,- ;¦ .....\ -. ijfciV .-¦ . . r '' sffe^^Y1'' i ?fm ^'^rSw*''' '- ," ¦": .' :¦ BBEmiM !-"¦ ¦ ¦ ¦¦-' i 11 HBfirel*3^' -¦'¦ ¦ ' ,: ,- : ¦ ¦jj'.,.--. .-, . - A COMPENDIUM CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. A COMPENDIUM CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY ANALYTICAL OUTLINES OF A COURSE OF THEOLOGICAL STUDY, BIBLICAL, DOGMATIC, HISTORICAL. BY WILLIAM BURT POPE, D.D., THEOLOGICAL TUTOR, D1DSBUEY COLLEGE, MANCHESTER- \ VOL. I. SECOND EDITION, REVISED AND ENLARGED. NEW YORK: PHILLIPS & HUNT. CINCINNATI : WALDEN & STOWE, l88l. CONTENTS OF VOLUME ONE. PRELIMINARIES. PAGB Definition of Theology 3 — 1 Theology Pbopeb : God and Divine Things 3 — 5 In Relation to Man : Extent and Limitations 6 — 9 In Jesus Cheist : Relation to Natural Theology, and Earlier Dispensations 10 — 14 In the Chuech : Development and Various Types .... 14 — 24 Theology A Science : Its Aim, Methods, and Study . . . 24—32 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. Revelation oe the Faith 36 — 155 Revelation as given by God : General ; Its Definitions . 36 — 38 Special : Its Purpose and Sphere 38 — 42 The Cheistian Faith as Received by Man 42 Faith and Rkason 42 — 46 Credentials of the Cheistian Revelation 46 — 155 Its Response to' Expectation of Mankind : Preparations in Human Nature; Correction of Natural Religion; Perfecting of Former Revelations 46 — 61 Divine Atteibtjtes in Revelation : The Supernatural Order 61— 99 Mieacles : Nature of Evidence ; Tests 63 — 76 Peophecy : Laws ; Tests ; Value as Credential 76 — 92 Lnspieation : The Divine Hand in Scripture 92 — 99 Chaeactee of Cheist the Revealek 99 — 126 His Supbeme Claim and its Justification 100 — 113 Hypotheses conceening Cheist 113 — 126 VI CONTENTS. PAGE Influence of Christianity 126 — 139 Its Avowed Aim and Pretensions 126 — ] 30 Its Fulfilment of its Mission 130 — 139 Its Pbesistbncb and Permanence : Early Spread ; Con flict with Judaism ; Heathenism ; Natural Religions ; Scientific Thought ; Gradual Victory 139—150 The Holy Ghost as the abiding inteenal Cre dential 150 — 154 Summary 154 — 155 Inspiration : The Divine Faith 156 — 192 Revelation and Inspiration 156 — 157 Testimony of Sceiptubb : Old Testament ; Our Lord ; the Apostles 157—168 Dogmatic Results : The Holy Ghost the Lnspieeb . . 168 — 170 The Organs of Inspieation 170 — 173 The Scriptubes of Inspiration 173 — 175 Development of Doctrine : Heathenism ; Judaism ; Patristic ; Mediaeval ; Reformation ; Arminian ; Mo dern Theories ; Assaults and Defence 175 — 192 The Canon : The Divine Rule of Faith 193—230 The Canon of Scripture 194 — 206 Sceiptueal : Old Testament Ratified in New 194 — 196 New Testament 196 — 198 Historical : Earlier and Later History of Canon .... 198 — 202 Assaults and Evidences 202 — 205 The Rule of Faith : Objective Standaed of Docteine and mobals and privileges 206 — 209 Rationalism and Teaditionalism 209 — 213 Subjective Canon ¦ . 213 — 230 Btblical Criticism 213 — 217 Fabeic of the Bible : Introduction, History 217 — 222 Philology 222 — 223 Hermeneutics 223 — 228 Exegesis and Theology 229 — 230 GOD. The Existence and Notion of God 233 — 248 The Being of God : In what sense Innate and Demon strable 234—236 In the Constitution of Human Nature 236 238 CONTENTS. vn ¦Bi.au Cosmological and Teleological Arguments ; Con sensus Gentium 238 — 240 Limit of all Argument ; The Secret of Antitheism . . 240 — 242 The Notion of God : Partial ; Real ; and Sufficient . . 242 — 248 The Divine Essence and Peefections 248 — 358 The Divine Nature and Names 248 — 249 Essential Names : Elohim and Jehovah, with their Cor relation in the Old Testament and the New .... 250 — 255 The Triune Name 255 The Divine Unity : Polytheism ; Pantheism 255 — 269 The Trinity and Triunity : Development in Scripture . 260 — 270 Ecclesiastical Development : Ante-Nicene ; SabeUi anism ; Subordinationism and Principatus of the Father ; Arianism ; The Creeds ; The Councils ; Me diaeval; Reformation; Modern Errors; Practical Conclusions 270—287 The Attributes of God 287 — 360 Relation to Divine Essence 287 — 289 Classifications 289—291 Attributes of Absolute Essence : Spirituality; Infinity; Immensity ; Eternity ; Self -Sufficiency ; Immutability; Perfection ; Observations 291 — 307 Attributes Related to the Crbatube : Freedom ; Omnipotence ; Omnipresence ; Omniscience ; Wisdom ; Goodness ; Observations 307 — 326 Attributes Related to Moeal Government: Moral Attributes Generally ; Holiness and Love ; Holiness ; Righteousness ; Justice ; Truth ; Faithfulness ; Love ; Mercy and Grace ; General Observations on the Study of the Attributes 326—353 GOD AND THE CREATURE. Creation 361 — 436 The Creation : God ; The Holy Trinity ; Divine Attributes in Creation 362—364 Peimaey oe Proper Creation 364 — 367 Opposed Systems : Pantheism ; Polytheism ; Dualism ; Materialistic Atheism ; Antitheism ; Agnosticism ; Scientific Materialism ; Positivism 367 — 395 Secondary Creation, or Cosmogony 395 — 406 The Mosaic Cosmogony . 396 — 401 viii CONTENTS. PAGB Extra-Biblical Cosmogonies 401 — 402 Evolution : Cosmical and Organic Development .... 402 — 405 Motive and End of Creation 406 — 408 The Created Universe 408 — 436 Angels and Spirits 408 — 416 The Material Universe : Matter and the Cosmos . . . 417 — 420 Man : Divine Image ; Natural and Federal Unity ; Hypo thesis as to his Origin; Unity, and Antiquity on Earth; Elements of Human Nature 430 — 436 Peovtdence 437 — 455 The God of Providence : The Several Persons of the Trinity, and the Divine Attributes in Relation to this Doctrine 437_446 The Objects of Providence 446 — 455 Providential Conservation and Theories 446 — 449 Providential Cabe 449 — 451 Providential Govebnment 452 — 455 Summary , 456 PRELIMINARIES. THEOLOGY. REVELATION TO MAN. BY JESUS CHRIST. IN THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. THEOLOGICAL SCIENCE. VOL. I. B CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. Christian Theology is the science of God and Divine General things, based upon the revelation made to mankind in tjon Jesus Christ, and variously systematised within the Christian Church. All that belongs to the preliminaries of our study may be dis tributed under the several heads suggested by this definition, which is so framed as to include, first, Theology proper ; secondly, its limitation to the relations between God and mankind ; thirdly, its essential connection with Christ; fourthly, its characteristics as developed under various influences within the Christiar. Church ; and lastly, its title to the name of a science. The introductory remarks which will be made on these several topics have for their object simply to prepare the mind of the student for what lies before him ; and to give a few hints which will all afterwards be expanded in due course. THEOLOGY. Theology x roucr God is the source and the subject and the end of theology. The stricter and earlier use of the word limited it to the doctrine of the Triune God and His attributes. But in modern usage it includes the whole compass of the science of Religion, or the relations of all things to God. This gives it its unity and dignity and sanctity. It b 2 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. Theology or Divinity. Ex. iii. 14. Job xi. 7. 1 Tim. vi. 16. Acts xvii. 23. 1 Cor. ii. 11. Rom. i. 19. God All in All. is A Deo, de Deo, in Deum : from God in its origin, concerning God in its substance, and it leads to God in all its issues ; His Name is in it. 1. The only adequate definition of this subject embraces Divine THINGS : Xoyos irepl tov ©eoO /cat irepl rw Oeiiav. The Supreme, whose Being is the first postulate of theology or divinity, declares Himself to be as to His nature incomprehensible and unsearch able. I AM THAT I am is the nearest approach to a definition ; it asserts without proving His existence, and that He exists io an essence known only to Himself. The Old Testament asks : Canst thou ly searching find out God? canst thou find out the Almighty unto perfection i The New Testament, which brings Him nearer in His Son, represents Him as dwelling in ihe light which no man can approach unto to search. In the profoundest sense He is ever the Unknown God. It is His glory that He must conceal Himself. But St. Paul, as a preacher to the Gentiles, neverthe less declares that Unknown God, and in his writings uses two expressive phrases which at once affirm the prerogative and assign the limits of our theology proper. He speaks of the things of God, to. tov ®eov, in reference to those mysteries which the Spirit can and will reveal to those who receive Him. And he indicates that even apart from the supernatural revelations of the Spirit what is [or may be\ known of God, to yvtao-Tov tov ©eov, is unfolded to man. All that is known is all that may be known : the possible know ledge is the actual knowledge in its successive communications from the light of nature to the light of grace and thence to the light of glory. The thick darkness round about the unsearchable Presence is not absolutely unbroken : the rays that flow from it penetrate every department of true knowledge, especially of this. 2. There is a sense in which universal theology is concerned simply with the relation of all things to God : if we carefully guard our meaning we may make this proposition include the converse, the relation of God to all things. Relation of course must be mutual ; but it is hard in this matter to detach from the notion of relation that of dependence. The Eternal One is the Unconditioned Being. When we study His nature and perfec tions and works we must always remember that He is His Perfeot REVELATION TO MAN. Self independent of every created object, and independent of every thought concerning Him. But there is not a doctrine, nor is there a branch or development of any doctrine, which is not purely the expression of some relation of His creatures to the Supreme First Cause. 3. Hence every branch of this science is sacred. It is a temple Dignity which is filled with the presence of God. From its hidden sane- gan?tjtv tuary, into which no high priest taken from among men can enter, issues a light which leaves no part dark save where it is dark with excess of glory. Therefore all fit students are wor shippers as well as students. In the heathen world there was a true instinct of this. The highest tribute the ancients could pay to their poets and philosophers, from Homer and Hesiod downwards, was to call them 6eo\6yot. Their philosophy was their theology. So in the early Church, when theology put on its perfection, its relation to God was the seal of that perfection : St. John was called the Divine, 6 OeoXoyos, because his writings • contained most of the manifestation of the Holy Trinity in its internal and external relations. What has been said of God Himself may be said concerning the theological study of God : He is the centre everywhere of a science which has its circum ference nowhere. The remembrance of this must exert its influence upon our spirit and temper in all our studies. Wlio shall Ps. xxiv. ascend into the hill of the Lord 1 or who shall stand in His holy place f Se that hath clean hands, and a pure heart. 3,4. DIYINE THINGS MADE KNOWN TO MAN. For Man Theology is mainly concerned with the things of God as they are related to man and his destination. This pro position implies the capacity in our nature to receive Divine truth ; indicates both the extent and the limits of its range as revealed especially for man ; and explains the essentially human character which is impressed on its form and invests it with a profound human interest. 1. Man is in a certain sense the centre of this science. He is Man the specifically the centre of one branch of it, technically called Centre. 6 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. Anthropo- Anthropology, which has to do with his characteristics as a logy- creature formed in the image of God ; but, more generally, he is the object around which all revolves. The light of revelation is poured upon the human race ; and in its fulness upon it alone. Ac cordingly the relation of mankind to the Supreme may be said to be one ofthe definitions of theology. But man is only one insignificant, and yet not insignificant, creature of God. His place in the vast creation, and the development of his wonderful career in harmony with all other Divine designs, marks out his relation to theology universal. But this general truth must be viewed in two lights : man is the object of all revelation, as it concerns him and his destination ; man is the subject of all revelation, as he is its recipient. Man the (1) Theology is concerned with the destiny of man in the object, universe. Its first lessons, the opening of the volume of the book, presents him as the head of the creation of God : the history of the origin of all things, and of the slow formation of this world, is only the preface to his introduction as the representative of his Maker upon the earth. His fall and his redemption are blended in one ; the whole sequel of revelation is the record of the Divine method of retrieving in the Second Adam what in the first was marred, the Divine Image. The redemption of the human race, and the salvation of individual man, are interwoven into one great economy, stretching from the shutting of the earthly to the opening of the heavenly Paradise. Tliere is not a revelation of God in His three Persons, as the Father, the Son Incarnate, and the Holy Ghost, which is not directly or indirectly connected with the salvation of mankind. Thus theology is simply the system of Divine truth which lies at the foundation of human religion or the spiritual fellowship between man and his Creator. Man the (2) But the same general principle may be referred to man as subject, the recipient of revelation. Created in the image of God, he is an intelligent, free and responsible creature, capable of separation from the Divine will and also capable of restoration to the Divine communion. The two first postulates of all theology are the Per sonality of the Infinite Being and the personality of man His creature. Neither of these is matter of demonstration in the holy oracles ; both are assumed or taken for granted everywhere. REVELATION TO MAN. 7 To renounce either is to annihilate theological knowledge properly so called. Although in the prosecution of this study methods of proving both may be adopted, under the pressure of a necessity imposed on us by the waywardness of human scep ticism, yet must we finally and always beg the question here. God is a Person who condescends to man; and man is a person who is capable of God. (3) The objective and subjective relations of man as the Religion. centre of theological science meet in the word Religion, one of the largest and deepest terms with which we have to do. Its derivation has been much disputed ; but the two leading explana tions of it may be united for our present purpose. According to Lactantius, vinculo pietatis obstricti deo et religati sumus, unde Inst. Div. ipsa religio nomen accepit, non, ut Cicero interpretatus est, a ly> 28, relegendo. That is to say, the eternal bond which binds man to God is signified by religion, which is therefore the relation of the human creature to the Supreme Creator, as acknowledged and borne witness to in all forms of theological teaching'and worship. Men have never been without a religion, for God has never left Himself without witness in any age or land : there have been ^cta xiT. gods many and religions many, though to us only one God and 17. one religion. The rejected interpretation of Cicero, however, demands to be heard : qui omnia, quae ad cultum deorum perti- j)e Nat. nerent, diligenter retractarent et tanquam RELEGERENT, sunt dicti Deor.ii. religiosi, ex relegendo. That is to say, the exercise of the human mind in pondering and considering Divine things is signified by religion, which is, as it were, an instinctive and inwrought aspira tion of human nature corrected and purified and directed to its highest issues in the true faith. We combine the two when we say that man is the centre of all theology as it is the foundation of all true religion. 2. Hence the limitation that everywhere meets us. The rela- Limita tions of the vast universe, and of other creatures in it, with God, tions. are included only so far as they concern mankind. Revelation brings us tidings from without, from the outside universe ; and its communications concerning the earlier probation of spiritual intelligences, their division into orders, their interest and agency in the development of the Divine purposes, amount when syste- 8 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. matised to a considerable department of revealed truth, to which the name Angelology is sometimes given. But it is always their connection with man that regulates the method and the amount of these disclosures. There is strict parsimony as to everything not essential to human destiny : the principle of Least Action is maintained in revelation as in nature. Hence it is obvious that the responsibility of theology, so to speak, is limited to one subject. Those who study it must submit to this restriction. John xxi. What is that to thee 1 has its meaning here for all who indulge too 22- much in speculation both as to the past and as to the future. John xiii. Concerning all other things thou shalt know hereafter: there are ' many hints and earnests of a more abundant compensatory out pouring of knowledge in due time. Meanwhile this is the answer by anticipation to many objections of the sceptical spirit We have but one leaf out of an enormous book ; its page begins and ends, so to speak, in the middle of a sentence. Hereafter we 1 Cor. xiii. shall see much more of this book. Now we know in part. We 12 know ourselves apart from other creatures and other worlds. Then we shall know as also we are known : we shall know other beings and other worlds as they know us. Humanly 3. There is an impress upon theology, whether in its Divine taught, records or in its human science, which results from its adaptation to human faculties. We must here take it for granted that man is a creature capable of religion, that is, of communion with God, as a person related to a Person. The Scripture which does not prove that God is does not prove that man is capable of knowing God : both are the fundamental presuppositions of theology. But, reserving the fuller demonstration of this, we must mark that as he is a creature in probation, his knowledge of Divine things is given in probationary forms, testing his character at every point. All is expressly adapted to his limited faculties, and imparted to him in a way suitable to his present stage of ex- Acts xiv. istence. God has come down to us in the likeness of men, and speaks u' to them in their own language. As the Rabbins said of the Law, Lex Dei loquitur linguam filiorum hominum, the law of God speaks the language of the children of men. The entire Bible is m^viiST pervaded by what is called Anthropomorphism and Anthropo- pathy : the former gives a name to the condescension of God REVELATION TO MAN. in seeming to take a human form and human attributes ; the latter includes also the peculiar affections of man, not excepting some that belong to his infirmity, such as hope and suspense. Not that the reality does not correspond. The Supreme gives us a true revelation of Himself ; but it is a revelation that can be •understood only in our world, and by us men. Even the angels l Peter desire to look into these things ; they are learning the secrets of the '• 12- manifold wisdom of God as known by the Church; but they cannot Eph. iii. study them in our language. 4. As human students of our own truth, we may be assured Sufficient. that we shall have full and sufficient guidance. Nothing that it concerns us to know has been or will be hidden from us : what is reserved is reserved for our discipline, as what is revealed is revealed for our instruction. He hath shewed thee, 0 man, what is Mic. vi. 8. good: this must have its widest application. So also must that other saying, which contains the counterpart : The secret things Deut. belong unto the Lord our God: but those things which are revealed I2UI-23- belong unto us and to our children for ever. With what a profound human interest does this invest the whole domain of this sacred knowledge ! Our life, our hope, our destiny, our all, is bound up with it : it is the record of our degradation and of our deliverance, of our ruin and of our recovery, of our woes and of our redemption. How great is the dignity of man that he is the centre,, in any sense, of such a science ! If it is the name of God that gives it its surpassing majesty, that grandeur is reflected upon us. What is man, that Thou art mindful of him ? Our study Ps. viii. 4. cannot be conducted aright without a combination of the loftiest triumph and the deepest humility ; we must always remember the dignity while we never forget the lowliness of the place we our selves occupy in it. Approaching the revelation of Him who is our Wisdom, we hear : that no flesh should glory in His presence ; receiv- 29-31* ing that revelation we again hear, he that glorieth, let him glory in the Lu. ii. 32. Lord. Theology is a light shed upon all the universe ; it is the glory of God's creature, man. But this leads us to the eternal secret of our dignity. Our knowledge comes to us through One who is Man and also God ; His incarnation in the fulness of time explains the Anthropomorphism of the Old Testament ; and it is in Him that the theology of God and the theology of man become one. 10 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. By Jesus Christ. In His Person. Jn. xiv. 9. 1 Tim. iii. 10. Isa. xl. 9. John xix. 5. Ecce Dens ! Ecce Homo ! Col. ii. 3. Matt. xi. 27. John xiv. 6. lTim.ii.5. Eev. i. 1. Natural Theology. BY JESUS CHRIST. Jesus Christ is Himself in Person and in Word the revelation of God. He has confirmed and supplemented Natural Theology, or that which is independent of super natural revelation. He has consummated the preliminary disclosures of His own earUer dispensations. He has dis credited and condemned all teachers and teaching that reject His authority. Hence the science which we study is essentially Christian theology. The postulates of the general proposition will be more fully established hereafter : they are now only stated and assumed. 1. In its technical sense, the term Christology generally refers to the doctrine of Christ's Person as such in the unity of His two natures ; but it may be said that Christology is Theology. He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father. Although He reveals God as the Father who becomes visible in Him, He is in a certain sense the manifestation of the entire Divinity. He is the Mystery of God manifest in the flesh. The Old Testament, Behold your God ! Ecce Deus tuus ! answers to the New Testament, Behold the Man ! Ecce Homo ! Our Lord is the ever-blessed unity of these : for both were spoken expressly of Him. His Person is the com pendium of all that is Divine in human things, and in Him are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. He is the substance of revelation in act and in word. He is Himself the one and supreme Theologian : neither knoweth any man the Father save the Son. He is the centre of theology ; all its doctrines revolve around H^n : / am the Truth. And, as Mediator between God and men, making both one, He is in a peculiar sense the bond of perfectness in theology. In Him is its unity, and it is complete in Him. The superscription of the Apocalypse is the superscription of our science as a whole : it is the a-n-oKaXvfK 'I-no-ov Xpurrov, the Revela tion of Jesus Christ, of Him as its object, from Him as its source. 2. The Supreme Revealer confirms and absorbs into His teach ing the original revelations of nature : or what is called NATURAL theology. (1.) He presupposes the elements of this natural BY JESUS CHRIST. 11 knowledge. He everywhere appeals to it. But by the mouth of His servant Paul He has given the fullest exposition bf what it includes. First, the Apostle speaks of the law written on their R0m. ii. hearts, or on the reason of universal man, which is the indestructible 15- evidence of a God in Whose image he was created : for we are also ^ctg xvjj His offspring. Secondly, he appeals to the religious consciousness, 28. or conscience, in man bearing witness, and their thoughts the mean- Rom. xi. while accusing or else excusing one another according to the standard 15. written or rather engraven on the reason ; to the evidences of the eternal power and Godhead which were clearly seen, being understood ROm.i.20. by the things that are made ; and to a Providence, drawing men, in Acts xvii. all ages, to feel after the unknown God of a final revelation. 27. Thus St. Paul, as preacher in the Acts, and teacher in the Romans, traces the broad outlines of the primitive inferior and traditional knowledge of mankind. He is himself pre-eminently the theologian of the finished revelation in Christ, but he indi rectly and yet most clearly acknowledges the labours of a certain theology outside of supernatural revelation and preliminary to it. (2.) The New Teacher confirms and supplements the theology of nature. Our Lord came not to destroy but to fulfil this natural law and these natural prophets. Of these scriptures also He silently says to the searcher : they testify of Me. His coming John v. reveals their imperfection ; but His tribute to them, as the basis 39. of His teaching, vindicates their Divine origin. The fanaticism of the Jews cried : Will he go unto the dispersed among the, John vii. Gentiles, and teach the Gentiles f He did both afterwards by His 35" Apostles, and the latter He had done long before. This will hereafter recur at more length. 3. Christian Theology is the consummation of its own earlier Old and economies. Christ was the Revealer from the beginning. But New Tea- His revelations have been given by progressive stages ; and now men s' in the end of the world He has gathered the whole into one great system of truth. We may therefore regard His perfect teaching as the consummation of its preliminary forms. It is the fulfil ment of Old Testament theology as a vast body of preparatory truth, the ruling design of which is to prepare the way of the Lord. This one complex economy of past revelation is itself divided again into several branches : there is the Patriarchal 12 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. lPet.i.ll. Exclusive. Matt. xxiii. 8. John x. 8. Lu. xxi. 8. Matt. v. 22. John xvi. 13. Matt. xxviii.20. Perver sions of Natural Religion. THEOLOGY, which had in it the earliest broad disclosures of the Divine will, the Gospel before the Law ; the Mosaic theology, which is that of the chosen people, and its theocracy, and typical institutes, the Gospel under the Law ; and the Prophetical theology, which is emphatically the Gospel in the Law. These branches of the earlier teaching were all under the guidance of inspiration : under the Spirit of Christ which was in them. They are all presupposed, confirmed, and supplemented and perfected by the New-Testament institution of Christ. This also must again be considered more fully. 4. New-Testament teaching, which sanctions the religion of nature and the earlier disclosures of truth, both having the same common element of preparation, denounces every independent source of religious instruction. One is your Master, even Christ, b xoftr/TjT^s or o SiSao-icaXos. He has expressly shut out all others who had come before Him, or who might come after Him : the former, all that ever came before Me, since My appearance, whom the sheep did not hear ; the latter, Go ye not therefore after them. He is not more jealous of the honour of His Father than of His own honour. He is the absolute Teacher ; But I say unto you interdicts every other : the only supplement of His own words whieh He admits is that which He Himself gives in the person of the Spirit of truth. And this is intended in the comprehensive saying of the last commission : iravra oo-a b/ertiXifi-^v, all things whatsoever I have commanded. The theological systems of religious teaching which are thus condemned are those which have been based upon perversions either of natural or of revealed religion. (1) The former has assumed many forms, all of them having some common relation to the only truth. There has always been a Traditional theology among men, which, containing vestiges of primitive revelation perverted into error, has been woven into every imaginable form of Mythology, or legendary religion, vary ing with the culture of the nations. These have been connected, especially in the East, with elaborate religious systems which may be called the Heathen Religions, flourishing especially in India, China, and Persia when Christ came into the world. Philosophy, which seeks the first principles of truth in the love ot BY JESUS CHRIST. 13 it, but without even professing to find it, has been in every age a human disguise of Divine revelation : anciently deeply religious, almost in every age the expression of a religious sentiment, but in modern times led away by false fundamental principles. The theology proper of a perverted religion of nature is Deism, in its rather less anti-Christian form Theism, which retains a God but rejects supernatural revelation, and especially that of Christ. (2) The perversions of revealed religion have assumed also Perver- many forms. The most gigantic is that of Rabbinism, or sions of Talmudism, as taught in the writings of the Talmud, the founda- jjelieton tions of which were laid in the Judaism of the interval between the two Testaments. Next comes Mohammedanism, an impos ture based upon the Holy Scriptures, but reducing religion back again to the lowest conditions of nature : the strangest admixture of truth and error which history presents. And to them must be added that mass of Christian Traditionalism which is identi fied with the corruption of the Christian Faith. All these are the dark background of the science which the name of Christ sanctifies. We shall meet some of them again and again ; and indicate them now only in outline. 5. Christ, the Centre of theology, is its Living Teacher also. Christ the As the test of all opinion and faith is the place it assigns to Him, Teacher. — Whom say ye tliat I am f being the question that follows Whom do Mark viii. men say that J am I — so His doctrine cannot be studied effectually ' ¦ save at His feet. By His Spirit He guides His disciples, as the company of its believing students, into all the truth : no longer by a supreme inspiration, but by a secret instruction that gives the full assurance of understanding to the acknowledgment of the Col. ii 2. mystery of God,\which is]Christ, to every believer united to Himself. Pectus facit theologum, the heart's devotion makes the theologian : this aphorism of Augustine holds good of all whose hearts are true to their Master. They are the holy brethren who are invited to con- Heb.iii. 1. sider the Apostle and High Priest ofourprofession,[Christ] Jesus. Ofthe unbelieving Jews our Lord said : Why do ye not understand My John viii. speech ? even because ye cannot hear My word. But His true disciples, 43" down to the least, can hear His doctrinal word, Xoyov, for they have learned by the Spirit its heavenly meaning as the word of eternal truth ; therefore they understand His speech, His XaXtav 15. 14 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. and receive His perfect doctrine. They know Him their Master, and His communications. But He gives His instruction through His Spirit, not only by secret and personal illumination, but through the channels of teaching provided in His Church, which 1 Tim. iii. is the pillar and ground of the truth. They receive both the elements and the developments of Christian doctrine as set forth among the people of God ; the teachings of God are addressed to Gal. vi. 10. the household of faith : irpbs tovs ooca'ovs rrjs irio-rews. Developed THEOLOGY IN THE CHURCH. in the Church. The Lord has been pleased to commit His revelation, as finished in the Scriptures, to the keeping of His Church, under the control and supervision of the Holy Spirit. The Scriptures are the rule and standard and test of theology, which in this relation must be regarded as the whole sum of the Church's Christian literature, gradually produced and variously modified: an extension ofthe term which is absolutely necessary, but requires to be guarded by the proviso that all sound theology is that which has its foundations and evidences in the Word of God. The former part of this proposition must now be assumed : its discussion is reserved for a future place. Meanwhile, it may be said that there is nothing in theology which does not seek its authority in the Word of God : our science is the arrangement, development, and application of facts and principles given by inspiration. The authoritative volume has from the beginning been lodged in the Church. The early oracles were in the keeping of Jude 3. the covenant people ; and the Christian Faith has been delivered unto the saints. The oracle has always had its ark. As the Church was enlarged the Bible was enlarged ; but never was the one without the other in the world. Neither, however, without the Divine Spirit, Who has always watched over the growth of a theological literature around the Bible. Besides the fixed utter- Acts ii. 40. ances of inspiration, the Holy Ghost has His own many other words spoken by men under His more common influences; and Christian men have also theirs, which He overrules and controls. And THEOLOGY IN THE CHURCH. 15 Laws of Develop ment. all these are in their expansion theology, using the term in its widest latitude : a boundless mass of more or less systematised doc trine, the growth of all ages, of all kinds of soil, and of all zones of religious faith. The whole, so far as we have to do with it, is directly or indirectly the produce of the Christian Church : either as the formal arrangement of its own teaching, or as the result of false teaching which it condemns. And we have to consider its various characteristics accordingly. But religious truth, as moulded within the Church, must be developed according to some laws. First, the requirements of teaching would insure the creation of a large body of various theology. Again, this has assumed specific forms as conformed to lifferent types of doctrine within the Church : giving birth to a great mass of what may be called Confessional theology. And, further, there is a rich development that is governed by the law of adaptation to the internal and external circumstances by which the truth may be surrounded. The idea of evolution is all- pervading in this science ; and we are safe in applying it if we renjember that there is one law of development peculiar to Scripture, the law of progressive revelation, and another that governs the human systematisation of this. Divine doctrine is developed in the Bible ; in the Church human dogma. I. Both as teacher and as defender of the Faith the Christian Church «ras from the beginning under a necessity to create a theology : whether as the teacher of its converts or as their defender against error. Didactic divinity was the necessary expansion of wnat in Scripture is termed the Apostles' doctrine. Acts ii. 42 Its first and simplest form, as seen in the writings of the earliest Fathers, was Expository or practical, aiming at the edification of the flock ; then followed the Catechetical, for the preliminary instruction of converts or Catechumens in order to baptism, con ducted by pastors as Catechists, and formulated in the permanent Catechism ; and thus were laid the foundations of all subsequent Biblical theology proper. Defensive assertion of truth was rendered necessary by heresies arising within the community, and by the duty of vindicating the Faith against those with out. The latter obligation gave rise to Apologetics in all its branches, called in modern times Evidences : Apology having Theology of the Teaching Church. 16 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. reference rather to the position of the Christian society as challenged by the world, Evidences belonging rather to its aggres sive and missionary character. The former introduced DOGMATIC Theology, taught first in Creeds — the Apostles', the Niceno-C»n- stantinopolitan, and the Athanasian ; afterwards in specific expo sitions of those creeds, and their individual articles : this, as distinguished from Apologetic, is controversial divinity or Polemics. In later times, all these branches have been incorpo rated into the unity of what is called Systematic divinity, or the orderly arrangement of the doctrines of revelation, as they are Dogmas fixed in the decisions of the Church, defended against external assaults, and unfolded in the ethics of human duty. This is the normal development of the science within Christendom, and common to all its branches. Every Christian community presents in its own liteiature more or less system atically all these various forms of fundamental teaching. Confes- H. There is a development also which has been conducted sional according to the law of distinct types of doctrine, issuing finally "' in what has been already termed Confessional theology. This opens a very wide field, where the differences of the several branches of Christendom meet our view. It requires something like an historical survey. Scriptural 1. Such a survey must include the New Testament itself; but Types of. marking the essential difference between its several types of doctrine and those that appear in the Church after inspiration had ceased. It is important to have a clear conception of this. The sum of Scriptural teaching is the combination of many elements which the Holy Ghost fashioned into unity. As the history of the redeeming government of mankind runs on, the gradual evolution of doctrine generally and of individual doctrines runs on with it ; and as all events converge to the fulness of time so all doctrines converge to the fulness of truth. Multiplicity and variety are for ever tending to simplicity and unity. The pre paratory teaching of the Old Testament and the perfect teaching of the New are one in the unity of prophecy and fulfilment. The same may be said of the predictions of the Gospels before the Pentecost, and their accomplishment afterwards. And there are different types of doctrine in the Apostolic circle. St. John St. ' THEOLOGY IN THE CHURCH. 17 Peter, St. James, St. Paul contribute their several distinct exhibi tions of Christian truth, each of which is sharply marked off from its fellows, while all conspire to the unity of the faith. The first Eph. iv. Three received each his special charisma or gift, and represented the Saviour's teaching as given to them in its elements by His own lips, before and after the resurrection, and as subsequently expounded to them by the Holy Spirit, according to the Lord's promise. St. Paul was added to the company ; he derived his teaching, according to his own testimony, directly from the Risen Saviour, who elected the future Apostle from a Rabbinical school, and gave him a specific revelation of the scheme of the Gospel. In one of the Epistles which contain the fullest exhibition of what is new in the evangelical system he says : for I neither received it Gal. i. 12. of man, neither was I taught it, but by the revelation of Jesus Christ. It is most obvious that the method of the Inspiring Spirit was to complete the Christian revelation on the principle of a series of converging developments, the last and highest of which were com mitted to St. Paul and St. John. This fact will meet us again ; it will be our main guide in the Biblical exposition of theology. Meanwhile, it must be remembered that these developments ended with the perfected revelation. Divine doctrine then ceased, and human dogma then began its course. The unity of New-Testament doctrine is perfect. The Apostle Paul, who seems to introduce so many new elements into his teaching that he is claimed by very opposite parties as the real founder of Christian theology, is the most strenuous of all in asserting that unity, and in denouncing every tendency to divide the Christian Faith into several types. Now I beseech you, brethren, by the name 1 Cnr. i. of our Lord Jesus Christ, that ye all speak the same thing, and that 10' 13- there be no divisions among you ; but that ye be perfectly joined together in the same mind and in the same judgment. . . . Is Christ divided f 2. In Christian history the case is different. Christendom Creeds soon was partitioned into provinces : the period of perfect unity a5 . on" r *¦ r r j lessions. in theological teaching was very brief. This is not the place to discuss the moral character of this fact : it is with the fact alone we have to do, and with that only in a preliminary way. (1) During the first six hundred years, the Patristic age Patristic proper, the unity of the Faith was expressed by the CEcumenical ^e' VOL. I. 0 18 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. Creeds : the Apostles', which gradually expanded the Baptismal Formula, the Nicene, which introduced a more theological defini tion of the Holy Trinity in Unity, the Athanasian, which still more fully expanded this, and added to it the precise definition of the Incarnation. Scarcely were the Three Creeds ledged in the universal Faith than the first division of Confessional theology took place : that between the Oriental and the Western Confessions. Beginning with the difference of a word, the insertion of the FlLlOQUE to express the procession of the Spirit from the Son as from the Father, the breach wore on, and the two Theologies have had ever since their marked types : that of the East con templative, mystical, unprogressive, and teaching rather by symbol than by creeds ; that of the West abounding in analysis, always progressive, and developing every truth to its utmost issues. The Greek or Oriental Creed, mainly though not exclusively represented by the Orthodox Church of Russia, holds to the decisions of the seven CEcumenical Councils from 325 to 787, the Nicene Creed being its basis. Since the Reformation it has issued several Confessions, that of Peter Mogila in 1643, the Decrees of the Synod of Jerusalem 1 672, the Catechism of Philaret, sanctioned in 1839. Oriental divinity has many points of specific distinction from that of the West. From the Roman Catholic it differs by rejecting the doctrine of the Papacy, by some modifications of the Seven Sacraments, by denying the Immaculate Conception of the Virgin, by circulating the Bible in the Vernacular, and, as a consequence of the first of these differ ences, by the assertion of its own absolute supremacy as the only orthodox and true representative of Christianity on earth. Classing Romanism among the schisms and heresies as the eldest born among them, it nevertheless agrees with Rome in the great bulk of its doctrines, and has no affinity with Protestantism save in its rejection of an infallible human authority and the conse quent possibility of its own reformation. Romanism (2) The Romanist and Protestant types of theology have divided and Pro- tiie -Western world for three centuries : united as thev un- testantisxn ..... ¦ « .. „ J doubtedly are in many ot the most fundamental verities, their differences touch almost every essential topic in the administra tion of redemption and the presence of Christ in His Church. THEOLOGY IN THE CHURCH. 19 Those differences will meet us only too often : meanwhile it is enough to say that each type of doctrine is developed into a large body of theology. The basis of Romanism was until lately the Tridentine symbols and decrees and canons, or the solemn sanction given by the Council of Trent in the middle of the sixteenth century to the dogmas which had been growing up in the mediajval times, and were formulated in opposition to Pro testantism. In the present century the Vatican decisions on the Immaculate Conception, 1854, and Papal Infallibility, 1870, have been added to the Tridentine decrees and Roman Catechism of the era of the Reformation. Protestantism as such, that is, the general system of decline which derived its name from the protest against Rome, has many subdivisions, and its confessions are many. Historically considered, these divided into two at the Lutheran Reformation : the Lutheran and the Reformed ; the chief ex- and positors of the former having been Luther and Melanchthon, and eformed- of the latter Calvin and Zwingli. These are one in their adhesion to the three ancient Creeds, but specially in the restoration of Holy Scripture to its supreme place as the standard of faith, in the vindication of the fundamental doctrine/ of grace which in the ancient Creeds had not sufficient piominence, and in the esta blishment of the Scriptural view of a sinner's personal relations to Christ. But they differ in other respects : mainly in that Lutheran Theology is more deeply sacramental, and the Reformed is pervaded by the revived predestinarianism of Augustine. The chief standard of Lutheran doctrine is the Augsburg Confession of 1530, with Luther's Catechisms of 1529, and the Formula of Concord, 1577. The chief Reformed Standards were the Helvetic Confession of 1564, the Heidelberg Catechism of 1563, with the various Confessions of France, Belgium, and Scotland. The Re formed doctrine hao spread more widely, and is now represented by many formularies, among which may be classed the Thirty-nine Articles, and more distinctly the Westminster Confession, which unites most of the English-speaking communions of Calvinism. (3) In the beginning of the seventeenth century the Arminian, Arminian. or rather Remonstrant, Confession arose in Holland, under the direction of James Harmen, Arminius, as a protest against what has been called, from its second founder, CALVINISM. The 20 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. supreme principle of this latter type of doctrine is the Absolute Sovereignty of God : its best representative is the Westminster Confession. The Arminian type has for its principle the univer sality of the benefit of the Atonement and the restored freedom of the human will as an element in the doctrine of the Divine decrees. The Remonstrance presented by the followers of James Arminius contained five articles, of which the following is the substance : that God elected to salvation, or to reprobation, those whose faith or whose final disbelief He foresaw ; that Jesus Christ died for all, but .only believers receive the benefit ; that repent ance and renewal are of the Spirit's operation ; that the grace which effects this may be finally resisted ; that the question of a necessary final perseverance must be left undecided. These Five Points, the last of which was afterwards made more explicit, have been the foundation of Arminianism in Holland, and in England, where it leavened theological thought to a great extent. In the Kevival of the last century the original Methodists were dis tinguished from the followers of Whitefield as Arminians. But the immediate successors of Arminius declined from sound faith in some particulars ; and in its own country the system is deeply tinctured with Socinianism and Rationalism. (4) All these Confessional types are exhibited in the systematic teachings of the larger communions into which the modern Unitarian. Church is divided. Nor are there any other, unless a Unitarian type is admitted : there was after the Reformation a Soclnian Confession ; but that, as a Confession, has vanished, scarcely any trace of its peculiarities being found in modern Unitarianism, which has its most productive field in America, and can scarcely be distinguished from pure Theism. Nor can there be said to be an Eclectic or Latitudinarian system : for these words apply to no one particular type of Christian doctrine. Methodist (5) Methodist theology, which has spread duringthe last century over a very wide area of Christendom, is Catholic in the best sense, holding the Doctrinal Articles of the English Church, including the Three Creeds, and therefore maintaining the general doctrine of the Reformation. It is Arminian as opposed to Calvinism, but in no other sense. Its peculiarities are many, touching chiefly the nature and extent of personal salvation ; and THEOLOGY IN THE CHURCH. 21 with regard to these its standards are certain writings of John Wesley and other authoritative documents. III. There is a third view to be taken of development in the theology of the Christian Church : having reference to the form it has in all ages taken from external circumstances. This also will be best seen in such a brief review as may serve to indicate the importance of the study of the ecclesiastical history of doc trine or dogma, and, at the same time, prepare the way for those historical summaries which will be given under the several heads of the following course. I. In the Patristic Church — including the -ante-Nicene and post-Nicene periods down to Gregory, A.D. 600 — there were schools of theological thought, which represented almost all the later tendencies. For instance, Asia Minor and Antioch, Alexandria, and "North Africa were severally centres of three very distinct kinds of teachings : the first, more faithful to Scrip ture and Apostolical tradition ; the second, blending philosophical speculation, allegorical interpretation, and the mystical element with its Christianity; and the third, hard, real, and dialectic. The early writers in these distinct schools betray their influ ence in every age, and in all their views of Christian doctrine ; and the same influence extends downwards, more or less, through subsequent times. These schools reign still without the names. 2. During the earlier part of the Middle Ages, superstition moulded tradition into forms of doctrine that more and more ¦ diverged from the Scriptural standard. This was a period, how ever, of comparative stagnation, as contrasted with the luminous activity of the post-Nicene age and with the deep theological devotion of the Schoolmen beginning with Anselm about 1100. The Scholastic divinity in the universities of Christendom wrought up the materials it inherited into systematic forms, which carried dialectic subtilty and philosophical speculation to their highest point. By the toil of many indefatigable minds it laid the foundation of the complete system of Roman Catholi cism as formulated in the Council of Trent ; while, at the same time, it transmitted its methods to Protestantism, the first century of which almost rivalled the work of the medieval doctors in ana lytical severity and completeness. Whatever deductions may be General types. Patristic Schools. Middle Ages. Scholas ticism. 22 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. made from the value of its results, the Christian Church owes very much to the industry and devotion of the Schoolmen. Systematic theology had its origin in their labours. Mysticism 3. Through all these, however, struggled the Mystical spirit, which controlled a large part of the Scholastic theology, and penetrated every branch of the Christian Church, influencing the doctrines of each by turns. Its law of development is the inde pendent teaching of God in communion with the human spirit : independent, first, as without the external means of grace, and, secondly, as given to the individual apart from all others. The theology of every period, and of every region of Christendom, has received the impress of this law working lawlessly : its operation has touched Pantheism at the one pole, and at the other merely imparts a mystical colouring to Christian doctrine and devotion. Consequently, it is impossible to characterise Mystical theology as one distinct whole ; and still more evidently is it wrong to brand it with indiscriminate condemnation. Its earliest Chris tian representative, the pseudo-Dionysius, teaches with all his errors a sublime doctrine of the Supreme and of man's communion with Him ; and the purest spirit of self-renouncing consecration pervades the writings of Scotus Erigena and other Mystics who held the leading doctrines of the Christian Faith. The Theologia Germanica, a work which transmitted to modern times the ancient Mysticism, was made by Luther almost one of the text books of the Reformation. From that time downwards Mystic devotional theology reappears in every region of Christendom. Romanism has had its several types in Spain, France, Italy, and Germany ; and its Mystical writers, apart from their unevangelical and quietistic errors, carry devotion into a very high region. Every community of Protestantism has had its representatives both of the sound and of the unsound Mysticism. In some it has passed into a transcendental theosophy, Jacob Behmen being their expositor ; in others, into a fanatical independence of external revelation, and indifference to the common fellowship of the Church ; in others into a visionary religion of intuitional sentiment and feeling. But its healthiest manifestations have been simply a tribute to the pure Mysticism of the New Testa ment ; a protest against the mere form and externality of godli- THEOLOGY IN THE CHURCH. 23 ness ; and the true expression of all that is high and unearthly in communion with God. 4. In every age, but especially in these last times, theology in the Church has been influenced by a tendency the opposite of that of Mysticism : the spirit of Rationalism, which makes the human understanding the measure of the truth it accepts. Rationalism is either philosophical or critical : the former has aimed to recast Christian doctrine, and make it the manifold expression of its own ideas ; the latter has been destructive, eliminating from the faith everything that human reasoning can not explain. In both these forms it has widely influenced the development of Christian theology, though both may be said to carry their doctrine to a region altogether outside of Christendom. The term Rationalism, as signifying one of the elements that mould religious thought, may be restricted to the latter meaning. It is the spirit which perpetually labours to make the truths of revela tion acceptable to the human understanding. In a very different sense from that of the Apostle, it testifies only that which it has seen : seen with the eye of reason alone. Accepting the Christian Faith as a whole, it claims to give a good account of it to the intuitions and judgments of men ; but this at the expense of all that is transcendent, mysterious, and past finding out in the ways of God with mankind. 