Table of Contents

The Irrationalism of Infidelity: Section a.

Being a reply to "Phases of Faith"*

TO FRANCIS WILLIAM NEWMAN

3 PREFACE

9 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

HOW, AND HOW FAR, CAN GOD BE KNOWN BY MAN?*

The Irrationalism of Infidelity: Section b.

Being a reply to "Phases of Faith"*

34 PRINCIPLES ON WHICH THE EXAMINATION IS CARRIED ON

ANIMUS OF THE EXAMINATION

40 GOD IS EXCLUDED

The Irrationalism of Infidelity: Section c.

Being a reply to "Phases of Faith"*

71 OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED

72 GENERAL PRINCIPLES

89 ALLEGED MISTAKES IN ACTS 7: 16

92 DISCOURSE OF GAMALIEL, ACTS 5

THE SLAUGHTER OF THE INFANTS

ZACHARIAS, SON OF BARACHIAS

NAMES OF THE APOSTLES

104 HARMONIZING THE GOSPELS

106 THE RIVERS IN PARADISE

The Irrationalism of Infidelity: Section d.

Being a reply to "Phases of Faith"*

109 THE SENTENCE ON THE SERPENT: SERPENT WORSHIP

114 TWO ACCOUNTS OF THE CREATION

115 OPINION OF DR. ARNOLD OF RUGBY

116 JOSEPH

THE LONGEVITY OF THE PATRIARCHS

THE ARK

INFALLIBILITY

119 THE ENTRANCE OF DEATH

THE FALL

121 OBJECTIONS DEPENDENT ON "SCIENCE"

124 THE SONG OF DEBORAH

THE SACRIFICE OF ISAAC

MR. NEWMAN'S NOTIONS OF INSPIRATION

144 THE DELUGE

The Irrationalism of Infidelity: Section e.

Being a reply to "Phases of Faith"*

146 ABRAHAM AND SARAH, AND ISAAC AND REBEKAH, IN EGYPT

"SMALL PHRASES"

147 QUOTATIONS FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT

THE PROPHECY OF ENOCH

156 PAUL'S RECOGNITION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

THE INTRODUCTION TO LUKE'S GOSPEL

161 DEMONIACAL POSSESSION

164 CHARACTER OF JOHN'S GOSPEL

STAR OF THE MAGI

165 HEROD'S MASSACRE OF THE CHILDREN

EGYPT AND NAZARETH

168 CHARACTER OF LUKE'S GOSPEL

169 CHARACTER OF JOHN'S GOSPEL

170 CURES EFFECTED BY NAPKINS

CATCHING AWAY OF PHILIP

CURSE ON THE BARREN FIG-TREE

171 THE TRIBUTE-MONEY

172 USELESS MIRACLES

THE EARTHQUAKE

176 THE MIRACLES OF ELIJAH AND ELISHA

THE DEATH OF UZZAH

177 ABIMELECH, AND ESAU

ABRAHAM'S VISITORS AT MAMRE. ELIJAH'S RAVENS

ARNOLD ON THE GOSPELS

The Irrationalism of Infidelity: Section f.

Being a reply to "Phases of Faith"*

179 ELOHISTIC AND JEHOVISTIC SOURCES OF MOSAIC HISTORY

184 DIFFICULT NARRATIVES

NOAH AND THE FLOOD

PHARAOH AND ABIMELECH

DOUBLE ACCOUNT OF CIRCUMCISION

OF THE NAME OF ISAAC

189 JACOB NAMED ISRAEL. BETHEL

BEERSHEBA

190 THE NAME JEHOVAH, ELOHIM, EL-SHADDAÏ

191 TWOFOLD MIRACLE OF THE QUAILS

THE WATER: AARON'S ROD: THE ROCK: MERIBAH

DOUBLE CONSECRATION OF AARON AND HIS SONS

195 DOUBLE PROMISE OF A GUARDIAN ANGEL

196 DEATH OF AARON

JOSHUA ARRESTING THE SUN AND MOON

200 SONG OF MOSES

201 FRAGMENTS OF POETRY

BOOK OF THE LAW FOUND BY JOSIAH

THE SAMARITANS

204 HEZEKIAH'S PROPHETS

DEAN GRAVES

206 SHAM SCIENCE

207 MR. NEWMAN'S HEBREW MONARCHY

DEUTERONOMY

THE REVELATION, ESPECIALLY CHAPTER 17

THE AUTHOR OF THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS

216 THE SONG OF SOLOMON

ESTHER

INSIGNIFICANCE AND SIGNIFICANCE

218 PAUL MISREPRESENTED

The Irrationalism of Infidelity: Section g.

Being a reply to "Phases of Faith"*

220 GROUNDS OF FAITH PROPOSED IN SCRIPTURE

THE TESTIMONY OF CHRIST

REVELATION OF GOD

227 FAITH AT SECOND HAND

228 DIVINE TRUTH COMMUNICATED BY GOD. ADEQUATE PROOFS

The Irrationalism of Infidelity: Section h.

Being a reply to "Phases of Faith"*

231 HISTORICAL OBJECTIONS

CONQUEST OF CANAAN

PURIFICATION OF THE TEMPLE

235 ASSUMPTION OF GOD SPEAKING FROM WITHOUT

SIMON MAGUS AND DEMAS

240 CHRISTIANS UNDER CONSTANTINE

241 PROPHECY

ACTS 13 33-35

244 ISAIAH 55, 50, 53; PSALM 22; ZECHARIAH 12, 13

247 DANIEL 9

249 DANIEL 12

THE APOCALYPSE

257 COMING OF THE LORD

The Irrationalism of Infidelity: Section i.

Being a reply to "Phases of Faith"*

259 DANIEL, AND DESOLATION TO THE TIME OF THE END

267 PROPHECIES OF THE PENTATEUCH

THIS OLD TESTAMENT A CONTINUOUS HISTORY

THE GOSPELS

272 THE DISCOURSES OF THE LORD

SPECIAL VIEWS OF CHRIST'S PERSON

JOHN'S ACCOUNT OF THE RAISING OF LAZARUS, AND OF THE HEALING OF THE MAN BORN BLIND

CHARACTERISTICS OF JOHN'S TESTIMONY

278 OBSERVATIONS ON MIRACLES

281 MR. NEWMAN'S REMARKS ON TONGUES

286 PAUL'S PREACHING OF A GLORIFIED CHRIST, PETER'S WITNESSING

The Irrationalism of Infidelity: Section j.

Being a reply to "Phases of Faith"*

GENERAL REMARKS

MODERN LOGIC

The Irrationalism of Infidelity: Section k.

Being a reply to "Phases of Faith"*

295 MESSIANIC PROPHECIES

302 ZECHARIAH AND JEREMIAH

CHRIST'S ASCENSION

314 FAITH AND CONSCIENCE

The Irrationalism of Infidelity: Section l.

Being a reply to "Phases of Faith"*

315 FACTS AS TO MR. NEWMAN'S CONNECTION WITH OTHER CHRISTIANS (WHILE STRIVING AFTER A PURER CHRISTIANITY); OR, THE NARROWNESS OF DOGMATISM

The Irrationalism of Infidelity: Section m.

Being a reply to "Phases of Faith"*

321 CLOSING REMARKS

The Irrationalism of Infidelity: Section n.

Being a reply to "Phases of Faith"*

342 APPENDIX

IS GOD OTIOSE, OR ACTIVE IN GRACE?

Dialogues on the Essays and Reviews, section a.

Christianity and the Education of the World.

Dialogues on the Essays and Reviews, section b.

Christianity and the Education of the World.

Dialogues on the Essays and Reviews, section c.

Christianity and the Education of the World.

A Second Dialogue on the Essays and Reviews

What has the Bible taught? And what has Geology proved?

A Third Dialogue on the Essays and Reviews,

section a.

Modern Philosophy and Modern Theology, both compared with Scripture.

A Third Dialogue on the Essays and Reviews, section b.

Modern Philosophy and Modern Theology, both compared with Scripture.

A Third Dialogue on the Essays and Reviews, section c.

Modern Philosophy and Modern Theology, both compared with Scripture.

A Fourth Dialogue on the Essays and Reviews, section a.

Inspiration and Interpretation.

A Fourth Dialogue on the Essays and Reviews, section b.

Inspiration and Interpretation.

A Fourth Dialogue on the Essays and Reviews, section c.

Inspiration and Interpretation.

A Fourth Dialogue on the Essays and Reviews, section d.

Inspiration and Interpretation.

Inspiration of the Scriptures

The Human Element in Inspiration

Remarks on Rationalist Views

JND - Apologetic

Apologetic [1]

J. N. Darby

This document may be found online at www.stempublishing.com

You are welcome to freely access and use this material for personal study or sending to other Bible students, compiling extracts for notes etc, but please do not republish without permission.

With the prayerful desire that the Lord Jesus Christ will use this God-given ministry in this form for His glory and the blessing of many in these last days before His coming. © Les Hodgett (contact@stempublishing.com) (2011)

The Irrationalism of Infidelity: Section a.

Being a reply to "Phases of Faith"*

J. N. Darby.

{*London: 1853.}

<06001-129E> 1 File Section a.

"Nevertheless the foundation of God standeth sure, having this seal, The Lord knoweth them that are his. And, Let every one that nameth the name of Christ depart from iniquity." 2 Tim. 2: 19.

TO FRANCIS WILLIAM NEWMAN

You will not be at a loss to discover the author of this attempt at a reply to your last publication, so strangely entitled "Phases of Faith;" nor to recognize one once well known to yourself.

I have had no thought of sparing your book. You have denied and dishonoured in it the Lord that bought me, to whom I owe everything a soul can know in blessing and God reveal in grace. I have no sympathy with cold indifference in such a case. It is a duty to feel. Not to feel proves we have never felt what it seeks to pull down.

With yourself the case is somewhat different. Not that I can distinguish, as some do, between a book and its author. If the book is a guilty one, its author is guilty of it.

But there is another feeling arises as to the author, which does not as to the book. To the book I can measure out, without a pang, unmingled feelings of disgust and contempt; to the author I could not. The thought of him awakens sorrow, regret, pain, a thousand feelings which the evil I find in his work, the thoughts as to Christ once expressed by him and supposed genuine by me, and my own love to souls, however feeble, as alas! it is, contribute to produce. I do mourn; and hence it is I add these few prefatory words.

I have known you, supposed you loved Christ, took for granted (as one unsuspectingly does) you believed in Him, heard a testimony from yourself to your spiritual delight in Him, as the joy, the food, and delight of your soul. Was all a delusion? Is not your present book? Did you feel these things? Were they, as you thought, livingly linked up with a Christ known to yourself? Does your book prove a greater moral elevation? Forgive me, if I think that, independent of all dogma, it proves frightful descent from what at least restrained your steps, your lips, then, if it did not possess your heart. Can you compare what then expressed your joys with the feelings and manner of thinking (I am not talking of views or groundwork of judgment, but of their effects) which your book betrays, and feel happy at it? Take some of your own letters, and say. I have some which, of course, I cannot quote here for these expressions of your feelings. But what a difference when I read them! I cannot bring myself to believe that there was nothing real in them. My soul looks out for some gleam of such thoughts in the book your infidelity has produced; but I can only find a miserable nature let loose by it. Who can tell how deep something else may be buried by such a mass of nature's ruins and filth, which the mighty grace of God may yet disencumber and make grow, and thus the old serpent lose its natural and congenial haunt?

2 But I write that you may at least feel that my attacking your book is as far as possible from bitterness toward you. I have no desire to spare your book. I am dealing with a book — with principles and with minds that may be affected by it. I believe it a dishonour to yourself; but as regards your book, you are but a name attached to the moral condition of mind contained in it, and there presented to the public. I am not dealing with you about it, but with it before God and my reader. The thought of yourself, which intruded itself necessarily upon me in reading it, was one of deep sorrow — I trust of gracious feeling. My answer to the book was not the place to express it: I can here assure you of it. If you read my book, you must expect no concealment of a severe (I believe a just) judgment of your publication.

You have here the unfeigned expression of what I feel as regards yourself — not in its strength, as this must be public (and I hate published feeling), but at least the true character of it — pain — sorrow — I trust divine love — and a lingering clinging to the hope that, however low he may have fallen, it is impossible that one who has expressed the feelings you have in bygone times could have done so without some reality.

May the Lord, who alone has power to blot out and overcome our wretchedness, and new-create the heart, make you — as in other ways He has me — a monument of His almighty and infinite grace!

I remain, as one well known to you, and desirous of remaining unknown to others,

Yours with earnest desire in Christ. J. N. Darby.

3 PREFACE

I have no pretension to learning or leisure, yet I have written and now present to my reader a book, the size of which, when I see it complete, alarms myself. It may be asked why I undertook such a task when I knew that I had neither. My answer is this: When any one loves, confides in, and is deeply indebted to another (and in this case the debt is infinite), he will seek to defend, if he has any heart, the beloved object when it is attacked, without perhaps exactly measuring his power to be fully successful in its defence.

One qualification (none is of any value if God be not with us) I may boast of — profound, unfeigned (I believe divinely given) faith in the Bible. I have, through grace, been by it converted, enlightened, quickened, saved. I have received the knowledge of God by it to adore His perfections — of Jesus, the Saviour, joy, strength, comfort of my soul. Many have been indebted to others as the means of their being brought to God, to ministers of that gospel which the Bible contains, or to friends who delight in it. This was not my case. That work, which is ever God's, was wrought in me through the means of the written word. He who knows what the value of Jesus is will know what the Bible will be to such a one. If I have, alas! failed it, in nearly thirty years' arduous and varied life and labour — at least such, as far as the service of an unknown and feeble individual usually leads, I have never found it fail me: if it has not for the poor and needy circumstances of time, through which we feebly pass, I am assured it never will for eternity. "The word of the Lord abideth for ever." 1 Peter 1: 25 If it reaches down even to my low estate, it reaches up to God's height because it comes thence: as the love that can reach even to me, and apply to every detail of my feebleness and failure, proves itself divine in doing so: none but God could, and hence it leads me up to Him. As Jesus came from God and went to God, so does the book that divinely reveals Him come from and elevate to Him. If received, it has brought the soul to God, for He has revealed Himself in it. Its positive proofs are all in itself. The sun needs no light to see it by.

This, indeed, has made me hesitate as to how far it is to the purpose to go through much of the matter of this book — that part, I mean, which takes up the objections to scripture. My only reason is, that they are thrown down before a multitude of minds, as every one knows, in these days — a heartless and sickly age, which finds its refuge, from the cold and desolate waste of infidelity and human wilfulness, in the more pleasing imagery of imposed superstition. The man of intelligence produces human infidelity. The man of imagination will give us human superstition, coloured over with the haze of antiquity, for fear what it really is should be too clearly seen. Both give me man. The scriptures alone give me God. Hence the peculiar form of modern infidelity is, attack on the written word — the scriptures Superstition takes exactly the same ground. The cry of "Bibliolatry!" sounds alike from the intellectual and from the superstitious infidel. Both have the same object of attack, both are infidels — one an intellectual, the other an imaginative one. Both would persuade me that the Bible cannot itself command my conscience and oblige me to faith as coming from God. Do they not both seek to do this? Is it not infidelity? Doubtless, through the sinfulness of man's will, without divine grace, he never will really receive the word as it is in truth — the word of God. But is that his fault or the word's? Infidels and superstitious persons will both tell me that the word itself has not divine authority over my soul; that I cannot receive it as such on its own authority without something more to prove it. It is hard to say who is guiltiest here: he who denies it is the word; or he who, not denying that it is, declares that what God has said cannot bind the conscience of man unless validated by some authority other than its own.

4 I should not certainly have entertained these objections even in order to reply to them; but they had already done positive mischief to many, and shaken the comfort, and agitated the minds, more or less, of many accustomed to confide simply in the word with real faith. Most Christians have met with examples. One which came in a painful way under my own observation led me to read, and, in result, to answer the book. Some who have read the MS. have desired that it should be printed. It was not like a book of edification, which, if it failed to attain its end, came simply under the negative charge of being profitless or stupid. It was worse than this to occupy the mind with questions, if there were not positive good to be done by it. The book is meant for those who have been already occupied with these questions. Knowing that to feed on the word is what the soul wants, not to discuss it, I have no desire that any should read it before whose mind the subject has not already come. But how large alas! this class is now as well known to most interested in these subjects.

5 I desire to add one remark here in reference to inspiration. I beg to avow, in the fullest, clearest, and distinctest manner here, my deep, divinely-taught conviction of the inspiration of the scriptures. That is, while of course allowing, if need be, for defect in the translation and the like, when I read the Bible, I read it as of absolute authority for my soul as God's word. There is no higher privilege than to have communications direct from God Himself. I say this, because, in reasoning with infidels in the body of the book, I have sometimes done so on their own ground, to shew how untenable their positions were — how unreasonable their complaints, even setting aside inspiration. Indeed, did not the scriptures claim this authority, no one would dream of calling in question their authenticity or the evidence on which they rest. Such a method might lead some unguardedly to suppose hesitation or want of depth of conviction on my part. My joy, my comfort, my food, my strength, for near thirty years, have been the scriptures received implicitly as the word of God. In the beginning of that period, I was put through the deepest exercise of soul on that point. Did heaven and earth, the visible church, and man himself, crumble into nonentity, I should, through grace, since that epoch, hold to the word as an unbreakable link between my soul and God. I am satisfied that God has given it me as such. I do not doubt that the grace of the Holy Spirit is needed to make it profitable, and to give it real authority to our souls, because of what we are; but that does not change what it is in itself. To be we when it is received, it must have been true before it was so.

And here I will add, that although it require the grace of God and the work of the Holy Ghost to give it quickening power, yet divine truth, God's word, has a hold on the natural conscience, from which it cannot escape. The light detects "the breaker-up," though he may hate it. And so the word of God is adapted to man, though he be hostile to it — adapted in grace (blessed be God!) as well as in truth. This is exactly what shews the wickedness of man's will in rejecting it. And it has power thus in the conscience, even if the will be unchanged. This may increase the dislike of it; but it is disliked because conscience feels it cannot deny its truth. Men resist it because it is true. Did it not reach their conscience, they would not need to take so much pains to get rid of and disprove it. Men do not arm themselves against straws, but against a sword whose edge is felt and feared.

6 Reader, it speaks of grace as well as truth. It speaks of God's grace and love, who gave His only-begotten Son that sinners like you and me might be with Him, know Him — deeply, intimately, truly know Him — and enjoy Him for ever, and enjoy Him now; that the conscience, perfectly purged, might be in joy in His presence, without a cloud, without a reproach, without fear. And to be there in His love, in such a way, is perfect joy. The word will tell you the truth concerning yourself; but it will tell you the truth of a God of love, while unfolding the wisdom of His counsels.

It is because I have found it all this, feeble and unworthy as I am, and because it is the scriptures that have made God thus known to me through grace, that I have ventured on ground to which I am not much accustomed; from which I gladly retire, to use the word which I here in a particular case attempt to defend. I have sometimes feared I might be a little like David with Saul's armour on. I have done it, I trust, in love to the Lord and to the souls of others, yet with some reluctance. Let me add to my reader, that by far the best means of assuring himself to the truth and authority of the word is to read the word itself.

In fine, I would say, that as I am conscious I have no claim to literary honour, so I neither pretend to nor desire it. I hope I may have been, in general, sufficiently clear to be understood. I would only beg my reader kindly to remember, that sometimes the subjects are somewhat abstract; and while he who publishes anything must expect, of course, to be criticised (if what he writes is indeed worth it), I would so far claim indulgence as one may who has snatched from hours of rest almost the whole time occupied in composing what the reader has before him (service in ministering amongst souls from day to day, and other labours in the Lord's field, needless to mention, fully occupying all ordinary hours of toil). If I am useful to any, and the Lord accepts it as service done to Him, I am content. I think one or two points are twice referred to from being connected with different subjects. It is not very material. If it be so, the reader will excuse what other labours forbid my now correcting.

I draw the attention of my reader to one point, on which this whole question of revelation greatly hangs in the reasoning of those with whom we have to do. I have noticed it in the body of the book from feeling it was really the basis of their reasonings. I have since seen it laid down as the foundation of them by a French writer of this class in his attacks on scripture. It is this — that man is not capable of other ideas than those his own mind can create or produce. These may be awakened by some occasion, but they must exist in an abstract sense. This is true, as to mathematics, because they are the expression of the relationship of quantity or form, and these are perpetually inherent in what is subject to the mind of man, and what he has the capacity of pursuing to all its consequences. But in moral facts it is quite otherwise. Every being who has a superior moral nature to mine will produce acts, of the influence of which I am susceptible, though quite incapable in virtue of being morally inferior. Nay, so true is this principle, that the same act done by beings of a superior nature or position has an entirely different moral character and effect. If that nature and position are infinitely superior, the difference is infinite, the obligation quite of another character; yet the act may be quite intelligible, even through my wants. I do not measure it, but I know a love, if the act be one of love, which is beyond my measure.

7 Thus Christianity tells us, that "God was manifest in the flesh" 1 Tim. 3: 16 to fulfil a work of self-sacrifice for me. A man's sacrificing himself for me would present the highest human claim on a grateful heart; but God's doing it (that new, lovely, yet infinite fact, capable of filling the whole moral world,) puts all that world in a new condition. Again, take the moral difference merely: man could die for a benefactor perhaps, but he is not capable, in true simple-hearted love, of unostentatiously dying for an enemy; God's becoming a man to do it silences the heart, and creates, by the sovereign title of love, a new order of feeling.

The result is, that the notion that new moral thoughts which no human investigation could reach cannot be produced, cannot be communicated, is utterly and stupidly untrue; and of these truths man is abstractedly incapable of judging but by the effect and thoughts produced by them. He becomes capable of estimating them by the change which takes place in his state in virtue of them, and not by pre-existing thoughts; he receives the new moral ideas from the objects and grows up into them. This is eminently true of Christianity, as an unexampled divine act, for and in man. I reserve the answer to the French rationalist for another occasion, if God permit. He has stated more definitely the basis of the argument; and, consequently, the gross absurdity of the system is more palpable.

8 The heart and conscience, then, is capable of impressions, of effects, which neither could produce; because beings in a higher order of moral nature can act on principles, and with rights entirely above man, and yet can act on and towards him in things he was wholly ignorant of before, which meet his need, but which no moral effort could, by any possibility, have produced, because they proceed from a nature superior to his. It is a false assumption, that man is so constituted that he is not capable of a certain impression by an act of which he was wholly incapable of forming an idea before it was accomplished by another. He knows it as so accomplished by the superior being in the effect produced in his heart by it. I do not doubt that there is a divine work wrought in communicating the knowledge of it; but on that ground I do not enter here.

9 INTRODUCTORY REMARKS

HOW, AND HOW FAR, CAN GOD BE KNOWN BY MAN?*

{*"Canst thou by searching find out God?" Job 11: 7.}

When a man makes his own mind the measure of his knowledge of good, he soon sinks to the level of that by which he measures it; indeed he is already sunk there morally.

This is the case with Mr. N. He judges of what God ought to be, of what a revelation ought to be if there was one, by his own mind and feelings.

A book presents itself as a revelation from God; and he judges that it is not one. By what rule is his judgment formed? By what his own mind is, independent of revelation, which he subjects to the test of his own thoughts, when the book is presented to him as such. He can do this only in virtue of the competency of his mind to judge, before he has received it, what a revelation ought to be. That is, his own mind, and even his own mind in its present state, is the measure by which revelation is to be judged of. Were it so, the mind of God must be on a level with the mind of man, and even of the particular man who judges. But the fallacy of such a principle, as well as the excessive self-sufficiency of it, is evident.

First, the measure of what the divine Being ought to be or require (for if it be a revelation by Him, it must declare what He is, or what He requires) will vary with the moral condition or the natural disposition of each individual who seeks to form a judgment.

More than this, it will vary with the circumstances in which a man is placed, with the age of the world in which he lives, with everything through which he has passed in emerging out of the state of natural ignorance of all things in which he began his life, and which have exercised an influence in forming his character.

It would be mere folly and ignorance of human nature, blindness to the most obvious facts, not to recognize these influences in the forming and moulding of the human mind, and thus their power in colouring its judgment of all around and above h. Does Mr. N. think he has not profited by the influence of the Christianity he rejects? He miserably deceives himself if he does. But, to do him justice, he does not think so. In another volume of his (it is well the confession is absent from this) he avows (speaking of the New Testament, with the devotional parts of the Old, and declaring his intimate knowledge of it), "to it I owe the best part of whatever wisdom there is in my manhood." (Soul, p. 242.) But of this farther on. He will not suppose that he himself soars entirely above the ken of the moral discernment of others as to his own condition, since he accounts himself capable of judging what God and a revelation ought to be. He has profited, he tells us, by the wisdom and piety of this false Messiah. But he thinks he has emancipated himself from the trammels of a revelation which he does not believe, and emerged into the truthful results arrived at by the logical and philosophical workings of the human (let us say the word, of his own) mind.

10 But here a question arises: Have all emerged alike into the same thoughts of God and moral truth? Have these philosophers, these rare men few and far between (for the mass have followed stupidly some religion or other), this élite of the human race — have they all formed the same estimate of good and evil, of God and His relationship with men? Have Stoics and Epicureans, Platonists and Peripatetics, come to the same result? I might almost ask, have they come to any result? Are the rationalist infidels of Dr. Paulus's school (of which Germany is well nigh tired), or the spiritualist infidels of Dr. Strauss's (of which it has been, for the moment, enamoured), the true interpreters of what they are agreed to doubt about and cast off? Is the "desolating pantheism which is abroad" (ib. preface 12.) the same as Mr. N.'s objective relationship with a God whom he knows as a personal Deity by specific sense, but of whose mind he knows no more "than a dog does of his master's?" (Soul, pp. 119, 121.)

Mr. N. and others tell us of "following truth." (Phases, P. 116.) What is the truth they are following? Where is it? The truth they are following is truth they have not got. What is it — this truth they are seeking? They do not know. If they knew, they would not be following it.

Mr. N. may here object, that he arrives at this conclusion, that God has sympathy with individual man. (Ib. p. 201.) Now the sympathy of God with individual man is rather a vague word. God does not sympathize with sin, with lusts, with passions, with ambition, with avarice, with violence. I suppose Mr. N. will not deny that there are such in the world — alas! that they largely prevail in the world in general. Indeed, he tells us elsewhere (Soul, p. 44) that there is "prevailing wickedness." The sympathy of God is a lovely word, a gracious thought: but what is this sympathy, if it cannot be exercised in reference to so very large a portion of man's moral existence in the state in which it is actually found? Mr. N. shall tell us. "The Christian advocate," he says in the same page (Phases, p. 201), "assumes that God concerns Himself with our actions, words, thoughts — assumes, therefore, that sympathy of God with man which (it seems) can only be known by an infallible Bible." Is this the sympathy of God with individual man? He "concerns Himself with our actions, words, thoughts." No doubt He does; but this may be in the way of a judge, mere responsibility on my part, as well as sympathy on His. The law of England concerns itself about my actions and words, at least, without much sympathy. In what way does God do so? This is the serious question.

11 Now I believe there is a consciousness in man that God does concern Himself about our actions, words, and thoughts. But then, in spite of clothing this with the graceful name of "sympathy," what I am concerned to know is, Who and what is the God that does concern Himself about them? Is He a righteous Judge? By what rule does He judge? Is He love? When my conscience tells me I have sinned, when some vile wretch feels in bitterness what he has done, what resource is there for him? How is his conscience to be purged? How is he to get happy with the God he has offended? In a word, what is the God that does concern Himself about my very thoughts? This is the important point to know. All religion assumes what Mr. N. says it does, as he explains it; because all consciences feel that God does so concern Himself about our actions, words, thoughts. But in what manner? What is He who does so? For this we need revelation; but Mr. N. denies us it altogether — the only thing I want, because we have the consciousness that God concerns Himself about us.

Revelation does not tell me that I have a conscience and aspirations; it gives me the answer to them. And this is what I want, and not to be told I have got such. I do not want a book for this: I want a certainty of what God is, to answer the need of my soul. I know what He is by His revelation of Himself in Christ. Of this Mr. N. can tell me nothing; and he deprives me of that which tells me everything. There I find perfect love to me as a poor sinner, and thus have the possibility of truthfulness and honesty in a sin-conscious soul. There I find a love which is consistent with God's maintaining that absolute righteousness and hatred of sin which my soul has learnt He ought, and which my heart (now renewed in knowledge) desires Him to maintain, and could not own Him as the God I desire if He did not maintain. In Christ I am (I will not say restored to Him, but) brought to know Him in perfect peace, as nothing else could make me know Him, love Him, walk with Him, as a known God who loves me.

12 Would I exchange this with Mr. N.'s aspirations and thoughts of God? Can he give me this? Doubts he can give me (this is easy work), difficulties in scripture doubtless, uncertainty as to everything I supposed to be truth. Philosophers (like Mr. N.) think that they can prove, that what has made my heart divinely happy has made me bless God, because of a goodness I never dreamt of till I knew it in Him; that what has consecrated the hearts and lives of thousands, and changed, where the heart was not consecrated, the whole condition of the world (for men are ashamed of doing in the light what they would do in the dark, though they are not changed in heart) — they think, I say, that all this has been done by a fable, an imposture. Poor human nature! Ay, the reader will see that Mr. N. thinks this of himself. But the truth they are following — Where is it? What is it? Why, they are following it: how can they tell you what it is till they get it? True, they cannot, and I must wait.

"Rusticus expectat dum defluat amnis; at ille

Labitur, et labetur in omne volubilis aevum."

Is this all? Not quite. They are the only really honest people, save some blinded persons who are led by others (as Mr. N. once was) in an honest delusion. They are honest because they believe nothing, and are following — following they cannot tell me what. Their honesty is in following without believing anything, and in trusting all the conclusions of their own minds, in rejecting what they supposed they did believe. And their descending steps in this are called "phases of faith!"

But, perhaps, the age is enlightened. Be it so; though in philosophy and moral apprehension it may perhaps be doubted. But be it so, I repeat. Is the age's opinion of itself to content me in my measure of God, and of what a revelation of Him ought to be? Millions in previous ages have believed in a revelation — in the revelation which Mr. N. rejects — enlightened men too, philosophers even, wearied with searching after a truth they never found. They are all wrong.

13 But why am I to think we are arrived, just in our day, at the perfection of the human mind, so that we are exactly right now? Mr. N. will tell me that they were superstitious ages. The age in which Christianity was introduced or made progress among the Gentiles, was very far otherwise. Witness the various forms of mind, the Philos, the Celsuses, the Porphyries, the Alexandrian School of the Neo-Platonists, the Lucians, and others, whose reputation is publicly known (without any pretension to learning), to say nothing of earlier Grecian philosophy which led the way. But suppose it was superstition: what does that prove but this that the theory that man's mind is the measure of revelation and of what God ought to be, makes truth and error, and the very character which God ought to have, depend on the age a man lives in? I speak of facts.

Men, and men of able intellectual minds, have received the revelation which Mr. N. rejects as being unworthy of God. They have thought it very worthy of Him — have adored the God revealed there as alone worthy of adoration, as supremely worthy. I am not now seeking to prove that they are right. But the fact cannot be denied. They had minds enlarged by stores of knowledge, they were of a philosophical turn of thought, they had considered all, or almost all, the objections which Mr. N. presents in his book (for on this head there is little or nothing new in it: his objections are mostly as old as the Celsuses of the first centuries, and other such objectors); and, in spite of all, they have bowed before the God of the Bible as supremely good, supremely just and wise. Mr. N., applying his mind as the measure of it, thinks it all utterly unworthy of the God which his mind has pictured to itself: for what other has he?

Now, to say nothing of the heathen, who had gods to please their lusts, for lusts men have after all; nor of those who made God a kind of soul of the world, or who do, as there are many with a "desolating pantheism," make Him an all-pervading power or influence, so that everything is God; but to take such men as Mr. N., Sir Isaac Newton, Pascal, Paul, Justin Martyr (Mr. N. loves such associations), I must either judge that Mr. N.'s mind and judgment are the sole true measure, or that the human mind is not a competent measure of what God ought to be, or what should characterize a revelation from Him. Nay, should I think Mr. N. and his school alone right, I should not have gained much, for I should then have to consider all other minds incompetent; and he would, if he has not a revelation, be himself a Deaster, and the sole revealer of truth. What does Mr. N. think?

14 I beg the reader to remark, I am not here supposing Sir Isaac Newton or Paul to be right. I only shew that they differ from Mr. N. in his idea of what a revelation ought to be (quot homines, tot sententiae); and that I learn thus that the human mind is not a competent measure of a revelation. Mr. N. and his school will surely forgive me if I do not think they stand alone in their competency to measure what becomes God. How can I tell that the author has arrived at the end of his "phases"? I humbly conceive, from his own statement, that he never has had faith at all (unless in the Irish clergyman). Would I could believe he had! How gladly would I commit all this to the fire! He may alter yet once more; light may break in upon his mind; he may learn to see a beauty in Jesus he has never seen yet. The Lord grant it may be so! What a joy to think it is true that all (even his writing against that Blessed One) would be freely forgiven! And O how does the thought of Christianity refresh the heart in the midst of all the cold logic of infidelity, if logic such confusion can be called! But all his previous estimates were false — were "phases" of the state of his own mind. And can he assure me this is not one which some subsequent illumination ("movement," p. 233, is the word) will throw into equal discredit? The Lord grant that it may be so!

Nor is this without example in history as to men in general Where superstition has bound down the will and degraded religion below the standard of natural conscience, it awaits only an adequate impulse from good or from evil to break the chains. I leave aside the good now; but the working of the mere will of man, under the impulse of evil, brought about such an event in the French Revolution. The Bible was not there as a restraining power, nor as formative of human enquiry and thought. Superstition and a hollow state of society came down with a tremendous crash, and all reverence for God was buried in its ruins. Man had emancipated himself, to have — what? Uncertainty in everything, and a ruin from which he found no resource. Conscience and the Bible, under God's good hand, had emancipated at the Reformation (imperfectly perhaps, but really); man's will without the Bible, at the French Revolution. In the country in which it burst forth superstition had continued; and society, as it was, was attacked with it, and all fell together. But man is a dependent creature; and, when he pursues his own will like a naughty child, he ere long tires himself, and is not always agreeable to his neighbours. Its energy is a feverish and feeble thing. Men as they are in general, that is, man as such, must have something certain to lean upon; he tires of uncertainty — tires of wandering he knows not whither. He is feeble, he wants rest; and, after a certain effort, he will have it. What has resulted in the case we refer to? Men have gone back, alarmed, disheartened, and weary, to the superstition which at any rate clothed itself with the certainty of Christianity; and, as far as they dare, impose on conscience, for peace' sake, what never satisfied nor purified any conscience before the God with whom men have to do. They have given an outward stability to what pretended to certainty, and had sufficient influence to make that certainty available to quiet the mass, sufficient remains of Christianity to deck itself with its name, that they may have what, at least, can be called certain, and may so far give rest to society, if not to conscience. The will broke loose; the will of tired man would have rest somewhere. Corrupt Christianity was better than nothing.

15 It will be said, "This will not endure." I believe, undoubtedly, it will not. But we are seeking what certainty the human mind can in itself secure to us, and whether this enlightened age can afford me the rest which the soul seeks after; we are enquiring into its competency to measure truth — if its present phase is really a resting-place.

And even for what this age does possess of what is morally superior to every preceding one — to what is it indebted? To Christianity. Activity of intellect was not wanting, nor acuteness either, in other times. If ever a tongue shewed nicety of thought and mental cultivation, it is the Greek. Nor was elaborate and striking speculation on the soul and on God wanting, nor development of systems of large theoretical conceptions of what is hidden from material observation in the Godhead. Philosophers will tell you that the christian scriptures (such as the gospel of John) borrowed, as to their highest elements of thought, their ideas from some of these. Civilization was not wanting, nor study. Yet who can deny that, where Christianity is received, you would find in the mass of mankind truer notions of God, and of right and wrong, beyond all comparison now than then? Yea, the peasants and beggars have a truer knowledge of God, and more real, more holy, more instructed affections when its doctrine has taken effect, than the most elevated philosophical mind in the Academy at Athens, or its imitators at Rome. This is due, Mr. N. tells us, to an enthusiastic imposture — an imposture of a most audacious character, for Jesus pretended to be Son of God (Son of man according to Daniel 7) — an imposture ill reported too. Is this credible? Does man want an imposture to bring him out of mental and moral degradation, and make him know God? Such is Mr. N.'s theory. Nay, as we have seen, he owes most of what his manhood knows of wisdom to this imposture.

16 But does not the knowledge of God — produced where Christianity or even Judaism has existed, and that even where no aspirations after God exist, where the heart is not practically changed — prove that there was a revelation of God? For it is in the knowledge of God there is such amazing general progress. It is really the statements afforded by this revelation which have drawn out Mr. N.'s aspirations. This formed his boyish mind, this communicated his manhood-wisdom. Can I believe, then, his theory? Why should this ardent piety which now attracts him, these energetic statements about God which have drawn out his soul, have sprung up among these narrow bigots of ordinance-bound Jews, rather than from the finely cultivated understanding of an academician, if there had not been a revelation of God so as to produce them? The world moralized by imposture and enthusiasm! What a world it must be! And such a mind as Mr. N.'s gets almost all his manhood-wisdom from it! What an imposture it must be!

Let us consider other religions. Mohammedanism has borrowed much from revelation; but it has met the lusts of men as on God's part, who, as He is there represented, will and does satisfy them: Christianity does so not even in thought.

Again, let us turn our eyes in another direction.

So exceedingly strong, even according to Mr. N., is the moral power of Jesus's character, or the effect produced by His agency, that the very attempt to portray it in pictures has given an entirely different tone to the ideal of those pictures, and imprinted on them a grace and expression of which the highest and most perfect works of art are otherwise entirely destitute, and such a tone of moral loveliness as was conducive to moral improvement all through the dark ages. This result he connects with the effect of the highest moral qualities of man, the absence of which in heathen statues deprived them of this power. These were wholly wanting, he says (see Soul, pp. 20, 21): "meekness, thankfulness, love, contentment, compassion, humility, patience, resignation, disinterestedness, purity, aspiration, devoutness." He does not say these were in Christ; but he is speaking of what was wanting in the Apollos and Mercuries of antiquity, in contrast with the pictures of the Saviour, conducive during centuries to the spiritual improvement of men, and the effect of the character of Jesus on the human spirit.

17 Let us now turn to see what Jesus, who produced this immense moral effect on after ages, was in Mr. N.'s judgment — what He was, in whose imperfect portrait the above enumerated graces more or less shine forth.

"The cause of all this [the mischief of present Christianity] is to be found in the claim of Messiahship for Jesus." (Phases, p. 225.) "He selected 'Son of man' as His favourite title, which is a direct annunciation to us that He based all His pretensions on the seventh chapter of Daniel, from which that title is adopted. On the whole, then, it was no longer defect of proof which presented itself, but positive disproof of the primitive and fundamental claims." (Ib. p. 198.) "My positive belief in its miracles [those of Christianity] had evaporated." (Ib. p. 187.) "He [Jesus] had receded out of my practical religion, I know not exactly when. I believe I must have disused any distinct prayers to Him, from a growing opinion that He ought not to be the object of worship, but only the way by whom we approach to the Father; and as in fact we need no such way at all, this was (in the result) a change from practical di-theism to pure theism. His mediation was to me always a mere name, and, as I believe, would otherwise have been mischievous." (Ib. p. 188.)

"Thirdly, while it is by no means clear what are the new truths for which we are to lean upon the decisions of Jesus, it is certain we have no genuine and trustworthy account of His teaching. If God had intended us to receive the authoritative dicta of Jesus, He would have furnished us with an unblemished record of those dicta." (Ib. p. 213.)

Mr. N., then, has acquired nearly all his manhood-wisdom, ages their highest moral tone, and the world its beau idéal of grace, from (the Lord forgive even the thought in one's mind!) a bold impostor — One who, having found a spurious prophecy (which, however, must have been pretty ancient to be so used), pretended to be the object of it, pretended to work miracles which He never wrought, and sent others to pretend to work them, He and they being alike incapable of doing so, whose deception was deliberate and intentional. For, speaking of riding on the ass, Mr. N. says, it was "a deed which Jesus appears to have planned with the expressed purpose of assimilating Himself to the lowly king here described." (Ib. p. 195.) What kind of piety and wisdom, which attracts and adorns his mature and manhood-thoughts, must Mr. N. have learnt from such a One? Yet this is philosophy; this is logic — the philosophy of one who has been in the East, and can tell what majnün means!

18 It was the character of Paganism that their deities had nothing to do with conscience, unless it were a future gloomy Pluto.* They were the helpers and satisfiers of their lusts and wishes. Christianity alone acts directly and immediately on the conscience, puts God in connection with it — an immense benefit, and yet takes away fear by revealing love; and unites perfect love and perfect righteousness in the character of God in the doctrine of atonement, so that the conscience and heart may be elevated to the height of God Himself — a God known in love. What the human soul never did before for itself, what it never could do, nay, what it never ought to have supposed, Christianity has done. Another thing characterizes it as introduced into the world — its activity towards souls. Others may have since imitated this. It is not the activity of souls about God, come for money who may to learn, but the activity of God about souls. Hence it is what has (as far as this has been done in spite of human nature) moralized the world, nay, Mr. N. himself. It acts on man for good. Who and what does this? Mohammedanism is active. Ambition is active. Corruption is active. But what is that activity which has permanently moralized the world, taken in the mass of men, and elevated their notions of God? Whence did the activity flow?

{*I find the remark has been made elsewhere, that the only moral part of heathen mythology was the infernal part of it. What a tale that tells! Conscience will tell its tale, whatever lusts may seek; but it will never draw to God.}

Mr. N. has attempted to compare the progress of Christianity with that of Mohammedanism, by introducing the wars of Constantine, and the Saxon conversions by the sword of Charlemagne. But the Mohammedan conquests were the avowed principle of the religion from the beginning. The conduct of Constantine and of Charlemagne was contrary to its principles and to its practice for three hundred years. But Mr. N. is here feeble, in spite of himself. Constantine used the Christianity which existed, and which was (though suffering up to that hour, as is well known — for Diocletian's persecution had not long since been raging) strong enough for a competitor for the throne to secure his pretensions by. Mr. N. says that Constantine's christian army established Christianity. Perhaps on the throne it did; but how did the christian army come there?

19 But there is another ground on which to rest the proof of man's incapacity to measure what God and what a revelation ought to be. Men have lusts, passions, ambition, avarice: alas! though restrained by Christianity so that society is altered, yet the heart of man is still influenced by all these evil principles. Now all this must dim the spiritual perception, and render it more or less incapable of rightly judging of God and a revelation. How is it to get the thought of God which is to set it right? Christianity has no need to be ashamed of its axiom, "Blessed are the pure in heart; for they shall see God." How are the impure to be capable of judging? Mr. N. has no revelation to act on them. Is the soul, when governed by corrupt lusts, that is, corrupt desires, perhaps habits (and with how many is this true), capable of judging? If not, this large class is incompetent to form any estimate of the scriptures. These lusts will not correct those who are under their power. What is to be done for them? They may sink, on Mr. N.'s plan, to the level to which their lusts may carry them.

In fine, in whatever aspect we view man, all is uncertainty if man's mind be the measure of truth. But you will say, This is undermining everything — it is the Pyrrhonism of a Pilate.

No; the Christian believes God has spoken — has been active in love towards man; and he bows. He is not a judge, but a receiver of truth. He desires, as a new-born babe, the sincere milk of the word, that he may grow thereby, having tasted that the Lord is gracious. I am not saying he is right or wrong in receiving it, or on what ground he has done so. I am only shewing that he is not on the same ground on which he is who considers man's mind to be the measure of truth. He has said, "Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth." 1 Sam. 3: 9, "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" Acts 9: 6 He has bowed to what he believes to be absolutely certain, and to be the truth — absolutely such. He may have a great deal yet to learn of it, but he believes it is there revealed by God. "He who hath received his testimony hath set to his seal that God is true; for he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God." John 3: 33 Faith, then, has certainty, because it bows to Him who cannot lie, and receives His word as the truth itself.

And here is the real question. Mr. N. takes the soul's thoughts, and excludes wholly God's making Himself known. The believer brings Him in, and this changes everything. On this I shall enter into some detail farther on; I merely state the real point in question here. There is not a greater fallacy, a more impudent presumption of man's self-sufficiency, than that it is the capacity of the organ (as men speak, that is, of the soul), in itself, which is the measure and limit of its knowledge; embracing even, in the word "capacity," all knowledge acquirable by its own powers, and all affections acted on by objects known within these limits. It can be acted on by that which it has no intrinsic capacity to acquire; as light enters into the eye, and gives a capacity of seeing by acting on it; as medicine or even food on the body. A susceptibility of being acted on, so as to have effects and even powers produced, is not a capacity in oneself to measure or acquire. The entering in of the word gives light and understanding to the simple. Now this is the operation of a revelation where it is really received. No doubt it is adapted to man in every sense, to his conscience, to his actual state, to his heart; but it is nothing acquirable by man as he is. God is active in communicating to him what operates on his soul, but which is true whether it operates or not, and which has no place in the soul, nor ever will, nor its effects, unless it be positively communicated. Evidently a revelation has this for its proper character, though it may enforce known responsibilities by sanctions known only by that which is revealed, or by the authority of the Revealer, whose perfections and claims are made known. Has man no need of such communications? Has God nothing to communicate which may be a blessing to man, which may morally and spiritually elevate him? Is He incapable of doing it?

20 And this leads to another very important point.

Morality, properly speaking, is relative; that is, it flows from relationships in which we stand to others, and in which we owe such and such things to them in virtue of the claim upon us which their position gives them. I do not mean by this that intrinsic purity of heart is not to be sought, and the subjugation of passions in their workings within us. No Christian could question it for a moment. It is peace in itself. We ought to be pure: it is a good in itself, and it is the practical condition of communion with God: "Be ye holy, for I am holy;" 1 Peter 1: 16 and, as it is stated in a passage we have already cited, "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Matt. 5: 8 This claim of purity distinguishes Christianity as revealing God. No other religious system knew it; for none associated man with a God known to be light, and who called us to walk in the light as He is in the light. Love also in exercise where it is not relatively due is the proper characteristic of the Christian. And these two distinguishing characteristics flow from this blessed and glorious truth — that the Christian partakes of the divine nature, and hence is called to imitate it in practice. "That eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested to us" 1 John 1: 2 (as John teaches us, in Christ, so that He should be an absolute practical example to us) is also "true in Him and in us" whose life He is, "because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth." 1 John 2: 8.

21 This is the christian life. Without disputing about words, I do not call this morality, though it be really that which is the spring of and accomplishes it; because the proper and natural display of life in us is not properly obligation, though that life may, in this display, fulfil those obligations. Now morality, I apprehend, is, properly speaking, the maintenance of obligation. Of this latter we will now speak. In its nature, and by the force of the term obligation, it is, as I have said, relative.

Before entering on this point, I would notice the connection, as stated in the scriptures, between the two; that is, between our partaking of the "divine nature," and our fulfilment of moral obligation.

"Love worketh no ill to his neighbour; therefore love is the fulfilling of the law." Rom. 13: 10 Here this principle of the divine nature communicated to us accomplishes what would be a moral obligation enforced by the law; but the two things are distinguished. And then love goes farther also, because there is positive active energy in it, where there is no relative obligation. While I say no obligation having this nature, I clearly have it to live in it, and so also please God, which itself is the highest obligation. Hence, "he that knoweth to do good, and doeth it not, to him it is sin." James 4: 17 So the Lord Himself united both, even to the giving of His life. "But that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father hath given me commandment, so I do." John 14: 31 The precepts of the gospel are the guidance of this nature, according to the perfection and perfect wisdom of Him who is its source; they are heeded by us in the obscurity of our feeble nature and distracting passions, and give (as ought to be the case, as it was in Christ) to the movements of the divine nature in us the additional character of obedience.

22 It remains then true, that what is called generally and properly "moral obligation" is necessarily and in its nature a relative thing. And hence the measure of it is the claim which the being in relation to whom I stand has upon me in virtue of that relationship.

In this sense it is, though the expression be very incorrect, that morality is eternal. First, if we consider as morality our own (or, to use the modern word, our subjective) state (to which the term is hardly properly applied), the love and holiness which become a man are the communication of the nature of God Himself, and are eternal in their source and character. But secondly, morality, properly so called, drawing its source from the claims attached to certain beings with whom I am in relationship, in virtue of which they are in that relationship, is as unchangeable as the relationship itself. For "eternal" in this case has only the meaning of absolute and unchangeable when the relationship exists; that is, the relationship being known, the duty attaches to it essentially. Thus, father and son, for example, is a known relationship. The relationship of father and son cannot exist without certain relative duties necessarily arising. The obligation is inherent to the relationship of father and son amongst human beings, and so in other cases.

But this shews the importance of a revelation.

As to the first (that is, our likeness to the divine nature), it is absolutely necessary; for God is unknown in His real perfection without it.

In the latter (that is, moral obligation properly so called), it has equal importance in another way, namely, that the revelation which God makes of Himself creates an obligation commensurate with that revelation. If the Son of God has died for me — is my Saviour and my Lord, it is clear He has a claim morally upon me, according to what He is as so revealed, and what He has done. That is, a revelation creates a part of morality; just as a woman's marriage does by her entering upon a new relationship with her husband, with this difference, that the obligation of marriage is abstractedly known in itself, whereas what is newly revealed then first begins even to be known as an obligation. The obligation takes its origin from it.

Some remarks may be added here. The mere capacity of nature to enjoy or stand in certain relationships does not constitute a base of morality; the relationship itself must exist. An orphan may have a nature susceptible of all the feelings and obligations of a child toward a parent. The moral tie does not exist, because the claim of the parent cannot be there.

