, or vex them with gos- 
samer distinctions and phantom conceits : he did not 
turn religion into a rubric or character into a mummy. 
In short, he did not teach as the scribes. 



NOR SYSTEMATICALLY. 

Again : Jesus Christ did not teach systematically ; 
that is to say, according to what we would call a scien- 
tific method. In his instructions there is no appearance 
of elaboration, no show of logic. Look at this Instruc- 
tion of the Mount. It is the most formal and elaborate 
of his teachings, for it is his pronunciamento as the new 
King. And yet nothing could be simpler, or more free 
from all signs of study. It has no firstlies, secondlies, 
thirdlies. It does not suggest Aristotle's Dialectics, or 
Calvin's Syllogisms, or Buckle's Statistics. In fact, it is 
so informal as to baffle any natural analysis. And so 
with all his teachings. Not that there is no plan in 
them, or no philosophy in his religion. He is profound- 
ly systematic. But his system is the natural meander- 
ing of the river, not the artificial course of the canal. 
To the student of nature there is more method in a cedar 
of Lebanon than in the Temple of Solomon. 



yESUS CHRIST AS TEACHER. 207 

NOR RHETORICALLY. 

Once more : Jesus Christ did not teach rhetorically. 
The thought does not seem to have occurred to him of 
substituting aesthetics for religion, literature for dogma, 
culture for righteousness. Look at his instructions. In 
vain shall you search for finely-turned sentences, ornate 
amplifications, brilliant flights, elegant allusions, learned 
quotations from the hermeneutics of Hillel, or the theol- 
ogy of Zoroaster, or the metaphysics of Plato, or the poe- 
try of Virgil. His language is the language of the com- 
mon people. And yet unstudied and homely as it is, it 
involves the lore of the eternities. 

IL HOW JESUS CHRIST DID TEACH. 

And so we pass to consider, secondly and affirma- 
tively, the way in which Jesus Christ did teach. 

HE TAUGHT AUTHORITATIVELY. 

One word summarizes it: it is the word authority. 
*' When Jesus had ended these sayings, the people were 
astonished at his teaching : for he taught them as one 
having authority, and not as the scribes." 

AUTHORITY OF CONSCIOUS AUTHORITY. 

And, first : Jesus Christ taught with the authority of 
one who was conscious of authority. 

Look at this Instruction on the Mount. How in- 
tense the personality which pervades it. Six times does 



2o8 3^ESUS CHRIST AS TEACHER, 

this untitled Rabbi from Nazareth plant himself in open 
opposition to the scribes, joining issue, be it observed, 
not with Moses, but with the authorized interpreters of 
Moses, boldly overturning the misinterpretations of cen- 
turies : " Ye have heard that it was said to them of old 
time But I say to you." Or look at his other in- 
structions. How sublime their egotism ! Yes, look at 
this very word 'Eyw : " I am the bread of life ;" " I am 
the light of the world ;" " Before Abraham was, I am ;" 
" I am the resurrection and the life ;" " I am the way, 
the truth, and the life ;" " I am the Alpha and the Ome- 
ga, the first and the last, the beginning and the end." 
How imperial the sovereignty which is stamped on every 
saying of his. From first to last it is a very king who 
speaks, conjugating all life in the imperative mood. His 
very sayings are decisive of destinies. Dogmatic he was 
not, and yet he was dogmatic. Listen : " Whosoever hear- 
eth these sayings of mine, and doeth them, I will liken 
him unto a wise man, which built his house upon a rock : 
and the rain descended, and the floods came, and the 
winds blew, and beat upon that house ; and it fell not, 
for it was founded upon a rock. And every one that 
heareth these sayings of mine, and doeth them not, shall 
be likened unto a foolish man, which built his house upon 
the sand : and the rain descended, and the floods came, 
and the winds blew and beat upon that house ; and it 
fell : and great was the fall of it." Listen again : " He 
that believeth on the Son hath everlasting life : and he 
that believeth not the Son shall not see life; but the 



yESUS CHRIST AS TEACHER. 209 

wrath of God abideth on him." Listen once more : " Go 
ye into all the world, and preach the gospel to every 
creature. He that believeth and is baptized shall be 
saved ; but he that believeth not shall be damned." If 
this is not authority, what is authority } 

AUTHORITY OF ELEMENTALS. 

Again : Jesus Christ taught with the authority- of one 
who dealt in elementals. 

For observe the precise purpose for which Jesus 
Christ came into the world as teacher. He came not to 
instruct men in secular matters. He came not to teach 
astronomy or geology or physiology or metaphysics or 
economics or arts. True, he might have taught all this. 
The Lord of nature might have anticipated the discover- 
ies of a Copernicus, a Columbus, a Harvey, a Faraday. 
But he knew that all such discoveries belong to the inci- 
dental and mortal part of our being, and could sooner or 
later be wrought out by man's own powers, and so he 
left all such things to follow the law of unfolding. What 
he came to teach was what man could not learn without 
supernatural disclosure. What he came to teach was 
not incidentals, but essentials ; not ephemerals, but eter- 
nals ; not facts, but truths. " To this end was I bom, 
and for this cause came I into the world, that I should 
bear witness unto the truth." Yes, Jesus Christ came 
into the world to attest the existence of unseen, elemen- 
tal, eternal realities. 

And how profound and radical his teachings ! How 

18* 



2IO yESUS CHRIST AS TEACHER. 

utterly free from all pettiness of details — from all that is 
merely incidental and transient! e.g.y the Lord does not 
tell us how often to pray, or how much to give, or when 
to go to church, or what to do and what not to do on the 
Sabbath-day. And yet many persons imagine that if 
they could know such things as these, they would master 
the chief problems of the Christian life. It is a pro- 
found misconception of the teaching of Jesus Christ. 
No martinet disciplinarian is he, turning life into a mi- 
nute and perennial drill, where all is 

"Faultily faultless, icily regular, splendidly null." 

No, he does not tell us what to do so much as what to 
be ; for if we are what we ought to be, he knows that we 
will do what we ought to do. He does not purify the 
stream of life by undertaking to purify each separate 
drop as it rushes along ; he purifies life at its fountain. 
He grapples with living, immortal, transcendent issues, 
even the issue of a Godlike character : " Be ye perfect, 
even as your Father which is in heaven is perfect." 

But let us take some particular specimen of the 
depth of Christ's method. Observe, e. g., how he in- 
terprets the law of murder : " Ye have heard that it 
was said by them of old time. Thou shalt not kill ; and 
whosoever shall kill shall be in danger of the judgment : 
but I say unto you. That whosoever is angry with his 
brother without a cause shall be in danger of the judg- 
ment : and whosoever shall say to his brother, Raca, 
[worthless fellow,] shall be in danger of the council : but 



yESUS CHRIST AS TEACHER. 211 

whosoever shall say, Mareh, [fool,] shall be in clanger of 
hell fire." According to the Mountain Teacher, then, 
murder is not an act, but a thought ; not a question of 
standing in the eyes of the community, but of charac- 
ter in the eyes of the All-seeing. No murder was ever 
committed which did not besfin in the heart : " Out of 
the heart proceed evil thoughts, murders, adulteries, for- 
nications, thefts, false witness, blasphemies." The mur- 
der is not in the pistol or the bludgeon or the arsenic, 
nor yet in the hand that wields them, nor even in the 
volition that wields the hand : the murder is in the angry 
feeling that originates the volition. All life, good and 
bad, starts from e^erms. Thus radical is the Great Teach- 
er's method. His teaching is more than elementary ; it 
is elemental : his school the world's true and everlasting 
Seminary. Precepts he transfigures into principles, stat- 
utes into character, rules into life. Himself the true 
Lawgiver on the true Sinai, he transcribes the Ten Com- 
mandments from tablets of stone, writing them on tablets 
of heart. And so he rears an internal Sinai, whose qua- 
kings shall shake the very foundations of the soul, start- 
ling the dullest conscience and preluding the thunder- 
peals of the Judgment-day. 

AUTHORITY OF NATURE. 

Again : Jesus Christ taught with the authority of one 
who appeals to nature. 

Were I asked to describe, in the briefest expression 
possible, the method of Jesus Christ as teacher, I would 



212 y^ESUS CHRIST AS TEACHER. 

answer : He was a parable speaker. That this is a just 
description will be evident from a simple enumeration of 
some of his parables, thus : The Sower, The Tares, The 
Seed growing secretly. The Mustard Seed, The Leaven, 
The Unsought Treasure, The Sought Pearl, The Drawn 
Net, The Two Debtors, The Merciless Servant, The 
Good Samaritan, The Rich Fool, The King's Marriage 
F'east, The Fig-tree, The Great Supper, The Recovered 
Sheep, The Recovered Coin, The Recovered Son, The 
Dishonest Steward, Dives and Lazarus, The Unjust 
Judge, The Pharisee and the Publican, The Two Sons, 
The Vineyard Laborers, The Pounds, The Talents, The 
Wicked Husbandman, The Ten Virgins, The Sheep and 
the Goats. These are but specimens of the Great 
Teacher's recorded parables. And the evangelists hint 
that he uttered very many parables which they did not 
record : " All these things spake Jesus in parables to the 
multitudes, and without a parable he spake nothing to 
them ; that it might be fulfilled which was spoken through 
the prophet, saying, I will open my mouth in parables, 
I will utter things which have been kept secret from the 
foundation of the world." In fact, erase from the records 
of Christ's sayings all he has said in form of parable, and 
figure, and metaphor, leaving only what he taught in 
distinct statements, and how comparatively meagre the 
residue ! 

And there are immense advantages in the parable 
method of instruction. In the first place, there is a deep 
foundation for the parable method in the very nature of 



JESUS CHRIST AS TEACHER. 213 

things ; that is to say, in the correspondence which exists 
between things spiritual and things natural. "All 
things," says the son of Sirach, *'are double, the one 
against the other." It is a profound saying. The bless- 
ed truth is, there are two Bibles, both issuing from the 
same Divine Author; the one, (Psa. 19:1-6,) the Bible 
of the Unwritten Word, or the Lex non Scripta : the 
other, (Psa. 19:7-11,) the Bible of the Written Word, or 
the Lex Scripta : or rather, the one Bible is in two vol- 
umes, the volume of Scripture and the volume of Nature, 
and the volume of Nature is the volume of Scripture il- 
lustrated. Yes, there is a deep foundation for the para- 
ble method in the nature all around us. Again : the 
visible world supplies us with the aptest and most effec- 
tive illustrations of the invisible. The mass of mankind 
find it difficult to grasp an abstraction ; bat they easily 
grasp a picture. For every one man who can understand 
a truth put in the form of an abstract proposition, there 
are a hundred men who will instantly understand it 
when sketched in a story. And the natural world fur- 
nishes us with the truest pictures of the spiritual. When, 
therefore, the Divine Teacher, in introducing a parable, 
uses his favorite formula, saying, " The kingdom of 
heaven is like this," " The kingdom of heaven is like 
that," every one instantly catches his meaning, and 
feels that he speaks truly. Again ; these illustrations 
are themselves arguments. It is often said : " The 
Scripture parables prove nothing." Whereas they are 
in fact specimens of logic in its highest forms. If 



214 7ESUS CHRIST AS TEACHER. 