5. The other aspect of Rationalism may more appropriately be termed Speculation in theology. Speculation starts from certain a priori determinations which thought finds in itself as the neces sary and primary ground of all being and thinking. It fixes upon its point of observation, and speculates or regards attentively the whole field of possibilities from that point of view. Hence it constructs its own philosophy of religion from subjective prin ciples. It aims to understand Christianity as the expression of eternal laws governing the universe. The result has been an ever-shifting variety of theological conceptions of the sum of things. The characteristics of each system have been marked by eome primary category or law of thought to which all is reduced : in that of Scotus Erigena it was the idea of Nature uncreated, creating and created ; in Leibnitz the Monad ; in Spinoza, the one eternal Substance, with its attributes of thought and exten- Rational- ism. Specula tive Theology. 24 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. Develop ment with the Times. sion ; in German transcendental philosophies, all more or less theo logical, the idea of the absolute, the Ego and non-Ego, the Idea. Each makes the Christian revelation the eternal and necessary expression of its own self-gendered thought. But another applica tion of the term speculative in relation to theology requires to be mentioned : that which simply implies a disposition to push inquiry into the fringe of thick darkness which encompasses the circle of every revealed doctrine, and to fill up the chasms in the system of truth at every point. It is the undue exercise of imagina tion in the religious domain ; and it differs from Rationalism only in this, that it does not reduce faith to knowledge, as if we must perfectly know in order to believe, but rather strives to include within the sphere of knowledge what is left to the acceptance of naked faith. With speculative theology, however defined, we ought to have but little to do. 6. Finally, there are healthy developments in theology, and especially in some branches of it, which are guided by the general advancement of human affairs. With the progress of human culture theology progresses. In its relation to science, philo sophy, learning, and civilisation generally, it both gives and receives. It absorbs the good influences, and counteracts the evil, of the times. It begins, as it were, afresh in every land in which it is planted and grows with its growth. The tree is everywhere the same, and its fruit the same ; but its development varies with the influences of soil and culture. In every Christian Church theology is, at this moment, undergoing as a science manifold and obvious improvement ; and each community con tributes its part to the general advance. But this leads to the last branch of our general proposition. Theology a Science. THEOLOGY SCIENTIFIC. Christian Theology is the systematic arrangement of the truths pertaining to the revelation of God. It may lay claim to the character of a science : its aim is scientific as it is the basis of practical rehgion ; its methods also are scientific, in the best and only legitimate sense. But theo^ THEOLOGY A SCIENCE. 25 logical science has peculiarities which distinguish it from all others, and must be kept in view by every student. I. The aim of theology is to exhibit the grounds and principles, The the connection and harmonies, the results and applications, of the j6^8 facts of revelation. In common with every science, it obeys the Art. law of the human mind, which demands that the materials of its knowledge should be inductively generalised and systematically arranged ; and, in common with every science, it arranges its materials for use and practical application. Theology is the science, and Religion is the art. The two derivations of the word Religion — from Relegere, or Religare — blend, as we have seen, in making it the practice of the duties that flow from man's •relation to God. Whether more subjective, according to the former, or more objective, according to the latter, it is, and has ever been, the art or practice of the Divine service. The reasons, obligations, laws, arguments, and results of this service are set forth in the science which is its foundation. And, as religion is from God, so also is theology. The Bible is as full of the science as it is of the art of religion. It will be seen hereafter that there is a distinction between Biblical and Systematic theology ; but that distinction does not involve the exclusion of theological science from the Bible : almost every treatise in it refuses to allow this. Wherever man's duty to God is taught, there must be the establishment and enforcement of its grounds ; and Holy Scripture encourages both the theoretical and the practical study of Divine truth. II. The methods of theology are scientific. It observes, tests, Methods, and arranges facts and makes generalisations ; it uses both the inductive and deductive processes of argument ; it depends upon the same primary laws of thought upon which those processes rest ; and it sets out, as all legitimate human inquiry must set out, with a firm faith in certain truths which lie behind experience, being inwrought into the fabric of our minds : such as the primary law of causation and all that it involves, and the validity of those laws of belief which are innate. But the facts of our science are gathered from regions some of which are thought to be inter dicted to scientific observation. There is the sacred deposit of 26 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. original truths in the constitution of man's nature. There are the economies of Creation and Providence. There is the bound less storehouse of the Word of God ; and there are the innumer able testimonies of common experience, of which Scripture is the test, while they confirm the Scripture. Strictly speaking, all these regions of observation are one, inasmuch as every element of religious consciousness, and every lesson of the external universe, is wrought up into the fabric of Divine revelation. We cannot take a step further without the assurance that these are legitimate fields of observation, the facts or phenomena of which are as real as the facts with which physical science has to do. Theological science is dissipated at once if this is denied. Supposing it granted, then there remains only the careful, honest, and religious observ ance of the accepted laws of reasoning. The result, whether by analysis or synthesis, is the scientific presentation of each doctrine and class of doctrine and the entire compass of theology. In this way, that is by the rigorous processes of indftction and deduction, systematic theology arrives at a clear and distinct apprehension of every article of the Faith. For instance, its doctrine of sin is the result of a wide and exhaustive examination of a large number of testimonies in Scripture and in experience which force conviction on the mind that one, and one only, theory can account for all the facts. The same may be said of its doctrine of the Person of Christ, which is inductively established by a comparison of many passages, none of which individually contains a formal statement. Of this we shall have manifold other illustrations as we proceed. Theologi- III. Hence a distribution of the truths of revelation in syste- cal Ency- matic forms, which combine into a complete encyclopaedia of c op '''' theological science. A comprehensive view of this divides it into Biblical, Historical, and Dogmatic ; each of these, however, more or less penetrating the others, and all combining to form what may be called Systematic divinity. Biblical. 1. Biblical theology, in its widest meaning, includes the criticism and study of the text of Scripture ; its construction as a whole ; the laws of exegesis and their application, or Hermeueu- tics ; its archaeology, geography, and history > and all that belongs to the Introduction to the Bible. More restricted in meaning, THEOLOGY A SCIENCE. 27 Historical, Syste matic. it is the arrangement of the theology of Scripture in its own terms and according to its own laws of development and classifi cation. In this sense it is the foundation of all theology properly so called : every doctrine, as will be seen, having its own and proper Biblical development. 2. Historical theology embraces ecclesiastical history in its whole compass, or the history of the kingdom of God within and without the Scripture ; including all that belongs to the Church, its antiquities, ceremonies, and jurisprudence, but especially the progress and development of Christian doctrine through the ages of controversy and formation. It is in this latter sense that we shall use the term : endeavouring to present every specific article of the Faith in its evolution in ecclesiastical systems. 3. Dogmatic or doctrinal theology includes both the doc- Dogmatic. trine and ethics of Christianity in their scientific arrangement, with their apology and defence ; in it doctrine as taught in Scripture, and dogma as taught in the Church, are one. 4. Systematic theology may be said, more or less, to include all these : it takes the system of doctrine as its basis, but illus trates it from history, and verifies it by Scripture. It has this peculiarity, that, while the other three may be independent of any particular standard, every work on systematic theology more or less bears the impress of one confessional stamp. 5. Of this fact the present course will be an illustration : exhibiting the compass of Divine truth, whether as presented in Scriptural forms, or as moulded by ecclesiastical development, or as dogmatically stated in its results. It will first treat of the Christian Religion, and of its Documents as the Divine Rule of Faith : including the topics of Revelation, Inspiration, Canon, with such exhibition of the credentials or evidences of the Faith as are consistent with the strictly dogmatic character of our course. This is the necessary introduction to the supreme doc trine concerning God : His Being, Essence, Names, and Attributes. The consideration of these subjects will lead to the relations of God and the Creature. Then follows the doctrine concerning sin : its origin, nature, and universality. The Mediatorial Ministry of Jesus Christ, His Person, and His Work, as objectively finished on earth and in heaven, will next demand The Present System. Analysis. 28 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. prolonged attention, leading to the Administration of Redemp tion, including Personal Salvation, the Ethics of the Gospel, and the Institutions of the Christian Church. All must needs he closed by the doctrines pertaining to the Last Things. Unity of IV. It is of great importance that the mind should be imbued Theology. a^ fae outSet with a sense of the possibility and the advantage of a well-articulated system. In the organic unity of Christian truth every doctrine has its place in some cycle of doctrines, while all the lesser systems revolve around their common centre. And it is one of the fruits of theological study to enable the student to locate every topic at once. But not only so. There are rich and profound harmonies among these truths ; and every doctrine, having its proper place, has also its relations to almost every other : the quick discernment of these relations is another fruit of devout and earnest inquiry. Putting the two together, the high aim of the proficient in this study should be to discover all the affinities and connections of the truths of the Christian system. It may be objected that such scientific precision in the definitions and demarcations of doctrine is out of keeping with the free spirit of Christian theology. It is customary to point to the rich and irregular luxuriance of Scripture. But the Scripture is altogether on the side of order. Some parts of it are as syste matic as they could be made ; and none are without system. It 2 Tim. i. k^ and bids us have and hold, the iVototojo-iv, the form of sound 1 Tiia. iv. words. St. Paul distinguishes between the words of faith and 6. the words of good doctrine, which he exhorts Timothy to combine in their unity. Of course, the effort to systematise must he governed by a higher aim, and guarded against the danger to which it is peculiarly exposed. Theology, the city of God, is built, as it were, upon seven hills, which are the great doctrines that may be discerned to be fundamental. These several hills of the Lord are not sharply separated from each other, but throw out their spurs in all directions, making it hard to show where one department of truth ends and another begins. To maintain the distinctions without marking them too mechanically is the aim of sound theological science. Pecu- V- I* remains only to mark the sacred peculiarities of this Iiarities. study. True as it is that its methods are the same which are THEOLOGY A SCIENCE. 29 employed in the inductive sciences, it is also true that its mate rials are partly or mainly collected in a region which merely human science cannot penetrate, and where a special kind of demonstration is alone attainable. It is wrong to place theology on a level with the inductive sciences : it is either below them, or above them, or both, according to the spirit in which it is viewed. 1. There is a sense in which the entire round of theological truth Faith. is matter of faith : even those facts which belong to the conscious ness of every man are connected with great verities that are delivered to faith from the invisible world. Now, faith is the inward assurance of things not seen, and makes the materials of theology as real and certain as the things that physical science has to deal with. But that faith is not altogether common to man ; it is connected with certain moral conditions ; and, to those who have it not, theology in every form is only an incom prehensible pseudo-science. They retort upon it its own words, and brand it as science falsely so called. Not that they entirely 1 Tim. vi. reject the study of Divine things : to them also there is a Science 20- of Religions, or of the superstitions and quasi-spiritual delusions of mankind. To those who believe it is the truest, most comprehen sive, and not least exact of all the sciences ; and it is not their fault if it remains, nevertheless, a region of esoteric mysteries into which they alone are initiated. 2. Mystery is everywhere in this knowledge : its simplest elements Mystery. are things unsearchable by the faculties of man. This is to some extent true of all other sciences ; they all have their mysteries, in both the Scriptural senses of the term : things brought to light that have been long hidden, and things unsearchable, the signs of which only are seen. The latter always wait on the former; when the mystery ceases to be a matter reserved from knowledge, it ceases not to be a matter reserved from reason. This is true of the impenetrable things of nature ; it is a mistake to think that when science has discovered the laws that govern the wonderful phenomena with which it deals, the mystery ceases. The simplest elements of every department of knowledge are things unsearchable by human faculties. Supposing scientific research to be successful in penetrating every secret of nature, so far as to find the secondary cause of every effect, there is still a large residuum over which it 30 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. 1 Tim. iii. 16. Petitio Principii, Conven tional language. broods, waiting for light which probably will never come. But the theological mystery is confessedly great. Every doctrine, how ever bright and blessed in itself, is compassed about with thick darkness ; every page and every line of its record " exit in mys- terium.'' There are, and will ever be, great antitheses or, as men call them, contradictions in thought which our limited capacity is unable to reconcile. Metaphysical thinking is compelled to leave these antinomies unsolved wherever the finite and the infinite meet. Our science also has its speculative region, into which reason soars, but the logical understanding cannot follow. More over, and finally, it has revelations to deal with which appal the minds which they baffle : the dread and awful truths which are its dark side, having their reflections in human experience and the ordinary course of nature, but not the less a stumblingblock on that account. All these are the cross of theology, which to itself is its glory, to unbelieving man its reproach. 3. Like every other science, but in a peculiar sense, theology has much in it ofthe "petitio principii." It assumes many irreducible first axioms. The consciousness of self, the consciousness of a world not self, the consciousness of God neither self nor the world, we may seek to demonstrate, but they are postulated in the demonstration. It will appear, as we proceed, how often and in what various ways theology seems, in its general credentials and in its defence of every doctrine, to argue in a circle. This is a necessity of which it need never be ashamed, and no truly philo sophical or scientific mind will charge this as an offence. 4. In common with all the sciences, theology has its phraseology of conventions : partly of scriptural precedent or suggestion, partly of human appointment. Conventional terms are necessary in all knowledge : the symbols of ideas once settled are, and ought to be, unchangeable. The systematic arrangement of Divine truth requires them, and has enlisted them in great variety. It has its precise technical terminology, the fixing of which has been the result of sound inductive processes, and the accurate maintenance of which gives its precision to our study. Revelation, Inspira tion, Scripture, Faith, Trinity, Substance, Person, are instances of terms which have their established conventional meaning. The importance of this may be illustrated in the case of two of these THEOLOGI A SCIENCE. 31 terms in particular. Inspiration is a word in common use to signify an influence breathed upon or flowing into the mind from any external source, as opposed to its own inherent operations : hence it has a current philosophical and literary application. In religious matters it also signifies any influence or energy of the Holy Spirit in the awakening of spiritual feeling. But it has in theology a conventional meaning, which is limited to the direct and specific discipline of the Inspiring Spirit preparing the writers of Scripture for their task ; and to that use of it the term is strictly to be appropriated. Again, the word Person has a variety of applications. It signifies generally the ground of personality, or of independent, conscious, responsible action. But it has in theology a specific relation both to the doctrine concerning God and to the doctrine concerning Christ. As to the former, it is used conventionally to distinguish the Three Persons in the unity of the one Divine essence. The personal God is known to us as Three Persons ; and the term which has been long established stands simply as the symbol of an incom prehensible mystery. As to the latter, the indivisible Person of Christ signifies the result of the union of His two natures. The conventional term has here another and distinct use, being again the symbol of a mystery equally unfathomable with that of the Triune personality. The same term has its different conventional use in these two supreme subjects ; and its applications must be remembered and respected. But every department has its own specific theological vocabulary. They will defend themselves as we proceed: meanwhile, the student* should be impressed with their importance, making it a law of his study to define them carefully and hold them fast tenaciously. 5. Theological science, in conclusion, has a Divine sanction, Divine influence, and control, which no other can claim. There is a Teaching. spirit in man : and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth them under- g. standing in every department of knowledge. But in theology, which seeks in all truth its relation to God and eternity, there is the guarantee of a special guidance of the Holy Spirit of God. His witness is not given only to the personal acceptance of the believer ; it is a testimony to the doctrine on which his experi ence rests. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but tlie 1 Cor ii 12. 32 CHRISTIAN THEOLOGY. Spirit which is of God ; that we might know the things that are freely given us of God. This declaration of St. Paul refers to nothing less than the whole compass of theology, as it unfolds the deep things of God ; and, what is more, it assures us that the sufficient knowledge of these deep things is not the prerogative of inspired Apostles only, but is the common privilege of all who receive the Divine Spirit as a Teacher. The theological student who does not imprint this truth on his heart at the outset goes on his perilous way without the strongest incentive for the encourage ment of his labours. In this study the Holy Ghost more than blesses the diligent mind : He directs its pursuits, shapes its con clusions, and sanctifies its reasonings. The first condition of the successful pursuit of this science is the submission of the reason Jude 25. to the teaching of the only wise God our Saviour. In the Holy Scriptures this is laid down as a primary axiom. No one who 2 Tim, iii. despises or neglects it will ever be more than a learner, ever 7- learning, and never able to come to the . knowledge of the truth ; but St. Paul, using the same strong word for a perfect experimental 1 Tim. ii. apprehension, says elsewhere that God will have all men to be saved, *¦ and to come- unto the knowledge of the truth, clT%uv, John i. 9. of the light of the Son in human reason which lighteth every man REVELATION. 37 that cometh into the world; (pavepovv, of the declaration of the Divine glory in the universe, and of the testimony of the Supreme to all men to whom that which may be known of God is manifest, referring to His providential guidance of the Gentiles before whom He left not Himself without witness, ovk d/iaprupov. It is sufficient for our present purpose that all these lower and more unrestricted or improper revelations and methods of revela tion are taken up into Revelation proper. The Records of the Faith are the records of all the teachings that at sundry times and in divers manners preceded and prepared for it. There is, however, a special and limited meaning of the term. But, before considering this more fully, it may be well to note some theo logical distinctions which lead the way to it. 1. The word revelation unites the two ideas of a Divine unveil ing or d?roKaAvt/as, and making known or (pavepaxrvs, of the mysteries of religion, or of the soul's relation to God. We must remember the conventional meaning of these terms in theology. There are secrets gradually unveiled in the worlds of mind and matter, the slow disclosure of which is appointed to be the aim and the re ward of human science ; but we do not call them mysteries. Nor do we call their discovery revelation, save as they are directly connected with religion and taken up into the economy of the Providential government of the world. 2. This leads to another distinction : Revelation, in this higher theological meaning of the term, is general and special. As GENERAL it is undoubtedly common to the human race as such : the foundation of what may be called natural theology and natural religion. Although, as we have seen, the highest word is not used of this universal unveiling of God in the creature, it may be called natural as distinguished from supernatural revelation. This latter is SPECIAL ; as being imparted not so much in man as to man, through the medium both of Divine works and Divine words, as will be hereafter seen. 3. External and internal revelation are to be separated : the former is as it were given objectively and for all ; the latter is specially imparted to the organs of revelation, and to those who receive it in faith. They are united in St. Paul's words : by revelation He made known unto me the mystery which in other ages Rom. i. 19. Acts xiv, 17. Heb. i. 1. Unveiling and Mani festation. General and Special. External and Internal. Eph. iii. 3—9. 38 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. was not made known unto the sons of men, as it is now revealed unto His holy Apostles and Prophets by the Spirit. Here is the special revelation not included in the former general manifestations of God ; the disclosure to the organs of inspiration as a body ; and the internal unveiling to St. Paul by the Spirit, to make all men see what is the fellowship of the mystery. But it is obvious that all external revelation must also be internal, though the converse may not be said with the same propriety. The One Revela tion. Eph. iv. 21. The One Purpose. Period. 1 Tim. iii. 16. Col. ii. 2. Col. ii. 3. SPECIAL REVELATION. Revelation, in the stricter, deeper, and fuller sense, is the unfolding of the eternal counsel of God in Christ, for the restora tion of man to fellowship with Himself. This is the sum and substance of truth as truth is in Jesus ; it is the conclusion of the whole matter of Divine manifestation to man ; and, as such, it is perfected in the Christian Scriptures, that is, in the final testimony of Jesus. His testimony is the last word of all objective revelation. In this definition there are three salient points ; the one Eternal Purpose in Christ the Revealer, the perfect Scripture, and the identity, or rather coincidence, of the Christian oracles with the Christian Faith. 1. Revelation proper is consecrated to the mystery hid with Christ in God, the one Secret which it unfolds. This is the common burden of the prophets and of theApostles and of Christ Himself. It is the one truth of the whole Word of God. The entire range of its disclosures, in all their many forms, is governed by this supreme purpose, and all pay their tribute to this one subject. Christ, Himself the Sum of all revelation, is Himself also the one Revealer or Apocalyptist. He is the Revealer in act and in word. First, and above all, in act. He is Himself the personal revela tion of God and His whole eternal purpose towards the human race. This profound truth of Christianity is presupposed through out the New Testament. It may be studied in the combination of several Pauline passages. In the first the great Mystery of Godliness is spoken of as being manifest in the flesh : this refers to the Person of Christ Incarnate, Who elsewhere is termed the Mystery of God, which is Christ, the one Secret to be revealed in Whom are hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge. Again, REVELATION. 39 this manifestation is said to be reflected from the mirror of the Gospel, which consummates all Divine disclosures : But we all, with open face beJwlding as in a glass the glory of the Lord. Finally, 2 Cor. iii. it is still more clearly explained in a passage which combines the , i". others, as the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ, 2 Cor. iv. the Countenance of the personal God in His incarnate Son looking 6" upon man and giving him, in the light of that countenance, all that he needs to know for time and eternity. Our Lord Jesus Christ is Himself the substance of all revelation of God, according to His own testimony : He that hath seen Me hath seen the Father. John xiv. Secondly, therefore, He is the Revealer in word. No one knoweth -, • . the Son but the Father ; neither knoweth any man the Father, save the 27.' Son, and he to whomsoever the Son willeth to reveal Him : 6 mos dTTOKa/Yifyai. Christ is THE Word in His original and eternal John i. 1. estate, Who, however, became incarnate to be the Oracle of God in the temple of humanity. No man hath seen God at any time ; John i. 18. the Onlybegotten God, Who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath made Him known. In His incarnate estate He is also that Prophet, John i.21 Who should absorb into Himself all prophetic functions, whether of announcing or of foretelling the will of God. In virtue of that first name, He has been from the beginning the Revealer : it was His voice that uttered the ancient oracles. In virtue of the latter name superadded to the former, He has summed up, satisfied, and consummated the revelation of all past ages in one perfect revelation for ages to come. He spake by the prophets; He spake upon earth ; and, though gone from us, He yet speaketh. His word means all revelation, and all revelation means His word. The Oracle and the oracles are one. 2. The Scriptures contain and are this perfect disclosure and Scripture finished revelation. Of their Divine origin we need not think as yet; though it is anticipated in the fact that the Saviour has given His authenticating testimony to the whole body of them in their integrity. That sanction, first, makes the Old Testament the revelation of Christ. As it testified of Him so He testifies of it. He took it into His hands, and blessed it, and hallowed it for ever as His own. As revelation is Christ, and Christ is the subject of the Old Testament, the Old Testament is of necessity the revelation of God. Knowing better than any human critic 40 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. can know all its internal obscurities and difficulties, He sealed it nevertheless for the reverence of His people. The canon of the ancient oracles, precisely as we hold them now, no more no less, He sanctified and gave to His Church as the early preparatory records of His own Gospel and kingdom. That sanction, secondly, assures us that the New Testament is His own authoritative com pletion of the Scriptures of revelation. Leaving the fuller study of this proposition for a further stage, we need only note the general fact that our Lord declared His own purpose to complete Matt. v. an unfinished revelation. Think not that I am come to destroy the 1^- law, or the prophets .- I am not come to destroy, but to fulfil, SXXa ¦n-X-qpSio-ai : not only to fulfil the predictions both of law and prophecy, but to fill out their meaning ; to set on them the seal of perfection by revealing fully what they revealed only in part. All the lines of Old-Testament revelation were broken off and incomplete : He gathered them up into Himself and His word, so that in Him they might have their vanishing point and yet not vanish. In regard to the Old-Testament oracles the word of St. 1 Cor. xiii. Paul does not hold good : When that which is perfect is come, then 1°* that which is in part will come to an end. And He made full pro vision for the preservation of His perfected doctrine. All that we need to a'ssure' our hearts of this was given in one large promise, which declared that His sayings should be revived in John xiv. their unbroken unity in His disciples' memory, He shall teach you ^6- all things, and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you ; that what He could not yet speak concerning His John xvi. Person, His Spirit should reveal, He will guide you into all truth; and that the same Spirit should show them the things to come. The Spirit was no other than Himself by His Agent re-uttering His own words, revealing His own Person and work, and filling up His prophecy of the future. Hence, lastly, our Lord's sanction makes the complete Scriptures the finished revelation, never to be superseded. Nothing can be more plain than that the entire fulness of what the Revealer had to say to the world was to be communicated to the Apostles by the Holy Ghost ; and that, not as a further disclosure on the part of the Spirit, but as the con solidation of the Saviour's teaching into its perfect unity, and its expansion into its perfect meaning. No future streams of REVELATION. 41 revelation were to rise higher than the fountain-head of truth opened in Himself. Hence we may repeat concerning the Book what has been said concerning the Lord's teaching: the Bible means all revelation and all revelation means the Bible. 3. We are justified, therefore, in holding that the Scriptures The of revelation and Christianity, as the Christian Faith, cover the Scriptures same ground and strictly coincide. As yet, we have nothing to tian;ty do with the question of inspiration, nor with inquiries into the One. genuineness and integrity of individual books and individual passages ; but only with the general fact that in all sound theology the Bible and Christ are inseparably connected. Not that they are in the nature of things identical : we can suppose the possi bility of an Incarnate Revealer present in the world without the mediation of the written Word. Indeed we are bound to assume, as has been already seen, that there is a wider revelation of the Word in the world than the Scriptures cover. Moreover we may assert that His revelation of Himself is still, and even in con nection with the Scriptures, more or less independent of the Word. But, as the basis of the science of theology, the Bible is Christianity. It has pleased God from the beginning to conduct the development of the great mystery by documents containing the attested facts, the authenticated doctrines, and the sealed pre dictions of revelation. The process of the Divine Counsel has been bound up with the enlargement of the Volume of the Book. . That Book is the foundation of Christianity : the Lord of the Bible and the Bible are indissolubly the Rock on which it is based. We have no other Christian Religion than that which is one with its documents and records ; we have no documents and records which do not directly or indirectly pay their tribute to the Christian Religion ; and there is no revelation in any depart ment of truth of which the same may not be said. All revelation is identical with Christianity and summed up in it. Hence, generally speaking, and as yet regarding the Scriptures only as a whole, we may say that the character of Christianity is the character of the Bible ; the claims and credentials of the one are the claims and credentials of the other. This observation will lead us by an easy transition to the counterpart of Revelation : the Christian Faith. 42 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. The THE CHRISTIAN FAITH. Faith. The Revelation given by God is the Christian Faith as received by man. The entire body of revealed truth is addressed to the principle of faith, receiving on Divine evidence what becomes matter of certitude and assurance. This is the objective dogmatic Faith delivered to the saints. But this same Faith may also be regarded as having to win the assent of the world, and as presenting its credentials to the reason in order to universal accept ance. Hence we have two general aspects of our present subject : first the Christian Revelation as accepted by faith, and, secondly, as presenting its evidences to reason. Received THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION AS ACCEPTED. by Faith. The Christian Revelation in all its compass of truth is addressed to faith primarily, to reason only as subor dinated to faith. It is committed to the supreme tenure of that principle which is the evidence and substantiation of spiritual things. This faith extends explicitly to all the facts, doctrines, and promises of the Holy Scripture, and impUcitly to all its mysteries whether already re vealed, in course of revelation, or reserved for the future. Eph. iv.21 Its supreme object is Christ and the truth as Truth is in Jesus. But it must be remembered that the Christian Faith is effectually such only to those whose belief is quickened by the Holy Ghost into the assurance of per sonal knowledge and experience. It is obvious that this general proposition involves a considera tion of the credentials of Christianity ; but we have now to do with Revelation only as addressed to faith. As containing the Christian system of truth, and recorded in the Bible, it appeals REVELATION. 43 to a universal principle of human nature, the faculty of believing. This primary faculty is profoundly seated in our constitution : it works as the acceptance of truth on sufficient evidence, whether of consciousness, or intuition, or testimony. It is at the root of all knowledge generally, especially of all knowledge of spiritual things. Now it is to this principle pre-eminently that Revelation appeals : to faith alone as it is a revelation of spiritual principles and truth : to faith conjoined with reason as it is a Divine re cord of facts through which these principles are taught. These two points have now to be briefly discussed. I. Faith must here in all things have the pre-eminence. Faith. 1. The grand revelations of the Word of God are all committed to that highest and noblest faculty which the Scripture calls the Heb.xi.l. evidence of things not seen. The existence of a Supreme First Cause, the creation of the world framed by the Word of God, the Heb. xi. nature of sin and the glory of redemption, the Person of the 3, 4. Incarnate and His atonement, the union of the Holy Spirit with the spirit of man, the processes and issues, in time and eternity, of the redeeming economy, in short all that belongs to the super natural world, must be believed or they are not the heritage of the soul. There is no faculty competent to deal with them, to receive them, to appropriate them, but faith. Reason of itself is the soul's judgment according to sense : if it is regarded as occupied with the mysteries of the spirit and the spiritual world it is no longer reason but faith under the name of reason. Faith is to the other world what the senses are to the world that now is; the eye, the ear, the taste, the touch that perceives what the physical senses cannot perceive. All is thus summed up : The natural man 1 Cor. ii. receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God : for they are foolishness unto 4* him : neither can he know them because they are spiritually discerned. 2. Hence it is that, inasmuch as the principle of faith belongs Its Place as certainly to human nature as reason does, the evidences of the _ ln supernatural world are addressed to a faculty which they ought Nature. to awaken, even as light ought to awaken the faculty of seeing. If the great truths of Revelation excite no response it is because a deadly evil vitiates the faith which does not vitiate the natural senses. It is necessary to dwell upon this, because reason, thus set aside, will ask why it is that Revelation addressed to a uni- 21. 44 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. versal faculty in man does not meet with instantaneous and universal acceptance. The 3. There is a spirit in man, and the inspiration of the Almighty giveth JobPxxxii ^em understanding. There is a Spirit Who demonstrates truth to 8. the mind, affections, and will of the personal man ; but only to John iii. njm wno js sjncere an(j cometh to the light. The credentials of Divine truth are self-evidencing : they are like the light of the sun in the natural world. This preliminary postulate is of the utmost importance, and may be established from the Scripture itself without any irrational begging of the question. First, let our Lord Himself be heard. The testimony concerning Him is, John i. 9. that He is the true Light which lighteth every man that cometh into the world. His testimony to Himself, borne, moreover, to one John who was not His disciple, is : Every one tliat is of the truth heareth xvin. 3' • My voice, where of the truth points to the mysteiy of man's free posture of mind as disposed or otherwise to be guided aright. John ii. This final declaration of Him Who knew what was in man expresses 25- the spirit of His entire teaching concerning the self-manifestation John vii. of His truth to every man's conscience who wills to do His '• will. Secondly, the light of the body of revelation is the Holy Ghost. The Saviour does not appeal to reason, apart from the mediation of the sole and supreme Convincer. That Spirit also knoweth what is in man, and brings His own Divine demonstra tion to every mind that does not refuse to consider what He says. He so adapts His arguments to the present fallen moral nature of men that their rejection can spring only from the perverseness of those whose spiritual eye of faith is darkened. As Christ is John xvi. the Truth incarnate, the Holy Ghost is the Spirit of the Truth. He is the great Apologist of Revelation to the world. And St. Paul says, concerning His argument, that it is nothing less than 1 Cor. ii. demonstration : iv d-!roSei£ei nvev/taros. Hence, thirdly, descend ing to man, we may appeal to the testimonies of Scripture as to the sin and self-conviction of unbelief. The tenour of those testi monies may be summed up in the same Apostle's last word, con- Titus hi. cerning the heretic, the alperiKov avQpwrov : he is auTOKcmxKpiTos, 11" condemned of himself. Those who resist the truth are men of corrupt 2 Tim. iii. minds, and this has its evidence in their being reprobate concerning 8- the faith. On the other hand, he tells us that there is a manifesta- 13. REVELATION. 45 tion of the truth to every man's conscience in the sight of God ; and 2 Cor. iv. that, in every case in which it is hid, the cause is to be found in a > blindness superadded by the god of this world. The same God who in the natural sphere commanded the light to shine out of dark- 2 Cor. iv. ness in the beginning, commandeth still the light of His know- "• ledge to shine in Hie face of Jesus Christ. No command of God can be disobeyed. There was light follows Let there be light in the Gen. i. 3. moral world also ; but the light, like its Author, may be rejected of men : the darkness comprehendeth it not. John i. 5. 4. To those who receive the light, in the sense of not refusing it, revelation is one whole, and all its glorious system of truth is received and surely believed. To them it is both objectively and subjectively THE Faith ; and, inasmuch as Christianity has brought The it in all its fulness into the world, it is to them the Christian Faith. Faith. This phrase has therefore a large meaning. It signifies that it is not their Philosophy simply, the glory of their reason, the Tradition they have derived from their fathers, but the rich inheritance which the Holy Spirit has given to that one supreme faculty of their souls, the faith which is the evidence of things not Heb. xi. seen. It is a body of truth which, as reason did not give it, so '• reason cannot take it away. It is a region in which they walk by faith, which their faith habitually visits, in which their faith lives, and moves, and has its being. II. But some of these remarks have already suggested that faith Reason. is strictly allied with reason in the acceptance of Christianity as a system of truth. The Spirit Who awakens faith regenerates the reason so that it humbles itself to receive mysteries which it can not understand ; the evidences on which faith rests are such as the reason is called on to approve, here the judgment of the mind having its full honour; and in the acceptance of the whole economy of the Scriptures of Revelation faith and sound reason are blended into a perfect unity. 1. The Christian Faith presents to the faculty by which the Reason infinite and the eternal are perceived a system of truth which * "r, human reason cannot fathom or understand, against which it naturally rebels. But the same Spirit Who opens the eye of faith gives reason its perfect soundness, so that it consents to accept what it cannot itself verify. Here of course we regard Revelation 46 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. as one organic whole, which has for its unifying principle one overwhelming truth, the union of God and man in Christ. Around this centre revolve other equally incomprehensible doc trines ; and beyond these in a wider orbit many which are not in the same sense beyond the human faculties. And speaking of the one vast Revelation we may say that it is committed to faith and submissively wondered at by reason. Faith is elevated to receive it and reason humbled to submit to it. Faith and 2. But this faith is not arbitrary or despotic. It gives its Reason, rights to reason in all things over which reasoning presides. It presents the evidences for the being of God, for the Incarnation of the Son, for the mystery of the Atonement ; and reason must either admit the evidence as in the case of the Divine existence, or confess that it has nothing to plead against it, as in the case of the Incarnation. Like sin before the presence of Divine justice reason shuts her mouth and is silent. But, descending into the province of the general external evidences of Revelation the matter changes its character. Either it must be said that here reason and faith are one under different names, or faith must be regarded as no longer the faculty of perceiving the infinite but as the prin ciple of believing on evidence. In either view faith and reason are here inseparable. Faith accepts and relies on what there is every reasonable ground for believing. Our great term, THE Christian Faith, then becomes the body of external revelation which is surely believed in by all Christians because they are assured of the strength of its evidences. But this leads us at once to the Credentials of Revelation. deSials. THE CREDENTIALS OF THE CHRISTIAN REVELATION. Revelation, which is one with the Christian Faith, which is one with its documents and records, presents its suffi cient Credentials to the reason and heart and will of man as one great body of irresistible evidence. First, it comes to mankind as a response to the universal desire and expectation of communication from above : to the craving REVELATION. 47 of the human heart for communion with God. Secondly, Revelation exhibits, in its own structure, the Divine attri butes as stamped upon every part of its system in the form of miracle, prophecy, and inspiration. Thirdly, it furnishes, in the Person of Christ the Revealer, its heavenly guarantee of its own truth. Fourthly, in its perfect con summation as Christianity, it appeals to the character of its influence in human history : positively in its victory over the world's evil, and negatively in its victory over all opposition. Lastly, it relies, as a Divine revelation might be expected to rely, on the demonstration ofthe Holy Spirit. All its credentials may without much difficulty be classed under these several heads : so far that is as they are a general apology and vindication of the Christian Faith contained in itself. The Revelation of Christ in the Scriptures enforces its own Evidences claims, and theology must pay supreme deference to those internal ^y^" credentials. These become Evidences when they are arranged in their order. What the Law was to the earlier Gospel, Evi dences are to Credentials : added because of human weakness. They have their use, as it respects both the believer and the un believer ; to the former for confirmation, to the latter for conviction. y 1. The behever is taught by them how to give a reason of the Believers. hope that is in him : to be ready or prepared, -n-pos airoXoyiav, for 1 Pet. iii. Apology. St. Luke, the Evangelist of the Evidences, sets this clearly before us : he so arranges the testimonies of the Faith that Theophilus, already instructed in the verities most surely believed, might know the certainty of those things: «n.yv<3s, referring to an Luke i. 4. accurate and systematic knowledge. Both for the confirmation of his own faith, and for the conviction of the gainsayer, every Christian, especially every Christian minister, should have the form of sound defence at hand to guard the form of sound words : the viro-nm-uKrvi, or systematic arrangement, is equally necessary For Un- for each. believers. 2. As to the unbeliever, the Credentials must be so arranged 2 Tim. i. as to form a complete body of evidence for his possible conviction : *"• 48 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. Vocabu- ary of Unbehef. without either undervaluing or over-estimating their importance. They must not be despised by a transcendental reliance on the self-evidencing light. Christianity, Uke its Founder, has a mission to seek that it may save. Its history, both within and without the Bible, is a record of calm reasonings with the mind, even of those who turn away. Evidences or signs are for those who believe not. There may be cases in which the arguments used concerning Revelation may induce the sceptic to listen to the voice of Revelation itself. But, on the other hand, too much must not he expected from them, as they are external evidences apart from the interior demonstration of the truth. Our Lord and His Apostles have left us no instance of argument with those who held not some measure of faith to which their reasonings might appeal. As the Book of Revelation does not reason with Atheism, neither does Christianity lay any stress on reasoning with Infidelity and disbelief. 3. Various terms have been here introduced : such as unbeliever, disbeliever, doubter, and sceptic. These bear their shades of meaning, which it is important to remember and discriminate in all discussions on this subject. It is well known that in the New Testament there is everywhere a clear and broad distinction between two classes : believers and unbelievers. But it is not implied that the state of unbelief is that in which nothing is Disbelief, believed : on the contrary, Unbelief is Disbelief and disbelief is the belief of the opposite of that which faith holds. Not that no room is left for a neutral state, that in which men muse in Doubt, their hearts and remain suspended in doubt. Doubt hesitates between two contradictory conclusions. It may have some degree of belief, checked by a consciousness of ignorance : in this case it is provisional, waiting for more light, and the New Testa ment gives several instances of this as worthy to be reasoned with. It may be definitive, and is then Scepticism, or the sur render of the mind to a conviction of the impossibility of certainty, with a tranquil complacency in such a state. But as scepticism believes that truth cannot be found, it is itself faith in necessary ignorance, unbelief of that about which it doubts, and therefore really disbelief. Hence the bad sense which is generally attached to the word in Christian Evidences. Scepti cism. REVELATION. 49 4. Let it be further observed that these credentials have no Creden- reference to those branches of evidences that concern the volume Evidences externally viewed : they come from the heart of Revelation as it is one great communication in Christ ; and the question of the authenticity and authority of the several parts of the Holy Scriptures must be postponed. It must be remembered also that the Apologetics of the Christian Faith accompany the several doctrines ; every article of the creed requires its own defence ; and therefore the evidences of Christianity must needs be dis tributed over the whole course of our dogmatic system. Again, they allow opportunity for the fair consideration of everything that can be said for or against Christianity as such, without descending, however, to innumerable subordinate questions, which have no importance in themselves. Once more, the exhibition of these credentials in all their grandeur will simplify the later evidences as to the several doctrines of the Bible, and at the same time lend those evidences their own force. Finally, this arrangement enables us to do justice to the cumulative character of the argument : it is not merely an accumulation of all that may be said on the subject, but such an orderly presentation as will make every argument, whether more or less important, both give and receive strength through its connection with the rest. THE RESPONSE TO THE RELIGIOUS EXPECTATION OF MANKIND. Revelation Christianity,. or the perfect Divine Revelation, presents Expected. itself as the answer to a universal demand. It explains while it appeals to the innate craving of the human mind to know God, or its sentiment of religion, and accounts for the general expectation of the Race, as expressed in its traditional Religions : appealing to them by what they contain of truth, and by what they contain of false hood. It comes with these credentials; and, moreover, pleads as being the perfect utterance of a Revelation which has been among men from the beginning, and, therefore, as the response to an expectation kept alive in the world by its own earlier teachings. Under VOL. I. E 50 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. Presump tive Ar guments. The Sense of God in Hu manity. this first department of credentials must be included all those preliminary considerations which are sometimes reckoned as Presumptive Evidences. In systems of Apologetics, or Evidences, presumptive arguments are commonly arranged in a threefold gradation. First, it is shown that a Divine revelation is POSSIBLE, whether as it respects the Giver of it or the recipient. Secondly, the deficiencies of reason within and the failures of human religion without are urged to establish that such a revelation is necessary. Then, thirdly, the conclusion follows that it is probable : the probability, when the Divine goodness and man's desire are taken into the account, reaching the point which only falls short of moral certainty. Now this chain of propositions may be established : the argument breaks down nowhere. But, for the reasons already given, it seems better to attain the same object by first of all examining the Revelation itself. Instead of arguing over the first proposi tion, the affirmation of which is contradicted by a certain school of philosophy, we must assume it to be true by appealing to the consciousness of all men, the doubters included. To conduct this argument without taking some revelation for granted is a thing impossible. And it is certain that it is more after the manner of the Bible to set out with the credentials of Revelation itself than to array a number of internal and presumptive evidences in its absence. THE DESIRE OF THE HUMAN MIND. Divine revelation appeals to a preparation in the human spirit which it explains and accounts for : first, the instinctive and indestructible sense of dependence on a First Cause; secondly, the consciousness of responsibility to a Supreme Authority ; and, thirdly, the union of these in the deep desire to know and have fellowship with the Source and End of Ufe. This three-one fact in human nature revelation challenges ; and here is its first cre dential. The instinct in man and the response from God meet. From the first word of the Scriptures to the last the Voice of the Creator speaks to the still small voice of His creature : the Voice of the All-sufficient answering the cry of dependence, of the Merci- REVELATION. 51 ful Judge dealing with guilt, and of the Eternal and Invisible conversing as Man with humanity. In the Bible, as completed hy Christianity, there is not a possible question of human nature to which a response is not given. The positive strength of this plea will be considered when we come to establish the existence of God. Meanwhile, it may be necessary here to obviate two opposite objections which may be urged against this most mighty presumptive argument. 