23 Next, holiness in its nature, and love, as we speak of it here, suppose sin, though it may be only known as the opposite of the nature which knows it. Innocence is not holiness; it is ignorance of evil. God is holy, for He knows good and evil, and is perfectly good, and evil is perfectly abhorrent to Him. We have the knowledge of good and evil; hence naturally our conscience is bad; but if holy, and as far as holy, we abhor the evil we know, and know as evil, when it is present, in the measure of our holiness.

Love too, as we know it in God, is exercised in respect of evil; for evil exists and exists in us, and He loves us in that state.

Now, the understanding of perfect holiness by a sinful nature is, as to its own capacity, impossible. Conscience may so far understand it as to see its opposition to sin, and angrily or in terror dread the consequences; but an unholy nature does not comprehend or know a holy one in its separation from evil, as to affections — will — delight; for it has contrary ones. So, indeed, of love: "He that loveth not knoweth not God; for God is love."

To say that a man is not a sinner is mere folly and insensibility to good and evil, and the strongest possible proof of ignorance of God and hardness of conscience. "Thou thoughtest," says he whose piety Mr. N. declares he delights in (Phases, pp. 223, 232), speaking in God's name, "that I was altogether such a one as thyself; but I will reprove thee, and set before thee the things that thou hast done." Ps. 50: 21 To say that he is a sinner* is to confess his incapacity of knowing God, or judging of Him, or the revelation He gives of Himself, unless sin (that is, an opposite moral nature in thought and desire — in insubjection too of will) be the capacity to know Him.

{*Mr. N. teaches that man cannot grow up sinless, but must be a sinner (pp. 100, 101).}

But if we consider morality, properly speaking, as grounded on relationship, it is clear and easily made evident that man cannot, and ought not, to suppose in his own mind the only thing which God can be to his comfort. For in that for which man is responsible to God he has failed. I ask not the cause. I am willing here to take the ground Mr. N. takes (proof as it may really be, as I shall shew, of indifference to God's presence and favour). I will suppose that sin is come in neither by following Adam, nor by inheriting his fallen nature; that it is all the pure fruit, without other cause, of man's own individual will. Be it so.

24 He has failed, then, in the relationship to God and man in which he stood as a responsible creature, and that by his own proper perverseness. He needs mercy. He needs, then, forgiveness. He needs a God of goodness, who cannot hold the guilty for innocent, and yet forgives iniquity. But if a person has sinned against One to whom he owes so much, his taking it for granted that he is to be forgiven, as a matter of course, is hardness and impudence of heart.

If my child had been very naughty and offensive to me (and it is nothing compared to sin against God), and he were to say, "Of course my father will forgive: forgiveness is a proper thing that suits his character — is becoming conduct;" would not his state be really worse than his offence — his conscience shewn to be hard? Conscience — right feeling — thinks of what we have merited from those good and gracious, when we have offended them, and judges itself, though it may be attracted by grace. The heart which coolly expects forgiveness, because it suits the character of Him we have offended, is in a state which unfits it for receiving it.

If God reveals it, it does indeed suit Him; and I bow in thankful adoration when He has shewn Himself such (but this is revelation): to expect it is to be insensible to it — to be unfit for it.

And here I may take up Christianity itself, because I only shew that, being what it is, there must be a revelation to communicate it: the sinner's mind ought not and could not judge it, or appreciate it, or suppose it, unless it were revealed. It declares a love of God which gave His only-begotten Son, One with Himself, the object of His infinite delight before the world was, for vile and polluted sinners. It declares that the Son came in the exercise of this same love, giving Himself for them to put away their sin and bring them to God — thus known to be perfect love to themselves — and with a conscience which knows that He imputes no sin to them at all (without diminishing, nay, giving a far deeper sense of His holiness), because His character had been perfectly glorified about it.

The Father did not spare His Son, but delivered Him up. He freely and in the same love gave Himself for it, to glorify God and save us. Could a sinner expect such a dealing? Would it not have been a presumption which increased his offence, and shewed his pride and the naughtiness of his heart? Revealed, it is a love which nothing else could manifest, and the glory of Him who has love for His nature.

25 That is, not only the human mind, as such, is incapable of appreciating in itself God and the revelation of Him, but, seeing we are sinners, it cannot, morally it ought not, to suppose the revelation to be such as it must be, if of any use to man, seeing he is a sinner. The supposition constitutes unfitness to enjoy and profit by what is supposed. Known by revelation, grace is the perfection of God as He manifests Himself. The expectation of it destroys its nature (for it would not then be mere goodness), and debases still further him who expects it.

All these considerations shew that the mind of man, and specially of sinful man, is incapable of estimating what God ought to be, and what the revelation which He would give of Himself should be.

Hence utter uncertainty in the soul as to what He is. This is, indeed, an unquestionable fact — He concerns Himself about our words, actions, thoughts. Solemn thought! for if He does so, it is because He has a right and a will to do so. But what is He who does? Here all is solemn or irritated silence, or an effort to believe Him good, so as to set the conscience easy and the will free.

Mr. N. would take away what I have, if he could. He will give me his thoughts instead, but no revelation of God. I must take his thoughts (worse than second-hand faith), or my own, or everybody his own: — that is, everything beyond the thought that God concerns Himself about our actions, words, and thoughts; and almighty power and Godhead are the sport of every man's mind, and of the fancies which a sinful will may have about the God men have to say to. For what else than his own notions can Mr. N. give them?

And does Mr. N. deny this horrible uncertainty, this incapacity to judge of revelation?

He cannot and he does not. I am not here supposing that he does not give us his thoughts about God: these we may hereafter examine in a measure. But we are here examining his views of revelation. On this head all is avowed uncertainty and incapacity. "There is no imaginable criterion," he tells us, "by which we can establish that the wisdom of a teacher is absolute and illimitable." (Phases, p. 213.)

Now this is not a statement that the Bible is not a revelation of God because of what it is; but that no revelation can be established as certain to man.

If there be no imaginable criterion by which it can be established, man is incapable of judging of the certainty of a revelation; for he has no criterion to judge by. I do not deny that some might be proved to be false, by evident contradictions, or such other proofs as are within the measure of man's appreciation, for which he has a criterion. If a pretended revelation declared there were many gods, and of the basest immorality and born in time, such as Jupiter and Venus,* and the like, it could not be a revelation of the one true God, whose "eternal power and Godhead" men ought to know without a revelation given by inspiration. (Rom. 1.) But for receiving a revelation as certain in a positive way, man has no criterion; that is, he is incapable of judging of it.

{*Yet, in fact men not having desired to retain God in their knowledge, they were received as gods, because man's passions, and habits, and imaginations, and associations of country, of the religion of his fathers, wants connected with his passions, are stronger in the immense mass of mankind than any calm reasoning about God from the display He has made of Himself in nature, or the workings of man's natural conscience. The Socrateses would be treated as atheists and the despisers of their country's gods, till an indifference which demoralises everything made polytheism ridiculous, and independence of God as convenient for men's passions as imaginative gods that favoured or thwarted him.}

26 It cannot be pretended that God cannot reveal anything (that is, state anything with certainty as to the past, as to the future, or as to what is unseen). Only man, according to Mr. N., has no criterion by which to judge that it is such. That is, man is incapable of judging with certainty of it; he is capable of uncertainty in such a case, and that is all.

A poor condition to be in if God be capable of giving such a revelation! Mr. N. tells us (Phases, p. 212) it would be very "undesirable;" but he cannot say in principle that God has not revealed and does not reveal anything, for he has no criterion to judge by in order to assure himself of it.

But let us measure this proposition a little more accurately. It affirms very clearly what I have stated as to man's incapacity, supposing him to be the judge of revelation. He is, it is confessed, a totally incompetent one.

But morally (that is as regards man's responsibility before God, or his comfort or enlightening from God, and God's competency to place man under responsibility or to comfort or enlighten him,) it goes something farther; for it assumes that man's criteria are the only means of the certainty of a revelation; and, in doing that, it affirms that God is incapable of giving a revelation which can bind the conscience of man as being God's revelation to him. I say morally, because I admit that sinful corrupt-minded man is an incompetent judge of a revelation. But Mr. N. admits no other way of its reception than the à priori moral competency of man; and on this ground his proposition really declares that God is incapable of so revealing Himself to man as to make Himself known, or bind the conscience, or assure the heart, by such revelation.

27 For if there be no imaginable criterion by which man can be assured certainly of its authority, and man's judgment be the only way of receiving it, God in no imaginable way can communicate his mind or will so as to make it certain to man as such, and thus binding on him, or a comfort to him. This is a bold proposition. It is always well to know what men do really mean; sometimes it is enough to state it to see its falseness.

This statement declares God's total incapacity to communicate with man. He must remain, as far as He is concerned, an unknown, perhaps an Epicurean (i.e., an indifferent) God. Any expression of love to His creature He is debarred from, as well as that of righteousness. For any revelation of His character to instruct man He is incompetent. He has made man in such a way as that all communion to him on His part is forbidden. Would He elevate man to an increased knowledge of Him? He cannot. Would He manifest any love to him in his sins and sorrows? He must resign Himself to be silent, shut up in His own perfection, if perfection an inactive love, incapable of telling itself to the one it loves, can be called. Such is the theory of Mr. N. But this is not all.

For if God cannot reveal Himself to man, man's thoughts of God must be entirely within the limits of his own mind. I shall just now shew Mr. N.'s theory false as to fact, on ground not yet noticed, but I take it now as he states it.

Now if God be brought within the limits of man's thoughts as such, if by searching Him man can find Him out, then is He really not God at all, or man is. At least, his mind is equal to the divine infinity; for when it comes to power instead of presumptuousness, the difference is soon found out.

I remember (for I also have had my "phases of faith") when first awakened to serious and, in some measure, continued moral thought, I was reading, partly through desire of knowledge, partly alas! through the vanity which likes to possess it, Cicero's Offices," and I came to the passage, nearly the only one which remains to me unobliterated by an active life, "subjecta veritas quasi materia," that is, "truth subjected as a material" to the mind. I said to myself (or rather the divine truth flashed across my mind), "This cannot be in the case of God, for my mind must be superior to the matter which is subjected to its operations; if it be, that which is so is not God. Faith alone can put Him in His place, which, if He be God, must be above me, as much as God must be above man."

28 Is not this true? But then there must be a revelation of God in some way, or I (deplorable condition!) remain in total ignorance of Him. I am not saying man is so, but that he must be so if there be no revelation of God. I believe conscience knows that there is a God — Mr. N.'s conscience, my conscience; but it wants something more than it knows: for conscience knows responsibility, and it knows sin — sin lying on itself — on him who has the conscience of it.

Argumentatively, it is an absurdity to make man's mind the measure of God.

Morally, it is a horrible iniquity as well as a folly.

But perhaps the reader will consider it unjust in argument, and even morally, to impute to Mr N. such a thought, as that which the Psalmist, whose piety he admires, puts into the mouth of God, being inspired so to do, as a charge against the wicked, "Thou thoughtest that I was altogether such a one as thyself."

But Mr. N. has reasoned out his principles too boldly to their consequences to conceal them. Any God known by revelation is too entirely excluded from his thoughts to make him fear to bring out his God such as He is according to his theory. He tells us, indeed, that we must regard Him as morally more perfect than man. Still his conclusion on the whole matter is, that "the perfections of God are justly called a projected image of our own highest conceptions."* (Soul, p. 41.) That is, as a fact, God is more morally perfect than man, which is not, indeed, saying much; but, adding boundlessness to our idea, our highest conceptions are the moral measure, as to kind, of His perfections, though it be a projected enlarged image of them.

{*I must be allowed to put the reader here on his guard against misapprehension, as if highest conceptions were the same thing as highest qualities. The expression does limit God's perfections to man's conceptions. All the poison of such a thought is there in full. But most of men's good qualities are inapplicable to God, as belonging to a creature: awe, reverence, gratitude, admiration, love to a superior, all that concur in adoration are necessarily excluded from the notion of God. When we partake of the divine nature, through a grace which has set us in perfect peace as to ourselves, we can love in a divine way, and love righteousness in a divine way. Otherwise we cannot. We must have a justly lovable object to call out a correspondent affection, or it will be an idolatrous passion towards an unworthy one. To love, in supreme sovereign goodness, is an absolutely divine quality. "God is love." 1 John 4: 8 Hence, at once, the apostle says, "He that loveth is born of God, and knoweth God" 1 John 4: 7; he derives this from Him, and He is the supreme object of it. This characterizes the divine nature as communicated to us. I can also understand and delight in righteousness in itself and holiness, being made partaker of His holiness, and renewed in knowledge after the image of Him that created me in righteousness and true holiness. But while conscience has anything to say, I cannot love them simply, though that conscience may see them to be right and good, because I cannot and ought not to love to be condemned, nor be content to be defiled, supposing goodness to be as great as may be. But righteousness condemns me, and holiness shews me to be defiled.

The truth is, all this attempt to project God out of our conceptions is confusion, just because we are creatures, and excellence in a creature is a different thing. And hence there is incompetency to see what God ought to be or must be; though I may in a measure know what He may approve in me, which is another thing, but which will never carry us up to the being which approves. Secondly, we are sinful creatures; hence what God can be to us ought not even to be estimated by us. And lastly, no conception of mind can estimate love. "He that loveth not, knoweth not God; for God is love." It never can be said, Man is love. A creature cannot be; he h bound to something else which bars him from supreme love. He may know it in supreme love to him as a sinner, and thus, but thus only, rise to its source. He knows it supreme and infinite, because it reached him: supreme, because there was nothing lovely in its effect; infinite, for nothing is so far from supreme love as enmity against it, and this was the condition of his proud heart. So even Mr. N. confesses, for he admits an antagonist will. And what else is that but open moral opposition against supreme good, and a refusal to bow to it? How is that to be loved' and if loved, is it to be sanctioned? or how reconcile entire condemnation of it, and yet perfect love to him that is in it? This the cross has solved, but not Mr. N. He has known too much of Christianity not to make all his system absurd by that which he has introduced into it, as it was, without this, by all it left out.

The cross, Mr. N. will tell us, is not just. No; it is love. But it is love exercised in such a condemnation of sin as makes its exercise consistent with righteousness, that is, the necessary and desirable display of God's opposition to evil. Christ was willing to offer Himself up, that God might be thus known and man saved.}

29 Now, the mental absurdity of this I am not answerable for; nor is it surprising in logicians and philosophers meddling with God's nature, and measuring it by their own. Absurdity is the necessary result.

But it is evident that the addition of boundlessness changes everything morally, so that the application of a limited nature to judge of a boundless one by is moral nonsense. If boundless love and boundless power go together, the result must be entirely different in kind from the responsibility by which I judge my conduct, who have but very limited power.

30 The title to use goodness sovereignly is a different thing from obligation under which I lie to God (if, indeed, Mr. N. admits any); for I am bound in my use of that by the obligation. Infinite goodness, coupled with infinite power, is free to act from itself.

But with this point I am not here concerned. I cite the passage from Mr. N.'s other book, to shew that his system does establish our mind as the moral measure of what God is, though we may attach the idea of greater degree to it.

Such is the necessary result of the exclusion of inspired revelation.

I have said, however, that it is really false in fact. Man does not, nor ever can, form his idea of God without his mind being acted on in the way of revelation, though it be not a direct inspired communication from God. He is surrounded by a system altogether beyond his power and control, which witnesses a Being that rises in divine supremacy beyond all his thoughts, which tells of a creating God. Yet, mark, he sees around him a confusion, a disorder, in the condition of those set as masters over the lower part of this creation, which tells a tale of their moral position before God which no wit of his can solve — too bad to be such as it ought to be, with too many signs of God having to say to it — of goodness and mercy, to think it possible it should not be a system of responsibility with which God has to do, with which He will deal otherwise than He does as yet — which put Tartarus and Elysium into the minds of the heathen, a vague and anxious future into the breasts of all: the very insoluble enigma of which shews some mighty moral relationship in disorder, proving by its very greatness that it must refer to God, and hence that it is only His coming into it which can give the key to all, or set it right, in fact.

Mr. N. admits "prevailing wickedness" (Soul, p. 44) in the creation of a Being of perfect goodness. How strange! He tells us, with cold calculation which one would think had never visited man's sorrows, that sorrow is needed to perfect man morally. A poor comfort to thousands of despairing souls, writhing in misery and complaining of God because of it! A poor answer to millions worshipping stocks and stones, and, according to Mr. N., a supposed devil,* through fear! Is this necessary for Mr. N.'s philosophical happiness and moral perfecting of man? If Christianity had produced all this, what would he have said? Had it done so, that would not alter the fact. There it is for cold-hearted drawing-room philosophers to pronounce it necessary at their ease.

{*"How could I believe in that painful and gratuitous imagination — the devil?" (Phases, p. 189.) Mr. N.'s assertions in that place will be considered elsewhere.}

31 Mr. N. tells us, indeed, that had we had it all to arrange our own way, man could not have done it better. Man could not have done it better! Is that all he has to say? Could God have done it no better? is the question, if we are to take it up as Mr. N. does, as being the original ordered system of God. Is prevailing wickedness, as the necessary result of all a supremely good God could do, the projected image of our highest conceptions? I dare say it is; but does it not then betray the true nature and competency of these conceptions? Mr. N. also declares there is an antagonist will in man. Is this also necessary to his moral perfecting?

But further, as evil is finite and transitory, Mr. N. thinks, while lamenting the actual state of the world, that in prevailing wickedness, however intense and whatever misery it causes, there is nothing to inspire rational doubt of the divine goodness. (Soul, p. 45.) Is this all the soul and its aspirations can give us? The chance that evil will be transitory taking away rational doubts of God's goodness, when what is intensely the contrary prevails, and that goodness is almost universally unknown! Is this Mr. N.'s highest conception, projected as an image with boundless proportions of abstract goodness?

The Christian has no such difficulty; he believes that there is alas! an "antagonist will" (Soul, p. 47), a rebellious and sinful nature, with all the miserable consequences of its "intense wickedness" (ib. p. 45); but he believes that God has come into the midst of it to win man's heart away from this perverse and miserable enmity to God by surpassing goodness, and to make Himself known to man as love in the midst of the fruit of his ways; yea, finding in all the misery and sin the occasion of shewing it, and at all cost of love to Himself. He does not rationally suppose God is good, because, in cold philosophy, man's sorrows are necessary to his moral perfecting. He sees in the sorrow (such as none ever had; for who could have such?) of God, come down to carry man's, and redeem and bring him out of it, the proof of that love which makes God known, alike in its greatness and its nearness, in its height above sin and its condescension to those sunk in it; according to that grace which could reach from the throne of God to the vilest of sinners, yea, to be made sin for them, and so bring up the heart, by reaching it there where it was, to the throne from which that grace had descended, and the God of whom it was the perfection. For the highest exercise (or, at least, display) of that perfection which dwells on the throne of heaven was that which visited the lost sinner upon earth, linking his soul to itself, and making known God as He is. Yes, there was a revelation, a revelation of what man wanted, and which God alone could give, and which made Him known.*

{*How much is known of God, on Mr. N.'s principles, is avowed by himself: "It is axiomatic, that man can no more understand the mind of God than a dog that of his master." (Soul, p. 119.)}

32 But I must return to the point I was upon. A certain revelation of God is necessary, and exists, and that revelation is the basis of all Mr. N.'s reasonings — that is, "the things that are made." Rom. 1. From these Mr. N. deduces design, a designer, and so on. No doubt Christianity fully recognizes this. But, then, this is only one way of God's revealing Himself — the lowest way. It reveals His eternal power and Godhead. But this raises other questions. Undoubted traces of goodness are infallibly seen in the creation; but while order reigns in the material world so as to leave no doubt of One of infinite wisdom who designed it, in the moral, such is the "intense wickedness," the confusion, and discontent that, if a man attempts to unriddle what he sees, he falls into a labyrinth from which there is no way out.

A mind which feels that God has to say to the world cannot, with the flippancy of philosophy turning despot in its despair, say, Evil is only transitory — hang the man that troubles society (as Mr. N. would do), and from the reasonableness of this deduce that God may leave the majority of mankind in such a state that even the heart that could reason thus "laments" over it, yet counts it good enough after all. (Soul, p. 43; the whole passage will be quoted hereafter as characteristic.) It cannot say, It is a part of the perfection of beasts of prey to be cruel and destroy, therefore the misery of the destroyed is intelligible; because it may say, "How is it they have such a kind of perfection? What is come in, that, in proportion as created being approaches man, evil begins to manifest itself; that where creation is without a will, all is material order, all lovely where man cannot reach; where will comes in, where man meddles, all is misery and sin? How is it that, if the beast's furious passion passes away with its occasion, man uses his intellect to perpetuate and perfect his vengeance? Is this for moral perfecting?"

33 The Christian does see that there is a revelation of God in His works which are seen, such as leaves man without excuse in not owning His eternal power and Godhead. He sees, plainly enough, that Mr. N.'s highest conceptions did not, and could not, take a step without it. But he sees that he wants something else from God to explain the riddle of the moral confusion which exists, since there is a God; and that as God has to say to it, and evidently it has to say to God (for His creatures surely have something to say to Him*), God, and God alone, can give the key and the answer to that in the midst of which his soul groans. He sees, moreover, that such as Mr. N. depend on a revelation of God as much as any: only that, in order to maintain man's importance, they take the lowest, the one morally inadequate to solve the grand question of the eternal interests of a soul with God, and reject that which would reveal God fully, and make man dependent on Him.

{*Mr. N. admits "that the God of nature is the God of our consciences, and that all wrong doing is frowned on by Him." (Soul, p. 65.)}

Why, if God has partially revealed Himself in His works, is it impossible He should reveal Himself in some other way? Is that the only possible one? If God can give in mere nature infallible evidence that it is He, why cannot He reveal Himself in some other way with adequate evidence that it is Himself who does so? This, we have seen, Mr. N. declares Him incapable of doing. But who will take his highest conceptions as an adequate guide to God? Why is he to use a partial revelation in which God has not left Himself without witness, if haply man might feel after Him and find Him, and deny all other? Mr. N., while using Christianity really to elevate his account of what God is, would reduce us to that which God's revelation points out as true, but as of the lowest kind. That is all his books amount to. The christian revelation recognizes this testimony: but it shews from the plainest facts, which Mr. N. very wisely passes over, that such a testimony, though it left man without excuse, had been perfectly useless, through man's perverseness, to elevate man above the corruptions of his own heart; that its existence had even left idolatrous revelling in abominations not fit to be named, and making gods to themselves to help them in them. Christianity owns the testimony, and shews that man's soul when in possession of it sank into the utmost degradation. Mr. N. avails himself of Christianity, from which he avows he has got almost all his manhood-wisdom, to prove the competency of this previous partial revelation to lead man up to God and render all other unnecessary, and to deny the Christianity which has given him the results and ideas to which the other never in fact led man. Which is the most philosophical, the most logical, the most true?

The Irrationalism of Infidelity: Section b.

Being a reply to "Phases of Faith"*

J. N. Darby.

{*London: 1853.}

<06001-129E> File Section b.

34 PRINCIPLES ON WHICH THE EXAMINATION IS CARRIED ON

I turn now to the revelation itself on which Christianity is based. The real object of Mr. N.'s book is to destroy the Christianity from which he gained almost all the wisdom he has. It is not very kind to others. Would he be the only depository of it in some improved shape into which it has been refined in his mind?

Our task now must be to examine Mr. N.'s reasonings as to the revelation he rejects.

And here, at the outset, I stumble on what proves the whole course of his argument, from one end of the book to the other, to be utterly illogical and unsound. His enquiry really is as to the truth and certainty, and hence the authority, of the revelation which the book called pre-eminently "the Bible" professes to give. Is it a credible authoritative revelation from God? Now, by his own confession, he has conducted this enquiry upon a principle which makes it impossible ever to receive any revelation at all as such. That is, he begins his enquiry, and carries it on, on a principle which shews the whole enquiry itself to be absurd and useless. The conclusion was come to before he began, it being contained in the principle on which he set out. He enquires into the authority of a revelation on a principle which in itself denies such authority in any case.

"We cannot build up a system of authority on a basis of free criticism." (Phases, p. 213.) This, Mr. N. puts in italics, as the grand result he comes to. Why then enquire, if such or such a one be authoritative, by free criticism? Effectively, if my mind is superior to the object it is exercised upon, it cannot have, morally, authority over me.

But this only shews Mr. N.'s book to be an illogical absurdity; and that he assumed his conclusion in principle before he set out.

Mr. N. states, as to what practically amounts to this same principle, "Perhaps I could not have gained this result by any abstract act of thought, from want of freedom to think: and there are advantages, also, in expanding slowly under great pressure, if one can expand, and is not crushed by it." (Phases, p. 200.) Now it is possible his mind had to go through a long process before it could divest itself of the outward influence of revelation. But when he had discovered that his enquiry was absurd (for it is absurd to enquire if a particular revelation is authoritative on a principle which denies the possibility of any being so), why should he communicate this absurd process of his own mind to others?

35 Not to shew justness of logical reasoning to those who had power to estimate its justness! That is a clear case. Had truth been really his object, he would have stopped and said, "Whatever results as to details I may have arrived at, my enquiry has been carried on on an illogical absurd principle; and as the principle involves the impossibility of an authoritative revelation, my enquiry must be, Is there no other means of ascertaining whether there is one or not? Is free criticism (I speak of it such as Mr. N. presents it) itself the just means of trying the question?" But this would not have been Mr. N.'s book nor answered Mr. N.'s purpose.

But now I ask, What does Mr. N. mean by "free criticism," such as, in its nature, to exclude all possible authority? It means the absolute supremacy and competency of man's mind to judge everything. God is wholly excluded. And this is the grand principle of Mr. N.'s book: for to judge God, if He be there, is absurd and impossible. His authority and word must prevail; if He be there, He must be perfect and right; but He judges and cannot be judged, or He is not there as God. Mr. N. supposes a man judging whether something be of God or not; but if criticism excludes authority, it certainly excludes God Himself. It supposes the absence of God and His word always. It means — I exclude God, and judge of all for myself without Him; and I will never do anything else. So thought Job, till he met with Him, and found his own littleness. But this is the whole of Mr. N.'s principle. He will in no case allow God to come in; for then, surely, criticism ends. This, stated here in principle, is found in every page of the book. Bring God in in thought and all is false. But for man to exclude Him is always false; It leaves out the grand spring, test, and key-stone of all moral truth.

If man says, "What, then, is to be done? Must not I judge morally before I receive anything as of God? Otherwise I may receive Hinduism or Mohammedanism." I will tell you what to do, if this be really so. Confess that you are away from Him. Is this the normal state of man? You are away from God, ignorant of God; or you would not need to use all this effort to know whether anything be of Him or not. I add, if you are away from Him, then confess your need of Him. But that would suppose a revelation or ruin. And such is the truth, and the efforts of free criticism involve it.

36 But, taken as a just human instrument, criticism, in the true sense and legitimate use of it, does not destroy authority. I admit that, morally, God's grace is necessary, because a corrupt — an "antagonist will" is to be dealt with; but, in the human sense, criticism does not exclude it. I may ascertain that a letter of my father is really his. When adequate evidence is acquired of that, his letter assumes at once his authority over me. Now the only thing that makes a difference in a divine communication is, that man is incompetent to judge of God, and has an antagonist will which will not receive Him. But this proves the necessity of a revelation and of divine grace — that is, of Christianity — unless man is to remain ignorant of God and opposed to Him.

The real secret of Mr. N.'s book is, that he desires to destroy confidence in Christianity. It is a common, very common, misfortune, through the weakness of our corrupt natures, to find invaluable moral truths mixed up with the grossest human corruptions. The divinely-wise man separates "the precious from the vile," and he becomes as God's mouth, being subject to truth from God. The self-confident man rejects all together, because his intellect is capable of seeing the corruption, and incapable of valuing the truth.

Such has been Mr. N.'s case. One knows it to be the case of millions who wear a transparent garb of popery, or, if bold enough or honest enough, have cast it off, and languish often in true and unsatisfied aspirations. How many have I met with in this state! How many, whom true Christianity made tell their thoughts of popery — ay, and the sorrows of their own hearts too — though they might not have the courage (that is, were not spiritual enough) to find a sufficient motive for being anything else!

But is there not this will, this desire, to destroy Christianity and all revelation? The whole book witnesses it; and often the speech of the author betrays him.

Thus, in a passage I shall permit myself to translate: "O false-named theology! O may the last part of so long a life remain to me, and energy (or breath), and whatever may be sufficient, to tell your deeds!" (Phases, p. 131.) Is there no will here?

Again: "If by independent methods, such as an examination of MSS., the spuriousness of the chapter could now be shewn, this would verify the faculty of criticism which has already objected to its contents: thus it would justly encourage us to apply similar criticism to other passages." (Ib. p. 108.) Encourage us! What does that mean?

37 These shew the animus of the book.

Let my reader allow me here to make a few remarks on the moral sentiments connected with a rejection of scripture. No doubt prepossessions of any kind warp the judgment; but indifference to what ought to have a place in the affections if true — indifference, that is, to its truth shews a heart incapable by moral defect (while in that state) of judging justly in a moral question.

I have long, I suppose, looked at the portrait of my mother, who watched over my tender years with that care which a mother only knows how to bestow. I can just form some imperfect thought of her looks, for I was early bereft of her; but her eye fixed upon me the tender love which had me for its heart's object — which could win when I could know little else — which had my confidence before I knew what confidence was — by which I learnt to love, because I felt I was loved, was the object of that love — which had its joy in serving me — which I took for granted must be, for I had never known aught else. All this which I had learnt, and which was treasured in my heart and formed part of my nature, was linked with the features which hung before my gaze. That was my mother's picture. It recalled her, no longer sensibly present, to my heart. A retailer of pictures comes in, and tells me that, from the painter's name and style, it could not be my mother's. The date proved it. It could, at best, be an unlike drawing from memory. Is the quiet indifference of criticism here the proof of a right state of mind? I am astounded. I may be forced to acknowledge my mistake, to give up the much-loved memorial that brought her back to my thoughts; but I shall groan in heart — turn away — wish it were not so. Indifference would prove, not a good critic, but a worthless heart.

Is Christ's picture in the word less precious to me? He was taken early from man's sight, to whom He had shewn this tender love. I have found — thought I found — His traits in the word. I know I have loved Him, and felt His love. That word recalls His love, gives me the expression of it. It is, has been, His look of love to me. Shall I feel "encouraged" to pursue criticisms which are to prove it all a fraud? He who has never tasted His love may; not I. Were I forced, I would cast it by with sorrow, lingeringly, if I must. I have lost what brought known love to my mind, what re-awakened thoughts and an image I had difficulty to recall. Be it so; His love may be true; but I sit down in sorrow. To pursue the criticism which "picks holes" in it I cannot. I lay it aside; I forget it; I do not trust it: but I shall not forget my sorrow. Did I take it up, it would be associated with my affections to what I know is true. I leave it, therefore, and admit it is better not to associate mistake with affection. But the loved Object I know of undoubtedly in my soul. That Mr. N. does not, never did, if I am to take his own account. The picture is gone, by what he supposes is sound criticism of these connoisseurs of pictures, and all is gone with it; for he had but the picture, and nothing else: and why should he not judge a picture, which is nothing else — worse than nothing, therefore, if a false one? For him Jesus is gone, with the written revelation of Him. He will believe enough of the history, indeed, to set Him down as an impostor, but has seen no trait of beauty in Himself which makes him regret to find Him such.

38 He has only by the process degraded his own mind to the point of considering an impostor among the most excellent of the earth.

Mr. N. must forgive me if I do not think he has gained by the process which has produced this result. I do not believe that he, when a professed Christian (though we know that where there is mere profession, men may be very wicked — away from God — and that we may all fall, though sincere), or any one who professed Christianity, would have associated with inquiries about God and His truth, the low-minded insinuations which are found in Mr. N.'s book, and which certainly I shall not copy. I am but a poor sinner, I well know: real Christians are inconsistent beings. The reality may be wanting when the doctrine is professed; but no one, even merely professing it, would have connected God's name and truth with filth. It is for an infidel to do that. That I may not seem unjust to Mr. N., I shall mention the pages where it is found, and no more. (Phases, pp. 129, 150.)

ANIMUS OF THE EXAMINATION

Before examining the details of Mr. N.'s book, I would yet make a general remark.

The kind of opposition men make to Christianity proves its truth in the main — proves in it the consciousness of a real claim of God on the soul.

39 No doubt men have attacked Paganism as false. They have resisted Mohammedanism, though its sword was its principal argument, so that there was less of this.

But the constant and laborious exercise of free criticism, the close and sifting examination the Bible has gone through for ages, the anxious research after errors or contradictions within, proves anxiety to shew that it is not what it pretends to be. Why all this anxiety? Those not immediately under the influence of Mohammedanism are long satisfied that it is false, and leave it there; but these minute researches after a flaw in the scriptures continue — are repeated — renewed. Men take it up on every side. Astronomy and geology are called in aid. Geography is ransacked: history, antiquity, style, manuscripts of all kinds, foolish writings of the fathers, absurd writings of heretics, apocryphal imitations of its contents; nothing left unturned to find something to discredit it; wise writings of philosophers to prove they could do as well, or were the source of the good, or even of the alleged absurdities of doctrine; every other influence sought out which could have moralized humanity, that it may not be supposed to be this. Why all this toil? Why, if it be a doctrine like Plato's, should it not have produced its effect, and our philosophers be as cool about it as about other things? It has — their conscience knows it has — God's claim and God's truth in it; and they will not allow that the true God, that Christ, is the source of it, for then they must bend, and admit what man is.

And this shews itself in the most curious way. Though they pretend to think nothing of Christ, or that He was an impostor, they will not allow that the authorized books of His religion give a true account of the doctrines of the religion. If I read the Koran, I am satisfied to take it as the account of Mohammedanism, absurd as it may be; and I say Mohammedanism is absurd. So of the Vedas and Puranas.

But when the christian books are in question, not only are they charged with error, contradiction, &c., but the free critics will not even allow them to teach the real Christianity after all. They are not a true, not an authentic account of Christianity. Why (if it be a mere fable, an imposture) so difficult about the exactitude of the account of it? Surely the main propagators can give a sufficient account of the imposture and its doctrines, for anything that concerns us. But no. There is the consciousness that God is in Christianity. The conscience, in spite of the will, knows it has to do with God here; and it wants a true revelation, a real and authentic account of what that God is. It is right. But though curiosity and a favourite subject may absorb many for a time, or an individual all his life, men are not so continuously, so perseveringly anxious to get at the truth of a fable. They do not reject the sacred books of any other religion, as not being a true account of that religion. They take them as they are, because they know they are a fable; or, even if it be known to be the work of men's minds, it is the same. A stranger to Lutheranism takes the symbolical books of Lutheranism as being Lutheranism, let him agree to or dissent from them. Why not the christian books as stating Christianity? An infidel cannot let God and His truth alone, because it is His truth. He is a zealot against it; for his will is engaged. He is a bitter zealot because his conscience is uneasy. He will laugh at a Mohammedan carpenter, who thinks he only has the true religion; he will curse a consistent Christian who thinks he has, and denounce and abhor such if they do not let him amongst them when he denies their Lord, and only wish for energy and all needed to proclaim their deeds. Why this difference?

40 GOD IS EXCLUDED

In running through the contents of Mr. N.'s book, I shall first notice that the grand object, as the grand fallacy of it all is, the getting rid of God; and this, whatever the subject may be. Only introduce God, and argument after argument crumbles and disappears. If there be only man, the difficulty may be great. Let God be acknowledged, and all is necessary and plain. If this be so, the real meaning of the book, what its reasonings are worth, will not require much other argument. The consideration of the passages I shall refer to will shew, I think, that all real knowledge of God, all sense of His value, was wholly absent from Mr. N.'s mind.

Here I would remark, that when we are reasoning on the force or meaning of a christian doctrine, we are entitled to receive it hypothetically, as true. This does not prove it to be so: but if I can shew it to be right and consistent with other truths, assuming it to be true, this removes the difficulty alleged against it on the score of what it means.

For example, in Phases, p. 8, Mr. N. says, "I certainly saw that to establish the abstract moral right and justice of vicarious punishment was not easy."

41 Now, I will first say that no one dreams of the abstract moral right or justice of vicarious punishment. He who undertakes it does so in love, not in justice. If I pay another man's debts, it is love. Kindness makes me do it. When it is done, it is then just in the creditor not to exact the discharge of them from the debtor, and the latter owes it to my love. The doctrine of Christianity is, that Christ gave Himself, offered Himself, was willing to suffer, to make good His Father's righteousness and glory, and to redeem guilty men. There is no idea of compensation, properly speaking, in it. Sin dishonoured God in the sight of the whole universe. His holiness, His truth, His justice, His majesty, all were compromised; and the simple exercise of love to the guilty would have been acquiescence in the evil, frightful disorder in the universe. Christ willingly gives Himself, that God may be perfectly glorified. On the cross all that God is is perfectly and infinitely glorified, and so is Christ in the highest way. "Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him." John 13: 31  - God's majesty is vindicated. What could have so done it? His just judgment against sin is shewn — His perfect love to the guilty is displayed in a higher manner than could be otherwise conceived — His truth, which had pronounced death against sin, established in the highest way.

In the garden Satan had persuaded man that God was not good — had kept back the wisdom-bearing fruit lest man should be like Himself. He had persuaded man that He was not truth, that man would not die, that God would not execute the judgment. Had God executed it simply against man, there was no love; had He not, there was no truth nor righteousness.

But Christ gives Himself up an offering for sin. God does execute judgment in a way amazingly conspicuous in its moral character, so that angels desire to look into it. His truth is displayed, His despised majesty vindicated, His perfect love exercised, and that in a way far surpassing all possible thought of ours. If we say, But He gave up another to the suffering; no doubt it is love to me, but how love and justice to Him given? I answer, He gave Himself in the same love, and it is His highest glory, that in which a motive-bond of love has its source even between Him and the Father. "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life that I might take it again." Here, too, death, and the power of death, and he who had it, were overcome, to the divine glory and our perfect comfort; so that death has wholly lost its sting. Now, leave God out of it, and what does it become? To make out the fact of any "compensation" was "harder still." (Phases, p. 8.) That is, admit the christian doctrine as true; and every truth as to God finds its place, and is exalted by it. But God has no place in Mr. N.'s judgment as to the doctrine we have here touched on.

42 Mr. N.'s friend argued, that "carnal reason could not discern that human or divine blood, any more than that of beasts, had efficacy to make the sinner as it were sinless." (Ib.) Human or divine blood had no more efficacy than a beast's! But, on the one hand, Christ's shedding His blood is giving His life; and, on the other, for us death, morally, is man's plague, Satan's power, and God's wrath. So, according to Christianity, Christ underwent it. Is that nothing more than a beast's dying? If Christ was "God manifest in the flesh," 1 Tim. 3: 16 was the love shewn in His dying nothing? Was the bearing wrath nothing? For such is the christian doctrine as to it; and it is that we are now considering. Is it nothing that the Son of God does, and bears all this even to death? No more than a beast's being killed? The author himself could not, then, quite receive it; because in the Epistle to the Hebrews the sacred writer "seems to expect his readers to see an inherent impropriety in the sacrifices of the law, and an inherent moral fitness in the sacrifice of Christ," (Phases, p. 8.) It is not fitness but value, "greater efficacy," that is in question now. And is there no more value in the death of Christ — "God manifest in the flesh," who attached the value of divine goodness and a divinely perfect will (which yet was perfectly obedient), of a divine person, to every act He did as man — than in the death of bulls and goats? instructive no doubt as figures, and a witness to the universal sense of need which the conscience of man feels of an expiation.

Am I not right in saying that God is left out? He who knew divinely infinite love knew infinitely divine wrath; and He who was the "Holy One" felt, in the proportion of that holiness which is beyond all measure, what it was to be made sin before the God of holiness. I know carnal reason (that is, philosophy) has no capacity to understand this: but that is not the fault of Christianity, but of the "antagonist will" which needs it while it rejects it.

Again, on another important point, speaking of the Athanasian Creed and the Trinity, the author says, "It came distinctly home to me, that, whatever the depth of the mystery, if we lay down anything about it at all, we ought to understand our own words." (Phases, p. 13.) Now this seems very plausible; but bring in God, or anything connected with Him, and if it be meant that we ought to be able to define the human words employed, it is necessarily and wholly false, because God is in another order of being from that to which our words belong. Words express man's thoughts in the way of definition — can do nothing else; but man's thoughts are finite, and God is infinite; and therefore it is impossible in the nature of things, that human language can be an adequate (or properly speaking, a just) expression of what God is. Yet almost all Mr. N.'s growing infidelity sprung from this evident fallacy: any real faith in God or knowledge of Him became impossible the moment he laid down this absurd and really illogical rule — illogical, if we admit there is a God. Take Mr. N. himself as witness. He says, in another work, "Concerning the divine nature, we know that our metaphorical language must be inaccurate; but it is the best we have got. To refuse to speak of God as loving and planning, as grieving and sympathizing, without the protest of a quasi, will not tend to clearer intellectual views, [for what can be darker?] but will muddy the springs of affection. Metaphorical language on this whole subject is that which the soul dictates, and therefore must surely express our nearest approximation to truth, if the soul be the eye by which alone we see God. Jealousy to resist metaphor does not testify to depth of insight." (Soul, p. 39.)

43 Now, it is true, he speaks here of metaphor alone; but why is metaphor used? Because of the incompetence of the human mind to use, as to God, the language of exact definition. It flows from the fact that man is man, and not God, and his language the expression of his nature, be it in its affections or its intellect. Hence it must speak as man speaks (i.e., use the expressions suited to the measure of man's nature, because man can do nothing else). If these are used as definitions of God's nature, they are necessarily inaccurate; if as means of communicating particular thoughts about Him, they are true, though inadequate. But if it be insisted that a man should know what he meant, that is, define his ideas, he cannot. Our language as to God, not merely our metaphorical language, must be inaccurate. It is, as Mr. N. professes it to be, our nearest approximation to the truth. It will be said here, "I do not ask you to define God, but the words you use about Him." But the definition of the words, by Mr. N.'s admission, makes them inaccurate, for they are to express something about God. But in exactitude of meaning they must be inaccurate. To this exactitude Mr. N. seeks to reduce them. Nor let the reader be alarmed at this impossibility of definition: it is the case with all the ideas he is most certain of, or most delights in. Let him try to define a straight line, a right angle, beauty, love, one's country, home. Yet these words convey either most accurate or exceedingly powerful ideas.*

{*I was going to give the old attempt to define a straight line, namely, "the shortest between two given points," which, evidently, is no definition at all. It is a mere quality of a straight line. But I judge something of an accurate definition may be given, as being that described by "a point moving always invariably towards, or in the direction of, the same point." A curve is a line described by a point which always leaves the direction it last followed. But this attempt does not affect the proof, that a true and even powerful impression may be produced by an idea not defined. Neither truth nor power is in definition, important as this may be in its place. Moral power and truth are in the bringing home to the soul the real relationship in which we stand to anything, and the obligation resulting from it, in the way of revelation of the character and conduct of that to which we are related, and hence the motives which flow from it. How this is brought home is another question. As a Christian, I believe it will only be by a new nature and divine grace. But this is not my subject here. Christianity reveals enough of God to make Him known to us in this way, and elevate us to Him by it. It does not pretend to define Him as He is. Creeds may be useful as contradicting false notions, but are, to say the least, most imperfect and unsatisfactory as communications of truth. I judge the matter of the Athanasian to be, perhaps, the least objectionable.}

44 Again, as to christian evidences, whether miraculous facts or moral character were the bases, Mr. N. finds that neither system went to the bottom of human thought, or shewed what were the fixed points of man's knowledge. (Phases, p. 41.)

Now this ground takes man's mind as the measure of evidence, to the exclusion of God. Can God, if He comes in (and the object of a revelation is to reveal Him) — can God give no evidence of Himself demonstrative of His presence and testimony, which is entirely beyond any previously fixed points of man's knowledge? If there be a revelation of God, it must do so. It may make man morally responsible by that which it brings.

Besides, Mr. N.'s reasonings here, as to which proof was the best and a warrant for the reception of the other, only shew narrowness of apprehension; because two proofs of a distinct order may corroborate each other, and make the truth of what they attest certain, when one only would leave it uncertain, though it might not prove it false. Thus a miracle, to sustain the doctrine that there were many unholy gods whose business was to please men's lusts, might test and try the heart and spirit, but could never prove the message to have the authority of one holy God; nay, a miracle by itself might be an inadequate proof of the authority of a message which was not in itself grossly inconsistent with such a Being. On the other hand, though moral truths are, perhaps, even a surer, if not so striking a kind of evidence, yet they may not (though they may go very far towards it) prove the mission of any one to be what he asserts it to be. But when plain and evident miracles (such as the restoring sight to one born blind by a word, or making a man with crippled feet of forty years' standing able to leap and walk before all immediately, the man being well known by all previously, or such as the raising the dead) are accompanied by a doctrine which has morally (as nothing else ever before it had) the stamp of goodness and holiness upon it, and of a divine knowledge of human nature, not of its lusts and character so as to use them, but of hearts so as to judge them: — when these things go together, they may, by being united, afford a proof which the unbelief of the will may surely resist and reject, as it will everything, but which will make it guilty and prove it such, if the testimony be rejected.

45 In a measure, too, Mr. N. loses sight of the fact that these evidences, as given, were before the eyes of men. They are not before our eyes; but we have undoubted historical proof of the effect produced by them then — of the character of the witness — the wide spread of Christianity which resulted (though no human force was used for its propagation for three hundred years); and we have the moral doctrine which produced this effect still subsisting, not only in the documents which profess to contain this revelation, but which are cited by friends and foes during all this period, as containing the authentic instructions of the religion the one professed and the other attacked. This countercheck of evidences of a different and independent character, in the way of proof, will be found to pervade scripture and to be characteristic of it, and a principal safeguard of the minds of the simple and true against subtle or fanatical pretensions.

If conversion were the subject in question, Mr. N. had never any thought of God's acting.

"How," he asks, "could such moral evidence become appreciable to heathens and Mohammedans?" "Mere talk could bring no conviction." (Phases, p. 43, and so on to p. 45.)

Again, in speaking of the very being of God, he proves, in referring to the Athanasian Creed, that the compiler "did not understand his words;" because, had he spoken of three men, he must have meant "three objects of thought, of whom each separately may be called man." So of God; so that on this ground there must be three gods. (Ib. p. 48.) What is this but excluding all idea of God even from Godhead, and reducing our thoughts of the divine nature to the limits of our own circumscribed one? Can there be any more entire exclusion of God from a person's thoughts? Besides, there is a gross fallacy even in the terms of the reasoning. Language is formed on thought. The word "God," being one and distinct in nature from all else means not only a being, but a nature. "A God," save metaphorically, or in heathen mythology (ein Gott und die götter), revolts the moral ear. When I say, "the Word was God," I use "God" for a nature which none else can have but the true God; but I use it as speaking of His nature. When I say, "God created," I speak of a Being who did so. "A God," speaking of the truth of divine existence, is nonsense. But if I say, "the Father is God," I say that He is ineffably possessed of everything that belongs to that nature which partakes it with none else: for none is God but God. Now I could not say, God is the Son; because then I should speak of Him as that one only Being, and exclude the Father and the Holy Ghost from the term "God" in my phrase. This is perfectly plain in English; the Greek distinguishes these two uses by the article —  Θεὸς ἧυ ὁ λόγος. Ἐυ ἀρχῆ ἐποίησεν ὁ Θεός.  Ὁ λόγος ἦυν πρὸς τὸυ Θεόν. Now Mr. N. overlooks entirely this double use of the term in English, and confounds all ideas on the subject by the use of the senseless term "a God."

46 Having the unity of the Godhead constantly asserted in scripture, the manner of the divine existence is a subject of mere revelation. There I find that the Holy Ghost wills and distributes; the Father sends; the Son is sent; and yet He and His Father are one. I find that the "Word is God," that the Son is "the true God," that "all things were created by him." If it is said of the Holy Ghost, "All these worketh that one and the self-same Spirit," I read in the same passage, "It is the same God that worketh all in all." Now, I have no better word than "person" for one who is sent, who wills, who distributes, who sends, and so on. It cannot give me that circumscribed idea of "person" which the word applied to man does (for then one existence excludes another); but I have no reason whatever to impose the limits of my manner of being on God's, but rather the contrary. Now all Mr. N.'s reasoning is merely the reducing the Godhead to the strictest limits of creature-nature, which is a mere absurdity and a miserable exclusion of all above us, and a levelling of God to man — the necessary degradation of man too, for he is elevated in knowing God.

47 I remember I always regarded with indignant contempt Mr. Hume's argument against miracles — that it was contrary to experience that a miracle was true, but not contrary to experience that testimony was false. It was really no argument at all; because the use of the word "experience" in itself excluded the idea of miracle, and the question is, if the testimony was we, not whether the testimony could be false: otherwise I should believe nothing I had not experienced. But making man's experience the limit of knowledge and of the elevation of man's thoughts, seemed almost to me a mixture of insolent self-sufficiency and degradation at the same time, which did not deserve reasoning about. It was degrading nonsense, making itself the limit of all possible power and knowledge. It was sufficient to state it to despise it, and all that flowed from it.

I add, that the Christian has a knowledge, by the Holy Ghost dwelling in him (not of course of the manner of union in the Godhead in any adequate way, but), of such a union as gives him a competency to understand that God can indwell in a way wholly above any creature-communication; and hence he knows that what he knows is beyond his knowledge. "In that day," that is, when ye have received the Comforter, "ye shall know that I am in my Father, and ye in me, and I in you." "He who searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for the saints according to God." Is this the saint's heart or the Holy Ghost? Both. It is my groan, the real groan of my heart; but it is the Holy Ghost dwelling in me who gives me the feeling, and the groan too, according to God. And it is His intercession. This is indeed God's sympathy with man. I am well aware that philosophers may mock at this. Of course, as such, Christianity supposes them not to have it — to be ignorant of it. "Whom the world," says the Lord, "cannot receive, for it seeth him not, neither knoweth him; but ye know him, for he dwelleth with you, and shall be in you." John 14: 17  Hence it is no proof for them in the way of argument. But it is for those who possess it in a way beyond all argument, and a way of understanding too that which argument will never teach. I cannot make a prayer to God without the whole Trinity. "Through Christ we have access by one Spirit to the Father." Eph. 2: 18 It is the hourly exercise of the Christian's faith, and better known there than in the Athanasian Creed, and by those who never knew what Trinity or Person meant; for definitions are poor things. What can be defined is not God, for God is infinite.

