The Scriptures—and in spite of infidels, Christians believe them—are plain as to the ministration of angels: “Are they not all ministering spirits sent forth to minister to them who shall be heirs of salvation?” As regards the wickedness of man they do believe in the fall of man, they do not believe that God made the world as it is morally. They see man degraded in abominable idolatries where Christianity has nothing to do with it, where in the highest state of civilization they worshipped and do worship objects that mark the lowest possible degradation, and indulge, even the wild Indians, in the careful practice of nameless degradation themselves; they know that, in the center of modern civilization, man let loose and boastingly casting off Christianity and God, indulges in horrors too horrible to repeat. They know that where there are not such outbreaks, and where there is a great profession of religion, sin and vileness prevail and scarce hide their face; and they do not believe that God made the world in this state, they leave that to infidels. They believe, knowing God to be holy and good, that man is a fallen being. The state is a fact. Men will excuse its violence as rising up against oppression: there is a measure of truth as to certain parts of this, but they are only deeper in the mire. Where did the intolerable oppression come from? and is violence, glutting in blood and debauchery, the only remedy they have? Further, God's remedy they reject, and are helping people to reject, to their own destruction.
Kuenen is referred to in Supernatural Religion as a very able book. With sufficient contradiction to make their judgment of little worth, all these rationalists are in substance on the same ground. The Pentateuch is not a really historical book at all, but a compilation from a few old documents partly made in the time of Judges, partly in David's or Solomon's reign, partly after the exile! There, at any rate, it received its priestly form! Every divine element is completely excluded, of course therefore no prophecy. Hence, when events later than the professed date of the writing was found, it was written after these events. Jahve was the national god, but Monotheism was only that into which they gradually grew up (through a Semitic tendency)! Some think Jahve (Jehovah) a Canaanitish god; at any rate it was one party, and a small one, who held to his exclusive worship; other gods being equally recognized, even in the Pentateuch, and by the best kings! One party would have fellowship with the Canaanites; another drive them wholly out. I may mention two cases as specimens of their systems. As it is rejected as historically true, and what professes to be of Moses invented or legends, they try and compose a system, patting things together by the probabilities drawn from man's motives, rejecting all thought of any revelation of God—of course all prophecy and any mind of God in the matter. The whole is put together and compiled finally after the exile, with the object of exalting the priests and the authority of Jahve!
But I must now give in my specimens: Abimelech was disposed to unite Canaanites and followers of Jahve, and did get power thus. Gaal was a Jahvist, according to the system. Gen. 49 was written in the time of the Judges! But what is to be made of vers. 5-7, the judgment on Simeon and Levi? According to them, the then state of Simeon and Levi led the poet of xlix. to pat into Jacob's mouth this judgment of the tribes. That comes, says Dr. Oort, from Gen. 34, written at that time, “for we know of no other inducement for the invention of this story than the covenant made between the cities of Shechem.” But it is not certain that we should know the inducement, says Kuenen, and Gen. 34 was written long after. Oort himself had a difficulty—the statement in the 13th verse, that they dealt deceitfully. But this is easily met: it is interpolated. No, says Kuenen; it is a confused reminiscence of the time of the Judges, long after Gideon and Abimelech! It is well that those interested should know the principles of Dr. Kuenen, so lauded by the author of Supernatural Religion.
At the beginning of K.'s book, speaking of the standpoint of his history, he tells us it is one of a number of monographs of the principal religions. The idea of including the Israelitish and the Christian among the principal religions deserves approbation and applause, only if there exist no difference between these two and all the other forms of religions. The idea of a special divine revelation, he says, would place too deep a gulf between them and others to count these among them; and at the end he adopts the statement of Mr. Reville, that, if liberal Judaism prevails (for they have their rationalists), it will closely approach liberal Christianity, which, by its openly avowed Unitarianism, will not excite the same repugnance as orthodoxy. A fusion is hardly probable; but if all religious sects laid down their weapons, religions sentiment would only gain by it. Of course, if a man believes nothing, though there are principal religions, there is nothing to fight for. Divine revelation does not exist; and then, whether Gen. 34 be an existing fiction of the time of Abimelech, or a much later writing of confused reminiscences of that time, is very little matter, and may be left to Drs. Oort and Kuenen who would hail a fusion of Judaism and Christianity, on the ground of there being nothing divine in either.