1. Atheistic philosophy of every order is content to assert that the sentiment in human nature is one of the fruits of its own imagination, begotten of fear or hope ; and that it has invented a revelation to satisfy the demands of its own delusion : the imagi nary revelation from heaven being, like heaven itself, its most consummate delusion. With such theories of the soul it is vain to argue : at least, they do not enter into the present discussion. Save, indeed, so far as they sometimes undertake to deny that what we may term this instinct is really universal in the consti tution of man. This is simply an appeal to experience and induction. No race of humanity has ever been found which does not contradict this denial. Among the very lowest tribes there are traces of a certain sense of dependence on another world : the degraded feeling which looks with awe at some fetish symbol of the unknown is the same tribute at the one pole as the philo sophical speculation of Agnosticism is at the opposite pole, to a sense in man of the Infinite. The finite instinct for the Infinite, which is faith, undergoes in them the same degradation which all their other mental and spiritual faculties have undergone : no more, no less. But of this more will be said hereafter. 2. Deism has another and very different kind of counter argument. It sometimes insists that these instinctive preparations for the voice of God are themselves the revelation of the Supreme, and that there can be no other : that is to say, a transcendental Deism refuses to allow that there can be any other authenticated revelation of the Infinite to the finite than that which is direct in the consciousness of those who receive it. But it forgets that the very highest religious sentiment in man is only a desire unsatisfied; and that, as every strong and universal instinct has its answer from without, so also must this the strongest and most universal Atheistic Explana tion. Deistic. E 2 52 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. of all. But it may be denied that there is any longing of the human mind for an external revelation. Many who admit that the irrepressible yearning of the human soul towards the Infinite is an argument for the expectation of a secret revelation of God in the depths of the yearning spirit nevertheless refuse to admit the force of this appeal in favour of a revelation coming from above with all the external appendages that belong to the Chris tian Faith. It is sufficient to reply that this style of argument ignores the fact that the relation of man to God is such as to demand an external communication as weU as an internal. If he were, as he should be, at peace with the Object he seeks, the com munion with his Maker might be conducted altogether within. Yet even then not altogether within ; for the whole universe around him would be full of symbols, the visible revelation of his Creator. But he is, by the very supposition, estranged from God. The original conditions have ceased to exist ; and no argument can be based upon them. The unutterable longing to which Christianity responds is that of a guilty spirit ; not only depen dent on the Supreme, but trembling before Him. Man looks up to heaven — as his Greek name, avOponros or 6 avw a.6pu>v, testifies ; but he looks up to an outward Judge and not within to an interior God ; and expects and hopes that the Supreme wiU appear to him and speak to him by some being, or voice, or token. And this is the germ of all revelation. Moreover, it is undeniable that in every age and in every region men have longed for and believed in an external expression of the Divine mind. In fact, Christianity ia but one of many responses to man's groaning unutterable towards God. But this leads to a further stage in our credentials, to which what has been said is only introductory. CORRECTION OF THE RELIGIONS OF MANKIND. _, As Divine revelation responds to the spirit in man, so it Anticipa- explains and responds to the groat Anticipation of the Human tion of Race, as testified by its universal Religions. This also is a most Mankind. mjgnty cre(iential, which may be regarded under several aspects. _ ,. . 1. The Christian Religion explains the religiousness of man- Religion ¦, j. . in the kind, and pays respect to the forms in which this has been Race. REVELATION. 53 expressed. St. Paul, the amplest expositor of Natural Theology, preaches in the Acts, and teaches in the Epistle to the Romans, that the whole world has always been under a Divine education : drawn hy God's works of creation to contemplate His power, and by the benefits of His providence to consider His goodness, in order that it might thus be prepared for a third revelation which should display both His power and His goodness in redemption. The Apostle, as the leading representative of this argument, pro fesses only to declare or preach, — KaTa.yyeAA.co vyu.ii/ — the Un- Acts xvii. known God Whom all the world had been ever consciously or 23- unconsciously seeking : that world which is, as Tertullian said of the human spirit, naturaliter Christianus. He makes God Him self, in a certain sense, the universal Teacher of the Gentiles in faith 1 Tim. ii. and verity, SiSdo-KaXos idvmv ; and heathenism, like the law, a '• schoolmaster unto Christ. In other words, this representative of Christianity traces all forms of religious faith and practice among the nations to a yearning for revelation from heaven. And he in fact gives us the' argument we now use : the strong presumption from the Consensus Gentium, the consent of all the world, in favour of a communication from God to mankind. For, Chris tianity, which is revelation made perfect, or rather the only true revelation, appeals to the anticipation it explains. Tracing to their ultimate cause both the truth and the error, it makes both subservient to its own credentials. It must be remem bered that the New Testament is in this the successor and con- tinuator of the Old. The whole Bible appeals from beginning to end, that is since the time that external religion began, to the common, tribal or national, instinct of the peoples of the earth. This argument we shall hereafter use in demonstration of the existence of a Divine Source of all things : namely, the very fact that the Bible regards it as already a secret thought, ready to be revealed, in the hearts of all men. Our present argu ment supposes that the being of God is admitted. And its strength is this, that that God has in every age been training the nations for a full disclosure of Himself. As it is written : He Pa. xciv. correcteth the Gentiles ; or places them under discipline. 10- 2. All this has taken for granted that the forms of religion Elements always existing in heathenism have possessed certain elements of of Truth. 54 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. truth. Otherwise they would be worthless as evidence of a universal aspiration towards communion with heaven. Whatever strong assertions we may find in the Old and New Testaments of the doctrinal errors and moral abominations of heathenism, we discern everywhere au acknowledgment of something good lying at their root, of which they are only the perversions. M; ch truth is tacitly recognised in the sacred traditions of mankind, however waning and ready to perish : that is to say, much truth dispersed among them and variously represented, though no one system may be said to exhibit even the perversions of all truths. Perhaps almost all the great tribal or national expressions of the feeling after the Infinite have more or less paid their tribute to the unity and supremacy of the One Unknown God, with a dim per ception of a plurality in that unity ; to the existence of intelU- gences higher than man, as it were between God and man, this notion being disguised in a thousand ways, from Polytheism down to the personification of all the forces of nature; to the degradation of man himself through a fall, and the universality of sin as personal guilt and liability to punishment ; to a mysterious Deliverer desired of the nations ; to the sense of the necessity and acceptableness of worship by sacrifice ; in the ethical domain to the rights of the Right and the goodness of the Good ; to the inex tinguishable hope of immortality, more distorted perhaps than almost any other truth. Now it is a credential of the Christian revelation that it acknowledges all this ; or rather that all this is true. Professing to be the supreme, the only direct, communica tion from God to man, it points to a universal consent among the nations that some such revelation was expected and was needed. Errors. 3. But this leads to the further argument, that Christianity explains and corrects these errors while it confirms the truth underlying them all. It comes as the correction of every delusion into which it declares the Eternal had permitted the world to fall Rom.i.28. as the consequence of its resistance of His Spirit. It teaches the true doctrine concerning God, sweeping away the pantheism, the polytheism, the atheism of the nations ; it amends the doctrine of 8in, hy connecting it with redemption ; it substitutes the true Divine-human Sacrifice, its expiation cleansing the heathen temple, its gift of the Spirit supplying the need of the heathen philo- REVELATION. 55 Objec tions. sophical schools ; it reforms the whole economy of worship, by revealing a Mediator ; it supplies the defects and reproves the corruptions of the world's ethical systems ; and it brightens and simplifies its doctrine of the future state. 4. Such are the credentials of the Christian revelation : such Summary are its claims to be heard. No further plea is at present urged than this. No other system, among the many candidates for acceptance, has ever made such pretensions as these. No ancient creed or religion, however missionary in its spirit, ever professed to come from God with the explanation and sure guidance of the world's spiritual desires. Christianity alone explains heathenism, with a solution at once gentle and stern. And it alone brings in the time of a universal reformation. This is, however, laid down only as its credential : as such it has all the force, although no more than the force, of a preliminary demand for profound respect and solemn attention to its appeals. 5. Objections to this credential, as such, and limited strictly to the present stage of the argument, may be noticed at once and disarmed in a few sentences. It will be said by the Atheist, or the Antitheist, that Christianity, in common with every other form of the religious sentiment among men, is no more than an invention of the human mind — or that subtle action of matter which is called the mind — and the most beautiful, though not always the most beautiful, evolution in man of those strange phenomena which in the lower orders of creation make man him self their object. All the history of religion, in every part of the world, and among all the tribes of mankind, is only the record of the evolution of something in man that has no name, no object, and apparently no meaning. We are not at present concerned with the Atheist ; and may postpone further reference to this subject. Meanwhile, there is another form of the objection which cannot be thus summarily dismissed. (1.) It appears to many students of what may be called Com parative Theology that the existence of so many other religions, containing so many noble and uncontested truths, is a bar to the acceptance of Christianity as the one definitive revelation of God. They deny the distinction between natural religion and super natural, between natural theology and revealed. They assert that Distinc tion Denied. 56 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. all the faiths or mythologies of mankind are natural or super natural alike, according as these words are understood. All are supernatural, in the sense that the Creator has lodged in the spirit of man a faculty for the Infinite, which has developed in a few great historical religions ; just as the Creator gave man a supernatural endowment of language, which has been developed into a few great families of speech. All are natural, in the sense that all have their natural pedigree, and may be traced through the various nationalities as, equally with language and perhaps more than language, the foundation of race distinctions. Hence, the Science of Religion distinguishes in various ways the reli gions of mankind. There are the religions which should be traced to individual founders : such as Moses, Zoroaster, Buddha, Con fucius, Lao-tse, Christ, and Mohammed. And there are those which are national, and have never been connected with human names : the religions of the ancient Brahmans, the Greeks, Romans, Teutons, Slavs, and Celts. Again, we have the Faiths which have Sacred Books, and those which are without them : of the former eight being reckoned, Brahmanism and Buddhism among the Hindus ; Zoroastrianism among the Persians ; among the Hebrews, Mosaism and Christianity; among the Arabs, Mohammedanism ; among the Chinese, Confucianism and the religion of Lao-tse. These distinctions rise at last into the division of two or three great families. First, the Aryan, sub divided into the Brahmanism of the Veda, Buddhism which sprang from it and revolted against it, and Zoroastrianism, which departed from the ancient Vedic faith. Secondly, the Semitic, with its Old and New Testament religions, the latter transferred, however, into Aryan soil; and Mohammedanism. These have played the most distinguished part in the history of the world hitherto ; but a third must be added, the Turanian, to which the branches of Chinese religion belong. The argument deduced from the study of Comparative Theology is simply this : that there is not one religion which is of Divine right, and must needs be separated from all the rest. In plain words, whatever other distinctions there are— between Monotheistic and Polytheistic, Documentary and Traditional, Cultivated and Fetish — the dis tinction between true and false religions is not to be allowed. REVELATION. 57 There is no final, definitive, supreme reUgion for mankind, any more than there is one universal language for mankind. This science, which is comparatively new, makes a fair show of zeal for all religions ; and, indeed, most triumphantly vindicates the truth, depth, and universality of the Godward tendency in our nature. But this is at the expense of Christianity, however seem ingly on its side. In fact, it takes away all the strength of the credential now under consideration, so far as it concerns Chris tianity, while leaving it in its full force so far as it concerns revelation generally, or the religion of nature. What then is to be said in defence of our argument ? (2.) First, and foremost, the Science of Religions pays too Chrig- much honour to the Faiths of the World when it brings Chris- ti?'n^ tianity into conjunction or comparison with them. After allow- Keiigi0ns. ing all that the catholic Apostle asserts as to the religiousness of mankind — our argument has done justice to that — we must not forget his dark testimony against the outward forms of that religiousness. The world by wisdom knew not God. Comparative iOor.i.21 Theology collects a number of sublime sayings about God to which Hindoo devotion gave birth ; but it is undeniable that the system of Brahmanism was at almost all points a gigantic parody on the religion of supernatural revelation. Attempt after attempt from age to age was made to reform it ; but its greatest reforma tion, that of Buddhism, — now one of the most extensively held faiths in the world — was and is in reality a religion without a God : the vastest waste of Atheism that has ever been known. Christianity is not one of the religions of the world : responding, like others, to the common instinct, only in bolder and sublimer terms. Once more, Christianity is not what the Science of Reli gions makes it : an offshoot from Mosaism, and an improvement on it, as Buddhism rose out of the old Vedic faith and put away its old gods. It is the one only religion that the world has ever received directly from heaven. In its present form, and with its present name, it originated in the midst of Judaism, at a certain epoch, and struggled for and won its ascendency much after the manner of other religions. But Christianity as Divine Revelation is only the consummate form of a truth, or a system of truths, that has been in tbe world from the beginning of human history. 58 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. But this will introduce another very important aspect of our credentials. The Per- CHRISTIANITY THE PERFECTING OF FORMER REVELATIONS. fecting of , Revela- It is a continuation of the same argument to say that Chris- tion. tianity is itself an explanation of the preparatory disclosures of revealed truth, and the consummation of them aU. From the 1. This is, in fact, the crowning presumptive argument in its Begmmng fav0UI.; that it is the end and completion of a revelation that has been going on from the beginning. It is not a religion that literally began in Judaea with the advent of Jesus. It does not profess to be the first supernatural communication to mankind : it is not the opening of the heavens for the first time. It finishes a testimony that began with the fall of man : in the best sense, it is therefore as old as the Creation. This last sentence has been made the watchword of English Infidelity : as if its being coeval with the human race were a disproof of its Divine original. But this is in fact its glory. It is the last accent of a Voice which spoke first at the* gate of Paradise. That voice was the Primitive Revelation from the perversions of which aU the innumerable forms of mythology arose. But that Voice awakened the desire of the human race to which all revelation has been a response, and has constantly deepened that desire whilst it responded to it. But only in a peculiar line, and within a limited area. On either side of that line, and beyond that area, men groped after the lost Creator and the forfeited Paradise in their own way : being dealt with both in justice and in mercy. The mercy of the Supreme has in every age guided the instincts of all the sincere. St. Peter is as catholic as St. Paul on this subject. Discerning in Cornelius . t the best religion of the Gentiles, he said : I perceive that God is 34, 35. no respecter of persons: but in every nation lie that feareth Him and worketh righteousness is accepted with Him. But justice abandoned the races as such to the consequences of their own perverseness : Rom. i. 21. because that, when they knew God, they glorified Him not as God, neither were thankful; but became vain in their imaginations, and their foolish heart was darkened. Thus the two Apostles agree: as to individuals the sincere have been guided towards an REVELA TION. 59 unknown Saviour; as to the races the just Providence of God dealt with them according to their inventions. Mean while, there has been in every age a clear, distinct, though not voluminous announcement of the will of God, delivered to a chosen and faithful people. And the peculiarity of these preliminary revelations has been this, that every word has at once satisfied human aspiration and kindled it to higher desire. Christianity is the final answer to a continuous expectation kept up from age to age. It is the response to what may be called a third form of the great anticipation : besides the instinct in every human spirit, and in the human race as such, man has had, though all men have not had, an express testimony of the Mind of the Supreme, leading human hope onward to the perfect revelation of Christ. Christianity comes as the perfecting of its earlier Self : the final and sufficient response to the expectation it had kept up from the beginning. This is its supreme preparatory credential. It is the last of many words, and leaves nothing more to be desired in the present estate of mankind. 2. The force of this credential will be felt only by those who Mysteries. already accept, or are disposed to accept, the revelation of Jesus. The more it is pondered the more satisfactory will it seem to all who take a large view of the dealings of Providence with man. There are, of course, unsearchable mysteries in the subject : mysteries so perplexing that they have driven some speculatists to the renunciation of a God. To those who do believe in God the gradual education of a world free and responsible is a thought to be accepted and reposed in. It is more tolerable at least than other thoughts which would displace it. It is more in harmony with every high conception of the Supreme to suppose that He has in every age been communicating His will with more and more clearness to mankind, having always in view a final and full disclosure, than to suppose that He planted a religious germ in man's heart which has been always developing with infinite variety in every variety of soils, no provision whatever being made for the survival of the best, without indeed allowing that there is or that there can be any best. (1.) But the objection may be urged that it is below the. dignity Delay of a Divine revelation to keep the world so long in suspense. In °* -"?eve" 60 THE DI VINE R ULE OF FAITH. answer to this we ean only refer to the analogy of all the other dealings of God which come within our cognisance. The earth as man's abode, the history of all the creatures that it inherit, especially the progress of everything pertaining to its chief inha bitant, has been under a law of secular and slow evolution. Sup posing the entire economy of things to be under the government of one Supreme Mind — that is to say, supposing the God of reve lation to be the Author of nature — there can be, or there ought to be, no difficulties in the way of considering at least the claims of a revelation which professes to describe the methods of a gradual education of the human race. To the Theistic advocates of development this ought to be a strong recommendation of the Holy Scriptures, and of their final solution of all mysteries in Christianity. With its Materialistic or Positivist advocates of course we have nothing to do : there are no credentials which appeal to them. They must give up their delusion of Nescience or unintelligent and meaningless Law, and first be reconciled to a Personal Author of all things, before the Christian Revelation even looks their way. But those who admit that the laying of the material foundations of the superstructure of inteUigent Ufe required incalculable ages ought not to shrink from the prelimi nary announcement that God has at sundry times and in divers manners spoken to the human race, and finally consummated aU His words in His Son. Part of an (2.) If, once more, it be pointed out — as it constantly is — that Unlimited wnat professes to be the last revelation is after all only a partial response to the deep questions of mankind, this may be granted as a fact, but it is robbed of its force as an argument by the sug gestion that even Christianity is only part of a scheme, understood only by the Infinite Mind, the first elements of which alone are brought within the range of our faculties. It will be shown here after that there is not a solitary question of the human spirit, on the answer to which its present peace and its probation for eternal happiness depend, which the Holy Oracles do not satisfy. More than that we have no right to expect. Had the revelation of Jesus professed to leave no mystery unexplained, that would have been a stronger plea against its Divinity than infidelity has ever yet been able to find. REVELATION. 61 SUMMARY. The cumulative strength of these pleas, the line of which only Summary. has been indicated, is or should be irresistible. They have im mense force as a moral demonstration of the claims of Chris tianity to be heard and weighed with the most profound solemnity. Not to listen to Christ is to be self-condemned. His words are the only response to the universal anticipation of the human race : as existing in the very constitution of the mind, as testified hy the consent of nations, and as kept alive from the beginning by supernatural and gradual disclosures of the Divine will. Either God has thus finally spoken, or there is no God, and man is the incomprehensible creation of chance and the sport of the chance that created him. THE EXHIBITION OF GOD AND OF HIS ATTRIBUTES IN REVELATION. Another class of the credentials of revelation is found in Divine its exhibition of the Divine attributes, displayed in the A'4"0"1168 tokens of the presence of God generally^ and particularly lation. in the supernatural order of miracles, prophecy, and in spiration as including both, which everywhere reigns. These are not so much notes and qualities of revelation as the fabric of the revelation itself; and have always been, whether separately or combined, the strong enforcement of its claims upon attention and acceptance. REVELATION SUPERNATURAL. God is a Personal Presence in the whole economy of revealed The truth. But He is not present in the same sense as that in which Super- He is immanent in the world : revelation is, has ever been and Qrder must ever be, a supernatural order, blending" with the natural, and moving on harmoniously with it in general, whilst exhibit ing most essential differences. But here it is necessary to define terms, or rather to remind ourselves of their conventional relations. 62 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. Super- 1. There is a sense in which the natural order of things — that natural in jg) the constitution of nature as governed by certain fixed physical and metaphysical laws — must always be touched if not pervaded by the supernatural, that is, by what is not matter of our constant experience. The invisible world, and all interventions from the spiritual world, are supernatural. Hence it follows that the intro duction of man into this system of things was a supernatural intervention ; and all revelations of the unseen in the constitution of his nature are supernatural ; and all evidences of the presence and glory of God in the universe as seen by man are supernatural. Miracle, 2. This then being granted, there is a sense also in which the Prophecy, great economy to which the Bible bears witness is in a pre- Inspira- ° . J r tion. eminent sense supernatural. From beginning to end — that is, from the first intimation of a coming Redeemer to His final mani festation with final and eternal truth upon His lips — aU has been beyond and above the nature of man's ordinary experience. All has been one vast and never-ceasing demonstration of God moving among men and supernaturaUy operating in human affairs. His wonderful works pervade the whole, though only on occasions bursting into what we call Miracle. They have displayed His presence in His own immediate acts, or in acts above nature per formed by the instrumentality of His creatures. They have displayed His one design in the communication of knowledge concerning it to His ministers in Prophecy. They have displayed His wisdom in the preservation, through men raised up to be objects of Inspiration, of the continuous record of His revealed economy of salvation. Thus the laws of the supernatural opera tion have been threefold. Miracle is the intervention of the Supreme Power in the established course of nature. The Creator 1 Cor. xv. put all things under the control of general law, but it is manifest 2'- that He is excepted which did put all things under it. His personal authority is not a violation of law, nor a suspension of it, but the introduction of a new and sufficient cause of any effect He would produce. Prophecy is the intervention of the supreme know ledge, imparted to man independently of the ordinary laws of knowing : whether for the purpose of uttering new truth, or of foretelling what, to all but God, is contingent in the future. Inspiration is that supernatural intervention of the Divine REVELATION. 63 wisdom by which the miracle of prophecy is made permanent in the organic unity of Scripture. Now these are all of the essence of revelation : they combine in every part of it. The Scriptures, or Revelation, or the Christian faith — these three are one — have exhibited one vast and permanent miracle, one great prophecy ever in course of fulfilment, and one great result of inspiration. 3. These three may be regarded as one great continuous Miracle, One and one great body of credentials commending to us the Scrip- T^ree*010- tures of revelation. But these credentials for faith must have their own evidences for reason. As they belong to the super natural order they must be received by faith. They imply, indeed they assert, the being of God, and His intervention for objects, and in a manner, before which reason sinks confounded. But as facts recorded and humanly attested, they must be received on evidence which is trustworthy and amenable to the tests of trustworthiness. These two must combine ; just as in all things pertaining to religion, faith and reason must unite : being recon cUed when they differ, and blended into the harmony of certitude. In examining these several evidences of God in revelation each must be viewed as distinct. But, in considering them as cre dentials of one great scheme professedly the revelation of a God Whose existence is admitted, we are not under the necessity of examining at length the question which touches their abstract possibility in a philosophical point of view. We regard them as the internal demonstrations of Scripture, and have only to ask what their force and meaning are as credentials, and to prove that no condition of such credentials is wanting. the credential of miracles. Miracles. There are many and distinct terms used in Scripture to signify what we call miracles. They are' called generally the Ipya, or WORKS of God ; sometimes these works are referred to as acts of the Divine power that effects them, and they are then miracles or Swa/ms ; sometimes the purpose for which they are wrought is made emphatic in their designation, and they are signs or o-ijiitia. A third term, ripara, is occasionally connected with 64 • THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. these ; but, as it merely refers to the immediate effect produced on the minds of beholders, it has no theological importance. All that requires to be said as to the credentials of Miracle may be referred to these two words respectively. Works WONDERFUL WORKS OF GOD. of God. The former, the highest expression of wliich is in the Pente- Actsii.ll. costal word, The wonderful works of God, pervades the whole Scrip ture, which clearly distinguishes between the ordinary operations of Providence and these extraordinary tokens of the Divine presence. It makes miracle the special intervention of omnipotence : in this sense also there is no power but of God. Revelation shows us the Maker of the laws of the universe, which we understand only as the invariable sequence of cause and effect, introducing when He pleases a new cause : not violating His own laws, or suppressing, or arresting them; not using the operation of more extensive laws than those known to exist, but simply bringing in new causes of new effects when He sees fit. Faith recognises the Finger of God ; and reason, admitting the existence of a Supreme Cause, assents to this. Its definition of Miracle is an act of the imme diate power of God intervening in the connection of natural causes and effects. It does not argue with those who deny to the God of nature this power and freedom to use it. The preUminary objection against the possibility of miracle, and the value of any amount of evidence that might seek to establish its credibility, can never be met by any other argument than this first term. It is well that the Apologist of revelation should take a high stand here. If there is a Personal God, there can be no a priori reason why He should not interfere with His own laws. No continuity and uubroken order of sequence in cause and effect can be made an argument against the possibility of its being disturbed. The last word of philosophy on the subject is that our faith in the sta bility of nature is a primary law of human thought, as certainly bound up in our mental constitution as our consciousness of personal identity. Now we have an equally firm faith operating as a primary law of thought that an omnipotent Being can, if He REVELATION. 65 will, put forth His Finger and regulate in a new way laws the general order of which He does not violate. On this conviction rests all the evidence that miracles need as they are manifesta tions of a Divine presence. SIGNS. The second term, o-qpeiov, ITiH, theologically and in our present connection the more important, is never wanting in Scripture, though used with a more limited application. It indicates that God declares Himself present in certain particular miracles, and challenges attention to His own words or the words of His messenger thus authenticated. Now, revelation has not at its great epochs been without this credential. While the Wonderful Works are literally never absent in revelation, — always in course of procedure, open or secret, known or unknown, in miracles of nature and in miracles of grace, during the ages while the Volume was constructed and since it has been finished, for ever and ever throughout the whole economy of salvation, — the Signs have been occasionally given at certain great and important epochs, and in confirmation, both to believers and unbelievers, of messages from heaven. It is needless to ask whether it might have been otherwise : in His wisdom God has seen fit to accom pany all supernatural communications by signs and infallible tokens. But, though needless, it is not unprofitable to consider how absolutely necessary such signs and tokens must be to authenticate tidings so amazing as those which the Scripture brings. Here a few distinctions may be useful. 1. The grandest miracles which are the credentials of re velation are in the substance of the revelation itself. Very many of the extraordinary interpositions it records are not bound up with the nature and purpose of the economy of God's redeeming will, but have been miraculous attestations of indi vidual missions. When, however, we rise from its appendages, cir cumstantials, and preliminaries to the Great Redemption itself, the case is different. Christ the Author of Christianity and its Substance and its End is the supreme Miracle, and everything connected with Him is miraculous. As soon as we come within the sphere of His sacred presence the definition of miracle VOL. I. F Signs. Miracle the sub stance of Revela tion. 66 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. becomes enlarged : it is then an immediate act of Divine omni potence which has its necessity, its reality, and its exhibition in the redeeming economy. To the central or final congregation of won ders in Him those of the Old Testament looked forward, and with them the great series virtually ended. The advent of Christ wa3 a miracle ; of which the entire history of His words and works, of His life and death, of His resurrection and ascension, is a continua tion. Hence it is obvious that with regard to the Christian system as a whole miracle is essential to its demonstration. For without miracle there is no Christian revelation. Miracles 2. But, descending from this high level, we may confidently necessary assert that the authentication of the human agents of the Divine will required such attestations from heaven as we call miracles. It may be going too far to say that the common instinct of man kind expects that if God sends a messenger He wUl excite attention by signs preceding and confirm His word by signs following. No founder of a' human religion has ever failed to appeal to this general expectation. Confucius and Buddha and Mohammed are sometimes said to have been exceptions ; but they were exceptions only to this extent, that they did not profess themselves to work miracles. Buddha was a strange anomaly in every respect. He appeared only as a reformer of an old religion, and did not found, or rather did not claim to found, a religion of his own. In other words, he needed no credentials, for he did not profess to come from God. Confucius brought no revela tion : his honest task and his honest work was to revive and classify and perfect the religious literature of his people. Mo hammed pretended to no power of working miracles : wisely declining to come into competition with the true prophets of God whose revelations he appropriated and perverted. But he did bring, or assume to bring, a new revelation ; and accordingly he made his appeal to miraculous messages and communications which were in the place of the miracles he could not perform. But, apart from the question of universal expectation,— which is of some importance, though not decisive, -we find that from beginning to end the Author of revelation is represented as taking this expectation into account, and as always investing His ambassadors and heralds with the credentials of miracle. The REVELATION. 67 importance of these signs by which the Divine Being has authenti cated the beginnings at least of every new economy of truth is sometimes undervalued. It is said to be more in harmony with heavenly decorum to communicate truth directly to the human mind ; and more consistent with the dignity of truth itself that i* should depend on its own intrinsic adaptation and fitness. Bu they who reason thus are needlessly jealous of the Divine pre rogative aud of human dignity. He who knows what is in man has never offered a revelation to the race without such signs and wonders as were sufficient to establish it in the world, leaving those inexcusable who should refuse to believe. 3. This leads to the nature of the credential itself, or the value Value. of the miracle as it is a sign. Generally, and taking revelation as a whole, it appeals to the body of evidence that God has inter posed in human affairs, in a manner transcendently extraordinary, as its plenary and abiding demonstration. That is to say, in few words, the Christian Faith rests its strong claim on this among other things, that there is a series of wonderful works and super natural acts behind it, around it, and encompassing it, which no sincere and candid mind ought to be able to resist. More particularly, every messenger, the Supreme Messenger not ex-r cepted, coming with professed revelation from above, has invariably been authenticated by miraculous endowments which God Him self has deemed necessary and sufficient to vindicate His servants' mission. Lastly, the miracles which satisfied the generation receiving these credentials are, as will be hereafter seen, com mitted to the documents which hand down the truths they taught ; and the miracles and the documents together with those truths become matter of historical testimony. 4. Finally, it is obvious that the value of miracles as such, and rp0 tn apart from all other credentials, is to be found mainly in the Same Ge- authentication of the messengers to their own contemporaries. neratlon- Their immediate effect on those who behold them is expressed by Nicodemus : Rabbi, we know that Thou art a Teacher come from God; John iii. 2 for no man can do these miracles that Thou doest, except God be with him Then follows profound attention to the messenger and the message. The Sign precedes the teaching. But to after genera tions there is a certain change. They have the message, and its F 2 68 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. full force as truth, before they consider the miraculous attestation. We in our day include the original miracles with aU other branches of evidence which are to be received on trustworthy testimony such as no lapse of ages can invalidate. But this leads to a con sideration of that testimony itself, or what may be called the credentials of this Credential Testg, EVIDENCES AND TESTS OF MIRACLE. The entire question of the trustworthiness of the testimony to the miraculous facts of revelation may be resolved into a state ment of the criteria or tests to which these supposed facts may fairly be subjected. Worthy L Such Divine interventions must authenticate missions objects, worthy of God. And it requires no argument to prove that the miracles to which the Christian revelation appeals have a cause behind them of supreme value. As a whole — from the miraculous attributes of the trees in the garden down to the ascension of the Incarnate Son of God and the Pentecostal opening of the heavens — they sustain the grand fabric of the Divine education of redeemed mankind. Here we must divert our attention from many isolated wonderful works and think only of the One Work of God upon earth. But, descending to particulars, and sending a general glance backward through all the economies, we see that the great assemblages of miracles were wrought at crises pregnant with importance to the Great Cause in the Old Testament. The ante-Mosaic miracles were authentications, not of God's messengers only, but of His own dread Name and attributes. At the in troduction of the Mosaic institute there was reason for the glorious manifestations of the Divine power, rebuking the long- endured perverseness pf Egypt, authenticating the Lawgiver so slowly accepted by His own people, proving the Divinity of what we call the Mosaic economy, and confirming that proof by signs following down to the miraculous entrance into Canaan. While the Theocracy lasted, every recorded wonder attested at the critical hour that Jehovah reigned. The miracles which cluster around the persons of Elijah and Elisha asserted His supremacy when the cause of God was at stake in the chosen REVELATION. 69 land. And, finally, after long comparative cessation, there was a great, and, in some respects, unexampled renewal of miracles to rescue the sinking faith of the people during their captivity. It scarcely needs to be pointed out that the New Testament yields the same analysis. The prolonged miracle of the Divine Person, Whose deep humilfation for mankind rendered necessary the vindication of His Godhead, stands out from all wonders of the Bible as one continuous Virtue from His Divine-human presence. The Resurrection, with its infallible signs, completed the educa tion of the Apostles' faith, and laid the corner-stone of all evidences for ever. The miracles of the Acts are exhibited only on critical occasions, but always then : witness the minor renewals of Pentecost for the conversion of the Gentiles, for Samaria, and for the relicts of the Baptist's ministry ; lessening, as it were, through these several phases, according to the importance of the occasion. Not always however were they lessened. The resurrection-miracles of St. Peter and St. Paul followed hard on the Saviour's highest acts : to demonstrate by the hand of two or three witnesses, after His rising, the fact ofthe victory over death which He had demon strated most effectually by His rising itself. The abundance of St. Paul's miraculous gifts were the signs of an Apostle which his 2 Cor. xii. peculiar vocation demanded. And, finally, the miracles wrought in the early churches were enough and no more than enough to attest the reality of the Pentecost ; being, so to speak, the same kind of confirmations of that great day as the few resurrections of the Acts were confirmations of that other day of the Resurrection proper. It must be remembered, however, that in conclusion the Supreme has not absolutely restricted His wonderful works to the great eras of revelation : the power of God, like the word of God, is not bound. We discern a certain law of miracles which seems to limit them to great epochs ; but there is nothing in it which requires us to limit the Holy One, or to render it impossible that miraculous interventions have occurred since the full establish ment of the organic Church in the world. Moreover, the occa sional instances in which the wonders, or i-epa-™, have been wrought by the permitted agency of wicked men are so referred to in Scripture as to strengthen this credential of revelation. As Balaam in the Old Testament and Caiaphas in the New delivered 70 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH sublime predictions, so the magicians in the Old Testament wrought supernatural wonders under a Divine restraint; and Antichrist, to come with his lying wonders, is predicted in the New. But the true workers of miracles in the Scripture are its holiest men ; and one of its closing records is the miracle that Acts xiii. vindicates the sanctity of miraculous power Upon Elymas. ¦rA ' , 2. It may be demanded that these wonders of the Finger of Lessons. God should generally teach worthy lessons, besides asserting the power of God in the supernatural order of the world : in other words that they should be essential constituents of revelation itself, as well as being its credentials. We must not, indeed, presume to judge what in every case is the worthiness of the lesson taught : some miracles may seem too trivial, such as the 2 Kings recovery of the axe, others too stupendously great, such as the vi. 6. sun's standing still, for acceptance. With this reservation, 13_ ' it cannot be denied that the wonders of Scripture are most con fessedly worthy of the cause they support. In aU cases they pay respect to the very laws that they seem to supersede. They themselves effectually teach the lessons of the Divine wih and illustrate the Divine perfections. Not a miracle in the whole Bible fails to demonstrate either the power or the fideUty, or the wisdom, or the justice, or the mercy of God. They are never, or very rarely, even liable to be regarded as merely portents. All are faithful to the character of God as otherwise revealed : mingling chastisement with mercy in both Testaments, the bene volence and mercy largely predominating in the New. As it respects the miracles of Christ, the supreme miraculous credentials, they are so ordered from the least to the greatest as to teach symbolically the whole mystery of His grace, and to give illus trations beforehand of the character of His future administration through the Holy Ghost. There are a few of His miracles which have been thought to militate against our canon, and to be merely portentous or evidences of capricious severity : for instance, the consignment of the swine to death, the withering of the fig-tree, and the vehement act of zealotry in the Temple. But, read in the light of the Divine providence in the world, these acts of Jesus will be seen not only to be in harmony with the zealous severity of the Divine justice but to be almost necessary for its illastra- REVELATION. 71 tion. Seeing that the gentle Redeemer so often predicted the desolation which impenitence would bring upon God's ancient people, it might be expected that some few of His symbolical miracles would confirm His prophecies. And these seemingly exceptional cases, in which He made inanimate and irrational creatures the vicarious symbols of His displeasure, are precisely of that character. But more of this when the character of the Lord Himself becomes our Credential. 3. It may be expected, further, that the miracles which bring Criteria. the Supernatural Hand into human affairs shall, as credentials, allow of the application of fair criteria in the case of those who witnessed them, and further that they shall be supported by sufficient evidence for posterity. (1.) As to the former, the demand may be as abundantly For the satisfied as the case admits. Many of the wonders recorded in e^ n the Bible are simply matters of record, and their circumstantials are lost for ever. But these may claim the benefit of being blended with the mass of those which are as it were wrought before our eyes, in the midst of all their surroundings. If the question were of the integrity of Scripture these exceptional instances might be challenged, and must be defended. But for our present argument that is needless : it is enough to assert that the grand miraculous credentials of the two covenants were wrought openly, under the cognizance of men's senses, and amidst such circumstances as forbid the possibility of deception. The miracles which accompanied the advent and legislation of Moses were witnessed by large numbers ; and the testimony of the rivals who used their enchantments is in evidence. Of course we have only the record of Scripture itself to guide us ; but for our present argument that is enough. We have all the evidence the case allows that the Egyptians as well as the Israelites saw and believed things that were not done in a corner. We have not con temporary documents to which appeal can be made. But the entire history which flowed out of these miraculous interpositions speaks for them. From generation to generation the annals of the nation are full of allusions to what was steadfastly believed from the day of its occurrence. And the whole economy of Hebrew revelations was founded upon that faith. However, it is obvious 72 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. that this question touches the Gospel miracles more particularly. With regard to them our Saviour Himself may be asked for evi dence. He admitted that publicity and openness and candid invitation of criticism were to be expected from anyone who claimed to bring a special message from heaven. And what He said as to His words held true of His miracles, which were His John acted words : I spake openly to the world ; I ever taught in the syna- xviii. gogue, and in the temple, whither the Jews always resort ; and in secret have I said nothing. Even the Resurrection — the miracle above every miracle — was amenable to the same tests with all others ; although in the nature of the case the interior mystery must needs be hidden. It was a supernatur-al event which men might investigate and be assured of : which indeed would be investigated with the utmost diligence. But it ought to be remembered here that the wisdom of the advocate of Christianity is quietness and confidence in a defensive or negative position. He is not bound to do more than challenge the opponent to prove that with regard to any of the recorded miracles of the Gospels, or of the Old Testament, there is the slightest vestige of evidence that anything was done which could give any ground for suspicion. But this leads to something that is more positive. Posterity. (2.) As to the latter: we are, as posterity, in a different posi tion, and miracles are matter of historical evidence. There are no events in the past history of the human race, which have become matter of accepted history and are doubted by no sane person, more amply and circumstantially attested than the miraculous life and resurrection from death of our Lord and Saviour Jesus Christ : that is, the whole range of the central miracles of Christianity. They were not questioned at the time of their supposed occurrence ; at least, the only challenge they underwent was of such a kind as to turn to their advantage. All kinds of spectators watched the more public miracles ; and the only disparagement recorded was that of those who ascribed the Lord's works to Beelzebub, and His absence from the sepulchre to the cunning stratagem of His disciples. The resurrection of Jesus was the critical or crucial miracle the establishment of which would assure all the rest. Now that event was guaranteed to many hundreds of persons by many infallible proofs ; it was REVELATION. 73 beUeved from the time by a large body of conscientious and credible witnesses, whose mental and moral character sustains every test, who, moreover, to the number of hundreds sealed their conviction by an entire consecration of life, and some of them by the sacrifice of Ufe itself. Finally, the great miracles of revela tion are connected with posterity by the existence of public monuments which owe their existence to a widespread and pro found confidence in their genuineness. In ancient times the Passover attested the national faith in the deliverance from Egypt, and it has continued from generation to generation to declare the strength of the evidence based upon the faith of a whole people. Similarly, the Lord's Day has declared down to the present time the faith of an immense body of witnesses that the Saviour rose from the dead. And, in fact, the Christian Church as an institution vouches, if not for the reality of the miracle of Christ's life and death and resurrection, at least for the satisfac tion with wliich the evidence of it was received from the earliest Christian generations. Supercilious scepticism may affirm that no amount of evidence can ever avail to enforce upon the mind the acceptance of facts which are contrary to the eternal laws of nature. The only reply which, at this stage, we can give is that this is quite true, if no God exists ; but that, if a Personal Ruler of the universe is believed in, such supernatural facts are not incredible; and, finally, that these events were witnessed and relied upon by a very large number of trustworthy witnesses who have sent down their evidence signed and attested to posterity. 