48 Mr. N. takes this same ground as to the Spirit's personality. (Phases, p. 52.) I do not go over it again. I only remark that he always had a repugnance to it; that is, he had never known it. Now, if I see willing, distributing, coming, teaching, guiding, being sent, I have no better word than "Person" to use. I have no attachment to the term, but the true Christian believes this of the Holy Ghost, and he knows Him as a divine Person dwelling in himself. God's love is shed abroad in his heart by the Spirit given to him. Now, supposing that the "Spirit of God" meant in the New Testament "God in the heart," as Mr. N. says, is not God a real Being, that is, a Person, in a real though inadequate and imperfect use of the term? I believe the New Testament means often by this expression "God in the heart;" and if the Holy Ghost be such, He is God; and, according to the New Testament, He is what is best expressed by the word "Person," for He is sent by the Father and from the Father, another Comforter, on the Son's going away. I repeat, I have no better language than "Person" when I have another who wills and acts. And what is Mr. N.'s question here? "Who by logic or metaphysics will carry us beyond this?" (Ib. p. 52.) Could any one more nakedly confess how God was shut out of his mind even when the subject was God's presence in the heart? a doctrine he admits to be taught in the New Testament; and then turns to logic and metaphysics to carry us farther in the knowledge of it.

So, in his conversation with an infidel, he has no thought of the possibility of God's acting. (Ib. p. 54.)

Even on the question of his reception among Christians, of which we will speak historically in a moment, he never suspects that it can be of any importance that he should hold the truth about God and His salvation. He was to be received upon some personal qualities, or, at any rate, without any truth as to God being considered to be material. He calls this "dogma." What he was was sufficient; what God was, immaterial. (Ib. p. 59.) And again (ib. p. 60), he never supposed union was on the ground of intellectual propositions. Is God an intellectual proposition only to him, then? So as to our thoughts and comments on scripture, he "most rigidly demanded a clear, single, self-consistent* sense" (ib. p. 65); that is, not a living, perhaps imperfect, communication of divine truth, but something fully reduced to the level of man's mind, and not in anything passing its limits. It must be a human truth. Now it is just this human singleness which distinguishes human from divine truth. Have I human thought? I have it: my mind measures it as it is; I have it all within my own limits. Afterwards there is nothing new. When I get the word — the communication of divine truth — I get what is linked with God as flowing from Him; it is part of infinite divine knowledge into which I am introduced; and though I know only in part, I am introduced into that which is infinite in itself, infinite in its relations and bearings. If I am a man, I am a man: everybody knows what that means. But if God becomes a man, I know it: yet is it now limitable by my notion of a man — my just, single, self-consistent notion? So to limit it would at once destroy it altogether — would falsify, by its pretension, the whole truth with which I am come in contact. How endless are the consequences in love, power, dominion, grace, obedience, communion, righteousness! The very character of everything is altered. Such is Christianity. It is the bringing in of this in the midst of the world of misery in which man's heart is plunged, and from which he sees no exit. And your philosopher would reduce me again to his one single self-consistent sense of the word "man."

{*This is far from having been really the case; for he used the word "Jehovah" then, and does that of "God" in the book I am answering-important terms, I apprehend — in quite different senses all applied to Christ or the Father.}

49 Christianity may be true, or it may be false; but such a way of taking it up is not power but imbecility. It professes to bring God in as a resource to the misery of man, misery which is there, whether it be true or no, and much greater where it is not received. And the philosopher tells me to take God out of it, and then it will have a single self-consistent sense — then it will be intelligible! Will it? How will leaving God out of it make His coming in intelligible? Who by logic or metaphysics will carry us beyond this?

The reader may see, too, how Mr. N. (ib. p. 71) sets cultivated understanding as a purifier of religion (i.e., above it).* Now what does this mean, if God be not excluded from religion? Is the human understanding to purify the truth of God? Would one who thought of the living God in religion dare to speak so? I am aware that Mr. N. may say that your religion is not necessarily God's. But he does not say "my religion," but "religion," adding, that religion and fanaticism are the same in embryo. Do they not come from man, then — entirely from man? Are they not a passion, a phrenological bump, a propensity of which understanding is to correct the uncertain tendency? Is it possible more entirely to exclude God even from religion? For certainly, if any religion comes from God, man cannot purify it.

{*His words are "Religion and fanaticism are, in the embryo, but one and the same; to purify and elevate them, we want a cultivation of the understanding."}

50 Hence, Mr. N. naturally concludes that "morality is the end, spirituality the means, religion is the handmaid to morals." (Phases, p. 72.) That is, man and his conduct is the end, anything of God (for where am I to find Him if not in religion?) a mere means. God comes in for His share, because the love of morality proves His excellence, who "is the embodiment of it to his heart and soul." But this exclusion of God is thus summed up — "It was pleasant to me to look on an ordinary face [i.e., not evangelical], and see it light up into a smile, and think with myself, There is one heart that will judge of me by what I am, and not by a Procrustean dogma." (Ib. p. 73.) Now, I conceive that making man — what man is — as morally amiable, to the total exclusion of any importance in what God he owned, what he thought of God, whether he denied one faith or every faith, whether he had any — could not be more clearly stated. That is, God is totally excluded. It is indifferent what a man thinks about Him, if that man is amiable towards me.

Again (ib. p. 75), even when he speaks of worship, he "worshipped [he says] in God three great attributes, all independent — power, goodness, wisdom." That is, he worshipped some ideas. He did not worship God Himself as his God, but certain qualities which he approved of: these he must discern, and then he would condescend to approve of God, and admire qualities; for as to worshipping qualities it is nonsense. We worship somebody.

That is, really, though he attached a name to certain qualities, though this name embodied these ideas of his own mind, God Himself was not owned at all.

Again, as to sin, he "saw that it was an immorality to teach that sin was measured by anything else than the heart and will of the agent." (Ib. p. 78.) Elsewhere he boasts of discovering that morality was eternal, of eternal ethics. A strange way of having them so, for they vary with every heart and every will. But how is God excluded here? Man's heart and will are the only measure of his wrong! Morality is eternal, as already explained; but its measure depends on the relationship which creates the obligation, and hence is measured by the claim of the being with whom we are in relationship. That, in grace, ignorance may be a real occasion of mercy is true, but the sin is not measured by it, if I would elevate my soul to any real morality, to what it is in itself; or morality changes with caprice. I should not treat a Hindu widow as a professing Christian, if she burns herself; but her ignorance does not make the measure of sin, though I may have compassion on her because of it: otherwise the grossest and most crud superstitions become the measure of sin. But God is excluded, and hence man's heart and will become Mr. N.'s measure of sin too.

51 And see the practical consequence. A man degraded in seeking the satisfaction of his own lusts is for Mr. N. "a good-humoured voluptuary." (Phases, p. 81.) How was he "to think that he deserved to be raised from the dead, in order to be tormented in fire for a hundred years?" Give an account of himself to God! This is all nothing to Mr. N. His morality is far better than christian truth. The voluptuary may go on in his good humour without troubling himself. Sin is only measured by a man's will and heart. God need not be in all his thoughts. And this is correcting and improving on Christianity! See this character treated in his contempt of and indifference to the misery of his fellow-man in the parable of the rich man and Lazarus. But I proceed.

As to relationship of the divine Persons, there is the same reducing everything to man's level in speaking of "begotten." It must signify a beginning of existence, since it does with man. Scripture warrants another use of it: "I will make him my firstborn," Ps. 89: 27 is said of Solomon; and "Israel is my son, my first-born." Ex. 4: 22, "Only-begotten Son" John 1: 18 is a term of relationship, not a low, carnal, human idea of begetting (the use of which, in respect to God, only proves the degradation of thought of him who so uses it, when referred to Godhead). And what is Mr. N.'s way of reasoning here? A doctrine which could not be proclaimed in English cannot be true! That is profound philosophy! Yet he admits what we say of God as loving, repenting, &c., must be inaccurate — cannot be a single, self-consistent idea. The want of it here raised unspeakable loathing. A man who could not define a circle, which everybody can understand and see,* would define the manner of divine existence by terms which should have the precise, definite sense which they have when applied to man.

{*I take it a circle is the line described by a point which always varies exactly equally from the last direction it followed: the radius would depend on the degree of variation.}

52 It may be seen how entirely he has lost the idea of God, when he affirms that it became clear to him "that polytheism as such is not a moral and spiritual error, but, at most, only an intellectual error; and that its practical evil consists in worshipping beings whom we represent to our imaginations as morally imperfect." (Phases, p. 89.) Otherwise, also, if a man "made the angel Gabriel a fourth person in the Godhead, to worship him would be no degradation to the soul, even if absolute omnipotence were not attributed — nay, nor a past eternal existence." (Ib. p. 89.)

Could one more clearly state, as to oneself, the loss of all real knowledge of one true God? To suppose the possibility of these "gods many" shews that the idea of one true God has lost its place in the soul — that one has not the knowledge of God. One may admire qualities, as one may in man or any one else; but a God who begins must begin somehow, and owe his existence to the creative will of another, and hence be under obligation to a superior. True Godhead would not be there. Could any one who knew God speak of there being many not eternal, not omnipotent, as indeed they could not be if there be many? Does not the mind of one who knows God feel at once there must be the one true One behind all these?

Am I not right in saying God is unknown to Mr. N. — is excluded by his reasonings?

Hence it was a question, solved only by other considerations, whether the doctrine of Christ's having a superior nature was not an indifferent thing. If His nature was a good one, and He only a man, why not worship Him? Can God be more completely excluded? (Ib. p. 90.)

Again, take the fall. "Adam fell by the first temptation; what greater proof of a fallen nature have I ever given? I was surprised to discern that there was, à priori, impossibility of fixing on myself the imputation of degeneracy, without fixing the same on Adam." (Phases, p. 96.) Now this assumes the truth of the fall for the sake of the argument. Now, is the enjoying God's benefits in innocence the same thing as the actual "antagonistic will" which Mr. N. has? Is the existing alienation from and enmity against God of a carnal mind nothing? Take the history. Adam abandoned God — was turned out of His presence. Mr. N. begins there. That is all nothing to him till he commits a sin, because God is nothing. Adam fell; he falls — all is one, says Mr. N. accepting the history.

53 Adam was with God, Mr. N. was not. That this makes any difference does not enter into his mind. Liability to fall in a creature, he understands, it regards man's condition; being in the presence of or absent from God does not make even a part of his enquiry, or subject-matter of his reasoning. Why?

Again (for he is speaking of a period when he professed evangelicalism), as to the person of Jesus, he says, "So, if any one dwelt on the special proofs of tenderness and love exhibited in certain words or actions of Jesus, it was apt to call out in me a sense that, from day to day, equal kindness might often be met. The imbecility of preachers who dwell on such words as 'Weep not,' as if nobody else uttered such, had always annoyed me." (Ib. p. 102.) Could anything more mark the total absence of any sense that God was there? Other men were fully as kind as Jesus!

Again: "If one system of religion may claim that we blind our hearts and eyes in its favour, so may another; and there is precisely the same reason in becoming a Hindu in religion as a Christian." (Ib. p. 114.) Now how totally does this deny the fact that God can bring in that which can enlighten man? Christianity and Hinduism lie there, and "the moral and intellectual powers of man must be acknowledged as having a right and duty to criticise the contents of scripture." (Ib. p. 115.)

Is it impossible, then, for God so to reveal Himself as to command the responsibility of man? Is He incapable of enlightening the mind by His truth? Must He remain the subject-matter of man's judgment, according to a human standard previously possessed, as much as Hinduism? Can anything more entirely deny God, and shut Him out from revelation itself? Again this is thus expressed: — "If we are to blind our eyes in order to accept an article of king Edward VI., or an argument of St. Paul's, why not," &c. (Phases, p. 119.) Now, if God reveal anything, as Christians believe God did by Paul, this argument applies just as much; that is, God is absolutely excluded from all authoritative revelation whatever. He must not interfere.

54 Again as to proofs given: "Why should I look with more respect on the napkins taken from Paul's body (Acts 19: 12) than on pocket-handkerchiefs dipped in the blood of martyrs?" (Ib. p. 130.) Is it forbidden to God, for man's sake, and to overcome his incredulity, to "confirm the word by signs following?" God acts by one, He does not by the other. One was a divine act, the other a human. It is not a comparison of a napkin and a handkerchief — Paul's body and a martyr's blood — but of God's acting or not; but this does not even enter into Mr. N.'s mind.

See, too, his remarks on miracles, and "useless miracles," such as Christ walking on the sea. Useless! to whom? to man? Was it useless to learn Christ's power over creation, and the way faith could use it, and unbelief lose it? "What was to be said of a cure wrought by touching the hem of Jesus's garment, which drew physical virtue from Him without His will?" (Ib. P. 131.) Was it nothing to shew that humble, trembling, unfeigned faith, could find resource in Jesus when all else failed, and find health and blessing there, approach ever so timidly? It is all nothing to Mr. N. But what does that prove? That such proofs of divine presence and goodness, such cheering encouragement to those whose trembling but unfeigned confidence might otherwise stay far off, have no charms for him. Intellectual power to judge God, if He ventures to shew Himself — that is all well. Divine goodness — health and cure for the poor and otherwise failing heart, so as to knit it to God; the assurance that it can surely get the blessing, there is no "moral dignity" in. What a judge of it!

Again (ib. p. 143), he treats the distrust of one giving up all revelation of God in scripture, as proving the existence of an artificial test of spirituality. Are, then, the largest and most intimate communications from God nothing? Is the fact of His so communicating with us, treating us, as Jesus expresses it, as "friends," by telling us all that can be divinely communicated to man, nothing? Is its existence, and the reception of it, a mere artificial test of spirituality — a small hanging branch gone, and all as well as ever? Is this Mr. N.'s value for communications from God?

We are not now discussing whether those which profess to be such are genuine, but whether their rejection, supposing they are, is of any consequence. For Mr. N. it was of none — a mere artificial test of spirituality. This is his estimate of communications from God. What is his value for Him who makes them? Did I treat my friends so (i.e., if I were indifferent to having them or not), what would it prove as to my feeling towards themselves?

55 Mr. N., indeed, states this indifference as to God, in connection with His word, with singular clearness: — "Meanwhile, I sometimes thought Christianity to be to me like the great river Ganges to a Hindu. Of its value he has daily experience: he has piously believed that its sources are in heaven; but of late the report has come to him that it only flows from very high mountains of this earth. What is he to believe? He knows not exactly, he cares not much: in any case, the river is the gift of God to him: its positive benefits cannot be affected by a theory concerning its source." (Ib. p. 153.)

The title of Mr. N.'s fifth period is remarkable, "Faith at second-hand found to be vain." This sounds well. Faith must surely be in God Himself. "Abraham believed God." Rom. 4: 3 But is every one to have God so speaking to himself that he is infallibly directed by it? Each communication being absolutely limited to the one who receives it, and excluded from going farther, all communication of truth being impossible. If it passed the one who had the vision, it is second-hand faith in the sense of Mr. N. And the favoured and exceptional visionary or auditor of God Himself cannot even be known, for then others would receive it as a revelation of God; but this would be believing at second-hand. Any one, therefore, receiving moral truth, or any truth which concerns men, would be an impossibility; for if confined to himself, it would not be such. That is, again, all possibility of any communication from God is denied.

He looks for a broader foundation for his creed than any sacred letter. Creed he had none yet; that is, he believed nothing. But the result is that it is impossible to believe anything. You may reason out a god of your own mind, as a spider the cobweb out of its bowels; but believe you cannot: for who is to tell you anything to be believed? You may be taken in the cobweb of Mr. N.'s spinning; but God must hold His peace. Can God be more wholly excluded?

"Without caring on what grounds they believed, though that is obviously the main point." (Ib. p. 146.)

56 "An ambitious and unscrupulous Church that desires, by fair means or foul, to make men's minds bow down to her, may say, 'Only believe, and all is right. The end being gained — obedience to us — we do not care about your reasons.' But God cannot speak thus to man." (Ib.)

It "is obviously," says Mr. N., "the main point" to know on "what grounds" we believe. "God cannot speak" as "an ambitious and unscrupulous Church." . . . "Only believe, and all is right." Well, if God speaks, I should think He must say, "Only believe, and all is right." If He speaks, the ground for certainty is that He is speaking. That He will and does, in the most gracious way, give adequate proof to make man know it is He that speaks, I undoubtedly believe: it is worthy of His grace. But if He speaks, rejection of His word is rejection of Him, of His authority, of His truth. That is, it is the condemnation of him who rejects it. An ambitious Church doing so has not the same effect, because it is not God. God's speaking and man's speaking is not the same — has not the same claim nor the same consequences. For Mr. N. it has, because God is not in His thoughts. Bring Him in — his reasoning is not worth a straw. Suppose I ascertain clearly that the ambitious Church speaks — a matter hard enough, it is true; what then? Nothing: men have spoken. Supposing I ascertain God has spoken; is the consequence the same? The ground of faith that God must give — the only ground of divine faith, i.e., of certainty — is that He has spoken. If man reject His word, what can he be but condemned?

The ambitious Church does not say, Only believe God: it says, "Only believe" (i.e., "believe me"). God says, "Believe me." Is that the same? Yes, says Mr. N. He says God cannot speak thus. How else should He speak?

But it is merely this — God is excluded from his thoughts.

"A question of logic, such as I had here before me, was peculiarly one on which the propagator of a new religion could not be allowed to dictate." (Ib. p. 147.)

What else could God do? He may afford proofs that it is He, and so He has; but if it be He, He must dictate.

But what is Mr. N.'s only idea? "Let Hinduism dictate our logic." (Ib.) Think of such an idea as God dictating logic! You have the measure of the "moral dignity" with which Mr. N. measures miracles or any of God's gracious dealings — that is, of God Himself. How dreary to the heart to deal with such reasoning! He has not a thought beyond logical notions. "If logic [he says] cannot be a matter of authoritative revelation [he cannot get beyond man's mind], so long as the nature of the human mind is what it is," &c. (Ib. p. 147.)

57 Now, even speaking logically, introduce God and it cannot be commensurate with the human mind, because God is not man; and reasonings deduced from what God is cannot be according to what man is. The premise is an unknown one, and incommensurate; adapted in grace to man, if you will; but grace is not logic. Thus Mr. N. reasons that it is not just one should suffer for another. Perhaps not; but if God becomes a man and gives Himself, what logic can solve this? There is no grace in mere justice, no love; and God is love, yet He is just. Paul's reasonings (that is, the Holy Ghost's) are drawn from what God is, and Mr. N.'s from what he is himself. Can we be surprised that they are different? From what else does Mr. N. derive them?

"He that spared not his own Son, but delivered him up for us all: how shall he not with him also freely give us all things?" Rom 8: 32 There is the glorious and divine logic which draws its reasonings from the actings of immeasurable divine love. So "if, when we were enemies, we were reconciled to God by the death of his Son; much more, being reconciled, shall we be saved by his life." Rom. 5: 10 How do these truths come home with divine power to the heart, as founded on the bright and glorious display of what God is, and His ways, as interested in us! It is logic of invincible power, founded on what God is, known by faith. Mr. N. may tell me that it is not suited to man's nature as it is. Not to his evil to sanction it, but to his wants it is. It is suited to the knowledge of God: if he means, to man without it, no more is the light of the sun to some creatures; but this does not prove the daylight to be evil to those who have eyes for it; but that the animals are themselves owls or bats. They cannot see in the light while their nature is what it is. Be it so: I dare say it is so. Thank God, in man's case, we may hope for a change.

As regards the means by which Paul was convinced, which Mr. N. requires to know, it is to me, as to my own conviction of the truth, quite immaterial. The point for me is, that I should have proof that it is a divine revelation. Supposing my conscience is reached by a word "sharper than any two-edged sword," and all my secret thoughts revealed to myself, so that I see I am worthy of judgment, and in the presence of a holy judge — that I am conscious, as a defiled being, I am in the presence of God. Supposing I search long-known prophecy, and find it accomplished in what meets my moral need. Supposing the notorious facts of Christ's life put the seal of truth and divine goodness on Him and His testimony, and make the allegation of imposture moral nonsense. Supposing this word, which searches my heart, accompanied by miracles which in their number and character leave no room for anything but an "antagonist will" to reject them — that I have seen a known blind man restored to sight, and a dead man raised. I get proof then, in every way, that God is now interfering and dealing with me, and that he who bears this message bears God's message and commission. What is it to me, save as an interesting collateral subject, how he came by it, how he was convinced? I am by adequate evidence, and that is the point. It is not second-hand faith to me; it is I who believe a present word of truth, which I believe to be God's.

58 I see, moreover, by the fruits when it is so received, that God's power is in it. Lusts are overcome; habits, long cherished, are changed; peace given; the love of God shed abroad in the heart; joy, happiness, intelligence, moral capacity, the knowledge of God, flow in. Activity of love ensues; the whole man is morally a new creature, and knows God as love. Mr. N. may be without this evidence. Others are not. He is not without it in its external parts. The process of the teacher's receiving has nothing to say to the matter. The proofs with which he delivers it are what concern me. To set a number of sinners to analyze the manner of a divine revelation is certainly the last thing that God who gave it would set them to do; to give them the adequate proof to conscience that it is one to them, is worthy of Him, and it is what He has done. Nothing can be more absurd than Mr. N.'s reasoning here. In principle Mr. N. is only shewing what the Saviour tells us, that the mind and will, thus acting and criticising, can receive nothing from God. Mr. N., having refused all else besides this criticism, ends, as we have already seen, in this gross absurdity — the incompetency of God to communicate in any way with His intelligent creatures.

He then takes the visionary acts of prophets, used to represent the iniquity of Israel and God's patience, as an injunction to practise immorality (taking, moreover, his inward judgment as the only valid rule). Now there is a natural conscience, a knowledge of good and evil; but it is a gross mistake to suppose that it cannot be corrupted, or that it is, in fact, an adequate measure of it; which Mr. N. always assumes. But this point I reserve for the questions of objections to scripture.

59 I only remark in this part, as connected with my present subject, that, where he objects to Christ's making the whip of small cords, and asks, Would a miracle "authorize me to plait a whip of small cords, and flog a preferment-hunter out of a pulpit?" (Phases, p. 151.) The divine authority, and divine authority of righteousness which respected God's acknowledged house, is wholly overlooked. If a church or chapel were owned of God as His house, and men were making a riot in it in time of service, any one would be justified in arresting the scandal with a high hand. But I notice here, that all this is leaving out God. Jesus did it with the declaration, that "One greater than the temple was there" Matt. 12: 6; that if they destroyed "the temple of his body, he would raise it up in three days." John 2: 21 He was Jehovah.

I will take up the grounds of faith farther on.

Mr. N. says, "The New Testament teaches that God will visit men with fiery vengeance for holding an erroneous creed." (Phases, p. 168.) One could understand his objection if God were but an opinion of the brain of man. But it does not teach any such thing; unless, as for Mr. N., God is nothing but an idea. It teaches that man will be condemned for rejecting God manifested in the most gracious way as the light itself, to which He had called man by every means grace could devise — prophecies, promises, John Baptist going as herald before to summon man's attention, miracles. It says they are condemned; or, to use the very words of scripture, "This is the condemnation, that light is come into the world, and men loved darkness rather than light, because their deeds were evil." John 3: 19 Christ says, "If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin: but now they have no cloke for their sin. If I had not done amongst them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin; but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father." John 15: 22

But God is a mere opinion in man's head, for Mr. N; to reject Him, because we have an "antagonist will," is consequently a mere erroneous creed. God is not in all his thoughts.

60 Again, he says, "As for the Old Testament, if all its prophecies about Babylon, and Tyre, and Edom, and Ishmael, and the four monarchies, were both true and supernatural, what would this prove? That God had been pleased to reveal something of coming history to certain eminent men of Hebrew antiquity. That is all. We should receive this conclusion with an otiose faith." (Ib. p. 170.) That is all! Is it nothing, then, that God does speak to man — interest Himself in his affairs? Had He no purpose in it? Is it connected with no moral relationship with these persons, with this people? Is it no proof that He meant men to give heed to the course of events He spoke of, the system in the midst of which the revelation was given, and to which it referred? Is "otiose faith" the suited feeling when God is admitted to have spoken? Is such stupid insensibility in such an immense moral principle as God's communicating His intentions or the future in any case to man, really "moral dignity?" God has spoken, and "that is all!" How does this betray the real state of mind — of what value God and His thoughts are to him who makes such a remark! What immense consequences flow from it!

God can reveal, it seems. Nay, He has revealed. He can demonstrate to the mind that it is He who speaks. It has been proved to be a revelation by the event. Then He interests Himself in man in the way of revelation. Is it with no purpose, no plan, no special thoughts as to man, his destiny, the world's destiny — which, without this, remains to us hid in dark enigmatic clouds — that He has made these revelations? Do God's thoughts confine themselves to some petty interest of Tyre or Edom, and leave all else to darkness or to fate? Is this logic? Were such a lightning-flash to shine in a sunless world, it would make a living mind desire a general permanent light. Does it not lead me to say, Can there be such prophecies of private interpretation? or, if "holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost," 2 Peter 1: 21 surely God's thoughts, God's interest, must go farther than this? Why to them, why to Hebrews, rather than to others? Has He no purpose in it? Is there no divine future? No; "that is all!"

Mr. N. will shut out God if he can; if he is forced to let Him in, he will make God's own voice as unimportant to others, if he can, as it is to himself. "We should receive this conclusion with an otiose faith." (Ib. p. 170.) That is, you would; but it proves far more of what your mind and heart and will are morally, than of the value of the fact that God has spoken to man. If He has, O what a field is open to the heart of those who have any! He does come in to speak to us. He has spoken. He can prove it is He who has spoken. What has He said?

61 In speaking of John's Gospel, he assumes this absence of God's inspiration. "Is it possible for me to receive them [the miracles] on his word?" (Ib. p. 175.) Perhaps not; perhaps yes. But the question is, Is it God's word? I am not here saying it is God's word (though I need hardly say I fully and thankfully believe it, and bless God for it, as the best treasure of my soul); but I say that is the question, and asking "How can I believe on his word?" is begging the question. You are seeking to prove it cannot be inspiration; the reason you give for it is, that you cannot believe it on his word. But the whole question is, Is it on his word? That is, you exclude God. And I here recall to the reader that what Mr. N. calls faith at second-hand is alone faith at all, unless each person is to receive a message from God immediately.

Again, Mr. N. says, "It is with hundreds or thousands a favourite idea, that they have 'an inward witness of the truth of [the historical and outward facts of] Christianity.' Perhaps the statement would bring its own refutation to them, if they would express it clearly. Suppose a biographer of Sir Isaac Newton, after narrating his sublime discoveries, &c . . . . to add that Sir Isaac . . . was himself carried up to heaven one night while he was gazing at the moon, and that this event had been foretold by Merlin: it would surely be the height of absurdity to dilate on the truth of the Newtonian theory as 'the moral evidence' of the truth of the miracles and prophecy." (Ib. p. 199.) Now, what does the reader think of this argument? That Mr. N. is ignorant of all internal evidence of Christianity we may alas! take on his own word. But I avow my esteem for logic is not heightened, if Mr. N. is to be taken as a specimen of what it is. The history and facts of Christianity are identified with a public claim, that the subject of them was God manifest in the flesh. Have the doctrines and truths, of which He was the revealer, nothing to do with the proof of that historical fact? Supposing the case of a wife; that is a mere historical fact, a legal question. Does the husband merely know by the register that it is his wife? Is relationship with God less real, less known, less important? Doubtless they are to Mr. N., but not to those who enjoy them But he leaves God out. He is not in his thoughts, however he may commend his present state of piety, which, he tells us, is as bright and real as ever.

62 The logic is no better. Sir Isaac's going up to heaven has no connection with the truths he has discovered; one does not depend on the other. They remain true whether Sir Isaac be in the moon or not. And if Sir Isaac be in the moon, it does not depend on the attraction of gravitation. Is that so of Christ? If He be not ascended up on high, if His miracles are all wilful impostures, does not that affect His doctrine? And is not the revelation of relationship with God such as none else ever made, a "speaking that He knew?" Has not His "testifying of what He had seen" a discovery, in a word, of things belonging to God which none other even approached — something to do with His coming from God? Does it not tend to validate His declaration that He was going there? Where is the absurdity? In the Christian who sees the connection, or in Mr. N. who sees none?

The Christian has an inward witness (not of the historical facts of Christianity, as Mr. N. says, but) of "eternal life" in his own soul, "and that life is in Christ." He knows it in daily enjoyment, and knows Him better than Mr. N. knows his best friend. How does Mr. N. know the sympathy of God he speaks of? Is it: — sympathy never exercised? If it be exercised, God can make Himself known to the soul. The Spirit, he says, is God in the heart. Well, the Christian so knows Christ. Does that afford no proof of the truth of what is said of Christ (and what is said of Him constitutes the important historical facts of Christianity) when he finds Him in the record given of Him — when every feeling of his soul is identified with the Christ he sees there? The facts, in a great measure, make the Christ he knows, because they are the revelation of Him — the expression of what He is. Mr. N. sees "historical and outward facts," because he leaves God out. God's presence would be an historical and outward fact. Would His words, doctrines, revelation of what He is, action on the heart, unfolding relative truths, have nothing to do with the proof that it was He? What is Mr. N.'s argument, but a total insensibility as to what God is, a leaving Him out in his own mind?

To say no more, is this logical, when the whole question is, Is it a true revelation of God?

63 It is the logic to which nothing can be compared in absurdity, because nothing can lie God but Himself; and to leave Him out when I am inquiring after Him, is to leave all void of the only thing I am looking for. How should I find Him then? This only is an infinite mistake, an infinite absurdity.

A child would settle the duties to parents in the world by denying there are any; because, if there are, the child could not reason for himself to know what he owes them. Man reduces himself to his own measure to judge if there be a God, because letting God in would not be logical — would not leave it in the measure of man's competency, which must be allowed if a man is to judge. And having made this famous step, he discovers that on this ground God cannot be known; and then writes a book to shew this, and calls it logical, and thereupon rejects revelation, and says it is only a question of history and outward facts.

But if the outward fact, or pretended fact, be that God Himself was manifested among men, he who would say that the truths taught — sublime discoveries of God, remarkable doctrines — were no proof of this fact (this great miracle unfolded in a thousand others) would prove — whose absurdity? The word is not mine; I borrow it from Mr. N. What I am shewing is, that Mr. N.'s book is a mere universal leaving out of God, when the revelation of Him is the matter in hand. Could there be a plainer proof of it? Nor can you separate the claim of the divine Person from the whole miraculous history. "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." John 2: 19 What does the Lord here make of His resurrection — the grand fundamental miracle of Christianity? His body is a temple. God is there, and He will raise it up again. "My Father worketh hitherto, and I work," John 5: 17 when He had healed the paralytic. So in Matthew, He is "Emmanuel" (that is, "God with us"). He is called "Jesus, for he shall save his people from their sins." Matt. 1: 21

Again, when Mr. N. was a Christian by profession, his belief "assigned an intellectual creed as one essential mark of this people" (ib. p. 202), the people of God. Is it simply a question of an intellectual creed when the subject-matter of the creed is a person, our relationship with whom involves the highest obligations? Supposing I were to say, that Mr. N.'s wife being such was a question of historical facts, proofs in a church register, and legal definitions — that the possibility of any owning her as such must depend on the historical proofs of the celebration of his marriage; would it remain an intellectual creed, his believing that fact? Yet there are these proofs. Now, whenever a fact implies an obligation, the acknowledging the fact is not intellectualism; it is morality. If Christ is my Saviour, if the Holy Ghost the Comforter be sent, if the Father has not spared His Son, who is one with Himself — to own all this is not a mere intellectual creed (though, of course, anything may be held intellectually); it involves the highest obligations — obligations paramount to all others. Everything is changed relative to goodness and piety themselves. unless God have nothing to say to either: and this is really the force of the argument of Mr. N. "To judge rightly about it is necessarily a problem of literary criticism" (ib. pp. 202, 203); "to judge wrongly about it may prove one to be a bad critic, but not a less good and less pious man." (Ib. p. 203.)

64 Mr. N. may state it in the lowest way as a question, whether Jesus, the Jewish teacher, be the Messiah; but every one knows that the question reaches to what I have said, and much farther too. Infidels are as pious as Christians, according to Mr. N. But if they are, the knowledge of God has nothing to do with piety — a very singular proposition, at any rate, which cannot exist where God is known. But Mr. N. leaves Him always out. Even supposing the Christian is got into an entire delusion about God; that his notions of God's justice have destroyed a right estimate of His goodness; that his thoughts of Christ's expiation have nurtured a cruel idea of God; that mediation has done him much mischief, as Mr. N. tells us; will his piety remain uninjured? Is it a mere affair of literary criticism, all this? But surely it is the question in scripture. No, no; Mr. N. would not have written his book — nay, his books — if it had been a problem of literary criticism. Does he not think it more than that? Does he wish for energy while life lasts to expose its deeds as a problem of literary criticism? Does he believe what he says? No; he knows that if Christianity be true, he has lost a Saviour; if it is false, I am leaning on a false one, on an impostor, for my soul's salvation.

I am well aware that Mr. N. thinks that piety may be nourished by an imposture; nay, that in them that believe in it as the true revelation of God piety is found; nay, that this imposture itself, the Bible, "is pervaded by a sentiment which is implied everywhere, viz., the intimate sympathy of the pure and perfect God with the heart of each faithful worshipper," and that this is found "in christian writers and speakers," and "is wanting in Greek philosophers, English deists [except, of course, his own school], German pantheists, and all formalists." (Phases, p. 188.) But this intimate and exclusive connection of deep piety and imposture, though of course logical and beyond criticism, seems singular to some; or how so monstrous an imposture as pretending to be Messiah and the Son of God is pervaded by the sentiment of the sympathy of the pure and perfect God. Is it not the time to say, "he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?"

65 The next discovery Mr. N. made, as to the happy effect of the "positive disproof" of Christ's claim, was that of being delivered from the selfish theory "that his first business must be to save his soul from future punishment." (Ib. p. 203.) Now, here again, I find God really left out. Is the sense that I have so sinned against God, that I have ruined myself, that, like a prodigal, I have turned my back on my Father to have my own way more comfortably, and have perhaps been eating husks with the swine, so that I am no more worthy to be called a son — is the sense that I am lost by this, and that at all cost I must get back to God, if only there be such goodness that I should be admitted on any terms — is this (though in it I am dependent on God for salvation, and fly to His mercy from the everlasting ruin I have brought upon myself), is this, I say, a bad selfish feeling? Such is the view Christianity gives us — I do not pretend to say what Mr. N.'s thoughts may have been — of the prodigal's return to God. It is very right that it should be felt as mercy to oneself. It puts one in a low, helpless, guilty position. The sense of this is right, and really known in no other way. It is not all we shall attain to when we have peace, but we begin rightly there. A child who has grievously sinned against his father ought to feel that he wants mercy for himself. If he does not, he has not found his right lowly place.

Now, what hinders Mr. N. from seeing this? He sees only man in the matter; and hence it is only, to him, the selfishness of the man who wishes to be saved. God is not in his thoughts. But Christianity brings Him in. "I have sinned against heaven and before thee." Luke 15: 18 There is the sense of guilt, of having deserved to be shut out from the Father's house, in the soul come to itself. This is perfect, infinite misery; when God's presence is come into the thought, it is perfect infinite misery to be shut out of it. The knowledge of what sin is makes us see that we ought not to be let into His presence. One says while falling in apparent inconsistency at His feet, not "God is good!" though he would not fall at His feet without some (no doubt, imperfect) feeling of it; but "Depart from me, for I am a sinful man, O Lord!" He is jealous for what God is, because he knows Him. If I know God, I must desire to be saved from being shut out from His presence for ever, and I know that I have been morally unfitted for it. Mr. N. excludes God, and, therefore, has no other thought but safety from future punishment.

66 Again, in p. 206,* the Bible is an evil, because it professes to reveal the will of God, and leaves our own inward powers unexercised. Is conscience, then, never to look to God? never to get light from Him? Is He to be excluded even from declaring His will? from even teaching us what is right? Is doing right to have no reference to God? With Mr. N., going into God's presence to know His will is like going into a priest's. He objects to both alike. "The Protestant principle of accepting the Bible as the absolute law acts towards the same end." I thought a priest mischievous, because he came in between us and God; and that getting into His presence was getting into the light, and that which did exercise the soul and conscience. Mr. N., of course, is independent of any such presence or direction of God. His αὐταρχεια is morally absolute. Obedience is no part of morality with him. But others find that that word pierces "to the dividing asunder of soul and spirit, and of the joints and marrow, and is a discerner of the thoughts and intents of the heart;" Heb. 4: 12 and that when they found "all things naked and opened to the eyes of him with whom they had to do," Heb. 4: 13 they found themselves much morally exercised — could not deny it was right, though in many things it condemned them. Yes, I rejoice in this light; I love to obey it. It is my meat to do the will of Him I serve, and I am glad to know it because it is His — glad He has deigned to communicate it to me — glad to have it perfect as He gives it. Light does not hinder the eye from working, nor is groping without it (though there may be more exercise, in a certain sense) a better position to him who knows what eyes are worth, and what it is to see. I am not exercised in the same way; I walk in happy unconsciousness of difficulty, where without it I should be tormented to find my way; but it leaves me free for a thousand exercises, full of joy and worthy of an intelligent being, which groping in the dark would deprive me of.

{*"In former days, if any moral question came before me, I instantly turned it into the mere lawyer-like exercise of searching and interpreting my written code. Thus, in reading how Henry the Eighth treated his first queen, I thought over scripture texts in order to judge whether he was right, and if I could so get a solution, I left my own moral powers unexercised." (Phases, p. 206.)}

67 Assuming the Bible to be the revelation of God's will (and Mr. N. assumes it here), the possession of it is a singular evil. Besides, an antagonist will, a thousand temptations, and the absence of the circumstances in detail in which I am placed, leave abundant room for the exercise of the spiritual powers. Only they are exercised in God's light, instead of in darkness. Mr. N. prefers being without God, and to trust his moral powers. But what does this love of God's absence while he finds his way, and confidence in himself, shew? That he does trust his moral powers. But the discovery that conscience will be benumbed by being brought into God's light which manifests and judges everything, and thus fall into disuse, is not such a result of trusting in them as would lead others to do so — at least, it would not me.

Besides, Mr. N. is wrong when he says, that "so long as an opinion is received on authority only, it works no inward process upon us." (Ib. p. 206.) First, as to God, it is wholly false, because all morality is judged of responsibly in His sight. Thus, if I receive on God's authority the opinion that I am to be judged for all I do, will that work no inward process upon me? (a singular phrase, by the by; but let that pass.) But even as to man's, it is not true. It supposes no previous inward process perhaps. I say "perhaps;" for often there may have been very great exercise which seeks a revelation, i.e., another's light when the mind is at fault, the communication of the mind of Him who has light as well as authority. And Mr. N. has no right to separate them even in man: for in submitting to authority (not force), I suppose light may just give that thought which sets the whole confused elements of thought in perfect order, though I receive it — i.e., depend for the certainty of its truth — on the authority which affords it me. Whoever has put in the keystone, the arch is solid when it is there. Yet I may receive it only on the authority of my teacher; not to say that the bowing of will by it is an inward process.

Thus, suppose the case of a converted heathen from among those who used to get rid of their fathers when too old to be useful; and one working in thought as to the foundations of a parent's position and a child's obligation. A missionary, whom he has learnt to trust, tells him that God has told us to honour our fathers and mothers. He receives this solely on the authority of the teacher; he has no other reason to believe God does command it but the teacher's authority over his mind. Does the introduction of the idea of God's authority and will into the relationship not produce an immense result, and alter all his feelings towards his father? Ask him why he has received this idea. He can only tell you that the missionary, whom he believes God sent, told him so. Here a vast process is the result in his mind: all his thoughts are fallen into order. God Himself has become the keystone of his whole moral condition in this respect. Yet the opinion is received on authority only. Put the Bible in the missionary's place — he is more directly in contact with God, no doubt. The authority is in God Himself in his mind; and great good results from this; for whatever brings us near God is a good, even though we should own authority as well as find light. But in both cases it is authority. The mind may be profited by light as well as by exercising itself on it, and more too. But the use of the word authority here leads by its equivocal force to a sophism. Authority in this argument merely means the certainty of something being the revelation and will of God — that is, puts me directly in presence of His will and authority. It is absurd to say this does not work a moral process on man. It is exactly what does. But again we arrive at the same point in Mr. N.'s system: God must be excluded. That I am right in my estimate of the argument is evident from what follows just after.

68 I have already remarked on Mr. N.'s absolute exclusion of all possibility of God's ever communicating anything knowable by man. I now only refer to it as shewing how even here the idea of God is excluded from his mind. "All that we can possibly discover is the relative fact, that another is wiser than we." (Ib. p. 213.) Can anything more entirely exclude God from all teaching? "There is no imaginable criterion by which we can establish that the wisdom of a teacher is absolute and illimitable." (Ib.) Now, supposing it be God who teaches, would not this establish it? Could there be a comparison of wiser, if He whom God had sent spoke the words of God, as John actually says of Christ? No; this is merely saying, à priori, that it is impossible for God to communicate anything to man. If He can, Mr. N.'s statement is nonsense. The moment I ascertain He has, I have a teacher whose wisdom is absolute and illimitable. But Mr. N. will not have God, nor allow Him to come in.

69 Again, in the same page, Mr. N. says, "If we are to submit our judgment to the dictation of some other, whether a church or an individual, we must be first subjected to that other by some event from without, as by birth, and not by a process of that very judgment which is henceforth to be sacrificed." I have already noticed this, to shew that Mr. N.'s whole book is fallacious. I do so now for another purpose. Why "whether to a church or an individual?" Why shut out God totally? Will Mr. N. not allow God to "dictate" to him? That is, is God's word, if He speaks, not to have authority with him? Again, in the most open way, he excludes God out of his supposition: he assumes that it is a church or an individual — that God never am. If he reply, "I only assume so on the supposition of a man's reasoning;" then I recur to what I said before: "Your reasoning assumes the thing not to be possible which we are reasoning about, and therefore is good for nothing:" or, as applying it to our present point, he assumes as data the exclusion of God, as if His speaking were an unsupposable case. Besides, Mr. N.'s reasoning is itself fallacious. I may ascertain a document to come from a person who has authority, and consequently the document itself as coming from him. Hence a critical examination can result in the ascertained authority of the instrument, though it could never give it. Mr. N.'s argument confounds giving authority, and ascertaining the fact; if this were true, I must abrogate my criticism, because the person has authority. I may criticize the proofs whether it is He, but not Him when it is proved to be so.

Again, "He will feel that the will cannot, may not, dare not, dictate whereto the inquiries of the understanding shall lead." (Phases, p. 219.) Surely not. That the will does is one of the evident moral disqualifications in the case of Mr. N.'s book. But is there nothing but will and understanding? Is there no God at all? Can the knowledge of Him or His mind never close an inquiry? Not for Mr. N. He does not suppose such a case. Is it the wise man who has said in his heart, "There is no God?" This absence of all thought of God from his mind shews itself in a curious shape in page 223. "The law," he says, "of God's moral universe, as known to us, is that of progress. We trace it from old barbarism to the methodized Egyptian idolatry; to the more flexible polytheism of Syria and Greece; the poetical pantheism of philosophers, and the moral monotheism of a few sages." God's moral universe, methodized Egyptian idolatry, and flexible polytheism! Does Mr. N. think this God's moral universe? This is what logic and philosophy afford us, and on which the Bible is to be set aside — a standard of moral judgment in man, which can call the worshipping an onion or a bull, or the making prostitution worship, to be part of a law of God's moral universe! Ohe, jam satis! Can any one sink lower in mental perception than this? But if the true God be lost, can we be surprised at anything?

70 I leave Mr. N.'s analogous arguments from the Bible; because, he says elsewhere, he believes the most important part of it invented, or, at least, first authoritatively promulgated in Josiah's reign; and that when he says, "Jesus was needed to spur and stab the conscience of his contemporaries, and recall them to more spiritual perceptions" (ib. p. 223), he has by the force of habit forgotten that he is speaking of an impostor, of whose teaching "it is certain that we have no genuine and trustworthy account," and whose authoritative dicta God never intended us to receive. (Ib. p. 213.)

In pages 228, 229, we have, perhaps, the most complete exclusion of God anywhere. After bringing in the church of the Romanist, and the spiritualist who judges it as erroneous; and then the Bible, in which also Mr. N. alleges there are contradictions and immoralities; and the Protestant who claims submission to it, while he joins the spiritualist in judging Rome; he in result declares that "in principle there are only two possible religions: the personal [i.e., the inward law] and the corporate; the spiritual and the external." And is God to have none? Is there only man's or the church's? So it is according to Mr. N. Church or man, God can have nothing to say to it, but as an otiose object, if He be one, of what man may find proper to think about Him, if Him it really is; for, false or true as it may be, man's thought only is possible, whether it be old barbarism, or flexible polytheism, or the moral monotheism of a few sages, in whose number Mr. N. of course ranks himself. God must not interfere in religion or communicate a single truth; it is "an implausible opinion, that God would go out of His way to give us anything so undesirable." (Phases, p. 212.) It "would paralyse our moral powers exactly as an infallible church does." (Ib. p. 213.) Is not God excluded?

I have omitted an example of this which has its importance. "Each established system assures its votaries; that now at length they have attained a final perfection, that their foundations are irremovable: progress up to that position was a duty, beyond it is a sin." "The arguments of those who resist progress are always the same, whether it be Pagans against Hebrews, Jews against Christians, Romanists against Protestants, or modern Christians against the advocates of a higher spiritualism." (Ib. p. 224.) Now what does this really mean? "The advocates of a higher spiritualism" mean persons who exclude revelation, because man is superior to any need of a revelation of God. Now the progress of man, as a means of knowledge, has nothing to do with a revelation, however the latter may cause progress. A revelation may be partial or complete; but it always, as such, has the absolute authority of God, in which there can be no progress, though there may be a further and clearer revelation of His will. But Mr. N. shuts out God, and hence only speaks of progress in man's condition — progress up to man's condition. It is evident such a statement has no place at all, if there be a revelation. This brings in God. Mr. N. simply excludes Him. Such, then, is the sum of all Mr. N.'s reasonings- God must on no account interfere or reveal Himself in any way. It is implausible and mischievous. That, after all, there were only a few sages who arrived at monotheism without it; that those who believe in this revelation have alone the principle of the sympathy of a pure and perfect God with the sincere worshipper, to the exclusion of all others — this is no matter. Mr. N. will use the wisdom he has acquired from it to pronounce it an imposture, and to decide that, though an imposture has produced this blessed result, yet a real revelation of God would be very mischievous; and he would engage us to believe his logic and respect his moral judgment — the inward law or spiritual man — as the competent judge of the whole question.

The Irrationalism of Infidelity: Section c.

Being a reply to "Phases of Faith"*

J. N. Darby.

{*London: 1853.}

<06001-129E> File Section c.

71 OBJECTIONS CONSIDERED

I now turn to some details. For, while the pride of man's heart would have no God (at least, not one who should interfere with him or reveal Himself), he is very anxious really to get rid of One which besets him, which exposes his lusts and his pride, closes in his conscience on every side, and bars his will, and tells him that God does concern Himself in his thoughts, words, and actions, yea, though He do it in love. I turn, then, now to Mr. N.'s objections to scripture. In treating of objections made to the word of God, it is well to consider what is objected to.

72 GENERAL PRINCIPLES

I cannot here, of course, write a book on the positive evidences of Christianity. But no one is ignorant that there are such, and that the positive proofs of it — proofs such as no event, no system, no person on earth has for itself — have been detailed in the language of every civilized people. Now particular objections leave this all out of sight; yet, where anything has been largely, positively proved, the dwelling on the objections that may be raised, without estimating the positive proofs of the whole system, is a totally unsound mental process. It is a way of judging of the truth of anything which would be admitted in no other case whatever. I do not object to the examination of every difficulty in detail.

In the case of scripture, the positive proof is that of the divinity of the system as a whole. If the system at large is positively proved, a difficulty attached to it which I cannot solve is a demonstration, not of the falseness of the system, but of my incompetence to deal with the difficulty. In such a case, a sound minded man is content to say, "I do not know." The historical facts and documents of Christianity are proved, with an evidence such as no other universally believed event or acknowledged book has any evidence to be compared with, and if proved shew that it is divine. It has met with an opposition which made every document and fact to be scrutinized with a closeness which left only what was incontestable uncontested. This was to be expected, because it presented the claims of a holy God, to which the antagonist will of man never would submit. Hostile heathens, philosophical adversaries, heretical corrupters, foolish advocates, elaborate historians, voluminous commentators, every kind of author and character has been occupied with it from the time of its promulgation, and authenticated its history and its doctrines even when opposing them; and this in the presence of the hostility of religions divinely established or nationally and deeply enracinated on the one side, and sceptical scorn on the other. The books on which the smallest doubt could be cast, doubts were cast upon; and their authenticity made a subject of question as they are by objectors now.

73 The internal difficulties by which Mr. N. seeks to invalidate the inspiration of the New Testament, or at any rate the greater part of them, were noticed already in the second century and answered. The Jews were as desirous to prove Jesus was not the Messiah as Mr. N. could be now. In a word, we are on ground travelled over for eighteen centuries. Old infidelity dressed up in a new form, to be met by increasing light and increasing proofs, which God in His goodness affords, both internal and external.