The other specimen I would cite is, that the prediction of Gen. 49:16, 17, is a clear proof that the chapter was written in the time of the Judges, more precisely of Samson; for then Dan rose up with some vigor! Such are the speculations we are to have, instead of the word of God publicly accredited by the Lord Jesus and the apostles. These are merely instances that occur to me, or rest in my memory.
The whole system is composed of such. I have entered into it elsewhere. I have read Kuenen, Ewald, Bleek, Graf, and looked at others. But, as I said, they are—though the one upsetting the other in detail so as to destroy their proofs—just the same in substance.
Supernatural Religion is a catalog raisonnee of all the infidel German books; an advocate's special pleading against revelation. But while I avow I have not read the half of those he quotes, I cannot say he is fair in those I am acquainted with. I do not charge the author with false quotation, but with leading the reader to the opposite conclusion, for what he quotes, to that the quoted book would, if the context be read.
I quite agree with Dr. Trench that possession means possession; the case of Legion leaves no manner of doubt. But, whatever Mede and others may say, these cases are expressly distinguished from lunacy, as Matt. 4:24; and not only the Evangelists speak of devils coming out, but the Lord expressly desires them to come out. And the case of Legion seems given expressly to show it is really so, as one of the “Fathers” remarks. Even now, with all their boastings, in cases of epilepsy the doctors on postmortem examinations fail generally to find any adequate trace of disease. Scientific men have to learn that they are not all the world, and Christians who are afraid through their pretensions, and yield to semi-rationalism, are the most contemptible of all writers. Milman says our Lord adopted the current language of the day because unbelief in spiritual agency was one of the characteristic tenets of the unpopular sect of the Sadducees; as if the Lord Jesus would maintain as a truth in the minds of the people a false doctrine on a most important point where the Sadducees were right, for fear of losing His popularity by identifying Himself with them by speaking the truth! Why should He even have said anything and not merely heal the sick person? It is next door to a blasphemy. Meyer says all the efforts to explain away the history of Legion are useless. Either you must take it as a true history, or recognize legendary parts and separate them, and take the story of the swine as the reminiscence of some mishap. He is as unbelieving on these points as the rationalists could wish. Lange's explanation, which Canon Farrar has borrowed, Meyer treats with the contempt it deserves. The existence of good spirits and bad, the very dread expressed by them of judgment as yet “before the time,” and the operation of divine power in miracles, is too interwoven with the whole structure of the Gospels to take them out without destroying its whole texture. I have already remarked that the allegation that the superstition of the Jews accounts for it, proves only the folly of the reasoner who makes it, for they were not believed in by the Jews at all.
That there are many inexplicable facts, false miracles also, and wonders done by evil power is recognized in scripture; but we are tested in such cases by them; they would deceive, we read, if it were possible, the very elect, and the power of spiritual discrimination, or the want of it, is shown; and all that the author of Supernatural Religion does is to confound them all together, showing his own incapacity to discern. Real miracles such as those of the Old Testament are not at all the same as in the New Testament. Divine power was of course shown, and in grace to a people owned of God to found or guard a testimony; but the whole scene of the Lord's ministry was the expression of power in goodness in a living person there, or in a still mightier testimony to His name and redemption when He was gone.