4. Once more, the dignity of eternal truth demands that it Miracles should not lay the main stress of its demonstration on miracles : never certainly never on miracles alone. No one in all the records of revelation is represented as having made the validity of his mission depend on his works ; though no one, thus authenticated, was ever known to decUne producing this credential when challenged. There is no subject connected with the evidences of the Faith that requires more careful statement than this. Ex aggeration on both sides is very frequent. Certainly, it might sometimes appear as if everything was staked upon miraculous intervention : for instance, the challenges of Moses and Elijah seem to confirm this notion, as also a few of the minor miracles 74 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. of both Testaments. But it ought to be remembered that the wonderful works wrought in Egypt were not merely the creden tials of Moses : they were also and chiefly marks of the Divine displeasure against the false gods of that land, and chastisements of the perverseness of those who refused to obey. The same may be said of the contest on Mount Carmel. The people were bidden to choose between the True God and the false gods before the tokens came from heaven ; and when these came, they took the form of chastisement, as in the case of Egypt. Merely as portents, to astonish the beholders and thus enchain their attention, miracles were never vouchsafed. But at all the great crises of revelation they have been given to enlist and pre-engage the hearers by tokens of Divine goodness and power. In fact, and on the whole, as they are the Hand of God demanding attention to His Voice, the relation of miracles to the doctrine of the Teacher who performs them is always most simply stated and guarded throughout the Scripture. The tokens when rejected are very soon withdrawn : Mark viii. There shall no sign, be given unto this generation was not uttered ¦^- until sign after sign had been rejected. Moreover, it is observable that the performance of miracles becomes very occasional where the Gospel is established ; and that by degrees they are taken up into the number of transitory and exceptional charisms, tokens of 1 Cor. xiv. the Divine power for them that believe not, and instruments of ¦ usefulness to those who believed. When it is said that God con- Heb. ii. 4. firmed the word of His servants both with signs and wonders and with divers miracles and gifts of the Holy Ghost we must remember that the stress is laid upon the last clause. And our Lord's pre- John xiv. diction and promise of the greater works than these to be wrought by His Apostles, and of the miraculous tokens to be expected by believers, were not intended to be understood of a permanent authentication of the Gospel by miraculous tokens. But this takes us back to the Supreme Witness Himself, Who has left many testimonies to the true place of miracles among the cre dentials of His Faith. Nothing is more certain than that He appealed to His works as fulfilment of prophecy, and as proofs of His own Divine power and authority. He also made them the vehicle of teaching His most impressive lessons, and of encouraging His servants' faith in the goodness of His heart. Our Lord also RE VEL ATION. declared that His miracles rendered unbelief inexcusable : If I jojm XVg had not done among them the works which none other man did, they 24. had not had sin. But the works include, if they do not mean, the words : If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin. John xv. And accordingly His most solemn testimony as to the responsibility of His generation was : the word tliat I have spoken the same sKall John xiL judge him in the last day. Finally, there are two other passages in St. John which will repay careful study. Tliough ye believe not Me, John x. believe the works : this places the works in their due subordination, 38- while giving them their value. Those who ought to believe because of the works, ought rather to have believed because of the virtue that proceeded from Himself. The works whieh the Father hath John v. given Me to finish, the same works that I do, bear witness of Me tliat 36- the Father .hath sent Me: this gives the glorious Gospel, as one whole finished in Christ, its supreme place as the final and con summate evidence of the truth of revelation. 5. Lastly, there is a criterion or postulate which believers in The revelation add to those already considered. The miracles of kuper- .,.,,.•, natural Scripture, m their wide variety and unbounded grandeur, are the Order. economy of a Supernatural Order. As they must, therefore, be in many respects dimly apprehended by the limited faculties of men, it may be expected that there will be residual difficulties, remaining as the test of faith. Among these difficulties we do not reckon the supposed evidence of modern science in favour of a fixed and unalterable reign of law, any interference with which is in itself not to be conceived. Law implies a Lawgiver, and the Supreme Author of all laws may interpose when and how He will. Moreover, so long as man has the evidence of consciousness that he can control for a season the action of natural laws, the exercise of his own volition being independent of any previous merely natural cause, it will be impossible to persuade him that the Infinite Personal Will cannot interpose amidst the sequences of nature. But there are other difficulties. Such is the occasional want of seeming reason for a supreme intervention ; concerning which, however, it is enough to say that we are not fit judges on this question. Again, the undeniable occurrence of prodigies such as witchcraft and necromancy and the performance of wonderful works through the agency of evil spirits, are sometimes 7G THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. Prophecy. a stumbling-block to faith : only however to a faith which does not admit, what the Scriptures everywhere testify, that such things as these have been permitted by God for reasons to a great extent incomprehensible to us. FinaUy, the question of the con tinuance of miraculous signs since the days of the Apostles pre sents a topic of difficulty. But the difficulty vanishes if it is honestly admitted that there is no reason why the Supreme should not still manifest His power in endowing His servants occasionally, whether with the gift of prophecy or with the gift of miracle. This granted, the question becomes then simply matter of evidence. All these and other seemingly unsolvable problems become to the believer in the supreme miracles of the Incarnation and the Resurrection no more and no less than trials of humiUty and intellectual submission and faith. PROPHECY. Prophecy, as one of the credentials of revelation, is, like Miracle, bound up with its very fabric. It is the Divine law of the gradual disclosure of that system of truth which is ever ex panding throughout the Scriptures from stage to stage unto per fection. As such, the term has two meanings : one wider, according to which it is the immediate declaration of the wiU of God through His servants, whether as to the past, or the present, or the future; and one more restricted, according to which it is the prediction of future events in connection with the great economy of revealed truth. More General Meaning. PROPHECY MORE GENERAL. 1. Prophecy is the utterance of Divine revelation; and a prophet is one raised up and sent to communicate God's truth. The meaning of N'OJ is an Announcer; and that of HN4! is Seer, the earlier name of the same office, or one who receives what he is to utter in visions. The visions were not universally cha racteristic of the office ; but the office itself, and the employment of it throughout the whole economy of revelation, is one of the great credentials of the Bible, as pervasive as the miracle, with REVELATION. 77 which indeed it is indissolubly bound up, being only one aspect of a continuous Divine intervention in human affahs. The prophet was not an ordinary announcer of the will of Heaven, like the priest who might read and expound the law. He was an instrument of the Divine will raised up out of the order of nature, to receive communications which may be called supernatural, being imparted by an influence of the# Holy Ghost sometimes called Vision, sometimes the Word of the Lord : for instance, The word of the Lord was precious in those days ; there was no open 1 Sam. iii. vision. Whether, by exhibiting to the interior eye the scene, or by lodging the word in the thoughts, there can be no doubt that the Author of revelation performed what in another domain would have been a miracle, every time that the Man of God or the Gen. xx. Man of the Spirit was sent forth with his burden of revelation. „ ¦ 2. The essence of this credential of Divine revelation is this, 7. that it represents every communication from God as directly Self- imparted by a Divine afflatus, the influence of which the prophet Y\J^°~ could not mistake, and the reality of which the people might test. This direct contact of the Spirit of God with the spirit of man is the pervading law and the pervading glory of the Divine revela tion from Moses downward. There is nothing resembling it in the history of perverted religions. So far as the oracles, sooth sayers, and diviners of heathenism offer any analogy, it is only as a foil to the grandeur of this credential. It is thus spoken of by the voice of Jehovah Himself. When Miriam and Aaron mur mured against the superior dignity of Moses as the prophet of the Hebrews, they said : Hath the Lord indeed spoken only by Moses f Nuinb.xii. hath He not spoken also by us ? and it is recorded that Jehovah came 2— 8- down in ihe pillar of the cloud, and stood in the door of the tabernacle ; . . . and He said, Hear now My words : If there be a prophet among you, I the Lord will make Myself known to him in a visi/m, and will speak unto him in a dream. My servant Moses is not so, who is faithful in all Mine house. With him will I speak mouth to mouth, even apparently, and not in dark speeches ; and the similitude of the Lord shall he behold : wherefore then were ye not afraid to speak against My servant Moses ? Here we have, as it were, in epitome, the entire mystery of the prophetic gift and function ; and in such a manner as to exhibit the strength of this credential most impressively. It is 78 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. Numb. xii. 6. Numb. xi. 25, 26. Heb. 6. Numb. xi. 29. Vindica tion. the Voice of Jehovah, jealous of His own honour and of the honour of His servants, at once describing and defending the prophetic law of revelation. We mark that there was to be a permanent order of these agents always ready — whether as a school of the prophets or still abiding in their callings — for the high service of the Kingdom. To one of them Jehovah would reveal Himself whether in a more extraordinary manner or otherwise, in such a way, however, that the receiver of the vision should have no doubt : / the Lord will make Myself known unto him. Yet the Supreme was not limited to any order of men or to any special method. Hence we find that, while the Seventy Elders received the Spirit and propliesied and did not cease (or but not further), the same Spirit rested also upon Eldad and Medad and they prophesied in the camp. Above all minor ministries rises Moses supreme : with bim Jehovah spoke face to face. Yet he was not strictly supreme : being only the type and precursor of that Prophet, Uke unto him yet greater than he, with whom in eternity the Father speaketh face to face : the Son over His own house. When this Son came, the ancient order of prophets ceased ; for the Supreme Revealer made every one of His Apostles like Moses, and spoke to them face to face. Moses could never communicate the Spirit received by him ; for we hear him say : Would God that all the Lord"s people were prophets, and that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them. But our Lord Himself breathed on His Apostles His own Spirit. And thus the whole sum of revelation is under the sublime law of a direct manifestation of God to His people through His servants. This is the grand and glorious claim of revelation from beginning to end, from Moses to the Greater than Moses. 3. We find everywhere, however, the most careful provision for the vindication of this credential. The interior consciousness of the prophet was the guarantee to himself that the Lord was with him ; this however could not be transferred to others, and is no argument to unbelievers who regard the entire mystery of the prophetic function as a delusion. But Jehovah gave His people tests by which they might verify the claims of these prophets. Those whom God sent could appeal to the fact that the honour ot Jehovah was their supreme end. What our Saviour said con cerning Himself was true of all who had come before Him, and of REVELATION. 79 all who should follow Him. My doctrine is not Mine, but His that John vii. sent Me. If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine, *6, 18> whether it be of God, or whether I speak of Myself. He that speaketh of himself seeketh his own glory. This test may be applied to the company of the prophets, and, if applied with candour, will result in the conviction that such a body of men could never have imposed a series of delusions on their own people and on the whole world. But this is not all. These men were fortified by two other qualifications. They were sometimes armed with the power of working miracles, as in the case of Moses and Elijah. Sometimes also their credential was the utterance of prediction : When a prophet speaketh in the name of the Lmd, if the thing follow Deut. not, nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken, xviii. 22. This, however, leads to that second and more limited meaning of the word which has almost displaced the former. PROPHETIC PREDICTION. Predic- T. ¦ ¦ • ¦ - tlOli. Prophecy is thus more specifically the impartation of a Divine knowledge of the future to man : that is, it embraces the predic tion of future events. All revelation from the beginning has been prediction unfolding into prediction. This,'we have seen, is its law ; concerning which no more can be said than that the God of revelation has so willed it. We can imagine it otherwise : every generation might have been taught its lesson, as based upon the past, but not including the future. But we are shut up to the assumption that revelation is the progressive disclosure of one great event to which the eyes of all generations, as well before it as after it, were to be directed. Moreover, according to the testi mony of Scripture itself the prediction of future events followed hy the accomplishment of those predictions has always been one of the Divine methods of authenticating revelation. Here then we have the general laws of prophecy proper, and its criterion as a credential. THE GENERAL LAWS OF PROPHETIC PREDICTION. Laws of There are a few general principles the study of which are of ro^ ec^' great importance in order to a right estimate of Scriptural pre diction as a distinct and pervasive credential of revelation. 80 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. Christ its Object. Acts x. 43. John v. 39. Rev. xix. 10 Double sense. 1. The first is that Christ is its Supreme Subject : the Object to Whom give all the prophets witness, directly or indirectly, from generation to generation, till He came; and for Whose return, now that He is gone, all the predictions of Scripture wait. The Redeemer Himself declared that the Scriptures were to be searched because they testify of Me : as if whatever else might be found in them this was their supreme matter. The testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy. His Person, advent, and kingdom give to all the prophecies of Scripture their unity. The great catholic all- embracing predictions which pervade revelation concerning the accomplished redemption of mankind, from the ProtevangeUum, or first prediction with promise, downward, are everywhere found ; each new cycle of the prophetic inspiration pays its tribute to that great design of the coming Deliverer. While no prophet is ever heard to foreannounce his successor, all conspire to foreannounce the Christ. We cannot always see the connection between the lesser predictions and that vast accomplishment ; but we do see that the running superscription of prophetic revelation is the final kingdom of the Redeemer. All types, which are prophecies in act, and all predictions, which are prophecies in word, have a more or less obvious reference to the Gospel. To discover this we often have to apply what is called the Canon of a Double Sense ; that is, a first accomplish ment nearer at hand, which itself suggests a second and ulterior satisfying all requirements : a combination worthy of the Divine attributes, and resembling in the free domain of history the use of symbols in nature ; the events to which the predictions first refer being themselves prophetic of Christ. In due time we must examine the predictions of the Old Testament more in detail. Meanwhile, all that is necessary here is to dwell on this law as stamping the credential character of prophecy. There are indeed predictions in the Old Testament — such as those minutely de scribing the destruction of some of the ancient cities of the world — the accomplishment of which is known and read of all men who study history. They must not be forgotten. But whoever examines the New Testament carefully will see that the whole strain of allusion to the Great Fulfilment of the fulness of time points to the coming and kingdom of Jesus as the one accomplish- REVELATION. 81 ment that guarantees all the rest. There is nothing more certain in the annals of mankind than that a series of predictions runs through the ancient literature of the Jews which has had a most exact fulfilment in the advent and work of Jesus. This is the supreme credential of prophecy in revelation. 2. Another unfailing evidence of the Divine presence in Progres- the prophetic Scripture is the peculiar law of Progression slon- found to pervade them : a law which determines the steady development of the great doctrine of revelation according to certain fixed principles. Every age is under the sway of some governing prophecy the accomplishment of which introduces the government of a new order of prophetic expectation. The fulfil ment of one prediction becomes the starting-point of another, with wider issues and a larger number of subordinate tributaries. (1.) It may be said that one transcendent prophecy begins the The One Scripture, commands the whole of revelation, and binds time and «0SPel- eternity in one : the first Gospel of a coming Redeemer. But even this illustrates, like all others, that largest application of the principle which divides the whole series into the Old-Testament predictions and those of the New. All the ancient prophets spoke of what Isaiah, in their name, calls the Last Lays, or the Gen. xlix. great Afterward, that indefinite period of Jacob's prophecy, *• D'D'H /VnnNJl, which began to be more definite in the opening vision of the evangelical Prophet, It shall come to pass in Is. ii. 2. the last days. The coming of that glorious After Age, or the ends of the world, or the world to come, the Fulfilment, is ihe fulness of Gal. iv. 3. time generally. Particularly, it is stamped with perfection in the New Testament by three tokens : it is the time of the last days when God spoke His perfect revelation by His Son, and imperfect Heb. i. 2, oracles were consummated by one Final Voice ; secondly, when He who was foreordained before tlie foundation, of the world, and 1 Peter i. testified beforeliand, was manifest in these last times, as the spotless 11' Lamb of the Finished Atonement ; and, finally, the period of the last days when the prophecy was accomplished, / will pour out of Acts ii. My Spirit upon all flesh. These three events fill up the perfection of the Second Period of redemption : the Voice of the Son, the Atoning Blood, the Effusion of the Spirit. And with Christ, the supreme Fulfilment, begins a new order and range of prophecy. VOL. I. G 82 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. What eternity is to time that His coming in the new economy is to the expectation of Him in the old. In fact, the very same language was adopted by the ancient Rabbins to distinguish these: the time of the Messiah was the WORLD to come, K2il cbty. Subordi- (2,) The same principle may be traced in the subordinate cycles nate throughout Scripture. The patriarchal predictions, while always faithful to the first law and keeping the Messianic age in view, terminated in Canaan, to begin again with an altogether new order of prophecies. The predictions of the Jewish prophets, so far as they referred to the Captivity, found their accomplishment in that event, the first goal of the largest of aU clusters of forean- nouncement ; but with that accomplishment another series emerged into prominence. Similarly, there are, in the New Testament, subordinate cycles of predictions out of the accompUshment of which other predictions arise. Over the Incarnation there was a large array of prophetic songs, pointing to the Advent but in cluding also its ulterior results. Our Lord's own predictions referred to His death and resurrection and ascension; to the outpouring of His Spirit, the estabUshment of His kingdom, the destruction of Jerusalem, the final resurrection, and the end of the world : the largest and most comprehensive series of predic tions delivered by any one Voice since prophecy began. The same law is latent in the Apocalypse, the last book of prophecy ; but here our eyes are holden, and it is not given to those who now read to trace its operation otherwise than in broad outline. The more this general principle is studied, in its application to the entire mass of the predictions of Scripture, the more glorious will appear to all dispassionate students the economy of prophecy which the Omniscient Mind has ordered. Whatever it maybe to those who are bent upon resisting all evidences that recommend the Word of God, to those who are of the truth this law of foreannouncement will itself be a strong credential of revelation. Reserve. 3. Once more, and pursuing the same topic a little further, all prophecy is under the law of Reserve ; a mysterious law which has been appointed in the Divine counsel, and has literally never been changed. In its absolute supremacy it governs the develop ment of revelation : this being the difference between time and eternity, that in the latter alone will all restriction be done away. REVELATION. 83 Neither What nor What manner of time has ever been fully made i Peter L clear until the day has declared it. It is evident that this might 11- have been otherwise. The same Spirit Who foreannounced the Coming of the Christ could have so described His Person, so unfolded His work, and so defined the period of His advent, as to remove every vestige of uncertainty. But this was not His wUl. He so ordered every prediction, and every cycle of predictions, that, while enough was declared to encourage hope and excite desire, enough was concealed to shut up the heirs of prophecy to faith. ' Looking back upon the long series as irradiated by the light of Pentecost we see that every general and every more particular prediction had its determinate reference to the Great Fulfilment ; but we can see also that not one of them was clear enough to preclude unbelief in the case of those who were disposed to murmur against Divine Providence. Every generation could rejoice in the fulfilment of the prophecies that had gone before concerning itself; but as to its own future it was under the sway of an indefinite hope. There is no exception to this law throughout the economy of prophecy. When it was approaching its Old- Testament close, it might appear as if the law was somewhat relaxed; for Daniel's predictions are exceedingly minute, and their specifications of the Seventy Weeks, and of the peculiarity of the last week of the Seventy, goes beyond the general indeter minateness of prophetic utterance ; but his prophecies are no real exception, having been until the Messiah came almost as inde terminate as the date of the Millennium. The New Testament introduces the same law, and is everywhere faithful to it. Reserve begins again ; and it reigns over the expectations of the Christian church at the present hour. Our Lord's foreannouncements of His passion were veiled in a certain obscurity; and it was not until after His resurrection that even the third day was under stood. Even when approaching the seventh of the weeks before Pentecost, and giving His disciples their last encouragement, the Saviour says only Not many days hence, though we might suppose Acts i. 8. that the tenth day would be certain to all. As soon as the Holy Ghost begins a new cycle of predictions concerning the coming again of Jesus, with all the subordinate fulfilments of prophecy connected with that event, we mark that we are under the same G 2 1 Peter i 11. 84 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. restrictions as the fathers were under. We have the immeasurable advantage of the accomplishment of the greatest prophecies con cerning Him in the First Advent ; but the times and the seasons of the Return are still under a veil. We have, like the ancients, to inquire diligently what or what manner of time thi Spirit of the Christ did signify. Nor have we a right to expect until the Lord comes a more clear and full revelation of the Millennial events than the fathers had of the Advent of the Redeemer. Now this law of a strict reserve is itself a glorious testimony to the wisdom and goodness of the God of revelation : especially when it is connected with those we have already referred to. For, to sum up, all prophecy points to One Supreme Person, Uke the needle to the pole, and with only the same tremulous variation; all proceeds in the majestic march of a determinate counsel, but in spiral cycles ; and over all, including that under which we live, there is the same veil of heavenly mystery. Like every past generation, we also are in the hour of a great Expectation : an hour or a day which is rich with the inheritance of a vast fulfil ment, but richer still, if possible,, in the hope of a yet more abundant inheritance hereafter when the time of its perfect re velation and enjoyment shall have fully come. A Sign to 4_ Finally, an important law of aU prophetic announce- neration " ments is that it has been constituted by the Holy Spirit a sign to every successive generation : in other words, Uke the miracle proper, and equally with the miracle, it has been a Divine cre dential of revelation. In the unlimited wisdom of the Supreme the prophetic office was ordained to subserve many purposes. It was the medium through which the supreme communications were, from time to time, made to the chosen people, of encouragement or warning to themselves, and of defiance and threatening against their enemies. Hence for a long, series of ages it was the vehicle of the entire economy of Divine instruction : containing the doc trines and the ethics of the religion common to all dispensations, with a glorious prospective announcement of the Christian truth hereafter to be revealed. Hence the prophetic books, and the prophetic elements in all the other books, are to us an inex haustible fund of instruction apart from their predictions of future events. But, all this being true, it is equally plain that REVELATION. 85 the whole system of foreannouncement was intended to be from generation to generation a standing and permanent credential. There is abundant evidence of this in all parts of the Old Testa ment. And if thou say in thine heart, How shall we know the words Deut. which the Lord hath not spoken ? When a prophet speaketh in the 21 2'2 name of the Lord, if the thing follow not nor come to pass, that is the thing which the Lord hath not spoken. Long afterwards we read : Remember the former things of old : for I am God, and there is none isa. xlvi. else : I am God, and there is none like Me. Declaring futurity from 9> 10- the former time, and from ancient times the things that are not yet done. To this our Lord gives His own sanction for the New Testament : And now I have told you before it come to pass, that John xiv. when it is come to pass ye might believe. * 29. THE TESTS OF THE PROPHETIC CREDENTIAL. The Tests of prophecy are very simple. They are, strictly speaking, not the moral character of the prophet, nor the worthi ness of the matter, nor the preservation of the record, nor obvious connection with the Divine scheme : these are all implied charac teristics which have been already dwelt on in another connection. But the prophecies which are the credentials of a revelation ought to be such as to satisfy their student that they can be accounted for only by Omniscience ; they should be beyond the suspicion of a mere human fulfilment : and they must of course, in order to be prophecies, precede their accomplishment. 1. It is undeniable that the prediction of future events is the prerogative of Omniscience alone ; and also that in the Scriptures God is represented as making it one great purpose in His com mission of the prophets to establish clearly this claim. We may suppose therefore that the predictions of Scripture will generally, if not in all individual and isolated cases, have such a character as to be beyond the reach of human calculation. It may safely be granted that in some cases it is impossible to prove the event foreannounced to have been beyond the range of skilful foresight. But it must be remembered that the weight of the argument from prophecy does not rest upon isolated examples : it depends upon certain great and prominent and vast predictions Tests of Prophecy. Possible only to Omnisci ence. THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. such as only the Supreme Mind could have given to men, and the ' accomplishment of which is before our eyes. Beginning with these, and fortified by their undeniable strength, we have only afterwards to stand on the defensive with regard to the rest: nothing is necessary beyond establishing that the opposite con clusion cannot be proved. First, then, let this test be apphed to that One Great Object of prophecy to Whom all the prophets bore witness. During a thousand years a perfect picture is gradually drawn, by more than a hundred distinct predictions, of One Person, and of Him as unique in the history of mankind : that distinct picture being the filling up of an outUne which had been sketched thousands of years before, in fact from the very beginning of .the world- Could the Deliverer of mankind have been foreseen in all the marveUous traits of His character, and in all the minute circumstances of His appearance and history and life and death and resurrection and reign, by the enthusiasm of national longing 1 Could the converging foresight of a series of prophets have drawn this most elaborate and most sacred Portrait ? The same may be said as to the steadfast predictions of the fates of some of the leading nations of the world. After the Person of the Messiah, the Israel after the flesh which rejected Him takes the next rank in the historical perspective of prophecy. There is a similar wonderful unanimity in the predictions of their entire history whether as originally Hebrews, or afterwards Israelites, or in more modern times Jews. Their destiny as depicted in the Bible, that is in both Testaments, brings prophecy and fulfilment into such plain and undeniable harmony that no room ought to be left for infidelity. This is a topic that must be pursued through the whole Bible, which shows that the rejection and dispersal of the people was foretold when it was most prosperous, its elevation and dignity when it was most dejected. Moses, the founder of Hebrew greatness, foretold the dispersion of Israel as the re sult of their disobedience, and at the same time their preserva tion through all ages as distinct and unconfounded among the nations. Scarcely one of the later prophets but has repeated this wonderful prophecy, applicable to no other race. The nations among which they were scattered have disappeared, or are in course of disappearance : the ten tribes are wanderers over the REVELATION. 87 face of the earth still. They have survived the greatest revolu tions of history : a standing proof that the Eye of the Supreme foresaw what His omnipotent Hand has accomplished. Though Jer. xxx. I make an end of all the nations whither I have scattered thee, yet will 11- I not make an end of thee. And, as to those other nations them selves, the prophetic Scriptures abound with predictions, more or less minute, the fulfilment of which has proved that the voice of God uttered them. It was foretold, again and again, that the covenant people should go into captivity : that the captives should be again set free, and those who spoiled them be themselves laid waste. A minute study of these prophecies will show, and the more minute the study the more effectually will it show, that Omni science was in these predictions. Hosea, Amos, and Isaiah pre dicted that the kingdom of Israel and Jerusalem also would be scourged by Assyria ; and it was so. The fulfilment was exact as to the ravage of Samaria, and the restraining hand that saved Jerusalem from destruction. In the year 712 B.C. Nahum denounced ruin against the Assyrian oppressor and Nineveh : in the year 612 B.C., after a century which had given no signs of this, the destruction of Nineveh took place. Concerning Babylon also, the successor of Assyria, there were equally sure words of prophecy. No fact in human annals is more certain than that the 'Babylonian captivity was foretold by Isaiah, and also the deUverance of the people; nor than that Micah, two hundred years before their accomplishment, predicted the same events. The burden of Tyre in Isaiah described its ruin by the Chaldeans in a manner so clear and explicit, and so fully confirmed by history, as to make it one of the triumphs of prophetic evidence. But for confirmation of the evidence the prophecies themselves must be carefully studied. This branch of the Apologetics of revelation is only glanced at in this general summary ; it will amply repay the most exhaustive examination. 2. As the first test pays its tribute to the Omniscience of the Fulfilment God of revelation, so the second pays its tribute to the Omni- required potence. Only He Who gave them could fulfil the predictions of potence. Scripture. But it has been urged by the opponents of the Faith that many of those so-called vaticinations which undeniably are found in the rhapsodies of the prophets were really fulfilled ; but 88 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. fulfilled through the determination of those who were interested in their accomplishment that they should be accompUshed. It is pleaded with great subtilty that patriotic enthusiasts, gifted with keen foresight, gave hints of what they saw in the germ of pro bability ; and that these hints fulfilled themselves. It is not a hopeless, nor is it even a difficult, task to vindicate the whole body of Old-Testament foreannouncements from this charge. But it most concerns us to examine it in its reference to the New Testament, where it is applied, with some show of plausibility, but with no real force, to the Supreme Fulfilment of aU prophecy. The spirit of infidelity does not shrink from making the career of Christ a studied adaptation to Himself of the scattered prophetic hints of the ancient records. It seizes upon the Scriptural word, Matt. i. that it might be fulfilled ; and boldly assumes that the entire history „p' . of our Lord and His kingdom in the New Testament was a cun- 16. ningly devised fable, woven after the pattern given in the Old Testament. It is scarcely necessary to say that here Ues the stress of the whole argument against the Christian revelation as resting upon the fulfilment of prophecy. We may remain for ever in doubt as to the precise relation of some of the obscurer predictions of the prophets to their fulfilment : the doubt is simply the result of our ignorance of many of the elements necessary to its solution. But it is a matter of vital importance, the very life of Christianity is in it, that our Lord's manifestation on earth should be a fulfil ment of what was provided and foretold according to the deter minate counsel and foreknowledge of God; and not a studied assumption of a character and destiny sketched in the enthusiasm of national hope. Here we must needs argue in a circle : it is the first necessity, as will be hereafter seen, that, as we believe in God, we believe also in His Son. And He rests the whole issue of His mission, with all its boundless interests to mankind, upon the accomplishment of the entire prophetic word in Himself. He has appropriated all the leading foreannouncements of the Messiah to His own Person. But, in His own application, and in that of His Spirit in the Apostles, there is a distinction to be observed. While all the major prophecies are referred to as absolutely accomplished in His mission — beginning with His in carnation and ending with His final return — many of the minor REVELATION. 89 prophecies are said to be fulfilled in an accommodated sense. The formula that it might be fulfilled applies to some events which Matt. i. accomplish prophetic types : such as Out of Egypt have I called My „ . Son : and, Then was fulfilled that which was spoken by Jeremy the Matt. ii. ' prophet, saying, In Rama was a voice heard. The same principle 17, 18. may be applied to many quotations from the ancient prophets : in Christ and His kingdom all types and predictions found as it were their natural and legitimate resting place. But it must be remembered that, if the Supreme Fulfilment is in Christ, His authority must protect all the prophets who wrote of Him : protect them, not only in their general authenticity, but also in the detail of these most obscure predictions. The two prophets against whose mission and specific prophecies infidelity has most vehemently excepted are Isaiah and Daniel ; and these are pre cisely the prophets whom Jesus and His Apostles most emphati cally quote. They are safe therefore in our estimation for the Master's sake. But, speaking generally, they are safe in their own integrity. Their leading foreannouncements were such as could never have fulfilled themselves, nor have been fulfilled by those who artfully seize upon these hints. Have the nations and empires whose overthrow was predicted and accomplished, fulfilled the predictions by their own cunning 1 Are the Jews executing on themselves the judgment written 1 They are the most deter mined enemies of the Christian Fulfilment; but they do not deny that the hand of God has been long against them. He has smitten them, they think, for the chastisement of the world's peace ; and wounded them for the transgressions of mankind; but surely they have not smitten and wounded themselves in order to fulfil predictions bound up with their own disgrace. 3. The test of prophecy takes yet another form. It is very Post confidently asserted that some of the avowed predictions of Scrip- ¦B7entum# ture were written post eventum : after the supposed accomplish ment. To prove this in the case of any of the least of these predictions is a task which has not succeeded ; in the case of the greatest of them, that is of those on which the burden of the credential lies, it has been a hopeless failure. But the spirit of infidelity is very bold : as daring in its unholy attacks as the spirit of faith is daring in its acceptance of mysteries. From the 90 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. earliest assault on prophecy down to modern times the whole force of its attack has taken this direction. Disintegrating the Scriptures as a whole, utterly renouncing the traditions of ages, and attaching no weight to the testimony of Christ and His Apostles, of the Jewish and Christian churches from the beginning, it scruples not to make the Pentateuch a Mosaic tesselation of documents to which Moses has only given his name, which indeed belongs to a period subsequent to the Captivity ; and the voices of the psalmists and prophets, from Samuel and David to Joel and Zechariah, are regarded as singing strains which turn history, past and present, into poetry with a prophetic form. The Book of Daniel is declared to have been written after the leading events which it records, these being mainly predictions concerning Antiochus Epiphanes ; while its remarkable miracles are supposed to prove its unauthentic character as weU as later origin. It has been seen that the Lord has thrown His shield around this prophet ; He mentions him by name; receives from him His Messianic designation, Son of Man, and that of His kingdom, the kingdom of heaven ; and generaUy protects him by anticipation against all assaults. The Lord's own apology is sustained by the best modern research ; and, after the utmost critical sifting, its most vehement opponents have no argument to allege but the extreme minuteness of its prophecies and the supernatural hand in its events. The Holy Gospels contain predictions of the Supreme Prophet ; and they also are therefore assigned, in spite of the strongest evidence of antiquity, to a period after the destruction of Jerusalem. In this case also our loyalty to the Lord almost forbids argument. If Christ Jesus be worthy of any confidence the main predictions of the Old and New Testaments must have been delivered before their fulfilment. As to a multitude of lesser prophecies, about which there may be contention, the application of our test, and the consequent vindication of the prophets in detail, will require the close study of prophetic Scripture as a distinct branch of theology. But that minute investigation is not neces sary to show the triumph of this particular credential of revelation as such in its broad outlines. Doubtless the New Testament followed the Old, and the Old was not written after the event The dispersion of the Jews, the spread of Christianity, the ruin REVELATION. 91 of the great empires whose burdens rest upon the prophets, the signs of Antichrist, the latter-day infidelity, — all are fulfilments of distinct prophecy, which assuredly was written before their accomplishment. prophecy and miracle. The evidence of Prophecy as a credential of revelation is of the Nature highest order: whether taken by itself or in connection with °f ~Te," r , ., J dential. miracle generally. 1. In common with miracle proper it is a standing and per- The petual token of the Divine presence in the whole sphere of revela- Presence tion. He Himself appeals to both as His high prerogative in many of the sublimest passages of the prophets, I have declared Isa. xlviii the former things from the beginning ; and they went forth out of My 3- mouth, and I showed them; I did them suddenly and they came to pass. It was the Voice Supernatural, beyond the ordinary methods of guiding man's inquiries, that declared all coming •events from the beginning: nothing worth calling history has taken place without foreannouncement. And it was the Hand Supernatural, beyond the ordinary and quiet operation of Provi dence in nature, that suddenly brought it to pass. The bound less variety and steadfast unity of these predictions give them an unspeakable grandeur; and the wonderful events in human history which are the direct fulfilment of prophecy are beyond all others great in all the elements of sublimity. In fact, if all the events which have been matter of fulfilment and of prophecy are eliminated from the current of human history there is not much that is left. The leading transactions of every age have been under a ruling prophecy ; and we also, in our day, wait to see the end of the things that concern ourselves. 2. Viewed apart, and by themselves, these prophecies are Cuniula- peculiarly cumulative in their demonstrative force. Unlike the i'ye- miracles, the fulfilled predictions constantly enlarge the materials of their evidence. There is a sense indeed in which this observa tion, frequently made, is not true. The miracles recorded in Scripture are thought to be more feebly commended to the acceptance of every succeeding generation ; as if the testimony 92 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. Full of Instruc tion. on which they rest grows weaker as it recedes from the present. But that is not philosophically true. Moreover, the most evident and noblest miracles — if any such distinction may be made — are yet constantly performed ; and the Finger and Hand of God are evermore at work in the hearts of men and in the heart of society. Still, the accumulating force ofthe prophetic credential is more con spicuous than that of the miracle. We live under a vaster amount of fulfilment than any former age ; and he who shall take the historical prophecies of the Old Testament and trace their ful filment in the course of Oriental history will have an irresistible demonstration of Christianity at his command. 3. Finally, like the miracles, the prophecies are bound up with the teaching of the Bible ; and, apart from their evidential foree, yield an unlimited treasure of instruction in the ways of God, the work of Christ, and the destiny of man. Neither miracle nor prophecy can easily be over-estimated as the vehicle of Divine teaching : neither can be while time lasts exhausted. Inspira tion as a Creden tial. Law of Scripture. 2 Tim. iii. 16. INSPIRATION, OR' THE DIVINE HAND IN SCRIPTURE. The specific doctrine of inspiration, as the ground of the Divine authority of the Scriptures, will be considered in its place. It may here be regarded very briefly as one of the credentials of re velation, on a level with Miracles and Prophecy and completing or consummating their evidence. 1. Inspiration is a distinct element of the supernatural order of revealed truth : one of its laws and characteristic attri butes. As such it simply means that the sacred documents are worthy of the Divine Author ; and that they are not unworthily described as God-breathed. Strictly speaking only the writers are inspired ; but the last word 6n the subject in the New Testa ment gives the epithet to Scripture itself: n-So-a ypa<£ij Oeo-nvevcrros. What we have agreed to mean by inspiration is therefore the fact that God has interposed to keep a continuous and abiding record of truth in the world : this, throughout all the ages of the world's religious history, has been the Divine method of impart ing and preserving the knowledge of God among men. The beginning of this interposition, so far as concerns the written REVELATION. 93 documents, is lost in the distance of ages ; but none of its fruits can be supposed to be lost. Inspiration is, in a certain sense, one with revelation, as meaning the Divine bestowment of knowledge that could not otherwise be acquired. It does not, however, entirely coincide with revelation : being either less or more : less, since much that has been revealed has not been transmitted ; more, since much is recorded and transmitted that was not given by direct revelation. But, whatever may be its limits, it indicates a specific intervention of God in human literature, through which there has always been in course of production, and has been finally produced, the permanent and authoritative revelation of His mind and will to man. And this may fairly be regarded as a credential of the whole system of revealed truth : it is worthy of the Divine wisdom, and what might have been, humanly speaking, expected, that He whose power has been known in miracle, and His knowledge in prophecy, should declare His wisdom and fidelity in giving revelation to mankind, and in making it an abiding heritage. Now revelation makes this its universal claim ; and appeals to the manifest evidences of the Presence of God, as its Author and Indwelling Spirit, in Holy Scripture. Such is the overwhelming demonstration of this, that the whole weight of the cause of Christianity might be made to rest upon it, if it be rightly stated and exhibited. The entire scope, and contents of the volume of inspiration justify its pretension to have come direct from heaven. When the character of Jesus is introduced, and the moral and spiritual effects of His Gospel, we shall have to consider much that might be supposed to belong to this cre dential. But there remains a very interesting argument that may be briefly touched upon here. 2. Generallyspeaking, the records of revelation are worthy of their Scripture Divine authorship or of the Divine authorship which they claim. Wj)iyJ.e° Dispassionately taking up the whole Bible, with the hypothesis Author- in our thoughts that it was composed by writers under a special ship- control of the Holy Spirit, we find nothing, or very little, to make us hesitate in admitting the claim ; but, on the contrary, perpetual demonstration that the several authors cannot have been left to themselves. The children of this Wisdom justify her on the whole ; and where they seem to do otherwise it is only 94 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. that we cannot penetrate the secret which makes any one of them 2. Cor. xi. say, in the language of St. Paul, / speak as a fool. ~ . 3. For, it must be remembered that the records of revelation human, exhibit a characteristic Divine-human excellence corresponding with the only sound theory of inspiration. They are worthy to be assigned to the authorship of the controlling Spirit : supposing that Spirit to employ human faculties and human editorship. They may not be at all points, in every line and every record, what we might expect from the immediate dictation of the Holy Ghost, or from the writing of His Finger on tables delivered to man. But, if they are below what God might be supposed to send down straight from heaven, they are certainly altogether beyond the unassisted ability of man, higher indeed than any ability of man, even assisted from above, could have produced : that is to say, there are disclosures in various parts of the Bible, and one in particular everywhere, which imply not the raising of earth to heaven but the descent of heaven to earth. We have only to contemplate their tranquil, authoritative solution of questions that no other books have attempted even to investigate ; their profound and natural familiarity with God and the things of God ; the simplicity and awfulness of their doctrine of sin ; the supreme moral interest that everywhere reigns ; and their uni versal, never-failing appeal to what is good in human nature, as if a Divine Voice were issuing from them for ever speaking to something in the human spirit that must hear. If God records His truth for man, this is just what He would write : whether we have respect to what is given or to what is withheld. There is a perfect Divine dignity and perfect human purity : it is both the Voice of God and the voice of man ; combined in so marvellous a way as to make the claims of Inspiration rightly understood a most impressive credential of the Faith. Snpre- 4. Hence the simple and undeniable fact of the supremacy of macy- the Bible, as a collection of religious documents, may be appealed to as itself a mighty presumptive argument of its own truth and of the truth of the religion it propounds. There is nothing parallel, nothing similar, in human literature. Place it by the side of the most ancient religious books, the Indian Vedas, the Chinese Classics arranged by Confucius, and the other sacred writings of REVELATION. 95 the world at large, and comparison must soon give up its task. Soon give it up : not immediately ; for there are undoubtedly certain outlines of primitive truth in the ancient writings of the East which show that they also were written not without a certain degree of the Divine afflatus. The Holy Ghost has ever been the Voice of One crying in the wilderness, and saying, Prepare ye the way of the Lord. In the books which treat of the Science of Religion, and give us systems of Comparative Theology, more than justice is done to this element common to the sacred books of what we call heathenism and the Holy Scriptures : so far as mere justice is done, the advocate of Christianity heartily assents; but when the other holy writings are collated with the Christian at all points it is an exaggeration of justice that becomes most unjust. The Bible refuses to form one column of a great Biblical Polyglot. There is outside of the Christian Scriptures no docu ment extant among men which really professes to have been written under the inspiration of God : and among those which may seem to make such a claim there is not one which does not in half its contents refute the claim, common sense being the judge. Again, there is no document of the kind extant for which it may be pleaded that, though as standing alone it has no divinity, it recovers its character when placed in a collection of sacred books. But there is not a book of the Jewish and Christian Scriptures which does not vindicate its own dignity and sanctity at all points when studied as belonging to the entire volume. This leads however to a distinct argument. 5. The Unity of the Scriptures of revelation is a very strong Unity. credential in its favour as professing to be from God. It is one great vision, and its interpretation one : beginning and ending with the same Paradise, with thousands of years of redeeming history between. It has been instinctively called, what it does not call itself, the Bible : one Book divided, if divided at all, into two parts. That the New Testament as fulfilment should so perfectly correspond with the Old Testament as prophecy is in itself the most wonderful phenomenon in literature : it is evidence1 as near demonstration as need be of the intervention of a Divine Hand. The Redeemer made manifest in the later Scriptures answers face to face and feature for feature to the Form predicted 96 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. in the older Scriptures. But it is not merely that the Same Being is foreannounced in one book Who comes in another. He is the sole predominant subject of many books in both departments of the Bible. One idea runs through the whole : the kingdom of God set up or restored in His incarnate Son. To this idea authors of various ages and of various races contribute in a harmony which never could be the result of accident or mere coincidence. Only the Divine power could have made so many men, of different lands, concert, without concerting, such a scheme of literature. These men belonged to no school of consecutive writers : yet they seem as if they had been, before time was, in the counsel and council- chamber of Jehovah, and to have come forth each predestined to furnish his own contribution. If they had not asserted their inspiration of God, that hypothesis must have been invented to account for the facts and phenomena of their writings. But they have asserted it : the claim is bound up with every page of the word they have left behind them. Unity in 6. There is a special aspect of this argument which wUl be Develop- found 0f great importance by those who examine it from this point of view : that is, the unity of teaching which is maintained through a long and diversified course of development. The lead ing doctrines which distinguish Christianity from every other system of supposed religious truth are to be traced through the many books of the Bible in a line of everwidening and ever- deepening expansion. Each prominent article of our Faith may be traced upwards to its germ in the earliest Biblical documents, and downward again as it threads its way distinct from others until it finds its full expression. And all combined converge through the older Scriptures to a consummate harmony in the New Testament. These two facts are undoubted : they ought not, at least, to be doubted by anyone who is familiar with the history of doctrine in the Bible. The Holy Trinity, with the redeeming relation to mankind of the Second Person in that Trinity, and the relation to the universe of life sustained by the Third Person; the establishment in the world of a kingdom of grace destined finally to triumph ; the acceptance of every penitent sinner by God on the ground of what is called a Righteousness of Faith; the essential difference between soul and body, with the transient REVELATION. 