The history of Christianity no one attempted to deny when any denial of it would have been of the smallest value. They hated it, opposed it, sought to destroy it by force, and to subvert it by argument and ridicule; but it was there to be hated. No man thought of denying that. The documents were reasoned against, and objections made to them; but they, and they only, were received, by friends and foes, as the authentic documents of the religion professed by Christians. This is beyond all question. The Jews exist to this day the living witnesses of the truth of this history. They possess the books of the Old Testament, which we do. Their state confirms the Christianity they deny. It is well known that the Talmudists* confirm the history of Christ's death, His flight into Egypt, and His miracles (though attributing them to sorcery He had learned when there, or, as some say, He wrought them by the means of God's ineffable name, which He stole).

{*These testimonies are of comparatively late date. They are in the Gemaras, not the Mishna; but this rather confirms the truth. If we receive the christian records, the Jews were forced to own notable undeniable miracles done before the eyes of the multitude. Comparatively speaking, contemporary hostile accounts are silent on the subject (I speak of Jewish doctors), and later ones do not dream of denying them, admit the facts, and attribute them to magic. Celsus (a heathen author, who lived some fifty years after St. John, as quoted by Origen) does not deny the miracles, but ascribes them also to magic. The Talmudists speak of instantaneous cures wrought by the name of Jesus. The passages are quoted by all the authors and commentators who have treated this subject at any length. Lightfoot is the usual book of reference for the English reader.}

If we turn to the internal testimony, there is no book in existence to be compared to the New Testament scriptures. Nothing in the least degree approaches its simplicity, power, moral depth and moral purity, profound knowledge of God, adaptation of His love to the heart of man; none that displays God so much, brings Him forward so constantly, without ever committing itself by anything unworthy of Him; brings Him down so near man, and yet only more fully to shew Him always to be God; reveals Him in person, in doctrine, in precept, in His ways, in prophecy; and by Mr. N.'s own testimony, it alone has produced the sense of the sympathy of a pure and perfect God with the sincere worshipper. It has done more; it has manifested Him as the Friend of publicans and sinners — a way of which Mr. N. has no idea. For them (and how many are there!) he has no God; and yet He is never more evidently God than when we see Him thus.

74 If, with a God of law, the unclean leper must stand off from man as well as God, Jesus will touch the defiled one with a holy power that dispels the evil by which it cannot be contaminated, while perfect suited love is revealed in the act.

But, further, take in general the account given of this manifestation of God in flesh. There is a divine infinitude in the relationships revealed and developed. We can feel, if indeed we can discern God, that we are occupied with what is infinite. Yet he who speaks is so at home in what is infinite, that the expression of it is simple, as God is to Himself — as everything is to Him. There is no bombastic effort to elevate expressions to what one's heart does not reach; no enlarged and laboured periods to unfold what remains secret and unknown after all, if indeed all be not in expression. What produces the inexpressible feeling is stated; but the statement has the simplicity of known and perfect truth. When Paul would sometimes express his feelings as to it, you may see him labouring beyond the bounds of human language, to give vent to the thoughts of a heart which possesses what is too great for it to contain. Yet this is only feeling produced by it.

Take the revelation of the facts, and all is simple. Read the scene with the shepherds, when that great event is announced which brought in reconciliation and the bringing together of a fallen world and God by the incarnation. Can anything exceed its simplicity? Yet what thoughts are unfolded in a few words: "Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, good will towards men!" Luke 2: 14 What accomplishment of promises — what revelation of grace — what an untold and ineffable mystery — what a God is revealed in love! Men, angels, Israel, the world, are all concerned. Where is there a word that is not characteristic of simple divine revelation? where is there an epithet seeking to elevate what such working of the human mind can only lower? Read all through the New Testament: never will you find an epithet attached to the name of Jesus. He carries His own beauty: others may talk about it, express their feelings about it; it is very right; it has its just and holy place. But Jesus is to be the thing revealed, if it be a revelation, not the expression of man's feelings about Him. What a testimony is this, that the Holy Ghost, and not Luke, or John, or Mark, or Matthew, was the real writer of these histories of Jesus! There is a divine stamp on the whole history, the not discerning of which proves, not the failure of the evidence, but the incompetence of him who is insensible to it to perceive that which is of God.

75 Again, take the whole body of scripture, a collection of books written by various persons during a period of fifteen hundred years — of about eight hundred, by Mr. N.'s admission. All these develop an immense system. The sacrifices of the old are far the fullest development of every moral truth contained in the great historical fact and doctrine of the new, yet comparatively without meaning, till that fact appeared and that doctrine developed its bearing — circumstances and histories, full of instruction for our present walk, which in themselves are simple histories of patriarchs or of Israel (the application of them being totally unknown to those who wrote) — a unity of design, a completeness of structure (yet written when the connection of the subsequent part with the former was impossible to be known to man), which proves the unity of the mind of the Being whose revealing power and controlling thought and knowledge run through it all from beginning to end.

It may be said that this is natural, where one people has been the scene of the development. But the fact is not so. This people rejected, and has been totally set aside by this development. The law in its own proper nature does not admit the gospel; and the gospel sets aside as a system in toto the law, and yet confirms it all as divine, as the law and the prophets all prove the gospel when it arrives.

The doctrine of the Church is brought out, of which there is no mention in the Old Testament whatever, yet it alone fills up the gap, and satisfies what these prophecies have revealed. Without it the world would have remained without any direct revealed association with God. This the revelation of the Church affords, for it is heavenly, which the world and Jewish government cannot be; yet these were to be set aside for a long while, and nothing earthly could fill up the gap.

It is revealed when the time is come and not before, because it sets aside the whole previous system of Jew and Gentile, a revelation which, if made before, would have destroyed all the authority of what existed. Yet it is necessary, when it does come, to the whole order of God's ways, as revealed in the system it sets aside. Now it is alleged, there are difficulties in detail as to this vast and wonderful system, externally authenticated as nothing else in the world is, which has internally the impress of its divine authorship in its whole character, morals, doctrine, and structure. If I lose the effect of the positive evidence, I prove my incapacity of estimating the value of the revelation of God, instead of simply my incompetence to solve the objection, as is the case if I accept the whole thus proved, and avow I cannot explain the difficulty, supposing such to be the case; as a man who reasoned what the sun was from an eclipse, and could not see when it shone. Suppose some phenomenon in nature which I cannot explain. That there are such, and even monsters, every one knows. I find around me (Mr. N. will not deny it) proofs of divine operation, and of a constant law (which is the strongest proof of divine operation) and power — a vast universe bearing (as a whole and in the minutest part) the proof of the power of God as having created and as sustaining it. If it be indeed God, nothing can be hid from this power; the very proof it is His is its universality, infallibility, and constancy, and that what grasps the whole cannot let the minutest part escape its attentions. It is not an outward show. That man could produce in his little measure. Go search within: see the springs, the details. Man's work is but the scene of a theatre, a fair show by dim light, and it is moved by what may fail at any moment. Follow God's into detail. See all His works in scrutinizing light. Does He fail anywhere? Has anything escaped Him? Nothing. How came the monster there then? Is there some Arimanes, some evil Demiurge, that has had at least his share in the work? One failure proves that God is not there! Such is logic — at least the logic of objections. I find some inexplicable phenomenon, some lusus naturae as it is called, some monstrous birth. It is a proof that there is no God, no perfect Creator and Sustainer of the universe! Is this sound reasoning with the proofs I have of it? No, the wise man, sure of the former by irrefragable proofs, says, I do not know why this is. He knows indeed, if taught of God, that evil is come in, and that sorrow and confusion is the fruit of it — evil which he does not attribute to God, save as permitting it externally for correction.

77 It is in vain to say, I can shew by the order of physical laws how it must have happened. Who made physical laws necessarily producing monstrosities? The sense that it is a monstrosity, moreover, is proof of the conscience of a universal order. Why then is a particular inexplicable difficulty adduced as an objection to revelation, and urged as a proof that the whole is false? There is but one reason. Revelation controls the passions, which creation does not. A judgment to come, sin, having to answer to God — these are what revelation treats of; and they are what man does not like. A God of providence he will have and reason about, because he wants Him, and he prides himself on having to say to the Almighty as he (man) likes to have to say to Him. But to be judged by Him, or even to own himself a sinner, and to be in so humble a condition as to be loved by Him and to need it — ah! that is another matter. The principle then on which the reasoning drawn from objections goes is a false and hollow one. Still, as they trouble the mind, I shall refer to them, without pretending to solve every difficulty that can be raised. That is merely a question of my competency, not of the truth of scripture. To judge of these we must advert to another principle which affects directly the whole force of any objection to any writing whatever, and that is the object of the writer. If my object is to shew the spirit and bearing of a course of action in which many isolated facts have the same moral force, I may neglect chronological order without anything being changed by it. If I were shewing the progress of an individual mind in them, chronological order would be everything. Again, if I am shewing that a person's public life had a given aim or object, I select the facts proving it, and neglect a multitude of others, without which, as a personal history, it would be necessarily imperfect and disconnected; but it is not incomplete in the view in which I have written it. If I were shewing the filial piety of the same person, and the way he kept up the ties of family to the end, only such parts of his public life would be related as might shew, that, in spite of its importance and activity, this tie was always felt and acted on. And so on.

78 Take again, as an example, the Code Napoleon. Did I speak of it as a monument of his genius, I might select particular parts in which the bearing of law on society, an intuitive perception of just results in details, and the vast scope of design were manifest, and shew that these originated in his mind Did another history seek to shew his power in employing instruments, it might shew the very same parts drawn up by men able in their vocation; and a caviller might find difficulty to reconcile the drawing up of all by these instruments with the originating mind which had set all agoing and directed it throughout. Were I shewing the progress of legislation in the world, I might allege these very same parts as the necessary consequence of the progress of society, and that they flowed as the evident consequences from the preceding steps in this process, as one idea leads on to another; and, in appearance, Napoleon's originality would disappear. All these histories might be true — nay, we may suppose, absolutely true — yet impossible for one who had only these to reconcile them in everything, because he has not the additional elements and a knowledge, which would be really divine, of the whole order of man's mind and history, which would be absolutely necessary to put them together. Is God's history of His Son in the world less vast in conception, less multifarious in the relationships it speaks of, than Napoleon and a code of laws?

Take, again, a scriptural example: "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased; hear him." Matt. 17: 5 If I quote this desiring to rest His claim to be heard on His being Son, in contrast, say, with Moses or Elias, I may quote it: "This is my beloved Son, hear him." If I were shewing the delight of God in Him, I might quote the former part, leaving out "hear him." If I refer to His Father's perfect approbation of Him as a reason why He should be the expression of His mind, I should quote the whole passage. These different citations, instead of being contradictions or mistakes, are proofs of the intention with which the statement is quoted.

Now, if God gives us a history, He must have an object. He cannot write a history even of His blessed Son merely to amuse man with a history of true facts. Hence He will, in a revelation, give what may be quite disconnected as a history. Thus, if God be unfolding the character of Christ as Son of man, He will select what does reveal Him in that character, not what presents Him simply as Messiah come on earth among the Jews. Consequently, in selecting the facts, large gaps may be found in the history. The connection will be the character of Son of man and facts really connected together historically in moral consequence, which are not in mere chronological order.

So of other great principles developed in the history of Christ. Many facts may be common to different features of His character, or necessary to the whole history. Thus grace in every case will shine forth; but not perhaps in the same application. No one can, in fact, read the gospels, without seeing that Jesus is presented in different characters in them. Matthew gives us His connection with Israel in His coming; that is, with the promises made to Israel: hence the constant quotation of prophecy. In John He is God Himself come down from heaven. In the beginning He was with God, and was God. Then the Word was made flesh. There is no manger of Bethlehem here. His genealogy is divine, so far as there is any. The Abrahams, the Davids, and the Adams have no place here, save so far as Christ takes one among their posterity by being a man. The Jews are treated as rejecting Him in this character from the first. Luke has his point. The Son of Adam is at once on the scene, though His connection with the Jewish people be historically given. Mark gives us the gospel-service of Christ, and we have nothing before John Baptist's ministry.

79 Now I say not that God has given a revelation, however truly I believe it; but that if God does give a revelation, He must have an object, and hence that the revelation must have a character suited to that object, or it would be imperfect and inefficient; the work would be that of an incompetent workman. The objection must lie, if valid, against such a work as pursues thus its object; for God must surely accomplish His purpose in this manner, if He does give revelation: and hence, to prove He has not, the objection must shew that the passage objected to is contrary to a purpose so pursued. God's revelation will not seek the satisfaction of man's curiosity in another way, nor to satisfy man at all (save so far as, in grace, not to turn him aside), but to instruct him. Did it do so, it would prove it was not God who wrote it.

PARTICULAR OBJECTIONS — GENEALOGY IN MATTHEW

I turn to the particular objections.

The first is, that Matthew was under manifest mistake in inserting fourteen names instead of eighteen, and in saying that there were only fourteen generations. This is a poor objection in presence of the moral power of the gospels; it shews a mind descended on low ground: but we will consider it. That Matthew has omitted three kings, none disputes; but this does not prove he made a mistake in doing so. The point he is shewing is Christ's legal connection with the throne of David: this, the omission of the three names did not in the smallest degree affect. The descent and the proof of it remain identically the same. Matthew and every one else knew of these three kings. What was his motive in omitting them may or may not be discoverable; but it does not affect the descent. What he gives is perfectly right. Mr. N. says, "I was struck with observing that the corruption of the two names, Ahaziah and Uzziah, into the same sound (Oziah), has been the cause of merging four generations into one." (Phases, p. 107.) Now this is a mere assertion* without the smallest foundation whatever. In the genealogy in 1 Chronicles, where the names are found together, there is no similarity in sound or anything else. Uzziah is not used, but Azarias, which does not resemble Ozias in sound or in any way. In the general history there are long chapters Or details which absolutely preclude all confusion. Where did this corruption of both names into the same sound exist? Not in the LXX: there, where brought together, we have Ὀχοζίυς and Ἀζαμίας. Nor is there any confusion between these names. Uzziah is called Ozias by the LXX in 2 Chronicles. But there is not the smallest ground whatever for saying there is any confusion with Ahaziah. Azariah and Uzziah are much more alike in Hebrew, and even interchanged; but it is Ozias in Greek where it is read Uzziah, and Azarias where it is read Azariah.** But with Ahaziah there is never any confusion whatever.

{*The remark seems borrowed from Wetstein.

{**It is Azarias in 2 Kings 15: 13, 30, where the Hebrew reads Uzziah. In the rest of the chapter the Hebrew reads Azariah, which the Greek preserves here in verses 13, 30.

80 This argument is merely one which plays in the ear of the English reader.*

{* Ὀχοζίας and Ὀζίας are not only different, but are never used together.}

If Matthew used the Septuagint, and it is there Ozias is found, the Septuagint gives no occasion to any confusion. If the Hebrew, Ahaziah and Uzziah could lead to none; they are in different parts of the history, and the letters are so different they could not mislead.

If Matthew, indeed, looked at the genealogies, it could not be mistake — he would have copied the genealogy as he found it; if at the history, then there is no possible ground for confusion. Nor did the circumstances of the history afford any occasion thereto. It is a perfectly gratuitous supposition, without any foundation in fact. Matthew has left them out intentionally, or what he was led of God to copy did; and there is no mistake: he has counted the generations he has given, and he has counted them correctly.* Had he put them in and said there were fourteen, mistake might have been alleged. He has omitted the first three descendants of Athaliah — Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah. It is easily to be believed that the Spirit of God led Matthew to take the Jewish registers, for such would be the authentic means of proving a genealogy where the public fact was to be proved. To men it would have been even more suited to his purpose than any other, for they could not reject it. To the believer the revelation of the fact was sufficient; but an appeal to what men acknowledge is a means the Holy Ghost uses continually in grace. No one who has paid the least attention to Hebrew genealogies can have any difficulty whatever. Whole families are given under a name, nay, whole peoples, or even under the name of a district, if they were known by it; they are recommenced again, if any one had the character of a new stock. Many links are often left out, provided the family relationship is established; little else is generally aimed at. This is evident, on comparing them.

{*Jerome, in loco, notices the omission, and says they were left out as being children to the third generation of Athaliah, who was of Ahab and Jezebel's family. Matthew intending to have fourteen in each class. It is very possible the Jews had left them out from this motive. writing and giving the genealogy, it is evident that Matthew, for the purpose he had, should copy the genealogy, not make one. One he had made would have been of no possible value, and his introduction of the three omitted kings wholly out of place or ill-timed.}

81 The taking this from the registers, and to take it as it was there, would be the natural way, I may say the right way, to authenticate it to the Jews. Faith has no difficulty in it. It believes on other grounds that Christ was the Son of David, as the gospels also set it on other grounds of proof. To have departed from the registers would have hindered the testimony, nay, destroyed the effect of this testimony.

Was it anything unworthy of God to use it in grace?

To use it is really of no avail, and evidently unascertainable, and hence, I may add, a good field for an objection when we wish to find one. That Matthew was familiar with scripture is evident, unless he is admitted to have quoted it by inspiration; if he did, we need not reason about the genealogy. If he was familiar with it, all this argument about a mistake is perfectly absurd, because there is no ground for it in reading the Old Testament. The histories of Ahaziah, Joash, and Amaziah are as largely related, or more so, than those of the greatest number of the kings.

82 The term "begat" is constantly employed in Hebrew for a descendant. But whatever the motive of Matthew, there is no mistake. He has left out three kings, the children of an apostate woman, recommencing with him in whose reign the prophecies of Messiah dawned brightly on Israel, and he has counted his genealogies aright. It is very possible that the words "Jehoiakim" and "Jehoiakin" are blended in Jechonias, because this happens in other authors,* that is, the two names are written the same. But Mr. N. does not see that this makes no difficulty. Jehoiakim, or Eliakim, was older than Jehoahaz, and is named with his brethren, Jehoahaz being omitted,** and Jechonias, or Jehoiachin, is spoken of only in Babylon, whither he was carried. Or Josias, being the last independent king of David's family, and Jechonias, being the one actually carried away, is put forward as marking the epoch, and Josias named as being the last king who had any free place in Israel, for Jehoahaz was carried, after three months' reign, into Egypt, and Judah never after raised its head; hence the whole family is thrown together as the children of Josias, Jechonias being singled out as the person led captive and the fresh royal stock in Babylon. In either case, the descent of David's family remains alike made good.

{*Thus Josephus calls Jehoiakim  Ἰωαχιμου, saying Nebuchadnezzar killed him, and made Ἰωαχιμου, his son, king. And Clement of Alexandria expressly says, After  Ἰωακεὶμ ὁ ὁμωνυμος αὐτοῦ Ἰωακεὶμ reigned three months. Irenaeus says (lib. 13, 30, end of 21 Bened. edit.), "Joseph, Joacim et Jechonia filius ostenditur."

St. Jerome insists largely on this (in Dan. 1), saying, "Ob hanc causam in Evangelio secundum Matthaeum una videtur deesse generatio quia secunda —  τεσσαρακαιδεκάς — in Joachim desinit filio Josiae, et tertia incipit a Joachin filio Joacim. Quod ignorans Porpheytrius calunian struit ecclesiae, suam ostendens imperitiam, dum Evangelistaeo Matthaei arguere institur falsitatem." Jehoiachin is called Ἰωακειμ twice in Jeremiah 52: 31. In 4 (i.e., 2) Kings 24: 6 it is said, Ἰωακὲιμ, (or κὲιμ) slept with his fathers, and Ἰωακιμ his son reigned in his stead, and so on in the chapter, and at the end of 2 Kings 25. I may add, that considering the two Jechonias as distinct makes the fourteen more easily reckoned; otherwise David is reckoned twice, as closing the first fourteen and beginning the second. The only apparent difficulty (which Epiphamius settles by inserting ἐγέννησε Ἰεχονίας but he cannot be trusted) is, that it is not said Jechonias begat Jechonias; but this is easily understood, because the captivity intervenes and breaks the thread of the genealogy entirely. The whole history of Israel ceased, and the kingdom. If the reader prefer this solution, I have no objection. It appears that it was rather after the captivity of Jechonias (he was then only eighteen) that his son was born. The reader may see that these objections are as old as Porphyry, and how early, as I stated, everything was minutely examined.}

{**The English reader must not consider the expression, "they were carried away captive," as of any consequence; it is literally "of her carrying away."}

83 The reader will remark that the three epochs are characteristic of the state of Israel or Judah, beginning, of course, with Abraham. These objections, then, have not the least weight. No one is called to believe that fourteen is eighteen. Matthew counts the generations he has given in the Jewish style of twice seven.

The Spirit meant to shew the legal descent of Christ, so as to inherit the royal title; and this He has done perfectly by that which was the legal proof of it, and inspired Matthew to do it, and to do it in this way, which was the only right and valid one. It was the proof that Joseph, of whom Christ was heir legally, was descended from David, and so from Abraham.

How was this to be legally done? Not by inspiring a genealogy, but by shewing it by the admitted tables. This is what is done. That it is the legal descent or title is evident; for the evangelist does not for a moment leave a cloud on the fact that Jesus was not Joseph's son. He says, "The husband of Mary, of whom was born Jesus, who is called Christ." He publishes carefully what he is doing — that he is not giving the natural descent. Christ's miraculous birth follows, to make this dear. It is His legal title which is deduced here, and in the legal, right, and valid way. The designation of Joseph, by the angel, as son of David, confirms the truth of what I say as to the design of this part of Matthew.

Even if the chapter were spurious, this would encourage Mr. N. (so he says) to apply similar criticisms to other passages. Would he be glad to be thus encouraged in a classical author?

The very ancient objection of the difference of the two genealogies is then brought forward — a difficulty, amongst others, as old as Celsus and Origen. Mr. N. settles for his readers (assuming, I suppose, their ignorance) that "neither gives the genealogy of Mary, which alone is wanted." (Ib. p. 108.)

No one could object to his seeking to prove this, if he wished it; but to state it as an uncontested fact is merely trading on the credulity of the English public. It is, he says, an undeniable mistake, in spite of the "flagrant dishonesty with which divines seek to deny" it. (Ib.) Thus the subject is dismissed. Who can dare answer in face of such a judgment? Modesty might say, "I cannot disentangle a difficulty which depends on registers we have not got;" but this would not be the Βασιλιχὴ ἀτμαπὴ, the royal road to certainty needed to gain credit as a sceptic. I have no great respect for theology, nor can I pretend to be learned. Still I can say, that this is not quite so clear a matter as Mr. N. thinks. There is enough to "encourage criticism" on such a decision.

84 As regards the genealogy of Matthew, it is undoubtedly the genealogy of Joseph, and given as such.

Mr. N. says, this is not what we want. Now I apprehend Matthew must have known much better than Mr. N. (for I do not assume his inspiration here) what was required in his days, either from the expression of it by others, or the habits of his own mind formed by the same circumstances. The truth is, this was of great importance. If Jesus presented Himself to claim the throne of David, and Joseph had at that time a separate and hostile title in the direct line from Solomon, Jesus's title would have been void legally; and it was material to shew Him rightful heir by this title. And we find, in fact, that Joseph never once appears after Christ makes the claim, though we have mother (and, remark, confided to another at the cross), brothers, sisters — never Joseph. Jesus had succeeded him in his title, in a Jewish way, to the crown of David and throne of Israel. Matthew, then, gives what was needed in this respect; and gives it suitably. Jesus was the legal heir of Solomon.

Mr. N. ought to know, if he writes on such a subject, that many learned men think that the genealogy in Luke is that of Mary pursued in the order of nature up to Nathan. I am well aware others have thought it that of Joseph also; and as Salathiel was son of Jechonias, and Zerubbabel his grandson through Pedaiah* — so also he may have been collaterally, or by his mother or grandmother, descended from Nathan. If there were no brothers of such mother, he would rank as such. They have applied the same reasoning to Eli as regards Joseph.** The truth is, in these Jewish genealogies, where grandsons are called sons — nephews and cousins, brothers — and children raised up to a man by a brother taking his widow, whose seed is called then after her dead husband, with the registers we have defective as a mere human testimony — no objection is of much weight, and answers can only be suppositions. But these last are quite sufficient; because, when a contradiction has to be proved, a case possible by supposition shews absolutely there is no contradiction.

{*See 1 Chronicles 3: 17, which may give the reader an idea how, while very carefully shewing of what family a person was, the Jewish records left the rest obscure. No one can tell in what exact relationship those of chapter 5: 18 stood; only they were certainly of Jechonias' or David's family: by any of them a descent could have been traced. The leaving out of women, so that a man was called son of his maternal grandfather, increased the difficulty.}

{**Wetstein, for instance, considers the genealogy of Luke as the natural or direct genealogy of Joseph, and Matthew, the derivation of the royal title which was in the collateral line. This is a question really of the construction of the Greek phrase; for as we have not the registers to settle which it is, it may be of course, as to the names, either. It does not affect the substantial question as to our blessed Lord in the least. The inspiration of the gospels, and His mission as Son of David, rest on other proofs altogether; and that once proved, and His claim authenticated by His miracles and all other evidence, He is certainly Son of David, and the particular object of the genealogies is an independent question. Mr. N. has assumed that it was to prove Him really and naturally the son of David; but this is merely his assumption.

Matthew certainly deduces his legal title, not his natural descent. What Luke's is is a question interesting in its place, but only so for its own merits. The total want of force in Mr. N.'s argument is shewn in this, that supposing Luke had given an unexceptionable genealogy of Mary — that is, one to which no objection could be raised — and given it avowedly as Mary's genealogy, what possible proof should we have now that it is exact, but faith in his inspiration, and the absence of proof to the contrary, or his general fidelity as an historian? That is, its correctness must rest on the general proofs of Luke's fidelity or inspiration, which are to be looked for elsewhere. And in fact, in the gospels the testimony that He was Son of David is always rested on other grounds; while it does not appear, on the other hand, that the genealogy was ever contested. It is a mere delusion to advance the difference between the two genealogies as an objection, because Matthew's is avowedly the royal legal tide in Joseph. Now if the natural genealogy were given in Luke, there would be no kind of necessity that they should be the same. If it be counted from Mary, for the greater part it could not be.}

85 If we consider it as the Lord's genealogy through Mary, it would stand thus: But Jesus Himself was beginning to be about thirty years of age (being, as was supposed, son of Joseph); and τοῦ Ηλι may be directly in connection with Jesus' Ιούδας Ιαχώβου, or, still more exactly,  Ἐμμὸρ τοῦ Ευχέμ. This abruptness would result from its being an extract of genealogical tables. Υἱὸς may be understood in these cases as  ἀδελφος is in the case of Jude in Luke, and πατὴρ in Acts 7 (if we adopt the ordinary reading), and Herodotus 6: 98, quoted by Wetstein on Matthew 1: 17. As to abruptness, 1 Chronicles begins with far greater in an analogous case. The τοῦ refers entirely to the person of Heli, and marks its case as dependent on υἱὸς understood. The use of the article with names is habitual in genealogies, and constant in the gospel. Mark has τὸν τοῦ Ζεβεδαίον . . . . Ἰάχωβου τὸν τοῦ  Ἀλφαίου, and in the whole genealogy of Matthew. So John 19: 25: so that the absence of υἱὸς, and the presence of τοῦ, is nothing extraordinary. The form of it here is more abrupt. Were I to say, ὁ  Ἰησοῦς ὁ τοῦ Ηλί τοῦ Ματθάτ , it would be an easy and the correct form of speech; but to begin the extract of genealogy with ὁ τοῦ Ηλὶ, after the long interruption, would be extremely unnatural; the rather as He had been said to be supposed the son of Joseph, so that υἱὸς as naturally suggests itself to the thought as it is commonly left out. But the example of many* Greek genealogies would lead, as Luke generally writes correct Greek, to the supposition, that the connection of the series is with Joseph. The reader who possesses Wetstein's Greek Testament may see such examples in the notes.

{*Herodotus, however, uses it with simply τοῦ after the first name.}

86 If taken as Joseph's natural descent, this would prove that the object of the genealogies was, not to give Christ's descent according to the flesh by Mary, but, first, the natural descent of Joseph from David, and, secondly, His being that one of such descendants to whom the crown belonged; Matthew giving the latter, Luke the former. The descent from David, which was only necessary to the accomplishment of Jewish promises, was rested, to the Jews, on their known authentic records and acknowledged principles.

The fact of actual descent, if to be taken in the material and not in the legal sense, would rest on the uniform testimony of the gospels that He was Son of David, such as the angel's to Mary, a testimony resting on the general proofs of their authenticity. There is no mistake, for Luke is as careful to say, "being (as was supposed [or reckoned]) son of Joseph" as Matthew; so that, if it be Joseph's descent, he well knew and meant to express what he was thus proving. It remains to be proved whether, in any accomplishment of such a promise among the Jews, and made to the Jews, any other relationship was needed, and whether such relationship is not to be taken according to Jewish (scripturally Jewish) relationship, and not English. For instance, it is well known the widow's child by the brother was reckoned the son of the dead. This is foreign, we know, to all our thoughts; but, as a divine national law (for it was merely a national law connected with the inheritance of the land), every Jew did and was bound to count him so. The brother was guilty and despised who did not do it.

87 Now scriptural language is to be taken as it is given to us in scripture. It is quite evident, that this legal title was judged important, whatever fancies Mr. N. may have as to it as an Englishman — important where alone this promise had its proper and peculiar importance as to its effect, for Matthew, who especially occupies himself with the accomplishment of such promises, gives this only.

It is certain that in general the evangelists rest the Jewish part of the question on Joseph's position. (See Luke 2: 4.) But, instead of being irreconcilable, these genealogies are open to so many explanations that the difficulty arises thence. Thus, if Mary had no brother and was the daughter of Eli, the Lord was descended from Eli; and Joseph would be called τοῦ Ηλὶ as heir and representative of Eli. If Matthat and Eli were brothers and one died without children, then Joseph would be counted the seed of one, though really child of the other, and might be heir of both.

Now these shew that there is no contradiction, supposing both the genealogies Joseph's; their credit will then rest on that of the writer. Hence different persons,* as Africanus (whom Augustine follows), who pretends to give it from relations of Jesus's family, and others, have adopted different ones. None can be proved: all prove there is no contradiction. If the genealogy be Mary's, there is clearly none. It may be however given as Joseph's, who through Mary would be τοῦ Ηλὶ, representative of Eli in the family. In this case Luke would give the union of the legal and natural title, and the structure of the phrase would be, according to Greek genealogies, ὢν (ὡς ἐν.) υἱὸς  Ἰωσὲφ, τοῦ Ηλὶ, &c., and yet Eli would be the father of Mary, and the genealogy really hers. Its being thus the natural descent by Mary, though legally passing through Joseph, would meet another point in the genealogy of great importance in Luke's gospel, its being traced up to Adam, so that Jesus is Son of man, to which His natural genealogy has more reference. It would make Him also naturally son of David. Thus the natural genealogy would be traced and brought through Joseph, its legal representative; and this I rather apprehend to be the case, but I attach no kind of importance to it. I would add, "according to the flesh" has a broader meaning than mere natural descent,** though founded no doubt on fleshly descent.

{*The reader may consult, if he will, Eus. Hist. 1: 7, and Quaestiones et Responsiones ad Orth., 131 - 133, conf. 66, which seem to adopt Africanus's system.}

{**Compare the following phrases: "No confidence in the flesh," which is the descendible privilege (Phil. 3.), "and knowing Christ after the flesh," "of whom as concerning the flesh," "our father according to the flesh."}

88 On the whole, I am satisfied that the descent itself is Mary's. I may add here, that the apocryphal vision of Isaiah, which is probably of the year 68, declares Mary to be of the lineage of David, as Joseph also. This I refer to merely as shewing the popular general apprehension of that day. In Kaye's Tertullian, it is stated, that Tertullian uniformly appeals to the census as establishing the descent of Christ from David through Mary. It is the more likely that it may be so, as the Jewish Talmudists speak of Mary as the daughter of Eli, saying she is tormented in the other world.

On the whole, then, there are two questions. First, Do the generations contradict each other? This, it is clearly demonstrated, that there is not the slightest possible ground for asserting. With this all objection really falls to the ground. Secondly, Is Luke's genealogy that of Joseph or Mary? It may be legally Joseph's and naturally Mary's. But this is a question for theologians, not for infidels; for, whichever the Lord may have thought proper to have given, an infidel has nothing to say in the matter.

The question of inexactitude no human being can settle by any subsisting registers, for there are none.* To impute it, therefore, is mere wantonness. To the question of inspiration it has nothing to say. The proofs of this rest on totally other ground. Were the genealogy as accurate as law could make it, it would not prove it inspired. Were it inspired, I should have no proof of its accuracy from other sources; I must rest it on inspiration proved in another way.

{*The omission of the three kings by Matthew I have already discussed. It does not depend merely on registers, but on an elaborate and detailed history; so that the question goes beyond registers. I refer here to Luke, adduced as contradicting Matthew.}

The fact of Christ's being in every sense Son of David, is rested, in the gospels, on proofs of quite a different character. On the other hand, His legal title to sit on the throne of David is given in a way which was conclusive to the Jews. The fact of His natural birth of Mary would not have proved it, Joseph being alive; nor if there were other relations of Joseph, unless He was his legal heir. Even if there were not, the legal title through Eli by Mary might be important to give also, as it was allowed He was not naturally Joseph's son. Thus every way He was heir, and the two genealogies had their just place.

89 ALLEGED MISTAKES IN ACTS 7: 16

The next objection (Phases, p. 108) is Acts 7: 16: "And were carried over, and placed in the sepulchre which Abraham bought for a sum of money of the sons of Hamor, the father of Sychem." That there is a difficulty in this passage is beyond a doubt; and some mistake difficult for us now to solve. There is a name which is inexactly connected with an historical fact in the Old Testament. It is also one of those difficulties long since discussed. But to call in question inspiration because of it, is to put what an error in copying would produce, in competition with all the moral and spiritual evidence of divine power, manifest in the whole contents of the book itself, and in its effects in the world for ages. It is so falsely measuring the intrinsic importance of evidence, and the character of proof, that the person rejecting the scriptures because of it would prove nothing but his own incompetence to measure evidence. A book two thousand years old has a mistake in a sentence, which the omission of a word entirely rectifies, without changing anything — a word very likely to creep in. And this is used to discredit what bears the largest, fullest, strongest, positive proofs of every kind, of being the testimony of God, and has produced, and does produce, effects which nothing but the testimony of God could do.

The objection is this: Abraham is said, as the passage stands, have bought the place of the sepulchre of the sons of Emmor, It was Jacob, if the sons of Emmor be rightly here, not Abraham, who did so. The solution of it is, in one sense, exceedingly easy. The only question is, Is it really the true one? The word "Abraham" being left out, all difficulty disappears. "Jacob died, as did also our fathers, and were carried over to Sychem, and placed in the sepulchre which he bought," &c. Now Joseph was buried there; and Jerome states, that Paula saw the sepulchres of the rest; and Wetstein quotes Syncellus and two Jewish writers to the same purpose.* The omission of Abraham is given credit to by this — that one uncial MS,** ancient and of good authority, has an addition here which gives strong ground to suppose Abraham to be an interpolation.

{*Josephus says they were buried in Hebron. The Old Testament says nothing of it; and it is contrary to Jewish tradition, which says, "Hebron is called Kirjath-arba, because Adam, Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob are buried there".}

{**I say one, because, though Laud, and Ven. Bede are quoted in the critical editions of the Greek Testament, the MS marked E in the Acts is Laud, or the Latin translation; and it appears that seventy-four readings of Bede are found in this MS, so that these are really scarcely more than one authority.}

90 I would lead the attention of my reader to another point here. Let him read Stephen's speech, and he will find a very brief but most perfect and complete summary, for application to the consciences of the Jews, of the history of the patriarchs from Abraham to the end of Joseph's history — a summary which supposes the most perfect and accurate knowledge possible of the details of the history; a man thoroughly master of the whole account given in Genesis, and carrying it in his mind, as all perfectly well known, so as to give in few words the whole moral bearing of all its parts. It would have been impossible for any one, leaving aside inspiration (and if inspired, the question is at an end), for any one not perfectly familiar with every part of it to have given such an abridgment of the history. But it would have been equally impossible for a person so informed, and master of his subject, to have made such a mistake; because the facts were connected with most interesting points in Jewish history, which made the deepest impression on their memory, and connected themselves with their earliest and strongest associations, and are in the history itself too entirely distinct, and accompanied with far too great a detail of different circumstances to allow of the supposition of any confusion of mind between the two. The supposition, therefore, that Stephen confounded the two, is, in every point of view, the most improbable solution of any one that can be made. This, it is true, is nothing for a sceptic, because he gains his point by it, or at least raises a doubt. That his reasoning is very absurd is no matter to him; because, if he can produce a doubt, faith is at an end. Hence he uses arguments which would be absolutely unreasonable in any human enquiry, and at once rejected.

Now I am bold to say, that nothing can be more unreasonable than that an author who could have produced such a summary of the patriarchal history as Acts 7 should make the blunder supposed to be made in Acts 7: 16. The mere literal authority would lead to correct it by leaving out Abraham; but the internal evidence would lead me, I confess, to believe "the sons of Emmor the father of Sychem" interpolated; and it would run thus: "in the sepulchre which Abraham bought for a sum of money." I would add, that the Peschito Syriac reads the verbs in the singular: "Jacob died, as also our fathers, and was carried over to Sychem, and laid in the tomb which Abraham bought for a sum of money." The point seems to be, that he had it when Israel was not in possession of the land, Sychem being mentioned as shewing God's title over the whole land: for it was now the seat of Samaritanism, a point in Stephen's speech of moment, as was his shewing that the best and most blessed of their ancestors had nothing there at all but what they bought — were still pilgrims and strangers, as the saints now were becoming through the Jews' rejection of Messiah and the Holy Ghost's testimony in Stephen's own person. It is the whole tenor and bearing of Stephen's speech — the rejection of the lawgiver whom God sent as a deliverer, and the delivering to the Gentiles Him who was their preserver of life, and hence the stranger's place for the true-hearted, Solomon's temple itself being rejected by the testimony of their own prophets. Some one, seeing "Sychem, where Jacob was carried over," added the "Emmor father of Sychem,"* and left "Abraham" in the text.

{*The Vatican reads, "in Sychem," not "father of Sychem." The Syriac omits all after Emmor.}

91 In result, it is fully confessed that a difficulty exists in the text as it stands.

The reason assigned for it by the infidel is the most improbable of any, humanly speaking.

We are not in possession of means to correct with certainty the mistake that exists.

There is a very probable way of accounting for it, without doing any violence whatever to the text as it stands, when one word is omitted, or if the last words naming the persons are omitted; for the account of the transaction, if either be, is perfectly exact: the mistake is in the name only.

This last remark is material; namely, that it is a mistake which a transcriber might make, or a marginal reference to a name introduce: no moral error, no mistake, even in the facts, setting aside the name, exists. The teaching of the Holy Ghost in the passage is in no way in question, otherwise than in the insertion of a name.

92 DISCOURSE OF GAMALIEL, ACTS 5

The next difficulty presented is in the discourse of Gamaliel, Acts 5. (Phases, p. 108.) Theudas, it is said, was after Gamaliel's time, instead of before Judas's; and appeal is made to Josephus, whose testimony is considered infallible and complete, because it is not inspired. Valuable and important as the information afforded by Josephus is, the accuracy of this servile worshipper of Vespasian* as the Messiah of an apostate heart is not so absolute as the author would lead people to suppose. But I do not see reason to call in question his account of Theudas. It happened (according to his account), as we learn by comparing the dates, in his childhood; and he mentions Cuspius Fadus as the governor under whom it happened; so that there is no reason to suppose that he was not well informed. But Luke is also an historian of extreme and undoubted accuracy. Few give such proofs of it by reference or allusions to a multiplicity of historical and geographical details or customs,** in which a stranger would betray himself.

{*Interesting as the information furnished by an eye-witness on such a subject as the history of the Jewish war, and of one almost a contemporary with other still more important periods, must be, it would be difficult, I judge, to find an example of a baser human spirit than that exemplified in the History of Josephus.}

{**The reader who knows German may consult Tholuck's Die Glaubwurdigkeit der evangelische Geschichte; or, if only French, an abridged translation of it by the Abbé Valroger, entitled, Essai sur la Credibilite de l'Histoire Evangelique. It is an answer to Strauss's Das Leben Jesus, u.s.w.}

Now Josephus mentions a Theudas who rose up after Gamaliel's time; Luke, one who rose up before it.

Mr. N. assumes that they are the same, and that it is Luke's mistake. He says, "Of both the insurgents we have a clear and unimpeached historical account in Josephus." (Ib. pp. 108, 109.) The reader might suppose that there were two insurgents only in those days. The fact is, they hardly ever ceased for forty or fifty years. There were a multitude of them.

It has been shewn that, between the death of the first Herod and the destruction of Jerusalem, there were three Judases and five Simons. Lardner makes, I think, four Simons in forty years, and three Judases in ten; one of whom, Usher is decidedly of opinion, is the Theudas mentioned by Luke, as to which I do not pretend to offer an opinion. Usher thinks the name the same. At any rate the name of Theudas was so very common, as well as the change and assumption of names, that an insurgent Theudas is the most easy thing to credit that possibly can be. A statement of "both the insurgents," as if there were only two, and the two Theudases the same, is, to say the very least, as unfounded a one as possibly can be made.

93 Remark further, that Luke, in his account of Judas, is thoroughly accurate. Though generally called Judas Gaulonitis, he was a Galilean; for so Josephus also calls him. It is supposed, that having the means of being thus accurate as to one, he is wholly inaccurate as to another fact, drawn from the same sources. When the whole difficulty is this, which is really none, that in a multitude of abortive efforts of the Jews against Roman power, Josephus has omitted one which Gamaliel mentions, we knowing that he omits many others, the name being a very common one indeed, as Wetstein has shewn, and the fact being ascertained that there were five such efforts of persons having or assuming the same name of Simon, and three more assuming another within ten years; so that a second of the same name, and that a very common one, in fifty years, has not the smallest improbability whatever.

Further, the only circumstance to prove them the same is the death of the leader, and the dispersion of his followers; an event which probably occurred in every case in these vain and desultory efforts of partial rebellion. One point in which detail is given may be noticed, to shew they are not the same; for Luke gives the number of Theudas's adherents as about four hundred; whereas Josephus says they were "a great multitude," τὸν πλεῖστον ὄχλον. Indeed, though much cannot be rested upon the word, the result was somewhat different; for in Luke they were "scattered," διελύθησαν, and brought to nought. Of those under the Theudas against whom Cuspius Fadus sent a troop of horse, many were slain and many taken prisoners, among whom was Theudas, who was beheaded. Now, though, as a general result, dispersion and coming to nothing might be stated, on the whole, the impression is different. And remark, that Luke has evidently accurate information here, for he is able to tell the number of his Theudas's followers as about four hundred. Yet he is an historian who is remarkably exempt from all appearance of pretension or exaggeration.

94 And here note, that I am not called upon to prove that Luke is right, but that the objection is an unfounded one. And I judge that what we have seen proves it not only to be unfounded, but unreasonable; and that the expression, "both the insurgents," is an unwarrantable assertion, to say the least.

The truth of the history rests on the general credibility of the historian; for I am not to suppose inspiration here, though the abundant independent proofs of that preclude all these questions altogether. The effort to shew it improbable entirely fails. Perhaps the reader may suppose that this is an answer invented now to meet the case. Alas! all these objections have been made centuries ago. This one in particular by Celsus, some sixteen hundred years ago or more; and the Christianity these philosophical heathens tried to subvert then, as the philosophical deists, boasting of their greater spirituality, do now (borrowing their objections from the heathens, and their spirituality from the Christianity they seek to subvert) — this Christianity, I say, has subsisted after all their efforts, and saved millions of souls taught by it, as Mr. N. has admitted, the sympathy of the pure and perfect God with the sincere worshipper, in spite of the opposition, and in spite of the still more dangerous corruptions which have for the most part disfigured it. It has subsisted and produced an energy of love which "philosophical faith" never thinks of, not only because it is the truth of God, but because the God of truth Himself is in and with it, and has proved it in revealing Himself to the hearts of poor sinners saved and made happy by it. What has Mr. N. that he has not borrowed from it? He must not be surprised that we claim the feathers he has decked himself in. He may be assured that my heart would earnestly wish them to be livingly his own. Nor would I, if stripping him of what is borrowed, peck at himself. I would not spare his work, seeking as it does to deprive souls of what alone is blessing and life. I feel my feebleness in commenting on it. What I can I will do to shew it groundless and unreasonable. But I add the proof how ancient this account of Theudas which I have given is.

Origen, who had read Josephus, and gives him the character of truthfulness of research, says, in reply to Celsus, "We say that there was a certain Theudas among the Jews, before the birth of Jesus, alleging himself to be some great one;" and again, "Judas the Galilean, as Luke has written in the Acts of the Apostles, chose to say he was some great one, and before him, Theudas." Acts 5: 36 Elsewhere he says the same thing. Hence learned men have remarked, that the fathers here constantly refer to these two as the thieves and robbers who came-before Christ, shewing that they supposed Theudas did so. This merely shews that they accepted Luke's account as certain, in spite of Celsus's objection already cited.

95 Eusebius, overlooking all difficulty of date, takes for granted Josephus's Theudas and Luke's to be the same; he places him in the reign of Claudius, that is, seven or ten years after Gamaliel's speech, which must have been before the death of Tiberius, or in the beginning of Caligula's reign.

THE SLAUGHTER OF THE INFANTS

Under the general head of "undeniable mistakes" (for infidels must not be expected to fail in hardihood of assertion) we have, "The slaughter of the infants by Herod, if true, must, I thought, [how easy to think a doubt and find the thing doubted an undeniable mistake!] needs have been recorded by the same historian." (Ib. p. 139.) Why? Is it so very likely that a Jewish infidel historian should have recorded a particular act of local cruelty, which would have been the strongest testimony possible that Jesus was the Messiah? He must have given some reason for such a very peculiar and specific act of cruelty out of Herod's family, where he was cruel enough, and for which no conceivable reason could have existed, but some extraordinary testimony that the Christ was born in David's city. This would have been too much for Josephus's history and his heart. Indeed the omission of one local cruelty in a village is nothing extraordinary in an historian. The killing a few children was nothing to the hard-heartedness of Josephus and Herod, if there was no particular reason. If there was, it was the last thing Josephus would mention. It was not his affair to give proofs that the Christ was come. But that the cruelties of Herod at this time referred to some pretensions of the coming Messiah, though the slaughter of the infants would have been inconveniently precise, is plain, from a passage of Josephus, which, though as obscure as a man avoiding the whole truth could make it, yet very distinctly shews these cruelties to refer to the hope of a miraculous king.*

{*The reader may, if he pleases, consult Lardner on this point. Book 2, chap. 2, vol. 1, p. 346. 8vo. 1838.}

96 Further, the story in Matthew falls in perfectly with Herod's general character, both as to its cruelty and the jealousy of anything which affected his title and government, which habitually gave rise to this cruelty. The saying of Augustus is well known — that it was better to be Herod's hog than his children.

Further, this story of the slaughter of the infants, though confounded with other incidents, was believed by the heathen as a recognized fact in subsequent ages, as well as owned as such by those called fathers. Macrobius among the former, Justin Martyr, Irenaeus, and others, among the latter, are witnesses of this. It is the merest unfounded assumption that there is any mistake whatever here, and only proves the disposition of the one who makes, or rather renews, this old objection.

ZACHARIAS, SON OF BARACHIAS

Zacharias, son of Barachias, is the next. As to mistakes as to names, no Christian would attach any great importance to them, from the fact of their easy introduction in copying from the margin when written there by some one who supposed it to be such a one. Suppose, for instance, "from Abel to Zacharias" were in the text, some one adding "son of Barachias" in the margin as a remark, it is soon inserted as part of the text. Evidently it is not like a part of the sentence, affecting the sense. I say this as a general remark, for it is not necessary to have recourse to such a supposition here. Supposing the name to have been simply Zacharias, nothing could have been more natural than the Lord so speaking. 2 Chronicles being the last book in the Hebrew Bible, it would have amounted to this: — The blood of all the martyrs in your history, from Genesis to 2 Chronicles (as we should say from Genesis to Revelation, without ascertaining the date even of the latter book), will be required of this generation. It imputes no error whatever to the blessed Lord. The martyrs from Genesis to Chronicles were all the martyrs whom Jewish hatred of truth had sacrificed. The Lord does not chronologize their martyrdom, saying, the last of the martyrs. Those who take this view would drop the words "son of Barachias." This is confirmed by the fact that they are not found in St. Luke; and St. Jerome informs us, that in the gospel of the Nazarenes (an impure and corrupted gospel according to Matthew, as it seems adopted by Judaizing Christians) the reading was "Zacharias, son of Jehoiada." Now I do not adopt this reading; I refer to it as tending to confirm the absence of "son of Barachias."* Evangelaria and scholiasts give Jehoiada, and the latter affirm that Barachias had also the latter name, such a change being the commonest thing possible amongst the Jews, as is well known; and from Jerome downward this has been the thought of different learned men, the names having nearly the same signification, as in the case of Eliakim and Jehoiakim. But I see no need to rest on these details, which, though sufficient to explain it, may be thought to savour of effort. It is not proved that Zacharias, the son of Jehoiada, was slain between the temple and the altar, which is noticed as aggravating the sin in both Luke and Matthew. It is very possible, as he was addressing the people in the court: and he may have fled into the inner court when attacked, and been slain there. The people had no business there; but if it was a violent and riotous murder commanded by the king, breaking through the consecrated limits and profaning the inner court** would not be very astonishing. The Jews attached extraordinary importance to this murder; they say that his blood bubbled up till avenged by Nebuzaradan, who slew ninety-four thousand of rabbins, of their scholars, and of the people.*** Their fables are not important, but as shewing how it had impressed itself on the Jewish mind; and the Lord refers to what was notorious amongst themselves. The presence of the addition "son of Barachias" would, then, be easily accounted for, and the reference of the Lord to the case of the other Zechariah the most natural possible. The change of names, according to the notion of Jerome and the old Greek scholiasts, would, in Jewish nomenclature, take away all difficulty too.