things on earth are shadows, as I believe they are, of 
things in heaven, then there are things in heaven, for 
the shadows prove it, just as a shadow does prove the 
existence of the substance that casts it. This is why 
the Lord's parables are such peerless instances of argu- 
mentation. E. g., In this Instruction on the Mount, the 
Great Teacher wishes to convince his disciples that the 
Heavenly Father will take care of all who put their 
trust in him. How does he undertake to do this.-* By 
an oracular statement to that effect .-* No ! By evolving 
an elaborate process of ratiocination "i No ! By an 
analogy from nature } Yes ! " Behold the birds of the 
air ! They are not God's children ; and yet your 
Heavenly Father feedeth them. Consider the lilies of 
the field. They are not God's children ; and yet your 
Heavenly Father clotheth them. In those birds is my 
argument, in these lilies is my proof. Ye are God's 
children ; most certainly then will your Heavenly Father 
feed and clothe you." What ingenuous soul can resist 
the logic of such an appeal } Again : parables open 
channels for the unperceived entrance of unpalatable 
truth. Like sugar-coated pills, or like the little scroll 
of the angel's hand, which in the mouth was sweet as 
honey, but which, when swallowed, was bitter, parables 
may convey distasteful truths, as it were, in disguise. 
How often did the Great Teacher graciously ensnare 
his adversaries in this artlessly artful v^ay ! Once 
more : parables have a wonderful self-adjusting power, 
letting into the heart just so much truth as the heart 



^ESUS CHRIST AS TEACHER. 215 

will allow to come in. It is not so with a syllogism, or 
a theorem in geometry : these you either understand 
wholly, or you do not understand them at all : the demon- 
stration is an indivisible thing, and you take in all of it, 
or none of it. How different the parables of our Lord ! 
They have the property of an indefinite elasticity, ex- 
panding and contracting, adjusting themselves with a 
marvellous accuracy, not so much to our powers of un- 
derstanding as to our moral susceptibility. They let into 
our hearts just so much light as our hearts will let in ; no 
more, no less. 

No wonder then that the Lord of nature and teacher of 
men was wont to speak in parables. They furnished him 
with the most telling illustrations and confirmations of 
the truth he came to disclose. They secured for him an 
audience which abstract statements might have repelled. 
They planted the responsibility for character, or absorp- 
tion of spiritual truth, at the most merciful and at the 
same time the most decisive point — the point of free-will, 
or moral sympathy. And all this because parables have 
a deep and solid foundation in the profound connection 
between the realm of matter and the realm of spirit : so 
that we may discern in the one the meaning and the 
proof of the other. 

And herein, brethren, we have a hint for ourselves as 
teachers. Nature is our great storehouse of illustration 
and demonstration. Instead then of eying " science " 
askance, let us boldly court her alliance. Her office, 
as in the days of magian astronomy, is still to bring her 



2i6 JESUS CHRIST AS TEACHER. 

treasures of gold and frankincense and myrrh, and lay 
them at the feet of the ever-unfolding Christ. By thus 
constantly appealing, as did the heavenly teacher himself, 
to the great nature around us, our teachings will ever- 
more be fresh and fertihzing. 

AUTHORITY OF INTUITION. 

Again : Jesus Christ taught with the authority of one 
who appeals to our intuitions. 

Look again at this mountain instruction. On the 
surface it is utterly wanting in every sign of formal logic, 
and yet it is profoundly logical. But it is the logic of 
instinct, the argument, of insight, the demonstration of 
intuition. Listen to one of these demonstrations — the 
appeal to one of the radical elements of human society — 
the sense of fatherhood and sonhood : " What man is there 
of you, who, if his son ask bread, will he give him a 
stone? Or, if he ask a fish, will he give him a serpent .? 
If ye then, being evil, know how to give good gifts unto 
your children, how much more shall your Father which 
is in heaven give good gifts to them that ask him .?" Can 
you conceive an argument more resistless } Thus did 
Jesus Christ speak to that which is deepest and most 
central in man. He appealed to something higher than 
sensibility, higher than intellect, higher than will. He 
appealed to that which in man is the least human and the 
most divine — the bar of the moral sense, the bench of 
conscience. Therefore did he teach with an authority to 
which the scribes were strangers. They cited authority— 



JA'SL'S CJIKISr AS TEACHER. 217 

the authorities without ; he appealed to authority — the 
authority within. 

AUTHORITY OF CHARACTER. 

Once more: Jesus Christ taught with the authority of 
one whose character was itself the supreme authority. 

IIow marvellous the authority of the Galilean carpen- 
ter over the ages ! How he dominates men's intellects, 
and affections, and consciences! At the mention of his 
name how many millions bow and confess that he is 
Lord of lords ! The civilized world, in spite of the sneer 
of the skeptic and the wrath of the reprobate, reckons its 
dates from the year of his birth, heading their documents 
with the august words, Anno Domini. The word Chris- 
tendom itself — what is it but Christ dominion.? And 
whence came this man's authority } Not from wealth, 
for he had not where to lay his head. Not from social 
influence: for his own brothers did not believe in him, 
his own townsmen rejected him, his own countrymen 
crucified him. Not from scholarship: for he was only a 
Nazarene mechanic, without academic training; "How 
knoweth this man letters, having never learned.?" i. r., 
having never been trained as a Rabbi. And yet, never 
man spake like this man. Whence then comes this man's 
authority .? From the majesty of personal character, from 
the omnipotence of daily life. Men can fight other 
things : they can fight wealth, rank, force, brain : but 
they cannot fight character. And this man's heavenly 

teachings were matched, buttressed, made imperial by his 

19 



2i8 JESUS CHRIST AS TEACHER. 

heavenly life. Therefore never man spake like this man — 
never teacher taught with this teacher's authority. As 
Augustine says: "Whose life is lightning, his words are 
thunder."* 

" And so the Word had breath, and wrought 
With human hands the creed of creeds, 
In loveliness of perfect deeds, 
More strong than all poetic thought : 

" Which he may read that binds the sheaf. 
Or builds the house, or digs the grave. 
And those wild eyes that watch the wave 
In roarings round the coral reef." 

Such is an attempt to set forth, in part at least, 
Christ's method as Teacher : in part, I say : for the field 
is immense, and we have been able to scan but a section 
of it. May it not be in vain that we have scanned that 
section ! And now a few words in way of conclusion. 

THE CHURCH CHRIST's SUCCESSOR AS TEACHER. 

And first : Jesus Christ in ascending dropped his 
mantle as instructor on his church. From that hour the 
church of the living God has been the world's great 
teacher. Listen : " All power is given unto me in heaven 
and in earth: Go ye therefore and teach all nations, 
baptizing them in the name of the Father, and of the 
Son, and of the Holy Ghost: teaching them to observe all 
things whatsoever I have commanded you : and lo,T am 
with you alway, even unto the end of the world." Do not 
imagine that these words were meant only for ministers. 

* Cujus vita est fulgur, ejus verba tonitrua. 



yESUS CHRIST AS TEACHER. 219 

The classification of the church into clergy and laity is 
not a division in fact ; it is only a distinction in form. 
In the sight of God ye are teachers not less than we on 
whose heads have been laid the ordaining hands of the 
presbytery. And very majestic is your office as teacher. 
The world's great imperial men are not those who are its 
millionaires, or its monarchs ; they who rule the world 
are they who teach it. Alexander was called the Great, 
because he was a conqueror: but his greatness died with 
himself. Plato the teacher was greater, and is still Plato 
the Great, for he is swaying Christendom to-day. The 
masters of the world are those who are its masters ; and 
master, being interpreted, is teacher. Do we not at this 
very day call the school-teacher master .^ 

INTIMACY WITH CHRIST THE SECRET OF AUTHORITY. 

Would you, O teacher, like the great Master himself, 
teach with authority 1 You will not gain it from the 
books. Commentaries, maps, blackboards, teachers' 
meetings, Sunday-school magazines and lectures and 
conventions are good. They give a certain kind of au- 
thority, but it is only the authority of the scribes. Would 
you have a real, conquering authority.'^ Then, like the 
great Master, live in sympathy with nature, and the forces 
of the universe. Occupy your thoughts with the elemen- 
tal, and transcendent, and immortal. Above all things, 
live in communion with eternal God himself. Be closeted 
with him in the intimacies of a celestial friendship. Like 
the divine man of Nazareth, have a godlike character. 



220 yESUS CHRIST AS TEACHER. 

Then shall men acknowledge that your doctrine, like 
Christ's, is not yours, but his who sent you. Then shall 
you teach with authority indeed. Yes, thy method, O 
teacher, will be the method of Jesus Christ. 

CHURCH OF THE DISCIPLES. 

Finally : May God give you and me grace to keep us 
evermore studying in the school of the Lord from heav- 
en : for so shall we in very truth belong to the church 
of the disciples. Thus sitting at his feet and listening 
to his word, we shall grow up into him in all things, who 
is the head, even Christ. 



THE 



Right and Responsibility 



OF THE 



CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE 



IN THE 



STUDY OF THE SCRIPTURES. 



REV. E. A. WASHBURN, D. D., 

RECTOR OF CALVARY CHURCH, NEW YORK. 



19« 



THE 



Christian Conscience 



AND THE 



STUDY OF THE SCRIPTURES, 



It is an old question I bring before you, as old as the 
first day of the Reformation, when the translation of the 
Bible was the leader of intellectual as well religious free- 
dom ; yet as new, and perhaps more weighty, in its 
connections with modern thought. What is the right, 
and what the law of the Christian conscience in the study 
of the Scriptures ? The subject meets us in many rela- 
tions, which demand our earnest inquiry. It forces itself 
on the friends of public education, who must inquire to- 
day whether the Bible shall be excluded from the school. 
It meets the thoughtful believer in the grave riddles 
opened by the growth of Biblical criticism, and the fresh 
researches of science. We hear on one side the denier 
of any divine revelation, who claims that he is the only 
true champion of Protestant principle. Nor can we doubt, 
on the other, that the secret of most of the perversions 
to the church of Rome lies, as one of its best apologists 



2 24 THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE AND 

holds, in the uneasy fear which finds its refuge in the 
name of infaUibility. Where do we stand ? Is there 
any agreement between Protestant freedom and unity in 
Christian truth ? What is the Protestant principle ? 

I wish to answer this question with an honest clear- 
ness. I believe with the fullest conviction, that the 
ground of the Reformation is the true and the only true 
one on which we can rest. Yet it is not so easy, as some 
think, to be stated ; and it involves some points in which 
I shall doubtless differ from the popular view. But 
if I can so meet them, as to convince you that our 
growth in Christian knowledge is one with an unshaken 
faith, I shall fulfil my purpose. Nor do I speak only or 
chiefly to scholars : for although I shall touch on lines 
of thought which any students in theology who hear me 
may follow into deep waters, my earnest wish is to meet 
the wants of all thoughtful Christian men, to give them 
in a day of chaotic opinions that abiding truth, which to 
know is eternal life. 