97 separation caused by physical death; the eternal issues of the present life of probation ; — these are all doctrinal truths which run through the whole Bible, so that Christian preachers may take their proof-texts from almost every book; but which run through the Bible with always progressive clearness. The development of doctrine we have to study elsewhere. It is referred to now as a clear indication of the presence — perhaps it would be better to say of the very strong probability of the pre sence — of a Divine Hand in the construction of the Bible. The supreme truth — that of the Sacred Trinity in the Godhead — might be shown to bear up the pillars of this argument. There is not a single reference in the Old Testament to the Messiah as a Person near to Jehovah, or as Jehovah Himself, that is not perfectly consistent with the amazing secret concerning His being which the New Testament brings to light ; nor is there a single reference, among multitudes, to the Spirit of God that is not perfectly in harmony with what the later Scriptures declare as to His relation to the Father and the Son. Such is the effect pro duced on the devout mind of a believer in Christianity by the consideration of this wonderful harmony that he is disposed to place it among the foremost evidences of the Faith. Most certainly it is one of its most emphatic and persuasive credentials. 7. It must be remembered that the argument based upon the Strength presence of the Divine Hand in the construction of the Bible is °* tne -^-r" not exhibited as final and demonstrative : it is, as has just been Sumen • remarked, only a credential hard to resist. Here a few further observations may be made which will suggest hints to be followed out by the student himself to any extent. (1.) There is in this no more demonstration than the analogical Ana- argument generaUy presents. Throughout the works of God — logical. granted that the creation is a work of God — we perceive the universal sway of a law of evolution, qualified however by a subordinate law of occasional interventions that seem to break the former. Precisely what we find in nature and in providence we find in the gradual construction of Scripture. Why it should be so, it is vain to ask. That it is an absolutely valid proof of the Divinity or supreme authority of the Bible it is vain to assert. It might by the most wonderful of all coincidences have happened VOL. I. H 98 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. tion. that such a Book should be composed at long intervals by authors independent of each other, and retain such a character of steady, uniform, evergrowing development. But the probabilities against this would have been exceedingly great. Qu-ilifica- (2.) Again, it must be borne in mind that the Divine influence aud agency in Scripture is not asserted to be absolute and un qualified. What was said as to the miracles, and might have been said as to prophecy — that residual difficulties were to be expected in the nature of the case — may be said of the credentials of inspiration. Objectors frame hypotheses of miracle and pro phecy with which the facts are not found to accord : and they are offended. So, also, they frame hypotheses of inspiration with which the records of revelation cannot be harmonised : and they turn away with suspicion. This subject will be more fully dis cussed when we come to the doctrine of inspiration. At present it is enough to say that there is in the human elements of the workmanship of Scripture nothing utterly inconsistent with the supposition of a Divine Hand overruling and controlling and even arranging the whole compass of sacred Uterature. Summa'/y. SUMMARY. These three credentials of Miracle, Prophecy, and Inspiration ought to be united : they rautuaUy give and receive strength, and are strongest when they are combined. The miracle is of course most demonstrative to the extant generation of beholders, the prophecy is of course demonstrative only to the generations who come afterwards. The present generation in the midst of which miracles are wrought cannot hand down to us in the fullest degree the evidence of their senses ; we who behold the fulfilment cannot send back to those who heard the prophecy our vision of accom plished prediction. Inspiration embraces the two in one: it records the fact of the miracle, and, as inspiration, makes it present to every age ; while, as inspiration, its record of a prophecy makes the fulfilment as if it were already come or were already past to those who hear it. This may be made plainer by applying it to the narratives of our Lord's mission. Throughout the holy Gospels Jesus is found working miracles and uttering prophecies. When His works and His words were alike approaching their REVELATION. 99 close, He predicted the coming of a miraculous power which should provide for the permanent record of the whole : He promised the Spirit of inspiration Who was not only Himself to abide with His disciples but also to cause the Lord's words to abide with His Church. Certainly the Saviour when He gave this assurance uttered a prophecy, which was fulfilled from the Day of Pentecost onward ; while the prophecy predicted a miracu lous effusion of the Holy Ghost Who was to be a Memory within the disciples' memory, and a special expositor of their Master's words. And the fulfilment of the prophecy was the Spirit of inspiration through Whose influence and superintendence the Four Gospels were written. But these three are more or less united throughout the history of the Bible : they have never been dis joined since the construction of the BibUcal Library began. Strictly speaking, it was prophecy which commenced, miracle abun dantly followed, and in due time inspiration provided one per manent record. The three have kept pace through all the ages of revealed truth ; and they ended together, when their common work was done. Yet they have not ended. In the Bible miracle, and prophecy, and inspiration abide : but in some respects the greatest is inspiration ; for it really absorbs the two others, and gives continuance and permanence to the whole. THE CHARACTER OF CHRIST THE REVEALER. Christ the Revealer. The Person of Jesus Christ, the Author and Finisher of the Faith, is its highest and most sacred credential. This is true of our Lord's historical manifestation generally ; but for our present purpose it will be sufficient to regard Him as the Founder of His own religion, and to mark the perfect consistency with which He supports His claim to be the Incarnate Revealer of all truth. The more closely we examine the Four Gospels the more clearly shall we perceive that He Himself in His Divine-human selfconsciousness rested upon this for the enforcement of His claims : not only in the case of those who were around H2 alleled. 100 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. Him in the flesh, but also throughout all the future. The strength of this argument as such will be found to be only increased by the various explanations from time to time devised to resist it. There is no rational way of account ing for the Person and Work of Christ but that which accepts the Divine origin of Christianity. THE SUPREME CLAIM. The Claim Here we have reverently to consider the claim of Jesus, the oi Jesus. gUpreKie Revealer, and the consistency of His teaching with His claim : both these being viewed as completely exhibited in the Christian revelation as a whole. Unpar- 1. The Saviour's testimony to Himself is not to be gathered from any one of His assertions, but from the entire strain of the Gospels, as these are corroborated by the exposition of His Apostles. The sum is, that He came down from heaven as the Son of God, and appeared on earth while stiU in heaven as the Son of man, to reveal the words of His Father and to accom plish His Father's will, for human redemption. There is no thing parallel to the pretension of Jesus ; nothing Uke it ever entered into the mind of man. The anticipation of mankind had never risen to such a conception : scarcely had the Old Testament itself prepared for it. Jesus is the Incarnate Son of God : this fact, or this claim, entirely rules the new dispensation. * For the Christianity which does not bring this credential we do not plead: such a Christianity has descended to the level of other rehgions. It might almost be said that the very claim is a sufficient cre dential. That such a Being as Jesus of Nazareth undeniably was — so lowly and pure, so unselfish and reverent, so mighty in word and deed, with such irresistible power over all who approached Him — should declare Himself to have come down from heaven with the mysteries of eternity, with eternal truth in His words and eternal love in His heart, is itself something so new and transcendent that it might almost take our faith captive at its will. This is the thought of those who are already His. But it is a sublime credential which provokes the unbelief of the unre generate reason, and must defend itself. REVELATION. 101 2. There is no more wonderful characteristic of our Lord's Soleness of His Person. revealing mission, and no stronger assertion of its divinity, than the absence of everything that might place Him on a level with other teachers, or with men generally. From His first word to His mother in the temple down to His prayer before the cross, there is not a single expression uttered by Himsetf which, fairly interpreted, makes Him a member of the fellowship of the human teachers of mankind. Nor is there a single expression in the New Testament which, fairly interpreted, makes Him a member in common of the human race. (1.) It is true that on some few occasions Jesus spoke as a jjot j^e man, and seemed to ally Himself with the Rabbis around Him. To other Nicodemus He said, We speak that we do know, and testify that we j- etchers. have seen ; and ye receive not our witness : thus contrasting himself io 13. with the Master of Israel as the teacher of a new doctrine, while in some sense identifying Himself with his order. But it must be remembered that He immediately added : No man hath ascended up to heaven, but He that came down from heaven, even the Son of Man Whieh is in heaven : thus, the very sentence which appears to conjoin the Redeemer with His own Apostles, in which He in deed uses almost the words that both St. Paul and St. John apply 2 Cor. iv. to themselves, is that which contains the very loftiest assertion , J / . of His Divine authority as a Teacher. It is the new Teacher 1. Who says that He is the Son of Man Which is in heaven. (2.) Further, and it is of great importance, our Lord never Not like once allied Himself with mankind in any such way as would be er en , inconsistent with the infinite peculiarity of His claim as His Father's Representative in the human race. The more deeply this fact is pondered the more wonderful will it appear, and the more mighty as a credential of the Christian Faith. Though His delights were with the sons of men, and He so identified Him- Prov. viii. self with the human family as to elect for His own lips the 31, name Son of Man, yet in every variety of way He distinguished Himself from the descendants of Adam. If ye, being evil, is Matt. vii. only one instance out of many with which the Gospels make us 11, familiar. Whosoever studies the question in all its bearings will find that in this fact is one of the most effectual internal evidences of the truth of our holy religion. 102 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. The Claim ITS JUSTIFICATION. The full exposition of the character of our Lord in all His offices must be reserved. But there are some reflections which arise from a general review of the history of His revelation of Himself, and of the truth in Him, which wiU set this sacred and central credential in its proper light. Antici- 1. Though it is undoubtedly true that nothing in human history Potions of runs parallel with this claim of the Redeemer, it is found to be in strict harmony with the profoundest desires and instincts of the race. Not indeed that the incarnation of the Son of God had ever been anticipated. The loftiest aspiration of the rehgious spirit in man had never aimed so high. The transcendental philosophy which makes the Infinite and the finite two necessary poles of thought finding their axis, as it were, in the union of the Absolute and the Conditioned in Christ could never have existed if the Gospel had not given it the idea. The difference between the modern and the ancient Pantheistic philosophy is to be traced to this : Hegel and the moderns have ploughed with the heifer of revelation, that is, of New-Testament revelation; for scarcely did the Old Testament disclose this deepest secret of the counsel of God. Whatever approximations towards the idea of a personal union between God and man, exhibited in any one historic person, are to be found in the ancient or modern sys tems of religious philosophy lack, as close scrutiny proves, the essential element of the Christian incarnation. They never con ceived, nor did they approach the conception, of a real and per- _ manent union of the Divine and human in one personality. Yet the very distortions of the truth are profoundly suggestive. They are like the magicians' imitations of the miracles in Egypt : per mitted exhibitions of what man's fantasy will do with Divine truth, when Satan is the teacher and not the Holy Ghost. But to return. The manifestation of our Lord among men — the Son of Man and the Son of God in one — was the pure and perfect realisation of the highest unconscious longing of human nature : H ii *nat °^ seeinS tne Divinity reflected again in itself as a mirror. 7. He was in that sense also tlie Desire of all nations. Personal 2. Christ's personal character, if such language may be used, Character. ° ° J REVELATION. 103 is in precise harmony with the assumption of so unheard-of a relation. It is a character of which it must be said that it is neither altogether Divine nor altogether human : it is Divine- human ; with the perfection of God in it, but exhibited in the life of a man. Human holiness has in Him its consummate ideal: judged indeed by a standard that He has set up ; one however that our own reason approves. Following Him throughout His career, and forgetting so far as we can His Divinity, we mark that every act and word, and believe, are constrained to believe, that every thought also, is consistent with His assertion that Satan had NO John xiv. PART IN Him. When the Saviour was tested by the Enemy in the 30, wilderness He neither asserted nor denied His sinlessness; but the answers He gave were precisely those which a perfect human nature would have uttered. It is written, Man shall not live by Matt. iv. bread alone, but by every word that proceedeth out of the mouth of God. 4- When He was maligned by His foes among men He simply challenged all accusers and defied them : Which of you convinceth John viii. Me cf sin ? As He approached the cross, where His atonement ^6. required His absolute sinlessness, He spoke most explicitly, The John xiv. prince of this world cometh, and hath nothing in Me. It is, of course, utterly impossible, in the nature of things, to demonstrate the absolute sinlessness of Jesus as man. None but God can pronounce upon that. But it must be remembered that, accord ing to the assumption of the whole New Testament, Jesus was more than man. His holiness is essentially Divine holiness. That is, it is a holiness which is guaranteed by the Divinity of the Son of God. The miraculous conception insured the sanctity of the human nature ; and the Divinity of the Son insured the permanent necessity of that sinlessness. Hence it was Divine sanctity. We see that it is not a holiness that has retrieved itself, that our Lord's resistance to temptation is not that of one who can fall, that He does not speak of law and of duty save as a God. In short, the reUgious character of the Saviour is Divine-human : it is what God, supposing Him also man, would exhibit ; and that is all the argument requires. 3. The Incarnate mission of Jesus is conducted precisely under Incarnate such restrictions as are consistent with the twofold nature of His ^lsslon- one Person ; and this alone we have a right to demand. All 104 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. His works and all His words are Divine. The universe is under His authority : there is a sense in which we see all things already put under Him. And nothing can be more certain than that our Lord claims to know everything pertaining at least to human destiny : as the impression produced in our mind is that supreme power is at the Saviour's command, so also we feel a conviction that He has unlimited knowledge. In Him are Col .ii. 3. hid all the treasures of wisdom and knowledge : hidden in the deepest sense of the term. Both these truths our Lord impresses in His own heavenly manner, not yet understood by those who heard : Johnv.19. The Son can do nothing of Himself , but what He seeth tlie Father do: for what things soever He doeth, these also doeth the Son likewise. These words speak of what is an Eternal Vision, and of what is an Eternal Power. But there is a strange reserve in the Redeemer's assertion of both : yet not strange, however mysterious, to those who understand, or rather believe in, the Lord's wonder ful relations to God and man. This power is, as it were, held by Him in trust and sometimes fettered by some transcendent re straint ; this knowledge is a hearing of the Father, first in eternity, and then gradually enlarging in human faculties. Of the unfathom able mystery that is here it is needless to speak : only of its consis tency with the claim, amazing beyond all human conception, of the Founder of our faith. Style of 4- Christ's style of teaching exhibits the same harmony. It Teaching, is, on the one hand, perfectly after the manner of men. He uses human documents, quotes them humanly, and adopts the purest arts of human rhetoric. His presentation of truth as a Teacher is simply the highest in human literature. But it is absolutely Divine : those who are drawn by the cords of a man, for instance, in the begin ning of the Sermon on the Mount must be constrained to Own at the close that they have heard the voice of a God and not of a man. We feel that His dealing with the conscience is not that of a human witness, nor of a sanctified human teacher, but of a Judge, Who not only gives laws and administers them but also demands of all who hear Him an account of their conduct. No one can read carefully the Four Gospels without feeling that the Master of Christian doctrine and morals is more than man. It may be sometimes matter of doubt whether the Teacher is one to REVELATION. 105 whom in an extraordinary manner the Divine authority was delegated, or Himself the Divine Son of God. But there can be no doubt whether or not the Voice of Jesus speaks with the con fidence of a final Revealer of doctrine and Arbiter of duty. And the very doubt to which reference has been made implies the pure humanness of His ministry. The two sides of His teaching character — the one expressed by the people's question, How knoweth j0hn vii. this man letters, having never learned 1 and the other by our Lord's 155 vm own self-revelation, My Father hath taught Me — are harmonised in the Redeemer's claim as avowed through His whole history, but on no other principle can they be reconciled. 5. The end and consummation of the Saviour's whole work Oonsum- reveals this credential in its infinite clearness and force. The mation of Founder of Christianity Himself lays the chief stress of His appeal to mankind on His redeeming mission, and His atoning death. It must be expected, therefore, that in the crisis and cul mination of the incarnate history — that is, in the transactions connected with the death of the cross — the deep secret of our Lord's Divine-human nature would be exhibited in its most impressive way. Accordingly, we observe that in almost all the details of our Lord's suffering and death there is evidence that the Victim of manifest human violence and of hidden Divine justice is both human and Divine. He approaches His passion as a man : the Man of sorrows, and acquainted with grief, is only a Is. liii. 3. man of deeper sorrow and more profoundly acquainted with grief than other men. Looking at Him from our human position, we see that He advances to the end like any other martyr : He had His distant dread, His Gethsemane foretaste, and then the very bitter ness of death itself. By those who looked at Him with only human eyes He was regarded naturally as the first of all confessors : perfect in meekness as towards enemies, perfect in lowliness of heart as before God, and perfect in self-sacrifice as bearing the witness of blood to His mission. But by those who beheld Him from heaven — He was seen of angels — it was regarded as a more 1 Tim. iii. than mortal passion. The Eternal Father had again and again • declared that the Sufferer was His Eternal Son : as when He sent Him down from the mount <<( transfiguration, and when He acknowledged Him before the Miudering crowd in the temple. 106 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. So also the centurion near the cross, and the disciples who watched Him afar off, bore their witness. These testimonies, however, may not be accepted by all as the credentials of Christ : their value is felt only by those who accept the heavenly origin of the Gospels, and already believe in the Divine-human Person of the Son. But the naked strength of the argument is felt by those who watch the Great Sufferer of Christianity, and mark very carefully the union of Divinity and humanity in the Saviour's own sentiment, bearing, and words. According to His own sacri ficial Prayer, His death was a voluntary self-sanctification : to be an offering the virtue of which should expiate the sin of the world, to reveal the Divine glory in the redemption of mankind, and through that revelation to secure His own return to the glory of God. No testimony borne by our Lord to Himself is plainer than that which declares Him to have died not as men die ; but to have suffered as the Son of God, appointed in the Divine counsel to save the race by dying for it. The entire economy of Chris tianity is based upon this. It stands or falls with the security of this foundation. The Person Who claims the confidence of men, and demands that they entrust to Him their eternal destiny, asks their absolute submission only as their Divine-human Redeemer. His credentials are not perfect till they are deUvered from the cross. And His apologists, who plead His cause, affirm that every incident and word of the history of the passion, like the great passion itself, is consistent with the Saviour's claim. There is a calm undertone of Divinity in all the human experience and testi mony. The Lord declared beforehand the circumstances of His- death, and after a certain period made His disciples familiar with that cross the sight of which afterwards appalled them so much. He spoke of His enemies as having no power against Him of themselves ; of the hosts of angels as ready to defend Him if He should only call them to His aid; and of the whole passion generally as a foreordained event that nothing could avert from Him though He accepted it with perfect spoutaueousness. It is profoundly true that the credentials of Christianity come in aU their strength from the passion- week and the eve of the cross. Humanly speaking, and supposing the Sufferer to be only a perfect man, we may claim for the death ot Jesus a dignity aud a pathos REVELATION. 107 of which there are few examples in history and no rivals. He set His face steadfastly to go to Jerusalem, knowing what awaited Him there ; and, though He might 'have escaped — for the leaders of the people evidently wished to give Him the opportunity — He deliberately arranged everything, down to the minutest particular, for His own end. His disciples' safety was in His thoughts, and provision for His mother, and for the daughters of Jerusalem only less dear to Him than she watr, at the very time that He was meditating on the world's salvation. During the same hour that He was pouring out His triumphant prayer in the expecta tion of His glory, as if the suffering of death was over, He was in the profoundest anguish of Gethsemane, holding in His hand the cup which He drank with seemingly more fear than Socrates felt when his cup was in his hand. But an infinite difference is manifest between the cups. There was a bitterness in the Redeemer's agony which no man hath felt or could feel. It was the endurance of that curse on human sin which the Christian economy ascribes to Christ, and the absence of which makes the history of the end of Jesus unintelligible. We take the three Gospels and perpetually feel that there is something more than mortal in His sufferings. We add to them the fourth, and we perceive the secret of the mystery. To have invented such a combination of the suffering and triumphant Messiah was altogether beyond the power of such men as the Evangelists. It had been the labour of Jewish Rabbis for ages to disjoin the two : the interpretation of inspired men alone could unite them thus. The Spirit of Christ in the Prophets could only signify the passion and the glory that should follow. But the Spirit of Christ in the Evangelists teaches them to see the suffering and the glory blended in one hour, the hour and the power of redemption. That two such aspects of His death are found in the same Gospels requires the agency of the Spirit for its explana tion ; and His explanation is that the Saviour was delivered up by the wicked counsel of men to the wicked hands of men, on the one hand, and that on the other, He died by the determinate counsel and foreknowledge of God. Meanwhile He, as at once God and man, yielded Himself up both to the will of man and to the will of God His Father. Here all is evident though incom- xviii. 8. 108 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. prehensible consistency with that supreme claim on which all the stress is laid, and those who are of the truth must feel the force of this most sad and most glorious of all His credentials. Pre- 6. Once more, it must strike every thoughtful observer of Jesus, diction aa an(j hearer of His words, that the peculiar character of His pre- Kingdom. dictions concerning the future of His cause upon earth is in strict harmony with His Divine-human claims. Almost from the outset of His manifestation it is obvious that the Teacher of Nazareth speaks of that future with two voices that are really one : that is to say, on many occasions it might seem as if He were sent to make a great experiment, the issue of which would depend upon His servants' fidelity ; while, on many other occasions, He spoke in the full consciousness of the accomplishment of a Divine pur pose the end of which was known to Him as clearly as the beginning. There can be no doubt that these two aspects of our Luke Lord's prevision are manifest everywhere. When the Son of man cometh, shall He find faith on the earth 1 was His question to the disciples concerning a special kind of faith that He constantly inculcated, a faith, however, that He bids His disciples to regard as rare in every age, and probably — to them but not to Himself— to be rare at the last. This is only one specimen of many passages in which the Saviour seems to look out upon a vast contingency. Matt. ix. The harvest truly is plenteous, but the labourers are few ; Pray ye 37, 38. therefore the Lord of the harvest, that He will send forth labourers into His harvest. Here we have another. But there is a much larger number of His sayings in which there is no contingency expressed or implied. Such are all the purely eschatological discourses, where the programme of the future kingdom is sketched in its broad outlines with a firm hand. There is no more clear and definite history in the Bible than the future of the last day, evidently as present to the Divine Teacher in the Gospels as the day on which He speaks : whatever may be thought of the authority of the writers of the New Testament, it is certain that without a single exception they represent to us a Saviour Isa. xlvi. Who beholds at once the sum of things, declaring tlie end from the beginning, and has before His eyes the whole panorama of human history. Certainly it was not His will to disclose all; because, in the unfathomable mystery of life, what is present to 10. REVELATION. 109 the Supreme is to the creature a yet unformed future dependent on himself. Hence the Saviour's predictions of the events of the long interval — the times and the seasons — are given in general terms. That there was to be a long interval He always implied : especially in the kingdom-parables. That it was to be a diversified interval of struggle He showed also : I am come to send fire on the Luke xii. earth; and what will I if it be already kindled ? The disciplinary " furnace was already heated ; before its fiery process began among men it must begin at the house of God, and even with the Son in the house : But I have a baptism to be baptized with ; and how am I straitened till it be accomplished 1 His disciples might expect it to be otherwise : Suppose ye that I am come to give peace on earth ? I tell you, Nay ; but rather division : for from henceforth — a term that always stretched from the present to the last future— there shall be five in one house divided, three against two and two against three. The two aspects of the future — that in which it is a fixed issue, and that in which it is a varied contingency — are strikingly combined in the Lord's reference to what He termed the day of His appearing. While in general the expression refers to the final advent, it is certain that the Lord Himself comprehended under it the entire space of the interval : the several critical events — such as the Pentecostal visitation and the destruction of Jerusalem, and the many indefinite crises indicated in the Apocalypse — were the day or the coming of Christ. This must be studied more fully in its proper place. Meanwhile, it is enough to point out in how wonderful a manner the Saviour's predictions of the future of His cause and kingdom confirm His claim to be the incarnate but Divine Revealer of the Father's will and Author of the Christian Faith. 7. This leads, however, to another view. The provision made Provision by the Founder of Christianity for the continuance of His cause f°r the or kingdom on earth exhibits the same tokens of consistency with His Divine-human character. The human provisions are through out perfect in their calm, deliberate foresight. The Seventy and the Twelve were carefully chosen : the former to prepare the Lord's own way in a transitory manner, and accordingly with rules for their guidance not adapted for permanence ; the latter to pave the way for His Gospel among all nations after His departure, 110 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH and accordingly with a long-continued discipline the perfection of which appears throughout the Gospels. We see also that while the Lord speaks of a kingdom over men He is also preparing for a Church gathered from among men : its foundation is laid, and the Two Sacraments — the most wonderful expedients in all legis lation — appointed for the initiation and abiding test of worthy membership. Besides these two fundamentals of ecclesiastical order many other regulations were made. In fact, nothing was left unprovided for : every hint and germ develops afterwards into profound significance, fitted into a perfect system. But the pro vision is at all points Divine ; and in truth its adaptation depended upon the Lord's own survival and victory as God over death and continuance in life. All was made to rest, further, upon a heavenly Substitute for His visible presence, Whose glorious descent from heaven, a Messenger from Himself, is as clearly before the Redeemer's mind as His own descent through death to the world of spirits. This argument — for it is reaUy such — requires to be studied with care, especiaUy in the light of the final discourses in St. John. Can anything be conceived more grand or sublime than the Saviour's tranquil committal of the interests of His kingdom to Another Divine Person, for Whose advent He had made all necessary preparation ? The idea of a divided function — His own in heaven and the Spirit's upon earth — is one with which we are so familiar that we are apt to lose our sense of its perfect uniqueness. If it did not come from above, it could not have come from below. If its origin was earth, then never did earth produce so strange a thought before. In other words, the great future is humanly provided for, but under Divine conditions, by one and the same Incarnate Head of our religion. Contrasts 8. We might trace still further this marvellous chain of con- in Jesus, sistency, the links of which are the credentials of our Lord's mission. But the best apology of the Christian Religion for ever keeps the Person of its Founder in view and considers the combination in Him of Divine dignity and human humility. The claims of Jesus to the homage and devotion of men are at all points exactly what might be expected of Deity Incarnate, but to be accounted for on no other assumption. Without that great pre- supposal all is obscure and incomprehensible : that being admitted REVELATION. Ill all is harmonious and worthy of acceptation. In our Saviour's character as the Head of a religion are seen in marked dis tinctness the two sides. There is a series of records which re present Him as one of ourselves, and even as claiming to be the Refuge of the weary because He could say, I am meek and lowly Matt, xi in heart ; and such a most tender human atmosphere the history ¦" ' breathes to the end. But this same Jesus everywhere claims, both from His foes and from His friends, all that God might exact: the former He threatens with His own displeasuie, as if there could be no fear beyond that ; while from the latter He de mands perfect love and creaturely consecration. There is nothing like this in the history of mankind. Such a twofold relation of One to others — of a human Head to the members of His community — is absolutely alone in human affairs. The purest, gentlest, and most abstracted of men, whose deep devotion to heaven and unselfish spirituality cannot be for a moment even brought in question, nevertheless addresses those who seem to be His fellows as their God and their Judge. On the one hand, He displaces Mfl ^es, who Numb.xii, was the meekest man on earth, and becomes Himself the pattern 3- , xvumo.xx. of humility. On the other hand, His holy wrath surpasses the io_ ' jealous anger of Moses who rebuked the people and died for his impatience. The Woes of Jesus are as historical as His Bene- Matt. v. dictions. But, after all, the noblest argument for the consistency ,, *Jn , „,„.,,. . , , . , , , , TT Matt. xxi. and truth of the Saviour s claims is the calmness with which He asks for the undivided homage of every heart. He Himself makes the sum of religion the perfect love of God; and then claims perfect love for Himself : here upon earth as there in heaven jonn Xi it holds good that I and my Father are one. 30. 9. We complete the chain, thus \feebly held and traced, when r£ne Tnnu_ we point to the inexpressible influence of the Saviour's character, ence of both while He was upon earth and since He has gone into heaven. esus' If He came down to this world, the Eternal Son in the flesh, and delivered these credentials of power and goodness, and died for us as the Incarnate Lover of our souls, we might expect that His Divine-human ascendency over men would be supreme and per manent. No one can read the four Gospels without feeling that the sway of Jesus of Nazareth over those who came within the sphere of His influence was strictly answerable to our hypothesis. 112 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. To none was He an object of indifference ; no one ever crossed His path, or exchanged words with Him, who was not thenceforward a different man. It is impossible to account for His supremacy over all on any human principle. The narratives that record it are too artless and simple to be suspected of depicting a mere human hero : they have no air of embellishment, and rather understate than exaggerate. There is not a sentence in them that calls attention to the character or works of Jesus as their subject. They simply record facts, and leave those facts to produce their own impression. We follow the steps of the Redeemer ; and mark that His influence on all men is precisely what the influ ence of God incarnate would be. If the recorders of His Ufe had purposed to describe such a Being, supposing them able to form the conception and to execute it, they could not have better accomplished their task. The scene with the doctors and His parents in the Temple, the conclusion of the discourse on the mountain, the testimony of those sent to entangle Him, the various accounts of His colloquies with His disciples, occasional intercourse with individual strangers, and controversies with the malignant Jews, with the solemn pathos of awe which He inspired into every person who had to do with His death, aU conspire to prove that the Jesus of the Gospels is always consistent with His John vii. claims to be the Incarnate Son of God. Never man spake like this Man I never man was loved, reverenced, adored like this Man! The sentiments inspired by this Son of the Blessed are to those who love Him testimony to the Divinity of His claims. And it has been permanent. There is nothing possible to the Supreme that the name of Jesus has not accomplished during the Christian ages. His name through faith in His name has evoked a stronger and a purer enthusiasm than any other ; and it is the only one that has evoked it among all races alike. Wherever the Gospel is preached and received Jesus is accepted as the Son of man Who is the Son of God : accepted with a fervour and confidence which no human qualities could account for. No mere man ever was or could be received with such an equal devotion : with that kind of catholic recognition which regards Him not as a Jew or an Oriental but as the Man Who belongs to all men. But the vast majority of those who have received Him have received Him aa 46. REVELATION. 113 their God : the exceptions have always been few. He has received a Divine devotion through all generations from His own people ; and been hated as only Divine excellence can be hated. He is still God manifest in the flesh : by far the most influential power that has ever been known in the affairs of mankind. 1 Tim. iii. 16. HYPOTHESES EXPLAINING THE MANIFESTATION OF CHRIST. Objec tions. many Varieties. Many have been the attempts to give an account to human reason of the most wonderful phenomenon in all human history : that is, to parry the force of this argument, the most precious and the most effectual of all that Christianity has to bring forward. It has been felt by friends and enemies alike, that this is the inmost stronghold; and consequently both the most determined assaults and the most resolute defence have been found here. A few remarks may be made on the methods adopted by infidelity : the student will perceive that the consideration of these methods will tend only to strengthen our position. 1. It is remarkable that the Gospels, which contain predictions One with of the entire future of the Eedeemer's kingdom, very accurately predict, both by word and in act, the kind of assault that would be directed against the name of Jesus. During our Lord's sojourn on earth the representatives of every subsequent speculation spent their surmise and questioning upon Him, and the representatives of every subsequent attack are found confronting Him. The colloquy between the Master and the disciples at Caesarea PhiUppi throws much light on the divided opinions of the generation. Whom do men say that I, the Son of man, am ? was a question once Matt, xvi, asked and still continued from age to age. It teaches significantly 13- that the opposition excited among His contemporaries took the form of hypothesis concerning His Person. His enemies pondered rather Who He was than What He was. Although sometimes they strove to impeach His moral character, as one who broke the Sabbath, or who stirred up the people, or who was too familiar with sinners, generally they aimed at the mystery of His relation to the Father : either avowedly pointing to His known Nazareth family, or darkly hinting at a supposed compact with Satan. Anyone who should collate and study the opinions of His contemporaries VOL. I. I 114 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. Methods of In fidelity. concerning Him will find the germs of all subsequent opinions and treatment. From that day Jesus has riveted on Himself the regards of the whole civilised world. And it may be safely affirmed that all speculation on the Founder of Christianity has had reference, expressed or unexpressed, to the mystery of His Incarnate Person. This most strange phenomenon— the Form that seems so much like the Son of God — has to be accounted for in some way by those who reject Christianity. They must confront and salute this Figure : it may be with fear or with scorn or with reasoning doubt ; but never with indifference. 2. The methods of infidel resistance to the claims of Christ have been very various ; but usually they have wavered between two sides of an alternative : while all accept the reality and in a certain sense the truth of the Record, some have laboured to find flaws in this Image of holiness, or, if they have not disparaged the Lord's character, have aimed to prove that it exhibits nothing beyond human attainment ; while others, despairing of this, and leaving His character untouched, have made it a picture drawn by the enthusiasm of His disciples vying with each other in lay ing on the Picture touches of perfection. What more has to he said definitely on these points will be only briefly indicated : reverence imposes a restraint as to the former class ; and future discussion of the Person of Christ will introduce much that might otherwise be said on the latter. THE PERSONAL CHARACTER OF JESUS. The Character of Jesus. Sinless ness ques tioned. Our Lord's personal character, whether in itself or in relation to His mission, has been brought into controversy from the beginning ; but with very different subordinate objects, and on .very different principles. Generally, the assault has been nega tive or positive : either the absolute sinlessness of Jesus has been denied, or some positive moral impeachment has been ventured on. 1. Negatively, it has been asserted that the sinlessness which Christianity imputes to its Founder is simply and absolutely an impossibility. Concerning this assertion it is enough to say that ' it pays an unconscious tribute of high importance to the fact that our Saviour's claim to be, in virtue of His Divine personality, eternally REVELATION. 115 and essentiaUy what His servant calls Him, Separate from sinners. Heb. vii. It is felt by most sincere opponents of the Christian revelation 26. that Jesus is presented to us by His Evangelists, and by Himself through their record, as One in Whom there neither is nor could be any taint. St. John gathers up all testimonies in one In definite Present : In Him is no sin. Some there are who do not 1 John iii. admit that such a claim is made. : many sincere Christians, for °- instance, think it necessary to the perfection of our Lord's human nature that it was possible for Him, under pressure of temptation, to have fallen ; and many unbelievers suppose that Jesus went no further than a challenge to His enemies to prove against Him any moral evil. In either case, they take it for granted that He shared the common infirmity of mankind, and make their com ments accordingly. Some, at whose head stand the French Encyclopedists, and the German author of the " Wolfenbiittel Fragments," regard him as an impostor who made piety a mask : having failed to secure the empire of Judaism he changed his note, and said that his kingdom was not of this world. Others suppose that he was only the first and greatest of Christian enthusiasts who have mistaken ardent zeal and high devotion for sinlessness. Later infidelity has been more respectful than the earlier, and has been content to allege that the exemption of Christ from sin is fatal to the claims of Christianity : since He was truly man, and all men are sinners. The Christian theology which meets such an argument by saying that Christ might have sinned but did not sin plays into the enemies' hands. The best, and indeed the only reply is that the Head of the Christian Faith was tempted of evil in His human nature, which was conceived and born without sin ; and that He was incapable of falling because His human nature had no personality independent of His Divine nature, which rendered sin impossible. 2. Positively, the elements of our Lord's character have been Fault analysed, and found to be wanting in some attributes essential to *°??d ™ perfection. This is a chapter in our Apologetics which the Christian mourns to approach, and would fain make very brief. He can see no spot in the Lamb of God ; and the more he studies the character of his Master the more fully persuaded is he that it embodies all perfection. But mariy who say that they are dis- I 2 116 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. passionate critics come to a different conclusion. The Saviour's asperity against His enemies ; His avowed indifference to ascetic practices, and disrespect to the conventional morality which would separate a Rabbi from convivial assemblies and prevent his numbering women among his disciples ; His recoU from suffer ings and from death ; His vacillation during the last days of His life ; the bitterness of the final Woes uttered before He left His people ; these are features in which — by recent English Infidelity, to its disgrace — He has been counted less great than some of His own disciples. But there is no difficulty in answering these objections. As to the Lord's indifference to the conventional ethics of the time, it is enough that we adopt His own defence. As the Lord of the Sabbath He relaxed the prescriptive observances which had clustered around the day ; as the Lord of the Temple He acted there as men did not generally act ; and as the Lord of all proprieties He made Himself the Friend of pubUcans and sinners. Moreover, as His morals were well known to be strict in principle to the verge of rigour, it was His good pleasure to show in practice that the wisdom which cometh from aibove is justified of all her children : that her severity is not asceticism and her abstracted ness from created things is not indifference to the welfare of mankind. The Saviour did indeed bow under the burden of His unfathomable Messianic sorrows, and His human part shrank from the bitterness of that death which was prepared for Him. But to shrink from death is not necessarily to fear it : the Redeemer only paid a tribute of salutation to the enemy whom He came to destroy. Moreover, his eyes must be holden indeed who does not perceive that in Gethsemane, as distinguished from Calvary, the question was of something infinitely more than death. On the cross, in the presence of multitudes of witnesses, no infirmity is betrayed for a moment : in the garden before the cross there is a most mysterious and incomprehensible struggle of the Incarnate Redeemer which points to the sacrificial endurance of the visita tion of Divine justice for the sins of the world. This was not Matt. the sinful fear of dying : witness the words, My soul is exceeding xxvi. 38. sorrowful, even unto death 1 unto death ! Here there were only three human witnesses — if indeed in all senses witnesses — and the record of the exceeding bitter Gethsemane cry might have REVELATION. 117 been withheld, if the Evangelists had written with the fear of enemies before their eyes. As to the last impeachment, our Lord is the perfect Counterpart and Representative of the Old-Testa ment Jehovah. As He said, Ye believe in God, believe also in Me, John xiv. so we may say : those who disbelieve in Jesus because of His severity and wrath against hypocrites and reprobate sinners must disbelieve in the God of the ancient Scriptures. In the Gospels we see and hear and feel the very Jehovah of the older revelation, as He is described from Paradise to the Return from Captivity. HYPOTHESES AS TO JESUS AND CHRISTIANITY. As it respects the public appearance and work of the -As to the Founder of Christianity, the argument is turned against our ls ' Faith in many ways. It may be well to glance rapidly at the stages through which the assault generally travels, or rather at the various resting-places where the spirit of unbelief halts. 1. The first hypothesis reduces Jesus to the level of the other Primus great reformers of mankind, assigning Him it may be the first 'nter place : Primus inter pares, as they said of Him in GaUlee that He was One of the prophets. At the right juncture he arose and Matt. xvi. fascinated the world by a mysterious influence which it could not 14- resist, and so swayed the minds ofhis followers that he became for ages the Lord of human thought and destiny. Every great power in human affairs has had its secret. Every man who has moved his own nation in his own time, and many nations afterwards, has had some peculiar element of success : a great doctrine, or the offer of something longed for by all men, or irresistible force of arms. So it is said that Jesus had his secret, though no one ventures to say what it was. Suffice that he led captive the whole world at his will; and for some unexplained reason was more successful than any before him had ever been. The peculiarity of this hypothesis is that it treats the Founder of Christianity with great respect, and in fact has been accepted by many who accept the Christian revelation as from God : a Divine economy hut without a Divine Head. But it is utterly inadequate to explain the Saviour's own testimony to the nature of His mission ; and is therefore at best a great unreaUty. He Himsetf utterly disavowed 118 THE Dl VINE RULE OF FAITH. John x. 8. Fanati cism. Fanatic in the Fanum. Matt xxi. 23. it. From the beginning to the end of His public teaching He separated Himself from other human teachers as summarily as He separated Himself from other children of Adam. Although the words all that ever came before Me are thieves and robbers had another meaning as spoken to the Jews, they were intended also to signify that no Messiah professing to have come with a revela tion for the race could substantiate his claims. He Who spoke was Himself from the beginning to the end of the world the only Revealer. Neither does Christ nor do His Apostles rest the weight of the Christian religion upon the human exceUence of its Founder in comparison of other prophets of mankind. 2. A second hypothesis makes Jesus a Jewish fanatic, who was inspired by an intense study of the ancient documents and legends of Judaism, formed during his silent youth the amazing scheme out of which Christianity sprang, kindled his own enthusiasm in the hearts of a few others whose natures he could read as he read Simon's, came to believe in himseh0 as the creation of his own enthusiasm, cast all upon the hazard of a great experiment, and at length paid the penalty of his daring. But a single glance at the awful tranquillity and reasonableness of the Lord's character at once dispels this illusion. An enthusiast He was, beyond any that ever lived : He was the second Adam, hungering and thirst ing for what the first Adam had lost; both His anger and sorrow at the effect of sin, and His eagerness to redeem the world, sprang from His supreme charity. All the glorious enterprises of Christian love of souls have been only rills from the ocean in Him. But a fanatic He was not, nor is there one trace of fanati cism in all the narratives concerning Him. Those who read the Gospels in the light of the Old Testament, and with sufficient knowledge of Hebrew customs, will see no traces of rehgious frenzy in the acts of Jesus. It was no more than a meet tribute to His own honour and the honour of His own Father that He cleansed the Temple : that is, the outer court and approaches of it, where alone the guilty traffic took place, and where such an act of zealotry as His would require only authority to sanction it : By what authority doest Thou these things ? and wlio gave Thee this authority 1 When He turned water into wine He did the precise opposite of what a fanatic would have essayed to do. When He REVELATION. 119 seemed to renounce His mother and His brethren, it was only to teach that He was of no race or lineage, but the Son of man : that lesson taught, He never treated His mother or His kindred with anything but. love. As to those who profess to believe that He was a conscious impostor, though they hear Him ask, How can Mark iii. Satan cast out Satan 1 it is superfluous to say a word. That an impostor should spend his life in exposing hypocrisy, and in sacrificing self for the good of others, as Jesus confessedly did, His enemies of every age being witness, is what no sane reasoner ever alleged. Modern infidelity has outgrown that charge, and is or ought to be ashamed of having made it. 3. So far we have been considering What arguments may be urged against the Divine origin of Christianity as represented by its Head. But these have had little success; Accordingly, the attack has been more generally directed against the documents of the Faith : and elaborate theories have been devised to account for the Author of Christianity without any special reference to Himself or His own character. These are sometimes dignified by high- sounding names, and have had much more attention than they deserved. By whatever names known they are simply variations on the central theme that the Christian religion is a remarkable development under favouring circumstances of a fortunate germ. This germ could not, however, have developed without the help of the early adherents of Jesus, who are supposed, in every form of the hypothesis, to have raised the superstructure — for the figure must now be changed — of the Christian system on the foundation of the name of Jesus : that name being supposed by some to have been merely the centre of legendary accretions, by others the symbol or expression of a national Messianic myth, and again by others as the watchword of opposite parties in the early church in the interests of which the Gospels were invented, thus creating a Christendom that forgot the true meaning of the name Jesus, being the expression only of theories or tendencies. (1.) First comes what may be called the Legendary Hypothesis of Christianity. . It simply assigns to it an origin which requires no more than a slight nucleus of reality in the person of Jesus and His personal influence of word and work : the industrious enthusiasm of His followers invented all the rest. This method 23. Docu ments at tacked. Legen dary Origin. 