Now no system, Patristic, Papal, or Protestant, however short of what scripture contemplates, is so directly opposed to this purpose of God in the written word as that of modern criticism; for it is essentially infidel. God's word is incompatible with the assumption of human growth or patchwork. Disbelieving in any real unity given to all scripture by the inspiring Spirit, they exclude the governing counsel of God in its every part, and thus lose every true conception of His mind, and only deceive themselves in calling their motley aggregate “a message from God.” The liberation claimed is from divine authority, which leaves no room for man's wisdom and will; the deepening is but in external research which swamps all seeking for and delight in the Christ of scripture; the strengthening is in value for the dust and dry bones of heathen history. The effect is departure from the fullness of God in Christ so richly revealed as to leave no room for development, save in the imagination of those who say that they see; whose sin therefore remains.
How far the school is from believing that “the one” —not— “far off divine event” —the establishment of His kingdom, over the world and all the universe, must be preceded by the day of the Lord in unsparing judgment not only of Israel and the nations but of Christendom yet more sternly because of its greater privilege, as man will share the apostasy, to which skeptical criticism of scripture is one of the guiltiest incentives and ingredients.
But let us turn to what Dr. Driver says as to this. He is most jubilant over the spirit of the age and its successes. “A great intellectual awakening” he claims for it, as well as “great discoveries”; sciences new, yet “arrived at a vigorous and independent manhood”; and the older branches worked as never before by better methods “to startling and unexpected results.” It is not so that their best living representative, Lord Kelvin, spoke at his jubilee in Glasgow a short time ago. And as he is neither pessimist nor optimist but known for his sobriety, no less than his depth and extent, for his own discoveries as well as his practical power in turning them to every day use, such a testimony on what has been the most ardent and distinguished work of his life outweighs a host of men comparatively in no way his equals. “One word characterizes the most strenuous of the efforts for the advancement of science that I have made perseveringly for fifty-five years, and that word is—failure. I know no more of electric and magnetic force, or of the relation between either electricity and ponderable matter, or of chemical affinity, than I knew fifty years ago.”
But if the progress in natural and experimental science were ever so immense (and I should not wonder at it where God is forgotten or made light of), what is the worth of any or all such knowledge morally even? God's revelation stands on wholly different ground, has a character necessarily peculiar to itself, and is for the end of His glory in the spiritual blessing of the soul, with an eternity of bliss or of woe, the issue for every child of man who believes or who does not. This must differentiate scripture from all else that is written or spoken, or in any way appeals to man. The inspired word of God, first in trying man by a commandment and then by His law and every help of ordinance, and priest, etc. in the O.T.; next by revealing Himself in His Son in the N.T., with the Holy Spirit given to the believer as never before, with suited words to explain and yield power and enjoyment as well as an answer to every other want. To argue from the natural to the supernatural, from man to God, is not only false but unbelieving to the last degree. Though it is sought to conceal the impiety of putting in question the written word of God, by the plea that it is only the exterior that is challenged on literary grounds, and historic investigation, or the like, no book has ever been subjected as the Bible to such extravagance of imagination as to its construction. Where is one solid fact to countenance such a manipulation in denial of the writings and writers accepted by faith, and with blindness to the effect of obliterating all its just claim to be God's word, inspired by Him, and possessing His authority no less than if He addressed each as from heaven?
There is another awful consequence of this baseless pride of knowledge, that it involves the destruction of confidence in the Son of God and of His inspired servants, who are beyond doubt and to the highest committed to the honor and certainty of scripture, both Ο. and N.T. So radical is the opposition of the skeptical criticism that its more open advocates do not hesitate to say, as the necessary inference, that they know the growth of the Bible as did neither the Lord nor His apostles! Such daring unbelief and irreverence ought to alarm the feeblest saint as every intelligent Christian must abhor it as the exhalation of the bottomless pit. The last writer of the N.T. is he who insists most on this safe-guard in the last hour of many antichrists, “Let that therefore abide in you which ye heard from the beginning” (1 John 2:2929If ye know that he is righteous, ye know that every one that doeth righteousness is born of him. (1 John 2:29)).