We must begin our inquiry with a clear statement of 
our Protestant position, and the argument urged against 
it by the ablest opponents. The doctrines of a justifying 
faith in Christ, and of the supremacy of Holy Scripture 
as containing all necessary truth, are the ground of the 
Reformation. Both are sides of one principle. It is 
the claim of the Protestant that no traditions of men 
and no outward sacramental systems can come between 
the personal conscience and God ; and therefore the 
word of God alone can be the rule of faith. But it is 



THE Sl'UDY OF THE SCRIPTURES. 225 

the position of the Roman church, that such a principle 
is the claim only of the most lawless freedom. Although 
all may profess to hold one Bible, yet as the right to 
examine and settle its truth belongs to every conscience ; 
as many questions of doctrine as well as order are involv- 
ed in such study, which need Christian learning ; and 
as few have either the intellect or training for this, the 
Protestant claim is the source of unbelief or fanaticism. 
To talk of the inspiration of such a Book is a misnomer. 
If it can be interpreted by any sect or any man, it is no 
longer the word of God. None can state the reasoning 
better than a stern Protestant satirist of former days. 

" What is the Bible ? The book where each man seeks his own dogmas; 
Yes, and the book where each man certainly finds what he seeks." 

If there be unity of faith, then, it can only be possible 
when we admit the supreme authority of the church as 
interpreter; and tradition, so far from being contrary to 
Scripture, is thus necessary to it. Protestantism has 
been, says the Romanist, its own fearful commentary on 
this fact ; for since the day of Luther it has overturned 
not merely the system of the church, but the Scriptures 
whose authority it boasts ; and to-day its Bible means any- 
thing from Strauss to the latest unbelief. Nor is it only 
or chiefly as the destroyer of a sound learning that it is 
to be feared ; it is the destroyer of the simple religion of 
the people, the parent of all doubt and all impiety. Such 
has been the argument, from the "Variations" of Bossuet 
to the latest of these divines. I cannot give it in more 



226 THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE AND 

eloquent strength than in the discourse of the greatest of 
modern French preachers, Lacordaire, and I am anxious 
to do full justice to his reasoning : '' Take from the heav- 
enly order the force Newton has consecrated under the 
name of attraction, and at once the globes peopling the 
ether would fly in contrary paths, precipitated by that 
other force which is the schismatic power of nature. 
There must be a principle of unity superior to the ele- 
ments of discord which it nurses in its bosom, and this 
principle, it has a name : it is sovereignty. And as there 
is no civil society without sovereignty, there is no society 
of minds without an intellectual sovereignty. Should 
Protestants carry their doctrine over the world, what 
then 1 They would have sown the Bible, and with it 
some ideas it contains; but they would not have estab- 
lished a divine order, for they have none." This is the 
logic of the Roman-catholic system in a word : Unity of 
faith is impossible with Protestant freedom in the study 
of the Scriptures. 

We are, then, fairly to test this question. If my pur- 
pose were merely to answer the Romish doctrine, it 
would be enough to say that its objection comes from 
an utter misstatement of the Protestant principle. The 
aim of the Reformers, in claiming the supremacy of 
Scripture, was not at all to deny a due authority in 
the Christian church to interpret the Scripture, but 
to deny any authority to impose as of faith any dogmas 
"not proven by warranty of Scripture." Nor is the 
abuse of freedom in its interpretation any argument 



THE STUDY OF THE SCRIPTURES. 227 

against its right use. We hear quoted, often with a 
sneer, the old watchword, " The Bible is the religion of 
Protestants ;" but the sense in which that phrase was 
first uttered by Chillingworth, the most clear-headed of 
thinkers, was not that the Protestant faith meant what- 
ever any self-willed theorist or ignorant enthusiast might 
force on the Bible, but simply that it contained all neces- 
sary truth. But I do not wish merely to answer blow by 
blow. I wish fairly to meet all the difficulties of the case 
as they are felt by every thinking mind among Protes- 
tants themselves. Let us hear them honestly. Are 
there not, it is asked, many questions of science and crit- 
icism utterly beyond the range of any save learned 
men, which are yet claimed as necessary to the faith in 
revelation } Is there any real difference between a Prot- 
estant confession, which demands this, and a Romish 
infallibility ? Is not the notion of free inquiry in such a 
case a mockery } I cannot doubt that such questions 
are hard to reconcile with some of our prevailing ideas 
of Scripture, and the systems of doctrine identified with 
it. I cannot doubt that the dilemma has led many 
to the denial of all positive belief, and driven others 
into a church which rids them of a painful responsibility. 
And therefore I wish to consider this whole subject of 
the right of the conscience and the true authority it rec- 
ognizes. It will lead us to that view of Scripture which 
makes it in the noblest sense a sure word of truth, and 
that view of the church which makes it a living fellow- 
ship. 



228 THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE AND 

Let us, then, study the principle, which was the start- 
ing-point of Protestant thought. I have said that the 
doctrines of a justifying faith in Christ and the su- 
premacy of Holy Scripture are parts of one truth. 
What was this idea of justifying faith, which created 
a new life not only in theology, but in all thinking 
minds from a Luther to the plain Christian man.-* Was 
it another scholastic proposition to take the place of 
the reigning system } Surely no. It was the very con- 
trary. It was the good tidings that Christianity was no 
system of scholastic notions to be received by a blind 
assent, but the gospel which could only be known by 
the living knowledge of Christ. Such a principle up- 
rooted at once the theory on which was built the sacra- 
mental fabric of Rome. It opened that ethical and spir- 
itual path which has distinguished Protestant thought 
ever since from the traditionary religion of the past. 
And if the doctrine of justification has sometimes since 
been changed into a metaphysical notion as hard as those 
of the schools, it was in its original idea this restoration 
of a living, simple Christianity. The gospel of Christ is 
given for one only purpose — to reveal redemption from 
sin, our sonship with the Father, and a life of real holi- 
ness, as the way of the life eternal. This is its substance. 
It is clear, therefore, that such a revelation must come 
to every man as a personal being endowed with thought 
and conscience, and must demand the personal exercise 
of those powers to receive its truth. Jesus Christ, the 
giver of pardon, grace, life, the personal revealer of the 



THE STUDY OF THE SCRIPTURES. 229 

Father, is the object of knowledge. Such a knowledge, 
then, must be in its essential character different to any 
such assent as we give to mere authority in questions of 
science or of history. It begins with the recognition 
of our moral relation to God as his children, of his 
law of holiness and our sin, of the love of God as it 
meets this want in the incarnate grace of his Son. It 
is a knowledge, therefore, not only intellectual, but knit 
with the renewed affections, and through it we receive 
the truth of Christ as we are made one with his own 
spirit of holiness. His revelation becomes to us not 
only a doctrine, but a life of real growth in his fellow- 
ship, of daily duty to God and men. But if this be in- 
deed our conception of Christianity as a personal faith, 
it is clear, again, that it is no individual opinion, no sub- 
jective religion. It rests on the one common truth of 
the incarnate Son of God, whose revelation is the same 
for all men, because all have in their consciences the 
same fact of their relation to God, the same sense of 
sin, the same need of redemption. This was the Protes- 
tant principle ; and it is plain in this view that it was 
and was meant to be, not a new Christianity, but the old, 
positive, historic faith, as it was embodied in the Apos- 
tles' Creed, which Luther and all the Reformers held ; 
that faith, not in later dogmatic systems, but in the 
Gospel of the New Testament, which spoke at once to 
the mind of each personal believer, yet is the ground of 
fellowship for all who are members of the great house- 
hold of God. 



230 THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE AND 

We have here, then, the just and the only just view 
of this principle, as it bears on the doctrine of the 
supremacy and sufficiency of the Scriptures. The in- 
carnate Christ is the object of our faith. It is in 
this volume alone we have the original, pure record of 
the truth and grace he has bestowed ; and all the sys- 
tems of men can add nothing to it. We are, then, to 
interpret it in accordance with the law of its divine 
unity. It is given in the form of history; a history 
which teaches us the education of the world through its 
growing childhood to the birth of Him who was the fulness 
of times. That history, in its very structure, is mingled 
with many critical questions as to the creation, the an- 
nals of the early race, the development of Hebrew life, 
and the formation of the new Christian society. But its 
one essential purpose, so far as it concerns our belief as 
followers of Christ, is the knowledge of our redemption. 
Christ is the key of the Scriptures. It is " through the 
faith that is in Christ Jesus," the apostle says, in that 
much-misconceived verse of his epistle, we learn that 
"all Scriptures are given by divine inspiration." The 
spirit of his Gospel alone opens them. It gives us the 
knowledge that is not a scientific guess-work, but 
"profitable for teaching, for instruction in righteousness." 
If we have learned his truth, these pages from begin- 
ning to end have a living unity. The Old Testament 
reveals the one personal God, the creator of the world ; 
the origin of man as a son in his moral likeness ; the en- 
trance of sin bv the free act of transgression ; the contin- 



THE STUDY OF THE SCRIPTURES. 231 

nance of a divine grace in the long, preparatory training 
of the Hebrew past ; the holy law, which stands alone, 
like Sinai, in the moral desert of history. The New 
Testament reveals the perfect truth and grace of God in 
the person, the life, the sacrifice of Jesus Christ. All 
these parts of the sacred volume have thus their mutual 
connections, and all must be interpreted by their one 
divine purpose 

Such, then, must be the clear principle which guides 
us in our study. Whatever belongs to these foundation 
truths is the divine, infallible faith of Christian men. 
Whatever does not touch these lies within the outer cir- 
cle of scientific inquiry. I do not here dwell on the 
theory of verbal or plenary inspiration. If the view I 
have given you be clear, it will be seen that such a theo- 
ry, whatever the reverence of Scripture that prompts it, 
leaves the deepest difficulties of the subject unanswered. 
For if the Bible be indeed a book which only presents to 
us a vast number of critical riddles, to be received as 
part of essential revelation, yet in their very nature 
beyond the decision of any save the most critical scholar, 
and always open to fresh controversy, then it must de- 
mand, as the Romanist asks, an infallible interpreter. 
Our faith, then, needs a surer ground. It rests on the 
knowledge of Him who is the life of the written Word. 
It is our deeper reverence for its mspired truth, our faith 
in its real unity, which point us to the principle I have 
laid down. Such a knowledge will teach us the right 
point of view, from which we shall learn the worth of 



232 THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE AND 

the Hebrew history, its worship, its social polity, its he- 
roes and its saints, yet understand the far higher charac- 
ter of the Christian Gospel, and the Christian holiness. 
It will show us the due relation of all its parts, chronicle 
or psalm or prophecy, to the central design. It will show 
us the natural variety in the style of the writers, the 
tone of their thought, yet their true harmony. There will 
be no self-willed reason in this study, for it is to follow 
the reason of the Word itself. There will be no vague 
opinion, for we " hold the head, even Christ." We shall 
not fear the assaults of a false neology, because we 
shall be assured that all the results of earlier or later 
criticisms can no more shake the foundattons than the 
removing of a few loose stones can shake the walls of the 
cathedral. Much will interest us as Christian scholars, 
which will not touch our Christian faith. Science will 
decide at last, as it did with the heresy of Copernicus, 
the questions of our time as to the Mosaic cosmogony, 
or the age of the world ; yet its verdict will not disturb 
us, if the design of revelation be not to teach geology 
or astronomy, or the details of secular history, but to 
give us the knowledge of redemption. And as this is the 
plain rule for the scholar, so the simple believer will 
read this word without needless questions concerning that 
which has no bearing whatever on his faith or holiness. 
If we have not this knowledge of Christ's gospel, al- 
though we have sounded all the depths and shoals of criti- 
cism, we have not the alphabet of the truth ; if we have 
this, the sacred volume is one, one in its historic and 



THE STUDY OF THE SCRIPTURES. 233 

its spiritual meaning, one for the wise and the unlettered, 
one for the intellect, the heart, and the life. 

