EVIDENCE OF THE NEW TESTAMENT.
WE have next to place ourselves in New Testament days. It becomes us to be careful, to take off the shoes from our feet on the holiest of ground. How fresh the atmosphere here breathed; how bright the light; how happy those who live in it, and here find at the same time their joy and their security! May they that know its sweetness as well as its power, that know whom they have believed, the Christ of the New Covenant (Luke 22:2020Likewise also the cup after supper, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood, which is shed for you. (Luke 22:20), 1 Cor. 11:2525After the same manner also he took the cup, when he had supped, saying, This cup is the new testament in my blood: this do ye, as oft as ye drink it, in remembrance of me. (1 Corinthians 11:25)—Revd. Vers.) turn to account each word and thought. If the Scriptures of old testify of Him, how must not these be full of what He is! May they shed light for the reader upon that which before was at the best dim; may they impart a vigor to his faith in the oracles inherited from Israel. Let us not forget that salvation is of the Jews. If the casting away of them be the reconciling of the world, what shall the receiving of them be but life from the dead '?" And if some of the branches be broken off, and thou, being a wild olive-tree, wert grafted in among them, and with them partake of the root and fatness of the olive-tree, boast not against the branches. But if thou boast, thou bearest not the root, but the root thee.' They also, if they abide not still in unbelief, shall be grafted in; for God is able to graft them in again.'
What is the testimony of the New Testament to those Books that the Jews have held so dear, have kept inviolate amid all their blindness' to God's ways, to the revelation of Himself at Bethlehem, in the Temple, at the Cross? The Law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ.' It is meet that those who engage in the critical study of His Word should be sensible of this grace, to be humble, and to learn this truth, it may be in the Old Testament, that we may rid ourselves of bondage to human sentiment. Where the Spirit of the Lord is, there is liberty; not that of which, to his shame, the skeptic boasts, the freedom that either knows no restraint in its self-destructive course, or, if it does, finds no just excuse for its capricious treatment of the Word of God. Should any reader have been captivated by the influence such breadth of imagination can exercise over the deceitful heart of man, he might learn a lesson from the history of a man to whose lucid writings concerned with verbal criticism the writer would gladly acknowledge his obligations; one who began his career as a Biblical scholar by a self-confidence which attacked the Law of Moses, and ended it by trusting alone in the Savior's grace; one of whom it has been said, every year he lived brought with it growth of conscience, and led him somewhat nearer to Christ: we mean Wilhelm Martin Leberecht de Wette.
May the reader indeed be able to begin where the German Professor had to end! Let us pass through this part of our survey of the subject mindful of the incapacity indeed of our minds for the deep things of God, whose Spirit searches all. We may ponder the words of Augustine cited in the Preface to our English Bible: 'It is better to make doubt of those things that are secret, than to strive about those things that are uncertain.' The writer of the Preface goes on to say, As it is a fault of incredulity to doubt of those things that are evident, so to determine of such things as the Spirit of God hath left questionable can be no less than presumption.' Much is there in Biblical criticism especially which helps us to realize that the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit of God, for they are foolishness unto him; neither can he know them, because they are spiritually discerned. But he that is spiritual judgeth all things. If we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God, we are in a position to know the things that are freely given to us of God.
There is indeed little necessary to say about New Testament authority. The Greek Scriptures themselves together are a Gnomon,' a guide to which we shall take heed if in search of positive instruction, of the Truth. Cf. Tregelles" Authenticity of Daniel,' p. 78, note.
The New Testament by its citations from the Old affords evidence of the highest kind for most of the Books of the Old Covenant; that is, we meet with a consistent recognition of the Palestinian Canon. Every reader must verify this for himself.
The late Lord Hatherley wrote, The whole soul of every writer of the New Testament is, in fact, imbued with the Old, and may be said in very truth to have assimilated the Old Testament as a part of itself.' The Canonical Books of the Jews to which no reference is made in the New Testament, are none the less verified as Holy Scripture alike by the Hebrew collection and by the Septuagint. We reserve such remarks as it may be well to make upon New Testament citation, concerned with the settling of the Text, for a subsequent part of our subject, but may here commend to the reader's attention the following passages of the New Testament of which the original source is doubtful—Luke 11:49,5149Therefore also said the wisdom of God, I will send them prophets and apostles, and some of them they shall slay and persecute: (Luke 11:49)
51From the blood of Abel unto the blood of Zacharias, which perished between the altar and the temple: verily I say unto you, It shall be required of this generation. (Luke 11:51); John 7:3838He that believeth on me, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. (John 7:38); Eph. 5:1414Wherefore he saith, Awake thou that sleepest, and arise from the dead, and Christ shall give thee light. (Ephesians 5:14); James 4:55Do ye think that the scripture saith in vain, The spirit that dwelleth in us lusteth to envy? (James 4:5). We take the following from Lord Hatherley's little work, upon the testimony borne by Christ in His quotations from the Old Testament to the truth of its records: Never did it occur to any of those who were with Him from the beginning of His teaching, nor afterward to him who was chosen from amongst the pupils of Gamaliel to be Christ's chosen witness to the Gentiles, that all these varied testimonies '—to the collection of which the book from which we quote is devoted—' of word and deed on the part of our Lord to the inspired truth and the prophetic power of the Scripture, means no more than would a citation by St. Paul to Titus of one of the Cretan poets.' `Assuredly the two Testaments must stand or fall together; assuredly if the Old Scriptures be devoid in any part of truth, our Lord's testimony to them must (shocking as it is to say so) be untruthful; and if so, then indeed the moral world is again a chaos, and the Christian's hope a dream.'
There seems no real ground for believing that any of the Apocrypha are quoted or used in the New Testament. The reader may consult Gough's New Testament Quotations collated with the Scriptures of the Old Testament.' Expressions common to both may indeed occur; but that is only something which is illustrated by the history of all literature. Jude 1414And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, (Jude 14), 15, to which Davidson refers, treating it as a quotation from the book spoken of by Tertullian, seems to be analogous to 2 Tim. 3:88Now as Jannes and Jambres withstood Moses, so do these also resist the truth: men of corrupt minds, reprobate concerning the faith. (2 Timothy 3:8), which appears really to be an inspired confirmation of what is found in a Targum, one of the Jewish paraphrases of which something will be said at a later stage. Another possible explanation is that the passage in Jude rests upon the same footing as Acts 20:2525And now, behold, I know that ye all, among whom I have gone preaching the kingdom of God, shall see my face no more. (Acts 20:25), that is to say, was part of the revelation the Apostle had. Jude does not say as it is written,' or use any expression to signify he referred to a document, the early existence of which we do not however deny.