From the beginning our Lord decided beforehand against the modern imposture, which is quite independent of Hebrew or Greek erudition, and springs out of real ignorance of the truth of God. It is due to reckless fancy in perverting the divine names and the accompanying difference of thought and expressions, into supposed difference of legends, compiled very late, they say, and in times really unsuitable to the O.T. as it now appears. Confessedly the Lord and the apostles sustain the faith in scripture which all the saints and martyrs of early Christian times confessed, and leave no room for the wild insinuation of Astruc, which modern Germans have sought to swell into the most gigantic of fables. The believer's safety and joy is to depend on Christ, who came at the interval when the old things came to an end, and the new had to be ushered in on divine authority. And He has taught us with divine authority that the scriptures even of the O.T. are to be received as they then existed with absolute trust. So more than one apostle vouched no less for the N.T. Thus “the light of to-day” in its presumptuous unbelief was anticipatively condemned and excluded. The modern theory by their own showing was unknown as having the smallest credit “from the beginning”; but room was left for it as a “fable,” which men love who are weary of the truth, and delight in the fruit of man's ingenuity.
Thus in p. 20 says Dr. Driver. “I may assume on the part of those who hear me a general familiarity with the new light in which, to those who do not refuse to open their eyes, the Old Testament appears to-day. The historical books are now seen to be not, as was once supposed, the works (for instance) of Moses, or Joshua, or Samuel.” Not a few who read the new brochure have examined for half a century the new criticism, and are assured that it is the darkness of the natural mind, yielding to speculative fancy on the surface of the scriptures, and destitute of the Holy Spirit's guidance, because they evade and despise the authority of Christ who pronounces against them, root and branch. He and His apostles accepted the scriptures as written by Moses, David, Isaiah, Daniel, and others, as Christians have held for many centuries, and leave no room for this development of skepticism. “Have ye not read (said He) in the book of Moses,” etc. (Mark 12:2626And as touching the dead, that they rise: have ye not read in the book of Moses, how in the bush God spake unto him, saying, I am the God of Abraham, and the God of Isaac, and the God of Jacob? (Mark 12:26))? “And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Isaiah; and when he had opened the book, he found the place (chap. 61) where it was written, The Spirit,” etc. (Luke 4:1717And there was delivered unto him the book of the prophet Esaias. And when he had opened the book, he found the place where it was written, (Luke 4:17)). To Luke these men dare to give the lie, pretending the writer to be unknown. “They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them” (Luke 16:2929Abraham saith unto him, They have Moses and the prophets; let them hear them. (Luke 16:29)). “If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded though one rose from the dead” (ib. 31). “Behold we go up to Jerusalem, and all things that are written by the prophets concerning (not an “ideal” sufferer, but) the Son of man shall be accomplished” (18:31). “David himself saith in the book of Psalms,” etc. (20:42). “Had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me; for he wrote of me” (John 5:4646For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. (John 5:46)). “The scripture cannot be broken” (10:35). So in chap. 12:38-41, Isaiah is quoted as such from chap. 53:1 no less than from 6:99Knowing that Christ being raised from the dead dieth no more; death hath no more dominion over him. (Romans 6:9), etc.
How is it then that these critics reject the positive testimony of the Lord and His apostles? If believed, it overthrows their system. But they far prefer their own thoughts to scripture. Alas! they do not believe the Lord. To them applies as to skeptics in His day, “Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures nor the power of God” (Matt. 22:2929Jesus answered and said unto them, Ye do err, not knowing the scriptures, nor the power of God. (Matthew 22:29)). Nor does anything strike one more than, with indefatigable research on external appearances easily misapplied, they seem wholly insensible to God's mind, and thus sink into the ready service of the enemy for defaming and seeking to destroy divine revelation, though they think the contrary.