In such a light we pass clearly to the next weighty 
side of our subject, the authority of the church as the 
interpreter of the Scriptures. It is the claim of the 
Romanist and of others who deny the Protestant prin- 
ciple, that there must be unity of faith in regard to 
the truths of revelation. We grant this, nay, we affirm 
this unity as the very bond of fellowship. To deny it 
would be to make revelation a mockery. A religion or a 
church, which came out of no positive truth whatever, 
would be as like that of the New Testament, as the uni- 
verse of Prof. Haeckel out of a lifeless cell is like that of 
the Divine Maker. But the question on which hinges 
the real difference is as to the nature of this unity. What 
is it.-* We have already given the answer in the conclu- 
sion we reached as to the character of the Scripture 
itself. The truth of the W^ord of God has in itself, as we 
sought to show, an intrinsic unity ; it is the one revela- 
tion of Jesus Christ, of the son ship and fellowship of 
believers in him. There need be, then, no contradic- 
tion whatever, and no perplexity as to the superior 
claim of Bible or of church. It is said that the church 
existed before the Scripture, and that the canon itself 
rests on its authority. Undoubtedly. It is said that the 
Scripture is above the church. Undoubtedly. But the 
view which we have given, reconciles them. Jesus Christ, 
the living Word, is before and above both. The Incar- 
nation is the key of the Bible ; without it there remains 

20- 



234 ^-J^HE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE AND 

a dead letter. The Incarnation is the basis of our or- 
ganic fellowship ; without it creed and sacrament are dead. 
Scripture and the church, then, bear witness to one and 
the selfsame essential truth. The written word remains 
always the original, supreme and sufficing record of 
him, nor can any authority of human councils add any- 
thing as of necessary belief to what he has given. It is 
the function of the church to keep this truth in its sim- 
plicity, to embody in its creed the clear meaning of 
revelation, to expound it through its authorized teachers, 
its. devout worship, and its methods of practical educa- 
tion. 

A Christian creed is thus the growth of Christian 
thought. It was necessary that the truth of the Incar- 
nate Christ should be defined in its more doctrinal form, 
when our religion had passed beyond the plain belief of 
apostolic days, and many speculative theories had be- 
clouded its simplicity. The great doctrines of sin, atone- 
ment, grace, have been the successive expositions of the 
one revealed fact of God in Christ, as age after age they 
have employed the mind of the church. But while this 
is true, the unity of the faith is not the unity of a theolo- 
gical system. Creeds and confessions have their needful 
use as a bulwark against speculative errors, but they are 
not the living truth itself. We have in the science of 
' astronomy the noblest work of the human mind in reckon- 
ing the orbit of the sun and the varied motion of 
the planets, yet the sun, not the treatise of astronomy, 
gives light and heat. And even so it is the personal 



THE STUDY OF THE SCRIPTURES. 235 

power of Christ's truth which gives life. The belief 
in his Incarnation did not rest on the vote of an assem- 
bly of bishops in. the Nicene age ; the common faith 
of believers uttered itself in the creed, and this is the 
truth speaking in the New Testament now and always 
in the divine sinless grace of his person, of which the 
symbol is only the scientific expression. Thus it is with 
each doctrine. Augustin may expound the meaning of 
sin, Anselm may give us a theory of the atonement, 
Calvin may reason of the riddle of grace and will ; but 
it is the fact of sin in the conscience of each, the truth of 
redemption as it speaks in the heartfelt revelation of the 
Saviour, which makes believers one. And hence the 
chief duty of the church is, while it guards against 
ignorant interpretation, to keep "the healthy teaching" 
which St. Paul so often urges, by an appeal to the open 
word of Scripture. Here alone in the primitive, fresh 
gospel we have the touchstone by which to try the dross 
of all traditions; here we all, scholars or simple, have 
one common birthright. 

Now this clear principle we are to distinguish from 
the false view of the church as the interpreter of the 
word. It is the claim of the Romanist that Scripture 
is the record of divine truth ; but its interpretation is 
given to one class of teachers alone, and a Christian faith 
is an unquestioning assent to its decrees. Let us not 
mistake the difference. This claim is not only to the 
authority of a wise teaching, consistent with the open 
knowledge of the word of God, but to infallibility. And 



236 THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE AND 

I beg you again, to observe the ground of the claim. It 
is that false conception of the Scriptures which I have 
endeavored to expose. It is the assumption of the Ro- 
manist, that the Christian revelation is a system of ab- 
stract dogmas, of scientific riddles, which must therefore 
be a sealed book to all, save a few authorized expounders. 
I turn to one of the most subtle of modern defences^ 
the Grammar of Assent, by Mr. Newman, for the clear 
statement of the doctrine. " It stands to reason that all, 
learned and unlearned, are bound to believe the whole 
revealed doctrine in all its parts and all it implies ; it 
stands also to reason, that a doctrine so deep and various, 
as the revealed dcpositmn of faith, cannot be brought 
home to us and made our own all at once." " The difficulty 
is removed by the dogma of the church's infallibility and 
of the consequent duty of implicit faith in her word. It 
stands in the place of all abstruse propositions in a 
Catholic mind, for to believe in her word is virtually to 
believe in them all. Even what he cannot understand, 
he can believe to be true, and he believes it to be true, 
because he believes in the church." Examine now the 
logic. If the word of God be such a riddle, "deep and 
various," and if essential faith be in this riddle, then 
in very deed many Protestant minds would cry, " Let 
us give up our torturing responsibility, and rest in the 
Nirvana of the infallible church. But if it be not this, 
if it be a revelation indeed for the mind and heart, 
such a claim is the most astounding of absurdities. We 
lay bare here the root of the sophistry. Such a faith 



THE STUDY OF THE SCRIPTURES. 237 

is not the acceptance of the truth of Christ as it meets 
our personal thought or affection ; it is the assent of the 
blind mind to a sum of abstruse propositions which we 
cannot know at all, but believe because we are told to 
believe them. If this be Christianity, then it is no reve- 
lation. The word of God is a mockery, for it can convey 
no light even through the glasses of its pretended inter- 
preters. This mental assent is such as the man of 
science would demand, should he say, '* You cannot see 
the stars with the naked eye ; put out your eyes and then 
look through my telescope." If this again be Catholic 
unity, then the truths of our salvation are a deposit of 
esoteric dogma in the hands of an irresponsible priest- 
hood. If this be Catholic certainty, then the meaning of 
the Scripture is not surer than when left at the mercy of 
a hundred sects, for we have absolutely no test left to 
judge between its truth and every tradition. Who does 
not see, that out of this root has sprung the harvest of 
falsehoods } The church declares as Christ's word, " this 
is my body," and, therefore, a bit of bread is Christ, al- 
though sense, reason, and Scripture, deny it; and for the 
communion that asks your intelligent faith, you must hold 
a senseless and soulless marvel on peril of salvation. Yet 
we have devout men to-day, who for fear of unbelief will 
choose this theory and call it the unity of faith. Strange 
insanity ! It will make a hundredfold more unbelievers 
than the most destructive criticism. But let us not 
merely recognize here the error of a Roman- catholic 
system. It may lurk and does too often lurk in Protes- 



238 THE CHRISTIAiy CONSCIENCE AND 

tant disguise. If instead of the simple truth of the 
gospel of Christ, we make it an abstruse theology or 
a volume of scientific riddles, we shall reach a like con- 
clusion. Whether it be Trent, or Dort, or Westmin- 
ster, whether Anglo-catholic or any other, to mistake 
the authority of theological confessions for the unity of 
the faith, is the principle of infallibility. Our Chris- 
tianity becomes a gospel of notions, not a living word 

And if, then, we so understand the rightful relation 
of Scripture to the church, we can at once apply our rea- 
sonmg to the conclusion before us — our right and our 
responsibility in this study. The law which binds our 
conscience, and the freedom we must maintain in the 
pursuit of the truth, are not contrary to each other, but 
one, I shall take up each of these points in its order. 
We have the true idea of law : not the surrender of our 
Christian right to any arbitrary power, but our intelligent, 
willing unity in the body of Christ. We recognize in 
our relation to the church the same organic fact we ac- 
cept in all our growth. Each of us has his education from 
youth to manhood in this social atmosphere ; and each 
must find this training in science or letters, under the 
care of the best teachers, in the studies suited to his 
powers, that he may gain the self-discipline for his call- 
ing. Nor is it less so with our Christian nurture. There 
are few, unless they have been bred in the thin air of 
free religion, who sit down in youth to construct a belief ; 
and if, like Mr. Mill, any has been guarded from all reli- 
gious bias, he will only accept Atheism by faith in his 



THE STUDY OF THE SCRIPTURES. 239 

father's infallibility. None ever reads the Bible " without 
note or comment." We receive the current ideas of doc- 
trine from home-teaching, book, Sunday-school, pulpit ; we 
catch many opinions, to be corrected by riper thought. 
But such authority is not arbitrary ; it is the same defer- 
ence to superior learning we pay in questions of law or 
natural science. I have indeed no faith in the cloistered 
training which keeps the young mind in the ignorance 
of all criticism, or in the mechanical study of the Bible, 
for such a mistake too often whets doubt ; but I have as 
little in the slipshod religion that forgets the need of 
mental and moral discipline. We can only gain in the 
instruction of the Christian household the reverent rea- 
son which can enable us to pass beyond the school. If 
we have learned the simple truths of a Father, a Re- 
deemer, a Sanctifier, the law of a pure conscience, the 
affections that bind us with Christ and men, the habits 
of a growing holiness, the modesty of true knowledge, 
we have the heart of wisdom ; and whatever the mental 
struggles or even the doubt of after years, we shall sel- 
dom fall into a shallow or a mocking unbelief. 