{*Hilary and some others omit all after Abel. Irenaeus reads as in our Bibles, but we have only the Latin translation here, which probably inserted the reading of the Vulgate, which has these words.}

{**Such was the statement of the Rabbins. Rabbi Judah asks Rabbi Achan, whether he was killed in the court of the women or of Israel: he replies, In neither, but in that of the priests, &c.; and then the story of the blood ever after springing up, instead of being absorbed as that of victims, is related.}

{***The reader may see the particulars in Wetstein.}

97 But there is a circumstance which would tend to make me judge otherwise of this question, besides the all but uniform testimony of MSS and versions, of which the earliest have "son of Berachiah," such as the ante-Hieronymean Latin ones. It is this. The Jewish traditions state, that Zechariah, the son of Iddo, a prophet and priest, was slain. Zechariah, the son of Berachiah, of whom the test, as it stands, speaks, was grandson of Iddo, and is called twice "son of Iddo." (Ezra 5: 1; Ezra 6: 14.) Further, Iddo was a priest, who came up from Babylon with Zerubbabel. (Neh. 12: 4.) And in verse 16 of that chapter, we have, Of Iddo, Zechariah. So that we have these facts.

98 The prophet Zechariah, son of Berachiah, was grandson of Iddo, and is called son of Iddo twice in Ezra. We have a priest Iddo, whose son or descendant is called Zechariah precisely at this epoch; for Zechariah, the son of Iddo, was a chief priest in the days of the son of Jeshua the priest. The Jewish Targum states, that Zechariah, the son of Iddo, a prophet and priest, was slain in the sanctuary. Further, the name of Iddo in Zechariah and Ezra is the same (the latter adding a silent aleph), and so is the priest in Nehemiah 12. (See Keri, and 5. 4.) I am aware some have referred the Targum on Jeremiah to Zechariah, the son of Jehoiada, taking Iddo for this latter name; but there is no relationship between the two names whatever. Not only this, but the way Ezra speaks of Haggai and Zechariah is remarkable: he calls Haggai, in both the passages, Haggai the prophet. But Zechariah has, as his title, Zechariah the son of Iddo, not Zechariah the prophet, though shewn to be such. The reason seems evident. This was Haggai's only distinction. Whereas, Zechariah, the son of Iddo, was a well-known personage, Iddo being a chief priest over his brethren; that is, Zechariah, though a prophet, had a distinct and well known title by which he would be designated: he was a priest, and Iddo was a well known chief priest, so that he was called his son, though really his grandson. Hence, as the Targum declares that a prophet and priest of the name of Zechariah, the son of Iddo, was slain in the sanctuary — a Zechariah, the son of Iddo, being certainly son of Berachiah, and a priest and a prophet, why should I be surprised if the Lord should say, that Zechariah, the son of Berachiah, was slain in the sanctuary?

Has the infidel any proof that Zechariah, the son of Berachiah, the son of Iddo, was not slain, so as to confute the statement of Matthew? Absolutely none. It is not stated in scripture that Zechariah the prophet was so killed. How could it be? There is no subsequent historical book. Is it stated of any other prophet? Of none.* Yet the Lord — and so does Stephen — charges them with treating all the prophets in general in this manner, so as to add, "It cannot be that a prophet perish out of Jerusalem." Jeremiah, and Baruch his scribe, had their lives given them as a prey by a special deliverance on God's part. Why, then, must the Lord be wrong? Because the infidel thinks He ought to be so. There is really no other reason whatever.

{*But this only confirms the authenticity of the gospel, for we have a statement which seems error, but which, on a careful comparison of circumstances, turns out to be just exactly what proves the statement to be that of a person living when the circumstances were well known, or that he knew them well himself, so as not to need care as to apparent probability. Zechariah, son of Iddo, priest and prophet, was, according to the Targum, slain in the temple (and I suppose, as Targums are not inspired, we may credit them historically); and Zechariah, son of Iddo, priest and prophet, was son of Berachiah, — son of Iddo, as we know from the record itself, meaning grandson. Zechariah, son of Berachiah, is said, in the New Testament, to have been slain between the temple and the altar — as the Targum says of Zechariah, son of Iddo, whom Nehemiah proves to be son of Berachiah.}

99 The Lord makes a statement which there is nothing to confute. Say Matthew does; because he does, it is not to be believed, though, from the general conduct of the Jews, nothing can be more probable. Most generally, persons who do not accept the statement as it is, turn to the history of the son of Jehoiada in the Chronicles, which, from its similarity, they suppose to be here referred to. This is a question of criticism which humble inquirers into scripture may listen to, however it may be decided. We are certain, I think I may say, that both Zechariahs were priests as well as prophets; so that the place of their death is not a surprising one. But Mr. N. rejects all this and the Chronicles with it; yet he uses these books now to prove the inexactitude of Matthew. Now his rejection of them takes away his title to the use of them for this purpose. At any rate, he will not have this history to be the one referred to, so that he has no right to infer inexactitude from it. However, as men have doubted who it was, he will have the New Testament wrong somehow. And he chooses the most improbable, nay, I think I shall shew, impossible supposition, for such only it is, to prove that Matthew, if Matthew it be, has made an undeniable mistake.

Josephus has mentioned a Zacharias, son of Baruchus, killed in the temple, and it is to be he; at least Mr. N. cannot "shake off the suspicion" (Phases, p. 109) that it is. On what ground, we are left to divine.

In the first place, Baruch and Berachiah are not the same name. Both are used; and neither in Hebrew nor in the Septuagint are they confounded.

100 In the next place, the Lord addresses the Jews as guilty already, referring to their previous acts, and saying, "Fill ye up the measure of your fathers, that this blood may come upon you." Matt. 23: 32 This would have no force at all, if it were not a past act of which they were not personally guilty. They would commit similar ones wilfully and complete the dreadful series, so that the time of vengeance should arrive, and all the accumulated guilt of past ages, as to which God had exercised forbearance (if peradventure they would repent), would bring its accumulated consequences on their head. But this supposes that the Lord refers to the past acts committed by this people, but not by this generation, and to acts of which their consciences were fully aware. If it be said, But the question is, Did the Lord say it? If it were He, of course then all objection would be set aside, for it would be a prophecy if He referred to the son of Baruchus; while Matthew saying so leaves the argument just as strong, for it arises from the internal force of the words, which he could not have put into the Lord's mouth. Their meaning, be they whose they may, cannot apply to Baruchus.

Moreover, Baruchus was no prophet; nor, for aught we know, a righteous man. Josephus says he was very rich, and a hater of evil men. But Luke, in the parallel passage, makes the Lord speak only of prophets.

Further, Zacharias, the son of Baruchus, was killed by the zealots just before the temple was besieged. Now, according to all historical evidence, Matthew was written before that — many think, long before it. The siege of Jerusalem, at which time Zacharias the son of Baruchus was killed, took place in the year 70. Some think Matthew wrote his gospel in the year 41, a date borrowed from Eusebius, that is thirty years before the siege of Jerusalem, and the death of the son of Baruchus; and the common account given in the immediately succeeding period, the first centuries, was, that he left it for the use of the Hebrews, when he went forth to preach the gospel elsewhere. Others, founding themselves on a passage in Irenaeus, think he wrote it so late as 61 or 62, and even as 64.* But this is the latest date assigned by any who have examined the subject. That is, if historical evidence be of any weight at all, the latest period at which Matthew can be supposed to have written his gospel, was six years before the death of the son of Baruchus; so that if he put it in, he was inspired, which after all is absurd, for he could not by inspiration attribute to Christ what He did not say.

{*I have no doubt, with many learned men, that there was a Hebrew copy of Matthew's Gospel made for the use of the Jews. It is very possible, too, he left some account in writing, when he left Judaea, in the vulgar tongue of the Jews; while the Greek Gospel we have is that given by the Spirit of God for the permanent blessing of the Church. The Gospel of the Nazarenes or Hebrews seems to have been some such Hebrew document corrupted and interpolated.}

101 To pretend that Matthew is not the real author is to deny all historical evidence whatever.

Further, we have Matthew quoted in the Epistle of Barnabas, and quoted as scripture. The author of this latter book, it is not material to my purpose to know. Its early date cannot, I believe, be questioned.* The epistle is considered to have been written in 71 or 72, that is a year or two after the death of Zacharias, the son of Baruchus, and in his epistle Matthew's Gospel is already quoted.

{*He refers to the ruin of Jerusalem as just happened. He is himself quoted by Clement of Alexandria, Origen, &c.}

Clement of Rome, the companion of apostles, quotes Matthew about the same period. His words may be taken as Luke's, as the passage is nearly the same in both evangelists. Thus we have additional proof of the extreme improbability (I may, indeed, say impossibility), historically speaking, of Matthew's Gospel referring to the son of Baruchus, or of its having been written afterwards; for it is quoted as scripture within a year or two of his death. The consideration of the testimony of St. Luke confirms this more than improbability.

If Matthew refers to the son of Baruchus, so of course must Luke. It is the same person who is alluded to, as no one, I suppose, doubts. Now Luke, in the Acts, refers to his gospel as a previous treatise which he had written: but in the Acts he closes with St. Paul's imprisonment in Rome; that is to say, the year 65. So that his gospel was already written in that year, that is, five years and more before the death of the Zachariah of whom Josephus speaks. That is, it is impossible that he can refer to him, for he speaks of an act already committed; indeed, were it sot so, it would be inspired prophecy as in Matthew. But this is evidently not so; it refers to a past act.

In a word, the supposition or suspicion of Mr. N. is the most improbable possible, and really impossible to be true; and there is no pretension to any evidence which contradicts the statement of St. Matthew's Gospel as it stands (that is, no proofs of any kind that Zacharias, the son of Barachias, was not slain). We have no scriptural evidence anywhere to look for, to confirm the fact that he was, no more than in the case of the other prophets. There is no subsequent scriptural history, nor any complete authentic history, of the times to relate it. But we have a statement of a Jewish doctor of high repute, that a Zechariah, son of Iddo, prophet and priest, which is the prophet's exact description, was killed in the sanctuary.

102 That is, the objection has no foundation whatever, unless the will to object, because of the divine claim on the conscience, be one. Further, if Zechariah the prophet was martyred, he was the last so martyred, as far as we have any testimony of those who shine in the authentic scriptural history of the Jewish people; for we know nothing of the sort concerning Malachi, nor indeed is he mentioned in the historical books of the Old Testament.

NAMES OF THE APOSTLES

It is natural for Mr. N., when seeking to justify an infidelity which has not been convinced by the divine power of the word — has not bowed to it as morally evidencing itself to be of God — it is natural for one who has proved his mind to be insensible to the grace and truth contained in it (a grace and truth which bears the stamp of God upon it) to accumulate all the difficulties which the reader, willing to be an infidel, may accept without enquiry as insurmountable, and the unwilling be troubled or perplexed by. There is, he tells us, an "impossibility of settling the names of the twelve apostles." (Phases, p. 109.) Supposing we could not do so, what then? We should be ignorant how some one came to have two names, the very commonest thing of all common things among the Jews. What could that prove? Just nothing at all, except this — that the gospels are genuine, and not a forgery; for had they been, the forger would not have created a useless apparent inconsistency. Now there is this proof of independence. But the real truth is, though it be perfectly immaterial "settling" them, yet there is no kind of difficulty in it. Levi had also the name of Matthew, as Saul had that of Paul, Simon that of Peter, as numberless others in scripture. So that if we had even but the two names, no kind of difficulty would arise — Levi would have the name of Matthew also. But we have the particulars of his call given by two of the evangelists, the one of whom calls him Levi, the other Matthew; so that the proof that he is the same is really incontestible by any sober-minded person, and there is nothing to "settle." One Gnostic heretic, Heradeon, has the names Levi and Matthew in speaking of the same apostles who, he says, had not suffered martyrdom. But it is supposed he refers to Lebbaeus, that is, Thaddaeus: if not, it is of very little consequence, as we have the account of his call under the two names.

103 Grotius alone, that I am aware of, fancied Levi and Matthew different persons, founding his opinion on a questionable passage of Origen, who in another clear place treats them as the same, and on the statement of Heradeon before mentioned. The whole fact is, that some confusion has arisen in one or two minds from Thaddaeus having the name of Lebbaeus; but at the most only in one or two instances, and those uncertain: just as his being called son of Alphaeus in one gospel has made one or two transcribers confound him with James; and some fancy him his brother — of which it suffices to say, perhaps he was, perhaps he was not.

But there is no real uncertainty whatever about it, unless a mistake of some careless or ignorant person outside scripture is to make uncertain what is perfectly dear in it, and accepted as certain historically by all well known authorities who have spoken of it. For there is no doubt they were received as the same in the early Church. Jerome says, Matthaeum cognomento Levi, "Matthew surnamed Levi," as an acknowledged unquestioned fact. How different the spirit of Eusebius! He notices, taking for granted they are the same person, that Matthew out of abundant modesty calls himself, when sitting at the receipt of custom, by the name he was known by as an apostle. Luke and Mark give him his apostolic name in the list of apostles, and his previous popular name when sitting as a publican. It is, at least, refreshing to meet with something of the spirit of grace in the midst of such criticism. And how true it is, too! how much it discerns of what mere miserable criticism never did and never will! We may remark that Luke says, "Levi made him a great feast in his house;" Matthew only, "as he sat at meat in the house."

There is no other question as to the apostles' names but Thaddaeus and Judas, names confessedly interchanged, or rather, as learned men have urged, the very same. Simon, Andrew, James, John, Philip, Bartholomew, Thomas, James, Simon, Judas Iscariot, are the same in all.

104 HARMONIZING THE GOSPELS

As to harmonizing the gospels, it is a great mistake in principle. The Spirit of God has (as I have said, and as is evident to an attentive reader) given in each gospel what referred to a particular character and particular instructions of Christ; and facts referring to this subject are recorded, and such parts of discourses as apply to them; the connection of the facts being in many cases the object,* and not the historical order — many being related without any date at all, the Spirit of God not attaching any the least importance to the time when, but to what was said, in what circumstances. In some respects, there is a progress in the development of certain subjects which is chronological, such as the growing spirit of rejection of Jesus among the Jews, and the substitution of a new order of things. Yet in giving this general chronology (which is seen, for instance, in Matthew** very evidently, and all relating to the subject fully developed), the details which point out certain parts and moral elements of unbelief may be classed according to the subject, in order that we may understand their bearing. The same fact may be confirmed by another evangelist and put in historical order exactly, or in some other moral connection. We dislocate the whole purposed contexture of the gospels in trying to put them into common continuous order. It may be in some respects interesting to search it out, but quite subordinate to the general purpose for which they are written. I have tried so to arrange them, and I have not found the thing impossible; but I have found it takes the passages quite out of the order in which they were meant to stand.

{*I may remark here, in passing, that the expression used by Luke, "to set forth in order," applies far more often in Greek to order of subjects (i.e., a regular account, not mere notes) than to order of time. The former is its regular meaning, only ἐφεξῆς is more commonly used than κατεζῆς in classical Greek.}

{**The most chronological gospel as a whole is, I think, Mark. Luke follows the same order very closely where he is chronological, which in the middle part of his gospel he is not; but the chronological development of Christ's rejection is found as stated in Matthew, only he introduces here and there particular facts out of their historical place, which make the unfolding of Christ's service in relationship with the Jews and His rejection clearer.}

Besides, we have a very limited portion indeed of the facts of the history, which enormously increases the difficulty of putting it together; because the links which connect the facts historically are often wholly wanting. There may be six months between two facts mentioned in one verse, in the same sentence, if these two facts refer to one subject; and these two facts may be dispersed amongst a number of others in quite different connection elsewhere, and if one be morally important on a particular subject, it may be put after one chronologically subsequent, without a note of time. This is actually the case; because the object of the Holy Ghost is to give us certain moral pictures of Christ as Son of David, Son of man, and as Son of God, a divine Person, and of God's ways with men in Him — not to make out a full biography. Such alone, I am bold to say, could have been God's way of dealing.

105 I put a case, to shew how easily the omission of a fact seems to produce contradiction, if the fact be not known. A person, desirous of shewing my kindness and condescension, states that I accompanied him from Reading to Oxford on foot, though it was almost more than my strength permitted, and unfolded my mind to him, all the way, enlarging on what I said. Another has a point to prove, namely, that it was on a certain day (which is this selfsame day) he was with me, and that I had informed him of a certain event; and he states that he overtook me on the Oxford mad going to Reading. This was just half an hour before the other spoke of walking with me. A third states positively that I only arrived in Oxford that day, and never left it afterwards. Now there seems contradiction here; for how could I have been overtaken on the Oxford road to Reading, and never have left Oxford that day, and have, on the contrary, gone from Reading to Oxford, not having even strength to go more than one way? Yet one fact makes all easy, which was immaterial to all the parties who had spoken of it. I had forgotten my pocket-book, and had turned back again after two miles' walk, and was overtaken a few minutes afterwards going to Reading, and then set out again. And, so far from being a contradiction, I never should have met the person I walked to Oxford with had I not been back to Reading. Now, this is a simple and obvious case; I refer to it to illustrate the danger of reasoning from such apparent difficulties.

Judas is called of Galilee in the Acts; Josephus calls him a Gaulonite. Geographers have difficulty how Gaulonitis can be Galilee. Here is a difficulty almost insuperable — "an undeniable mistake" — nothing to impeach Josephus's statement. Luke is an incorrect historian, not an inspired writer. How can we correct it? Simply thus: Josephus has, as the title of his chapter, "Of Judas the Galilean." If it had not been there, what a triumph for critics! Yet they would have been all wrong, on the now united testimony of two accurate and exact historians. Have the geographers explained it? Not that I know of; but Josephus, not being a Christian, is to be believed, and hence Luke may be. This is not the only such case.

106 THE RIVERS IN PARADISE

The next difficulty is the geography of the rivers in Paradise. It is "inexplicable." (Phases, p. 110.) This is very possible. But I apprehend that the inexplicable thing is the text which speaks of geography, not the geography of the text. If so, which certainly is the case, I should think Mr. N. had better wait till he can explain or rather translate it before he raises an objection from it. The interpretation of this exceedingly brief statement is not easy. If it were explicable, perhaps Mr. N. might find no objection arising out of it. A river went from Eden to water the garden; from thence it was separated, and it became four heads. Now, that there were four rivers is pretty clear, for of four heads we have two well known named ones which are rivers — Tigris and Euphrates. The other two are not clearly ascertained. Two systems have been maintained: one that Gihon and Pison were the two rivers which form or formed the mouths of Tigris and Euphrates, which, after uniting, separated again. But this presents many difficulties. Others, who have placed the garden in Armenia, near the sources of Tigris and Euphrates, seek Gihon and Pison in rivers in that country. No opinion has been clearly proved, because the text itself presents serious difficulties as to its meaning.

The first words, "a river going out from Eden," present a difficulty. The general idea, that the garden of Eden was not without this refreshment, is clear; and Tigris and Euphrates give a general idea of the country it was in. Eden supplied this water; that general idea is given. Eden may have contained the general source of waters, hence called Nahar generically; but the waters of this common springhead separated, and four principal streams were formed from them.*

{*It was the Wasserscheide, strangely become in (at any rate, American-) English, "Water-shed," a singular example of the difficulties of etymology. I quote from Bryant a description given by Moses Chaeronensis of the district in Armenia to which the passage we are speaking of is supposed to relate: "Armenia alta inter omnes regiones revera altissima est; quippe quae ad quatuor coeli partes fluvios emittit." (Vol 3, p. 7, of the 4to edition.) "Upper (High) Armenia is really of all regions the highest; for it sends out rivers to the four quarters of the heavens;" and then he goes on to speak of its advantages.}

107 No rivers had yet been mentioned, though seas and dry land had. The source of these was the territory from which God had ordered that blessing should flow. Thus Nahar would be used generically (as I might say land in contrast with sea). Nahar, river-streams, took their source in Eden. The garden was thus watered. Their freshness all was there. From thence the waters flowed here and there, and surrounded and characterized by their course other countries. Thus the sense would be — "And a river-source was in Eden to water the garden; and from thence [Eden] it was distributed, and became four principal streams." Of these we know two, and two are uncertain — a circumstance not very astonishing; while there are such, and which answer accurately enough to such description. This sense has its perfect place in the general moral bearing of this part of scripture. There were the streams of refreshment found. The primary object was the garden; but thence they flowed around the world which needed it. The context of the passage speaks of the different things that characterized the garden; and this account of the river which refreshed it then comes in. Every reader knows the place which a river holds in every description of what God has established. There is "a river which makes glad the city of God." "God is in the midst of her." This last could not be said of the garden.

Here what follows is — "Jehovah Elohim took the man and placed him in the garden;" and then goes on to shew the responsibility under which he was placed — a contrast with the security flowing from God being in the midst of her. It was not the holy place of the tabernacle of the Most High; but the place of all those blessings and testimonies of goodness by which He had surrounded man when He had placed him under the responsibilities, which He must have done if all the wondrous scene which we know, and which infidelity is ignorant of and incapable of discerning, was to unfold itself before the angels and the universe of God — responsibilities of which we know the consequences, and (if we believe in the Second Adam) the glorious remedy.

Of these analogies, and developments, and proofs of truth flowing from the link which God's ways and hand in it afford between all the parts of this wonderful book, infidelity, of course, is ignorant; cannot pretend to the knowledge of. "The secret of the Lord is with them that fear him, and he will shew them his covenant." With Mr. N. it is a question of geography; as if God, in unfolding the first steps in that wondrous scene which angels desire to look into, were giving us some additional elements to settle a point in Rennel's Geography. I admit scripture ought to be accurate in everything, without going beyond the forms of knowledge of those to whom it was addressed at the time, or it would not have been suited to them, as God does condescend to suit His instruction to us; as, if we know His grace, we might expect He would. And where is the book which — addressed, in ages earlier than otherwise known history, to a despised people — has stood the test of increasing light as the Bible has on every point? Take the Koran, and see the nonsense that is found in it: yet this was in the seventh century. Take the Fathers. Take any book pretending to give an account of what are called fabulous ages, and see how the marvellous prevails; the little grains of fact to be picked out of these large stories; the prodigality of marvellous nonsense, from which we must in a mythical way conjecture some historical idea (if there is any). The only effect of which is, when we have discovered it, to shew that what we have as plain history in scripture is the true origin of the distorted fables we meet with in profane accounts and ceremonies — ceremonies of which the vulgar know nothing but the outside, as the religion of their fathers; but which shew, when investigated, that what we have in scripture is really the world's history — is that which, however distorted, has formed everywhere the basis of the whole system which knit portions together as one people, and separated them as different peoples too; which acted on their fears and conscience, and impressed their imagination — had been the origin of their different religions, which were but the conscience of having had to say to God in these gradually forgotten wonders, of which Satan had possessed himself to acquire the veneration and govern the lusts of those who had utterly departed from, and forgotten, the true God who had wrought them.

108 This leads me, in connection with the next objection, to the exceeding little-mindedness of infidelity.

The Irrationalism of Infidelity: Section d.

Being a reply to "Phases of Faith"*

J. N. Darby.

{*London: 1853.}

<06001-129E> File Section d.

109 THE SENTENCE ON THE SERPENT: SERPENT WORSHIP

Mr. Newman sneers (he must forgive me the word) at the sentence on the serpent (Phases, p. 110), the meaning of which is evidently the entire humiliation of the serpent. Going on its belly and eating dust would present this thought to any one familiar with scripture. Gen. 3: 14, 15. The import of the words is, beyond all question, the expression of judicial degradation, and the feeding on it even to its fullest extent in the symbol of death.

Hence his full final judgment is expressed in these words: "And dust shall be the serpent's meat." But this one sentence, thus ignorantly scorned, gives the source, explanation, and judgment of what has characterized the universal race of man over the whole globe, to an extent without rival; unless, perhaps, the worship of the sun, which was generally identified with it. Where the polished idolatry of Greece and Rome (with which, I dare say, Mr. N. is well acquainted) has never penetrated, the exaltation of the serpent has reigned paramount, and even in all its details proved the truth of the Mosaic account of the fall. Indeed, the allusion of Mr. N. here is unfortunate; for the fact that a single verse of simple statement accounts for what has governed the whole world, though it embraces nothing of the corruption that characterized what so governed it, is the strongest possible proof of the divinity of the record we possess.

It is evidently impossible for me here to give an account of the Ophiolatreia, or Serpent worship. I can only notice some of the remarkable elements of it. It is found in China, Egypt, Babylon, England, France, Ireland, North America, Mexico, Peru, Russia, Scandinavia (i.e., Sweden and Norway), Greece, Italy, Africa in its most savage parts, Palestine, India — in a word, all over the world. It is connected with the principal gods of the East, of Greece, of Rome, and with the most solemn worship of the countries I have mentioned. In Sweden and Norway, and in Macedonia serpents were kept in the houses as household gods; in Greece and elsewhere, in temples as public ones. They were considered the preservers of Athens, as of Whidah on the coast of Guinea; and the savage of Louisiana carried a serpent and the sun, as the symbols of his religion, and tattooed them on his skin.

If we turn to the elements which characterized it, we find it accompanied with a tree, and a naked woman constantly its priestess. In India and Mexico, the deliverer is bitten in the heel by the serpent, which in these and other cases is destroyed by being smitten on the head. Further, he is worshipped often erect, and not prostrate on his belly, and was fed alive with sweet cakes of honey. We find him frequently associated with a tree, and conversing with a woman. And this in countries, in sculptures, and in heathen accounts, which leave no possibility of alleging fraud or intention.

110 It has been shewn that the early history of Greece relates to colonies partly from Egypt, but partly from Hivites, serpent-worshippers driven out from Palestine by Joshua, as indeed were the Carthaginians.* Can any one doubt for a moment of the bearing and origin of all this, and the importance of shewing that "that old serpent," which had elevated himself to be the god of all the world, was, by present ocular proof, a venomous prostrate reptile? There he was, manifested and marked out by his condition under the finger of God. And when we see the whole world full everywhere with these traditions of the serpent, of the worship of the serpent (and of the serpent erect and not on his belly), is not the immense moral importance of this declaration (which in one little word explains it all, gives the terrible and real secret of it all, and reveals the ruined condition of the rebellious and disobedient man) evident to any serious sober-minded person? Scripture has not invented these facts; the whole state of the world, as the research and learning of the nineteenth century have brought to light, has demonstrated the truth of the account given it in Genesis — the divine importance of the key given in a few short words. That is, the whole history of the universe demonstrates the folly of the flippant sneers of ignorant or wilfully blind infidelity, spinning thoughts out of itself, as a spider its web, to catch those who may be foolish enough to fall into it, and neglecting the universal testimony of the world.

{*It may be interesting to the English reader to know, that Stonehenge, other circles at Abury (Wiltshire), and again at Stanton Drew, near Bath, as well as many in Brittany, in France, are temples of the serpent, formed in exactly the same mystic shapes as appear in Egypt (that is, a serpent in a circle, which represents eternity, the Deity, and also the universe, which is also sometimes seen as an egg coming out of the serpent's mouth, or encircled by his folds).}

I may just add, as curious, that a living serpent was kept in the temple of Esculapius, the god of healing. So serpent amulets among the Britons were supposed to preserve from all harm. Serpents were carried in baskets by the Bacchanals, Bacchus having in Greek the same name as the object of serpent honour in India, as indeed was the case with another name in Egypt.

111 Another remarkable fact connected with it was, that the notion of gaining wisdom from serpents was universal. This went even to the notion, that eating their flesh gave it. They gave oracles. The progress of idolatry seems to have been this: Satan seized upon the idea of God in men's minds, and the obscure traditions of what had happened. Where he could, he connected this directly with himself; and serpent worship was universal, as we have seen. Still, the sun being the great and splendid benefactor of man, and in unity, man's heart connected this with the one supreme God. This allied itself with the universe. Thus the serpent and sun worship (both being intimately associated with the idea of the unity of Deity and the universe) became connected.

Sometimes the worship of the sun drove out the serpent worship in its grosser form, yet was always connected with it: how should it be otherwise? Thus Apollo, who is the sun, established his worship at Delphi by slaying Typhon, an immense serpent, who was also said to have been cast down from heaven by Jupiter. He then gave oracles in his place. Still the serpent was sacred to him, and was otherwise associated with the Delphic worship. So in the Scandinavian mythology, the great serpent produced by the evil spirit, Loke, against the supreme God, is cast into the sea. He is the enemy of the gods; Thor will destroy him, but he will die in doing it. So the wolf, produced by the evil spirit, now chained, will in the end break loose and devour the sun.

On the other hand, Hercules, and other such mystic personages answering to Thor in many respects, a kind of god-man, destroys serpents in all manner of fables. And Krishna in India, and Teotl in Mexico, reproduce traditional accounts of scripture redemption, connected with what is said of the serpent in Genesis.* Caesar produces as the doctrine of the Druids, that man's sins could only be expiated by man's death.

{*The notion of the serpent biting the heel, and of the preserver crushing its head, is retained in the constellation of the Serpent and Hercules.}

Now idolatry, as far as we can say from scripture, came in only after the flood. Hence we have the next step in idolatry, a vague tradition of a reign of bliss under Saturn, which recalled Paradise; and then his three sons, Jupiter, Neptune, and Pluto, who become the supreme gods of heaven, earth, and sea; that is the three sons of Noah (the ark being so distinctly remembered, that in the grand procession they carried a statue about in a kind of ship). Indeed, it is very probable that the Greek word translated "temple" is really identical with that of "ship." In fine, the worship of the serpent connected itself with that of the sun and whole host of heaven; and, in cultivated Greece and Rome, merged, though retaining both, into traditions as to Paradise, Noah's three sons, and the flood. The purest of all serpent worship was perhaps in England.*

{*Here too, however, it was identified with the worship of the sun and of the ark or goddess who represented it.}

112 This serpent worship retained its power longer than we suppose. In idolatrous Egypt, so judged in scripture, there was a sect of Gnostics who connected it with their pretended Christianity, and, under the name of Ophites (that is, "serpent worshippers"), had a living serpent, which was let out to glide over the sacramental elements to consecrate them, it being the source of wisdom (exactly as was done with Isis,* the great object of serpent worship, on whose temple was written, "I am all that hath been, and is, and shall be; and my veil no mortal hath ever removed;" and exactly as the worship in England was carried on in the serpent temple at Abury and other places, as recorded in British bards' writings of that day): so in Brittany in France, where the remains of these dragon temples are abundant, it is curious to see the mounts ("barrows" as they are called) where the sun was worshipped with the serpent, now all dedicated to St. Michael, whom the Revelation presents to us as the destroyer of Satan's power. And within man's memory, in a village wake, the serpent worship was commemorated, though none understood what it meant.

{*It is doubtful whether this was Isis. Wilkinson supposes the inscription to have been to Nepthys.}

But I have said enough to demonstrate the importance of shewing that the serpent was to go on his belly and eat dust. The world has consecrated it — has shewn the place the serpent had in its history. The connection of it with the worship of the host of heaven is shewn in the fable that Minerva, the goddess of wisdom, seized hold of the great serpent that was attacking Jupiter and the gods, and flung it into heaven, where it became the constellation Draco. Indeed, all the constellations are idolatrous gods. And, to this day, the planets known to antiquity are all marked by the symbolical signs connected with this worship — that of a circle and cross.

In a word, while many traditions of truth were preserved, the serpent was deified. The Englishman little knows, when he tends his sheep or ploughs over Hackpen, that the hill he has beneath his feet has for its name "the serpent's head," for such, in old British, is the meaning of "Hackpen" (and there was the head of the immense serpent formed by stones, the circle of deity through which it passed being in the centre, and known as Abury, a name which is undoubtedly supposed to recall the universal name given to the serpent as worshipped); nor that Arthur Pendragon is "Uther of the dragon's head;" nor that when he calls his "mother," he uses most probably one of the names of Isis, the Egyptian goddess, which identifies death and the woman, for Moth signifies "death."*

{*This last connection is perhaps questionable.}

113 The reader who wishes to have more details on this must consult Bryant and Faber; or, if he has not access to these, a work more popular, but with, perhaps, fuller information — Deane's "Worship of the Serpent." He will find the facts I have only alluded to, and an abundance more, which it is, of course, impossible for me to give here.

Universal testimony renders it unnecessary for me to dwell upon the pain and peril of childbirth. Gen. 3: 16. The apprehension of death which so often accompanies it tells a tale in a woman's heart which a man's indifference (Phases, p. 110) to it will avail little against. I am aware that Mr. N., who thinks it mawkish sentiment to make difficulties about hanging people for the good of society, and takes evil for granted, must, among other evils, take for granted that of parturition. But one who believes in goodness, though he believes God can bring good out of evil, and that He has attached increase of suffering to seeming greater ease, that men's lot may be more even — one who believes God is good may naturally ask, "Why was suffering attached to the bringing in an innocent babe into the world? Why was this special suffering attached to woman, and man left exempt from it necessarily and always?'' For, whatever the reason, general and universal suffering, more or less, there is in this respect. Were the Bible an imposture as to this, it could only found such an imposture on the universal consent of man's universal knowledge of the fact. There was not such extravagant effeminacy of habits when Moses wrote the Pentateuch. A person who founds his infidelity on an assertion that suffering does not, as a general rule, accompany childbirth, must be wonderfully fond of the infidelity he is sustaining.

114 TWO ACCOUNTS OF THE CREATION

The next objection is, "that the two different accounts of the creation are distinguished by the appellations given to the Divine Creator." (Phases, p. 110.)

Now that God, in the revelation of Himself, employs different names for the purposes of that revelation, which bring out some particular character in which He is pleased to act in the display of Himself, every one who has paid the least attention to scripture is perfectly aware of.

There are three names especially which constitute so many grounds and bases of relationship with Him. He always was what is revealed in each one; but He was not so formally in relationship with man, until revealed for that purpose.

God is the general name of the Being — Elohim.

1. Almighty was the name He took as the special protector of Abraham — Shaddai.

2. Jehovah, as in relationship with Israel, the abiding One, "who was, and is, and is to come," who will accomplish in power what He has promised and undertaken in grace. (See Ex. 6: 3.) As this was the name He thus formally took with Israel, to whom these oracles were given, He is careful to shew, from the outset, that Jehovah their God was the Elohim Shaddai ("God Almighty") of creation and of Abraham; and hence the name of Jehovah is introduced from the beginning of any relationship of God with His creatures, though it was not the name of formal revelation and relationship.

3. The third name is Father. This is with Christians. Hence it is said in 2 Corinthians 6: 17, 18, "Come out from among them, and be ye separate, saith the Lord, and touch not the unclean thing; and I will receive you, and will be a Father unto you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty." That is, the living God (see 2 Cor. 6: 16), Jehovah Shaddai, makes Himself Father with those who come out and believe.

Now this is the whole matter in what is objected to. As soon as God begins to unfold His ways with His creation, to be in relationship with it as a subsisting thing, and the ground on which this is based and manner in which it has been formed is developed, He reveals Himself as being that very Jehovah whom the Jews knew as their God. When it was the mere fact of creation in power, the great thing was to shew that God, as such, did it. Elohim created, Elohim made; but when God is teaching what He was for this creation, and how He took such a place, He takes a name of relationship in which those to whom the revelation was addressed knew Him as their God. He is not called simply Jehovah, but Jehovah-Elohim, so as to connect the two thoughts, and shew the Jehovah their God as Elohim the Creator, the supreme source of all things. And this was of the very last importance. Germans and infidels, who are altogether ignorant really of the whole scope and purport of scripture, naturally find some reason within the scope of their infidelity (which cannot reach beyond a question of documents) for what is really altogether a perfection, and a pretty evident one for such as are at all attentive to scripture.

115 OPINION OF DR. ARNOLD OF RUGBY

As to Dr. Arnold (Phases, p. 111), the interesting character of whose mind and talent I need not enlarge on here, there was one characteristic trait of his mind which always furnishes a solid ground for distrust of any — that is, its very great confidence in itself. Breaking through the narrow boundaries of an Oxford education, which is more occupied with the means of knowledge than with knowledge itself, it broke forth into what was to it an unknown region, and soared out not quite aware whither. Amidst a thousand moral benevolent theories, the spiritual right-mindedness of a regenerate mind kept him safe as to what concerned moral foundation for himself. But there was no kind of moral or intellectual measure, in his own mind, of the sphere into which he got, nor of man's powers in relation to it. He knew that he had broken loose from many things that were mere trammels, which he then despised; but he never knew what the world, into which he had wandered out of the happy valley of the Isis, really was. Hence many a question started, which, to a mind not substantially kept right by spiritual instinct, as his was, became infidelity. I should say of this interesting man, that he was one of the most interesting, but unformed, I know within the little circle of my knowledge. He never was in the mature manhood of his mind, which accounted to itself for its own thoughts and real bearing. Here, for instance, drawing the juice, I doubt not, from much of scripture, he leaves the husk of infidelity to Mr. N. It was immaterial to him what the morass of difficulty was which he thus lightly tripped over, and thought thus to help others over too. To Mr. N. there was the morass of doubt, and that was all. To Arnold "the Mosaic cosmogony" was cosmogony, and that was all. To Mr. N. it was questionable cosmogony, and that was all he found in it.

116 JOSEPH

"The history of Joseph" is "a beautiful poem": only it is a true one — a wonderful picture of Christ's relationship with the Jews, yet written confessedly centuries, to say no more, before it happened, and by those who could not possibly foresee its accurate application. Nay, it is prophetic, I doubt not, of that which is yet to come. Here, however, Mr. N. merely suggests there are difficulties, without entering into any detail or proof, so that we are relieved from answering him.

THE LONGEVITY OF THE PATRIARCHS

He objects to the long lives of the patriarchs (Phases, p. 110); but he does not say why. Nor is there any reason why a man should not be constituted to live nine hundred as well as seventy years. It is a question of the sovereign power of God, on which mere reasoning is absurd. The longevity of the patriarchs would have rendered the peopling of the earth easier, as well as the communication of true knowledge more secure. But Mr. N. does not even state the difficulty with any accuracy; for the earth must have been peopled from two persons (or, at any rate, from six since the flood) according to the Mosaic account. After that, five hundred years, four hundred, and so on; and on the division of the earth in Peleg's days two hundred years were the allotted term of man's life, and, ere long, "three-score years and ten." But if we take the flood as the point of departure, the universal tradition, mythology, and worship of men confirm the account of Moses, and of the existence even of the three sons of Noah.

THE ARK

The statements of ancient eastern writers, preserved for the most part in Josephus and Eusebius, are as clear and distinct as possible, confirming the account of Moses even to the sending forth of the birds. And the traditional mythology of Egypt, Greece, and all the neighbouring countries preserves the various facts and words connected with the flood, the ark, and Noah; tracing up their history each one to this same personage, making a god of him. And the eight became, in a remarkable manner, the sacred divine number in Egypt (the great converter of Mosaic history* into fabular divinities); while he is in many fables represented as hid in an ark from the fury of a mythical representative of the deluge, and coming out by a new birth, and celebrated as the inventor of wine. A sacred ship was carried in procession in many places. The very word "ark" (in Hebrew, teba) having given its name** to many of the places in which these superstitious memorials of it were preserved. The preservation of the ark on Ararat is recorded by the most ancient historical records in existence; and in various places, where temples connected with these events were erected, a vast cleft was shewn, through which the waters of the deluge are said to have retired.

{*India, though in another form, has preserved the same histories; but through Greece, which derived it chiefly thence, we are more familiar, at any rate, with the Egyptian edition. All idolatry had, I cannot doubt, a common source; that of India, Egypt, Druidism, and other mythological systems, were only local forms of it.}

{**Some question this.}

117 In the East, the general historical account was preserved more clearly and fully — a very natural result of the fact that it was from thence, according to the Mosaic accounts, that the various colonies of the human race started: whereas in Greece and places connected by colonies with it, each (though stating it in a way which, even to their own serious writers, proved it a far earlier history) attributed it to the first king of their own colony and localized it. But they all agree in doing the same, each for his own colony, thus proving its universality, and in many instances acknowledging that their founder came from Egypt, and in one case in a very peculiar ship, thence held sacred — the very one which was carried in procession in the rites of Isis, in which the ark and the deluge were celebrated.

Besides this, the tradition of a deluge is universal all over the world. I may add, that the ablest naturalists, such as Cuvier, allege it to have been universal. Where does this universal tradition come from? Whence its connection with the author of the human race preserved in an ark, and beginning again the history of man, who had perished by a deluge?

I may add, that there is an ancient medal of a city in Asia Minor, called by the Greek name of the "ark," on the reverse of which you have an ark, with a man and woman in it: the top taken off and a bird flying with a small bough in its bill, and another resting on the ark. A man and woman are also outside, come down on the dry ground. All these, remark, are heathen notices of the deluge.*

{*The reader who has the opportunity may consult Bryant, vol. 2. p. 195 of the 4to edition.}

118 Mr. N. suggests physiological difficulties as to the peopling of the earth. (Phases, p. 110.)

Some physiologists have thought, on physiological principles, that the earth must have been probably more populous at the time of the deluge than now; but to such mere probable calculations it is really useless to have anything to say. The population of the earth increases so much more rapidly under some circumstances than under others (so amazingly faster, too, in proportion to the space over which the population has to spread), or, on the other hand, diminishes from oppression or misery; that assertions, made off-hand as to possible numbers, really prove nothing else than the disposition of the objector. Mr. N. — who has not confidence in scripture, because he will not believe it to be God's word, and who has great confidence in these surmises, because he is sure they are man's — considers the latter, of course, certain, the former of no authority, and talks of demonstrations; though as to demonstration, for instance, of the antediluvian population, it is a mere absurdity to talk of it. Does he suppose he has any demonstration that there has been no deluge, the testimony to which, and even to the Mosaic account of which, is everywhere, and the proofs of which, according to the authority of such men as Cuvier, are everywhere also? All this shews simply the will to make objections, and the hardihood of objectors.

INFALLIBILITY

I would just remark here, that the word "infallible"* is used by Mr. N. in a very loose way, in which, indeed, he is not singular. God alone is infallible; for "infallible" means one who can in no case err. The most perfect truth cannot be called "infallible;" it is the opposite to error, not to fallibility. This word does not apply itself to anything already expressed. The mass of truth to us yet unknown in scripture gives a certain applicability of this word to it (meaning, that we are sure that whatever we do thus find will be truth).** But the moral difference of infallibility and perfect truth is very great indeed; because when I judge of the infallibility of scripture, I am pronouncing on an abstract question about the book. When I reject positive truth that is there, I am facing what acts directly on my conscience. I do not discuss infallibility with an infidel. For, in strict logic, none but one who is incapable of erring in what he may pronounce is infallible. But in scripture all is pronounced: it is truth or error. The business of the infidel is, therefore, to pronounce that such and such things are truth or error.

{*"It was impossible to allege anything so cogent in favour of the infallibility of any or some part of the scriptures." (Phases, p. 112.)}

{**Hence, when a simple person says, "Scripture is infallible," he is quite right: he means merely, that all he will find there is the truth as coming from God.}

119 THE ENTRANCE OF DEATH

I turn to the question of the entrance of death. Mr. N. examines the present condition of man's body,* which scripture declares and every one knows to be mortal; and states, that as it is constituted it must be so, and hence argues that it must have been so in a state which he knows nothing about. And that is called logic! Is it impossible that it should have been in another state? Of course, as it is, it is mortal. But could not God have sustained it? All things subsist by Him. An animal that lives a century or two, or an insect that closes its life with the evening of its birthday, are all constituted so by Him with whom are the issues of life. Could He not have ever sustained the life of him whom He had made in His own image? A heathen, Callimachus, will tell him, that in Him we live, and move, and have our being. Mr. N. will tell us that the earth could not have held them. Who told him they would have stayed there? All this is mere gratuitous supposition.

{*"To refer the death of animals to the sin of Adam and Eve is impossible. Yet if not, the analogies of the human to the brute form make it scarcely credible that man's body can ever have been intended for immortality." His proof is drawn from geology and physiology, such as, "The conditions of birth and growth to which it is subject, and the wear and tear of life," &c. (Phases, p. 112.)}

One thing is certain, that some dire and ruinous confusion is entered in; and whatever Mr. N. may dream in his closet, the misery, the violence, the horrors of the four quarters of the globe proclaim an unintelligible Deity, or a desolated and ruined, because a sinful, world. He must be as hard-hearted as the god his imagination would content itself with, or admit that sin has brought in desolation and misery. Death is but the seal and stamp that characterizes an existence over which it casts its fear, if thought allows anything but a wilful folly which is worse; and indeed it extends its power and gloom over man in spite of folly, so as to make a Saviour weep, though he that denies Him can look at it with indifference, because he can hide it from his heart, till it meets his eye, or — which God forbid — too late, appals his conscience.

120 But Mr. N. will teach us more than scripture. Man is like the brutes that perish, and must have always been so. Death could not have come upon animals. Geology, he says, tells us so. Now I do not pretend to judge this absolutely. The apostle, in speaking of death entering into this world, says nothing whatever of what has happened in others, or with other creatures. He does not even speak of beasts. Now man has not been found in any ancient fossil remains.

THE FALL

What the apostle says is this: "By one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin; and so death passed upon all men, for that all have sinned." Rom. 5:12 Now here he evidently is entirely occupied with the effect of sin in bringing man under death, as the beginning of death declares. Neither in Genesis nor in Romans is anything said of the beasts. In both, men alone are spoken of as the specific subject. In Genesis, and to that the apostle refers, it is a sentence previously pronounced on man. When man was created, God breathed into his nostrils the breath of life, a thing never said of beasts. Death was pronounced in case of failure. As far as any other testimonies go, the New Testament rather speaks of beasts, as indeed does the Old, as perishing beings — "The beasts that perish." Ps. 49. Peter says, "Natural brute beasts, made to be taken and destroyed." 2 Peter 2: 12. Now I grant this does not positively prove anything, because the psalmist and apostle may refer to their present condition. But it shews how little ground there is for the objection. For with a holy wisdom, the word of God does not answer our curiosity, but leaves beasts as they are before our eyes. We are told, indeed, that the creature has got into misery and ruin by our fall, and, as a system, will not be restored till we are manifested in glory; and this is true even of our bodies. This was morally important for us to know, that we might be humbled by the sense of the way in which we had dragged down subordinate creation with us — encouraged by the thought that our glory would be the occasion of the restoration of the blessing. But no further curiosity is indulged.*

{*Besides, the finding fossil remains of an antecedent world, supposing it fully demonstrated, proves nothing of the manner in which death entered into this, even as regards beasts. We have no knowledge of their condition before the fall.}

121 OBJECTIONS DEPENDENT ON "SCIENCE"

To talk of physiology is mere nonsense, because physiology can only examine man as he is — a state which scripture and all men pronounce to be that of mortality. What he was is the question; and of this I apprehend a dissecting infidel surgeon is about as ignorant as his neighbours; and more so than many, if he supposes that the God who created man could not sustain him in a present immortal condition. No creature can subsist per se, that is, independently of God. God had constituted man not dying, and then sentenced him to be a dying creature as he is. Why is "wear and tear" (Phases, p. 113) essential to life? Now it is, no doubt; but this is not essential to life, but to man's present state of life. The Paradisaical state is mentioned by Plato in a curious passage. He says, "They lived naked in a state of happiness, and had an abundance of fruits, which were produced without the labour of agriculture, and men and beasts could then converse together. But these things we must pass over, until there appear some one to interpret them to us."

It is certainly remarkable, how everything in the Mosaic history is preserved, at least as disjecta membra, bits of truth amidst masses of error and superstition, corrupted into a mythological system by Egyptians, into a fabular system by Hesiod and Homer, into a monstrous system by Hindus, but preserved. While Moses (who certainly did not derive it from extracting it by morsels from Hindu, Egyptian, Grecian, and Mexican fables, or from Plato, who lived centuries after him) has given a concise, simple account of immense moral import, infinitely elevated above the whole range of the heathen fables which pervert its elements, placing the supreme God — man —  good — evil —  responsibility — grace —  law — promise —  the creatures — marriage, all in their place; which short statement accounts for all that we find dispersed over the whole world, of traditional notions of the primeval history of man — so accounts for it, that with a little pains, we can trace all the fables to their source. How comes this? It is God's most brief but divine account of the whole matter, preserving by its very brevity its true character of the moral seed, so to speak, of all that has been afterward developed of good and evil. It was meant to be such and not more. The germ of all was there in that form. It is divinely given. With further details it would have lost this character. It would have had only its own moral consequences for the parties concerned, like other acts of individual men. But in the Mosaic account, creative goodness, the knowledge of good and evil, conscience, judgment, the way of the tree of life closed, and promise in the woman's seed given, all involving immense principles, are brought out. We see ourselves that the whole world is concerned in it, the immense drama of which angels and principalities and powers are the wondering spectators; and the conflict of good and evil, the moral of the tale, is opened with those in whose persons it was to be all developed; and the suggestion of His coming in grace and power, who would close, in the glorious triumph of good, putting down evil, what had begun in the solemn lessons of a lost paradise. But the drama was a reality; and all was involved in that one man and his failing companion. Yet from her who failed recovery was to spring, for grace was to be brought out and magnified (that is, God in His dealings with man). And these things angels desire to look into.

122 But Mr. N. will find faults if he can — old moral ones, for the old ones that depended on "science" are abandoned. We hear no more of the Zodiac of Dendera, or the millions of years of Hindu chronology, or the more moderate thousands of Chinese dynasties. All these have disappeared before increased information. The Zodiac, on which the Volneys would found the ruin of revelation by its proofs of the long ante-Mosaic existence of the world, has been proved, by the discovery of the meaning of the hieroglyphic symbols, to have been made in the reign of Augustus Caesar. The Indian eclipses are proved to have been calculated backwards, and the earliest observation to have been made not earlier than 700 years before Christ, that is, scarcely so early as Hezekiah's reign. And the time is known when all ancient books were destroyed in China, so that all is fable before. No history exists before the latter part of the history of the Jews: and, what is remarkable, all well-authenticated ancient history centres round that people.