For there is scarce anything in which the new critics more generally agree than in finding not a few Elohists and Jehovists in the Pentateuch and elsewhere. Now this depends mainly on the repeated occurrence of one or other of the O.T. divine names of God with a corresponding difference of words and subjects, out of which they invented the notion of different documents. This was mere ignorance flowing out of unbelief. For the names have respectively an exact propriety, which demands their usage for the different truths intended, and moreover requires other thoughts and words suitable for each. Elohim is God in the history, and in His sovereign operations, as in creation Jehovah is His name in relationship and moral dealings. So it is in the Psalms, and Prophets, where differing writers would be out of the question. But, these critics trust themselves and do not trust God or His word, and hence are of all schools the most pretentious and the most superficial; as all must be who fail to see one divine mind, which amidst, wonderful variety impresses a general design on the scriptures as a whole, and on each particular as contributing its special design in its own part. But their system ignores and denies both a general and a special design, quite above the understanding of the writers generally if not universally. It is a dream no better than of a fortuitous concourse of atoms which others imagined for the universe. The reality of God actually moving in every part of this spiritual creation is foreign to their minds and incompatible with their reveries. Theirs is the characteristic principle of infidelity; and they even call the product of so many cobblers inspiration, scripture, and God's word! Does this improve matters? It enables them to retain their chairs, canonries, etc.
Hence one must deny, not of course different groups of laws in the Pentateuch, but that there is the least solid basis for insinuating different strata at widely different periods of the national life. The attempt to vilify Deuteronomy as an invention of Josiah's day, instead of being the closing book of Moses, is in itself a fraud of which no mind could be capable but of an enemy to God and His word. It is remarkable as the book which our blessed Lord honored at each of His temptations by Satan; and even this was as due to that inspired book of Moses as to His own position when tempted. Of both this system incapacitates for seeing, because devoid of faith it cannot please God or know His word.
“The Old Testament in the Light of To-day” is the title of Dr. Driver's First Paper. It shows clearly enough where the new school is. Their eyes are turned away from the light of God, from Christ the true Light to the darkness of man to-day, the darkness of “this present evil age” which He is soon coming to judge and punish. “If therefore the light that is in thee be darkness, how great is the darkness!”
When God spoke in His Son, what the believer knows to be the Light shone not only on the O.T. but on every person. Indeed everything was thus manifested as it is. He is the truth objectively, as the Holy Spirit is in power for the believer (1 John 5:66This is he that came by water and blood, even Jesus Christ; not by water only, but by water and blood. And it is the Spirit that beareth witness, because the Spirit is truth. (1 John 5:6)), who therefore becomes light in the Lord. Never does scripture treat man's thoughts or discoveries as anything of the kind; still less to allow the least comparison with Him that speaks from heaven (Heb. 12:2525See that ye refuse not him that speaketh. For if they escaped not who refused him that spake on earth, much more shall not we escape, if we turn away from him that speaketh from heaven: (Hebrews 12:25)) and will speak “once” more in a judgment which will shake not only the earth but also the heavens. Hence for the Christian all is out in the light of God through His word. Flaws there are through man's weakness or wrong, both in text and in translation, and intelligence may be at fault. But the truth is completely revealed as to both God and man, and this right on to “the day of God, by reason of which heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and elements shall melt with fervent heat. But according to His promise we await new heavens and a new earth wherein dwelleth righteousness” (2 Peter 3:12, 1312Looking for and hasting unto the coming of the day of God, wherein the heavens being on fire shall be dissolved, and the elements shall melt with fervent heat? 13Nevertheless we, according to his promise, look for new heavens and a new earth, wherein dwelleth righteousness. (2 Peter 3:12‑13)).
Where is Dr. Driver's faith of God's elect and knowledge of truth which is according to godliness? Far from me to judge him personally. His heart one leaves to the blessed God. We would speak only of his testimony as to revealed truth. What we have throughout his paper is but glorying in man, and especially the men of this day. They if modest and wise must see their nothingness, and measureless need of God's pity and grace, instead of repeating the old folly which Job reproved in his friends, “No doubt ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you.” Alas! indeed men now look for indefinite progress. But what a shock to Christian conscience, when scholars bearing the Lord's name, and in the position of clergymen as eminent and influential as they could well attain in great seats of learning, boast of things, compared with the grace and truth of Christ, as the advances in our experimental science, and their dependent mechanical arts, in Anthropology, Archeology and other such sciences, as with other branches of human knowledge! These investigations may well be left, like the hewing of wood or the drawing of water to those who enjoy not the title of entrance into the holies; but they are beneath those who by grace are made kings and priests to God.