Such is the authority we recognize as that which 
binds us in the communion of Christ. It is the au- 
thority of learning. It is the authority of holiness. 
It is the authority of a common faith. We do not, 
because we hold the Protestant faith and accept the 
Bible as the oracle of truth, therefore make a new 
Christianity ; but rather, we claim our share in all the 
wisdom that has studied its divine pages. The history 



240 THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE AND 

of the church is not a mere wrangle of theological opin- 
ions. The essential truths of Christ, his doctrine and 
sacraments, are unchanged in their real influence ; nor 
do we confound with any systems of any teachers the 
faith that abides always, everywhere, and for all. It is a 
far truer view of catholicity which our Protestant belief 
gives us than that which I have cited from Lacordaire. 
The unity of the church, in his idea, is like the power of 
the sun, which masters the " schismatic force " that tends 
to draw the planets from the centre. But let us study 
this magnificent figure. If there were no centrifugal 
power to balance the attraction, the planets would be 
drawn into the scorching bosom of the sun. That is 
the unity of Rome. It is not there we find the attractive 
power that keeps the life of Christianity. Unity in the 
church, as in nature, combines authority and moral free- 
dom. Where is this abiding religion.? It is just where 
it was in the apostolic or Nicene age. It lives in the 
Word of God and in the fellowship of Christian men. 
All the controversies of the schools, all the questions 
that concern the critic, do not materially affect it. It is 
not probable that the habit of Christian prayer will die 
out because Mr. Tyndall has proposed his prayer gauge, 
or that a thousand theories will disturb the life of reli- 
gion. The purpose of the gospel of Christ is for gui- 
dance in the way of daily duty, and therefore it can never 
lose its power. It teaches the same Father, Redeemer, 
and Sanctifier; it heals the conscience in its struggles 
with sin, ministers to rich or poor, lettered or simple, 



THE STUDY OF THE SCRIPTURES. 241 

one law of social duty, one comfort in trial, holds up the 
cross of Christ, and opens the gates of life eternal. And 
it is the truest mark of the divinity of our religion, that 
it has this adaptation to the mind and heart of all men. 
There is a science for the scholar, and a sufficing wis- 
dom for the less-gifted believer. Few can master the 
Hebrew or Greek Scriptures ; £ew can decide the nice 
questions of Christian evidence ; but he that hath the 
Son of God hath the witness in himself. A Laplace can 
map the heavens by his Mecaiiiqiie Celeste ; but the sea- 
man, with a simpler knowledge, shall guide his vessel by 
the same stars through the dangers of the ocean ; and 
even so a Christian man, if he be not able to meet all the 
speculative riddles of the time, to settle the facts of geol- 
ogy or the law of evolution, may walk in the light of a 
positive truth with a faith as reasonable as it is heartfelt. 
Is it a blind assent to the voice of an infallible church 
which gives this unity .? No. It is that the foundation 
truths of the Christian revelation are one for the con- 
science and the life. When I turn to Augustin, as he 
reasons of the loftiest problems of the providence of God 
and the nature of the soul, I hear him say at last, " In 
Cicero and Plato I meet with many things acutely spo- 
ken, but in them all I find not this : * Come unto me, ye 
weary and heavyladen, and I will give you rest ;' " and if 
I go to the humblest disciple, who has learned this faith 
in the Son of God amid the trials of daily life, I have the 
centre and sum of a Christian theology. 

We may thus pass to the point which completes 
21 



242 THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE AND 

our view — the freedom of inquiry in the study of the 
Scriptures. If the truth of revelation, as I have 
shown, is one and unchanging, because it Hves in its 
original record and in the fellowship of all believers, 
yet the exposition of the book is human, and therefore 
capable of clearer and clearer knowledge. There must 
be always in the church of Christ a spirit of healthful 
growth. We are never to confound with the abiding 
faith the methods of Biblical interpretation. The criti- 
cism of the Word of God must, in its very nature, change 
with our closer study of language, the light thrown on 
Hebrew or Christian history from all sources of later 
learning, and the correction of past errors. It is impos- 
sible to find in any science, in the advance of astronomy 
from the rude chart of the heavens to the laws of New- 
ton, or of anatomy from Galen to our times, a riper 
growth than from the allegorical methods of the early 
fathers to the historic criticism of our day. We love the 
spiritual insight of Augustin, but his fanciful interpreta- 
tion of the days of creation would be thought to-day 
strange absurdity. This mystical exposition has been 
consecrated in the Latin church. But Protestantism, 
while it has from the first been truer to the Scripture, has 
only by degrees freed itself from the same methods. It 
has too often interpreted the Scripture by its theological 
systems, instead of its systems by Scripture. The Old 
Testament has been turned into a riddle, and the epistles 
of St. Paul read through our controversial glasses. We 
have too many to-day who follow the canon of Cocceius, 



THE STUDY OF THE SCRIPTURES, 243 

that the Bible should have all the occult meanings they 
can find in it. Yet each step has brought us nearer and 
nearer to the true method. And it is the glory of our 
Protestant faith that, as it claims above all to find truth 
in the Word of God, it has, in spite of its partial sys- 
tems, encouraged that free, yet reverent study which 
is sure at last to correct its own errors, and lead to 
a living knowledge. The only condition of a healthy 
life, intellectual or spiritual, is in this ceaseless growth. 
Let there be an authority that frowns on all culture, ste- 
reotypes all belief by its theological confessions, and calls 
all reasonable thought rationalism, and it will end in stag- 
nation ; nay, it will always create rationalism in its own 
bosom. It -is passing strange that readers of history, 
Protestant as well as Romish, so often mistake this 
principle. The dogmatism of one generation reacts in 
the heresy of the next. The pent-up reason finds its 
only freedom in a wild explosion. What can give us 
so sure a lesson as the church which boasts infallibility ! 
No communion has held within its bosom more war- 
ring elements : Jansenist and Jesuit ; rationalists like 
Abelard who tore up school theology by the roots, Pan- 
theists who grafted Averroes on the stock of Catholic 
faith, materialists, in the age before the Reformation, who 
denied soul and immortality ; yet all its efforts to burn 
out thought by the fagot, or its modern anathemas against 
science, have ended in an unbelief among educated minds 
far deadlier than any of Protestant growth. Yet we have 
too often forgotten the lesson. It cannot be doubted, as 



244 THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE AND 

Dorner has clearly shown in his history of the reformed 
doctrine, that the earlier neology of Germany, was the 
natural child of the formal theology. Where then, is 
the security of the faith against false science? It 
lies in the growth of true science. The church must 
keep its simple creed, its reverent training ; but it 
must have such trust in the divine power of truth, 
that it can encourage a wise freedom. When I hear 
some of our modern dogmatists say that the Protestant 
principle leads to rationalism, I smile as I should at one 
who forbade pure water, because it holds an inflammable 
gas. That spirit is at bottom indifference to truth. The 
real secret of the power which an infallible church has 
over many minds, is that it satisfies their sloth and rids 
them of the responsibility of thought. It was well said 
by John Locke, that if infallibility had been best, it had 
been better that God should make each man infallible, 
since mistake would then be impossible; yet he has not 
done so. Christian truth is given to the church for its 
growth. It must keep the open word of God ; it must 
win its victories over error by a sounder learning. 

But perhaps I cannot better close this argument 
than by taking as my example the lesson, which the his- 
tory of Biblical criticism furnishes at this day. I have no 
space for more than a sketch ; but enough, if it teach us 
what I have striven to enforce, that our best Christian 
learning is the fruit of our struggles. We look with 
natural alarm at the unbelief which seeks to undermine 
the very ground of a divine revelation ; yet if we will 



THE STUDY OF THE SCRIPTURES. 245 

study its steps, we shall have no unwise fears of the 
result. I have said already, that the neology, which had 
its birth in the church of Luther, came from the decay of 
theology itself, which had hid the living truth of Scrip- 
ture under its formal system. There was no true study 
of its historic structure or its unity of design. It was 
an easy work for the critic to sweep away the rubbish of 
former interpreters, to explain the miracles by ingenious 
natural theory ; and for a time it seemed that every part 
of the Old and New Testaments would be destroyed by this 
piecemeal process. But it was another task when the old 
earthworks were demolished, and the rationalist came face 
to face with the central truths of revelation. A new gen- 
eration of thinkers like Strauss followed the negative 
critics. This was the positive question they had to 
meet, what should explain that greatest of all miracles, 
the person of Christ, the central fact of both revela- 
tion and human history } And here, then, the Word 
of God called out the new learning of its defenders. It 
awoke a deeper study of the Scriptures. It has ended 
to-day in the noblest results. Undoubtedly our older 
methods of interpretation have been changed in many 
points ; but we have gained a larger and surer ground. 
The Old Testament has been studied in the light of 
history ; and the divine features, in which it stands 
above all records, its truths of one God, its stately law, 
its unity of design, its work in the education of the race, 
remain its unshaken evidence. But the result of this 

study is nobler yet in the New Testament. Neology has 

21* 



246 THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE AND 

centred its strength in the effort to explain away the 
historic miracle of Christ. It has sought to make him a 
mythj it has sought again to give a later origin to the 
Gospels ; but each attempt has ended in clearer evidence 
of fact. The contest is not over. It may even seem to 
many in this day of a gross atheism to be fiercer than 
before. But it is precisely here we find the best promise 
of the end. For it is no longer a pretended Christianity 
with which we have to strive ; it is an unbelief, which 
confesses that there is no standing ground between an 
unknowable God and the revelation of Jesus Christ. 
And more than this, it is clear that the long struggle has 
ended in the sounder learning, the more living faith of 
the Christian church. We have gained not only a truer 
knowledge of the Scriptures, but through this of the char- 
acter of revelation itself. It is the aim of our best 
thought to turn away from the unreal strifes of our 
theological schools, and to come back to the sources ; 
to measure systems of doctrine and church parties by 
the one simple truth of Christ, not Christ by them ; and 
this will bring at last the only unity. A theology of the 
New Testament, a church of the New Testament is what 
we need. This is the result, this is the noble witness of 
a Christian learning. We may mourn over the strifes of 
error, but we are false to the cause of Christ, false to 
the whole history of the past, false to all the labors of 
the wise, false to the best hopes of the future, if we have 
not this unshaken faith in the victory of truth. 

And thus, my friends, I may gather these thoughts 



THE STUDY OF THE SCRIPTURES. 247 

into their plain conclusion. I have shown you the rela- 
tion of the Christian conscience to the gospel of Christ. 
I have shown you the unity of the truth given in the writ- 
ten word, and the method of its study : its right harmo- 
ny with the doctrinal authority of the church, the abiding 
character of Christian belief, yet its growth in true knowl- 
edge. If my reasoning be clear, I need but a few words 
to enforce it on all who have an interest in the inquiries, 
that busy thoughtful men of our own time. I hope that 
my view, however imperfect, will give you such guiding 
principles as may keep you, in a day of many teachers 
and many creeds, true to the one divine Master. It is 
not an easy task to keep this harmony of a free conscience 
with authority. It is a path between the rock of tradi- 
tion and the quicksand of unbelief. But if you have 
learned aright the living character of that truth, revealed 
in the New Testament, it will direct you in its study. 
You will not mistake for a sound reason the mind 
which examines it without any knowledge of its spir- 
itual purpose, or with a merely critical keenness to dis- 
sect the letter. Such study will end only in a shallow 
misinterpretation. It is the book which teaches the 
history of God's dealing with men, the life of the Re- 
deemer, and the law of duty ; and if that be its de- 
sign, it must demand of us that we approach it with a 
reverent heart. Such a spirit will not check the love of 
honest inquiry : it will inspire it We shall, if we be 
scholars, whose work it is to explore this mine, carry 
with us the safety lamp of a devout wisdom. We shall be 



248 THE CHRISTIAN CONSCIENCE AND 

able to distinguish between the essential truth it reveals, 
and the questions that are open to a scientific criticism ; 
we shall welcome every true result of learning, without 
being carried away by the brilliant, but unproved theories 
of our time. We shall hold fast the truth we know, and 
keep a calm trust in it amidst the changes of opinion. This 
is the reasonable freedom of a Christian mind. It has no 
kindred with the free religion, which thinks it possesses 
truth because it has renounced all positive creed. There 
is no Christian freedom save in the truth. And it is as far 
on the other side from the spirit, which accepts the tradi- 
tions of men instead of an intelligent and honest knowl- 
edge. Let us never be of those whom Hooker describes 
as minds that "use reason only to disgrace reason." 
There may be a rationalism, which weaves its theories, 
and calls them revelation — a rationalism as fatal to the 
simplicity of Christ as unbelief. Whatever its name, 
whether of infallible Pontiff or Protestant system, it 
must never usurp the authority we can only give to our 
divine Master. Let us gladly promote all sound knowl- 
edge. Let us hail without fear that noblest work of our 
time, which will give the church a faithful revision of the 
Scriptures, assured that it will reveal more truly the 
mind of its Author. Let us defend the faith always with 
the weapons of fair argument, of manly learning ; for we 
know that " we can do nothing against the truth, but for 
the truth." 