120 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. Mythical Hypo thesis. of accounting for the Christian economy is applied to it in cmn- mon with the whole scheme of revelation and all the supernatural events and wonderful histories of the Bible. In fact, it is the normal and necessary argument of unbeUef in the Divine conduct of the universe generally, and of human affairs in particular. It is based on a philosophy, falsely so called, which makes the religious sentiment merely an accident of human nature, either its embellishment or its disease as the case may he. It supposes that the universal instincts, traditions, and religions records of mankind are merely the produce of imagination under a special influence, for which no account can be given. In particular, it assumes that the entire fabric of the Bible is a tissue of the national legends of a people smitten more than most others with the religious phantasy. With the appUcation of the notion of legend and invention to fhe Bible generally we have not now to do : save so far as its utter futility in the case of the Gospels discredits its value in regard to all revelation. As to the history of Jesus it is hard, inexpressibly hard, to believe that so compact, affecting, and heavenly a narrative could have been made up of the floating traditions of Galilee and Judaea. It is enough to point to the inexpressible air of reality suffused over the accounts, their pure and childUke simpUcity, the self-foigetful- ness of the writers, their impartiality in recording what showed the weakness as well as what showed the strength of the great Hero of their narrative, the transcendent Picture drawn so abso lutely beyond invention, and the natural flow of the narrative into the current of later history which cannot be assigned to legend (2.) The Mythical Hypothesis is but a modification of the former: more seemingly dignified but not more rational. The myth may be defined as the vesture in which great national ideas have, from generation to generation, clothed themselves by a certain necessity of human development, and without the con currence of any conscious legendary invention. Undoubtedly the myth, fivOos, means the product of fancy but not the product of falsehood. Every race has had its great illusion. The hope of a coming deliverer has been bright in the expectation of every people, especially of every people whose history has been, like that of the Jews, calamitous. The Messiah had been for ages predicted REVELATION. 121 and expected among them, especially since the Captivity. The Messianic idea was the great myth which was realised from time to time. When the Roman oppression was at the worst the idea took form in many persons ; but that of Jesus was the fairest. He was only the resultant of many forces springing from the common expectation. His disciples made him the centre of their unconscious but necessary creations ; and thus only embodied the supreme Judaic fiction. This hypothesis hardly merits refutation. It is utterly inconsistent with the facts. The Jesus of Christianity and the Christianity of Jesus did not spring up in poetry by which a nation expressed its hopes : the nation as such disavowed the whole. It was undeniably a very small company who were responsible for the form of the new revelation. The hypothesis must be appUed to the plain, straightforward, and earnest circle of the Apostles. On the one hand, it in some sense lowers them to the level of childish dreamers ; on the other, it ascribes too much to their mythologic and creative faculty, which is thus supposed to have invented one of the most elaborate systems of belief known to man. The four Gospels and the Acts and the Epistles are not composed of the stuff that myths are made of. They are, or profess to be, clear history, and doctrine based upon the history ; with reasoning of the severest kind binding the whole together. Legends and myths are after all impalpable things : Christ and Christianity are hard realities. (3.) The most popular theory among philosophical opponents Tubingen of Christianity in its perfect form makes it the result of conflict 0f ^J_ among various parties in the Christian Church. Those who hold dencies. it may or may not accept the idea of a mission assigned by Providence to Christ : they may or may not believe in God. Generally they leave that matter undetermined. But there are two parties at two opposite extremes who have their specific notions as to the person of Jesus. The one hold Him to be the temporary expression of the eternal incarnation by which the Pantheistic God is for ever evolved in consciousness ; the other* hold Him to be the simple expression of a human ideal. But all agree that the system contained in the New Testament sprang up from a union of many opposite, or of two chief, tendencies : hence it is sometimes called the hypothesis of Tendency. It 122 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. Paul the Founder of Chris tianity. would be scarcely necessary to examine this were it not that it has been by far the most influential theory in the attempt to harmonise the various books of the New Testament. It assumes that Jesus lived and taught and died ; but that no record of His history was thought of until far into the second century. Then arose gospels or memoirs with many aims or designs. Those which merely gratified an unsanctified curiosity found no perma nent credit, and are now preserved only as relics. Some, how ever, were written in the interest of a Judaic Gospel, and of them St. Matthew takes the lead : some sentences preserved by him, and by him alone, might seem to make Jesus no more than a zealous assertor of the perpetuity of Judaism. Others were written in the interest of a Gospel for aU the world, and of these St. Luke takes the lead : some of the most touching parts of his work introduce the heathen as receiving the glad tidings. Mean while, the hand of the partisan is to be found here and there and everywhere cunningly interpolating his own view : making the author whom he transcribes and whose text he corrupts speak a language inconsistent with his views. Accordingly, critics of this school have a reason to give for every various reading, and their only perfect text is that in which aU writers absolutely agree. But there is another and more interesting application of the hypothesis, which might with more propriety be termed the Pauline ; for it really makes Paul the founder of the Christian system. Different schools contended both over the body and the spirit of Jesus : over His resurrection from the dead in the flesh, and the resurrection of the spirit of Judaism in Him : there was a broad distinction between the Jewish and the Gentile, the bond and the free, the Petrine Christianity and the Pauline. The writings of the New Testament were composed or at least finished, some with the one tendency, others with the other ; but both were exquisitely combined in the Acts, which Peter and Paul divide between them with about equal pre-eminence. Paul, how ever, finally triumphed ; his Jesus spoiled the best of the Rabbis or Prophets ; prevented Judaism from putting on its perfection in the teaching of the Master on the Mount ; and gave the character of Christ a colouring of his own that it has permanently retained. The careful study of the New-Testament writings refutes this REVELATION. 123" most elaborate hypothesis, which arose from a superficial study of them. He who coUates the four Gospels will find that they agree with each other, and with the later Epistles in representing Christ to have abrogated the Law as an institution for one people, and to have fulfilled its meaning in every sense. There is not a page of the New Testament where may not be found, either in letter or in spirit, the evangelisation of the world. The simplicity of the history, both of the coincidence and of the divergence of Christianity and Judaism, forbids the acceptance of this notion that the idea of Jesus was perverted by Paul. The Pauline Christ does not differ from the Petrine or the Johannsean. It is St. Paul who caUs Him a Minister of the circumcision; and it is Eom.-xv. St. Peter who says that Christians are built up a spiritual house, ,p', .. and it is St. John who, in the name of all the Apostles, an- 5. nounces : That which was from the beginning . . . declare we unto you. 1 John i. All tendencies run one way, and that way is Christ : a Christ Who is not divided, but one. It is true that the Form of the Blessed One does not rise at once in full perfection upon the records of the New Testament : it is developed, as the word is, or gradually fashioned into its fulness and integrity. But the several writers conspire to this ; and, after all that they have done, it is Christ Who remains and not they. Not I, each says, but Christ liveth in me. St. Paul especially deprecates this theory by anticipation in the beginning of the Corinthian Epistle. And, while we are observing the interminable phases through which it passes in this volu minous school of destructive critics, we hear always a voice : Was Paul crucified for you ? or were ye baptised in the name of Paul ? 1 Cor. i. 13. SUMMARY. 1. . Our Lord in delivering to His people the Faith delivers it, so Summaiy. to speak, with His own hand, and His own Person is His highest credential. He is the Author and Finisher of the Faith. Prophets Heb. xii. before Him and Apostles after Him look, and bid us look, only to 2- Him ; or, as the writer who strengthens the faith of the wavering Hebrews says, to Consider the Apostle and High Priest of our prof es- Heb. iii. sion: no man falters long whose eye is singly apd supremely fixed J" on Christ Jesus. Revelation reflects the giory of His Person : that 124 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. John xviii. 37. John xviii. 21. Matt. xvii. 5. John v. 40. Matt. xvi. 17. is, His Divine-human perfection. It is hard to demonstrate the truth of our Religion on the assumption that Christ was as other men ; the Christianity of that postulate is not Christianity, and the character of Christ is the greatest possible embarrassment to its principles : the conclusion is too vast for its premisses. No man ever paid the person and words of Jesus the tribute of sincere, unprejudiced, thoughtful attention without feeling the irresistible power of this argument. Every one that is of the truth heareth My voice: these words are a sublime explanation and rebuke of the inmost spirit of infidelity. After all that He had said and done He would at the end give no further sign : Why askest thou Me 1 ask them which heard Me, what I have said unto them: behold, they know what I said. He stiU makes the same calm and unbending appeal : we have Moses and the prophets, we have Christ and the Apostles ; but in them aU He speaks of Whom the Father said, Hear ye Him I There is the immortal strength of the credentials or evidences of Christianity. If we beUeve in Jesus, all other apologetics are comparatively needless : if we doubt about or reject Him, all other evidence wiU be com paratively superfluous. It is impossible to read deeply into the Gospels without perceiving that the Saviour always appeals to something behind and below and beyond aU other evidences. Whether present in the flesh or absent in heaven He looks for faith in Himself as a principle or sentiment or energy that ought to be awakened by His own manifestation and word. If that faith is not found a revelation from heaven is resisted : Ye will not come to Me, that ye might have life. Wherever and to whom soever Jesus speaks there is an influence accompanying His words that must lead to faith, unless moral obstacles interfere. On that day when our Lord first opened to His disciples the secret of His Messiahship, and Simon Peter uttered the great confession, He pronounced the confessor blessed because he was taught of God ; and yet it is most manifest that Simon only uttered the sentiment that the appeal of his Master naturally evoked. Blessed art thm, Simon Bar-Jona ; for flesh and blood hath not revealed it unto thee, bd My Father Which is in heaven. We mark that our Lord some times points to His miracles, sometimes to the fulfilment of pro phecy in Himself; but sometimes He seems to disparage both REVELATION. 125 these. The evidence that radiated from His own Person, the virtue to vanquish unbelief that flowed from Himself, He never disparaged. Jesus is His own Interpreter, and His own Apo logist : the Sun in the moral firmament that needs no other proof than that it is a pleasant thing to see the light. This great argument should be the helmet and breastplate of the Christian, especially of the Christian minister. It gives immense corrobo ration to all other defences ; abates the strength of every form of opposition ; and consummates and crowns the whole system of Christian apology. Other series of evidences may convince the judgment, but this central one gives rest to the heart. Come Matt. xi. unto Me, all ye that labour and are heavy laden, and I will give you 28 — 30- rest, was the language of our Lord at the time when He mourned over the unbelief of the wise^ and the prudent from whom His truth was hid, and offered His thanksgiving that to babes were revealed all things that were delivered unto Him of the Father. 2. Doubtless, this appeal — which as a whole is unique in the TheLord's Gospels — was not limited to those whose minds were troubled Eegardfor with perplexities as to the truth. But certainly they were ou era" included. We find the Saviour often referring to the embarrass ments of the age in which men's thoughts were directed to the great Messianic expectation and they mused in themselves. Himself being the Christ, and knowing full well the thoughts of all hearts, He felt the most profound sympathy with the struggles of those who came to Him for the solution of their doubts. We may be sure that His promise of rest was given to such men as were feeling their way to Himself through a multitude of preju dices and difficulties which it is hard for us to estimate. We are apt to forget that He was not only the Friend of publicans and sinners, but the Friend of doubters also. The more carefully we examine the accounts of His intercourse with men, the more certainly we find that the difficulties in the way of their faith were always present to His thoughts. We plainly see and hear how solicitous He was to vanquish unbelief and win the hearts of all. But this great apostrophe to disquieted minds and the great promise of rest teaches us that He Himself has no argument more mighty and more influential than the study and emulation of His own character : That I am meek and lowly of heart. M***# **¦ 126 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. Effects of Chris tianity. THE INFLUENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. Christianity in the world is its own permanent apology. Its credentials have been presented to mankind from the beginning in the slow but sure accomplishment of the Divine purpose which it proclaims. To this it made its appeal in Apostolic days, and to this it makes its appeal now : what religion should accomplish in the free spirit of man personal or individual and social or collective the Christian religion has done and is doing. In one sense this is the most plain and palpable among the evidences of the Faith ; in another sense it is one of the most difficult, inasmuch as the many obvious and reasonable objections which arise and demand to be considered are not always easily to be refuted. The best method of exhibiting this line of argument is, to state clearly what the claims of Christianity, as a power, are, and what they are not ; then to point to the proof that it has answered and is answering its ends, notwithstanding the facts that may be urged to the contrary ; and to show that every opposing or rival system has either been utterly powerless, or is slowly con fessing its defeat. Object of Chris tianity. 1 Cor. i. 24. THE AVOWED AIM OF CHRISTIANITY. The key-note of this method of demonstrating the truth of Christianity is found in St. Paul's assurance that Christ in His Gospel is the power of God, and the wisdom of God. After challenging the whole world to gainsay what he affirms, and reducing its glorying to nought by showing the impotence of its wisdom, he REVELATION. 127 sums up : That no flesh should glory in His presence. But of Him are 1 Cor. i. ye in Christ Jesus, Who of God is made unto us wisdom, and 29 3 • righteousness and sanctification, and redemption : That, according as it is written, He that glorieth, let him glory in the Lord. The chapter, ending thus, is really a chapter of Apologetics ; and these words Which close it place the Redeemer, as the Author of Christianity, in the midst : with the world at its best on one side, reduced to silence and hopelessness, while on the other, the believers in Jesus have their glorying restored in Him Whom the Father hath made the very author of their new life, Whom He hath set forth more particularly to be the sole fountain of wisdom for the teach ing of mankind, of salvation from sin for individual man, ahd of redemption for the entire race. 1. The Gospel, making foolish the wisdom of this world, pro- Wisdom. fesses to impart perfect truth. The wisdom in St. Paul's sentence is what our Saviour meant when He said, / am the Way, THE John xiv. truth, and the Life, where the three testimonies must be united : 6- in Jesus is the whole truth concerning the way of life; nor is there any other truth than as it is in Jesus. Now it may be Eph. iv. observed that the Gospel really limits truth to the things which 21# concern man's relation to God : there may be many verities in other matters, but there is only one truth, and that is the founda tion of religion. When therefore we estimate the nature of the claim of Christianity it must be remembered that the claim is limited to religious truth only, and that as taught of the Holy Ghost. If the documents of the Faith are challenged on innu merable other questions, and judged by their relation to all branches of human knowledge, and tested by their conformity or otherwise with universal science, then their Author says, by the mouth of the same Apostle : not the wisdom of this world. 1 Cor. ii. 2. Again, the system of Christianity proclaims that it brings to rjgjiver. mankind generally, which of course in this matter is also man- ance from kind individually, deliverance from spiritual evil : that is, from the Sin. consequences of transgression by a provision for righteousness, and from the consequences of separation from God by a provision for sanctification to Him and His service. These two, it will be observed, are very closely conjoined, so as to form one idea : SiKaiocrvvri re Kai ayia.o-p.6s. This is the wonderful claim of the 1 Cor. i. 128 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. Redemp tion of World. Rev. xxii. 2. Isa. ii. Ps. xcvi. Ps. c. passim. religion of Christ, that it professes to put away sin, by a method that at once sets the conscience right with God and His holy law, and delivers the consciousness of man from the sense of impurity and consequent estrangement from Him : both the CONSCIENCE and the consciousness of sin being in the design of grace re moved. The provision for this is the grand secret of the Gospel and the design of the mystery of the Incarnation. God hath provided in His incarnate Son the means of putting away human evil. Jesus Christ is at once man and God : His mediation on behalf of the human race is that of One in Whom God meets man on a new ground and in a new relation. In Christ all sin is atoned for by man : for He is man absolutely. In Christ God accepts the Atonement, and unites man to Himself notwithstand ing his sin : satisfaction being presented to justice, and satisfac tion guaranteed to holiness that the pardoned sin shaU be also abolished. But here again it must be remembered that Chris tianity does not promise to rid individuals of evU by virtue of an act external. There must be a personal union with Jesus by faith, even as there is already a collective union of the whole race without faith. The individual is deUvered only on certain con ditions : through the penitent acceptance of the Atonement, and a sanctifying Spirit provided for all but administered only to the soul united with the Lord. If the infidel spirit asks how sin should reign in spite of an atonement that has put away sin, the answer is twofold : first, evil does not absolutely reign in the world, as will be hereafter shown ; and, secondly, the claim of the Gospel is not to deliver every man by a physical necessity or despotic application of power, but everyone who uses its pro visions as an infallible remedy abundantly supplied. 3. The religion of Jesus professes to redeem the world of man kind or the race of Adam from all its evil : to be set for the healing of the nations. This is everywhere its unlimited promise. It is not to be denied that redemption from all kinds of calamity is announced : a redemption in which not only man rejoices, but, in a certain sense, the whole creation around rejoices with him. The Old Testament bids the earth and the heavens be glad because of the coming of the Universal Deliverer ; and when He came Whom the earth and the nations desired it was declared of REVELATION. 129 Him by Himself, in the first words He uttered concerning His mission when He assumed His office in Nazareth : He hath Luke iv. anointed Me to preach the Gospel to the poor ; He hath sent Me [to heal 18' the brokenhearted], to preach deliverance to the captives, and recovering of sight to the blind, to set at liberty them that are bruised, to preach the acceptable year of the Lord. But here again we must be careful to note that the Saviour of our race never professes to have come with an absolute, unconditional, and universal deliverance from aU the effects of transgression. How this should be, why it should be, that the Redeemer of the world does not, notwithstand ing His name, put an end for ever to the evil of the world, is a question to which no answer can be given : no other answer, that is, than that the redemption of mankind is a probationary redemption, and takes effect only through the spread of a spiritual kingdom, as a process that aets with moral, slow, and not in every respect irresistible, force. 4. Such are the claims, and with such qualifications, for which Summary alone the religion of Jesus is answerable. In an argument which °* ^alm- pleadsits effects and results we are bound to take Christianity accord ing to its own profession. It does not claim to be an instrument in the hand of absolute omnipotence : providing a heavenly Man or a Divinity in man who should first instruct the race in duty, then go down to the pit where its past generations were gathered, and rescue them ; then send forth His influence to abolish sin, either in this world by moral teaching or in the next by purga torial discipline; and, finally, put an end to all the evil that could not otherwise be removed. Neither is that the Gospel which Christ preaches, nor could we well apologise for it if it were. Be that as it may, the Christianity which it is our business to defend by showing its own credentials is of a very different character. It professes to be the sole instructor of mankind : but only in religious truth, and only through a word which a Divine Interpreter must explain. It promises to save men from their sins : but only through such an atoning provision on behalf of all as each must appropriate for himself. It engages to eman cipate our world from all its evils ; but only as that world is created anew in Christ, and made up of individuals who receive His salvation. If the opponents of Christianity forget the free- VOL. I. K 130 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. dom of man's will, and the moral character of the influence religion brings to bear upon it, then they contend against a reh gion which we are not anxious to defend. CHRISTIANITY HAS FULFILLED ITS MISSION. Its Claim It may be confidently asserted that the Christian Faith has Sustained. ma(]e g00(j its glorying, whether we look generally at its influence in the world, or at its specific triumphs under the several heads already adverted to as the substance of ApostoUcal apology. THE DIVINE WISDOM IN THE GOSPEL. Christian That Christianity has introduced into the world a system of Doctrine doctrine worthy to be called Divine is the plea itself sets up, and ^(.jj one that may be sustained : in fact, it alone has a system of doc- Others, trine. All must admit that its exhibition of truth is at least the most compact and perfect the world has ever known : this must be allowed even by those who demur to many of its individual dogmas. Remembering that the Christian ReUgion means both its Testaments, that which it received and that which it created, we may say that it presents a body of professedly authoritative teaching on all subjects of interest to mankind, — ranging from heaven to earth, from earth to things under the earth, and thence back to heaven again, — in comparison of which all other teaching that belongs to the race is but as legend and fable. It is no exaggeration to affirm that whatever great fundamental truths are found in other systems come in a nobler form and in a more consistent connection from the lips of Jesus and His Apostles. There are doubtless many great spiritual ideas held by the Eastern Religions especially in common with the Gospel. But in the Gospel they are released from those appendages which almost distort them out of recognition ; aud, what is more than that, they are taught as parts of one vast and literally infinite circle of truth the centre of which is God. Although the outermost circumference of this circle is nowhere, its inner circumference, which comprehends strictly human doctrines, is clearly defined and traceable all round, without any arc of indistinctness. It is REVELATION. 131 the compactness, completeness, and consistency of the Evangelical system of truth that sustains its claim to be the wisdom of God. But the argument — so far as it is argument — will be better exhibited by considering what may be said in opposition. 1. It would hardly be a fair objection to the Christian system Mysteries of teaching that it is, as a whole, beyond the grasp of the human intelligence. Man's faculties are limited, and cannot expect to understand all the mysteries of religion. We know that we are encompassed about with innumerable worlds, which are but parts of the universe ; but beyond our own planet we know little even of physical nature : how can we expect to understand the things that pertain to spirit and the God of spirits 1 Whatever truth is, it must at all points transcend our capacity. But it may be urged that many of tho doctrines of Christianity are inconsistent with reason, or opposed to its primary laws of thinking: indeed, this is even charged against all the fundamental and peculiarly Christian revelations of truth. The Holy Trinity, that in the necessary unity or soleness of the Divine essence there are three Personal Subsistences ; the creation of the physical universe and the beginning of limited existence ; the probation and fall of spirits for ever unsaved and of redeemed mankind, as involving the dependence of an Infinite Being on contingent events ; the Incarnation of the Eternal Son of God, one Person in two natures as distinct as Infinite and finite can be ; and the vicarious sacrifice of that Divine-human Person for the race of man ; the vast contrast between this insignificant world and the price of its redemption ; the doctrine of original sin as infecting the race, and yet virtually atoned for at the beginning or before it began its course, as actually after many ages expiated at the cross, and nevertheless eternally punished in many : — these are but specimens of doctrine abso lutely -essential to the Christian system which are said to militate against the first principles of human thought. Similarly, the entire record of the providential government of the world with which these doctrines are bound up, especially some of the more wonderful facts of Scripture, such as the series of stern Divine inter ventions and judgments in the old world and the prophecies in the New Testament of yet sterner to come, excite the rebellion of K 2 132 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. human thought, which measures the unknown God by a standard of its own. Against this class of objections to Christianity there is no other argument than that, which Christianity itself uses in the Scriptures of the New Testament. Both the Master and His Apostles speak as perfectly aware that they announce things utterly beyond human comprehension and things which seem to contradict reason. Their reply to every objection is, that the whole system of Divine truth is beyond and above mere human criticism ; in fact requiring a special faculty, and that faculty to be specially illumined from above. Here was the force of our Lord's appeal to Nicodemus, who was perplexed by one of the John iii. seeming paradoxes of the new religion : If I have told you earthly 12, things, and ye believe not, how shall ye believe, if I tell you of heavenly things. This is a word of great importance : our Lord's figure suggests that He had mysteries to disclose, not so much Himself as by His Apostles, which were . as far above ordinary doctrine hitherto familiar as heaven is above earth. The Apostle Paul 1 Cor.ii.7. also again and again speaks of the wisdom of God in a mystery : in mystery unsearchable. The apologist may and must attempt to conciliate human reason by showing that the most difficult doc trines introduced by Christianity are rather above man's thinking power than contrary to the laws of thought ; that some faint adumbrations of the highest of them aU, the Holy Trinity, are found in nature and in the human constitution and some gropings after it in most of the traditions of nations. He may also point to the perfect unity of the system which stands or faUs with its awful doctrine of sin. : a doctrine confirmed by all the facts of human experience and the instincts of the human consciousness. If so much stress is laid upon the invasion and suppression of our instinctive principles, then it is lawful to point to them when they are in favour of Christian doctrine. Undoubtedly the tenour of the teaching concerning sin is in harmony with the profoundest thoughts of the human heart. He may also appeal to the instinctive hope of an equalising and reconciling hereafter and that future solution which is reserved for the vindication of the ways of Providence. But, after all that may be said, those who defend the Faith must be content to use an argument which man in his irrational pride despises : the argument that REVELATION. 133 Doctrinal Cross. imitates the Bible and refuses to argue with one who will not accept more than he can understand. Christianity imposes a The doctrinal as well as an ethical cross. In many cases, the burden of the Faith is the chief ethical cross : that of which our Lord said, speaking of the mysteries committed unto Himself for babes : Take Matt. xi. My yoke upon you and learn of Me ! His elect ones in every age have bowed down ; and, though this is not itself an argument, it must be remembered that very many of the greatest intellects among men have thought it wisdom to bear that cross, and have found in bearing it their rest. This rest must be sought and found. 2. The history of heresy in Christendom, the manifold per- Heresy versions of doctrine within the Church, and the endless diversities Objected of opinion among believers themselves, are pleas of which much use has been made. It cannot be denied that every truth has been perverted, and that almost every truth has been denied, among the communities professing to hold the Head ; and, more over, that the same documents have been and are still made the standard of appeal by maintainers of very opposite opinions on some most important points. But this undoubted fact is, on the whole, rather in favour of the Christian system than to its prejudice. Religious truth is not like truth mathematical. It is probationary, and does not command assent. Had it been other wise it might have banished every error from the world in the course of one age. But it has the entire strength of sin and sin ful prejudice against it ; and those whose lives it cannot reform would fain reform its teaching. The Wisdom of God in the Gospel has ever waged, according to its own prediction, a double conflict : against errors in the world without, and against the foes of its own household. To obviate the argument that might and would be found in the unfaithfulness of the professors of His religion, our Lord has left on record His own testimony that many false prophets shall rise and shall deceive many. So also St. Matt. Paul predicted the greater and lesser apostasies, and that evil 9Xm-lv" -1-' men and seducers shall wax worse and worse, deceiving and being 13# ' deceived. And St. John summed up the strain : declaring that prophecy had already become fact : Even now are there many Anti- 1 John ii. christs. Moreover, he turns the existence and abounding of these 18> l9- opponents of Christ and His doctrine into an argument in favour 134 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. of the religion from which they declined. Meanwhile the heresies 1 Peter i. pass away, but the truth endureth for ever. 25. THE RELIGIOUS POWER OF PERSONAL CHRISTIANITY. Personal The effects of Christianity upon the character of him who Migious heavily embraces it, and yields to its personal discipUne, most abundantly confirm its claim to be a religion provided by God for man. It offers, through the atoning mediation of Christ accepted by faith, a perfect deliverance from the sense of guilt, and a perfect system of education for hoUness. These are. the elements of a salvation needed, and equally needed, by aU mankind : the universal cravings of the race have been known to seek them as long as the history of man has been known. On these two great necessities hang all the obligations of religion. It must meet these, or it is useless ; and, if it truly meets these, then it leaves nothing wanting. Now Christianity in aU its doctrinal and ethical teaching keeps those two supreme demands in view. It makes everything, as it were, subordinate to them. It pro fesses to show every man living the Way of Peace and the Way of Holiness : the method by which he may obtain knowledge of the remission of his sins, and fuU deliverance from the sinfulness of his nature. It promises to every beUever a conscious union with his God : the power of a Divine life within making him happy and holy and fit for fellowship with the company of heaven. The testimonies of Scripture on these subjects are con firmed by a cloud of innumerable witnesses in the history of mankind, beginning with the Biblical records and continued to this day. Against this evidence of the truth of Christianity as against every other many things may be urged. Objec- 1. It may be said that this kind of argument is altogether sub- tions. jective, and begs the question. That the Christian religion makes such a claim is evident, and also that many have supposed them selves to be living witnesses of its truth ; but that all such sup posed experience is or may be the result of delusion, or of imagination, or of strong faith in an idea which goes far towards accomplishing its own will. Now the effects produced by the Gospel in those who have, entirely surrendered themselves to its REVELATION. 135 sway have been such as no imagination could produce. Multi tudes have felt reUef from the burden of a guilty conscience, either gradually or suddenly imparted, which has been to them as if, in the language of Jesus, they had passed from death unto life ; and they have consciously known, as they have been taught by St. Paul, the power of God unto salvation. They have been persuaded — as they think by the Holy Ghost — that their sins were blotted out ; and they have felt a strength supernatural in doing right, in bearing affliction, in vanquishing self, and in suffering for God, the source of which they have confidently ascribed to the same Spirit. But this kind of evidence the New Testament itself is not eager to press on the unbeliever. It is reserved for the sure encouragement of those who receive it. 2. It may be said further that the average lives of professors of the Faith from the beginning have not sustained this argu ment : that the Gospel failed when it was first sent, accompanied by miraculous aids ; that it then elevated only a very select number; and that its spiritual transformations and triumphs have been comparatively few from the very first, so few that they are fitly named the elect. Here again the apologist has little to say. He must admit that our religion has waged war against a strong power in human nature, and that this has been often a wavering or a failing war, even among its best professors. But if we grant that the influence of Christianity is moral only and not physical, there is no argument as against its own Divinity in its comparative failure. The earliest prophecies in the New Testament predicted precisely what has taken place ; while they also assure us that the triumph of the Gospel shall prove hereafter to have been exceedingly great : much greater indeed in every age than the eye of man could discern. 3. But the plea most earnestly urged against this argument is this, that the best effects of Christianity have been produced by other systems either independent of it or contrary to it. Almost all the so-called natural religions of older or of more recent times have names to present which are thought not to suffer in compari son with the saints of Christendom. The Eastern faiths have a wonderful catalogue both of ascetic and of mystic devotees ; and the Greek and Roman philosophies, — which have gloried in such 1 John iii. 14. Rom. i. 16. The Failure of Chris tianity. Com parison with Others. 136 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. The Logos Sperma tids. John i. 9. John x. 16. Petitio Principii 1 John v, 10. men as Socrates, Seneca, Marcus Antoninus, — are not behind them. This is a plea that it is not hard to set aside, although the method of doing so may seem somewhat bigoted. Firjt, no true advocates of our Faith deny that godliness has existed outside of direct revelation. The early apologists of the Faith were wont to dwell much upon what they called the LOGOS SPERMATICUS, or the pre-incarnate Son of God at the root of human nature, or as a seminal inspiration of truth among the heathen, or the influence of the light of THE Word everywhere diffused among men, as the New Testament declares. The effort to find Him after Whom the Gentiles groped has produced some of the noblest fruits of the tree of human morality. Other sheep I have, which are not of this fold, our Lord Himself said ; and we may suppose Him to have wondered at the faith of many, before and besides the Syropbceni- cian and the Centurion, who put to shame the chUdren of revelation. But this plea is sometimes carried too far. It may be denied that, apart from Christianity, any mortal has ever rejoiced in forgive ness and perfect victory over sin. On the contrary, the highest ethics taught and exemplified in heathenism have lacked the ver/ qualities and prerogatives on which Christian teaching lays the utmost stress. Not only have they lacked these qualities, but they have despaired of the possibility of reaching them. The Heathen atonements were never regarded by those who offered them as securing forgiveness from heaven ; and Heathen phUosophy never pretended to bring to more than a few, and to them only in a limited degree, the thorough purification of the nature. 4. Finally, it is said, as already intimated, that this is an argument in a circle. We assume that Christianity is true because it produces certain effects which itself only declares to be Divine. Nor can we altogether disavow this. The evidences of the Faith are of necessity deeply infected with the Petitio Principii. From beginning to end the New Testament refers to the effects of its own proclamation of the Gospel as being produced by God. It accustoms the individual believer — and to the individual reference is now made — to look for and to be content with the testimony of the Divine Spirit, concerning Whom and His influence it asserts, He that believeth on tlie Son of God hath the witness in himself. If it be asked, How is he to know that secret influence to he the Holy RE VELAT10N. 137 Ghost 1 the answer is, that the Holy Ghost also says, It IS I ! And, after all, the final refuge of the humble Christian must be in the Divine authentication of the Faith within himself. Matt. 27. CHRISTIANITY RENOVATING THE WORLD. The world is under a manifest process of deliverance from all the evils that weigh upon it as the fruit of sin. The pledge given by our Lord in that first sermon at Nazareth has so far been redeemed that we may with confidence predict that it will be redeemed in full. No power at all comparable to Christianity has ever been at work in thf world : indeed, no power save the Gospel can be said ever to have been at work at all in the world of humanity at large. Judaism was Christianity within a limited sphere, and with only the hope of the Christ Who has come. But from the day of Pentecost the Faith of Jesus has been leaven ing the entire race of mankind. Negatively, it has been steadily raising the tone of universal morality, and abolishing the worst evils of human society : even beyond the limits of its own fellow ship it has been an influence for good wherever it has been found. It has waged exterminating warfare against every vice that has ever been condemned by man's instinct or laws : mitigating on the way the evils that it is bent on destroying though unable at once to destroy. It may be boldly affirmed that wherever genuine Christianity has been admitted it has discountenanced and weakened and in due time abolished every practice that corrupts the fellowship of mankind as such. Positively, it has introduced benevolence in a thousand forms unknown to antiquity, and charities hitherto without a name ; it has raised and dignified all the nations that have received it ; and it may fairly claim as its own the civilisation of the modern world. Objections here also only too readily rise : objections confessedly hard to deal with. 1. It is, alas, a too obvious plea that the organisation of Chris tianity itself has been to a very great extent flagrantly corrupt. Very soon — to put the counterplea in its worst aspect — the religion of Christ, or rather the outward form of it in the world, fell under temptation. Errors crept in which were all the more perilous, and all the more humiliating, because they sprang from corruption Christian ity brings Universal Redemp tion. Luke iv. 21—27. Its own Corrup tions Objected. 13B THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. of the noblest principles of the faith. It is not necessary to enumerate, what it is impossible to deny, that the Church which should reform the world seemed unable to keep herself pure. This plea cannot be answered without humiliation that it should 2 Tim. iL be so, and thankfulness for the confidence we have that the !9- foundation of God standeth sure. As to the answer itself it is simple enough. As it is no valid argument against individual religion that the godly may fall, so it is no disparagement of Christianity as a system that it is liable to perversion. The causes of that perversion are very obvious ; the body corporate was not protected against them by any defence that should interfere with the laws of historical development ; and both our Lord and His Apostles foretold the very apostasies and declen sions that took place. Moreover, the evils and corruptions which have encumbered the cause of Christ have never altogether sup pressed its saving influence in the world. And, finally, a steady reformation has long been going on within the Church which will issue, according to prophecy, in making it a yet more effectual power for. the conversion of the nations. Slow 2. But a still more serious difficulty here arises. It is urged, mentP" ancl ^as l5een urSe(^ in au" aSes> tnat tne supposed remedial economy of the Gospel is either, on the one hand, arbitrarily under the sovereign and elective control of God, or, on the other, dependent on the free agency of man : in either case, too slow and partial to be a real and effectual relief of the miseries of mankind as such. Perhaps no objection to the Christian scheme has weighed more with thoughtful minds than this. It seems hard that a Divine scheme for the rescue of a world should in any sense suffer defeat, or be slow in its processes and partial in its opera tion. Of mere human systems this might be expected ; but surely not of the system which is said to declare both the wisdom and the power of God. The facts themselves are to the most cursory consideration very embarrassing. The countless multitudes of the descendants of Adam have been only slightly touched by the Gospel : comparatively few have even seen the tree whose leaves are for the healing of the nations, and still fewer have put forth their hands to it. What can be said to these things 1 Scarcely anything but what the Scripture itself says on this very subject. REVELATION. 139 The delay of Christianity to accomplish its mission, while the dying generations of men wait for it, is indeed a mystery un fathomable ; but it is no argument against the Christian Faith to those who remember that it is one branch of an infinite scheme, every department of which is oppressed or glorified by tho same mystery. And those who believe that the Creator works by a law of evolution that required numberless ages for the preparation of the earth, and in a long series of developments before man was reached, ought not to rebel against the slow process of man's redemption. There is no reply but the appeal to the unfathomable mystery that surrounds our being on every conceivable hypo thesis. Those who reject Christianity because it does not search to the bottom and expound the enigma of life are not wise : it at least goes immeasurably farther than any other philosophy. We cannot with our present faculties, or at any rate with our faculties in their present stage of discipline, reconcile the in scrutable counsel of God, on the one hand, and the profound abyss, on the other, of human control over human destiny. Meanwhile the Christian economy is most certainly accomplish ing the redemption of the human family ; there is no other force in the world that even aims at this. We may predict that it will make an end of sins, and bring in everlasting righteousness for the race as such. We may be sure that the time will come when all miseries and evils that grace can vanquish will be vanquished and be forgotten ; and that the wisdom of God will hereafter give account of everything that seems to impeach His goodness. As to the multitudes of individuals whom the Gospel seems to forget or fail to save by the way, they must be left with God and His Christ. Shall not the Judge of all the earth do right? But Gen. xviii. this eternal Judge of all the earth in the counsel of redemption 25- committed all judgment unto the Son; and He hath given Him authority John v. to execute judgment also, because He is tlie Son of man. 22- 27. THE PERSISTENCE AND PERMANENCE OF CHRISTIANITY. Persist ence of Christianity has sustained its other credentials, and added a tiamty new one, in the fact of its early spread, its enduring life, and its 140 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. outliving every form of opposition. Its triumph over all the assaults of its foes as well as all the contingencies of time was predicted by our Lord for the encouragement of His disciples, when He first announced the foundation and destiny of His Church. The earliest use of the term is very suggestive in this Matt. xvi. light : Upon this rock I will build My church ; and the gates of hell shall 18- not prevail against it. It is both His defiance and His prophecy. THE EARLY SPREAD OF THE FAITH. Early The history of the early victories of Christianity is a strong Spread of enforcement of its claims. As a religion it had everything against tianitv ** : s0 decisively against it that, on the supposition of its being one more new cultus introduced by a human innovator, or, as St. Gal iii.lS. Paul says, but a man's covenant, every method of accounting for its swift diffusion and sway is baffled. Nothing in its relation to Judaism was favourable : the new Gospel was a miserable dis appointment to the Jewish peeple : its proclamation of a crucified Messiah was unto the Jews a stumblingblock. It had few elements an' 1- of affinity with the philosophical systems of mankind, and made no appeal to the pride of the human intellect : it preached a fundamental doctrine that was unto the Greelcs foolishness, and even that doctrine it preached foolishly. It did not, in fact, come with any formal doctrine at all ; but simply enforced at first the old truths of natural religion as taught by a new Teacher Who must be accepted before His mysteries were unfolded. It is true that the Person presented was supreme in excellence ; but the Gentile disputers did not know this at first, and ah they knew was that he suffered a death of infamy. If he was accepted it must be as one who in defiance of every law of nature had left his tomb, but did not, as might be expected, come back to live among men. Moreover, the men who proclaimed the Gospel could not be acceptable to the Jews, not being Rabbis ; nor to the Greeks, not being philosophers ; nor to the common people generally, not bringing a popular doctrine. Their Gospel inculcated ethics of the grandest character; but such virtues as spiritual- Hiindedness, unlimited forgiveness, meekness, self-sacrifice, con tempt for this world, abjuration of all good in man, were not REVELATION. 141 likely to win attention. It introduced its adherents to a society that had no attraction but its simplicity, no rewards but persecu tion in this life. Yet in a few decades it shook the world, and in a few centuries subjugated it. 1. Against this it is urged that the power of a great idea fitly represented has, in every age, swayed mightily the minds of men, and that Christianity was only one more instance and not really more influential than some others. Something in the state of the world predisposed, it for the peculiar idea of redemption introduced by Jesus and His Apostles ; nor is it necessary — the argument runs — that we should know the pecu liar secret. But it may be absolutely denied that any system of religious thought has ever commanded all kinds of people and excited such a perfect, devotion. Brahminism and Buddhism and the other Eastern religions never even pretended to be forces for the world ; and though they have long existed they are tending towards extinction, and the Nirvana of one of them is written on all. Mohammedanism has lived by the truth it borrowed from the Bible, and been spread only by secular force : it has indeed ruled a large portion of the globe ; but it has long ago lost its missionary character. Christianity in all respects stands alone. Of course, there is no demonstrative force in the mere argument of success ; nor would there be, if success had been much greater. But at least it may be said that in connection with other pleas this has great force : apart from a Divine power, there is no mystery in the religion of the Christ greater than its early triumphs. 2. But, although there was much external might to oppose the spread of Christianity, it has been argued that there was much within it naturally to further its diffusion. A subtle case has been made out of the concurrence of fortunate circumstances : such as the pure and vehement zeal of the Christians, their new doctrine of a future life, the miraculous powers attributed to them, their austere morals, the union and discipline and vigour of the commonwealth. But it is obvious that this style of argument does in reality pay a high tribute to the new Faith, while it has little force as a human explanation of its triumphs. The reason ing unconsciously points to that very Finger of God which it aims to withdraw from human affairs, if not to abolish altogether. Objection that other Systems have suc ceeded. Its In terior Ad vantage. Gibbon, ch. xv. 142 TBE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. Judaism. THE CONFLICT WITH JUDAISM. Pecu liarity of Jewish Opposi tion. John i. 11. Matt. x. 36. Acts vi. 7, Acts xxviii. 25—28. Early Compro- 1. Judaism was the first enemy that Christianity encountered, and has been in all ages the most virulent if not the most for midable. Its opposition had this peculiarity, that it was mani fested against the Founder of the Faith : in fact, it was the only human and visible opponent that He met upon earth. He came unto His own and His own received Him not. Throughout the whole course of His ministry, but especially towards its close when His claim to be the Messiah became known, He was persecuted by the representatives of Judaism. This gave a peculiar emphasis to His saying : A man's foes shall be they of his own household. Jesus arose in the midst of our race as a member of the Jewish house hold, to perfect and glorify the ancient religion. His brethren according to the flesh by their malice and blindness brought about in a way they never contemplated the consummation and end of their own national religion and law. And the result of their enmity in the death of the Messiah was a most wonderful fulfil ment of prophecy and evidence of the truth of His claims. When we enter the Acts, we find that the first contest of the Gospel was everywhere with the Jews ; and that in most places, though not in all, the cause of Jesus was triumphant. It was not in Jerusalem alone that a great company of the priests were obedient to the faith. But neither in the Gospels nor in the Acts is the triumph of Chris tianity over Judaism so described as to make it an argument of the Divinity of the Christian religion. Rather it might seem as if the persistent enmity of the Jews was made such an argument, being so directly a fulfilment of prediction : Well spake the Holy Ghost by Esaias the prophet unto our fathers, saying, Go unto this people, and say, Hearing ye shall hear, and shall not understand ; and seeing ye shall see, and not perceive. 2. During the early ages there was a fierce polemic kept up between the Christians and the Jews. At first it seemed as if a compromise would be effected. A considerable body of Jewish converts received Jesus as the Messiah, but only as the greatest of the prophets, and as raised up for the ancient people : others being admitted to these privileges only by complying with their REVELATION. 