123 Take Herodotus, and you will find that he has no nations with a history to tell you of but such as were in connection with the Jews — the Assyrians, Egyptians, and Babylonians, and such like — I name only the earliest. All the rest is vague and dark. Outside this we have some Chinese dynasties and some dark Hindu traditions, which tend to confirm the early Mosaic accounts; and in monuments which no fraud could have reached. In Egypt, we have pictures of Jews making bricks under the lash; and, what is remarkable, we have evidently Jewish overseers, and besides them Egyptian directors, or head-overseers — exactly what is stated in the book of Exodus. For if infidelity can find doubts to stumble and fall upon, God has given to a simple faith what even externally confirms its confidence, and confounds the folly of the false science that will not believe. Such proofs are never the foundation of faith; they cheer and confirm it.

Remark another thing, that history groups itself also round exactly that centre which Moses has made the cradle of mankind. While the peculiar people of God, placed at the point of contact of the three parts of the old world, formed the centre field of active power, as they certainly did for Assyria, Babylon, and Egypt, Persia, Greece, Rome, all are grouped round it; the hivings off of people in all directions are found to be from the centre, in which Moses placed it. It was the real officina Gentium. So late as the barbarian inroads into the Roman empire, the invasions were in a great measure determined by advancing hordes from the east. In general, all languages and all records shew that, from about Mesopotamia, and the country north of it, as a centre, the world has been peopled. Though, of course, many of the movements are lost in the obscurity of ages, and secondary colonizations took place subsequently, as Hivites and Phoenicians peopling Greece and Africa, when driven out by Joshua, of which there is very ample evidence; and colonies from Egypt to Greece, and Greece to Italy; from Phoenicia over the whole Mediterranean at least. But this only confirms the general fact, and that very strongly in some of its details. The Phoenicians went even to Ireland, and the first of May is still called in Irish, as pronounced, Boul tinne, that is, Baal teine,* Baal's fire, teine meaning fire in the Celtic. I turn now to some other objections — the moral ones to which I have alluded.

{*The only question which may be raised is, whether this expression of Boul tinne may not belong to the original inhabitants who first peopled the country: but this would only make the proof stronger. In Ireland, the tradition of the arrival of the Phoenicians is well known and fully believed.}

124 THE SONG OF DEBORAH

Mr. Newman's first moral objection is to the song of Deborah, Judges 5: 24; and his objection is, that "the prophetess Deborah, in an inspired psalm, pronounces Jael to be blessed above women, and glorifies her act by an elaborate description of its atrocities." (Phases, p. 113.) But who told Mr. N. that Deborah's song was "an inspired psalm?" That the writer of the Judges was inspired to give it to us, I do not doubt; but that is entirely a different matter. I believe in the fullest way in the inspiration of scripture; but this does not mean, that all that it contains was inspired in the mouths of those who uttered it. We have Satan's words, wicked men's words, human accounts of divers facts, recorded by inspiration, but not themselves inspired. A revelation should give (it is what it means) the perfect presentation of the Divine mind on the subject of which it treats, to one spiritually capable of understanding it. But in doing this — as to man, as to Israel — it must give me a true real picture of what man, what Israel, is; and this it does, not merely by a dogmatic statement, but by a large historical development of what man has done, what he has felt, what he has been in various circumstances, under various advantages, and in various stages of progress through the revelations already afforded him. If the Bible had merely given us God's judgment, we never should have had the same testimony to conscience as we have, by its affording us man's actual history under the various dispensations of God towards him. But to do this, I must have him as he was, his feelings expressed as they were in him; whether without God, or under the influence of piety, yet ill-informed in God's mind; or animated as to his heart by God's Spirit, yet the result a mixed one, and taking the forms of thought and feeling, which were and must have been such as his state of moral education would have produced. Otherwise it would not have been the true and needed account of man (consequently, not a divine one).

In the midst of all this, we get positive revelations from God, given in order to act upon men in this state. In this last case, I get inspired testimony of what God's own mind is. Yet even here grace has adapted it to the conscience and spiritual information possessed, and God's dealings with men in such or such a state. If He deigned to deal with them, thus He must in condescendence have done for their blessing. He leads them up and onward indeed; but it is them He is to lead. A gracious father speaks to his child according to what suits it, yet never what is unworthy of himself: it is worthy of him to suit himself to it. So has God dealt with men, with Israel. How else could He have dealt with them, if He meant them to be morally developed?

125 Thus, in the Old Testament, we have a perfect, divinely-given picture of man, under this gracious process, in the various relationships in which he was placed with God, so as to get his whole condition fully brought out; that by a divinely-given history we might know ourselves, and at the same time the whole course of God's dealings, and what man was under them, till his need of perfect and supreme grace should be manifested, and God manifested in Christ as the supreme grace he needed, and man and God get into the relationship which was His full purpose according to the security which flows from the unchangeableness of His nature and the perfectness of His love.* When we were yet without strength, in due time Christ died for the ungodly. Rom. 5: 6. Hence it is said, "for the forgiveness of sins that are past, through the forbearance of God; to declare at this time his righteousness." Rom. 3: 25. He dealt with them for the full development of His ways. He received them according to His knowledge of the perfect work to be accomplished in Christ.

{*I speak of the revelation of it. The effectual means of all grace was Christ from the beginning. "God's righteousness was declared at this time." This last remark shews that the doctrine of development since Christ is a blasphemous arraignment of the perfection of God Himself manifested in Christ, fully revealed by the apostles, or a total ignorance of what Christianity is. Hence John urgently insists, "That which was from the beginning, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have heard, which we have looked upon, which our hands have handled, of the Word of life." That is, he calls back to what was from the beginning as the safeguard against all seduction. It is remarkable that, as soon as he had got thoroughly infidel, Mr. N. could get on good terms with his brother, who had got thoroughly papist, and not before. This tells a tale few are prepared to believe. It is a sign, too, of the times.}

Now God has given us a perfect revelation of all this; but we should not have the knowledge either of man or of our God Himself, and of His wondrous and all-perfect and patient ways with us, if we had not men at each step exactly as they were: it would not be the truth else. The statement of morality simply by God would, no doubt, have shewn what man ought to be. That we have in the law. But it would not have shewn us what man is — what he is under the various dealings of God. Now we have this; and, I repeat, to have it we must have man, even when under the influence of God's Spirit, just as he was under it (the effect produced being according to the degree in which his own soul was acted on, the medium in which he lived, and the measure of revelation afforded him).

126 Such was Deborah's song. It is not a communication of God's thoughts, but of Deborah's feelings. Doubtless, her heart was moved by the Spirit in thankfulness for the deliverance of God's beloved people; but there is not a sign of its being a communication from God to that people. Now such a song may vary in the spiritual conformity to the highest measure of light which is possessed — may be more or less mixed with man, and may be coloured by the general condition of the people, and the nearness of the individual's soul to God. It may express much greater nearness, because the mass are far gone from Him, as in Hannah's, whose weakness is entirely cast on God, and hence points vividly to Christ; or Simeon's, whose soul can go in peace Luke 2: 29, because the hope of his devout heart is fulfilled in the midst of the desolations of Israel; or (if God interferes in outward mercy and gives a temporal reviving, because He will not destroy, but makes Himself known, and that in mercy to His people) the thanksgiving or the praise will descend to the measure of the present interference, by which God has hindered His people from having their remembrance blotted out of the earth

Such is, in fact, Deborah's song. It does not rise above it — I mean above the present measure of Israel's blessing. If I am to know what Israel was then, it should not — if I am to know the way of God's dealings with them, it must not — pass beyond it. Israel gradually sunk; and the character of deliverers and deliverances sunk, till God had to come in afresh in Samuel and David, when "He had delivered his strength into captivity, and his glory into the enemy's hand." Ps. 78: 61 How am I to learn this, and know what the real condition of the people and the truth of God's dealings were, if I do not have them just as they were? A song of David, of Simeon, or of Hannah, would have been morally out of place to celebrate the deeds of Barak the son of Abinoam, and of the prophetess of the palm-tree in mount Ephraim. The thing objected to is a perfection in the revelation. I judge many things in the revelation by a clearer light. I learn many things in God's ways. How could I, if they were not there?

127 Mr. N. neither states the fact correctly, nor reasons justly from what he observes. It is never given as an "inspired psalm." It is only said, "Then sang Deborah, and Barak the son of Abinoam." I pass a moral judgment on many things in the Old Testament, because God has given us the true light, and the darkness is now passed. But how does that shew that it is not an inspired revelation that has given me them? I judge them in the perfect light. But it is He who is light who has given me them to judge of, and the light to judge them by. He means to inform my spiritual judgment, and to reveal His ways to me, to shew me-that He has never ceased dealing with men — that the world has not gone on without His knowledge. He has given me the key to everything, and therefore He has afforded me all these elements with divine perfectness, on which and by which my judgment is to be spiritually formed, and my senses exercised to discern good and evil, as man has learnt it through ages, or as it has been displayed and developed in his history; while Christ has given the perfect key by which to judge of it all. Hence Paul says, the scriptures are "able to make us wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus." And so, when poor Peter would have put Moses and Elias in the same rank with Christ, they disappear, and "a voice came from heaven, saying, This is my beloved Son: hear him. And . . . Jesus was found alone."

Then, besides these historical pictures of God's ways and of their effect on man, I do get direct addresses to the conscience at the time in the prophets, and the eye of the saints suffering under the evil state of God's people directed to that better day which the Christ who should visit them as the dayspring should bring in to set all things right. They looked on to it, and were saved by hope, as we are; if not so clear a hope, yet as true, and indeed the same, though only partially revealed, and in its earthly part, yet so as that heaven was necessarily brought in by it. Abraham rejoiced to see Christ's day; and he saw it, and was glad; and, a stranger in the Canaan which had been promised him, he looked for "a city which hath foundations, whose builder and maker is God" Heb. 11: 10; in the glory of which he will enjoy the blessings of the inheritance of his children in a better and sweeter way than those who shall actually possess them. The Old Testament is gained, not lost, thus; we have it from our God's own hand to instruct us. What happened as proofs of God's present interference in a temporal way to them — which was what suited their state and God's government of the earth — is spiritual instruction for us, written for our learning, which is what we want, that by which we can more fully know God; while all He teaches in it is perfect, and from that I learn His ways.

128 Mr. N. is false in his theory, and mistaken in his fact. First, I can "pass a moral judgment." (Phases, p. 114.) The history of men in the Old Testament is given me for the purpose; and instead of its being lost thereby, or the battle in its defence, it gains all its real value. And, secondly, as to Deborah's song, his statement is unfounded

Yet this does not depend on "my powers" (ib.), save as God may use them; nor on "my scientific knowledge" (ib.), on which, in his own case, Mr. N. places so much reliance; nor on "blinding my moral sentiments" (ib.), because I have the perfection of Christ to judge by. It does depend on my spiritual progress, my moral state, as to being able to use the word; and this is exactly what ought to be.

THE SACRIFICE OF ISAAC

As regards the sacrifice of Isaac, Mr. N. shews here, as elsewhere, his monstrous setting aside of God and His authority.

The act is not given as a rule of morality nor of conduct in any way, but as a special case in which Abraham's faith was put to the test. "It came to pass that God did tempt Abraham." Gen. 22: 1. Hence there is no kind of analogy with "those who sacrificed their children to Moloch."* Jer. 32: 35. Men, through a perverse, unnatural, and cruel custom, gratifying the suggestion of their depraved nature, without any command whatever, accomplished of their own will this horrid barbarity, which was done as due to, and as liked and approved by, the god which their nature had pictured to them, as a practice pleasing to him. They got over conscience and affection through the hope of having their lusts and vengeance gratified, so as habitually to treat their children thus. It was their own practice to execute this cruelty — their state of mind.** In Abraham's case it was not, nor ordered of God to be so. God had placed the promises in Isaac in a positive manner; and God puts Abraham to the test, to shew whether he had such entire confidence in Him, that he would give up all the promises as possessed (trusting that God would somehow and at all events accomplish them, and raise up Isaac again, for in him God had said that the promises of a seed should be accomplished), and obey God in an express command, let it cost him what it would. When this was proved, God suffered not the child to be touched.

{*"Abraham was (in heart and intention, though not in actual performance) not less guilty than those who sacrificed their children to Moloch." (Phases, p. 114.)}

{**I say, it was the fruit of their own heart, and the expression of its state. For the question is on the "heart and intention," which Mr. N. says was as bad in Abraham as in Moloch's worshippers. I have no doubt that the devil had brought them to this — taught them this frightful worship. "The things which the Gentiles offer, they offer to devils, and not to God." But Mr N. cannot take this ground, because he believes not in such a work of Satan. If he does, he thinks that the devil can communicate — reveal — a religion to men, but that God cannot. I treat it, therefore, as the simple fruit of man's heart; and thus this voluntary act of atrocious cruelty, in which man's heart did become the maker of his own god, as Mr. N. wishes, and in which this god was the projected image of his heart; this voluntary unnatural depravity to get such a god in some way to help it, to gratify in some way its own lusts, is not at all worse, according to Mr. N., than Abraham's sacrificing his own heart's feelings and everything he could lean upon, at the express command of a God whose constant love, faithfulness, and power he had known and believed in, and now trusted to give him his son back again. And a judgment such as this, to Mr. N.'s mind, is the proved falsity of scripture morals!}

129 What analogy has this with a practice of passing their children through the fire as agreeable to their self-made god — an act done on their own part? There is no kind of similarity in the cases whatever. Would you say, that a man who hazarded his life to save his father (as the young Munro, who was bitten in two by a shark), was the same as justifying suicide, or pirates offering a man every voyage to a shark, to satisfy some supposed impure god of the sea, and gain men's own ends? And mark how the express command of God (Abraham's sole motive for doing it) is entirely left out here. In the other case it was the habitual violation of the tenderest and strongest moral obligation, to please a god who, if that habitually pleased him, was certainly a devil. Here it is a single case where the supreme and express claim of a God known as sovereign and sovereignly good by Abraham is not cavilled with, however little he could account for such a command.

I am at this moment answering objections; but, in the midst of them, Mr. N. inserts these conclusions: —

"1. The moral and intellectual powers of man must be acknowledged as having a right and duty to criticise the contents of scripture.

"2. When so exerted, they condemn portions of the scripture as erroneous and immoral.

"3. The assumed infallibility of the entire scripture is a proved falsity, not merely as to physiology and other scientific matters, but also as to morals," etc. (Ib. p. 115.)

130 I have, in principle, discussed this already; but it is well to notice it here.

Express it thus: The moral and intellectual powers of all men must be acknowledged as having a right and duty* to criticise the contents of scripture. If not, it is merely the personal pretension of some individuals who plume themselves on their own capacity. That is, all men are in a state fully competent to judge of what is becoming to God. That is proved by Abraham's being as bad as Moloch's worshippers! and thousands of enlightened persons having been so far from discovering it, that they thought Abraham a blessed man, and Moloch's worshippers atrocious men and unnatural parents! I should have thought these last a proof that men, whatever the reason, were not capable of forming a just judgment of what becomes God. They clearly prove the assertion false; indeed, one has only to state the proposition to see its falseness. In the first place, the majority have accepted heathen atrocities without a murmur. In the next place, the immense majority of those who have not have accepted the scriptures (which Mr. N. condemns as giving a false idea of God, and stating of Him what does not become Him) as the most absolutely perfect revelation of God.

{*I say, moral and intellectual powers must be acknowledged as having a duty — a singular phrase, to give Mr. N.'s own idea as accurately as possible.}

They differ entirely from him.

Mr. N.'s statement amounts to this — he condemns certain portions of scripture as erroneous and immoral. Hundreds of infidels and millions of heathens have criticised the scriptures, or heard them criticised, and found proof that they are of God. They have examined them as a whole, and seen a perfect development of God's ways with man; the rule of man's conduct given to him; but the moral apprehension of the conscience, and the whole system dependent on it, being imperfect when God was only partially revealed (for all depended on the light given), they have seen the God of supreme patience condescending to deal with men according to the light they have from Him; but always with evidence enough to prove to the conscience, by things suited to it in the state in which it was, that it was God it had to say to. They have seen that in due time He has revealed Himself perfectly. Mr. N., availing himself of this light, though rejecting it as an imposture, condemns the previous state of imperfection by it. God bore with it, "as a father pitieth his [little] children," Ps. 103: 13. though correcting and leading them on. Which is worthiest of God? But the fact of man's passing four thousand years,* either accepting some Moloch-god, or considering as perfection the testimony Mr. N. condemns, proves that the supposed moral power of man was not fit to criticise, unless Mr. N. suppose that the true God was made for his happy self and his companions.

{*This is equally true, ever since, because Christians accept the Old Testament as a work of the true God, though the true light did not then shine. Indeed, the doctrine of human progress adopted by Mr. N. and his sect is the most heartless and vile idea imaginable. It is just a knot of self-complacent men, who think they have got a good deal of light that nobody else has, coolly consigning, as if by the arrangements of God (not as a dismal effect of sin and departure from Him, as Christians do), all the millions, for six thousand years, to darkness and the horrors of paganism, in order that they may have the light now. And mark the notable arrangement — their God (for certainly it is not ours) turns man out of His creating hands in this state of atrocious wickedness, darkness, and brutality, to get on some how if he can, by gradual discoveries confined to a few philosophers, to some degree of light at the end, when the scene is to cease. It is not the case of a child in the sweet simplicity of guileless confidence with all to learn. Burning men in immense wicker images of their own form, as British Druids did, is not simple-hearted childhood; nor is it cultivated corruption (flexible polytheism is the word), like that of Corinth. The Fall makes this intelligible; but without it, when one thinks of the point of departure, and that we are creatures of God, the system of progress is the most atrocious and absurd one can well conceive. And what progress! It is, that, at the end of six thousand years, a few philosophers can speculate heartlessly on those who have been in this darkness before them. But I shall say a little more on this, and other points connected with it, in a few pages of Appendix.}

131 He says, as we have seen, that the infallibility of scripture is a proved falsity. Proved by whom, and to whom? Not to me, by a person who can compare the habitual burning of children to Moloch with an extraordinary putting to the test of one who knew God by seeing if he would give up natural grounds of confidence as to possession of promise and trust wholly in the known and true God. Such a person seems to me morally incapable of judging of right and wrong, and much too far from God to be able to judge of anything. Not one who can criticise a song as inspired without giving himself the trouble of enquiring whether it be so. Nor one who can flippantly comment on a verse as ridiculous when it accounted for and judged the most universal evil influence in the world which he had either ignorantly or culpably passed over.

132 Mr. N.'s moral and intellectual powers have condemned, or his will has sought reason for condemning, certain portions of scripture carved out from all the rest. But how is this to guide those who only see in such condemnation moral incapacity of judgment in the proofs given, and incorrectness or ignorance as to the facts alleged, or those connected with it?

Mr. N. cannot pretend he is the only one who has examined scripture. Does he pretend that the immense mass of moral intelligent men have not judged quite differently from him? You will say, This does not prove the truth of scripture. I grant it. But it proves that what Mr. N. says in these three conclusions is only immense complacency in his own opinion; for the moral and intellectual powers in question were his own. For instance, why am I to suppose Cuvier's and Buckland's powers, who believed in a universal deluge, inferior to or less exercised than Mr. N.'s who denies it? Can any one tell me any reason Mr. N. has to give me for it except one? Again, take the moral powers of Paul and James, who cite the case of Abraham. They never suspect anything wrong. Were Paul's moral powers unexercised? Mr. N. will say he did not dare to criticise scripture. Were his moral powers then really numbed by it? Was he in the same condition in virtue of believing in scripture as those who gave their children to Moloch? This is Mr. N.'s theory;* for he cites, as an admirable act, a deed Mr. N. thinks equally bad. It is not referred to as an act pardoned for ignorance' sake, or passed over in silence, but adduced as a proof of the power of faith. I have read Paul's works, and I have read Mr. N.'s. Which has the truest knowledge of God, and what became Him? What were the effects produced in righteousness, love, devotedness, self-renouncement, strict holding fast of eternal righteousness and truth, largeness of heart, and flexibility in grace towards all, power of abstraction to embrace combined truth and vast plans in one glance as a whole — power of individuality which concentrated his affections on particular objects as if there were none else, a purity of mind which apprehended right and wrong with instinctive clearness, a spirit of obedience which bowed as a child in humility to the Master whom he knew as his Lord and God? We see powers moral and intellectual, exercised in the most various ways; heathen philosophers and poets, studied at the renowned Tarsus, and rabbinical lore imbibed at the feet of Gamaliel equally well known — a rabban among rabbis; and all these acquirements brought into practical exercise and adaptation to men in the most active life, by one occupied with every kind of character eminently real in his power, and yet carrying perfect abstract theory into the reality. All ended in his taking as a choice excellence what was, "if the voice of morality is allowed to be heard" (Phases, p. 114), not less culpable than sacrificing children to Moloch; nay, he quotes it as excellence "in heart and intention" (for there was no actual performance), exactly where Mr. N. finds the guilt. Now I humbly conceive that Abraham's heart and intention in giving up all, and the promises too (as to present possession) on the true God's own word, through confidence in Him, and counting on Him to restore Isaac, was not the same as an habitual disposition to put man's own children through the fire, as actually and always agreeable to the heart and nature of "Moloch, horrid king." Moses presents it as a special trial, and the apostle notices it as such. I conceive that the parallel does not prove the immorality of this portion of the scripture, nor the superiority of "the moral and intellectual powers" which think they can criticise it; but something very different from that (and that is moral incapacity to judge), and that Paul, who, by divine teaching, received the scriptures as from God, had his moral and intellectual powers much better formed and much better exercised by the reception of what was divinely superior to himself, than he has, who, depriving himself of all above him, pretends to criticise what Paul bowed to.

{*The truth is, that, according to Mr. N.'s reasonings, he was in a worse one, having taken up a false revelation.}

133 It is well Mr. N. should learn another truth. We may be morally exercised on that which is above us without calling it in question. Nay, the highest and only really profitable exercise must be of this kind. Ignorance of God is not the best cultivation of moral powers. The highest, best exercise of moral and intellectual powers is on Him; but if I own Him as such, I own Him above me in supreme authority. I do not call Him in question. He is not the subject of criticism, or the idea of God is lost. But we have already seen that Mr. N. shuts Him always out.

134 He never gets beyond man. But man, what is he? If it is his judgment, it is every man's — it is that of the most deceived. There are millions of judgments; that is, there is none, if we speak of a rule. You will tell me there is conscience, which is substantially common to all. I admit it fully; but, where real, it owns the authority of God, always in His supremacy — owns itself the object of His judgment, and does not pretend to be His judge: conscience ceases to act when we do. Hence, though the will be unbroken, and the passions unsubdued, the word of God, the scriptures, tell on it, speak to it, make it quail, attract it as good. And, as far as conscience goes, it does not cavil or criticise; for conscience is in a sinner, and it knows the word is holy, and knows it has to say to God in it. It is a subjective element, and is acted on as to responsibility, is aware of it — and the word acts on this. Felix will tremble, though he may say, "Go thy way," and hope for money, and leave Paul bound. Acts 24: 25

MR. NEWMAN'S NOTIONS OF INSPIRATION

A few words are also needed in this place as to inspiration, which Mr. N. introduces here in passing. He says, "But in what position was I now towards the apostles? Could I admit their inspiration, when I no longer thought them infallible? Undoubtedly . . . . The moderns have erringly introduced into the idea of inspiration that of infallibility, to which either omniscience or dictation is essential." (Phases, p. 120.) Mr. N. is so exceedingly loose in his way of stating things, that one is forced sometimes to be tedious to bring out clearly what has really to be answered. But as popular notions are often the same, such a process in answering may have a certain general utility. In reasoning on the reality of a divine revelation, however, such looseness is unpardonable. In popular language it is comparatively immaterial. Thus when men speak of the infallible word of God, they mean that they may rely upon it as having all the infallible certainty of what God says; and they are quite right. But no person speaking carefully would say the apostles were infallible. We have one of them rebuking another to his face, so that he did not think so. Thousands of devoted Christians have canvassed St. Paul's vows and purifyings at Jerusalem. Acts 21: 26. No true and sound-minded one has questioned the divine authority and truth of the scripture that speaks of it. What I look for in a revelation, as I have said, is a perfect representation of the divine mind, as to all the ways in which God is pleased to make Himself known in dealing with man. In order to have this, I must have a full display — an exposure of man as he really is; and this, being historically and dogmatically given, affords the ground of human conscience and divine light. Now this is the greatest boon, save the power to use it, that God can give to man (not now speaking of the salvation itself which it is the means of making known to him); he gets the knowledge of himself and of God, and of what God is towards himself, such as he really is; and he is brought into the perfect light, and that in grace.

135 But for this purpose, how many things very different from God's will and thoughts, contrary to what God would have inspired, and of a mixed character when He has acted on the affections, shall we find! If God shews us the truth, we must have things as they really are. We must have an apostle's failures as well as all else — man's path, under the highest power of the Holy Ghost bestowed upon him. For this end he must often express himself. Only with this we need the positive revelation of God's own mind in an unquestionable way to be able to judge, supposing we are spiritual, of all this; and that the scriptures afford us. This human character is, in the New Testament, especially drawn out and unfolded. In the Old, we have the history of man divinely given, and certain oracles imparted with "thus saith the Lord," with comparatively little, save in the Psalms, of the effect of the working of the Holy Ghost in man, so as to produce affections and thoughts in which the divine spring is seen, but the forms of human thoughts, because it was the Holy Ghost working in man. In this latter case, there may be various degrees of spiritual clearness of thought according to the state of the person in whom the Holy Ghost works. It may be such as spiritual men have now, only of course the thoughts conformed to the state of the dispensation. Thus it was, as we have seen, in the case of Deborah's song; and if I am to know man and God's dealings, and man under them, I must have this. A person may be filled with the Holy Ghost, and so express his mind, that though it be his feelings, and so given, yet what nature would have produced is absent; and it is only what the Holy Ghost has produced, though in his heart. Thus his heart is a proper vessel of the Holy Ghost; and his utterance may be recorded as being really of God, and proper inspiration, though in a human heart. Thus the song of Hannah has, I doubt not, this character, though not given as inspired, and expressive of her own feelings and apprehension of God's ways, as such must be to be real. So Elizabeth's song in Luke 1 — Zachariah's in the same chapter — Simeon's in chapter 2. In these cases, such outgoings of heart, being directly from the Spirit, will be prophecies, properly speaking. Such we have in the Psalms, though they be expressions often of feelings in the writer's heart at the time, and, I doubt not, prepared for the remnant of Israel in the latter day, as giving them divine comfort in their tried feelings and exercised hearts then.

136 Of David's psalms we are expressly informed by himself, the sweet psalmist of Israel, "The Spirit of the Lord spake by me, and his word was in my tongue." 2 Sam. 23: 2.

This kind of working of the Holy Ghost even in our hearts, and that in cases where our minds are not sufficiently taught of God to know what to look for, is spoken of in Romans 8, where he says, "He who searcheth the hearts knoweth what is the mind of the Spirit, because he maketh intercession for us with groanings that cannot be uttered." It is merely saying, that the Holy Ghost can work in the affections where the intelligence may not be sufficiently formed to express itself on particular subjects, or point out the positive answer to these affections. If before-hand God communicates the answer to a heart so exercised, it becomes real prophecy or inspired truth, as well as divinely given feelings. If even the Spirit gives such expression to the sorrow of the heart that it should be according to God, this may be more than personal, though it be such, and rise to the full revelation of that personal or sympathetic sorrow, which was in the heart of Jesus from the same causes more fully developed, and without counteracting or modifying evil. And this might be without the knowledge, in him who uttered it, of what it applied to. Such a principle is clearly recognized in the New Testament; for Peter speaks of the prophets who, by the Spirit of Christ which was in them, testified beforehand of the sufferings of Christ, and the glory which should follow, and they searched what and what manner of time it referred to, and found it was not for themselves but for us. 1 Peter 1: 11. The Jews had the same notion, and as an opinion it was well founded, though they joined unsound notions as to inspiration with it. They taught that there was the gradus Mosaicus, or "Moses' degree;" the gradus propheticus; and the Bath-kol, or "Daughter of a voice" — the first two founded on Numbers 12: 6-8, and the third characterizing the chetubim or hagiographa. This did not touch the authority but the character of the writings, but it is often of deep interest to know the manner of God's speaking to us; though, in whatever way He may speak, His word has always the same authority. Not one jot or one tittle can pass from the law, and all that is written in Moses, and in the Prophets, and in the Psalms concerning Christ, must be fulfilled. Yet when the apostle says, "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners, spake in time past, hath in these last days spoken to us by the Son [in the Son, in the person of the Son ἐν υἱῳ ]," Heb. 1: 1. is it not of the deepest possible interest to see the testimony of God brought to us in the person of the Son Himself? — God Himself speaking there? For He whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God, "for God giveth not the Spirit [to Him] in measure." Everything there was the expression of God Himself. It was not "Thus saith the Lord," for some precious sentences, and then a man's relapsing into his ordinary though perhaps sanctified existence. All that came forth breathed God — God in human kindness, philanthropy; as the apostle speaks, "God was in Christ reconciling the world unto himself." 2 Cor. 5: 19. If He took up a child; if He spoke to a sinner; if He sat at the well wearied, with a yet more weary and desolate heart beside Him, a woman who came alone at that strange time to draw water, one justly in one sense ill seen by men, and yet however dark, perhaps with secret wants beyond them, a sign to His eye that the fields were white for harvest; if He touched an outcast leper with a gracious and sovereign "I will" — all told that God was there, amongst men — with men, because of men; and gracious words proceeded out of His mouth. Surely they made men wonder; for how long had they been away from God. And if a prophet's words were just as sure because the Spirit of Christ really spoke to them, yet surely I need not speak of the bright and blessed interest which accompanied the existence of such a testimony as His who spake as never man spake. A Saviour's words came, if indeed heard, with divine grace itself to the ear. It was the mercy that it spoke of. "If thou knewest the gift [free-giving δωμεὰν ] of God, and who it is that saith to thee, Give me to drink [who has come so low as to be dependent on you for a drink of water]; thou wouldest have asked of him [entire confidence of heart in God — such a God! — would have been produced, nor would it have been disappointed in grace or in power to answer], and he would have given thee living water." John 4: 10.

137 This was indeed revealing God. Here we have not a long and dreary because a we picture of man cultivated in vain by the great Husbandman, and the testimonies and warnings of God sent to him, or prophecies of brighter days to come through grace. We have perfect gracious man walking before God, for our eyes to rest on and learn, and God walking before men in all the near grace they needed, come to them just as they were, that they might learn what He was, and by it be drawn out of what they were. It was presented to them in all their distance from God, and in all their misery where grace could be best felt, that they might be drawn out of that misery, and know with joy the God who had done so. It is this that Mr. N. despises — treats as an imposture. Man shall by searching find out God, and boast of his capacity — with such a history as he has; but God neither has nor shall reveal Himself to him. That is an evil, and forbidden by spiritual men! As for unspiritual they may shift for themselves; that is not a philosopher's affair: misery is necessary* for general development, as hanging is good for society. It is a mere "morbid notion" to object to it!

{*The following are Mr. N.'s statements on this head: — "It is true, that even in the primitive structure of things, we discover much which at first shocks us. Physical pain in many aspects appears not as an accident and an abuse, but as if definitely designed. Fierce beasts are observed to be armed for inflicting misery, and the instincts of one creature are often directed to destroy the quiet and comfort of another, which may seem not to have earned hostility. On this subject whole volumes might be written, as ample arguments have been. Here it may be sufficient to remark, that the difficulty turns on the epicurean assumption, that physical ease and comfort is the most valuable thing in the universe: but that is not true, even with brutes. There is a certain perfection in the nature of each, consisting in the full development of all their powers, to which the existing order manifestly tends; and any one who shall speculatively reconstruct the organized world, and logically follow out his own scheme, will probably end in discerning, that the present arrangements of God are better than man could have devised. As for susceptibility to pain, it is obviously essential to every part of corporeal life, and to discuss the question of degree is absurd. On the other hand, human capacity for sorrow is equally necessary to our whole moral nature, and sorrow itself is a most essential process for the perfecting of the soul. Not to have discerned the relation of sorrow to virtue is perhaps the most striking defect pervading all the Greek moral philosophy.

"More permanent disturbance of mind is caused to good men who have no extensive view of human nature, nor habit of mental analysis, from the prevailing wickedness of mankind. It avails not here to say that human goodness is only a relative idea, and that however much better men were, we should still think them bad, since our standard would have risen. In a mere moral view, indeed, such a reply suffices for all tribes of men have some morality. Those who are ferocious towards foreigners are often tender-hearted towards their own people; and the difference of savage from civilized virtue is one of degree. But religiously the case is otherwise; for there is a chasm between loving God and not loving Him, serving Him and not serving Him. We can easily suppose such an improvement in human nature, that though all would of course be still imperfect, yet none should be irreligious: and men will ask, Why does a good God leave so large a part of mankind in irreligion? To many this is an exceeding severe trial of faith, because irreligion has been invested with eternal consequences, which binds the understanding in a net absolutely inextricable. But let the Gordian knot be cut; let it be discerned that the infinite cannot be the meed of the finite; then, while we lament the actual state of the world, we shall not find it hard to understand that it has necessarily resulted from the independence of the human will, which must be left free and capable of resisting the divine will, otherwise we should not be men, but brutes or machines. Assuming then that evil is finite, transitory, and only an essential condition towards the attainment of a higher and permanent good, we find nothing in human wickedness, however intense, and whatever misery it causes, to inspire rational doubt of the divine goodness.

"That there is abroad among us an unsound view of supreme goodness (or benevolence, as it is called), cannot, I think, be denied. It is akin to that spurious humanity, which so shudders at putting a criminal to death, as to prefer keeping him alive even where there is no human hope of his being recovered to virtue, but every probability of his incurring more and more desperate hardness. The benevolent man is supposed to shrink from inflicting bodily pain on any one, whether for his own good, or as a necessary process for defending others; and where this morbid notion prevails, we must expect people to be much shocked at the broad facts of the natural history of animals, to say nothing of man himself . . . . Pain and suffering are undoubtedly among God's most efficacious means for perfecting all His creatures, and, not least, man; but they must needs be with Him means not ends, if we are to attribute to Him in any sense that which we are able to recognize as goodness; and consequently they must be His plans, either partial and subordinate, or finite and transitory. All theology which contradicts this, darkens and distorts the face of God to us." (Soul, p. 43-46.)}

139 But to return. The inspiration of the New Testament is interesting in another way. The Holy Ghost Himself is come down to dwell in the saints, and to take the things of Christ and shew them to us; and He dwells in us as a seal that we are children of God, heirs of all, and joint-heirs with Christ. He at the same time brings all the love of God into the sorrows of the way, enables us to apprehend according to God the present state of things, while it marks out a road suited to those who are one with Christ in heaven, for His members by the way. Hence the New Testament is not, in the general tenor of its revelations, a mere testimony of "Thus saith the Lord." It has this prophetic character sometimes; but in general it is the expression of the mind and the sympathies of God in all that concerns the saints on earth. It is the Holy Ghost in a man, who is a member of the body, communicating all the privileges of the body to it, and entering into all its sorrows, while it reveals the love and wisdom of the Father and the Son, leading into all truth, and casting the perfect light of God on all that went before, and shewing things to come; in this last having more the character assumed before in prophecy, as we read, "The Spirit speaketh expressly;" 1 Tim. 4: 1. "Let him hear what the Spirit saith to the churches," Rev. 2, 3 etc. Hence there is — while often rising to the most glorious testimonies of blessing in the revelation of God, and of His designs for the glory of Christ and the Church with Him — a familiarity, an entering into detail as to all that concerns the body, and what becomes its heavenly path down here — an expression of the feelings of the instrument who addresses it, which gives the most touching picture of the effect of the presence of the Holy Ghost, and brings down the love of God into the detail and circumstances of man's Christian life. It is not, indeed, after we pass the gospels, Christ Himself; but it is His Spirit lifting His members up to Him by the revelation of Him, and coming down to them in all their trials and conflicts, in all through which they pass, to be the spring of feeling there, through His assured sympathy. Such God would shew Himself; and surely all that He says there has the tenderest claim and the perfect authority of Him who speaks thus in love. It is the word of God; the Holy Ghost on earth, in the apostle or prophet, speaking generally in the Church; but not an inferior, separate Spirit; but as He hears so He speaks, in union with the Father and the Son — the wisdom of God amongst men.

140 The scriptures of the New Testament are the perfect expression of the divine mind as communicated to, or working in, the Church of God; suited to the relationship in which God has thus placed them with Himself.

I turn to the nature of inspiration. As to the apostles being infallible, no one dreams of such a thing. A truth communicated, as I have already said, cannot be infallible: it can only be absolute truth; and truth is truth. It is nonsense to speak of its failing or not failing. A person only can be infallible. The apostles may have been divinely kept while communicating truth, and thus not suffered to fail while thus used of God. In this secondary sense alone can they be, in any proper use of the word, infallible at that moment; but this is not the real meaning of the word. I do not doubt that God took care that all they have left to us in the scriptures should perfectly present His mind; but this did not make the apostles infallible. God alone is infallible (that is, incapable of failing).

141 Mr. N. says, omniscience or dictation is necessary to infallibility. Neither has anything to say to it. Omniscience and inspiration are a contradiction in terms: for inspiration is the communication of truth or facts; omniscience supposes, or rather means, that all is known already. Nor is dictation necessary either. Suppose, as to historical scripture, if God acted on my mind or memory so as to call up facts He chose to have related, in the way, the connection, the order in which He chose them to be in my mind, and associated with the feelings which He thought proper to be produced in my soul by it, and the utterance of my memory and the expressions of my feelings to which they naturally gave rise when thus produced, to the exclusion of all distracting or modifying thoughts of any kind, to deteriorate what the Holy Ghost produced in my mind and soul — and that I write this down as thus formed and producing itself in my mind, being full of the Holy Ghost, so that no other idea whatever intruded itself, but such as the Holy Ghost had produced, and that He approved the necessary expression of it, acting on the mind, not on the lips — should not I have and give the perfect mind of God, only through the mind of a man?

Again, if Christ had spoken, and the Holy Ghost recalled to my memory His words, or a particular part of His words, and I write down these words; so of facts. This would not be dictation. Supposing He formed in my soul the substance of what passed, and I wrote it down from the perfect spiritual apprehension of it, as He put it in my mind, to the exclusion of all else, I should have the perfect mind of God; yet the Holy Ghost acting in my mind would use it as an instrument, and the communication have the form of the mind it passed through. Why, if God has expressly formed the instrument, can He not then use it for the purpose for which He has formed it, according to what He has made it? Now that is style.* To deny it, and declare dictation necessary, is merely to suppose that the Holy Ghost cannot use a man's mind, such as it is, and govern his words, without annihilating him mentally, and making use of his lips as of the dumb ass's to rebuke the prophet.

{*"That there was no dictation is proved by the variety of style in the scripture writers." (Phases, p. 120.)}

142 The apostle does not speak of the mere use of the organ without the intelligence as the highest kind of inspiration, but as the lowest, and that it was of a higher order when the man was mentally made partaker of what he communicated, and communicated therefore with his own thoughts and feelings engaged (which produces style), though the Holy Ghost produced those thoughts and feelings. The spout which gives a form to the current that flows from it may transmit the water as pure as it flows in. I do not say the Holy Ghost did not give the words; but that it was not necessarily dictation of them merely. Nay, if He did dictate them, He could do it in the form of mind and thought of the person He deigned to use, so that it should be his style. So that every part of the statement of Mr. N. is unfounded. The Holy Ghost gave the thoughts; and they were not left to the uncertainty of man's account of them. He caused them to be communicated in words He taught; but why should not He work in a mind according to the mind He had designedly given it?* See 1 Cor. 2: 12-14.

{*This passage attributes three things to the spirit — the original reception of the truth by the instrument employed, the manner of its communication, and its reception by the hearer. I should translate πνευματικοῖς πνευματικὰ συγκρίνοντες "using a spiritual medium of communication for spiritual things." This shews how much the mind is connected with the expressions used in communicating truth. The whole question is, Can the Holy Ghost employ the mind, and through it language, to the exclusion of all other influence, or is it forced to leave the mind out and dictate the words? The apostle speaks of both, and prefers having the mind in use in inspiration.}

Human minds were left to the instruments, but they were acted on and used by the Holy Ghost to the absolute exclusion of all other influence from within or without. If I played every note of a piece of music exactly, not allowing a discordant sound to come in, note for note being settled long before, yet the tone of the instrument on which I played would remain the same. Had I not played, it would have been silent; nor while I play, can another note, but what I please, sound at all. God had framed the instrument with that tone, as well as used it. It is merely want of apprehension that the Holy Ghost could act in the mind, and take possession of it for its own purposes, and so govern the words. That leads to the statement I am discussing. Mr. N. says, "Their knowledge [of God's message], however perfect, must, yet in a human mind, have co-existed with ignorance, and nothing but a perpetual miracle could have prevented ignorance from now and then exhibiting itself in error of fact or argument." (Phases, p. 121.) Why co-existed? Ignorance does not exist, it is a mere negative. Supposing they were ignorant of every other possible idea, they would have given just the inspired message, and it would have been God's sent message, being produced in their minds exactly in that form. It would have been mingled with nothing else, for there would be nothing else to mingle with. Now that was the practical effect of the Holy Ghost, because He so filled their minds, and with that, that it excluded all else from their minds as much as if it did not exist for them. Every real teacher is inspired in the sense of having thoughts and feelings communicated by the Holy Ghost, but He does not so fill him and control his natural actings as that his own thoughts or will may not mix themselves up at all; so that he cannot be trusted as giving absolute truth as an authority, though all he teaches may be the truth, and he may spiritually profit his hearers. Besides, I doubt not that all his materials are already revealed in the scriptures. The Holy Ghost uses them by His ministration of them; but they are revealed, even if not generally known.

143 I do not know what Mr. N. means by a "perpetual miracle" (Phases, p. 121), to which he objects. The apostles were not perpetually writing epistles, nor evangelists histories. If God was communicating truth, He did whatever was needed to secure its being His, whenever He did so. That is a self-evident, necessary, and simple proposition. Mr. N. speaks of "revering" the apostles' "moral and spiritual wisdom." (Ib. p. 121.) That has nothing to do with God's word. The apostle himself distinguishes them. Mr. N. speaks of not obtruding miracles on the scripture narratives.* What he seems to mean is this, that when the scriptural history gives a plain narrative of fact, he is not to make a miracle of it to explain a physiological difficulty.

{*"I had slid into a new logical canon — that I must not obtrude miracles on the scripture narrative."( Phases, p. 122.)}

This has really no force in it. The historians relate a fact: if the fact is out of the order of nature, they relate it as it is. If they are credible, I am to receive it as what it is — something out of the order of nature. If it is not, I consider it natural.

Mr. N. speaks of their not "shewing any consciousness that it [the fact he narrates] involves physiological difficulties." A man that presents himself as giving by the Holy Ghost a narrative of what really happened does not occupy himself with questions, but communicates what is revealed. Did he do otherwise, it would make his "consciousness" of being inspired doubtful. Mr. N.'s remark supposes the thing in question, namely, that it is their doing. I do not invent a miracle, I believe a fact not in the general order of nature. It is one of the perfections of scripture, that it states the fact without any bombastic, or indeed any comment on what was done. There is the fact needed for one's knowing the truth. It is to produce its impression. The impression produced on the writer's mind is not the subject of revelation. You will find it in human Thaumaturge's lives, but not in a divine narrative. It is to produce (not, in general to record) impressions, unless these impressions form part of the divine history of man. What is it to my soul what the writer feels about the matter, provided he gives me the fact? Mr. N. does not seem to know what the true character and purpose of a revelation is.

144 THE DELUGE

But Mr. N. goes on to the deluge. I have already shewn that there are proofs from universal tradition throughout the whole world of this great event. "Geologists," he says, "have rejected it."* Some do, very likely; but it most certainly is not the case with all. Of the ablest there are those who do not. I do not doubt its universality; so that I leave any reply founded on a contrary idea aside.

{*"It had become notorious to the public, that geologists rejected the idea of a universal deluge." (Phases, p. 122.)}

Mr. N. asserts as to the question, "Whence could the water come?" (Phases, p. 122) that it is represented as coming from the clouds, and perhaps from the sea.* Scripture states that "all the fountains of the great deep were broken up, and the windows of heaven were opened." Gen. 7: 11. Now this last may be a figurative expression for a very extraordinary quantity of rain from clouds; but it is either descriptive of what for quantity would be a miracle (for it uses an expression never repeated), or else it is some miraculous outletting of water other than from the clouds. The expression, "All the fountains of the great deep were broken up, if it is not some miraculous outpouring of the sea itself, must mean some outbreak of waters from below, which, as never repeated, is to be called, so far as such events can be, miraculous.

{*"Secondly, the narrator represents the surplus water to have come from the clouds, and perhaps from the sea, and again to drain back into the sea." (Phases, p. 123.)}

145 Mr. N.'s statement of what scripture narrates is as unfounded as possible. Language never used elsewhere is used for the purpose of shewing that it was an extraordinary, and, save in this one case, unheard of, outbreak of waters in some never else known way. Mr. N. says, "from the clouds and perhaps from the sea:" as if clouds were certainly one source of the waters of the flood; and, if there were anything else, the thing to be added was the sea. Now something besides the clouds is certainly mentioned. Would any one suppose, from Mr. N.'s words, that if it was not the sea, it certainly was some divinely-caused outbreak of waters from some hidden source? He certainly does not dream of a "miraculous creation and destruction of water." (Phases, p. 123.) Be it so. But why two extraordinary words? Does not the narrative speak of some outburst of water known on no other occasion? But let us be more precise as to the fact. The passage speaks neither of clouds nor sea. But besides rain, it speaks of the fountains of the great deep being broken up, and the windows of heaven opened. It is never said the water drained back into the sea, but that "the waters returned from off the earth continually;" and declares the fountains of the deep and the windows of heaven were stopped, and the rain from heaven was restrained. That is, the narrator does present it as having its source and its arrest in the extraordinary intervention of God — call it "miracle" or what you please.

In a word, it is certain that the sacred writer does, in the distinctest way, point out some very overwhelming outbreak of waters from an extraordinary source.

The reader may remember, that when God began to form the world, what subsisted as already created was one vast mass of waters, called "the deep:" "darkness was upon the face of the deep," and "the Spirit of God moved on the face of the waters." The earth stood indeed by God's power out of the water; but what unknown mass of waters was engulphed is not stated, nor what were the waters which were above the firmament or expanse. Whatever store of waters there was below, broke forth over the earth, and from above came down upon it. Mr. N.'s statement of the passage is a total misrepresentation of it.

He states that the ark was not of dimensions sufficient to "take in all the creatures" (Phases, p. 123) — more exactly, the animal races belonging to the dry land. It has been proved, over and over again, that it was. It has been calculated that it was a vessel of more than forty-two thousand tons, being four hundred and fifty feet long, seventy-five broad, and forty-five high; eighteen times as much as the largest man-of-war (one of which can stow, say, a thousand men, with provisions, for a very much longer time than the flood lasted, besides an immense weight of guns, shot, &c.) so that it is evident that the ark could easily have received the animals that could not live in the water.

146 As to the dispersion of animals,* the discovery of many remains of different kinds, as of large elephant species, embedded in ice in Siberia — hyenas and their prey in a cavern in Yorkshire — has remarkably confirmed the deluge. The extinction of many species and introduction of others in the most unlooked-for way renders such speculations of no weight whatever.

{*"And especially the total disagreement of the modern facts of the dispersion of animals, with the idea that they spread anew from Armenia as their centre." (Phases, p. 123.)}

The Irrationalism of Infidelity: Section e.

Being a reply to "Phases of Faith"*

J. N. Darby.

{*London: 1853.}

<06001-129E> File Section e.

146 ABRAHAM AND SARAH, AND ISAAC AND REBEKAH, IN EGYPT

Mr. Newman objects to Abraham's saying twice, and Isaac once, that his wife was his sister, as being improbable. (Phases, p. 124.) Now it is stated that Abraham and Sarah had agreed to do it on beginning their wanderings. Nor is it therefore very extraordinary that Isaac should have thus learned it in his father's house.

"SMALL PHRASES"

Mr. Newman alludes to certain "small phrases which denote a later hand than Moses." (Phases, p. 124.) There is no reason to doubt that, whatever Samuel may have done, Ezra edited the sacred writings after the return from Babylon: from these sources the expression "to this day" is no doubt drawn. The prophets, Josephus informs us, were the authority on which books were revered as inspired, and that the canon closed in the time of Artaxerxes.*

{*This, though of course a mere human authority, but a competent one, as far as any are in these matters, falls in with Malachi and Esther being the last books, as to date, of the Old Testament, and the probable epoch of the close of genealogies in Chronicles.}

He notices particularly that "the kings of Israel are once alluded to historically." (Phases, p. 124.) In Genesis 36: 31 it is said, Before there was any king in Israel. So that "alluded to historically" is rather an inaccurate expression; their non-existence is alluded to. Edom had kings before Israel had any; that is all that is said. Edom's having any when Israel had had none was the point wished to be recorded. It was a settled nation ruled over regularly, before God's people Israel were so. In the chapter before, kings had been promised to arise out of the loins of Jacob. Yet the natural went first in apparent strength: God's people must wait His time. The list of kings in Edom consists of eight. Now Phinehas was the seventh from Jacob, and he was in full activity and vigour in the time of Moses. So that the kings of Edom, as mentioned in Genesis, very possibly did not extend beyond the time of Moses; though data are not given to determine when they commence. The reader will remark that it is not said, before kings, or the kings reigned, as if it were a history; but, before a king or any king reigned, which rather seems to belong to a time when there was none at all that was known. Yet kings had been promised to Jacob, and the pre-eminence, and none to Esau; yet Esau had them when Jacob had none. The contrast is not with kings in Israel and none in a by-gone time, but of kings in Edom when Israel had none.