This is our right and responsibility in the study of 
the Holy Scripture. It is the gift of God. The Word 



2UIE STUDY OF THE SCRIPTURES. 249 

is not bound ; it is free as the mind of Christ : it fears 
no criticism ; it asks no earthworks of false defence ; it is 
strong enough to conquer the traditions and the unbeUef of 
men ; it lay buried for centuries, alive in its charmed sleep, 
within the sarcophagus of a Latin superstition, and it 
came forth, like its Lord, to the better resurrection ; it 
has led the march of all knowledge, all civilization, and 
opens to-day in fuller light the mind of Him in whom are 
hid all treasures of wisdom. But it is a gift which links 
our freedom with our obedience ; and as we use or abuse 
it, we shall answer to its Giver. If we obscure, if we dis- 
tort, if we despise or neglect it, we can make the light 
darkness ; if we read, know, follow it. in his spirit who 
inspired its truth, we shall gain the knowledge which is 
eternal life. 



Majesty and Holiness 



OF 



THE BIBLE 



REV. MATTHEW SIMPSON, D. D., LL.D., 

BISHOP OF THE METHODIST EPISCOPAL CHURCH. 



_d 



MAJESTY 



AND 



HOLINESS OF THE BIBLE 



Unlike other books, the Bible has neither preface 
nor introduction. Nor has it definitions, postulates, 
axioms or elementary theorems on which to build its 
science of theology, or to prepare its students for its 
higher revelations or developments. Its first words 
bring us face to face with eternity and divinity, and solve 
the perplexing problem of the origin of matter. Terse 
as are its utterances, however, and suddenly as they 
come upon us, there is a sublimity and grandeur in its 
representations of the divine character which no other 
writings contain. In the words of the Psalmist, '* He is 
clothed with majesty." 

The Scriptures never attempt to prove the existence 
of God. To the Jew in the time of Moses, that was un- 
, necessary. Had he not beheld the wonderful series of 
miracles which astonished and finally overwhelmed the 
mind of Pharaoh ? Had he not known of the destruc- 
tive tempests, and fearful darkness, and of the avenging 

22 



254 MAJESTY AND HOLINESS 

angel ? Had he not walked through the Red sea, and 
joined in the triumphant song of deliverance, when the 
Egyptian hosts perished in the recurrent waves? Had 
not the pillar of fire shined on his pathway, and had 
he not heard the voice as of a trumpet, which, from 
Sinai's fiery summit, proclaimed the eternal law ? He 
knew there was a God. Nor do the Scriptures propose 
to prove the attributes of God. They shine forth in 
his wonderful actions, which were to his ancient people 
familiar throughout their history. But, ever and anon, 
referring to these great facts, the inspired penman utters 
the most beautiful and enrapturing views of the divine 
character and government. 

The majesty of these Biblical representations may be 
referred, chiefly to the names given to the Deity, the 
ACTIONS which he performed, and the language and 
SYMBOLS employed in delineating his attributes and 
government. 

The names by which he is revealed fill us with 
thoughts of his wonderful greatness and glory : and yet 
these terms so imperfectly reveal him, that a fearful 
mystery environs his character. " Clouds and darkness 
are round about him, righteousness and judgment are 
the habitation of his throne." He is " In the beginning, 
God:" the " Elohiin'' the strong and "mighty one." 
Yet mystery is here. ** Elohim " is plural ; yet as he 
creates, the verb is singular. He is more than one, as 
in his soleness, from the depth of eternity, his rays of 
briofhtness burst on human vision. He is but one, as the 



OF THE BIBLE. 255 

universe issues from the fiat of his almighty power. He 
is cl, the mighty, shaddai, the almighty, the all-sufficient ; 
he is adonai, Hie governor, the king, the judge. 

But a thousand years have passed away, and God's 
promises remain unfulfilled. The seed of Abraham 
were to be as the stars of heaven and as the sand on the 
seashore for multitude. They were to possess the land 
of Canaan. Kings were to be of his lineage. Yet his 
posterity are still in bondage in Egypt. They are slaves 
to taskmasters : they groan under the lash ; their male 
children are inhumanly destroyed. Moses, who sought 
to help, has fled to the desert. Forty years has he been 
a shepherd ; and now, an old man, he is ready to de- 
spair. God comes in the burning bush ; it is not an 
exhibition of power for which Moses yearned, it is to 
know that God will fulfil his word — that his purposes 
have not changed. He receives a commission to deliver 
the Israelites — a looking, longing, suffering people, who 
are crying for help and hope for a Saviour. But what 
shall Moses say } How beautifully simple is the narra- 
tive : " And Moses said unto God [Elohim], Behold, when 
I come unto the children of Israel, and shall say unto 
them. The God of your fathers hath sent me unto you, 
and they shall say to me. What is his name 1 what shall 
I say unto them } And God [Elohim], said unto Moses, I 
AM THAT I AM ; and thus shalt thou say unto the children 
of Israel, I am hath sent me unto you." 

This name, ydiovaJi or yahveh, I am that I aiUf sig- 
nifies self existence, perpetual existence, immutability. 



256 MAJESTY AND HOLINESS 

He remembered his covenant with Abraham, and he 
came to fulfil it. Four hundred and thirty years had the 
patriarch's posterity been in a strange land, and now 
about to show that, 

" What his mouth in^truth had said, 
His own ahnighty arm would do." 

He declares his perpetual sameness. " He is the same yes- 
terday, to-day and for ever." To confirm Moses more fully, 
he said again, " I am Jehovah. I appeared unto Abraham, 
unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God almigh- 
ty, but by my name Jehovah was I not known to them ; 
and I have also established my covenant with them to 
give them the land of Canaan, the land of their pil- 
grimage wherein they were strangers. And I have also 
heard the groanings of the children of Israel, whom the 
Egyptians keep in bondage, and I have remembered my 
covenant, and I will bring you in unto the land, concern- 
ing the which I did swear to give it to Abraham, to 
Isaac, and to Jacob." 

These two elements, almightiness to do and un- 
changing and unchangeable purpose to accomplish, give 
to humanity all possible assurance. The whole line of 
providences recorded in the Bible but illustrates these 
great attributes, and teaches us to become followers of 
them who through faith and patience inherit the promi- 
ses. Such a wonderful impression did the revelation of 
God, as the / am, make upon the Jew, that he utters 
not that word, but substitutes for it Adonaiy or Shaddai. 



OF THE BIBLE. 



257 



It represents an ever-present God, an eye never slumber- 
ing, a promise ever borne in mind, a memory which can- 
not forget, a purpose that will not change, an ever-watch- 
ful Jehovah, who listens to every cry, counts every tear, 
fathoms the depths of every sorrow, and in due time will 
appear as the almighty deliverer. 

This God of power and of self-existence appears " In 
the beginningr When was that beginning ? It was before 
creation, for he created the heavens and the earth. And 
in his psalm, Moses exclaims, •* Before the mountains 
were brought forth, or ever thou hadst formed the earth 
and the world, even from everlasting to everlasting, thou 
art God." And of Christ, the apostle says, " He is 
before all things, and by him all things consist." " All 
things were made by him, and for him, and without him 
was not anything made that was made." If the question 
is repeated, when was that beginning } I answer, I can- 
not tell. The human intellect cannot estimate distances 
either in space or time, but by intermediate measures or 
periods. Moses looks away back through the vista of 
time, and as he passes unnumbered periods by the way, 
on and on, he beholds a beginning. God is there, sole, 
imderived, almighty. Those of you who have seen the 
diorama of Paris, either in that city or at our Centennial, 
know how almost impossible it is to distinguish distances 
by the unaided eye. So, as we gaze at the heavens on a 
cloudless night, the moon, the planets, and the fixed 
stars, shine on us as in the same vast expanse, and seem 
about equidistant. Yet, when we have reached that 

22* 



258 MAJESTY AND HOLINESS 

moon, we have taken only a step towards the sun. Saturn, 
which shines so near in the western sky, is five times 
as distant as the sun himself; and that comet, just 
'starting on its distant journey, so distant as to be five 
hundred years beyond our sight till it return again — in 
that flight shall not reach even the neighborhood of those 
fixed stars. If we refer to what was a hundred years ago 
the general opinion, creation was supposed to be some 
six thousand years old. That period is vastly distant. 
You step in Westminster Abbey, among the dead of a 
thousand years. It seems like an eternity past. You 
visit the pyramids of Egypt, where Napoleon saw forty 
centuries looking down on his troops, and still the begin- 
ning lies far beyond. Refer then to geological specula- 
tion. Read the record of vast changes — of beds of fire 
solidifying in ages past into granitic rocks ; deposits of 
limestone and coal and sandstones, for long centuries, 
from the overflowing sea ; wide-reaching beds of rock 
formed of shells so small the microscope alone can show 
their form — and the beginning retrocedes thousands, if 
not millions of years. Still we see " In the beginning, 
God." Go to the astronomer, especially of the evolution 
school, and he tells you of fire-mist, and of its condensa- 
tion into suns, planets, and worlds, long myriads of years 
before earth had her form. He fancies stars so far away, 
that their light would require more than five hundred 
thousand years to reach our earth. Be it so, yet we have 
" In the beginning, God." Far as the geological period 
antedates the old era, far as the astronomical era pre- 



OF THE BIBLE. 259 

cedes that, so far, nay a million times farther, antedate 
the time, yet both reason and revelation cry out, " In 
the beginning, God." " He is the high and lofty one 
that inhabiteth eternity." " Thy throne is established of 
old, and thou art from everlasting to everlasting." We 
join with the apostle and with the innumerable hosts of 
heaven, in saying, *' To the king eternal, immortal, invis- 
ible, the only wise God, be honor and glory for ever and 
ever." 