143 Increase and Decrease. rite of initiation, and by binding themselves to keep the law. But when that expedient failed, and the Christianity which had its final expression in St. Paul's writings gained the ascendency, it was bitterly opposed by the ancient people, and all the more bitterly because they ascribed to Jesus and His religion the ruin of their polity. But Judaism the mother declined, and Christianity the daughter triumphed. From generation to generation there has been a ceaseless enmity between the Israel after the flesh and the true Christian Israel after the Spirit ; but, applying any fitting test whatever, we must be persuaded that the Christian Messiah has gotten to Himself the victory. His renewed, enlarged, bap tised, and perfected Judaism lives on earth : the Judaism which still clings to the law, and still looks for Another, lives indeed, but is dead while it lives. It has had its schools of learning, and names of high excellence. It has also displayed marvellous virtue in its charities, in its indestructible patience of hope — though a hope that must make ashamed — and in its meek endurance of un exampled wrongs, often from Christian hands. But it is, as a system, dead, twice dead ; and never can be revived. Moreover, it is remarkable that the greatest intellects produced by modern Judaism — Maimonides and Spinoza, the latter especially, — have done much to unsettle the religious ideas of mankind. 3. But the affecting and unnatural conflict between Christianity The Argu and Judaism is itself, and apart from any great success, a strong argument in favour of the Christian cause. Both systems are world-wide in their extent ; both pervade, or bid fair to pervade, the whole earth ; but how entirely different are the issues of their progress respectively ! The one is advancing on a career of beneficence, in the course of which it sweeps away all systems of idolatry, cruelty, and wrong. The other simply overspreads the earth without any mission or pretence of a mission : in obedience, as it were, to some fate or absolute compulsion. Why the Jews are diffused among the nations, more or less dishonoured of all, and in spite of the enlightened views of the present day never able to throw off the universal ban that is upon them, is a mystery that can be solved only by their own Scriptures, now become not theirs but ours. In them, as interpreted by the New Testament, the reason is given so plainly that he may run who ment. 144 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. Deut. iv. 27. Matt. XXVII .25. Deut. IV. •25. Deut. iv. 26, Dan.x.26. readeth ib. It goes back to their very origin : The Lord shall scatter you among the nations. And a second date it has, which is the turning point of the history of mankind : His blood be on us, and on our children. Moses predicted that, if they should do evil' im the sight of the Lord, they should cease from the enjoyment of theiT inheritance : Ye shall soon utterly perish from off the land whereunto ye go over Jordan to possess it ; ye shall not prolong your days upon- it, but shall utterly be destroyed. Utter destruction is never in the Divine threatenings annihilation. His ancient people have gone out of the presence of God, like Cain ; and a mark has been set upon them, that they should not be exterminated, but remain as an enduring demonstration of the truth of their rejected Messiah, Whose cutting off — but not for Himself — was their greatest evil in the sight of the Lord. Heathen- THE CONFLICT WITH HEATHENISM. The Early Struggle. 1. When Christianity appeared, the Gentile rehgions were both at their best and at their worst : they had reached the highest result of their wisdom and art ; but they had also descended to the lowest point of their moral impotence. The world was never so highly cultivated, and never so ethically vile. But both the strength and the weakness of heathenism were armed against the new faith, which was the object of the converging attacks of all the forces of the Gentile world. Christianity during the first three centuries was of course aggressive as well as persecuted. The ten imperial persecutions were only a reaction of heathenism against a spiritual persecution which itself had to endure from a religion that spared none of its weaknesses and poured contempt on all its errors. That religion prospered in spite of every attack ; and drove the mightiest mythology the world had known into the villages, whence it derived the name of Paganism. That which had been branded as an Exitiabilis Superstitio com pelled before the fourth century the homage of aU civilised nations of the empire. An attempt was made to revive heathenism under Julian the Apostate ; but it signally failed. The great Apologies of the second century were never answered. And when, somewhat later, the advocates of the ancient and effete REVELATION. 145 religions charged upon Christianity the decay and ruin of the empire, Augustine's treatise De Civitate and other similar writings, silenced the argument of heathenism for ever. Although many extraneous causes conspired to aid the Christian Religion in gaining ascendency, the dispassionate verdict of history must be that its own internal power gave it the victory. And that power was the Holy Ghost causing it to triumph in Christ. 2. This triumph of Christianity is all the more remarkable because as conquering it was itself infected by many of the errors it displaced. Scarcely a form of superstition was overcome which did not contribute its measure of corruption to the faith of Jesus. The earlier and later heresies were to a great extent results of the infusion of the old leaven of Oriental and Classical modes of thought. Gentile philosophy was vanquished ; but its Par thian arrows left their poison, and the final superiority of orthodox Christianity over the subtle errors of Gnosticism, Manichseism, Pantheistic mysticism, with the superstitions of materialistic sacramentalism in later days, manifested its eternal power not less than its original suppression of heathen error. If we take a broad and catholic view of Christian history in its doctrinal develop ment we shall see that there has been a steady, continuous victory of truth over all forms of the Gentile lie whether without or within the Church. No weapon formed against it, however often reappearing, has finally prospered. 3. No species of heathenism has ever effectually withstood the power of the Christian religion. Not always has its mode of assault been in harmony with its own precepts. Too often has its war with the old idolatries and superstitions been in harmony with that spirit which the Lord condemned in His sons of thunder. Sometimes it has imitated the violent methods of Mohammedanism or employed the cunning wiles of the great deceiver. But there has never been wanting an honest and true propagandism. And the result has always accorded with the high aim and pretension of the Gospel. It has supplanted one system after another in the South, and the West, and the North. The Eastern superstitions alone have seemed to defy its power. But these are slowly and surely yielding. They are the most ancient forces of heathenism, and in seemingly immovable tran- VOL. I. L 2 Cor. ii. 14. "Victory over the Heathenism that corrupted Christi anity. Over all Heathen ism. Lu. ix. 55. Mark iii. 17. 146 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. quillity have survived the fall of a multitude of other systems ; but they are surely succumbing to the truth which was earlier than they, and are fulfilling the predictions which make certain the universal spread of the Gospel. In them the word shall Matt. xix. have its double truth : many that are first shall be last in yielding ; 3°» and the last shall be first in demonstration of the glory of our Lord. Its Final 4. On the whole, a calm survey of the state of the world under Supre- tne influence of the Christian religion will lead every philosophic •*' student of history to the conclusion that the Head of the Church will surely become the Master ofthe whole earth. Human prophecy, guided by the lights of the past and the analogy of the present, must concur with prophecy Divine in predicting this. In the struggle for existence — if we condescend to use current phraseology — the survival will be on the side of Christianity. Give it time enough and it will, even apart from supreme interpositions of the Spirit, displace every other system. It has annihilated many; it has transformed some ; it has touched aU with the earnest of a fundamental change. The mystery of its slow development is in some respects unfathomable. But its ultimate supremacy is to human calculation the highest possible probability : to faith in the word of revelation it is as certain as the being of God. And its past, present, and future triumph is its irresistible credential Natural THE CONFLICT WITH NATURAL RELIGIONS. .... ,,' 1. It has been already seen that the teaching of Christ is as much Not in the . ., , . . . ... . . . Beginning a republication ot the original principles of natural religion as it is an expansion of the religion of Judaism. It rests upon these two as its pillars, so far as it is a religion : that is, a system of observances and morality and worship, which is all that religion or Bp-qo-Ktla means. Christianity is, however, a great revelation, an unveiling, of the supernatural world or order of things ; and against all that it brings over and above the teaching of nature there has been from the beginning a protest. In fact, the early Apologies abound with arguments vindicating the religion of Jesus against those who asserted the sufficiency of the light of nature. But the victory over opponents of this class was then easy, as the world had been long accustomed to the thought of heavenly REVELATION. U7 interventions. Antiquity, which really had nothing hut the traditions of a lost revelation, or what is called natural religion, was never without a strong conviction that it had at the same time something much better. It would hardly have understood the force of any argument against a revelation as such. 2. Perhaps the first, certainly the most influential, development Deism. of opposition to Christianity proceeding on this line of thought was Deism, the form assumed by English Infidelity in the seventeenth and eighteenth centuries. In this continuous assault on the Faith many elements combined : it was an application to theology, never intended by Bacon, of the new philosophy of induction and experience, as also an application of the sensational philosophy never intended by Locke ; but it was mainly an attempt to show that the principles of natural religion render a supernatural revelation superfluous, that the documents and evi dences of the supposed supernatural revelation are contradictory to the Ught of nature, and also that these documents are in them selves unworthy of confidence. As it regards this last point, in which the English Deists were followed by the destructive critics of France and Germany, more must be said when the documents are under consideration. The Rationalism also that underlies the entire system of attack must be examined elsewhere. Mean while, it is enough to say that the Christian revelation has not only survived, it has vanquished, Infidelity or Deism. The strength of this system — its theistic belief in God and adherence to the principles of natural theology — proved its weakness. The argument of Analogy was triumphantly applied to show that the believer in a God Who controls the course and constitution of nature ought not to reject the revelation of the Bible, which intro duces only a wider extension or larger view of the same scheme of the same God. It silenced all rational opposition to the Chris tian Faith ; and the silencing of opposition is in this case victory. As our Saviour said : Ye believe in God, believe also in Me. jonn x;v. 1. THE CONFLICT WITH SCIENTIFIC THOUGHT. Christian ity and 1. Generally speaking, there has never been any opposition True between Christianity and true science. For Christianity pro- L2 Science. 148 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. fesses to be, and is, a scientific presentation of the largest and broadest philosophy ever expounded to mankind. Hence St. Paul 1 Tim. vi. speaks of oppositions of science falsely so called. True science, or disciplined and formulated knowledge, must needs respect the system of thought which has commanded the homage of so influ ential a portion of mankind. It is not too much to say that no principle of thinking deserves to be called philosophy, and no results of thinking deserve to be called science, which can despise the Christian Faith. On this subject, however, enough will he found elsewhere. Meanwhile, it is one of the evidences of the truth of our religion that it has survived the attack of many systems of false science. It has in every past age received the homage of the best intellects and most earnest cultivators of both physical and metaphysical truth. This is true of the present age also. And it may be safely said that true Christianity is accepted by a far larger number of rigorous and sound thinkers than is to be found in the service of any one particular department of scientific opposition or perhaps in all departments of scientific opposition put together. Science 2. This being true, it may be granted that it is true only of anl . . e genuine Christianity. There has been in all Christian ages an anity. unsound development of certain doctrines against which sound science has successfully protested. The Christian Faith ought not to be held responsible for the additions of men ; and there can be no doubt that it has pleased God to rebuke by the ministry of human learning many errors which have dimmed or perverted the Faith. During the Middle Ages the authority of the Church was armed in favour of false interpretations of Scripture, and science came to the aid of the simplicity of truth. Christendom has had much to unlearn and much to learn through its contact with scientific criticism and research. It may have something yet both to unlearn and to learn : many most important helps for the solution of difficulties, the removal of obstacles, and the reconcilia tion of apparent contradictions in the exegesis of Scripture, may and indeed certainly will be afforded by the investigations of scholars and physicists. Science furnished the key to open some of the dark chambers of cosmogony. And as the origin of things is better understood since modern geology sprang up, so also the origin of REVELATION. 149 man is and will be better understood when the chaos of modern anthropology is reduced to shape. If it should seem in any case that a clear result of inductive science clashes with Scripture or the Christian religion, it will be found, as it has been found in times past, that the contradiction is not real : either the Scripture and the particular truth concerned has been misunderstood, or the scientific induction may itself have to be corrected, or some yet unknown mediatorial fact must be waited for. There is much ground common to science and the Faith in the archaeology, chronology, anthropology, and history of Scripture, not yet fully explored. Meanwhile, science in this relation is comparatively young, and Christianity is absolutely old. The foundation of the eternal verities that make up the relations of God and man has never been shaken by sound human learning and research. On many contested points there is doubtless much controversy. But religion has nothing to fear; and it is a consolation, though a subordinate one, that this is the firm conviction of many who are at once the most profound students of modern science and the most humble disciples of Holy Scripture. 3. There is, however, a false science, a fevSiawp.o's yvilio-vs, which False has absolutely withstood Christianity from the beginning ; and, Science. with peculiar critical keenness opposes it now. This also it has 1 Tim. vi. vanquished in the past ; and, though the issue is still pending, it 20- wiU be victorious now. This science is one with many forms ; and it may be called false, for its fundamental principles are un scientific, as destroying the foundations of all human knowledge. If science at all it is the science of nescience : a contradiction in terms. Scepticism, or suspended judgment on many points, may be tolerated ; though universal scepticism is utterly alien from the spirit of the Bible, which appeals to the common sense of mankind against the chaos both of universal scepticism and universal nescience. The same may be said of Pantheistic science : though based on a principle which has commanded the homage of much human thought in all ages, it is not scientific ; for it annihi lates the distinctness, or at least the permanent distinctness of the thinking subject, whose fleeting phenomena cannot constitute knowledge. Christianity has overcome Pantheism : by the very fact that the noblest Pantheists, the mediaeval, mystical, and 150 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. the German transcendental philosophers, have aimed to Chris tianise their system, and, in fact, have held it as Christians. Where it has not leaned on the Christian doctrine of the Trinity it has had no semblance of scientific precision : Spinoza's mathe matical system died with himself. Positivism is the supreme delusion of the nineteenth century : professing to be sure and absolute science in every department, it leaves out the endless phenomena which revelation has taught the world, and that with the general consent of aU true science, to caU spiritual. Materialism is the modern form of Atheism wliich seems tc threaten the hold of religion on men's minds. It is the last and most uncompromising of its enemies : never during earher ages having risen with anything like strength, it seems now to he encouraged to assault the Faith by the aid of physical science. But sound science must, sooner or later, utterly disavow a system that abolishes the notions of cause and effect, of aU final causes and ends, and asserts, in the face of evidence most absolute, the spontaneous origin of life. Most of these forms of the falsely called science will be considered in their appropriate place. Here it is enough to say that they have opposed Christianity in vain. The religion of Christ, with its earlier and later documents, gives a grand and consistent, though at some points most mysterious and unsearchable, explanation of aU things. It may be said to have already vanquished aU systems and hypotheses which are destructive only and have no positive principles or explanations of their own to substitute for what they take away. Demon- THE HOLY GHOST THE LAST CREDENTIAL. stration of the Holy No view of the credentials of Divine Revelation is com- pm ' plete which omits a distinct reference to the Holy Ghost, Whose special influence accompanies the Truth as its seal, demonstration, and assurance. This has been of necessity referred to already, and will in due course be more fully exhibited under other aspects and relations. Here it is sufficient to lay down this principle as the sum and con clusion of the whole matter : the Spirit of God and of Christ REVELATION. 151 alone gives to all evidences their force, and imparts to those who sincerely consider them both the faith that believes and the confirmation of that faith. Moreover, though it may seem a hard saying, the secret of an unbelieving rejection of the Christian Revelation must be traced tq an impUcit or explicit resistance of His never-failing and impartial testimony. The presence of the Holy Ghost, promised and pledged and bestowed, is the last and crowning credential of the Faith. THIS CREDENTIAL IN THE NEW TESTAMENT. It will be necessary only to indicate the force of the testimonies of Scripture on this subject . testimonies forming an unbroken series, the course of which n.ay be easily traced by the following leading instances of their use and application. 1. Our Lord, laying the foundation of the Faith, declares that the Spirit of the truth should convict the unbelief of the world : of sin, because they believe not on Me. Moreover, He promised that same Spirit as the power of the Holy Ghost coming upon you, by which His Apostles should be competent witnesses of Himself. It is most evident that to the Spirit is assigned by the Head of the Faith the function of enforcing its credentials. The Lord could not more expressly have said that the cause of Christianity was to be pleaded for ever by this Advocate or Paraclete. Accordingly, the first preachers of the Gospel appealed to this credential, or relied on this Advocate. St. Peter says of the facts, We all are witnesses ; but he then points to the testimony of the Holy Ghost : He hath shed forth this which ye now see and hear. And, at a later time more expressly : We are His witnesses of these things ; and so is also the Holy Ghost, Whom God hath given to them that obey Him. The Apostles speak with the consciousness of a higher Witness behind their own, to Whose effectual energy they look for the demonstration of their words. The entire Apostolic ministry iUustrates the same truth. The human witnesses do their best, setting forth, as St. John says, events undeniable : That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our Appeal to this in the New Testa ment. Testi mony of Jesus. John xvi . 8,9,13. Acts i. 8. Acts ii 32. Acts ii. 33. Acts v.32. 1 John i. 1. 152 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, concern ing the Word of life. But they never rely only on that. There is 1 John v. a concurrent evidence : The witness of God is greater, the same 9- Apostle declares ; and, with plain allusion to the Master's words, 1 John v. adds, And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth: koI rb Uvevp.d io-ri rb paprvpovv, on to TLvevp.6. iariv 17 aXrjOeiu, as if the Spirit were Himself the witness that He Him- , self is the truth ; or, as the Vulgate has it, quoniam Christus est Veritas. Thus the New Testament closes, in St. John's Epistle, with the great truth that the Holy Ghost, given by the Father, is the permanent and, as it were, official proof in the world that 1 John v. God hath given His Son. He that believeth on the Son of God hath the Witness in himself. Outside of himself, and objectively, there 1 John v. is the Saviour that came by water and blood : the beUever receives the external evidences of the mission of Jesus, both in its com mencement by Baptism and at its consummation on the cross. But the Spirit is the supreme Witness within the witness. Reason of 2. It is very important, in connection with this, to remember Unbelief, thafc the actual presence of unbelief in the Christian revelation is referred by St. Paul plainly and unambiguously to the rejection of the Spirit : he tells the Corinthians, after reminding them that 1 Cor. xii. ye were Gentiles, carried away unto tliese dumb idols, even as ye were 2j 3- led, that No man can say that Jesus is the Lord but by tlie Holy Ghost, words which follow their counterpart, No man speaking by the Sp:,rit of God calleth Jesus accursed. Above he had aheady said 1 Cor. ii. that faith standeth in the power of God, that is, in the demonstration 4» 6< of the Spirit and of power. These passages confirm the principle laid down generally in the New Testament, that there is a sense in which faith in the Christian revelation is the gift of God : a gift, that is, bestowed in connection with the prudent and prayer ful use of our own faculties. Hence St. John ratifies the whole at the close of Scripture, by saying that every true Christian tliat 1 John v. believeth on the Son of God hath the Witness in himself: hath, that 10- is, both the testimony and Him that beareth it within his own 1 John v. soul, as a permanent source of assurance. It is the Spirit that 6- beareth witness, not merely to subjective personal acceptance, but also to the great objective truth which is the ground of that 1 John v. acceptance, to wit, that Jesus is the Son of God. As the anointing 5. REVELATION. 153 of the Holy Ghost was the Father's seal on His Son's mission— for Him hath God the Father sealed — so the same anointing, John vi. descending from Him to the skirts of His garments, is the seal that ^1- assures to us the truth of His mission and the reality of our Cxxxiii. interest in Him. St. John therefore says with confidence : ye 2. have an unction from the Holy One, and ye know all things : all things, 1 g°h ""¦ that is, concerning the eternal difference between Christ and ' Antichrist. That unction of the Holy One, the Revealer, may not instruct in all mysteries, whether of nature or of grace, but if received in humble faith it serves two purposes : it makes the believer confident in Him Whom he trusts as a Saviour ; and it enables him to detect the liar that denieth that Jesus is the Christ. 1 John ii. 22. ITS PRACTICAL VALUE. Value of this mi • • i- <. ¦ .... Evidence. lnis is the bare outline of a doctrine concerning the objective and subjective testimony of the Divine Spirit which the entire New Testament fiUs up. A careful consideration of the current of its teaching on this subject will convince all, whether students or preachers or defenders of Christianity, that an appeal to the never-absent demonstration of the Holy Ghost is their sheet- anchor for themselves and their last appeal for others. 1. As apologists' for the Religion we believe in we must Limits remember for our encouragement the limits of our own obligation. 0I" Obliga- St. Peter instructs the early Christians who had, like us their descendants, to defend their creed, that it was their duty to be 1 Peter iii. ready always to give an answer to every man that asketh you a reason of the hope that is in you with meekness and fear. We are bound to provide the very best arguments for the Great Hope that our learning and diligence, can supply. This is most certainly demanded of us ; but nothing more. After all, the Faith is not in our keeping, but in that of the Holy Ghost. If we happily succeed in disarming opposition or securing attention or exciting the beginnings of trust, the glory is God's : Not by might, nor by Zech. iv. power, but by My Spirit, saith the Lord of hosts. If we fail, and our 6- opponents harden their hearts, we must not give way to Jonah like despondency, and fall into the snare of our own ill-success : 154 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. we must remember that our Master will see to it, and show in Jer. xliv. His time whose words shall stand, Mine or theirs. _ 28- 2. As preachers also in quietness and in confidence shall be yow Isa. xxx. strength. We must cultivate an absolute reliance on a certain 15. secret Divine testimony which is infallibly given to every truth that we declare : however weakly we proclaim it, provided only we proclaim it faithfully. Here we have the example of the Apostles, who with great fervour argue and persuade, but with Acts xiii. the utmost calmness leave the result to God : but seeing ye put it 46, from you, and. judge yourselves unworthy of everlasting life, lo, we turn to the Gentiles. But we have a higher example than that of the Apostles. Our Lord Himself, the Supreme Apologist of His own religion, committed His failing cause to His Father. He said, John vii. My doctrine is not Mine, but His that sent Me ; and when they murmured against Him and His words, He answered their mur- John vi. murings and said : No man can come to Me, except the Father Which 44j 45. hafo smt ]\£e draw him; and I will raise him up at the last day. It is written in the prophets, And they shall be all taught of God. Every man therefore that hath heard, and hath learned of the Father, cometh unto Me. This seems like a tranquil reference of the contest to the arbitration of Heaven, leaving His opponents to their own responsibility. We may humbly copy His example. Our doctrine is not our own, but His Who has sent us ; we must leave to His Spirit the responsibility and the justification of the tremendous mysteries we are commissioned to unfold. Personal 3. As Christian men, we have to take care that we find our Assurance own fujj assurance 0f fajtn in tne conScious influence of the Spirit of Christ. No theologian, in these days of doubt and despair of truth, can keep his soul in peace who does not so live that his Col. ii. 2. mind may be the temple of the Holy Ghost, giving him the full assurance of understanding, lo the acknowledgment of the mystery of God, which is summed up in one word, Christ. A beclouded faith John viii. may be traced to many causes ; but there is one secret of protec tion or cure : He that followeth Me shall not walk in darkness. 12. Summary. SUMMARY. Thus far we have only sketched the course that Apologetics may take in presenting the Credentials of the Christian Revela- REVELATION. 155 tion generally and as such; and as distinct from the evidences necessary to establish particular doctrines and particular docu ments. When we have to discuss the Canon, and proceed with the separate topics of theology, we shall find ourselves always obliged to maintain a defensive position. The contest is prepared at every point. The Christian system is everywhere militant; and some of the best evidences of the Faith are those which arise under the several heads of its individual dogmas, each of which has its own cause to defend. Meanwhile the general credentials of Christianity prepare the way for those more detailed evidences and add force by anticipation to the arguments intro duced to sustain both the books and the doctrines. When the glorious revelation as a whole is accepted, that acceptance renders the mind more accessible to persuasion on subordinate points, and disarms captious criticism of documents and minor difficulties of every kind. When the objective Christian Faith is subjectively received by the faith of man accepting its credentials — credentials adapted to our probation, and amply sufficient, as sealed by the Holy Ghost — then it becomes comparatively easy to proceed to the specific methods by which that Faith has been communi cated. The consideration of those methods connects this topic with that which now follows : in which we descend from revela tion as objective, universal and one, to the form it assumes in holy books. 156 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. LgJ* INSPIRATION. The term Divine in the general proposition that the Bible is the Divine Rule of Faith suggests the inspiration and infallible authority of the Sacred Records. Inspira tion, distinguished from Revelation as we have employed the term, denotes the specific agency of the Holy Ghost in the creation and construction of Holy Scripture : this is the Biblical conventional use of the word which strictly Umits its meaning. The theological treatment of the doctrine requires us to examine, first, the testimony of the Bible itself to its own inspiration ; secondly, the history of the dogma in the universal Church ; and, thirdly, the dogmatic results that may be regarded as fully expressing the truth on this subject. Revela- The distinction between the terms Revelation and Inspiration tion and depends, to a great extent, upon their conventional signification. t-^n In the Bible we do not trace the distinction found necessary in dogmatic theology, and so elaborately discussed in treatises on the subject. These are hints, however, that justify us in assigning to each word its particular province. In Scrip- 1. Scripture uses them interchangeably; or, rather, adopts the ture. same forms of expression to exhibit the methods of both. God Heb. i. 1. at sundry times and in divers manners spake in times past to ihe fathers by the prophets : this includes at once the revelation of aU truth to the minds of the prophets, and the inspiration by which they received and administered that truth. The Voice of God per- Heb. i. 2. vades the Old Testament ; and in the New it stUl speaketh in Bis Son. The divers manners include visions, whether in dream or ecstasy, by the medium of which the Holy Ghost presented, with or without symbols, new forms of truth to the mind, or what is INSPIRATION. 157 always called the Word of the Lord; and also communications to the waking faculties, conscious of all their own exercises and controlling them. The sundry times cannot well be understood unless we regard them as including the successive stages by which the ancient people were entrusted with the written oracles. Thus the inspiration and the revelation are one. St. Paul unites them when he says, I will come to visions and revelations of the Lord: a 2 Cor. xii. sentence in which all ancient methods are reduced to two, and these are shown to be continued in the New Testament, though no longer so general and characteristic as they formerly had been. 2. On the other hand, the Scripture authorises the conventional Oonven- phraseology which distinguishes between revelation of truth and t^g*;™8 inspiration to record it. The Son, in the unity of the Father and the Holy Spirit, is the Revealer. The Spirit, in the unity of the Father and the Son, is the Inspirer. The Son is the living and eternal Word in Whom the eternal ideas of all truth existed, before they were made known ; but the Spirit did signify its mean- 1 Peter i. ing to the prophets, who spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. „ i " . The word Revelation is generally used of the Lord ; the only 21. instance of the use pf Inspiration refers it to the Scripture as the 2 Cor. xii, result. The disclosure of the mind of God to man is revelation g rjjm when viewed in relation to the Truth unveiled, and inspiration 16. when viewed in relation to the methods of its impartation and transmission to posterity. And, as revelation must in its highest meaning be limited to the unfolding of the scheme of redemption, so inspiration is limited to that one kind of contact or intercourse between the Holy Spirit and the spirit in man which produced the written Word for all ages and generations. THE TESTIMONY OF SCRIPTURE ITSELF. Scriptural Testi- The Scripture presents the credentials of its own in- mony. spiration. Hence, remembering that in things Divine credentials are always first, and are, if necessary, to be sustained by their own evidences, it is not arguing in a circle to receive the witness of the Bible concerning itself: we must study the whole subject with the Book in our m. 158 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. hands. The Old Testament yields its testimony in a manner accordant with its preliminary stage of develop ment ; but, though only preuminary, that testimony will be found to include every essential element of the doc trine. Christ, the Revealer, gives His supreme attestation to the authority of the ancient Scriptures : such an attes tation, considering His claims, was absolutely necessary ; it is expressly given, and of course it is sufficient. He has also with equal expressness, though in a different manner, declared by anticipation the plenary Divine authority of the writings of the New Testament. After exhibiting the evidence of this, we shall descend to the Apostles' tes timony concerning the inspiration of the Old Testament and their own ; and then may be in a position to sum up the evidence of the Holy Oracles concerning themselves as one united whole. Old Testament. Deut. xxxiv. 10. THE OLD TESTAMENT. 1. The Old Testament does not lay down the distinction between- Revelation and Inspiration ; but it furnishes the evidence by which the distinction may be established. Communications of the Divine will were given in various ways to various men, few of whom, comparatively speaking, were educated and com missioned to write the permanent records of that will. The Patriarchs received revelations, and recorded some of them; but their records were not officially made Scripture by themselves. It was the special prerogative of Moses that he was the imme diate organ of Jehovah, the Logos-Angel : There arose not a prophet since in Israel like unto Moses whom Jehorah knew face to face. Of him it is not recorded that the Spirit made him an instrument: a distinction which was afterwards perverted as we shall see. Of all the inspired agents of Jehovah who testified concerning Christ Moses approached most nearly to the Person Whom he predicted, or rather was brought into closest analogy with Him. After the Uncreated Angel withdrew as the immediate Revealer, phrases INSPIRATION. 159 Jer.xxxvi. 1—4. are introduced which had not been known before but are used Numb. now in great variety. We read of the Spirit of God, or of Jehovah, * x^v- 2- coming down on men ; of the Hand 'of the Lord moving upon one 6 and another ; of the Word of the Lord coming to them. 2 Chron. 2. But, running through all, there is a constant commission to ™ x7' 1- write: from Moses, through Samuel's schools of the prophets, xxxvii.l. down to the end of the Old Testament. The Lord said unto Moses, Ex. xvii. Write this for a memorial in a book. A large number of references 14- to writing may be collected in the ancient records : to the men appointed to write by the commandment of the Lord ; to God as Numb. Himself the Writer, / have written to him the great things of My xxxiu- law ; to the manner in which the prophetic records especially Hos. viii. were arranged and preserved, and Baruch wrote from the mouth of 12. Jeremiah ; and to the general designation of the whole as Scrip ture, I will show thee that which is noted in the Scripture of Dan. x. truth. It will be seen by a collation of the multitudes of 21- passages of which these are specimens, that the Old Testament gives all the materials for the full doctrine which is presupposed, sanctioned, and unfolded in the New. OUR LORD'S TESTIMONY. Testi mony of Our Lord's witness to the inspiration of both Testaments is, to Jesus. those who believe in Him, the sum of all reasoning. Not indeed that it renders the most careful examination of the documents needless ; but a steadfast confidence in the Supreme Authority ought to precede, accompany, and follow every consideration of evidence. Certainly His testimony should more than outweigh all the objections which derive their strength from our ignorance. But that is not all. The Saviour's assurances not only confirm the results of inspiration, but throw a clear light upon its nature. I. In many ways this supreme testimony is given by the Re- To the Old deemer to the Old Canon as a completed whole. ment 1. First, by His absolute ascription to its writings of a Divine His authority. It was the one thing common to Him and His Jewish Appeal opponents that the Scriptures, the same to Him and to them, were admitted to be in all parts the Word and the Writings of God. He asked them : Why do ye also transgress the commandment Matt. xv. of God by your tradition, but said nothing of adding to or diminishing 3> "• 160 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. the holy books. They made tradition and that was their fault ; but they are not condemned as making or unmaking Scripture. While sweeping away their enfeebling glosses, and giving His own spiritual interpretation, our Lord expressly declared that the least ordinance and the least commandment in the Old Testament was Divine, and must have its fulfilment. Such is the meaning Matt. v. of one jot or one tittle, as connected with what follows. T tt 2. He attested the entire Old Testament, secondly, by the Used, terms He was wont to use in speaking of the older oracles. He Matt. iv. quotes them as Scripture generally, and as individual Scrip tures. It is written was His answer to the Tempter in the John v. wilderness. Search the Scriptures He said to the Jews and to all men : the solitary instance in which He gave such a command ment : a commandment with promise, They testify of Me. And He began His own prophetic office in the synagogue by proclaim- Luke iv. ing, This day is this Scripture fulfilled in your ears. The ancient collection of holy documents He distinguishes according to the Matt. v. current division as the law or the prophets : commandment and T . promise. In the law of Moses, and in tlie prophets, and in th xxiv. 44, psalms, concerning Me. But He unites them all again as the Scrip- 45. tures in that last unrecorded exposition of the Old Covenant that xxiv 27 -^-e Save to His disciples. He once caUs an ancient oracle the John x. Word of God, and adds, the Scripture cannot be broken. With this 35 ¦ it is instructive to connect our Lord's saying concerning Himself, My words shall not pass away ; which asserts at the end of His Matt. ministry the same eternal authority for His own teaching which, v. 19. ' at *ne beginning, He had asserted for the law. Himself 3. The Redeemer never fails to refer to the old Scripture as m "• one testimony, given by the inspiration of the Holy Ghost, con- Matt.xxii. cerning Himself. How then doth David in Spirit call Him Lord 1 43- this is the one instance in which the Spirit's inspiration is directly referred to, and it is a special prophecy concerning David's Lord, uttered by David himself, as a solitary exception to his usual style, and quoted exceptionally by our Saviour : in fact,_it may be said that the entire Old Testament was represented; it Rev^ xix. calleth Him Lord. Hence the testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy : this is a dictum which may also be inverted : the Spirit in the whole company of the prophets is the testimony of Jesus. 10. INSPIRATION. 161 For all the ancient seers both saw and spoke under the influence ¦of the Spirit of Christ which was in them. ' Peter i. 4. Thus the Saviour's witness to the Old Testament is simply ' perfect in every element that Christian faith can demand. He Lord's began and ended His earthly life by declaring its Divine authority Testi- and the necessity of its most minute fulfilment. He gave His m0Dy- testimony, not in accommodation to a current notion of the times, but as the Revealer of all truth. And the force of this is specially ¦strengthened by the fact that He sanctions the whole body of holy writers as One who is above them aU. What He said of the Baptist was still more applicable to Himself : He is much more Luke vii. ¦than a Prophet. He does not speak, however, as Himself inspired. "• Though a Prophet, and endued with the Spirit from on high, He never claims for Himself a limited and specific inspiration of the Holy Ghost : in this eternally separated from all the Spirit's •agents. As the Son of God incarnate He re-utters the entire Old Testament as His own ancient oracles made new ; they as it were died in Him to their transitory meaning, and rose with Him to be the power of an endless life. II. It is of the utmost importance to ask in what sense the Continua- Redeemer assures to us a continuation of these authoritative c .n. • bcnpture. oracles in His own New Testament. We may boldly say that the Great Fulfilment necessarily implied a continuation of Scripture, both as Word and as Writing. 1. Generally, our Lord testified, My words shall not pass away, New which is an echo of the sublimest assertions of the Old Testament , Words. concerning the Divine oracle. All His sayings on every subject, Xxiv. 35. whether recorded or not, were the words of God. Concerning the whole sum of His teaching He could bear witness, / have given John xvii. them Thy word. This being so, can we suppose that such a deposit 14> would die with those who first received it ? Their Master made provision that His words should, so far as they were to abide, be preserved in their memory. The promise indeed is very compre hensive, embracing all that the Lord had said. On the Mount of Transfiguration the disciples were bidden to hear Him, and that in Luke ix the presence of Moses and Elias. In strict harmony with this is 35 the fact that at the close of His ministry Jesus, more expressly than ever before, made His own sayings the sum of Scripture. It VOL. I. M 162 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. is remarkable that He does not impress upon His disciples the solemn importance of remembering the Scriptures of the Old Matt. Testament. It was His own word, — all things whatsoever I have xxvm. . cmvmangeg ymt — that He left as a legacy. Surely what He said of the sacramental cup may be applied in another way : this is the New Testament in My words. The teaching of the Lord was the new Bible; and we feel instinctively how true is the Col. iii. phrase of St. Paul : Let the word of Christ dwell in you richly. The word of Christ is no other than the word of God. New 2. He has also, both directly and indirectly, guaranteed to us Scriptures new gcrjptural writings. Though the Divine decorum forbade His leaving anything from His-own hand, He did not reverse the ancient law that revelation should be gradually developed in the Ex xxvii. volume of a book. As Moses was commanded to write the 1. beginning, so St. John was commanded to write the end, of that Kev. 1. 19. vomme, to finish it as it had been begun. To be more particular : 31, the new Scripture is prepared for and produced by the same Spirit of inspiration Who gave the old records. Precisely the same law of procedure which we have seen in the creation of the earlier documents we see governing the Saviour's arrangements for the later. It is as. plain as if He had said : By My Spirit I give you new Scriptures. But this He did not declare : aU grows out of His words without His saying so. Reserving revelation for Him self, He assigned inspiration to the Holy Ghost, though without giving Him the name of Inspirer ; and so described His influence as to make it precisely like that which rested on the ancient writers. Ex. iv. 12- In old time, it was said to Moses : Now therefm-e go, and I will be Isa lix.2l. with thy mouth, and teach tliee what thou shalt say ; and to Jeremiah : Jer. i. 7,9. Behold I have put My words in thy mouth, and Say not, I am a child. Here a special inspiration for special need is promised, over and above the general inspiration for office. Compare the words of our Lord to His Apostles, promising the very same special influ- Luke xii. ence : The Holy Ghost shall teach you in the same hour what ye ought 12/ ... to say. It is not ye that speak, but the Holy Ghost. These are H. ' promises in the Synoptists; St. John adds the final and supple- John xiv. mentary threefold assurance : the same Spirit will bring all things John' xvi. to y°ur remem^mnce, whatsoever I have said unto you ; further, He will 13. show you the things to come ; and, generally, He will guide you into all INSPIRATION. 163 truth. Connecting this special assurance with the Old Testament, the Lord afterwards said, I send the Promise of My Father upon Luke you : as if it were a new function of the Ancient Inspirer that He would impress on their minds. When that promise was fulfilled, they were, like Jeremiah, children no longer, but men in under standing. Now with reference to the three departments of the promise in St. John, the fulfilment required, and therefore in cluded, writing. Let this be carefully considered with regard to each. These are written that ye might believe, for the first. Write the things which thou hast seen, for the second. And the Apo stolical Epistles, containing the development of the truth in its manifold applications, is the fulfilment of the third. 3. From all this we may assuredly gather that the Mediator of the New Covenant purposed to add another volume to the Scrip tures of truth : without plainly saying so, any more than in Genesis He foreannounced the entire Old Testament. The facts declare this without any express declaration. The New Testa ment is constructed before our eyes exactly as the Old was. The same laws and methods continue in the new economy that were observed in the old. There is the same direct personal teach ing, and the Apostles see the Oracle face to face as Moses saw Him. There are the same dreams and ecstasies ; and there is the same overruling direction of the Holy Ghost in the compilation of documents. This only great difference exists, that the final truth is communicated by the perfectly revealed Son through the perfectly revealed Spirit ; and therefore long times and seasons are in the swift consummation needless. All was accomplished in a single age. The Preparations occupied many centuries ; the Fulfilment glorified one. xxiv. 49. John xx. 31. Rev. i. 19. A New Volume. THE APOSTOLIC TESTIMONY. The Apostolic testimony, both to the fact and to the nature of Inspiration, is most ample : the full development of this as of other doctrines is committed to the Apostles. I. As to the Scriptures generally, or particular Scriptures of the Old Testament, their tribute is explicit and clear. 1. St. Peter, as Preacher and Writer, is perhaps the pre eminent witness : in the Acts, to the Jews ; in his Epistles, to M 2 Apostolic Testimony To the Old Tes tament. St. Peter. 164 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. Acts i. 16. Acts i. 16. Acts vii. 38. 2 Peter i. 20, 21. 2 Pet. iii. 16. IPet-iv. 11. Epistle to the Hebrews. Heb. x. 15. Heb. ii. 6. Heb. v. 12. Heb. vi. 1. the Church of Jews and Gentiles ; in both, to future genera tions. On the eve of Pentecost he gives what may be called a classical text : e&ei 7rXrjpiad^vai T-qv yparjv Tavrijv r/v irpouire to Hvevpia to ayiov 8ia (TTop-aTos AdBiS. This is the Pentecostal wit ness once for all : in a form more complete than anywhere else, as it were a general definition. The Holy Ghost spake ; using the mouth of David an instrument, also that of Joel; and the result was Scripture in one particular expression of it : whether as uttered or as written it is identical. Nor is St. Stephen less clear : he says that Moses received Adyta tfovra, living oracles ; Sovvai fjp.iv, to transmit to posterity, here again the spoken and the written oracles being identical. St. Peter's Epistles contain evidence of great value, No Scripture is of any private interpreta tion — tSi'as im\vo-eti>s, referring to the prophetic element — but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. As to the Biblical writings in particular, there is much weight in his expression, the other Scriptures, when viewed on all sides. A shorter phrase in the first Epistle adds to the words and the writings of the prophets the element of their authority : if any man speak, let him speak as the oracles of God, which are supposed to be the standard of all truth in doctrine and in ethics. 2. The Epistle to the Hebrews furnishes the most ample series of testimonies to be found in the New Testament. The force of these is to be felt only by an examination of the texture of the whole composition, which literally regards the ancient Scriptures as oracles spoken by the Holy Ghost, and preserved for the Chris tian Church in a book to be quoted from as infaUible. It is remarkable that the same expression is throughout used to indi cate the testimony of the Spirit and that of the writer whom He employs : The Holy Ghost testifieth the terms of the great covenant in Jeremiah; and One in a certain place testified, meaning the Psalmist. While in this document God absolutely is the Revealer, and the Son the supreme medium of revelation, the Spirit is specially connected with the written Scripture. It may be added, that the first principles of tlie oracles are represented as the same in the Old Testament and in the New: the rudi ments which these Christians needed to be taught again were the principles of the doctrine of Christ; and, as these had been INSPIRATION. 165 taught in the Christian writings, these writings were also the Divine Oracles. 3. St. Paul also, both as Preacher and Writer, lives and moves St. Paul. in the ancient Scriptures. He quotes them constantly, and always as containing the Voice and the Writings of God. His manner of introducing individual texts shows plainly the importance he attached to the very words used by the Holy Ghost. For instance : He saith not, And to seeds, as of many ; but as of one, And to thy Gal. iii. seed, which is Christ. He uses a wide variety of epithets, such as -r. The Prophetic Scriptures, Holy Scriptures, Sacred Writings, and 26^ Scripture given by inspiration of God. The last two contain his Rom.i.2. final testimony to Timothy; and they together declare that the lfiVfi1' Hallowed or Sacred writings applied by faith in Christ impart saving wisdom ; and that all Scripture is Divinely inspired. The term Oeoirvevo-Tos, as a predicate of ypafirj, has given the theo logical word Inspiration its Scriptural ground, sanctioning also the extension of the term to the writings as well as the words and the persons of the inspired men. St. Peter's great testimony signalises the impulse of the Spirit on the minds of the prophets : they were fapopevoi, led or borne along. St. Paul supplements this by making emphatic the result in the written Word in its widest extent, embracing much more than the word of prophecy. The former leans rather to the revelation, the latter to the in spiration, of the ancient documents ; but both include the collected oracles, and tlieir saving power to the believing recipient. Together, they condense into two short sentences the entire Biblical doctrine of the inspiration of Scripture : that is, primarily though not only, of Old-Testament Scripture. II. It is most important to collect the Apostles' testimony to The their own inspiration. But it must be remembered that, though Apostles' always conscious of the Spirit's special influence, they would only SB^?«™ on defensive occasions be likely to refer to it. In fact, the service of the Gospel required them on very many occasions to abstain from urging their highest claim. 1. St. John is the Apostle who gives the faintest expression St. John. to the specific gift of inspiration, while he is, perhaps, the most earnest in the assertion of the authority that resulted from it. Yet in the Apocalypse he says that he was, when he received his 166 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. Rev. i. 10. prophetic communications, in the Spirit, the very term applied by our Lord to the inspiration of David : no prophet was ever more 2 oiter 1- effectually moved by the Holy Ghost than he. He speaks of those Rev.' xxii. sayings as faithful and true which he wrote to the churches hy 6- commandment of the Lord, as if they were his own : and the fear ful words that end this book, if not the Bible, declare its inviolable Divine authority. In his First Epistle he seems to make the 1 John ii. unction from the Holy One a privilege of all Christians ; but a close 20- examination will give reason to think that he referred primarily to the Apostolic xplo-pa or anointing, which was also a x^pi-o-pa or gift, not limited to himself, and therefore not made promi nent as his own, but his in the unity of the whole Apostolate. Supposing, however, that the anointing is spoken of as belonging to all regenerate believers, we fall back upon the tone of super human authority which is impressed upon this document, as upon the two lesser Epistles accompanying it. St. Peter.. 