I do not think the slight of the A.V. as compared with the Revision in our day justified. It is true that there were singular mistakes and shortcomings in the old version, and more correctness in some respects in the oldest English translation of W. Tyndale. But there are not a few errors of such deep import in the Revision that one can only thank God that as yet so great a failure has not gained general acceptance. At any rate crying up our own day in this respect seems strangely uncalled for. Even Bishop Lightfoot to whom Dr. Driver refers, great scholar as he was, proves that a deeper knowledge of Christian truth than he possessed is essential to guard from e.g. the evident and serious blunder he made, followed by the Revisers in 2 Cor. 5:14, 1514For the love of Christ constraineth us; because we thus judge, that if one died for all, then were all dead: 15And that he died for all, that they which live should not henceforth live unto themselves, but unto him which died for them, and rose again. (2 Corinthians 5:14‑15). For he translates it so as to favor a sense not only false in itself but contrary to its own context; for it contrasts the universal death of man outside Christ, for whom He died, with those who live to Him who also rose to this end. It is therefore the death of all in their sins, not death with Christ which is the portion only of those who live to Him, as they live in Him, which “all” are very far from.
Take further if we only glance at the beginning of Luke, such plain error as the Revisers adopted in ch. 2:14; and their failure to see that the true parenthesis in 3:23 is “being the son as was supposed of Joseph,” leaving the genealogy to begin with “of Eli” (etc.) whom even the Talmud admits to have been father of Mary. This line is here given, not Joseph's in the Solomonic branch which Matt. 1 requires, each suiting its own Gospel according to that specific divine design which the books of Scripture possess by inspiration.
Again what ignorance and presumption to omit the amply supported “second-first” in vi. 1! No doubt its singularity made it unintelligible to most, and led to its omission in some MSS. and versions. But it has an important sense, if any intimate with that season would feel for Jewish hearts subject to the law. It is unaccountable unless genuine. Again in ver. 35 can one conceive anything more beneath scripture than their rendering “never despairing”? May it remain alone in its shame among all versions, good, bad and indifferent! In some of these and many more, such as Rom. 3:2222Even the righteousness of God which is by faith of Jesus Christ unto all and upon all them that believe: for there is no difference: (Romans 3:22), in the Epistles, the Revisers have changed the more correct readings and renderings of the A.V. for the worse. The vaunt of present-day exactitude is unbecoming.
It is hardly necessary to say that one regards with horror what is said in p. 23, that “the tablets brought from the library of Asshur-banipal have disclosed to us the source of the material elements upon which the Biblical narratives of the Creation and the Deluge have been constructed.” That the Gentiles had widely spread traditions about the earth's origin and man's, and of the deluge, is true and long known, but withal corrupted everywhere with their false gods to whom they were adapted. But that fabulous traditions, such as Asshur-banipal's tablets represent, disclose the source of the Biblical account is a slander of which infidelity is alone capable. The fact is that as far as I am aware not one Gentile first or last can be proved to have believed that “in the beginning God created the heavens and the earth.” It is a truth which faith alone receives; and I fear that the new school no more believe it than Asshur-banipal did; for it is avowed that the doctrine of development goes along with the new literary method. It is an abuse of language for a Darwinian to speak of crediting creation, as it is for the new critic to say that he believes in inspiration. In both cases it is a growth, not God's work.
It is painful in the extreme to read the words of professed teachers of revealed truth; a glorying in man which is natural to an unbeliever who lauds the progress of the age and claims for the present generation an advance beyond parallel. “It may have been most conspicuous and brilliant in the physical sciences, and in the great mechanical arts based upon them; but it has been not less real in many other branches of knowledge, in language, in history, in archeology, in anthropology. How much, in all these departments of knowledge is known now, which a century ago was unknown, and even unsuspected!... But the same spirit of scientific study and research which has inspired new life into so many other departments of knowledge, and even in some instances created them altogether, has also pervaded Biblical and Oriental learning; and there is hardly any branch of these subjects, whether language, or literature, or antiquities, or history, in which the stimulus of the nineteenth century has not made itself felt, and in which improved methods of investigation have not conducted to new and important results” (pp. 18-20). Are not we to-day the world's wonders?