The Bible represents God, not only as eternal, but 
as the creator of all things. How different is this from 
the fancies of ancient mythology. Jupiter, " the father 
of gods and men," " the omnipotent father," as he is 
sometimes called, was the son of Saturn, who had de- 
throned his father. They were born upon the earth ; 
but matter was eternal. The heavenly court was on and 
above Olympus. Gods were, as Geiger well says, " a tur- 
bulent aristocracy : one mightier than the rest but not 
almighty." Juno, the wife of Jupiter, succeeded in put- 
ting him to sleep during a battle of the Greeks before 
Troy. So angry was he with her, for raising a storm to 
impede Hercules, that he suspended her from heaven by 
a chain, with anvils tied to her feet ; and when her son 
Vulcan attempted to interfere, he hurled him headlong to 
the isle of Lemnos. Among the Hindoos the ancient 
Veda shows that the gods they worshipped were the 
elements, which were thus in being before their gods. 
The later philosophical speculations speak of a first 
cause, respecting which they utter some beautiful expres- 



26o MAJESTY AND HOLINESS 

sions. Yet this first cause wakes and sleeps, has days and 
nights — long nights of twelve million years. He creates 
lower deities which form the earth and preside over the 
elements, himself absorbed in profound contemplation ; 
and of these deities which control the earth, some are pa- 
trons of evil. 

The Scriptures rise infinitely beyond and above all 
such descriptions. Pure and holy in his majesty — the 
only Creator, " He spake and it was done : He commanded 
and it stood fast." " By the word of the Lord were the 
heavens made, and all the host of them by the breath of 
his mouth." In the Greek mythology, starry Uranus 
was the offspring of the earth. The earth was the grand 
centre around which the heavens moved. But while the 
ancient prophets knew not the true system of the uni- 
verse, yet by them, God declares, " Heaven is my throne, 
and the earth is my footstool." Indeed, it is one of the 
surprising facts, that the discoveries of science and the 
extension of knowledge give increasing sublimity and 
grandeur to the Biblical representations of God ; while 
they completely expose the puerility and falsehood of 
the ancient mythology, and of other systems of error. 
According to the Bible, not only was the earth created, 
but the sun, moon, and stars, and all the "hosts of 
heaven." Neither Moses nor David probably knew much 
about these hosts. For many long centuries they were 
not comprehended by science. No telescope had been 
formed to gather and concentrate their distant rays. 
To-day that host is innumerable. The distant nebulae 



OF THE BIBLE. 261 

have been resolved, and all those worlds which appear, 
where light just trembles on the verge of shade, are a 
part of these hosts which Elohhn created. How full and 
comprehensive is the declaration of Nehemiah, " Thou 
hast made heaven, the heaven of heavens, with all their 
hosts, the earth and all things that are therein ; the seas 
and all that is therein, and thou preservest them all, and 
the host of heaven worshippeth thee." The patriarch 
Job exclaims, " Which alone spreadeth out the heavens, 
and treadeth upon the waves of the sea; which maketh 
Arcturus, Orion, and Pleiades, and the chambers of the 
south." 

The shepherd company, with Moses in the wilder- 
ness, knew little of the vastness of the universe. Possi- 
bly we ourselves have only yet seen the beginning of 
the pathway that leads to the throne. The language of 
Scripture, however, suits all stages of knowledge, all de- 
grees of development. God is alike the creator, whether 
there be few worlds or myriads. Let us think for a mo- 
ment what is involved in creation. Our whole visible 
sky may be but as a little island in the heavens, beyond 
whose surrounding seas lie grander islands, or stretch 
out vast continents of systems, full of their Creator's 
glory. In our visible sky, our solar system occupies but 
a little space. In our system, the earth is scarcely visi- 
ble to many of its sister planets. Yet on that earth, 
what forms of life — what myriads of living beings walk, 
or fly, or creep upon the earth. The little branches of 
moss that scarcely tinge with color the surface of the 



262 MAJESTY AND HOLINESS 

rock, afford shelter and sustenance for millions of animal- 
culae. The sea is full of life. Every drop of water teems 
with being. Yon phosphorescent glow on the ocean's sur- 
face is from multitudes beyond number. The air is full of 
livmg germs. Tyndall, in a recent lecture, states that in 
his experiments they would pass through the pressed 
cotton wadding in his tubes, and boiling oil did not de- 
stroy their life. 

In creation, as revealed in the Scriptures, we have 
eternity of being. God appears uncreated, underived, 
sole, self-existing. He conceives creation. He thinks 
of matter, and chooses its properties ; determines mag- 
nitudes, distances, motions, and constituents of all worlds ; 
conceives all forms of being in heaven, earth, air, or sky — 
their sizes, organs, functions, appetites, instincts, desires, 
perpetuation — their inner structure, their food, growth, 
period of life, and decay. Not only all existing forms, 
but all possible forms lie open to his inspection. Then 
tliere is consciousness of creating power ; and he wills 
that his thoughts shall take form. At his will, all worlds, 
all forms of matter, all degrees of life, from the animal- 
cule and the worm, to the angel and seraph, spring into 
being, and are simply his thoughts made visible or so- 
lidified. From himself alone the matter of all worlds has 
issued ; and yet, undiminished in power and grandeur, he 
is the same great and glorious Jehovah, dwelling in light, 
whom no man hath seen or can see. He is God over all, 
blessed for evermore. 

A moment's consideration will show that in creation, 



OF THE BIBLE. 263 

omniscience is involved, as well as omnipotence. God 
must know all that he has made ; must know them not 
only in their existences, but in their possibilities; not 
only lo-day, but in their future ; not only in the individ- 
ual's form, but in all to issue from them. Such a knowl- 
edge — how vast ! He hath said, " No man can see my 
face and live." If this referred simply to comprehending 
God, in his knowledge alone, it would be literally true. 
No human intellect could bear one hour's grasp of God's 
knowledge. Fancy that to-night you were lifted above 
this great city, with its million of inhabitants — the roof 
taken from every abode — before your inspection lies open 
every act of every being at every moment, all which 
you must see. Every word reaches your ear, and you 
must listen to all ; every form of sorrow, every cry of 
agony. Not only visible acts, but every secret plan of 
purity or vice, of virtue or wickedness, every scheme of 
benevolence, and every purpose of riot, theft, licentious- 
ness, robbery, and murder ; every pang of the agonizing 
wife, mother, or child ; the anxieties of the rich, and the 
distresses of the poor. Multiply these by a thousand — 
for a thousand millions of such beings people our earth. 
Hold in your memory — nay, ever-present before you — all 
the acts of these millions in the moments past, while the 
present moment unfolds its vastness, and add to that a 
foreknowledge of the interminable future. Under such 
a pressure every nervous system must be prostrate, every 
brain must reel. God alone knows, sees, understands all ; 
and he is never weary, he never slumbereth or sleepeth. 



264 MAJESTY AND HOLINESS 

So, also, omnipresence is an essential attribute. God 
must be where he places his works. He must fill heaven 
and earth. He is there by his power to constitute and 
uphold — by his wisdom to guide, by his own essential 
presence to give life and breath to all that exist. For 
" our breath is in his hand, and his are all our ways ;" " it 
is in him we live, and move, and have our being." The 
Psalmist well exclaims, " O Lord, thou hast searched me 
and known me ; thou knowest my downsitting and my 
uprising, thou understandest my thought afar off. Thou 
compassest my path, and my lying down, and art ac- 
quainted with all my ways. For there is not a word in 
my tongue, but lo, O Lord, thou knowest it altogether. 
Thou hast beset me behind and before, and laid thy hand 
upon me. Such knowledge is too wonderful for me : it is 
high, I cannot attain to it. Whither shall I go from thy 
Spirit, or whither shall I flee from thy presence 1 If I 
ascend up into heaven, thou art there ; if I make my bed 
in hell, behold thou art there. If I take the wings of the 
morning and dwell in the uttermost parts of the sea, 
even there shall thy hand lead me and thy right hand 
shall hold me." 

The figure of the wings of the morning is another 
illustration of the expansion which science gives to the 
symbols of the Bible. David stood on Mount Zion, or 
the Mount of Olives, and saw the morning coming up 
over the distant hills of Moab. The gentle breeze came 
from the Mediterranean to meet the rising sun. Far 
north and south the growing light spread out over the 



OF THE BIBLE. 265 

horizon, and on and on the morning, with its outspread 
wings, gently moved upward and westward till it reached 
the Mediterranean Sea; still on it moved over its length- 
ened expanse until it passed the Pillars of Hercules and 
reached the uttermost sea. Away in that vast ocean, 
the sky alone encircling and on every side kissing the 
boundless deep, he sat in fancy, as the lone seabird rests 
upon the waves. Even there God held him by his right 
hand. David knew nothing of this vast continent that 
lay beyond that uttermost sea ; nor how God in the ages 
to come would hold in his hand the Pilgrim Fathers, and 
keep them in safety as they crossed that vast ocean ; nor 
how he would give them this great land for the founding 
of a great nation, across whose wide breast the psalms of 
David should be read by every child. Nor did he know 
of that other sea beyond, which should give up its multi- 
tudinous islands to the service of Christ Nor did he 
know how swiftly those wings of the morning moved, as 
so gently and silently they advanced, and scarcely seem- 
ed to move at all. Yet we now know that more swiftly 
than the locomotive at its utmost speed, more swiftly than 
the tempest in its fiercest fury, these wings of the morn- 
ing have sped onward more than a thousand miles per 
hour ever since creation's dawn ; but they have never 
preceded God ! Were we to note a tithe of the passages 
that vividly portray the doings and attributes of God, the 
evening hour would find our work but fairly begun. He 
is mighty beyond description ; he looks, and the earth 

trembles ; he touches the hills, and they smoke ; he holds 

23 



266 MAJESTY AND HOLINESS 

the winds in his fists, and the sea in the hollow of his 
hand ; he bows the heavens and comes down ; he rides 
upon a cherub and flies on the wings of the wind ; "he 
hath his way in the whirlwind and in the storm, and the 
clouds are the dust of his feet." 

Among the ancients, and in all heathen countries, 
there were gods many and lords many, but the Scrip- 
tures proclaim, " The Lord our God is one Lord, there is 
none else." Diverse elements of nature, distinctions in 
territory and in nations and distant worlds, gave color to 
the idea of a divided jurisdiction, and different heathen 
gods reigned like kings or emperors over their separate 
territory. But nature, with every advance of science, 
proclaims the unity of God. The earth is shaped by one 
hand ; its different sections are composed of the same 
elements ; currents commingle the waters of the tropics 
and the poles, and the streams of air are constantly pass- 
ing from north to south, and returning again. Men are 
of one great family ; multitudinous dialects and lan- 
guages spring from common roots. Gravitation not only 
binds our earth, but sweeps the heavens. One law of 
motion, one power of attraction, encircles the universe. 
The spectroscope reveals the fact that the sun and the 
stars have in them many of the same substances which 
our earth contains. The most advanced evolutionists of 
our day have no trouble in resolving, by simple laws, the 
original fire-mist into all the various worlds. Their only 
trouble is in originating the fire-mist and the laws, with- 
out a Creator. Moreover, such are the traces of affinity in 



OF THE BIBLE. 267 

all classes of animals, that they can evolve them from a 
protoplasm or a cell, through all the infinitude of animal 
bcinir. God has written his oneness in all nature : man 
is liable to impute that oneness to nature's self. Sci- 
ence, reason, and revelation, not only unite in singing, 
with Addison's orbs, 

" The hand that made us is divine," 

but also that we have but one Creator, the only true God. 