147 QUOTATIONS FROM THE OLD TESTAMENT

Mr. Newman next refers to quotations. He tells us that no "unbiased interpreter" would have dreamed of applying Isaiah 7 to Jesus. (Phases, p. 125.) Why not? From Adam's time, the woman's seed was the subject of promise. It was confirmed, with fuller and more specific details, to Abraham, confining it to Isaac's line, then to Jacob's, then to Judah's family, and at last, as is well known, to David's family, in a very definite way, so as to have been the constant expectation of the Jews at the time Christ came — as Tacitus declares in a well-known passage. To the Jews the place where He was to be born was familiarly known. The coming of Christ, then, we know to be the grand object always kept in view in the Old Testament; and, on the supposition of God being the Author of the scriptures, a continual reference to this, accompanying a direct appeal to conscience connected with an already given law, would characterize the books which compose the Old Testament. An "unbiased" and intelligent reader must expect to find it continually — it is the great object of the book; and to find it particularly in connection with David's family and with the restoration of Israel in a spared remnant, whom David's Son would save. No attentive reader of the Old Testament can dispute this.

148 Now Isaiah 7 begins by alluding to a prophetic and mystic son of the prophet — a common prophetic figure — called, "the remnant shall return." (Shear-jashub.) According to the Old Testament doctrine, this would immediately suggest the thought of Messiah. So we find the pious Simeon and Anna prepared at once for the thought, and the disciples asking, Are the σωζόμενοι, the spared remnant, few in number? [translated, "few that be saved"? Luke 13: 23.] Now Ahaz began the apostasy of David's family, the last stay of Israel; for, on the people "Ichabod" had long ago been written, and David raised up, and the peace and safety of the people made dependent on the faithfulness of his family in an express manner. 2 Chr. 7: 17-21.

Now Ahaz walked in the way of the kings of Israel, and made his son pass through the fire; he made molten images also for Baalim, and (though perhaps after this prophecy) introduced an idolatrous altar, after a Damascus pattern, into the temple, and set aside the brazen altar for himself to use as an oracle. To him Isaiah comes with his "remnant shall return," and addressing himself to the house of David, and referring to their unbelief and rebellion, judges it, and gives as a sign from God the birth of the virgin's son. Now that a* virgin should marry and have a child is nothing that can be a sign from God, nor anything particular to do with the house of David. Nor would there be any reason for calling his name Immanuel, that is, God with us. I know it has been said — Mr. N. does not condescend to say why "an unbiased interpreter" would not apply it to Jesus* — that Hezekiah was meant, in whose reign there was deliverance for Israel. Now Hezekiah had been born several years before the date of the prophecy. Thus the application of the prophecy to David's promised Son is the most natural and only intelligible one of the passage.

{*In the original it is not a virgin, but the virgin — an expression not used but with some particular reference. When quoted in Greek in the New Testament the same expression is preserved —  ἡ παρθένος.}

{**Mr. N.'s words are — the thought is a common-place infidel one — "First is the prophecy about the child Immanuel; which in Isaiah no unbiased interpreter would have dreamed could apply to Jesus." (Phases, p. 125.)}

"Out of Egypt have I called my son"* may present more difficulty, as supposing more knowledge of the ways of God. Hosea 11: 1, Matt. 2: 15.

{*They are, Mr. N. tells is, "imagined by Matthew to be prophetic of the return of Jesus from Egypt." (Phases, p. 125.)}

The Son of man is presented in scripture as beginning in a new way of grace the whole condition of man. He is called the Second Adam.

149 So is it with respect to Israel. Christ was to begin all Israel's history over again under the new covenant, as the true stock in whom the promises were to be enjoyed, the old vine having been proved worthless. Thus, in John, I do not doubt with reference to this, it is said, "I am the true vine, and my Father is the husbandman," John 15: 1, referring to Isaiah 6 and Psalm 80: 8, to the end. The disciples thought He was a chief branch perhaps of the old vine, but that was not the true one now. He was the vine, the real fruit-bearing plant of God, and they the branches.

This substitution of Christ for Israel was taught in a very plain and remarkable manner by the prophets. Thus, in Isaiah 49, the prophet begins with presenting Israel as addressing the nations as being the One in whom Jehovah was to be glorified. Then, verse 4, Messiah says he has in that case laboured in vain; and then, verse 5, the Lord places Him with a yet more glorious inheritance in Israel's place, though gathering Israel too to God. He takes the place of servant to glorify God. In the end of the prophecy the faithful remnants are found as the servants.

This word "servant" is just the key to the whole prophecy from Isaiah 40 to the end. First, Israel is the servant to shew forth Jehovah's praise. He failed. Messiah becomes His servant for it and is rejected by Israel, who thus fills up his guilt; and then the remnant, who, when the body becomes adversaries, are separated from it, and are the servants, accepted and delivered by Him at His return. Hence Matthew, or really the Spirit of God, applies this passage according to the whole tenor and purpose of the prophets — this judgment of Israel, Messiah being rejected, and the setting up of the kingdom in Him according to the prophecies, being the great subject of this gospel. Such too was the constant judgment of the Jews in a crowd of passages. It is not spiritualizing.* Jesus was not brought out of the world in any spiritual sense. He came down from heaven. Egypt is a great deal to Messiah, as taking up the lot of Israel itself.

{*"This instance moved me much; because I thought, that if the text were 'spiritualized' so as to make Israel mean Jesus, Egypt also ought to be spiritualized and mean the world, not retain its geographical sense, which seemed to be carnal and absurd in such a connection: for Egypt is no more to Messiah than Syria or Greece." (Phases, p. 125.)}

As to John 10: 35, Mr. N. entirely perverts what is said. He says (Phases, p. 125), "Psalm 82 rebukes unjust governors, and at length says to them, 'I have said, Ye are gods,'" etc. In other words, "though we are apt to think of rulers as if they were superhuman, yet they shall meet the lot of common men," and then accuses the Lord of using this "as His sufficient justification for calling Himself Son of God: for 'the scripture cannot be broken.'"

150 Now, this is either a good deal of ignorance, or, to say the very least, very culpable carelessness. At any rate, Mr. N.'s paraphrase has nothing to do with the matter. "We are apt to think" is on the face of it a very different thing from Jehovah's saying "I have said." Further, the Lord is not saying anything to prove what He is, but convicting the Jews of unreasonableness in their blame of Him, on the ground of their own scriptures What He says is perfect, as surely it must be. In the psalm, Elohim is judging amongst the Elohim, and declared that He had called these judges — perverse as they had become, so as to call judgment down on themselves — Elohim.

Now that is just the fact. In the Pentateuch frequently the parties are directed to be brought to the Elohim (as Ex. 21: 6, 23; Ex. 22: 8, 9, twice), so called, because in judging they were to act in God's stead. (See Deut. 1: 17.)

They have this name, particularly in the instructions given from Sinai, for causes to be brought to them — the parties were to make it good according to [the award of] Elohim — God or the judges. Hence the Lord says, "If the scriptures, which you own have irrefragable authority, give the name of Elohim to persons instructed by the word, how can you call it blasphemy that I apply the title 'Son of God' to one whom the Father has sanctified and sent into the world?" The argument is of the plainest force to shew their injustice, which is the Lord's object.

Mr. N. has not only misrepresented the reasoning of the Lord, but he has misrepresented what He says.

Mr. N. then takes in, in the lump, all the quotations of the New Testament: some had always been "a mystery" to him. Now they were clearly wrong; if canvassed, "it may appear that not one quotation in ten is sensible and appropriate." (Phases, p. 126.) Then it is assumed, that "it is so manifest that they most imperfectly understood that book," that the decision of the New Testament writers concerning the value and credibility of the Old Testament is not to be accepted. Thus it is settled. The only answer one can give to an assertion of this kind is, that it is not manifest. The only thing manifest that I see is, that Mr. N. has not the smallest notion of the purport and character of the Old Testament, as clearly expressed in it. The passages he has referred to certainly will not make any "unbiased interpreter" think so.

151 It is merely setting up his decision, after having shewn himself to be singularly incompetent to judge, not only above that of the New Testament writers, but above the clear judgment of hundreds, founded on sound reasoning and investigation, and intelligent study of the real bearing of the Old Testament, as the expression of the purpose of God. The decision of one who can turn "I have said, Ye are gods" — the plain fact which we find in the Psalms, and in a remarkable part of the Old Testament, applying to the subject — into "We are apt to think rulers superhuman" is not worth much attention in the investigation of the applicability of passages of the Old quoted in the New.

THE PROPHECY OF ENOCH

Mr. Newman next refers to another common objection. Jude has quoted the prophecy of Enoch. He has this excuse that this is commonly so stated, since Archbishop Lawrence published his book; and Origen has taken it for granted.

But I beg leave to say, that there is not the smallest proof of any kind that he has done so. The fathers are historically very useful, like all contemporaneous authors; their judgment, and not the least so Origen's, is nothing worth.

Now what proof have we that Jude quoted this book? Just none. It is evident that there was a traditional account that such a prophecy existed. This book of Enoch records it. Jude authenticates the prophecy as far as his authority goes. But that Jude took it from the book of Enoch, there is not the slightest proof whatever.

Enoch, all know, was favoured of God; the prophecy ascribed to him is a testimony of a doctrine established by a multitude of passages. Its written preservation in Christian times was more timely, as then Christ's coming in glory was the immediate and proper hope of the Church. While at all times a most solemn prophetic warning, it was less suited to be preserved as a part of the divine record, while God was still carrying on His government under the law. Everything is in its place.

It is the simple fact of the existence of the passage in both Jude and Enoch, which is used as a proof that it is quoted, which is no proof at all, because it is evident each may have taken it up if it was current by tradition. And the copying is very much less probable than the latter supposition, because the passage is not the same in both. It is thus given by Archbishop Lawrence: "Behold, He cometh with ten thousand of His saints, to execute judgment upon them, and destroy the wicked, and reprove all the carnal for everything which the sinful and ungodly have done and committed against Him."

152 Thus it stands in Jude: "And Enoch also, the seventh from Adam, prophesied of these, saying, Behold, the Lord cometh with ten thousands of his saints, to execute judgment upon all, and to convince all that are ungodly among them of all their ungodly deeds which they have ungodlily committed, and of all their hard [speeches] which ungodly sinners have spoken against him." Jude 1: 14. Now, that these passages refer to the same prophecy I see no reason to doubt; but I do not see the smallest sign that one was copied from the other. They differ very sensibly one from the other. There is nothing about what ungodly sinners have spoken in the book of Enoch — no expression such as "destroy the wicked" in Jude. The phraseology too in Jude is quite different and very peculiar. I should say, from the language and omissions, that it certainly was not a quotation.

But, further, the doctrine also is very different. The book of Enoch makes God come to execute judgment on His saints. There is no such doctrine as this in Jude. And the book of Enoch distinguishes particularly executing judgment on them, the saints, and destroying the wicked. No such idea as this exists in Jude. Nor is it a mere question of Ethiopic,* which I certainly could not solve. It is the positive doctrine of the book of Enoch, "while judgment," it is said, just before, "shall come upon all, even all the righteous." Thus His executing judgment upon them [the preserved] is the specific doctrine of the passage. It certainly is not that of Jude; for he says Enoch prophesied of the reprobate. And, while speaking of executing judgment on all, there is no such a thought as executing judgment on the saints and destroying the wicked. Jude goes on to speak of His convicting the ungodly for their deeds and their words against Him. So that the substantial meaning of the passages is quite different, as one contains what the other does not; and the language is quite diverse too. I conclude, with undoubting certainty, that one was not quoted from the other (unless the author of the Book of Enoch used Jude in his own way), and that Jude's is divine, accordant as it is with the whole testimony of the word, and the apocryphal Enoch's human.

{*De Sacy's Latin translation is exactly the same with Dr. Lawrence's. He supposes that the author may have borrowed from Jude.}

153 But further: What proof have we that the book of Enoch was written first? I doubt it exceedingly. Dr. Lawrence takes as his fixed point of departure, in making the enquiry, that the quotation of Jude proves it was written before his epistle. But this is begging the question. I have already shewn that, to say the least, it is an assumption without any proof (what can be adduced in the way of evidence proving, as I judge, the direct opposite).

Indeed, the proof that the writer was before Jude is to me very doubtful.

There are passages which seem to be quoted from the New Testament. Some of them I should not insist upon, because they may have been proverbial, and so used by the Lord Himself among the Jews.

They are the following:

"It would have been better for them had they never been born." "At that time I beheld the Ancient of Days while he sat upon the throne of his glory, while the book of the living was opened in his presence, and [while] all the powers of the heavens stood around and before him." "And he, the Son of man, shall be the light of nations" (this may be from Isaiah). "But in the day of their trouble the world shall obtain tranquillity." "In these days shall the earth deliver up from her womb, and hell deliver up from hers that which it has received." "The word of his mouth shall destroy all the sinners and all the ungodly, who shall perish at his presence." "Trouble shall come upon them as upon a woman in travail." "Before the Son of man, from whose presence they shall be expelled."

These look very like allusions to passages in the New Testament. But there is another circumstance. The writer says, referring to the destruction of the temple at Jerusalem, "Then I grieved extremely on account of the tower, and because the house of the sheep was overthrown. Neither was I afterwards able to perceive whether they again entered that house." Now this comes after a passage (chap. 88: 92) where it is said, "I saw, too, that he forsook the house of their fathers and their tower, giving them all into the power of every beast," which refers to the Babylonish captivity; and after he had announced the call of seventy accountable shepherds, which Dr. Lawrence himself applies to the rulers from Nebuchadnezzar down to Herod the Great. So that the destruction here alluded to was under or after the seventy shepherds; whereas their accountable rule began with Nebuchadnezzar: so that this was evidently another overthrow of "the house of the sheep." At any rate, as he gives the Jewish history up to Herod, he must have known they had their house again; indeed, he speaks evidently of Zerubbabel, Joshua, and Nehemiah or Ezra, and of the rebuilding of the temple. (Phases, p. 113.) This would lead one then to suppose that he wrote after the destruction of Jerusalem* by the Romans, and was thus unable to say that the temple would be restored.

{*In chapter 104 he turns back to consider the conduct and accountability of the shepherds already spoken of from the beginning (chapter 103 having closed the direct history, which would much confirm its being the Roman destruction of the temple).}

154 One passage looks very much as if he considered the Christians as a perverse race; but that a remnant would be preserved, to whom the power and glory would be given. At any rate, he speaks of the Jews being perverse at this epoch. These are his words, "Afterwards, in the seventh week [coinciding with that in which Christianity appeared], a perverse generation shall arise; abundant shall be its deeds, and all its deeds perverse. During its completion the righteous selected from the plant of everlasting righteousness [a remnant of the Jews] shall be rewarded, and to them shall be given sevenfold instruction concerning every part of his creation." (Chap. 92: 12.) After this they shall execute judgment on oppressors, sinners shall be delivered up into the hands of the righteous, and the house of the great King shall be built up for ever.

That is, he promises, after this week of perverse men, the full establishment of Jewish privileges in a Jewish way.

He speaks much of the Son of man, the Elect, the concealed One revealing the wisdom of the Lord of spirits; but Judaism is set up by power. And the only notice of the Christian week is perverse men doing a great deal.

It would rather appear to me the work of a Jewish writer, who, when Christianity had come, sought to buoy up the hopes of the Jews in their own expectations, when now given up a prey to the lions and all beasts.

The house was destroyed, perhaps Christianity prevalent. He made use of the name of Enoch as being one of which tradition had preserved some memorial. The Cabalists seem to have possessed this book from allusions in the book Zohar, quoted by Dr. Lawrence.

155 There is a difficulty apparently in the twelve shepherds, which Dr. Lawrence applies to the Asmonean princes and Herod. But he introduces Matthias, which I should judge doubtful, and Alexandra, a woman. Take away these two, and you have two shepherds after Herod. Were it not so, it would be merely closing the account of native princes with Herod, after which the state of Palestine was so uncertain (either a tetrarchy or a province, or for a little while again nearly united under Herod Agrippa) that he drops the history of it as a distinct thing. The view that I have presented is corroborated by chapter 89. After the twelve shepherds, he gives a sword into the sheep's (Jews') hands to slay the beasts of the field; and the Lord judges. That is, he puts power into the hands of the Jews at the close of this period.

I need not pursue this subject any farther. It suffices to have shewn that there is no probability whatever that Jude quoted from this spurious book — I may say a certainty that he did not, and that there is great ground to suppose that the Book of Enoch was written after the destruction of Jerusalem by the Romans.* But if Jude has not quoted it, it is very little matter when a mere spurious book full of nonsense was written. It is useful historically, as shewing the Jews' opinions in those days. I may remark that he is most distinct in his assertion, that there were openings for the abyss of waters to break forth from beneath for the deluge, and clefts for it in which to run back again, just, indeed, as the heathen shewed at Delos and other places for the retreat of their deluge.**

{*This was in the year 70 of our era, how much after I cannot pretend to say, because the dates fail; he says he could not see if they entered into the destroyed house. After that there are only prophecies of Jewish deliverance and grandeur.}

{**It is curious enough, that the book speaks of a modern solution to the cause of the deluge, which I do not think needful to discuss here, when Noah saw the earth inclined, and that its destruction approached.}

This objection of Jude's quoting from the Book of Enoch I hold to be totally unfounded. It certainly is wholly unproved. The ancients supposed it merely, they give no evidence as to the fact.

Mr. N. goes on to say, that "it does not appear that any peculiar divine revelation taught them [the New Testament writers] that the Old Testament is perfect truth." (Phases, p. 126.) They did not need one. They knew prophets had delivered it from God, as Peter says, and had not spoken by the will of man. But I further answer, they had; for the Lord confirmed this their faith in the Old Testament over and over again in the most explicit way.

156 PAUL'S RECOGNITION OF THE OLD TESTAMENT

Mr. Newman's statement* as to Paul is wholly unfounded — worse than unfounded. Paul recognizes the authority of the Old Testament in the fullest possible manner, always using it as conclusive authority. He maintains also, and insists on the full authority of the law, but shews that its action against us was averted by the death of Christ. We are not bound, he argues, by a law of a relationship which subsists no longer, as it cannot when a man is dead. But he takes particular care to shew that he does not undermine the authority of the law. Christ's bearing its curse (Gal. 3) is the strongest possible proof of that.

{*"So far as Paul deviates from the common Jewish view, it is in the direction of disparaging the law as essentially imperfect." (Phases, p. 126.)}

THE INTRODUCTION TO LUKE'S GOSPEL

As to the introduction to Luke's Gospel Mr. N.'s remarks are equally unfounded. "He could not possibly have written thus," he says, "if he had been conscious of superhuman aids" (Phases, p. 127); and just before: "He opens by stating to Theophilus, that since many persons have committed to writing the things handed down by eye-witnesses, it seemed good to him also to do the same, since he had 'accurately attended to everything from its sources (ἄνωθεν).'" Now I beg leave to say he says no such thing. He says nothing like that I may "do the same." These are his words, "Since many have taken in hand* to compose a narration of the things believed with certainty amongst us, as they have delivered them to us, who from the beginning were eye-witnesses and servants of the word, it seemed well to me fully acquainted from the beginning with all things [and that] accurately, to write to thee methodically, most noble Theophilus, that thou mightest know the certain truth concerning the things in which thou hast been instructed."

{*Origen's remark here is, that Luke's words, "many had taken in hand," are a tacit accusation that they had attempted in their own strength, without the Holy Ghost, to write gospels — absque gratiâ Spiritûs Sancti. But here Matthew, Mark, and John, he adds, did not take in hand to write, but being full of the Holy Ghost wrote gospels.}

157 Now this contrasts (whether we accept Origen's interpretation of taking in hand or not) what he had done with what others had, it declares that he had written differently, and with more certainty than the others — in a word, that he had not done the same. If the others had given the ἁσφάλειαν, the demonstrated certainty of the things, as he did, he need not have spoken of them as he does. I do not say that he alleges them to be false; but they were not such as hindered him from giving an account of the same thing, that Theophilus might have positive certainty about the history of the Lord.*

{*It has been amply shewn that he does not refer to Matthew and Mark. John's Gospel was not written.}

Further, Mr. N. translates ἄνωθεν "from the sources."* Mr. N. is undoubtedly a better scholar than I; but here dictionaries are adequate authority, and I think I may venture to say that the English translation is correct, and that  ἄνωθεν  has not the sense at all which Mr. N. gives it;  ἄνωθεν  does not mean "from the sources," i.e., from some other originals. It has it neither by etymology nor by use. It has the sense of "from above," hence, "from heaven," "anew," "from the beginning." I have searched Liddell and Scott, Scapula, and Stephens' Thesaurus, and I find no trace of such a meaning. The English translation is the natural clear meaning of the word so used. If by "the sources" is merely meant "from the outset," as tracing a river from its source, it is the same thing; and why change it, suggesting the meaning of other sources, not inspiration?

{*It is fair to mention that Moses Stuart does the same — at least if I remember right.}

But as this preface is often adduced, a few more words here may be justly offered to my reader.

No historical book is edited by the writer with "Thus saith the Lord." It would have been quite unsuited. The contents were not words spoken as such directly and solely from the Lord to men, but an account of various historical circumstances, often of very bad ones done by men; and when of good or even perfect ones, as in the case of Jesus, mixed up with others in a variety of transactions. The business of inspiration then was to secure the writer's giving a true account of what passed, to fix his attention on the right objects, and to connect them in such a manner as to produce the moral picture the Spirit meant to produce. Thus the Lord says, the Holy Ghost should bring to their remembrance what He had said. Now what was thus brought to their remembrance, in the form divinely suited to God's object in their history, they so set down. If they remembered it themselves as God would have it set down, God having for their own sakes so impressed it on their spiritual affections, the Spirit had only to lead them to record what they so already remembered. If it was recorded even by some one else already, or recounted by an apostle; if led by the Spirit to adopt such account, the case would be the same. The only thing to be looked for was, that the result produced was (in result, as a whole, in everything, and in all its parts in their connection) exactly what God Himself meant to give as the history of His beloved Son, or indeed of any other part of the divine history. So in what they saw. If Luke was present when Paul and the disciples knelt down and prayed on the shore, and the Holy Ghost had given him the feeling and impression about it which He meant to act on others by, he put it down in that way exactly under His power. He knew the thing as an eye-witness. The facts had not to be communicated to him by inspiration, though his manner of presenting them is perfectly according to the mind of God, and comes from Him. Now every one feels how entirely inappropriate it would be and out of place to introduce, "Thus saith the Lord: Then we went out to the sea-shore and knelt down."

158 In a word, the historical accounts are given under the care of God, by the Holy Ghost recalling if needed, directing in the use of known facts, fixing the attention exactly on the part of a transaction suited to the object of the history (for God must have an object in it), which has produced God's own history of the Lord's life, or other scriptural subjects. Now that is exactly what we want. He used men and men's minds for this; and what they used as means for it is perfectly immaterial. God allowed their circumstances to be such as to render the objections of infidel men the height of folly as to the general truth of Christianity. This is not the ground on which the believer receives it indeed. Taught of God, he enjoys, according to his progress in the divine life, the unfolding to his soul of all the rich truth which God has treasured up there, in a book that unfolds all that lies between the extremes of the sin of man and the love and holiness of God, and all the means which divine love has employed to bring back those who lay in one, to the sweet and blessed enjoyment of the other, and that in the development of those divine counsels which attach themselves to the person of Jesus.

159 But the circumstances in which the writers of the New Testament were shew the gross absurdity of the infidel on human grounds, so as to leave him without excuse. The truth of Christianity, as a general fact, is established as no other history in the world is; so also are its true character and the details which establish the divine power connected with it. God has granted an external and internal evidence which confounds the infidel — convicts him of being utterly unreasonable; and, of course, graciously strengthens as an outwork, the heart of the true disciple. The infidel pretends to know God so much better before-hand than anybody else, that he can shew that Christianity cannot be true. But the man that would attempt to shew it was not true would prove himself a fool in his wisdom. On no other subject would he be considered of sane mind, if he disputed on such evidence. It is the consciousness, as I have already said, that it is divine, and that it has a claim on the conscience, which is the reason of its being disputed. Were it not, no one would attempt to do it; but man cannot bear God Himself, though he may pride himself on his own thoughts about Him, if he can judge Him.

Let not my reader suppose that I have a thought of weakening in the smallest degree the fullest, highest character of inspiration in the historical books of scripture. Far from it: I believe it entirely and completely divine. It is the joy of my heart, as the security of my understanding, to receive it directly from God — my God. The thought that He thus deigns to converse with and instruct us is inexpressibly sweet. No one can know God, and not feel this.

But I do not allow that dictation (that is, the communication of words without the exercise of the mind of him who receives it) is the only means of this. God can wield a mind and a heart as He wields lips, and He can govern and produce impressions on them so entirely that the expression of them, while still that of the heart itself, shall be entirely and without mixture that of God's mind. So of the memory. The result is the same, with the difference, often very important, of making the heart and mind of the inspired person the vessel as well as communicator of it. Both may be true. He may teach the words (and that even at another moment from the first acquirement of the thoughts) exactly, but He may act in the mind, and make it His instrument in unfolding truth (or fact) as He means it to be unfolded.

160 Having said this, I turn again to the preface of Luke, to examine its force, which seems to me very simple. Many had taken in hand to compose a narrative of what Christians had received from eye-witnesses. Theirs was a human work, very well intended very likely, and perhaps correct in many things; but a work undertaken and executed by men. It was very natural when such wonderful and interesting events had taken place. But God had fitted Luke as a means to use for this purpose; he had an exact knowledge of all from the outset. The word employed and translated "having had perfect knowledge" Luke 1 is the same as in 2 Timothy 3: 10, where Paul says Timothy had fully known everything about him. Now this means "personal acquaintance with." St. Luke said he had this from the outset; he does not say how, nor do I pretend to say. Others had them from eyewitnesses. This he does not say himself; but only that he had thorough, personal, detailed, and accurate acquaintance with everything from the very outset. This is the force of παμηχολουθηχότι ἄνωθεν πᾶσιν ἀχμιβῶς. And he writes this, that Theophilus may know the certainty of the things he had been instructed in.

Now suppose Matthew or John gave an account in the same manner as Luke. They were, we know, personally companions of the Lord. No doubt this fitted them as witnesses (so the Lord, indeed, says, John 15, and as to the Lord's person and glory, the same principle was established in the case of Paul. He could say, "Have I not seen the Lord?") Did this render unnecessary the work of the Holy Ghost, which should bring to their remembrance what Jesus had said, so as to give it with divine accuracy? Quite the contrary, as the same Lord promises, John 14: 26; so John 16: 13. Why should it then not be thus with Luke? He had the means of very accurate knowledge of everything. This did not preclude the divine aid of inspiration; for it is positively promised to those who were eye-witnesses with the same object. And this is what we want. Not that suitable instruments should not be employed that there is divine fitness in, but that God should use these instruments so that we should have the word of truth from Him, and really His word. The heart wants it and joys in it. Man's need requires it. It is what is worthy of God. He mixes Himself up, so to speak, with men — blessed be His name! — employs them intimately — often in a way their hearts can feel; but He always remains Himself. We want both these to be thoroughly happy; and God would make us thoroughly happy.

161 DEMONIACAL POSSESSION

Mr. Newman then takes up (Phases, p. 127) the accounts of demoniacal possession and brings, as a proof that it cannot be, the belief among the Arabs that it is. This may be very forcible; but I am too blind to see the value of the reasoning. That superstition may be mixed up with it among unenlightened Arabs is possible; but why their conviction of the truth of it is a proof that it is not true is beyond my capacity. They believe, I suppose, that God made the sun, and yet this is true, though they have Mohammedan superstitions connected with it. So of many facts of Jewish history connected with Abraham, Ishmael, Esau, the passage of Israel through the desert. As in the case of all nations who derive their origin from those who were at the sources of truth, you see proofs of the existence of that truth mixed up with superstitious traditions. This any one, soberly enquiring into facts, will find to be the universal truth on this matter. But details of facts are disagreeable to infidels.

So of witchcraft: Mr. N., founding himself on the popular infidelity of the day, takes for granted that there is no such thing. Now I humbly beg leave to say, that I judge that this is very unphilosophical. I am quite aware that, when mere infidelity is established, it is itself a shorter way to shut God out. But it is a very convenient thing to the enemy, in the case of ignorant and superstitious minds, to do that which establishes his authority in a way more suited to their state. And he has done so the wide world over. I grant that nine-tenths of it are priestly imposture; but an accurate examination of facts does not allow the denial of a kind of power, which is not merely human, exercised over men. That when this power is gained, and in the hands of men, it is used to deceive and impose on credulity, no man in his senses, or believing in the word of God, would for a moment deny. But how came this influence all over the world? The devil — some mischievous, terror-striking, corrupt being (call him Teufel, or Sammael, or Obo, or what you please) — has got himself worshipped by means of some influence over men's minds. That is a fact. Those who have carried on the mysterious influence, and have been delivered from it, have acknowledged the greater part to be imposture; but have also declared that they were under an unknown influence at times. Take the history of the oracles. I doubt not corruption; but they existed, and there was a mysterious influence. So of various effects beyond human power. The cessation of oracles when Christianity began to prevail; the undoubted deliverance of persons labouring under certain distressing symptoms during and subsequent to the apostles' days; the fact of man's universal sense of some superior agency (and as shewn in terror and evil no righteous mind will attribute it to the true God) — all concur to prove that there is an evil power exercising a real influence over the bodies and minds of men. I have no doubt of the existence of positive power in witchcraft in England at this day. 1 do not doubt there is superstition and imposture; but I defy Mr. N. or any infidel to account for facts, perfectly well authenticated, on any rational or philosophical principles. I despise the arrogant pretension to philosophy which neglects facts. The world's history shews the existence of an unknown power acting on the minds and bodies of men — a power from which Christianity entirely delivers.

162 There are various forms of disease. In a general way all come from the evil one; but in the sense of "possession," his power cannot be applied to all of them: such diseases may be accompanied by possession or not; and so they are treated in scripture. We find the Lord healing diseases and casting out devils. We find lunatics and demoniacs distinguished in the same phrase.

And now mark Mr. N.'s way of reasoning: it is genuine philosophy, which is a mere popular prejudice after all. Arabians believe in possession. I read a treatise of Farmer which convinced me they were diseases; but not that the evangelists treated them as such. "Nay, the instant we believe that the imagined possessions were only various forms of disease, we are forced to draw conclusions of the utmost moment, most damaging to the credit of the narrators." (Phases, p. 128.) Be it so. But we have no proof yet. Then follows, "Clearly they are then convicted of mis-stating facts under the influence of superstitious credulity. They represent demoniacs as having a supernatural acquaintance with Jesus, which it now becomes manifest they cannot have had. The devils, cast out of two demoniacs [or one], are said to have entered into a herd of swine. This must have been a credulous fiction." (Phases, p. 128.) This came upon me by surprise. I had read indeed that Arabians believed in genii, and that in Eastern countries possession was believed in. I had read that Mr. N. was convinced, by a treatise of Farmer's, that a belief of demoniacal possession was not a superstition more respectable than that of witchcraft. But to tumble then on "Clearly they are then convicted of mis-stating facts" brought me up, I confess, rather suddenly in the argument. Is it the Mohammedans' believing in possession, or Mr. N.'s being convinced by Farmer's book, which clearly convicts the evangelists of mis-stating facts? Logic here has lost its breath by the surprise; and then Mr. N. runs away so tremendously fast that one has no chance, in such a state, to regain or overtake the argument. It is now manifest that the devils did not know Jesus, and the story of the swine must have been a credulous fiction. And then "at first sight" (it appears, with Mr. N., at last sight too), and no wonder this acts so as "to impair our faith in His [Jesus's] miracles altogether." (Phases, p. 128.) And the evangelists are convicted of their misstatements by Mr. N.'s believing that the imagined possessions were diseases, and by the Arabians' believing that they were not. How easy to settle things by "must have been," when we are convinced! It saves an amazing deal of trouble as to facts and consequences.

163 It is well known that in the second century Justin declares to the whole Roman world that persons living at Rome had been healed, and others yet were healed of demoniacal possession by Christians adjuring them by the name of Jesus; and Tertullian states in the beginning of the third, that those pretending to prophesy among the heathen or possessed would confess it was a demon if adjured by a Christian (saying, they had only to bring them before their tribunals, and to try). I would add, that I see no need to call even this a power of working miracles.*

{*I doubt much, historically, that miracles continued after those were gone who were brought into the Church by apostolic ministry. I do not doubt that God may interfere, if He sees good, in an extraordinary manner at any time; but this is not a gift of miracles conferred on a person. I believe (inasmuch as He, the Holy Ghost, who is in us, is greater than he, Satan, who is in the world) that Satan's proper power ought to be overcome always, however our having grieved the Spirit may deprive us of the power of doing so. I do not think that special answers to prayer are miracles either.}

At any rate, a sober man must have something more conclusive than Mr. N.'s reasoning to do away with the universal mass of facts not only in ancient but in modern times. See the accounts of the Angekoks in Crantz's "Greenland," or Brainerd's account of those whom he met with among the North American Indians. The denial of powers above those of man is, it seems to me, a low, proud, and foolish philosophy. A fancy that nothing can be above oneself is a ridiculous and suspicious fancy, and that in the presence of facts which shew results in good and evil which man has never been able to explain on mere human principles — immense and lasting results too. It is an old and just remark of Tertullian and Justin, that the demons led men into something like the truth in connection with natural conscience, that superstitious minds might think all religious systems equally true, and philosophical ones all equally false; and thus, either way, gain their end. I must be forgiven if I do not see much to prefer in the indiscriminate rejection of self-sufficient philosophy to the indiscriminate reception of credulous superstition.

164 CHARACTER OF JOHN'S GOSPEL

The different character of John's Gospel, noticed by Mr. N. (Phases, p. 129), is deeply interesting; but he relates not only no miracles, but no facts that are not immediately connected with some great doctrine or remarkable discourse.

I am not aware why Mr. N. (ib.) places Matthew seventy or eighty years after the fact, as no critic in existence places it at that epoch (the very latest of all is A.D. 64; many placing it so early as A.D. 38). None of the Gospels was written so late as seventy years after Christ's birth, not even John's. I do not think it needful to make any further remark on this part of Mr. N.'s statement.

STAR OF THE MAGI

MR. NEWMAN speaks (Phases, p. 130) of the star accompanying the magi. It is a common but very strange error. The scripture not only gives no hint of it, but contradicts it. "When they saw the star, they rejoiced with exceeding great joy." They had seen it in the east, and after they had made enquiry of Herod, it appeared again and pointed out the birthplace of Jesus. I see nothing wonderful,* if the Son of the Highest was born into the world, that it should be marked out by an extraordinary phenomenon, suited to the wise men's minds, and attracting the attention of all. The presence of the Son of God in the world was much more wonderful than that of the star. It was evidently a local supernatural phenomenon.

{*"I now thought of it, only to see that it was a legend fit for credulous ages; and that it must be rejected, in common with Herod's massacre of the children, an atrocity unknown to Josephus." (Phases, p. 130.)}

165 HEROD'S MASSACRE OF THE CHILDREN

Why must Herod's massacre of the children be rejected? I would remark, that Mr. N.'s plan seems to have been a very useless and unphilosophical one. It would have been much more simple to have rejected the New Testament altogether, when it had lost its divine authority with him. What matter whether the details were true or not? To spend his time in disproving details, when he really did not believe any, was foolish work. It had, indeed, one natural use — to discredit the book with others. It has another — to shew the utter groundlessness of what satisfied Mr. N.'s willingly convinced mind.

Now has Mr. N. any reason for rejecting the massacre of the infants? None. Josephus does not mention it: that is all. Mr. N. says it was unknown to him. But that is a mere supposition, an invention of Mr. N.'s. Is it anything extraordinary that an historian should omit a fact which another records? Has Suetonius related all that Tacitus has, or has Tacitus related all that Suetonius has? The contrary is well known. The objection has no force whatever. It is really tedious to reply to such futilities.

But in this case there is more than this. There was the strongest reason, if Josephus did know it, for not mentioning it; for he must have given some reason for the massacre — an account of what occasioned it — if he had spoken of it. That is, he must have spoken of Herod (whose jealousy as to his government was the principal source of his horrible conduct) having received the intimation, accompanied by such very remarkable circumstances, that the Messiah was born. It was not jealousy of a grown-up competitor, or of a rival son even. To slay a number of infants in a particular place, and that place David's city, where all knew that Christ was to be born, must have had some cause which pointed out an infant who claimed the throne born there at that time; and an infant's claim was not made by himself. It must have been the circumstances that marked him out — hence some extraordinary circumstances which would have designated the child with peculiar evidence as Messiah the King. Was Josephus likely to record this carefully? Roman interests and Jewish national prejudices would concur to close Josephus's mouth, parasite as he was, as to the event itself. Besides this, there is some strong reason to believe, that he has attempted to conceal it under a very obscure account of court intrigues just at that moment, which he speaks of as occasioning the jealousy and anger of Herod. The passage is obscure, and has something concealed under it of a king to be set up with miraculous power. I do not pretend to decide as to what gave occasion to it. Two passages in his works refer to it. (Antiquities, book 16, last chapter, at the end; and ibid. book 17, chapter 2, section 6.) They may be seen in Lardner.

166 If Matthew wrote his Gospel A.D. 38, as many suppose, living witnesses must have known the truth or falsehood of it; and even sixty years afterwards it would hardly have been forgotten. Justin, Irenaus, and Origen refer to it as a known fact; and in the fourth century a heathen author, Macrobius, speaks of it; this I mention merely as shewing it was notorious. This difficulty is one for those who will have one.

EGYPT AND NAZARETH

The next has more appearance of reason in it to a person who does not believe, nor consequently apprehend the bearing of the gospel accounts. It is this: Matthew states that the Lord was taken into Egypt; Luke, that after they had performed all things according to the law for Him, they returned to Nazareth. I cannot of course take popular habits of traditional belief in such an enquiry. Mr. N. of course can take them, and trouble people's minds by an objection to them. Such traditions it may be difficult to reconcile with other facts related, although the soul may sometimes lose little by the difference between the tradition and the history. Such traditions may be a mere careless interpretation of a particular fact. Thus it is assumed that the Magi's visit was at the time of Christ's birth. Who has not seen them from early youth represented amid asses and oxen, kneeling before a mother and a new-born babe with glories round their head? Now, morally, the departure from the history, if such means are to be used at all, is not very material. But there is not a tittle in the history given in scripture to prove that the Magi came at the moment of Christ's birth, but a good deal to shew that they did not. It is pretty evident from Herod's inquiry as to when the star appeared (Matt. 2: 7), that that appearance was at His birth. Now they may have taken their time to prepare to start; they certainly must have taken time for their journey — how much I do not pretend to say. Some little time was spent at Jerusalem before the visit. Further, Herod sends and kills from two years old and under, according to the time which he had accurately inquired of the wise men. Now we may well allow that Herod's jealousy and cruel character would have left margin enough to secure Him at all events, and that he was not particular about how many suffered. But, as it is said, according to the time accurately ascertained from the wise men, it must be certainly rather supposed that Jesus must have been on towards two years, or at least not just born. The woman's offering for a male child was thirty-three days after its birth. To kill all from two years and under, after accurately ascertaining that the child was less than thirty-three days old (which must have been the case if their visit was before Mary's presenting Him in the temple), would have a character of needless cruelty beyond all reason, particularly when it is said that he did so according to the time which he had diligently or accurately inquired of the wise men. There is a relation between the age of the children killed and the babe's age in Herod's mind accurately formed, and he slays them according to that accurate information. Now if he had ascertained Him to be less than a month old, and killed all under two years old, there was no relation between them whatever. All this shews that the presenting in the temple preceded the visit of the Magi, and there may have been even ample time to go to Nazareth and return to Bethlehem for the visit of the Magi. But that that visit was not made in the crowded state of the inn, spoken of at the time of His birth, is made probable by the fact, that the wise men came into the house to offer their gifts. There is no appearance of Jesus being then in the manger. Whatever other call they may have had, His parents certainly came up once a year at the feast of the passover. Their being, therefore, again at Bethlehem was nothing extraordinary.

167 Now in answering an alleged contradiction, to shew that the facts can be reconciled, is a complete answer. Now both the narratives in this way may be true. Even supposing Luke is speaking of an immediate departure, it is a very probable thing that, being enregistered, and having performed their duty in the temple, they should go home; while the occurrence of such circumstances as accompanied the birth of Jesus would almost naturally bring them back to David's city, with the Jewish feelings they had; and these poor people had nothing to connect them with Nazareth more than another place. They were in that miserable place perhaps from poverty. It was, not, at any rate, a place they had any tie to. If their son was the divinely-sent Heir to David of Bethlehem, whither would such a thought lead them? The circumstantial probabilities connected with the slaying of the infants tend to shew some time had elapsed. The birth of the babe mentioned in Matthew connects itself with the regal title associated with that place in every Jew's mind, and not with the date of the event. The important matter was that He was born there; for so not only prejudice but prophecy claimed; and it is in this connection it is used in Matthew. But the fact is, the "when" in English (which to the simple English reader is a natural note of time) has nothing to answer to it in the Greek, which is merely "Now Jesus having been born in Bethlehem of Judea" Matt. 2: 1  - a fact of all importance to His history, and to this passage in particular. There is no note of time more particular than "In the days of Herod the king" — a fact also indirectly material to His history, and which tends to set aside the idea of a more accurate note of time being given in the same passage, and to give a general character to the statement. Hence nothing is more easy than the connection of the facts, while the objection falls to the ground.

168 CHARACTER OF LUKE'S GOSPEL

At the same time, I must express my conviction that, while Luke says nothing but what is quite consistent with Matthew's history, he does not mean to give any note of time in the passage The Spirit's object in Matthew was to shew Christ's meeting the fulfilment of all that Jewish scriptures declared of a Jewish Christ, and such a one's rejection. In Luke's Gospel it was quite otherwise. He was shewing a Christ who, connected with Adam by His human nature, though He sinlessly fulfilled all looked for in a Jew, opened the door of faith to Gentiles in spirit; who was, in a word, Son of man.

Hence, having shewn Him duly accomplishing what the law required, this gospel at once transplants Him, neglecting all else, to the position in which all the Gospels place the Lord, as having given up the Jews, considered as attached to the temple and Jewish hopes as a nation, and labouring in despised Galilee (according to Isaiah 8 and 9) in the gathering a remnant by faith. Even if it be chronologically exact, that it was at that moment He returned to Nazareth, as it well may be, still I should judge the object of the Spirit in Luke was not that exactitude, but the moral fact that He did accomplish legal requirements, but, that once done, took His place among the poor of the flock, far from Jerusalem. We find an analogous instance in what follows, in His coming up to Jerusalem at the passover, and being subject to Joseph and Mary, but, His true character coming out, though He was not yet to act upon it: He came to be a Nazarene; He came to be about His Father's business. Luke marks this distinctly before He enters on His public ministry, that it might be seen to be connected with His person, and not to depend merely upon His office. He was the Pastor of the poor of the flock in spirit and character. It belonged to Him. He was the Son of the Father, though He might abide God's time for shewing it. This is just as much according to the tenor of Luke's Gospel, as what Matthew recounts is in accordance with the tenor of his. Luke 2: 39 contains the whole moral history of the place the Lord took in Israel. Of course Mr. N. is insensible to these things, because the intention of God in the scriptures is, by the position he has taken, wholly unknown to him.

169 CHARACTER OF JOHN'S GOSPEL

Mr. Newman speaks of John's omitting the temptation. (Phases, p. 130.) Of course he did. He was shewing the divine character of Jesus above all dispensation, as God before the world, as the Creator, and the totally new thing He was introducing into the earth, without reference to anything man was before, except setting it aside. Hence His infancy, His temptation, and all relating to His dispensational position on earth, is entirely left out. It begins before Genesis, and gives the origin of the saint's life, its place in Christ before the world. Thus it suffices to say, "He was in the world, and the world was made by him, and the world knew him not. He came unto his own, and his own received him not." Those who did He entitled to take the new position He was introducing man into — gave them authority to become the sons of God. From that time onwards the Jews are treated as reprobates; and, beginning with His discourse with Nicodemus as to the new nature, and the cross, and the heavenly things, and with the woman of Samaria as to new spiritual worship of the Father seeking such in grace, the new thing is opened out. All is perfectly consistent. And I recall to the reader's mind what I have already said — that if God does inspire a book, it must be with a moral purpose, and not merely to write a history. With that purpose, as gathered from the tenor of each book, all that Mr. N. objects to is perfectly in keeping. Had it been otherwise than it is, he who had seized the purpose of the book would have been sensible of defect.

170 CURES EFFECTED BY NAPKINS

The reason why napkins from Paul's body* had an importance, that pocket-handkerchiefs dipped in martyrs' blood had not, is as simple as possible. In Paul's case God was confirming the word preached by Paul by signs following; in the other case He was not. I must say, if a person has not some more sensible objections to make, it is hardly fair to waste rational people's time with such as these.

{*"Why should I look with more respect on the napkins taken from Paul's body (Acts 19: 12), than on pocket-handkerchiefs dipped in the blood of martyrs?" (Phases, pp. 130, 131.)}

CATCHING AWAY OF PHILIP

That the Spirit of the Lord (Phases, p. 131) caught away Philip depends of course on the authority of the book otherwise proved. There is perfect consistency, because the whole book is developing the extraordinary intervention of God Himself. His obedient servant had gone into the desert; God miraculously brings him back. The difference between oriental stories and this (to which Mr. N. seems always insensible) is, that God was acting here, and in order to make Himself known as interfering in grace, and attesting the words of these men in a way which authorized the setting aside a system which He had Himself established, and attested the pretension of Jesus to be the Son of God, which He had made to rest on His sending the Comforter, whose presence was now sensibly proved in a miraculous way.

CURSE ON THE BARREN FIG-TREE

The curse on the barren fig-tree* was peculiarly appropriate, Matt. 21: 19. The fig-tree was the symbol of the Jews as a nation, as the vine represented them figuratively as a religious system. Now the Lord had come seeking fruit, and just at this moment was really passing sentence on the nation. Each part of it, Herodians, Pharisees, Sadducees, lawyers, scribes, priests, come up in turn to question in appearance, but really to receive their judgment at His mouth. Christ takes, therefore, this symbolical tree, and pronounces the curse on it for ever. So it was now with Judaism under the old covenant. Hence, it is added, The time of figs was not yet. Many have shewn that there might notwithstanding have remained some of the old crop, for it is double on the fig-tree. But Israel was not really to bear fruit under the old covenant. All the prophets bear witness, that it is when they are brought back through grace, and under the new covenant and the Messiah, that Israel will blossom and bud, and fill the face of the world with fruit. The Lord had a right to seek fruit as they were; but it was not the time. The real crop was to come, though there was plenty of profession — leaves, but no fruit. Nothing could be more significant, or closely applicable in the instruction it afforded.

{*"Or what moral dignity was there in the curse on the barren fig-tree?" (Phases, p. 131).}

171 THE TRIBUTE-MONEY

The tribute-money in the fish's mouth* again is one of the most beautiful and perfect of the New Testament incidents. Matt. 17: 24-27. Christ had just been opening to His disciples the closing of His career of ministry among the Jews — had forbidden them to speak of His being the Christ to them, for He was going to suffer as Son of man: they must suffer with Him. Then, to three who were to be pillars, He shews His glory as Son of man, to encourage their faith in seeing Him rejected by Israel and all the religious authorities, and in taking up their cross. Just after this, Peter is questioned in a way which amounted to asking whether Jesus was really a good Jew. When he enters, Christ anticipates him by shewing His divine knowledge of what passed; but, while assuming the place of the Son of Jehovah of the temple, so as to be free from the tribute which kings did not take of their own children, He, with infinite grace, puts Peter, and in him all of us in principle, in the same place as Himself (just what He has done by redemption, when rejected as Messiah): "Then are the children free; nevertheless that we offend not." And this He does just when He had shewn His divine knowledge of Peter's thoughts, and what had passed. He then shews, in a way particularly intelligible to Peter from his occupation, that, far from being a mere Jew debtor to the temple, He disposes of creation though subject in grace to men. And, having shewn divine power and title over creation as He previously had divine knowledge, He again associates His poor disciple with Him, saying, "That give for me and for thee." Besides the touching grace of this communication to Peter, see what is brought out — His real character relative to the temple, the setting aside thereby, though submitting to, the relation in which as a Jew He stood to it; the divine glory of His person in wisdom and power; and yet the power of the redemption He was just going to accomplish to be such (and this was, as we have seen, precisely the topic in hand) that, viewed as Son of the Lord of the temple, He would set His disciples in the same relationship with God as Himself. What a touching, tender, and yet glorious way of rebuking the unbelief of Peter, and what a mass of truth is brought out exactly on the point treated of in this part of the gospels — the transition from the old things to the new! It may be clearly seen in Matthew where the establishment of the Church and the kingdom are connected with His being Son of the living God, and then His glory as Son of man brought out. Then, about to leave the faithless and perverse nation, He opens out (in the passage objected to) the full new relationship into which He was bringing those that trusted in Him, through the glory of His person and work. There is not a more beautiful and striking passage in every way than that which is here cavilled at. It affords the reader an example of the capacity of infidelity to judge of the bearing and importance of scripture facts, and the moral proofs a believer has which infidelity cannot touch, and which prove that it is ignorant of the elements of judgment.