2. St. Peter speaks of the writings of St. Paul as co-ordinate, 2 Peter iii. on the same level, with the other Scriptures : a slight hint of an -16- understood and current way of thinking has the force of a strong argument. It must be remembered that he had just before 2 Peter iii. been referring to his reason for writing a second Epistle : That ye 1, 2- may be mindful of the words which were spoken before by the holy pi-ophets, and of the commandment of us tlie Apostles of the Lord and Saviour. Hence there can be no question that he placed the apostolical company by the side of the prophetic ; and that he regarded himself, as well as his beloved brother Paul, as repre sentatives, in their writings and words, of the supreme authority of the common Master. For it is well known that Words and Writings are in Scripture often used interchangeably. In their 2 Peter i. ministry, applying his own language, we have also a more sure word XLK" of prophecy. St. Paul. 3. As to St. Paul himself, there can be no question of his claiming the authority of inspiration. Not being numbered with those who had companied with the Lord and received His great promise on the eve of the Passion, it was necessary that he should dwell more on the prerogatives of his irregular investiture. He speaks specially for himself, though as the representative of all, when he claims so often to wield, both in presence and by letters, INSPIRATION. 167 the very authority of Christ. His reference to matters not given of l Cor. vii. wmmandment must not be misunderstood. He does not mean that *>, 12. he wrote merely on his own authority ; but that in these particular •cases he could not and did not appeal to any distinct and specific ¦utterance of Christ. Yet it is observable that he is never more peremptory than in giving the decisions which are not settled by the precedents of the Supreme Master Himself. St. Paul does not separate between his personal life and character as a man and Rom.iii.5. his official relation to the churches ; though he distinguishes between Christ revealed IN him, and the new Faith revealed Gal. i. 16. UNTO him, and the Gospel fuUy known BY him; these three Eph. iii. 3. filling up the whole compass of bis new life. He ascribes his 2 Tim. iv. Tevelations to Christ as the Revealer, but to inspiration the words ^f- .. which the Holy Ghost teacheth. In short, had he been present in the ig_ ' paschal upper room, he could not more abundantly have asserted his possession of the privileges of the Apostolic company. His letters were to be read in the churches as the very Word of the Lord, and for his least counsels he can say, I think also that I have 1 Cor. vii. Ihe Spirit of God: a style of speaking sometimes regarded as 40- meaning no more than the common Christian privilege, but never in the New Testament so used. The Apostle's habitual thought -was moulded by the Old Testament, where such language is reserved for the organs of inspiration ; for instance, the spiritual Hos. ix. 7. man of the prophet is literally the man of tlie Spirit. 4. The two historical Evangelists, and the writer of the Epistle St. Mark to the Hebrews, who shared not directly the great promise given „ ^^ to the Apostles, shared it indirectly. St. Mark and St. Luke had for their special province those subjects concerning which the promise was given by the Saviour, and under the direction of St. 2 Cor. xii. Peter and St. Paul. No writings bear more undeniably the signs of an Apostle than these : and St. Luke's especially are most essential to the living organism of the New Testament. But the con sideration of their contributions belongs to the study of the Canon. 5. To sum up all. The writers of the New Testament form a Summary. body of men, united in the unfolding of Christian doctrine, who always deliver their message as from God their Saviour by His Holy Spirit. They do not often assert their inspiration : but it is everywhere implied by themselves and supposed to be under- 168 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. stood by their hearers and readers. In this they occupy precisely the same position as their predecessors in the Old Testament- Like them, they stand before the people of God with infallible teaching from which there is no appeal; like them, they occa sionally declare themselves, when their authority is resisted, to be organs of the Spirit. In a word, they simply take the place in the New Temple of the prophets in the Old : continuing their office and ministration by a commission the credentials of which were known and read of all men. Dogmatic DOGMATIC. Dogmatic Theology has a clear account to give of In spiration. The Scriptures, fairly compared and inter preted, declare it to be that special influence of the Holy Ghost on the minds of holy men, selected for the purpose,. which qualified them to communicate, from age to age, an infallible record of Divine truth concerning the redeeming will of God. This is the conventional meaning attached to the term both in earlier and later Christian times. Save with this meaning the word inspiration becomes comparatively vague and valueless. Here we have to consider the Inspiring Spirit; then the Inspired Organs;. and lastly the Scriptures of Inspiration. The Inspirer. The Trinity. THE HOLY GHOST THE INSPIRER. The Holy Ghost, in the Mediatorial Trinity, is, and i& alone, the Author of inspiration. This is His personal honour, and implies perfection in His work. To the ground of this office in the Absolute Trinity we cannot penetrate any more than we can penetrate to the ground of the revealing function of the Word ; enough, that as the Revealing Son is the Eternal Word, so the Inspiring Spirit, eternally pro ceeding from the Father and the- Son, is the supreme and sole medium of communication to the spirit of man. Whatever the INSPIRATION, 169 Son is to the creature the Spirit communicates. In the Media torial Trinity the Holy Ghost presides over the impartation of truth. This may be illustrated by His relation to the Person of the Revealer generally, and particularly by the terms employed in the phraseology of Scripture on the subject. 1. It is true, throughout the entire economy of redemption, The that the Spirit reveals the Son as the Son reveals the Father. Q^rist The preparations for Christ in the former times, whether in natural or in supernatural revelation, were under His control ; and especially the latter. Tlie testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of Rev. xix.. prophecy ; and it was the Spirit of Christ which was in them that 1°- . signified through the prophets that future redemption which is u_ the sum of revealed truth. The New Testament fully discloses both the Revealer and His interpreting Spirit : the One as much as the Other. As all truth comes through the Son Who revealeth what He hath heard of My Father, so the inspiration of the Spirit John xv. has always made man capable of receiving the revelation. The Holy Ghost fulfils Christ's Divine word : He shall not speak of John xvi.. Himself. And, precisely as , the work of Christ was fully made known when He appeared among men, so the office of the Spirit as the Irispirer of the permanent records of that work was fully known only after His Pentecostal coming. 2. The phraseology of Scripture- has been seen to be faithful to Phraseo- this truth. There is a gradual unfolding of it from the beginning. a^H;™ The Spirit is dimly, though less and less dimly, alluded to in the Old Testament as the Inspirer : in the songs of the neutral ground between the Old and the New Testaments He is more clearly spoken of; until after Pentecost He becomes the representative of all the revelations of the Holy Trinity. This principle must regulate our interpretation of certain passages that might seem to speak otherwise : that is, with less distinctive reference to the Holy Ghost as the Inspirer. God is said to have spoken or done what is spoken or done by each Person in the Trinity : a canon this of great importance generally. It was the Lord, the God of Lukei.68* Israel who hath visited and redeemed His people ; but the Son was the Redeemer. God sent His Son : but St. John's testimony goes on that 1 John iv. the Father sent the Son to be the Saviour of the world. So it is said that ' God spake unto the fathers by the prophets ; but holy men of God spake Heb. i. 1. 170 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. 2 Peter i. 21. 2 Tim. iii. 16. The Honour of the Spirit. Deut. xxxii. 4. as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. The Scripture is God-inspired, 6e6irvevo-To<;, but only the Spirit is the Inspiring God. 3. Hence special honour is due and should be paid to the Holy Ghost in His office and province : He is the God of Scripture. In this domain He is supreme ; according to the Nicene Confes sion, which introduces this Divine work into the highest act of worship : Who spake by the prophets. It is therefore not to be wondered at or condemned that we pay also a certaiu homage to the Scriptures as His finished work. What is wrongly charged upon this submission as Bibliolatry is a becoming sentiment of reverence for the Spirit in His word. Of Him also it may be said, His work is perfect, despite any supposed appearances to the con trary. As creation and providence and redemption are finished and complete severally, so also is the organisation of the Scripture : perhaps all the more perfect because of some things which we in our ignorance count imperfection. THE ORGANS OF INSPIRATION. The The men chosen of the Holy Ghost to be the organs of Inspired, inspiration were by Him sanctified through the truth for their office ; their faculties were prepared by His influence for the special province of inspiration assigned to them individually; and He superintended and controUed the exercise of those faculties for the accompbshment of His own end in the construction of Scripture. Holy Men 1. St. Peter, referring to the prophetic Word, tells us that holy men of God spake as tliey were moved by tlie Holy Ghost. It may be affirmed of all the instruments used for this high function that they were under the common sanctifying inspiration or influence of the Spirit. It is true that revelations were given — that is, dis closures of truth, and visions of the future — both in the Old Testament and in the New to men who were raised "up to this end, but were personally unsanctified : but Balaam and Caiaphas, though they received a transitory inspiration, were not employed to perpetuate or hand down their predictions. They were used 2 Peter i 21. INSPIRATION. 171 for a purpose, and their enforced ministry was taken up, like Pharaoh's, into the Divine plan. Similarly, certain writings, not themselves written by inspired men, are incorporated into the fabric of Scripture. These were all exceptions to the general rule, that only those who are in harmony with truth and under its sanctifying influence received its higher revelations. 2. But the Spirit used His instruments as men : their sanctity, or special consecration to their task, was the sanctification of their natural endowments, acquisitions, and study. They were not passive in the writing of Scripture, even to that degree in whieh they were passive in receiving revelation. They wrote, some times after long interval, what they had received; and always according to the characteristics of their individual genius, style of thoughts, and diction. But their faculties were raised, invigorated, and strengthened to their highest pitch. What has been termed the Dynamical theory of inspiration, — namely, that its influence acted upon and through the faculties of the inspired person, — is proved to be true by aU the phenomena of the several books. From the record of the most transcendent visions down to the simplest private letter, the writer in Scripture is true to himsetf. No individual author in the classical literature of Greece or Rome differs more from every other than every writer in Scripture differs from his fellow, Chronicler from Chronicler, Prophet from Prophet, Evangelist from Evangelist, Apostle from Apostle. 3. Inspiration proper is then the specific influence on the mind, after these pre-requisites are provided for. And, although no distinctions in degree are alluded to in Scripture, the evidence may be found there that the one and the selfsame Spirit, dividing to every man severally as He will, regulated His inspiring influence by the need. (1.) There are some portions of the Holy Writings in which pure revelation and inspiration coincide; where the inspiring Spirit would suggest the truth, and also the words in which to clothe it; in fact, use His instruments almost mechanically to subserve His purpose. It may not be easy to distinguish in every case the results of the verbal inspiration ; and the fact that the autographs of the Bible have disappeared proves that the Holy Ghost has allowed nothing vital to depend on such a distinction. Human Instru ments. Nature of In fluence. t Cor. xiL 11. Verbal. 172 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. The most sacred words of our Lord are reproduced with slight- variations by those to whose remembrance they were recalled -r John xiv. but we observe that His promise ran : He shall teach you all i 26 and bring all things to your remembrance, iravra a, whatsoever I have said unto you. The fluctuation of the expressions used by the several reporters does not invalidate the assumption that in much of Scripture there is the inspiration of Suggestion, especiaUy of the things and sometimes of the very words. Logical (2.) Many parts of the Bible, especiaUy of the New Testament, Argument are ^ne i0gicai development and formal arrangement of doctrme. St. Paul in his Epistles reasons from the Old Testament in asser tion and defence of New-Testament truth ; just as he and the other preachers of the Gospel proved from Scripture that Jesus was Christ. It is most obvious that in the conduct of his argu ment he uses his faculties according to the discipline of his youth. 1 Cor. ii. Rut he himself tells us that he also used words which the Holy Ghost 13 ¦ .... teacheth, and enjoyed that special inspiration of the Spirit which John xvi. was promised by our Lord : He will guide you into all truth, d&ryipm,. 13- He shall guide you in the way of reflection, argument, and sound exposition. All the Apostles received for the Church and the world what the Two received on the morning of the resurrection, Luke and the Eleven afterwards : Then opened He their understanding, xxiv.45. {fat {fay migJit understand the Scriptures. Indepen- (3.) A large portion of Scripture is testimony to fact, of various dent kinds ; and no theory of inspiration of witnesses can be accepted Testimony ,.,',,, ,, - - , , , - which should destroy their independent character as witnesses. They were inspired or moved to deliver their independent and faithful testimony. Sometimes they have to register facts, or supposed facts, which they gather from public records ; sometimes to record traditions, legends, current opinions, or uninspired pre dictions handed down by tradition : in these cases they are only witnesses of what they found. Sometimes they have to narrate events in which they had taken part to a greater or less extent : in this case they are directed to chronicle the result of their own investigations, each according to his own lights. Occasionally they are concurrent witnesses of transactions which they observed from different points of view : under such circumstances there is no previous harmonising of the testimonies, but each gives his own INSPIRATION. 173 faithful witness, according to his Divinely aided remembrance, the Divine aid, however, not necessarily rectifying the original defect or incompleteness of observation. Hence arise certain differences of presentation which the free Spirit has permitted : differences which are just enough to show that the witnesses are sent to give their evidence as independent, never enough to betray the supreme cause of truth. (4.) Once more, much of the Scripture is the result of what Editorial. would be called among men editorial arrangement. This extends over a considerable portion of the Old Testament, and is what St. Luke, for instance, in the New claims for his own function. Now the presiding and controlling influence of the Spirit was .as much needed for this as for any other department of the economy of revelation ; but His inspiration was of a different character. He taught His instruments to distinguish in Hebrew Uterature what was His own and what was not ; He superintended the arrangement of the Psalms ; He taught the Evangelists to sift the oral traditions which were rich with the deposits and memorials of the Sacred Life ; and, generally, He watched over and directed the construction of organic Holy Writ as one great body of Literature, in many human respects like all other litera ture, but Divinely distinguished from every other. THE SCRIPTURES OF INSPIRATION. The Scriptures themselves may be said to be inspired as containing the permanent mind of the Spirit, and being the organ of His abiding and living influence. Hence this attribute in many ways distinguishes them from all other literature, sacred and secular. TITLES. The names given to the collection of Books confirm all that has been said of them : whether those names are found in the Bible itself, or are the reverent invention of later times. The writers themselves use the very highest appellatives ; and never refer to the contents of the volume as a whole, or to any the least frag- The Scriptures Titles. 174 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. ¦ 1 . ment of it, without some expression of deep reverence. This habit was not confined to the Jews, ancient or modern, whose well-known reverence approached superstition : it is shared by the disciples whom their Lord forbade to call any man master on earth, who had brought them a new law, and most cer tainly would not have suffered them to give such titles to any but the writings of God. In this, too, they had His example. 2 Tim. iii. They are the SACRED WRITINGS, ra Upa. ypdp.p.aTa. Thus St. Paul speaks of the Old Testament, and in a connection which shows that the things which Timothy received through faith in Christ Jesus were of equal authority, and therefore that the New was to be included. Scripture everywhere, they are in this closing page Holy Scripture : The Writings pre-eminently, which refer not to the passing phenomena of time, but to the things of eternity. This is the only title they receive as a whole. They are the Word of God, however, in the estimation of Chris tians, as enshrining the Evangelical record of the work of Christ 1 Peter i. which liveth and abideth for ever ,- also, as containing the com- 23 • ... pendium of all the distinct revelations which are caUed individually the Words of God ; and finally as suggesting, what indeed they do not express, the close connection between the inspired Word and the Word Incarnate. It is in some cases difficult to decide „ , . exegetically whether the term A.fyos refers to the Eternal Word Heb. iv. ° J ' 12 13. or to tne word spoken. authority. In the 1. Its plenary inspiration makes Holy Scripture the absolute and Church. gnai authority, all-sufficient as the supreme Standard of Faith, Directory of Morals, and Charter of Privileges to the Church of God. Of course, the Book of Divine revelations cannot contain anything untrue j but its infallibility is by itself especially con nected with religious truth. It constitutes, as will be hereafter seen, the absolute Canon or Book of Faith. It is comparatively silent as to human science ; it has its own laws of grammar and rhetoric; it quotes traditions and admits records as testimony without pledging itself to their exactness. It does not profess to be Divine in any such sense as should remove it from human litera ture : a Bible of that kind would be something very different from INSPIRATION. 175 what we have. It is, after all, a Divine-human collection of documents : the precise relation of the human to the Divine is a problem which has engaged much attention, and has not yet been, though it may yet be, adequately solved. But in the domain of reUgious truth, and the kingdom of God among men, its claim to authority and sufficiency is absolute. 2. The evidence of the inspiration of the Scriptures belongs Creden- rather to the historical review which will follow. It is sufficient "* s- to say here that it is found in its own testimony, confirmed by its effects. Here once more we must needs argue in what seems to be a circle. In fact, there are no evidences to be brought to the question from without : only credentials from within. The Book may be said to be inspired. St. Paul uses that expression, not of the writers, but of what they write ; and points to its profitable uses for the proof. His words, already quoted, may be quoted again as the last authoritative assertion on the subject which the Scriptures themselves contain. Every Scripture being inspired is 2 Tim. iii. also profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness. This was St. Paul's final testimony, one of his Faithful Sayings : uttered when all his own writings were in the world, concerning which St. Peter used the same term Fpacjia.-;, classing them with the other Scriptures. When he thus spoke to 2 Peteriii. Timothy, he was himself giving him instruction which the older Scriptures could not give : hence the New Testament is included with the Old in the general declaration. The power of the holy oracles in the souls of all who study them has mostly been recog nised as its supreme credential. The Holy Ghost lives in the Word ; and His testimony to that Word, as the organ of His grace, is irresistible to the believer. To the unbeliever as such the inspiration of the Bible cannot be proved. HISTORICAL DEVELOPMENT. Historical The subject of Inspiration occupies a large place in the history of religious thought and ecclesiastical polemics; which is not to be wondered at, considering the vast issues at stake. On the question whether God has given to His 176 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH Heathen. De Div. 1. people an authoritative revelation of His will hangs every interest of truth, assurance, and certitude of faith. If the Bible is what our doctrine of inspiration asserts it to be, many great questions of controversy among the Churches are, or ought to be, at once settled by it. This gives harmony where all else is confusion. But the doctrine has been and is impugned ; and we must consider weU the attacks upon a position so vital. Hence a general view of its development is very important in the settlement of the doctrine. In order to make the survey complete, it is well to consider the universal tradition of mankind, the judgment of the Jewish Church, the ecclesiastical dogmas in Christendom, and the present state of opinion and controversy as to the nature and effect of inspiration. HEATHENISM. In common with every doctrine of the Faith, this one had its distorted shadow in the heathen world ; but the distinction we establish between Revelation and Inspiration is not here to be expected. Generally, a sentence of Cicero may speak for all : Vetus opinio est, jam usque ab heroicis ducta temporibus, eaque et populi Romani et omnium gentium firmata consensu, versari quandam inter homines divinationem. More particularly, the /xavm5 or Prophets, announcing their frenzied oracles ; the Poets, feigning or not feigning a special influence on their minds ; and the Lawgivers, of whom Numa is only a representative, cor respond, in a certain sense, to the Prophecy, to the Hagiographa or Psalms, and to the Law, of the Jewish doctrine of inspiration. In a certain sense only, however : for heathenism knew nothing, nor pretended to know anything, of a great system of supernatural truth revealed to the minds of men. JUDAISM. Judaic. The Jewish Church, before the Old-Testament Canon closed, had an absolute faith in the inspiration of Moses and the Prophets, INSPIRATION. 177 and the authors of the other Holy Writings. They inherited a large miscellaneous literature, but carefully distinguished and held sacred that portion which was given them directly from above ; and that distinction guided, as will be hereafter seen, the settle ment of the Canon. The Judaism of the Interval retained, with scarcely perceptible diminution of intensity, the same faith. The apocryphal authors assert the essential difference between human and Divine writings. In the book which Baruch wrote in Babylon, God is appealed to in these terms : As Thou spakest by Baruch ii. Thy servant Moses in the day when Thou didst command him to write 28- Thy law. Tobit also instructs his son to depart out of Nineveh, Tob.xiv.8. because that those things which the prophet Jonas spake shall surely come to pass. In Ecelesiasticus we read of many prophets by name, and of Isaiah who saw by an excellent Spirit what was to come Ecclus. to pass at the last, and he comforted them that mourned in Sion. xlviii. 24. Jonathan, seeking the friendship of the Lacedemonians, professes nevertheless not to need it, for that we have the holy books of Scrip- 1 M'acc. ture in our hands to comfort us. The book of Ecelesiasticus in its xu" 9 occasional high prophetic tone seems to claim inspiration ; but its claim was never admitted ; and it prays indeed for the restoration of lost prophecy, from the cessation of which events were dated : raise up prophets that hare been in Thy Name ; as we read also in Ecclus. Maccabees, So there was a great affliction in Israel, the like whereof xxxvi.15. was not since the time that a p-ophet was not seen among them. Philo, jx 07 an Alexandrian Jew, betrays the influence of Greek thought; but he has a high theory of inspiration, and declares that the prophets are Divine Interpreters, God making use of them as organs to mani fest His will, suggesting what they must say. Josephus represents the purer Palestinian belief : " It is implanted in every Jew from Cont. the hour of his birth to esteem these writings as the ordinances Apion. i. of God, and to stand by them ; in defence of them, if need be, cheerfully to die." He, like Philo, includes the historical books among the records of inspiration ; and assigns an equal value to all inspired utterances. With later Judaism we need not much con cern ourselves. It has lost its authority as a witness, in conse quence of its opposition to the Third Person of the Holy Trinity Whom Christianity has honoured as the Inspirer. Moses Mai monides, in the twelfth century, was the first to devise three VOL. I. N 6—8 178 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. Christian. stages of inspiration : the Mosaic, without dream, fearless, face to face, constant, in which none shared the prerogative of Moses ; the Prophetic, in which the pure truth was simply unveiled ; and that of the Kethubim, or Hagiographa, given by the Holy Spirit disclosing part of the truth in dreams or otherwise. Maimonides is the master genius of modern orthodox Judaism : " A Mose ad Mosem non surrexit sicut Moses " is a saying that expresses its method of rejecting the Prophet greater than Moses. But, apart from these philosophical notions of modern Judaism, the residuary and obsolete Jewish Church — if it may be so called — has always been faithful to its original and high doctrine of inspiration. THE CHRISTIAN CHURCH. In the Christian Church the dogma has had an important pro cess of development, or rather of variations in theological opinion. Patristic. Cohort. c. 8. PATRISTIC. 1. The Patristic age furnishes no definition of inspiration, but a very high doctrine was maintained. The Apostohcal Fathers quote the Old Testament exactly as the Apostles do : with the same reverent trust, and also with the same freedom. Clemens Romanus, the first uninspired Christian writer, assigns to the Scriptures of both Testaments the fullest inspiration; they are "the true sayings of the Holy Ghost." Polycarp quotes the Apostles' words as being words of Scripture ; and St. Paul in particular is by more than one said to write as irvevpjvrucas or divinitus inspiratus. Generally these earliest authorities make the Two Testaments One Scripture. The Apologists unani mously teach, or rather exhibit, almost a mechanical idea of it; some of them, however, limiting its range to religious truth. They adopt the figure of the Lyre on which the Holy Ghost discoursed. Justin Martyr used this figure in what may be regarded as the first theological definition : Ovre vo-a ovk avOputTrlvg ivvoia could men know such great and heavenly things, but by a gift, 8 Kiddpas twos */ Xvpas )(pG>p.€vov. Tertullian, who invented many theological terms, first used that of Inspiratio. The early INSPIRATION. 179 Fathers generally and as a body maintained the same high view Origen, erring on many other points, held on this the highest theory. Chrysostom and Augustine make the prophets the Mouth and the Hand of God : the latter speaks of the venerabilem stylum Sanctse Scripturae. The Nicene Creed includes the Apostles when it confesses to the Holy Ghost Who spake by the prophets ; this was the witness of the early and undivided Church to the inspiration of the Old Testament through the agency of the Personal Spirit, to XaXrjo-ov 8<.a iw irpo4>-n.r£>v. In harmony with this the Holy Ghost was called the Prophetic SPIRIT : Uvevpd re to TrporjTiKov o-eBop-eQa. koX irpoo-Kvvovpev. On Just. Mar. the whole, the Patristic Church was faithful to the doctrine which Apol. 1. the last of the early Fathers, Gregory the Great, represented when he said : " It is needless to ask what writer wrote, as the Holy Ghost was the only author : it is superfluous to inquire with what pen an author writes." An appeal to the words of the Old or the New Testament, of either or of both, was an end of all controversy in those days as it is in our own. 2. Withal there were, as might be expected, the germs of later Germs of freedom and indeed laxity. The Montanist heresy, which assumed Laxity. a series of Pentecosts and administrations of the inspiring Spirit, was wholly rejected ; but it has had its modern representatives. The Alexandrian doctors, generally sound, here and there allude to an inspiration common to the prophecies of heathenism and Scriptural prophecies. Tertullian sometimes spoke, as others have spoken since, of an inspiration of all edifying books. Origen and Augustine seem to have admitted that some portions of the Bible were given without inspiration, or by inspiration of a limited degree. Some authors, even more than they, laid stress upon the subjective or human element. And this was carried in the Antiochene school, represented by Theodore of Mopsuestia, to an extreme : the writers were mirrors reflecting according to their polish. Theodore was condemned by the Fifth CEcumenical Council for surrendering certain books of the Old Testament and of the New. But, like Luther, who foUowed him in this, he held a high doctrine as to the inspiration of what he accepted ; though, like Luther, applying a subjective canon of his own to determine what ought to be Scripture or what ought to be excluded. N 2 180 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. Medieval. - MEDIEVAL. In the Mediaeval Church, the doctrine of inspiration was obscured by the gradual elevation of Tradition into a co-ordinate rank : in fact, the notion of two inspirations — that of the Spirit in the Bible, and of the Spirit in the Church — was gradually established. But the theory did not otherwise suffer : the words of Scripture were still regarded as having a normal authority of their own. Fredegisus of Tours (804) even laid down a most rigorous mechanical statement on the subject. But he was opposed by freer theories, which in the rationalist treatment of Abelard and the subtile disquisitions of Thomas Aquinas antici pated later distinctions of the Spirit's inspiring influence. The Mystics, who in this age were mostly Pantheistic in their ten dencies, gave up any definite doctrine of inspiration, making it common to all saints in their intuition of Divine things ; and they thus provoked in some of the precursors of the Reformation a recoil to the most rigid possible views. Meanwhile the co ordination of oral tradition steadily advanced, untU it was formu- Sess. iv. lated at the Council of Trent thus : Sanctus Synodus, hoc sibi Can Sc perpetuo ante oculos proponens, ut sublatis erroribus puritas ipsa evangelii in ecclesia conservetur, perspiciensque hanc veritatem et disciplinam contineri in libris scriptis et sine scripto traditionibus, quae ex ipsius Christi ore ab Apostolis accepta, aut ab ipsis Apostolis S. S. dictante, quasi per manus tradita ad nos usque pervenerunt, orthodoxorum patrum exempla secuta omnes libros tam V. quam N. T, cum utriusque unus Deus sit auctor, necnon traditiones ipsas, turn ad fidem quum ad mores pertinentes, tan quam vel ore tenus a Christo vel a S. S. dictatas et continua successione in Ecclesia Catholica conservatas, PARI PIETATIS AFFECTU ac reverentia suscipit et veneratur. Si quis autem traditiones prsedictas sciens et prudens contemserit, anathema sit. TheRefor- THE REFORMATION. mation. The Reformation began in earnest the discussion of the dogma, as bound up with its cardinal principle, of the sufficiency of Scrip ture for all things pertaining to human salvation. INSPIRATION. 181 1. Its leaders were lax in their first decisions. Luther insisted on a material inspiration, as tb doctrine, and a formal, as to the manner, which was of less importance : he subjected the books of the New Testament to the criterion of his own judgment as to their Evangelical character, and rejected, for instance, the Epistle of St. James. Calvin went also very far in the admission of the human peculiarities. Hence, their Romish opponents found in this laxity a strong argument in favour of Tradition. The Formularies of the two branches of the Reformation varied. The Augsburg Confession is content with the absolute regulative authority of Scripture : " Regulam autem habemus, ut verbum Dei condat articulos fidei." The Reformed Confessions were stronger: the " Formula Consensus Helvetici " says : "Hebraicus codex V. T., turn quoad consonas, turn quoad vocalia, sive puncta ipsa sive punctorum saltern potestatem, et turn quoad res turn quoad verba, fleo-nreuo-ros." This was directed against Luther, who asserted that wood, hay, and stubble might be in the prophets, though the substance was there that could not be burned. The Anglican Articles are like the Lutheran more nega tive, the Westminster Confession more rigid. But the dogmatic divines of tlie new Churches tended gradually to the very highest rigour, as expressed in the Helvetic Formulary : thus Buxtorf maintained, irrationaUy, that the very vowel points of the Hebrew were inspired. In harmony with this, they asserted that the Testimonium Spiritus Sancti was the sole ground of assurance as to the Divine authority of Scripture, while the Affectiones Scriptures vindicated it to human faith and commended it to human acceptance : two incontrovertible truths, which, however, needed not the mechanical or Rabbinical doctrine. 2. The recoil from this extreme was to be expected. Tho reaction commenced with the early Arminian divines, who reserved the direct action of the Spirit for matters of faith, leaving historical research and memory to do their part. Thus Grotius says : A Spiritu Sancto dictari historias non opus fuit ; satis fuit scriptorem memoria valere, aut diligentia in describendis veterum commentariis. The later Lutherans introduced grades of inspiration : Calixtus, those of Revelation and Assistance ; Pfaff, those of Revelation, Direction as to dogma, and Permission The Leaders and Con fessions. Freer Theories. Arminian. 182 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. as to all else. Witsius, however, in HoUand, revived and main tained the more rigid view. The Jesuits, in the sixteenth century, introduced a convenient theory of Postspiratio, which should retrospectively elevate such books as the Maccabees into Scrip ture. This was protested against by the University of Louvain (1588), and left undecided by Sixtus V. The Romish Church has never gone beyond Perrone, one of its Uving representatives : Prelect. " Diximus saltern QUOAD RES ET SENTENTIAS, quia cum noluerit Theol. Ecclesia definire, seu dirimere qusestionem inter scholasticos agitatam, utrum preterea Deus verba ipsa dictaverit, nexumque verborum et periodorum, ideo ne controversiam domesticam cum ecclesise doctrina temere permisceremus, coarctavimus proposi- tionis sensum ad rei substantiam, sine qua vera Inspiratio Divina neque est neque intelligi quidem potest." MeanwhUe modern Mysticism has made the Internal Light co-ordinate with inspira tion, just as Romanism has made Tradition. The highest Mystics, of all communions, rose sublimely above the written Word. The Pietists, however, such as Arndt, Spener, and the Bengel school, paid full honour tp the written Scripture, maintaining, however, the supremacy of the Living Spirit. The Quakers in their formu laries — for they have them — give ambiguous statements : Barclay supposes that the Scripture only guides the Christian's internal standard. The early Socinians believed in inspiration : without the specific Personal Inspirer, though as a specific influence. The Racovian Catechism indicates traces of the truth from which modern Unitarianism has declined, as it has receded from many of the other higher doctrines of Socinianism. MORE MODERN HYPOTHESES. Modern L Most orthodox churches have more recently endeavoured to Theories, maintain a doctrine of Plenary inspiration in harmony with the notion of different Degrees. Rejecting the terms Mechanical and Verbal, as both inconsistent with the human element, they have sometimes used Dynamical, as indicating that the inspiring influence was not so much upon as in and through the writers : the result, however, being the infallible Rule of Faith delivered by the instrumentality of men acted upon according to the laws INSPIRATION. 183 of their own nature. This has required the distinction of Sug gestion, the direct revelation of things otherwise unknown ; Elevation, providing for the due preparation of the instruments ; and Superintendency, as guarding the processes from the in trusion of error. The second of these is by many, naturally enough, thought superfluous. The Inspiration is Plenary, as making the Holy Spirit responsible for the truth of all the matter; but not Verbal, as if He dictated the very words, which in some cases are lost with the autographs of Scripture. Those who reject all such theories of distinction are wont to attribute them to the influence of Maimonides : but unjustly, for they are held by some of the most eminent and orthodox writers on the subject in all churches ; and in some form must be accepted by every dispassionate student as nowhere contradicted by Scripture. 2. This view of the co-ordination of the Divine and Human undoubtedly lies at the foundation of the true doctrine ; but its dogmatic definition is difficult and as dangerous as difficult. (1 .) The least error here leads to an annihilation of the essential distinction between the action of the Spirit of God on Apostles and Prophets and His general influence in purifying the regenerate faculties for the apprehension of truth. The notion of an analogy between this unity of Divine and human and the Divine and human nature in Christ is liable to the same errors which have beset the doctrine of our Lord's own Person. The Divine element has been and is still by many carried to an extreme in the view of inspiration that makes the human faculties absolutely passive : the Eutychian perversion, so to speak, according to which there is no humanity or human agency left. This has been sufficiently referred to, and is indeed self-convicted. But the reaction is more important in its consequences : the Nestorian perversion, on the other hand, which assigns to the human element such a dis tinctness and such an ascendency as leaves no room for a distinct inspiring influence of the Holy Ghost. (2.) Schleiermacher has given the tone to much modern English thought on this and other subjects. Coleridge, Morell, Maurice, and others regard the inspiring energy as only the impartation of clear intuitions of spiritual truth by extraordinary means : namely, the raising of the faculties of the mind to a higher potency of Dynami cal Inspir ation. Divine and Human. School of Schleier macher. 29. 184 THE DIVINE RULE OF VAITH. what all good men possess. Their notion makes inspiration simply a sympathy with the revealing mind of Christ, the Apostles having had it only in a higher degree than ourselves. The N imb.xi. apostrophe of Moses, Enviest Hum for my sake? would God tliat all the Lord's people were prophets, and that the Lord would put His Spirit upon them I loses its meaning. There is on this assump tion no special prerogative of inspiration : aU believers are inspired according to the measure of their union with the Lord. If the mechanical theory swallowed up the men in the Inspirer this loses the Inspirer in the men : both errors are equally to be avoided. Truth in (3 .) Again, great numbers of orthodox theologians follow Rothe, tne Martensen, and others, in regarding each writer as contributing ° his independent portion of what is perfect truth only when the aggregate is received. However much this principle may be condemned in the form it commonly assumes, there is in it much truth. The Bible is one organic whole. Truth is in every part ; the whole truth, however, is only in the complete Bible. The writers of the Old Testament were inspired in anticipation of the New ; and the writers of the New Testament were inspired to sup plement the Old. The Synoptic Evangelists do nnt give the full mind of the Spirit as to the Person of Christ ; but St. John's pre sentation of it requires theirs as a background. So, descemUng into details, every writer in the New Testament adds some fruit of inspiration which is not found in any other. There is hardly a recorded event in the Lord's life which is not transmitted by the Holy Ghost with various shades of difference in the several Evangelists, and to be understood fuUy only when the different recorders are collected. But it is obvious that all this touches the results of inspiration, and not inspiration itself. Human (4.) There is a strong disposition to unite two things which are incompatible : the belief in an Inspiring Spirit responsible for all spiritual truth with the hypothesis that the human element is liable to all the common infirmities of human composition. When the analogy of our Lord's one Person in two natures is pressed into the service of this theory, it ought not to be forgotten that the human nature of our Lord was sinless and incapable of sin. If its upholders allow that the human element in the Bible is un susceptible of real error, however affected by infirmity, their In firmities. INSPIRATION. 185 doctrine may be made safe, and, if safe, it is deeply interest ing and instructive. But that is not generally the view of those to whom we refer. They would indeed limit the possible incor rectness of our present form of Scripture to things entirely un connected with faith ; and account for it in various ways. Some of these methods are consistent with the dignity of the Word of God : they are such as have been hinted at already. Others are vain and needless devices, and surrender the principle of inspira tion to vagueness and uncertainty. THE APOLOGY OF INSPIRATION. Modern assaults on the inspiration of Scripture are of. two Assaults kinds : they either deny its possibility on abstract grounds, as an they deny the possibility of revelation generally, or they seek to resist the evidences of its inspiration as a concrete book. PHILOSOPHY AND NATURALISM. 1. Spinoza, in the seventeenth century, united the two methods of attack. He rejected, on Pantheistic principles, the idea of any independent action of God, and was the first in later times to accumulate objections against the dogma derived from the text itself. He has not been followed by many in his extreme Pan theism; but Deism in England, and Rationalism or Illuminism in Germany and France, joined with Pantheistic philosophy in refusing to admit any Divine inspiration which should supple ment the religion of nature as based on the intuitional conscious ness of the human mind and its inherent perception of truth. But the defence of revelation generally is the defence of the method of imparting it. The possibility of inspiration consistently denied by Pantheism is inconsistently denied by Deism; for, with the assump tion of a personal God Who is not transcendent but reveals Himself, all their arguments fall. Apart, however, from such denials of revelation generally, this specific doctrine is philosophi cally opposed by many on psychological grounds. The views of Schleiermacher, and many who echo him, have already been referred to as introducing a false notion of the doctrine. They do in fact really lead to a denial of it altogether. It is thought Philosophy. 186 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. that religious knowledge, like all knowledge, is only the intuitional consciousness gazing upon realities ; and, therefore, that it is un- philosophical to distinguish between the inspiration of the writers of Scripture and the general Christian consciousness. But this notion undermines the foundations of a supernatural disclosure of the mind of God to man. Some seek to make a compromise. They think, with Coleridge, that in old time God did super naturally communicate to men knowledge by the Law and the Prophets ; but that in these latter and freer days He makes com mon His revelations through the grace of enlightenment given to all. Hence, so far as the Christian revelation is concerned, there is no infallible authority beyond the testimonies of fallible con sciousness. The more thoroughly the objections to a specific influence on the mind from without are considered, the more baseless will they appear. One human spirit can influence, and, as it were, inspire another. But here we have to do with the Creator of the human spirit, Who can not only move upon it but lodge His truth within it. There is literally no philosophical argument of any value against the Christian doctrine of a special inspiring influence of the Holy Ghost. Discre- INTERNAL DIFFICULTIES AND DISCREPANCIES. pancies. From very early times the industry of scepticism has been busy with the internal inconsistencies of Scripture, of which a very formidable list has been made out. Infidels early learned to use this weapon : it did not escape them that the BibUcal library abounds, literally abounds, with the materials for their task; the enemies of the Bible they have thought to find in its own house hold. But it will be seen by the student who gives the records of revelation the advantage of being supposed consistent, unless positive proof of inconsistency is found, that there are only such difficulties in the Scriptures as might be expected in such a book, written as it was written, and for the disciplinary, educational purpose which it has in view. Very much is done in the way of answering objections thus urged by simply analysing them. Such an analysis, however, to be of any value must be complete ; and the examination it requires belongs to the departments of Biblical Introduction and Hermeneutics. AU that is possible in our INSPIRATION. 187 dogmatic system is to indicate some general principles that must be remembered in conducting it, and to point out the bearing of the question on our present doctrine. 1. Many discrepancies are, or at least may be, the result of Auto- copying and translation. We have not the Originals; there graPnsn°t is not a solitary autograph of Prophet or Apostle extant ; and many errors of transcription may be admitted, and indeed must be admitted, by every candid student of the text : the inspiring Spirit has watched over the vicissitudes incident to the transmission of human literature without superseding them. The consideration of this question, however, belongs to Biblical Criticism. It is enough here to say, that there are few portions of Holy Scripture of which we can be sure that they lie before us precisely as they left the hand of the first writers. The process of copying the Hebrew of the Old Testament was pecu- Errors of liarly liable to danger : from the similarity of the letters, generally, J-ra*;scrip- and specifically from the ancient habit of representing numbers by letters of the alphabet, the difference between units and hundreds and thousands being marked by the addition of points to the units. This is a fact generally conceded. Dr. Kennicott says, " That the Jewish transcribers did frequently express the Bible numbers in the original by single letters is well known to the learned." And Winer: "In expressing numbers, the Jews, in the period after the Captivity, employed the letters of the alpha bet, as is evident from the inscriptions of the so-called Samaritan coins; and it is not improbable that the Old Hebrews did the same, just as the Greeks, who derived their alphabet from the Phoenicians, from the earliest ages expressed their numbers by letters. From the confounding of similarly shaped letters when used for numerals, and from the subsequent writing out the same in words, can be explained satisfactorily in part the enormous sums in the Old-Testament books, and the contradictions in their statement of numbers ; yet caution is necessary here." A very large number of the contradictory historical statements detected by comparing the Chronicles with the Kings, and Ezra with Nehemiah, and the Genealogical Tables one with another, may fairly be thus explained. Nor should any weight be attached to these, though numbered by hundreds : each of them must be care- 188 THE DIVINE RULE OF FAITH. 1 Kings vii. 26. 2 Chron. iv. 6. 2 Sam. viii. 4. 1 Chron. xviii. 4. Bom. ix. 3. fully sifted, and the result will generally be satisfactory. When it is not so, we are bound to believe that errors have crept in through the operation of causes that we cannot now trace. For instance, we read in one account that the molten sea contained two thousand baths ; in another, and it received and held three Jwusand baths. Now here we have an instance that may stand for many. Either 5, 2000, has been confounded with j', 3000 — the more probable solution — or the words received and held suggest that it was capable of containing the larger number. This is the first example that occurs : nothing but want of space prevents refer ence to many others. In this case we need not absolutely resort to a corruption of the text ; but there are others in which there is no other hypothesis open. When we read seven hundred horse men in one account, and seven thousand horsemen in another, we must suppose that ] has been miswritten for ?, an easy mistake. In multitudes of texts we must accept such errors ; steadfastly believing, however, that they are thus to be accounted for. And that, because we are equally bound to believe that the Scriptures of the Old Testament which St. Paul calls the Oracles of God were originally written under the inspiration of the Holy Ghost. The New Testament has not been shielded from the errors of transcrip tion : mistakes sometimes arising from carelessness, sometimes from design, but in neither case obviated by any continuous miracle. In the New Testament we have some early manuscripts that supply a standard of judgment ; but it cannot be absolutely asserted that there are not errors now appearing even in all of them ; and one or two seeming misstatements in historical allusion may be among the number. Here the only question that concerns us is, not how to reconcile inspiration with error in the Bible, but inspiration with a Bible liable to corruption in the text. That is a question not hard of solution. It is enough to the beUever to accept the fact, and to admit all its consequences into his theory of inspiration. The holy men who wrote these books were inspired ; but their inspira tion left no protective virtue in these document's themselves. All we can say is, that it has not pleased God to bind up His eternal truth absolutely and inseparably for good and evil with docu ments that perish in the using. The truth of the Bible is not staked upon the truth of every sentence that may be found in our INSPIRATION. 189 copies of it. Meanwhile, it may be affirmed, on the other hand, that so far as concerns that Wmd of God which liveth and abideth * Pet. i. 23 for ever, no corruptions of the written text have been suffered to interfere with ita perfect presentation. Not one of all the multi tude of various readings in the margins of both Testaments affects in the slightest degree the foundation of the doctrine on which man's salvation depends. 2. Many of the arguments urged against the inspiration of Verbal In- Scripture are really directed against a false or exaggerated notion ^ of its verbal character, and consequently fall away before a freer theory. That many words and sentences were given or suggested to the writers cannot be doubted by anyone who considers the solemn importance of some of the leading terms of Scripture. But to assert that every word was put into the mind of every writer on every subject is to lay on our doctrine a burden too heavy to be borne. It is hard to suppose that the very words in that case would not have been protected for ever. And such inspiration would have been too mechanical to harmonise with the obvious and undeniable range given to the human faculties. But the chief point is that this notion furnishes ground of opposition which it is difficult to resist. Very many instances occur in the Gospels of variation in the reports of our Lord's words, on the -most solemn occasions, which in no case affect their sacred spirit and eternal meaning, but are absolutely incompatible with verbal inspiration. Our Lord could not have spoken the several exact words placed in His lips : what they severally mean He did speak. Tj take only one example, and that of the highest possible solemnity, we read the following accounts. Drink ye all of it ; for Matt. this is My blood of the covenant, which is shed for (irepl) many, for XXTI' remission of sins. Again : This is My blood of the covenant, which is Mark xiv. shed for (i-n-ep) many. Again : This cup is the new covenant in My 24. blood, which is shed for (iirip) you. Once more : This cup is the new 2, covenant in My blood. This do, as oft as ye drink, in remembrance of l Oor. xi. Me. Not to speak of variations in the historical scenery of the 25i first institution of the Lord's supper, transpositions, derangements, and omissions, there is evidence here that much is left to the human instrument, and that the thing signified is alone supreme. But there is no evidence in this, or in the multitude of cases of 190 THE DIVINE RULE' OF FAITH. which this is an example, against the fact of the plenary inspira tion and absolute authority of the records. The three recorders and St. Paul — who here supplements the Evangelists even as he supplemented the Apostolic company — issued their authoritative accounts from the selfsame Spirit, dividing to each severally as He would. Science 3. Objections urged against the inspiration of Scripture on the Ethics groun