This Jehovah of the Bible, the eternal, omnipotent, 
omniscient, omnipresent creator and upholder, is not only 
presented as the one governor and director of the uni- 
verse, but also as a being of boundless wisdom, justice, 
goodness, and love. Traces of his wisdom are every- 
where seen ; the fitness of things reaches us at every 
turn, and we can well say, " O Lord, how manifold are 
thy works : in wisdom hast thou made them all." So, 
too, he cares for, protects, and loves what his hands have 
made. " His tender mercies are over all his works." 
" The eyes of all wait upon thee, and thou givest them 
their meat in due season. Thou openest thy hand and 
satisfiest the desire of every living thing." Language 
can go no farther in describing the wonderful watchful- 
ness and care of Divine providence. Every individual, 
of every class of animated being, turns its eyes to God. 
He hears its cry, he opens his hand and supplies every 
want. 

The majesty of God is grandly shown in his tender- 
ness and love. That love is boundless in its subjects, 



268 MAJESTY AND HOLINESS 

reaching in some of its forms to all creation. He is the 
God of the suffering, of the fatherless, and of the widow. 
His eye is on the minute as well as the vast ; not a spar- 
row falls to the ground without his notice ; the very hairs 
of our head are all numbered. This love is boundless in 
its resources. He gives not as the world gives. He hath 
infinite treasures, and is ready to bestow them upon man. 
This love led him to give his own Son to die for rebel- 
lious man. Such is its boundlessness, that the whole 
character of God, with all his glorious attributes, has its 
grand summation in the expression, " God is love." 

To all other characteristics is to be added immutabil- 
ity. This has already been noticed in the name of Jehor 
vah, the everlasting I Am, the Alpha and the Omega, 
the first and the last. Everywhere else we meet with 
change : the grass springs up and withers ; flowers bloom 
and fade ; trees grow and decay. Man in the pride of 
his glory is swept away. The seasons change, the moun- 
tains crumble, the very heavens grow old. The best of 
men forget their promises, or change their purposes. But 
God is unchangeable. Compared with creation, the in- 
spired penman says, " They shall perish, but thou shall 
endure ; yea, all of them shall wax old like a garment : 
as a vesture shalt thou change them, and they shall be 
changed; but thou art the same, and thy years shall 
have no end." Men have thought to assail our faith in 
God and his word, by attempting to prove the wonderful 
age of our earth and of the heavens. So far from weak- 
ening our faith, if true, it would but confirm it. Has it 



OF THE BIBLE. 269 

been untold millions of years since God formed this earth 
for human habitation, or since he laid its foundation ? 
" Known unto God are all his works from the besrinninc: 
of the world !" Nay, he hath chosen us in Christ ** be- 
fore the foundation of the world." Have his thoughts 
been on us for millions of years ? Did he purpose to 
give his Son to die that we might be saved ? Did that 
Son, in his omniscience, gaze on Calvary for thousands 
of years, and ever moi ing towards it, send his voice 
through the ages, saying, " Lo, I come " ? Then why 
should we fear for the future ? Heart and flesh may 
fail, but God will be the strength and portion of our 
heart for ever. 

The majesty of the Scriptures also appears in the 
representation of the plans of God in his universal gov- 
ernment. Scarcely had sin entered into the world and 
triumphed over man, than the purpose was announced to 
overthrow evil by one of Eve's descendants. To the ser- 
pent it was said, " And I will put enmity between thee 
and the woman, and between thy seed and her seed : it 
shall bruise thy head, and thou shalt bruise his heel." 
To Eve it was a consoling promise, though she little 
knew the time that must elapse. With God, in carrying 
out his great plans, "one day is as a thousand years, and 
a thousand years as one day." At one period centuries 
pass, and scarcely a change occurs ; then in rapid, un- 
broken succession follow events so strange and startling, 
as if centuries were condensed into a day. After the 

promise to Eve, ages passed, and the results of sin cov- 

23* 



2 70 MAJESTY AND HOLINESS 

ered the earth with crime. Centuries pass again, and a 
patriarch is sent to Canaan. To him the promise is re- 
newed. Four hundred and thirty years elapse, and his 
seed have no inheritance ; yet a sceptre of power ulti- 
mately rises in Judah, and a king of might in Jerusalem. 
Again centuries pass, and a captive people weep by the 
rivers of Babylon and hang their harps on the willows. 
Restored again just as the last feature of nationality was 
to pass away, and Judah was to be enrolled for taxation, 
Shiloh, the promised deliverer, came, and the song of the 
prophet was fulfilled : " Unto us a child is born, unto us 
a son is given, . . . and his name shall be called Wonder- 
ful, Counsellor, The mighty God, The everlasting Father, 
The Prince of Peace." In all these changes God reigned 
as a king : he subdued and scattered nations ; he gov- 
erned the elements ; he was the triumphant conqueror. 
He used nations as his scourges, and then hurled them 
back to oblivion. Changes of every kind were made sub- 
servient to his plans, and the powers of earth bowed be- 
fore him. He is represented as sitting on a throne ; that 
throne is high and lifted up, and his train filled the tem- 
ple. A sapphire firmament is under his feet, a fiery 
stream issues from before him. His agents are power- 
ful and innumerable. Thousands of thousands minister 
unto him, and ten thousand times ten thousand stand 
before him. The kings of the earth rise against him, 
but " he that sitteth in the circle of the heavens shall 
laugh, the Lord shall have them in derision." After all 
these majestic prophecies and announcements, when 



OF THE BIBLE, 271 

Christ came, he was the babe of Bethlehem, the man of 
sorrows, and acquainted with grief ; he was crucified, 
dead, and buried. Then his glorious triumphs visibly 
began. His church was founded, his truth spread, his 
kingdom enlarged, and he is sitting on the throne of gov- 
ernment expecting until his enemies shall be made his 
footstool. 

Jesus on earth reminds his disciples of the power and 
immutability of the great " / amr To fulfil his covenant 
with Abraham, God in the burning bush announced that 
name to Moses. To fulfil an older promise, made in 
Eden, long before the time of Abraham, Jesus came to 
earth, and he said, *' Before Abraham was I am." God 
to fulfil the one, appeared in fire ; Jesus to fulfil the other, 
appeared in flesh: in his resurrection from the grave, 
with its wonderful precedent and accompanying phenom- 
ena — in his ascension to heaven, while the angels sang, 
" Lift up your heads, ye everlasting doors, and the King 
of Glory shall come in" — his sacrifice was accepted, 
his mission w^as crowned with glory, and the Spirit has 
been sent to enlighten and to strengthen his followers. 
He is himself represented as caring for his churches, 
walking amidst the golden candlesticks, and holding the 
stars in his right hand. 

His great plan for the overthrow of evil involves 
in itself all minor plans. Here and there glimpses of 
his work are given. Men gather in the plain of Shinar, 
to build a tower which shall reach up to heaven, lest 
they be scattered abroad. Does God crumble it by an 



272 MAJESTY AND HOLINESS 

earthquake, or destroy it by lightning ? He simply 
touches their lips, and they give a slightly different vi- 
bration to the air which they exhale. Their languages 
are confounded, and by his breath they are scattered over 
the face of the earth. Again one hundred and eighty 
thousand men surround the capital of his people, and ex- 
pect an easy victory ; but the air is changed, probably 
noxious vapors ascend, and in the morning the magnifi- 
cent host lie dead upon the plain. With him it is easy 
to work " by many or by few." 

The years through which we have just passed are 
years of his power. The unification of nations, the prog- 
ress of invention, art, and science, the diffusion of knowl- 
edge, communication by steamers, railroads and tele- 
graphs, emancipation of slaves, the downfall of despot- 
ism, the overthrow of the papal temporal power, the ten- 
dency to dissever church and state — all point to the tri- 
umph of Messiah's kingdom. The present war will be 
no exception. England may join with the Turk — the 
cross may be carried into the conflict to support the cres- 
cent, but though hand join in hand, the wicked shall not 
go unpunished. Sooner or later Mohammedanism shall 
pass away. Paganism shall vanish, and the kingdoms of 
this world shall be the kingdoms of our Lord and his 

Christ. 

In the consummation of his plans the Scriptures tell 

us that Christ shall judge the world. Sublimely grand 

is the prophetic view given by the revelator : " And I 

saw a great white throne and Him that sat on it, from 



OF THE BIBLE. 273 

whose face the earth and the heavens fled away, and 
there was found no place for them. And I saw the 
dead, small and great, stand before God ; and the books 
were opened, and another book which is the book of life : 
and the dead were judged out of those things which 
were written in the books, according to their work. And 
the sea gave up the dead which were in it, and death and 
hell delivered up the dead which were in them, and they 
were judged every man according to their work; and 
death and hell were cast into the lake of fire." Can any 
description be more majestically grand than those of a 
general resurrection and general judgment, to be suc- 
ceeded by new heavens and a new earth "i 

Amid these descriptions of God's majesty and govern- 
ment we are to remember that his holiness stands pre- 
eminent. In its aspect, as simple purity or freedom from 
stain, we are commanded to seek for its attainment. The 
precept is written, '* Be ye holy, for I am holy ;" and in 
the life of Christ we have that holiness illustrated and 
exemplified. But holiness may be considered as the sum- 
mation of all the attributes of God in their glorious per- 
fection. In this we cannot be like him here. But we 
shall approximate that likeness, and hereafter shall see 
him as he is. A third aspect of holiness is frequently 
presented. It is the purity and goodness and benevo- 
lence of God made manifest in the working out of his 
plans, and in the grand triumph of everlasting righteous- 
ness. When we see with Isaiah the cherubim crying, 
*' Holy, holy, holy Lord God of hosts !" and when with the 



274 MAJESTY AND HOLINESS 

revelator we hear the response of hosts of redeemed join- 
ing in the same glad song, we cannot suppose that they 
refer simply to the purity of God. That they have known 
before ; it is involved in the very primary conceptions 
of the character of God : " He is of purer eyes than to 
behold evil." Nor can we suppose that it was simply a 
clearer view of the Divine character in itself. But such 
exclamations follow a revelation of God's great plans for 
the destruction of evil and the exaltation of righteous- 
ness. As in some great battle, when we have seen scat- 
tered forces converging to one point ; when we see the 
skill of the general displayed in massing at the proper 
moment, and in the proper place, just such forces as 
shall win the victory, we praise the grandeur of his con- 
ceptions and the triumphs of his genius; so when God 
arranges all agencies to discomfit the wicked, to sanction 
the right, to punish his enemies, and to reward his fol- 
lowers, and especially when we behold those grand results 
attained by self-sacrifice on the part of his Son and by 
the wonderful manifestations of heavenly love, we are 
prepared to join with the unnumbered hosts in saying, 
" Holy, holy, holy Lord God of Hosts !" This holiness is 
active as well as passive, and Jesus seems to refer to it 
when he says, "Be ye therefore perfect, even as your 
Father in heaven is perfect." But that perfection of the 
Father to which he alludes was that " he maketh his sun 
to rise on the evil and on the good, and sendeth rain on 
the just and on the unjust. The duty enjoined was not 
to love our brethren only, but to love our enemies, and 



OF THE BJBLE. 275 

to pray for them who persecute us. Then we become 
the children of God ; then we share not only passive holi- 
ness in freedom from sinful stains, but also active, God- 
like holiness, imitating the great Father in benevolence 
and love, and the blessed Saviour in the sacrifice of him- 
self, and in -going about always doing good. 







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