But I ought to state why I account the statements of Supernatural Religion to be unfair. I just remark that the statement as to the book of Enoch, though very common, is entirely unfounded. The doctrine of Jade and that of this book are quite different as to the passage alleged to be borrowed. I do not call this unfair; it is too common. There was a tradition probably as to this prophecy, and the author of the book of Enoch uses it for his own objects; and in Jude the Holy Ghost gives it us, according to the truth of it. It is to me pretty clear that the book of Enoch was written by a great partisan of the Jews, and enemy of Christians, and not long after the destruction of Jerusalem. He sees up to the destruction of his tower, but then can see no farther, but is full of all promises to those faithful to Judaism. Enoch, 88:22, 23, refers pretty clearly to the destruction of the temple by the Romans, and he could not perceive whether they afterward entered the house; in 92 we have the final judgment. Lawrence gives the passage in question thus from Enoch, “Behold He cometh with ten thousand of His saints, to execute judgment upon them, and to destroy the wicked, and reprove all the carnal for everything which the sinful and ungodly have done and committed against Him”
Now there is in Jude a prophecy in general analogous; but copied it is not. In the book of Enoch the saints are judged, and the wicked destroyed. Judgment on the saints is unknown to Jude. It is the doctrine of the book of Enoch, because he holds the Jews to be God's people. He says just before, “while judgment shall come upon all the righteous;” executing judgment on the preserved is the doctrine taught. Now it is the judgment of the wicked in Jude; nor is there anything of the speaking of ungodly sinners in the book of Enoch. Both the words and doctrine are different; nor is there the least proof that the book was before Jude. My own conviction is that the book of Enoch was written after the destruction of Jerusalem—I suppose, in that case, after Jude's Epistle. The idea that the prophecy was current before both is fair enough, but for copying there is no ground whatever. There are many passages in the book of Enoch which would lead us to suppose they were taken from the New Testament—doubtless some merely proverbial sayings used by both. Both the chronological elements and the contents of the book lead, on the closest scrutiny, to the supposition that the book was written by a Jew, who was obliged to admit the judgment of his saints, those faithful to Judaism, and treated the Christians as a perverse set. He had picked up a good many truths which a Jew could own, and wrote after the destruction of Jerusalem, but sought to make the Jews still believe in the accomplishment of the promises made to the nation. It is curious as exhibiting a picture of the current notions of that day. He puts the Christ as existing before the creation, but hidden; calls him Son of man, but this is in the Old Testament; he makes the flood come from the world getting a tilt. I do not then speak of this as unfair. It is second-hand and superficial, but it is a current notion, only it has no foundation. But there is what I consider unfair. The author—as he does in countless other instances, stating as proved and certain, because the infidel clique he belongs to have so settled it, what is far removed from being so—tells us, “It has been demonstrated that Ignatius was not sent to Rome at all, but suffered martyrdom in Antioch itself on the 20th December 115.” He quotes then Bleek as witness of this statement. Now Bleek adopts the date, which had been greatly disputed, but in these words (Clark's Eng. Trans. 1:158), “Ignatius, Bishop of Antioch, who was martyred at Rome under Trajan A.D. 115.” In the same place (Sup. Reliq. i. 268-9), we find “there are no less than three martyrologies of Ignatius, giving an account of the martyr's journey from Antioch to Rome “; but they are all recognized to be mere idle legends, of whose existence we do not hear till a very late period. In fact, the whole of the Ignatian literature is a mass of falsification and “fraud.”
The author quotes Milman ii. 101. Milman says nothing about it there. He does reject the Acts of Martyrdom, but expressly declares that he was sent to Rome, and (102) gives a summary of his journey to Rome as we have it in Ecclesiastical History, and quotes Cureton's epistles as of authority, and fully receives the account of his journey and seeing the brethren on his way, using it as proof there was no general persecution. The author quotes also Ewald vii. 314. Now Ewald does reject entirely the three martyrologies published by Dressel. But be not only holds the whole history itself to be true, and the author's statements wholly wrong, receiving Cureton's Ignatian epistles, but discusses it at length, and considers that the Syrian epistles have lost some passages which have been found in the Greek. As to Polycarp's epistle, he not only receives it, but says, appealing to Ireneeus' (iii. 3, 4, a e) quotation of it, that its originating with Polycarp people in our time have doubted and even denied, but they were utterly wrong. “Es ist die grosste Ungerechtigkeit.” That a mass of infidel Germans (no two of whom have the same theory, and make systems at pleasure, refuting one another, agreeing only to doubt what is true), may be cited, or Davidson, who does nothing but copy from them, no one need deny. But this seems to me very superficial, as well as unfair, in cases I have quoted. There is no original research into the questions, nor even care or fairness in quoting what is quoted in the cases referred to. A vast number I have not examined. That many German infidels sustain the author in many things he says, I have no doubt of.