Is this the mind of one delivered from the power of darkness and translated into the kingdom of the Son of God's love? Could one consciously so blessed put these accessions of human knowledge, supposing it ever so real and great, side by side with that of scripture imparted by the operation of the Holy Spirit? Yet who in it cries up the letter that kills? is it not the Spirit that quickens? The world's knowledge which the natural man can acquire leaves sin unremoved and judgment with its dread issue awaiting its votaries. Did not God in the cross of Christ make foolish the wisdom of this world? “For since in the wisdom of God the world through its wisdom knew not God, it was God's good pleasure through the foolishness of the preaching to save those that believe” (1 Cor. 1:2121For after that in the wisdom of God the world by wisdom knew not God, it pleased God by the foolishness of preaching to save them that believe. (1 Corinthians 1:21)).
To lump, after this fashion, the Bible with such acquisitions is blindness to the truth of God, and a heinous offense against grace and truth. It is well to have the word in its integrity and freed from accretion; but the incomparably more momentous thing is to have and enjoy the fruit, which all this external activity does not enable a single soul to taste. “For who of men knoweth the things of man, save the spirit of the man which is in him? even so the things of God none knoweth save the Spirit of God. But we received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit that is of God; that we might know the things granted to us by God” (1 Cor. 2:11, 1211For what man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of man which is in him? even so the things of God knoweth no man, but the Spirit of God. 12Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the spirit which is of God; that we might know the things that are freely given to us of God. (1 Corinthians 2:11‑12)). As a dog, no matter how sagacious, cannot understand a watch, which as a human work a man can; so a man is incapable of entering into revealed truth save by the Spirit of God; not only born anew, and redeemed, but needing and having received the Holy Spirit to this end. Not all the possible human progress in profane or sacred departments avails. One must be “taught of God” wholly above man, as the Lord declared according to the prophets.
Nor can there be a more superficial or unbelieving inference than what is drawn in p. 22: “The net results of these discoveries is that the ancient Hebrews are taken out of the isolation in which, as a nation, they formerly seemed to stand; and it is seen now that many of their institutions and beliefs were not peculiar to themselves; they existed in more or less similar form among their neighbors; they were only in Israel developed in special directions, subordinated to special ends, and made the vehicle of special ideas.” Even Balaam, wicked man and false prophet as he was, uttered under the compulsion of God's Spirit the truth which flatly contradicts such Gentile pride. “Lo, a people that shall dwell alone and shall not be reckoned among the nations” (Numb. 23:99For from the top of the rocks I see him, and from the hills I behold him: lo, the people shall dwell alone, and shall not be reckoned among the nations. (Numbers 23:9)). Nor is God's thought about Israel only separateness to Himself, but in ver. 21 their justification in sovereign grace, in 24:5-7 their given beauty, and in 17-49 their glory when the Star out of Jacob shines in power. Doubtless this seems strange, as the O.T. is the history of their failure under the law. But they are kept for Messiah and the new covenant, when the Unchanging One, to whom they are still blind, shall change all things in their favor. And the mind of God regularly looks on to that day in His love for His people.
Alas! the next p. 23 is daring infidelity. “The monuments of Egypt and Babylon combine to establish the presence of man upon the earth, and the existence of entirely distinct languages, as periods considerably more ancient than is allowed for by the figures in the Book of Genesis; and the tablets brought from the library of Asshur-banipal have disclosed to us the source (!) of the material elements upon which the Biblical narratives of the Creation (!) and the Deluge have been constructed”!! Thus openly does the Hebrew Professor of Oxford dare to avow that he believes the vain monuments of men, and gives the lie to God's testimony. The Confusion of Tongues, as well as the accounts of Creation and the Deluge, are fables constructed out of the heathen tablets of the noble Asnapper's library! What French or German has defamed scripture more daringly?
It is an assumption without the smallest proof save of and no indication whatever “that in the early chapters of Genesis we are not reading literal history.” The Lord and the apostles have decided otherwise, and as Christians we believe them, not in the least degree the Higher Critics, whom we can only regard as infatuated enemies of revelation.
So also we regard the speculation on the poetical books and prophets, as abandoning light for darkness in all spiritual respects. The divine who defined prophecy as “the history of events before they come to pass” was celebrated for his metaphysical power and his evidential prowess against Deism, in no way for his knowledge of scripture, which gives a larger and deeper thought of prophecy, and was so recognized by intelligent students quite apart from the neologian school. Indeed it is evident not only in the O.T. but also in the N.T. So the Samaritan at Sychar when she told the Lord, who had then said not a word about the future, “I perceive that thou art a prophet.” Yet immediately He told her of the profound change which no man on earth knew, when Jerusalem and its national worship of Jehovah should pass for the incomparable blessedness of Christianity, and the true worshippers to worship the Father in spirit and truth. Crasser ignorance spiritually cannot be than to learn that “the materials afforded by the inscriptions of Assyria and Babylonia,” whatever their trifling use externally, yielded one ray of light on the prophets. The prophets' writings are the only and the full proof that they dealt morally with their own generations on God's behalf, but with the richest certainty of the future, when His intervention by the Son of man, the rejected Messiah, shall put down all evil and enemies, establish His righteous reign, and fill all the earth with His glory. The first intimation is announced in Num. 14:2121But as truly as I live, all the earth shall be filled with the glory of the Lord. (Numbers 14:21), quite as clearly as in the varied forms of Isa. 11:99They shall not hurt nor destroy in all my holy mountain: for the earth shall be full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. (Isaiah 11:9), and of Hab. 2:1414For the earth shall be filled with the knowledge of the glory of the Lord, as the waters cover the sea. (Habakkuk 2:14). Not one sprang out of the circumstances of the then age, but out of God's purpose, whatever might be the occasion: it is worthy of God, in contrast with all those varying times of evil, and suited, but no natural reason.
Hence the Jews, dark as they were, were not so depraved as these modern pretenders, and justly called the writers of the O.T. historical books “the early prophets,” as distinguished from the later where there is little or no history. Again the prophetic element is still more manifest in the poetical books; but they all have the predictive in plain words, in type, or expressive figures, with its glorious issue, wholly independent of anything then visible or at work, and only possible for God to declare and insure. Nothing more opposed to the empty ideas of the new school, whose knowledge is human and sets up nature, not God and His word.
It is plain too that the apostle designates the Epistles in Rom. 16:2626But now is made manifest, and by the scriptures of the prophets, according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith: (Romans 16:26) as “prophetic scriptures,” not “the scriptures of the prophets,” which is the strange and certain blunder of the Revisers no less than of the A. V. The context is no less incompatible than the phrase itself. For a mystery or secret is in question which “had been kept silent, but was now manifested and by prophetic scriptures made known, according to the eternal God's commandment, for obedience of faith unto all the nations.” This was done pre-eminently afterward in the Epistles to the Ephesians and the Colossians. It clearly gives “prophetic scriptures” a wider and deeper scope than is usually seen. Now the mystery of Christ and the church is inseparable from the exaltation of Christ and His joint-heirs over all the universe in the day of glory. It includes the bright future according to God's own grace and power.
But the error comes out plainly in the discussion of “inspiration” that follows from p. 26. The Oxford Professor could count on a pretty cordial appreciation of his own unbelief from his congregational audience. It is not true that among believers there is any haze on that essential truth. Explanation of literary structure is academic guess; prying into the manner of God's communication is irreverent, even if possible beyond the inspired. Faith is demanded to the exclusion of theory. But there is the divine dictum: “every scripture [is] God-breathed,” or “being God-breathed [is]...profitable” etc.: in the first rendering asserted; in the second, assumed; so that the main truth remain intact either way.
This too is confirmed by the facts of its own statement throughout. That the inspired drew their narrative from the heathen, out of whom they were separated at all costs as the first of duties to Jehovah their God, is an abominable and baseless slander; that the heathen had traditions of Creation and the Deluge which they clothed with their idolatries, is true. But take the law and its stages in Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers, and the equivalent in Deuteronomy. The constant word generally is, “And Jehovah said to Moses.” To deny its possibility is clearly infidel and irrational. Is it true or false? Take again what David says (2 Sam. 23:22The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and his word was in my tongue. (2 Samuel 23:2)), “The Spirit of Jehovah spoke by me, and His word was on my tongue. The God of Israel said, the rock of Israel spoke to me,” etc. Law or Psalm, it was God's word, and scripture; and this is what inspiration means, and what the faithful believe. Is it necessary for every writer to present himself as in the opening of a play of Euripides? Would this suit the simple dignity of God's messengers to His people? “Hear, O heavens, and give ear, O earth; for Jehovah hath spoken,” says one of the greatest of prophets. “Thus speaketh Jehovah of hosts” says Haggai, one of the least, as the very last opens with the “Burden of the word of Jehovah.” Was all this a flourish, a literary fiction, or the solemn truth of God? It is a theory, and a theory of unbelief, that God inspired His servants, and withal left them like other men, to write mistakes, instead of its resulting essence to be the perfect communication of His mind If God's Spirit moved in the work, was it to effectuate God's will? or to leave it after all imperfect and misleading? The human element was in individual style; not in error, which could only frustrate the express aim and object of scripture. There had, better be no inspiration than to give divine authority to what was man's erring word, not God's. The scripture, and every scripture, is God-breathed authenticity and authority as His word.
So in what follows in p. 25 on the Prophets and the Psalms, the effect is to reduce to man's mind and circumstances, and exclude the supernatural energy of the Holy Spirit. No one denies that there was, or may have been, a present experience, as the occasion. As the rule, it was Israel's growing wickedness and ruin. This the prophet was raised up to judge, but also to disclose both God's final dealing and a partial one nearer then, the pledge of the complete, when the glorious hope of Messiah's Kingdom will be realized without a word of exaggeration “in that day.” No doubt the Fathers, the Romanists, the Reformers, the Puritans, and the divines of Christendom who followed, Nationalist and Dissenting, have applied to themselves what really awaits repentant Israel at the end of the age. This the new school in a slight measure see. But do any of them truly believe in the revealed purpose of God to set the Lord Jesus as Head over all things heavenly and earthly, with the glorified saints on high, and Israel here below with all the nations in subjection and peace with universal joy even for the long groaning creation? They write vaguely if such be their living and assured hope, perhaps unwilling to wound the great mass of their incredulous associates who believe in prophecy no more than in miracles, seemingly little more than dead men. An ideal vision is not a real prophecy. Many were the true and even minute predictions of Christ's first advent; very many more and on the largest scale await His second. Do they frankly believe this? So at least say the scriptures.
The question is then raised, (1) How do the facts bear on the inspiration of the O.T.? (2) How do they affect our estimate of its moral and doctrinal value? (3) What practical conclusions may be deduced? 1 But to my mind, they are not facts but flimsy speculations on the surface of scripture, and total lack of God's teaching by it. The effect is to lose, in contrast with the first man, Christ the object of the Spirit throughout. The practical result, is to turn from the light of God's word to fill souls with the darkness and vanity of man's records, as if these shed light on scripture. Even when they cannot but fully confirm the revealed word, how can one call this “light”? It may prove the folly of unbelief, and silence an objector. But Christ only, the word of God, the truth, sheds divine light.
Before his own answers, Dr. D. emphasizes a double element in scripture, a human not less than a divine. No intelligent Christian denies but recognizes it. Only he means the human element left to, its weakness and mistakes, instead of the divine sustaining it against error. As it was in Christ's person, so it is in scripture. Nothing short would have weight with a believing soul. But these critics lower Christ as much as the scriptures; for they regard Him as knowing no better than the scribes, or, if He did, accommodating Himself to the ignorance of His day! He cites in a note 2 Tim. 3:16, 1716All scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness: 17That the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works. (2 Timothy 3:16‑17), not from the A.V. but the R.V. which is far from being accepted as the true construction. What unbounded presumption in themselves! What blind confidence in petty knowledge of any in what is not God's word! “The use of the word will not guide us; for it occurs only in the passage referred to. Clearly the only course open to us [i.e. granting the misconstruction] is to examine, patiently and carefully, the book which is termed inspired, and ascertain what characters attach to it.” (p. 28). Now inspiration, though equally divine, did not always assume the same form, though we are told little, and perhaps could not learn more, about it. Why should we? Let us hear then the scriptures.
If we take the central book of the Pentateuch, what does it distinctly claim? “And Jehovah called unto Moses, and spoke unto him” &c. “Speak unto the children of Israel, and say unto them, When any man” &c. And so, with slight historic exceptions the book of Leviticus attaches to itself the character of direct dictation from Jehovah throughout. But these critics flatly refuse to believe. Faithful men accept it as literal truth, the law given through Moses. This is surely inspiration; and He who revealed it empowered the human medium to communicate it, not only piecemeal by the way, but written as a whole.
Would it not be an eminently human way to expect every or any book of scripture to open with “I am inspired” or its equivalent? No creature witnessed creation. None but God could vouch for it. Adam and his sons were called into being long after. Legends could but guess unless God made it known, as He assuredly did to Moses, if we believe our Lord. Was this so wonderful as to give him to write of Christ? The first of his books presents the far simpler and nobler words, “In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth”: a truth which had been utterly forgotten and denied long before the days of Moses. Where is its truth in one of those boasted monuments of Babylon, Nineveh, or Egypt, which professing Christians, and Christian teachers in the highest position, are not ashamed to allege against the word and authority of scripture? They of the monuments, one and all, worshipped idols or strange gods; and so the error was not secondary but fundamental. Their religion was based on a deadly falsehood which vitiates all possible reliance on them for truth or holiness. What can one think of men so infatuated as to impute the Bible to heathen trash? Is not this what all neo-critics do without a blush? Can it be denied with the least appearance of candor? Now who could speak as Moses writes authoritatively, of creation but the Creator? That Babylonians and others borrowed and corrupted the tradition is the homage that lies pay to the truth. Wickedness alone would make their forgeries the source of scripture.
But even Genesis is full of prophecy from the beginning, not only in direct terms (partly fulfilled, more to be so, and not to faith only but manifested to every eye), and indirectly yet more largely in its types throughout, save to blind eyes. Who but God could have thus revealed? Where is its reality outside scripture? Here most of these critics are as sceptically depraved as D. Hume and E. Gibbon, or as frivolous as J. J. Rousseau and A. de Voltaire.
Next Exodus attests stupendous miracles on which the monuments are as dumb, as they ignore and defy the Ten Words, and the judgments of God on Egypt's king and people; and the annexed copies of the things in the heavens shown to Moses inspired for communication to Israel for their worship and our still deeper instruction. Here the records of all the monuments are silent; but these critics grow bolder in their unbelief. For they dare to speculate, on the simple finding (after much disorder and idolatry) the long-neglected book of the law in Josiah's day, that it must be a fabrication then got up, pretending to a Tabernacle after the Exodus, if ever there was an Exodus. Can they believe that the true God gave no better revelation to Israel than a bundle of lies, which contradict each other? or that Israel (yea—the Lord) had to wait for German skeptics to find it out?
Then in Leviticus, which is almost entirely characterized by the words, “And Jehovah spoke to Moses,” and ends with “These are the commandments which Jehovah commanded Moses for the children of Israel in Mount Sinai,” how daring is the impiety which allows a doubt! Here they have not the plea of heathen writers for confirmation, whom they venerate as they distrust the scriptures. It is the love of doubt which they confound with the love of truth, the assurance of systematic self-will and independent speculation, and not the faith of God's Son and God's word.
Numbers seems to be equally impossible to be attributed to any other than Moses, making allowance for an inspired editor's slight additions. For it presents the circumstances of the march through the wilderness with the suited commandments of Jehovah. It has (if we believe the apostle in 1 Cor. 10) a spiritual bearing on the Christian pilgrim which only divine wisdom could have combined, yet characteristic of the prophets, indeed one only inferior to the highest, who had ample leisure and conferred power to indite as God enjoined, with love for Israel and yet more for Jehovah. This spared neither the people nor the misleaders, neither Aaron nor Miriam nor himself. Is not this as edifying as it contrasts with any pretended sacred book of man?
Deuteronomy closes the law, and is so self-evidently Mosaic with its personal pathos, that one may wonder that any man of spiritual perception could fail to recognize that none but the saintly legislator could have written it, as he intimates himself with death immediately in view, yet with undismayed spirit, and natural force unabated, and all his profound affections for Israel just about to enter the land of promise from which he was debarred. This and more necessarily gave a peculiar solemnity, adapted to the new generation who had not personally shared the departure from Egypt, the law imposed at Sinai, and but little of God's discipline through the wilderness, which form its wondrous rehearsal for instruction, encouragement, and warning quite unexampled in the O.T.
(Continued from Vol. 5 p. 378).