{*"And how could I distinguish the genius of the miracle of tribute-money in the fish's mouth from those of the apocryphal gospels?" (Phases, p. 131.) My business is not, of course, to prove that Mr. N. could distinguish it.}

172 USELESS MIRACLES

As to "useless miracles"* — what would Mr. N. mean by a useful miracle? I suppose one that displayed God would be quite useless to him. He does not want a revelation from God. He is too competent to know Him to need it. Useful in his point of view would mean for some human profit; for moral degradation in reasoning cannot be separated from infidelity, which makes man its end and shuts out God. Now doubtless Jesus was healing all that were oppressed of the devil, for God was with Him. But surely it is conceivable that a miracle which showed that a divine Person was come amongst men; and rendering this sensible to them, might have some usefulness in it. All men are not so able to do without God and a positive revelation of Him as Mr. N. is. They have found it useful to them to have Him revealed, a delight to them even to hear His words. They have wondered at His condescension and grace in thus communicating with them. They have understood that, where that power is, a man can walk on the waves of this troublesome world, and are glad to know that, by keeping the eye steadily fixed on Him, they can do it too; they have found it so, and that, if forgetful of this grace and power they begin to think of difficulties, they begin to sink. They go out on His word to meet Him. They have been helped when they failed; and they believe that when indeed He shall rejoin His tossed people, they will be at land immediately. They see this all fully developed in the circumstances of the miracle — Christ, acknowledged as prophet, refusing to be king, and going up to be alone on high, the disciples having to struggle on without His presence, while at last He will return, and all will be rest from labour. They see even that the whole subject of John 6, where it is largely spoken of, shews Christ as the food of His people during this outward separation. He had been satisfying the poor with bread (see Ps. 132), but the time was not come for His being king; He satisfies the saints meanwhile with far better bread — Himself come down from on high, with His flesh too and His blood: so must He be eaten to live by Him. It is again a full development of the new thing, preceded by a complete picture of the historical positions Christ would take — prophet, priest, and king — each in its place connected with it. To Mr. N. it is a "useless miracle." I am sorry for him — yes, unfeignedly sorry.

{*"What was I to say of useless miracles, like that of Peter and Jesus walking on the water — or that of many saints coming out of their graves to shew themselves, or of a poetical sympathy of the elements, such as the earthquake and rending of the temple-veil when Jesus died?" (Phases, p. 131.)}

173 Such wonderful testimony as "many saints coming out of their graves" after Christ's resurrection, surely was not useless to shew that death was then overcome. In order to furnish such a testimony they must have appeared. Their doing so "to many" precluded the idea of its being the heated imagination of an individual, or the fraudulent story of a few favourers of Jesus's pretensions.

174 DIVINE SYMPATHIES — RENDING OF THE VEIL

As regards poetry, or divine sympathies, it is not difficult to see that they are foreign to Mr. N.'s habits of thought. But he is certainly unfortunate in his choice of objections to the genius of the extraordinary events mentioned in scripture. If any one have the most obvious meaning and at the same time be of the highest possible importance, and especially characteristic meaning, it is the rending of the veil. Matt. 27: 51. Under the Jewish system, God had conferred benefits, given laws, sanctioned them by judgments; but man had been kept at a distance. God had never revealed Himself. He dwelt "in the thick darkness;" and if He condescended to dwell amongst men, He was within the veil, where none could approach — in a word, unseen. He governed from His throne; but direct approach was forbidden. The thick darkness and the barrier of Sinai, or the veil of an unlighted holy of holies, secluded Him from man. Had He shewn Himself in light to a sinful world, it must have been utter condemnation. Darkness had no communion with light. Unseen, He might in patient grace bear much which man's ignorance committed, and govern in mercy. But in due time, when man had been fully proved in all possible ways — without law, under law, under promise, prophecy, government, and even grace in the mission of God's own Son — and proved utterly bad, the time was come for God to shew Himself in grace, such as He really was. Had He done so before, man could not have been properly put to the test. This he now has been; and then in infinite grace, when we were yet without strength, in due time Christ dies for the ungodly. Now if God came forth merely as light or holiness when man was wholly wicked — his will antagonistic, as Mr. N. admits — He must, in the nature of things, have driven man out of His presence, unless holiness means allowing sin, whereas it means not allowing it. Yet God must be holy (that is, He cannot allow sin when He deals with it, or He would be morally like it, which would be a blasphemous denial of Him). How, then, does He act? In the death of Christ He manifests His holiness in the perfect taking away of sin, that His perfect love may flow out, never so shewn to men as in this act. Now God can fully reveal Himself without a veil. His holiness is perfect blessing, because shining out in absolute love, sin being put away. As a sign of this wonderful all-changing change, the veil which before hid Him is rent in twain from the top to the bottom, signifying Christ's death, according to the whole figurative arrangement employed to typify these things. And so the New Testament uses this event: "Having therefore . . . boldness to enter into the holiest by the blood of Jesus, by a new and living way, which he hath opened to us, through the veil, that is to say his flesh . . . let us draw near with a true heart, in full assurance of faith," etc. Heb. 10: 20. Again: "Into the second [that within the veil] went the high priest alone once every year, not without blood . . . the Holy Ghost this signifying, that the way into the holiest of all was not yet made manifest, while as the first tabernacle was yet standing: which was a figure," etc. Heb. 9: 7-8.

175 Now here we have the veil and its accompaniments declared to have precisely this force in the mind of the Holy Ghost. According to the whole system of scripture, and that in its deepest moral elements, whether of man's relationship with God, or in reference to the peculiar position of Israel, which we know historically was then closing in, the rending of the veil had the most clear and weighty significance. Nothing could have had so much. It was the central expression of the whole change of the divine way of dealing with man, and of man's relationship with God by the cross. And here I would remark, that to ascertain the importance and "genius" of a fact relating to a given part of any system, I must take such system within itself. It is another question whether the whole system be right or wrong. But within itself — and the veil was a part, and a central part, of the system then established of God — nothing could have such a distinct signification as its rending. It signified, as I have said, the change of the whole relationship of God and man. If I refer to a veil and its rending, I must consider the meaning of its being there, to know the importance of its being rent. God's being concealed or revealed is not an unimportant idea; and the rending, at Christ's death, of the veil which concealed His throne and glory, is not difficult to understand. It is a figure, of course, as all these parts of the tabernacle or temple were, but a figure of the most intelligible simplicity, and pregnant with meaning. It seems to me that the end of this page of Mr. N.'s book is an unfortunate occasion to ask people, as he there does, to withdraw the charge of being "superficial."

THE EARTHQUAKE

As to the earthquake, I cannot see anything out of place in God's marking, by an event peculiarly calculated to attract attention and overawe the mind, the solemn moment of the death of His beloved and only-begotten Son. If there were no God, or if creation were not in His power, it would be another affair; but I should have thought this eventful act of man's enmity against God, and the death of the Lord in the world which was made by Him, passing unnoticed and unmarked by some notable signal of its importance and character, would have been much more surprising. An earthquake was ever felt as shewing God's noticing, and solemnly marking that notice, of things on earth. Could there be such an occasion of doing so as the rejection and death of His beloved Son by wicked men, and the accomplishment of His mighty and wondrous work?

176 THE MIRACLES OF ELIJAH AND ELISHA

If the miracles of Elijah and Elisha, which form the next subject of Mr. N.'s objections, are examined, it will be seen that those of the former are judicial on evil; of the latter (save the case of the children devoured by bears, shewing that judgment will accompany, for despisers, the return of blessing), saving, and characterized by grace and life-giving. Elijah, declaring all attempt to bring back Israel useless, passes through each place which characterized Israel's relation to God, until he reaches the place of the curse, and the well-known symbol of death, and ascends up. Elisha's ministry does not proceed from Sinai, nor return to it: heavenly glory is its starting-point. He crosses Jordan again, takes away the curse from Jericho, and all his miracles were accomplished in saving, healing, cleansing, taking away death, and the like, save the one noticed. One of these remarkable servants of God marked out the course of Him whose Spirit they both had, under the law, through the curse, up to heaven; and then the other in life-giving power and blessing, as taking away the curse. This character of Elisha's ministry is closed and crowned by shewing the resurrection power attached to that which it so vividly presented. When Romish saints do such things it will be time to discuss the analogy alleged by Mr. N. to exist in this case.

THE DEATH OF UZZAH

As to Uzzah,* God did not make Himself known under the law as "the Father of mercies and God of all comfort." He maintained in this particular case His holy majesty, when Israel had grievously forgotten it. They were all in flagrant contravention of the law in what they were doing. It was the consequence of this to which the rash Uzzah exposed himself. 2 Sam. 6: 7. He never would have been so exposed if the open violation of the law had not been going on. And this stroke produced a just sense of their being in such a state. David remembered the law, and recognized the neglect of it as having brought on this sad judgment.

{*"Uzzah, when the ark is in danger of falling, puts out his hand to save it, and is struck dead for his impiety! Was this the judgment of the Father of mercies and God of all comfort?" (Phases, p. 132.)}

177 ABIMELECH, AND ESAU

As to Abimelech (Phases, p. 132), it was not justice that God was displaying; nor was He in the case of Esau. (Ib.) In that of Abraham and Abimelech, it was divine care over one He had called out to walk before Him. "He reproved even kings for their sakes, saying, Touch not mine anointed, and do my prophets no harm." Ps. 105: 15. God cares for those He calls to walk before Him. Gen. 20: 3. Abimelech had wantonly taken by tyrannical power a member of Abraham's family. God shews that He will not suffer His people on earth to be touched with impunity — that He would shew Himself careful of those He thus owned. He was made known by it in connection with His people; and this was of the last importance.

Esau and Jacob were distinguished, that it might be seen that it was God's grace, and not man's more agreeable character, which makes the difference between men.

ABRAHAM'S VISITORS AT MAMRE. ELIJAH'S RAVENS

The materialism of Mr. N.'s mind is extraordinarily shewn out in the two following objections,* as to God's visiting Abraham Gen. 18: 1, and feeding Elijah by means of ravens. 1 Kings 17: 4. The gracious intimacy and intercourse of God with Abraham, which gained for the latter the glorious title of "friend of God," to him is nothing but a physical question of eating. It is astonishing how this system debases everything it touches. There is not a lovelier picture to be found than the gracious condescension (fitted, indeed, to man's childhood in revealed blessings) of God to Abraham; while the mystery in which it was clothed added to the solemnity, and exercised faith, and indeed instructs us now in the relationship of God with the earth in Christ. Abraham was unfit to know the high spiritual privileges for which this very condescension prepared the way; but Elohim in this did the principal thing that was needed. He assured the heart of His servant, in a way in which he could seize and feel it, of His interest in him, of His affection and, I may say, confidence. Now this is everything with us. No doubt this is known now by fuller, more spiritual means; but the assuring the heart of it was the great thing — the assuring it in practical exercises. We see the effect in Abraham's pleading for Sodom.

{*"Could I any longer overlook the gross imagination of antiquity, which made Abraham and Jehovah dine on the same carnal food, like Tantalus with the gods? — which fed Elijah by ravens, and set angels to bake cakes for him?" (Phases, p. 132.) I have almost hesitated to copy this low and vulgar scoffing.}

178 It was the same in feeding Elijah by means of the ravens, during the famine by which Israel was judged. Would Mr. N. prefer indifference on God's part to those He had called to trust in Him, and who were suffering for Him? Now temporal care was the sign then of mercy. So the touching interest shewn by angelic ministry to His weary-hearted servant in the lengthened journey his impatience had cast on him. And here the peculiar fitness of God's dealing is evident. Had he been, like Moses or Christ, sustained by a kind of abstraction from a human state, it would have been out of place. Elijah, though a man of extraordinary faithfulness and devotedness, at this moment quailed before the dangers that beset the faithful, and retired to Sinai to complain to God. His journey there was in one sense ordered of God. Man could not restore the authority of a broken law. Elijah, who sought to bring back Israel to faithfulness, to Jehovah, and His law, has to go to Jehovah and tell Him it is in vain. No means could be more appropriate than the sense of failure in him who attempted it; yet he returns to Sinai as a divine witness of this failure. Hence he comes to God with the peculiar solemn separation from the world, in a measure, which marked the intercourse of Moses with God, and the temptation of Jesus; but while there was something of this solemnity in the intercourse, yet, as he was flying through failing courage to God, it was not the moment for unmingled manifestation of power. Was he to be repulsed? No. What he failed in was the adequate sense of God's interest in His people. Hence, if there was not all the peculiar glory of the forty days' abstraction from the conditions of human existence which were found in Moses and in Christ, there was what showed this tender regard of God, and care over the smallest circumstances which concerned His people, and sustained them for the difficulties of the way to come to God.

179 The ways of God are perfect; they have been ever condescendingly suited to men's, in circumstances which spoke great principles to the heart, and were immaterial save as shewing the nearness, condescension, tenderness of God, and His interest in His people — most unspeakably precious, as having this character in a human way, which could alone give the intimacy and the nearness to human thought which was fully realized in Christ. To the infidel it is a question of cakes! This is quite worthy of the system which shuts out God in His gracious nearness to man, and therefore never rises, in judging of circumstances, above the low necessities of the human mind. "Sir, give me of this water, that I thirst not, neither come hither to draw," is the level of an unreached conscience. Conscience must be reached, to get the intelligence which can perceive that it is a prophet, and that there are higher thoughts to be had than these.

ARNOLD ON THE GOSPELS

Mr. Newman refers (Phases, pp. 132, 133) to Arnold's rationalist thoughts as to scripture, as confirming his views as to the first three gospels, and leading him to accept John's at this period of his researches. Arnold meant well, doubtless, in building chiefly on the gospel of John, as Mr. N. states; but yielding to infidelity never does any good, because it is accepting its title to judge God. If I do, it has an equal right and equal reason to reject John as Matthew, or anything else it likes. It is infidelity; and woe be to it! It will be judged by the word it has rejected, and know that it is God's then, when it is a sword in Christ's mouth instead of a gospel.

The Irrationalism of Infidelity: Section f.

Being a reply to "Phases of Faith"*

J. N. Darby.

{*London: 1853.}

<06001-129E> File Section f.

179 ELOHISTIC AND JEHOVISTIC SOURCES OF MOSAIC HISTORY

The statement as to "Elohistic and Jehovistic"* sources of the Mosaic history (words which I hope my readers have never heard before, and very worthy of their German infidel source, and which they are happy if they never hear again) is without any other foundation than ignorance and the low German habits of criticism. I say, low habits.** There is (at least in what I have seen) a plodding diligence, no doubt, to find out something which has the character of human learning, no matter what, but something which will make a book (which somebody else has not made); but then it has all a downward tendency, and never rises above a grovelling pre-occupation with the external means of truth, or the spinning out their ideas of what ought to be. Take even Michaelis, a learned man and attractive by his modesty. When he comes to touch the interpretation of scripture, it is puerile to the last degree. A child who reads the scriptures with a little simple intelligence would smile at the wonders he finds out by Syriac and Hebrew (and, if Marsh is right, often a very slovenly use of them), and the working of his own mind. It is such naïf nonsense, and brought out with such good faith, that it produces the kindly feeling one has for the foolish questions of a child which betray his innocence. The mind of God in the passage never seems to occur to him, though he believes scripture to be inspired. Now Jehovah and Elohim are always used each in its own proper sense: the latter as the Creator God, God in His own being as such; the former as made known to Israel, a personal name in which He dealt with Israel, and even with the world though they did not own Him. The appropriateness of each is always sensible to him who seizes the bearing of the passage in which it is used. When the relationship or work of God known in relationship to Israel is expressed, we have "Jehovah." When the account is simply historical, God (Elohim) is used. In some cases either would give, if not so perfect sense, yet very little different; since Jehovah is the true Elohim, and Elohim is Jehovah; and the use of Jehovah in these latter cases amounts to the writer having God as known to himself in his mind.

{*"For some time back I had paid special attention to the book of Genesis; and I had got aid in the analysis of it from a German volume. That it was based on at least two different documents, technically called the Elohistic and Jehovistic, soon became clear to me." (Phases, p. 133.)}

{**Even Stuart, I judge, on the canon of scripture, does not escape this. For if we do not read with God, but simply as men, we are already on this low ground. Thus, judging as he and others do of the scriptural importance or authenticity of a book, by the enquiry if it has an ethical tendency for me: — what a thoroughly narrow-minded way of looking at it, instead of seeing it as part of an immense and divine conception and communication of the whole history of men, and God's ways with them. Thus, for instance, Esther. Is the providential care of Israel even during its rejection not a principle of immense importance in God's dealings with men and His people? It is of the very last importance. Is such a knowledge of God not ethical for me? He could not reveal Himself, or it would not be the time of their rejection. All the style of reasoning I am commenting on, I must be forgiven for calling by the well known term of "pettifogging." But I anticipate.}

181 The Psalms notably shew the different use of the two terms, as does the Book of Jonah. I will take a special example from the Psalms to shew this — Psalms 14 and 53. These are very nearly the same; but in one Jehovah is used, in the other Elohim. In Psalm 14 Jehovah is used. Hence it says, "They were in great fear, for [Elohim — God Himself] GOD is in the generation of the righteous." The relationship, the consequence of this name Jehovah, is expressed in the presence of Elohim with the righteous in verse 6. "Ye have shamed the counsel of the poor, because Jehovah is his refuge." Now in Psalm 53 Elohim is used; it is the historical fact of what they were in the sight of Elohim. Hence we have, "There were they in great fear, where no fear was; for Elohim hath scattered the bones of him that encampeth against thee; thou hast put them to shame, because Elohim hath despised them." These psalms convey the same truths; but the thought of relationship prevails where Jehovah is used; whereas, where Elohim is used, we have the general result as regards the enemy.*

{*It may be interesting to those who do study scripture with spiritual understanding, however feeble, to draw their attention to the circumstance, that all the psalms in the first Book (i.e., to the end of Psalm 41) are addressed to Jehovah, except Psalm 16, in which, as cited by Paul in proof of Christ's partaking of human nature, and by Peter as proof of His resurrection, Christ's taking His place with man is most clearly brought out. "Preserve me, O Elohim, for in thee [in what God was as such, He having become man] do I put my trust. Thou hast said to Jehovah, Thou art my Adon [Lord]; my goodness extendeth not to thee." (He takes the place of subjection, and that in Israel, not as equal with the Father. "Why callest thou me good? there is none good but God.") "[Thou hast said] to the saints that are in the earth, and the excellent, All my delight is in them." He takes His place now along with the saints, not with Jehovah: as to Him, He takes the place of a servant. How deep and admirable are the instructions of the word! Now all these psalms of Book 1. suppose relationship existing (as, however deserving rejection and not a people, was the case in Israel when Jesus was amongst them). But in Psalm 53 (i.e., Book 2) it will be seen that they are cast out from God's sight — can no more frequent His temple and worship. Hence we at once find not Jehovah, but Elohim addressed. And so it is through this Book; though, of course, He is owned to be Jehovah, and Jehovah as the only true Elohim. I have no doubt that, prophetically, Book 1 refers to the Jews in the latter day, returned to Jerusalem, and enjoying outwardly their hoped-for advantages there; and that Book 2 has its application when they are driven out in the time of the great tribulation mentioned in Matthew 24. It will be seen that Book 3 (beginning with Psalm 73) refers to all Israel (i.e., the ten tribes as well as the two) as such, and not specially the Jews, but only to the clean in heart, however, among them. They are still driven out — the temple pillaged and defaced — and Elohim is addressed, until the last confederacy in Psalm 83, where the judgment prophetically spoken of introduces Jehovah, known as Most High over all the earth. Then in Psalm 84 they address Jehovah, and turn and mount up to the tabernacles of Jehovah Sabaoth and His courts, finding that man blessed whose trust is in Jehovah. Thence onward is praise to Jehovah, with contrition and exercise of heart, mercy celebrated in the true, gracious, or holy One (Chasidika), Christ, the true David, which closes the Book. I may just add, that Book 4 celebrates in all its bearings, but in special connection with Israel, the introduction of the first-begotten into the world (Psalm go giving Jehovah's interest in Israel; Psalm 91, Christ's taking Jehovah the God of Israel as the true Elion Shaddai — the names by which Melchizedek blessed Abraham), then celebrates Him in this character and develops the coming of the Lord to reign, and that in detail from the cry of the needy till He is fully again seated between the cherubim. In Book 5 from Psalm 101 we have the general bearings of it all, and the praises and hallelujahs which result from it — a kind of historical comment upon all God's dealings with the world, Israel, the Messiah, and His place while all was going on. Already, in the last psalms of Book 4, Christ's government (that, while utterly brought low even to death, He was Jehovah) is brought out in the most astonishing way. The healing of the paralytic in Luke is a distinct allusion to Jehovah's name in Psalm 103: 3. But I must not go farther here on this subject.}

182 Again, look at Jonah, where there is not and cannot be the smallest pretence of two accounts. The intercourse between Jonah and God is under the name Jehovah. When the seamen learn who his God is that he is running away from, they fear Jehovah, and call upon Jehovah. Where it is a general testimony of repentance in strangers (Jonah 3: 5 to the end), it is Elohim. And when we have the general supreme dealings of God with Jonah, to make Him shew what He was with man as God, it is again Elohim. Now in Jonah this has peculiar force, because the relationship of Israel with Gentiles, and of Gentiles with Jehovah, is in question. It is the last public direct testimony of God to Gentiles before Christ. And this goodness of God to Gentiles is really what Jonah dreaded, as discrediting his message of judgment, which Jewish pride might like to see executed. (See Jonah 4: 2.) Hence on one side we have Gentiles brought, in the moment of judgment on the Israelite, to confess Jehovah; and on the other, God, as such, shewing Himself good, the faithful Creator, who thought of those who could not distinguish between their right hand and their left, and even of the cattle. At the same time the proper relationship of Jehovah to His prophet, as such, is also fully maintained, and the word Jehovah, his God, more than once repeated.

Now here we have the elements of Jehovah's grace, and Elohim's true character and supremacy; what, in the nauseous systematizing of ignorance, is reduced to some imaginary* documents, which none of them know anything about, but suppose. We have, I say, these two titles brought out in the clearest and most instructive way, as unfolding divine relationships for those who have the heart to delight in them, and justify that wisdom which is the joy of her children. The infidel must imagine and suppose some external cause, because he knows nothing of the real divine force of these things. And I would remark, that I am not here bringing an external proof of the truth of the Jewish system; but that, supposing its existence, the reason for the distinctive use of the words Jehovah and Elohim is fully given within the system itself — is consistent and appropriate. This the infidel ought to have seen or at least examined; because it is a part of the system he pretends to judge (and there are adequate proofs of its consistency within itself, which make his arguments perfectly futile): for what he finds imaginary reasons for is accounted for on the plainest principles of the system he is judging. For everyone can see that Jehovah was a proper name of God to Israel, and declared positively to be such, though the name of the one true supreme God. Now for the believer the use of the names of God carries blessed divine instruction with it, for all His names have a meaning: Almighty, Jehovah, Father, all have a sense to his soul. But it is not even rational to seek for a reason in imaginary causes, when the real reason lies within the system and makes a clearly stated and characteristic part of it. Now such is the difference between Jehovah and Elohim.

{*I would just add here, that it is perfectly indifferent to me if Moses used five hundred documents, provided what he in result gives me expresses exactly, perfectly, and completely, what God meant to communicate to me. I have taken the case of Jonah, because we have the use of Jehovah and Elohim where there is no pretence for this flimsy notion of documents. I may add, that I never found a case in which the use of either of these words did not seem to me precisely appropriate; and this distinctive use is eminently instructive. In the Psalms this is peculiarly the case. This internal evidence of suitableness to relationship is the strongest possible kind of proof of the genuineness and (the subject being moral and divine) of the divine character of the record, in which this suitableness is uniformly found. Thus, not to speak of the Psalms, where it is shewn more in detail (see preceding note), the Book of Jonah touches on the relationship of Israel to Gentiles, of the peculiar God of Israel with Gentiles, of God as such with the latter, with creation, so as to put everything in its place — without an idea of proving anything about it according to the whole history of the Bible from Genesis to the end of Chronicles. It shews the feeling of a Jew on one side, and God's way of looking at it on the other. The proper place of Jehovah, in His character of God of Israel, is always preserved; and yet it is shewn that this very Jehovah was the supreme God of goodness to men, let them be in the height of their pride, if there was room for repentance a character which He would not relinquish even towards cattle. Nothing can be more important as a key to the whole question of God being Jehovah, and the peculiar God of Israel, and yet the one supreme and universal God (a thought so easily lost, at any rate as to goodness, if not as to power, by Jewish pride). It corrects all that a Jew could draw falsely from his peculiar position.}

184 DIFFICULT NARRATIVES

As to these alleged "difficult narratives" Mr. N. is very obscure. One might suppose that the double accounts he alleges to exist are in every case distinguished by the use of Jehovah and Elohim. This is not the case. But I suppose he uses the fact of these names being employed to establish, at least, the existence of two documents, and their use by the author of the book of Genesis, from which they are drawn. But even this is untenable ground; because, if the two documents were distinctively characterized by these two names of God, an account alleged to be drawn from one of the distinct documents would not, as it often does, employ both of these names; nor two accounts, alleged to exist because the writer copied two distinct documents, employ, both of them, only one and the same name. Such accounts cannot be referred to two distinct documents characterized by the distinct employment of each.* Mr. N. slips over all this with a convenient looseness habitual with infidel objectors.

{*The reader has only to read Genesis 6: 7, to convince himself of the intermingling of the words God and Lord (i.e., Jehovah), though never without reason, to see the futility of the system. I shall cite some examples farther on; but it is easily seen by reading these chapters.}

However, none of his objections on this ground (rather a favourite one with German discoverers) has the least validity. It was important, in a book addressed to Israel, to shew that Jehovah, their God, was the one true supreme Elohim, the Creator, in contrast with the demon gods of the heathen. Hence, in Genesis, where creation and the ante-Israelitish history is given, we have these two names brought in together (the force of which is much lost in our English translation), or so used, as to make it clear that Jehovah is Elohim and Elohim is Jehovah, though this last was taken as a name of relationship only at the Exodus, on which we will say a few words farther on. The very creed, as I may call it, of Israel marks clearly the use of these words:"Hear, O Israel, Jehovah, our God, is one Jehovah." "And what nation is there that hath Elohim," says Moses, "so nigh to them as Jehovah, our Elohim, is in all things that we call upon him for?" Deut. 4: 7 "Did ever people hear the voice of Elohim speaking out of the midst of the fire?" "Or hath Elohim assayed to go and take him a nation from the midst of another nation, etc., as Jehovah, your Elohim, did for you in Egypt before your eyes? Unto thee it was showed, that thou mightest know that Jehovah, he is Elohim; there is none else beside him." Deut. 4: 33-34 So the people, when Elijah brought down fire from heaven, cry out, "Jehovah, he is Elohim; Jehovah, he is Elohim." 1 Kings 18: 39.

185 Having thus the undoubted importance of these words, let us apply this clear principle to that part of the history in which it was necessary to shew that Elohim was Jehovah, the Creator, Israel's God.

I have already alluded to the creation. We have there, first, as a general history, Elohim (God) creating everything in succession; and Elohim rests. (Gen. 1; 2: 1-3.) Then we have Jehovah Elohim, and the particular condition of things under Him, this kind of repetition being universal in scripture history, when subjects are considered in a new light (as, if I give Benjamin's progeny as such, and Saul's royal one for example as such). I am not exactly aware of three accounts, as Mr. N. alleges,* of man's creation. We have, besides Adam, a special account of Eve's creation. In this second chapter we have a detailed account of the condition and circumstances of man — the peculiar position he was placed in as lord of the creation — his wife's to him — out of what he was formed — how he became a living soul: details as essential all of them, when his relationship with Jehovah Elohim was unfolded, as the historical account of Elohim's creating all things in general (among which man had his place) was in its place too.

{*"The creation of man is three times told." (Phases, p. 133.)}

In this there is only a perfect communication of divine truth, each thing being perfectly in its place.

NOAH AND THE FLOOD

Let us turn to Noah and the flood.*

{*"The account of the flood is made up out of two discrepant originals, marked by the names Elohim and Jehovah; of which one makes Noah take into the ark seven pairs of clean, and single [or double]? pairs of unclean, beasts; while the other gives him two and two of all kinds without distinguishing the clean." (Phases, p. 134.)}

We have the sons of Elohim. (Gen. 6: 2.) As to them, and in connection with His peculiar dealings with man, Jehovah said (ver. 3), "My Spirit shall not always strive with man." We have "sons of Elohim" (ver. 4), because here the expression is characteristic. "Elohim saw" (ver. 5), because here it was God in His own nature and character looking at man as such. "Jehovah repented" (ver. 6), because here it is His special thoughts and dealings about man as His — His feelings in connection with this relationship. Again (ver. 7) Jehovah, and Jehovah in relationship with Noah. Noah (ver. 9) "walked with God:" here it was morally characteristic, not his relationship to Jehovah under that name.

186 "The earth was corrupt before Elohim" — again it refers to God's abstract nature and character. (Ver. 11, 12.) So (ver. 13) Elohim takes up His creation to declare its end to Noah. He had the Creator's title to destroy His creation. Elohim Himself commanded Noah what to do in this case. In Genesis 7 we enter into the full relationship of God with Noah as a deliverer; and it is Jehovah, just as we saw with Adam. There Elohim created. Jehovah had to do with Adam in a special way in the garden. Here Elohim is going to destroy His creation, and Jehovah has special relationship with Noah in the ark, as we have seen in Genesis 6: 3, 6-8, the peculiar relative feelings of Jehovah, not the simple character and supremacy of Elohim.

Yet, fully to identify the two accounts and connect them, we have in Genesis 7: 16, "And they that went in, went in male and female of all flesh, as Elohim had commanded him,* and Jehovah shut him in." Now here we have the general command of Elohim given in the preceding chapter about His creatures to preserve them as Creator; and then Jehovah shut him (Noah) in — that is, in the same verse, the special name of relationship in case of the faithful and chosen patriarch. Mr. N. says, "The two documents may indeed in this narrative be almost rediscovered by mechanical separation." (Ib.) Certainly it would not be more than mechanical; for German theology nothing more, indeed, would be wanting.

{*The connection of the two names here makes the double-document system absurd.}

Again, in Genesis 8, in preserving mercy we have Elohim's care of His preserved creation, and its deliverance to subsist on the recovered earth again. Then Noah builds an altar (ver. 20), and Jehovah's name immediately appears again, because it was important to shew that it was indeed Israel's God that was thus worshipped — God in relationship with man from the beginning. Elohim then (Gen. 9) begins the world, so to speak, again; but the moment it is a question of relationship (ver. 26), we have Jehovah the God of Shem.

187 I need not pursue this farther. One point only remains to be noticed — the twos and sevens of the animals. In the accounts of Elohim's directions for saving the different races of creatures, they are directed to be taken two of every sort, the male and female, to keep them alive. Nothing can be more simple than the meaning of this. When Jehovah is stating His thoughts as to Noah, and giving His directions in respect to His relationship with man and the earth, He directs Noah to take of clean beasts by sevens, still two and two, male and female; and they all go in two and two, as Elohim had commanded: thus identifying, in the text itself, the two names in a way which would make the dissevering them difficult, even on the mechanical process. The reason for distinguishing the clean beasts (still two and two, male and female) is too obvious to make the smallest difficulty. The twos refer, moreover, to male and female on a general principle. One must be very hard run up for a difficulty, or for a discovery, to find a contradiction here. The fowls of the air, which went in by sevens, are meant evidently clean ones too, as may be seen in Genesis 8: 20.

PHARAOH AND ABIMELECH

The cases of Pharaoh and Abimelech* only confirm the remarks we have made. Moreover, in the parallel part of the passage, Jehovah is used in both cases. Jehovah plagued Pharaoh with great plagues. Jehovah had fast closed up the wombs of the house of Abimelech. Only there is added in Abimelech's case, God having known Abimelech's integrity in the matter, that He (Elohim) warned Abimelech in a dream. Now here Jehovah the God of Israel would have been quite out of place; for Abimelech was a Philistine, and Abraham already distinctively called. Yet, as a gracious God in nature and character, Elohim could chastise Abimelech temporarily for his error, and warn him, though He would preserve the integrity of the family He had chosen.

{*"And here, also, the two which concern Abraham are contrasted as Jehovistic and Elohistic." (Phases, p. 134.)}

Here let me remark, that undoubtedly Abraham was to blame. In the day when God judges the secrets of men's hearts, all this will have its place between God and Abraham; but in His government of the world, all having fallen into idolatry, God was shewing His special care over one called out in grace to bear His name, and walk under His protection. Hence that special care of him and his descendants, till there was no remedy, because they respected the name of Jehovah less than a heathen, as was shewn in Zedekiah's conduct with Nebuchadnezzar. He that touched them Jehovah's called ones, touched Jehovah Himself, who declared He would protect them as El-Shaddaï, the Almighty, such a one touched the apple of His own eye. Jehovah's power as Almighty had to be made good against the apostate and guilty heathen, for the sustaining the faith of His called ones, and the knowledge that there was a God of the earth.

188 But the statement, that these names are contrasted in Abraham's case with Pharaoh and Abimelech, is unfounded. There is no divine warning to Pharaoh; and Jehovah's care of Abraham, in judging each, is related under the same title — Jehovah.

DOUBLE ACCOUNT OF CIRCUMCISION

I do not know what Mr. N. means by a double account of the origin of circumcision;* I know of but one, that in Genesis 17. It is referred to Elohim, but He is called, as appearing to Abraham, Jehovah, and yet gives His name as El-Shaddaï. It was a command connected with the character and nature of God. They were to be a separate people to Him, and the flesh be mortified This "was not of Moses," who brought in specially the name Jehovah as the ground of relationship, "but of the fathers," antecedent to the special relationship of the Jews with Him, and connected with the name "God Almighty," that Abraham might be a father of many nations.

{*"A similar double account is given of the origin of circumcision, of the names Isaac, Israel, Bethel, Beersheba." (Phases, p. 134.)}

OF THE NAME OF ISAAC

There are no two reasons for the name of Isaac. God directs his name to be called Isaac — "laughter" — as a term of joy and gladness at this peculiar blessing to Abraham. Sarah takes up the name when he is born, and says, "God hath made me to laugh;" but this is no double account of his name.

189 JACOB NAMED ISRAEL. BETHEL

God confirms the name of Israel to Jacob; but there is no double account of its origin. On the first occasion God had a controversy with Jacob, but blesses him, strengthens him to prevail in the conflict, and gives him the name of Israel — "a prince who prevailed with God;" yet chastises him, and does not reveal Himself to him. Gen. 32: 28. Jacob after this goes up to the place where his real meeting with God in blessing was to be, and puts away idols out of his house, knowing he is going to meet Him. Then God begins by revealing freely His name, and confirms to Jacob the title He had given him before. Here there is no kind of pretence for making two accounts — one using the word Jehovah, the other "Elohim." Jehovah is used in neither. In the case of Bethel, God appeared to him when he left the land of Canaan, and he called the name of the place "Bethel." God tells him, on returning, to go up there, calling it already Bethel; and then appears a second time there to Jacob, and Jacob thereupon confirms to it the name of "Bethel." He had a double reason; but it is called in the second part of the history Bethel already before he gets there; so that the case is very simple and very clear? and there is no pretence of a reason to speak of it as two distinct independent accounts which are referred to. Gen. 28: 19, Gen. 35: 15.

BEERSHEBA

The name of "Beersheba" was confirmed by Isaac when he also established by oath his boundaries there with Abimelech, as Abraham had done. These circumstances both gave occasion to this name. Being the boundary-wall, the engagement was repeated; and both engagements contributed to give it this name. But here there is not the smallest ground whatever for supposing that it was inattention to some other document, for it is stated (Gen. 26: 18), "And Isaac digged again the wells of water which they had digged in the days of Abraham his father; for the Philistines had stopped them after the death of Abraham. And he called their names after the names by which his father had called them;" and then it goes on to give an additional personal reason why the last had the same name.

190 THE NAME JEHOVAH, ELOHIM, EL-SHADDAÏ

As regards God's saying, "But by my name Jehovah was I not known to them,"* the meaning is as simple as possible. The words are — "And Elohim spake unto Moses" (in the previous verses it is "Jehovah," shewing how unfounded is the supposition of their belonging to distinct documents), "and said unto him, I am Jehovah: and I appeared unto Abraham, unto Isaac, and unto Jacob, by the name of God Almighty; but by my name JEHOVAH was I not known to them." Now here we have Elohim, Jehovah El-Shaddaï, all spoken of the one supreme God as different names, and then the Lord declares, exactly according to Genesis, that to the patriarchs He had revealed Himself as El-Shaddaï. (See Gen. 17; Gen. 35: 11.) This was the name the power of which He was specially to make good in their favour, in protecting them in their wanderings, "what time they went from one nation to another people."

{*"Still more was I struck by the positive declaration in Exodus 6: 3 — that God was NOT known to Abraham, Isaac, or Jacob by the name of Jehovah." (Phases, p. 134.)}

Now that He was calling His people, He reveals Himself to them by another name, as the ground of relationship and of the expectation of faith on their part, as the existing One "who was, and is, and is to come," though still the Almighty. He who now promised would live ever to perform, unchanged and unchangeable. Jehovah was God's proper and peculiar name with His redeemed people. He had never taken this name as the ground of His dealings with Abraham, nor laid it as the basis on which his faith was to act.

In the New Testament, God takes yet another — that of Father. Hence He says, "I will be a Father, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty." That is, God (Elohim), who had the two former names, Jehovah or "Lord," and Shaddaï, "Almighty," now took this special one of Father with the saints From the first calling out of the world to be separate from it God Almighty, Jehovah, Father, characterized successively the position which God assumed for faith. Nothing can be plainer. I believe He is now God Almighty; but it is not the name by which He is known to me: He is known to me by the name of Father "To us there is one God, the Father." If this be all German discoveries are worth, they deserve to be designated by a name which I shall not, however, permit myself to give them. I am sure they are not distinguished by any intelligence of the bearing of the work they are exercising their wits upon, nor the force of the expressions contained in it.

191 TWOFOLD MIRACLE OF THE QUAILS

The twofold miracle of the quails* is, in each case, perfectly in its place, and distinctly dated, and has its own proper moral character. Mr. N. is pleased to say, one shews unacquaintedness with the other. This kind of assertion is very worthy of the boldness of an infidel, but of no one else. An attack upon such a history as the scripture, taken second-hand from flippant German assertions (for such, I must say, they are), without really investigating the grounds of them, does not, I confess, shine, morally speaking, to my eyes. God has permitted, though they have done the best they can, that they should find difficulties (and they are obliged to rest in what is apparent — beneath the surface the conscience would be set at work); as to which the answer is certain and complete in the text (proving that they are superficial, and have not given themselves the trouble to examine the book they judge.) The dates of these two sendings of quails can be accurately ascertained, almost to a day. The only reason Mr. N. has for saying, that one shews unacquaintance with the other, is that the circumstances of one are different from the other, proving they are not the same.

{*"Indeed, a fuller examination shewed, in Exodus and Numbers, a twofold miracle of the quails, of which the latter is so told as to indicate entire unacquaintance with the former." (Phases, p. 134)}

Quails were given before the giving of the law (Ex. 16), immediately after leaving Elim, on the fifteenth day of the second month after leaving Egypt. They stayed a year at Sinai, for the giving of the law, and constructing the tabernacle, &c. And it came to pass on the twentieth day of the second month, in the second year, that the cloud was taken up . . . and the cloud rested in the wilderness of Paran" (Num. 10: 11) after three days' journey. (See ver. 33.) Then came the complaints, the judgment on which gave the name "Taberah" to the place; and immediately after, they stopped and pitched their tents at a place called, from the judgment that fell on them, Kibroth-hattaavah, "the graves of lust." This was their first station after leaving Sinai. We have thus clearly ascertained that a year and eight days, and possibly one or two more, elapsed from one of these events to the other. Their moral character is perfectly in keeping with the epoch at which they happened. If the reader examines the history, he will find that, from the Red Sea to Sinai, all is pure grace. They murmur — and it is said, they shall see the Lord's glory; and they get manna and quails without a reproach. They murmur — the rock is smitten, and they get water without a reproof. Conflict arises — they are made to feel their dependence; but the blessing is maintained, and the Lord is their banner — their conflicts are His.

192 At Sinai they undertake to obey, and to receive the blessing under the condition of their own obedience. They put themselves under law — fruit of that pride of heart which pretends to be able to satisfy God's requirements, and hence is willing to make its blessing depend on its own powers.

The proof is soon given of what the result must be. Before the law is brought down written, they have cast off God altogether. It is broken by them, and Moses breaks the tables.

Mediation comes in; so that they are yet borne with, put again under law, only that they are governed by patient goodness; and chastening and judicial government comes in — a principle which characterized their history up to the Babylonish captivity. Hence when they murmur again, despising the gracious provision of manna (of which the description is thereon again incidentally given*), and insist on meat, and persevere in eating it (though divine power, which they doubted, was shewn in sending it, so that they ought to have been ashamed of their request), while thus gratifying their lust without shame, wrath comes upon them. That is, we see in the most distinct way, the difference of that grace shewn in redemption and exercised towards the redeemed in their need, and the effects of proudly putting oneself under law, and finding, not the fruit of obedience, but the just consequence of those lusts which hinder our walking according to it.

{*"There is a double description of the names." (Phases, p. 134.)}

Nothing can be more deeply instructive than the double giving of quails. Neither, without the other, would have given the instruction which the different events afford.

THE WATER: AARON'S ROD: THE ROCK: MERIBAH

Take again the water.* If the reader reads from Numbers 10, he will see grace condescending to lead them; the ark, which by right ought to have been in the middle of the host, goes before for three days' journey, to seek a place for them to rest in — as Jesus goes before His own sheep. This was grace. The Lord serves them as guide, above and beyond the legal relationship. From Numbers 11 onwards we see Israel's rebellion, and the working of the flesh developed in its different forms: Taberah — Kibroth Hattaavah — Miriam and Aaron despising Moses — despising the pleasant land after sending the spies — the open rebellion of Korah, Dathan, and Abiram, against Aaron and Moses, priest and king in Jeshurun. How are the people to be led through? Destruction may be just, but cannot lead us to the end of our journey. Here then is given a sign of the principle. Aaron's (that is, the priest's rod) is to guide and govern them, and that not in judgment, as the use of Moses' had been, but in life-giving resurrection power — the dry stick blossoms and bears fruit — the sign of priesthood with divine power of life. Grace in this way can alone lead us through — Moses' rod of law and judgment cannot. With this, consequently, is given what might seem otherwise out of place — the means of cleansing unintentional defilements unwittingly incurred (Num. 19, the red heifer), the connection of which with our subject is evident. Murmurs come in again for water, and Moses is told to take the rod and speak to the rock, and it should "give forth his water." There is no need to smite it with the rod of judgment now. But Moses does not rise to the height of divine grace, but, occupied with himself, talks of himself and Aaron, and smites the rock with his rod instead of glorifying God. God rises above the unbelief even of Moses, and gives the water, glorifying Himself; but shews that on the legal principle it is impossible to reach the land. Moses is shut out of it. The first time the rock had to be smitten ("and that rock was Christ") to have the spiritual stream to drink of; but afterwards it was not so: it was only to be spoken to, and it would give its water. That is, under the grace of priesthood, which we need not for redemption, which is already accomplished, but for the weakness of the wilderness, it has only to be asked for and obtained. Thus we have sovereign grace giving freely and gratuitously; then legal condition, and failure and judgment; then priestly care and living grace affording, in spite of failure, the needed supply as the means of carrying the people through the wilderness to the promised land, after every form of the unbelief of the heart had been brought out. I may add, to complete the instruction, that quite at the close the question arises, Can these failing ones enter? The full justifying grace, and blessing too, is brought out, and in presence of the enemy it is declared as the full answer, "He hath not seen iniquity in Jacob, nor beheld perverseness in Israel."

{*"Water is twice brought out of rock by the rod of Moses, whose faith is perfect the first time, and fails the second time." (Phases, p. 134.)}

194 Am I going out of scriptural principles to indulge my own fancy in these things? No; "they happened unto them for ensamples (τύποι types — forms of truth), and are written for our admonition, on whom the ends of the world are come." And in these admirably instructive accounts, whose doubling gives them their peculiar character and force, infidelity sees, that is, imagines, two documents. And what more? Nothing? Yes, UNDENIABLE* error. There may have been fifty documents, for aught I know; only, if there were, God has marvellously used the contents for our instruction. Meribah means "strife," and the two cases of striving were called strife.** That is very surprising. As to a second appointment of elders,*** I may have easily, it is true, forgotten something; but I know of none. There were rulers of tens, fifties, hundreds, and thousands probably, appointed by the advice of Jethro; but that is quite another thing.

{*"That there was error on a great scale in all this was undeniable." (Phases, p. 135.) We have yet some cases of it to examine.}

{**"The name of Meribah is twice bestowed." (Phases, p. 134.)}

{***"A needless second appointment of elders of the congregation." (Phases, p. 134.)}

DOUBLE CONSECRATION OF AARON AND HIS SONS

There is not a double consecration of Aaron and his sons.* There is the full detail of all the tabernacle, and along with it the ordinances for the consecration of the priests; and there is the historical account of its being done elsewhere, but there is nothing extraordinary in that. And so perfectly in its place is the account of what was to be done when first given, that in Exodus 28 the ordinances for the consecration of Aaron come in between those articles of the tabernacle which were the display of God, or connected with the people, and those which the priests particularly used in drawing near as such. These last are described after the priests' clothing, and the ordinances for their consecration. Articles in the same part of the tabernacle are thus separated from one another, and connected with that part of the service to which they belong. To a careless observer the order seems disorder. The moment you perceive there are the two parts (God's dealing with the people, or displaying Himself in any way; and men, i.e., priests, approaching Him) the distinction and order is as clear as possible, and the introduction of the priests' garments and consecration has peculiar appropriateness, and gives a force to all that it could not have without — just as the sacrifice for passing defilements did in the midst of Israel's failings in Numbers. That the consecration should be historically given is most natural; the whole order of Israel depended on it, and circumstances** are mentioned there of the very last importance and largest import.

{*"A double consecration of Aaron and his sons." (Phases, p. 134.)}

{**It was there the consuming of the sacrifice by God Himself proved His acceptance of the whole order instituted, and led all the people at once to adore. And the acts of Aaron and Moses shew the peculiar position of the priesthood by itself, and the priesthood and royalty united, in a point of view which is of the largest interest in reference to Christ.}

195 DOUBLE PROMISE OF A GUARDIAN ANGEL

The statement (Phases, p. 134) that "there is a double promise of a guardian angel" can have weight only with those who do not give themselves the trouble to read the passages. In Exodus 23 the Lord says, "Behold, I send an Angel before thee to keep thee in the way, and to bring thee into the place which I have prepared. Beware of him and obey his voice; provoke him not, for he will not pardon your transgressions, for my name is in him." God goes before them by angelic power, by what He calls (ver. 23) "mine Angel." That is, an intervention of God in that way which was really Himself, only in the way of angelic power. Thus Jacob says (Gen. 48), "God, before whom my fathers Abraham and Isaac did walk, the God which fed me all my life long unto this day, the Angel which redeemed me from all evil, bless the lads." So where God, as I AM, manifested Himself in a flame of fire in the bush, He is called "the Angel" in the bush. Where Jacob declares at Peniel (i.e., the face of God) that he had seen God face to face, and lived, Hosea says "he had power over the angel and prevailed." So in the case of Manoah it is said "the angel of Jehovah did wondrously," and Manoah says "we have seen God," and the words are received as Jehovah's, telling them such and such things. He is called all through the passage the Angel Jehovah, as many translate it. Subsequently to what is spoken of in Exodus 23 Israel made the golden calf, and the Lord would have refused to go with them, as, if present, He must consume them, and declared He would send an angel with Moses. Moses intercedes, and the Lord says His presence shall go with him. To make of this general promise and the special dealing in reference to their guilt and God's prolonged mercy a double promise, is mere trifling.

196 DEATH OF AARON

As regards the difficulty arising from the passage in Deuteronomy* regarding Aaron's death, it is one of those passages which are the strongest possible proofs of not only the authenticity but the personal knowledge of the author, because there is apparent contradiction, which is immediately solved when you examine all the details — a proof that it is written by one who knew them, and, having the consciousness of the links which united the parts, was not sensible of the necessity of making it hang together as a fabricated story.

{*"Comprising Deuteronomy within my view, I met two utterly incompatible accounts of Aaron's death." (Phases, p. 135.)}

It is quite true that, in appearance, Deuteronomy 10 makes Aaron die before reaching Meribah-kadesh, where, according to Numbers, he sinned and incurred the penalty of death. Mr. N.'s proof is Numbers 33: 31-38. Moseroth being mentioned in verse 31 before Kadesh, where Moses sinned; Mosera, in Deuteronomy 10 as the place of Aaron's death, which would be thus before coming to Meribah, where he sinned; for in Deuteronomy 10 it is said he died at Mosera, consequently at Moseroth (Num. 33: 31); but in this list of Numbers this Moseroth is before he came to Kadesh-barnea, where the sin was committed for which he was condemned to die in the wilderness. In one word, Mosera, where he died, Deuteronomy 10, is in Numbers 33: 31 before Kadesh, where he sinned.

Now, if we look at these accounts superficially (Mr. N. must forgive me if I employ the word he has consecrated to this use), this objection may seem plausible enough. But it is perfectly certain that Israel went from Moseroth to Ezion-gaber, back to Moseroth, and again back to Ezion-gaber, then to go round Edom. This circumstance, which clears up the whole matter, shews that the knowledge of the facts was of that personal kind which is not aware of the difficulty of one who is a stranger to them, because personal consciousness of the whole is a continual explanation of them. If the reader pays attention, the first two places mentioned in Deuteronomy are in inverse order to that in which they are named in Numbers. I may first remark that they continued in this neighbourhood thirty-seven years; so that many journeys might have been made; but there is something more precise than that. In Numbers 33 they go from Moseroth by Bene-jaakan, Hor-hagidgad, to Ezion-gaber. From Ezion-gaber they go back to Hor. (Num. 21) After Aaron's death they go from Mount Hor back to the Red Sea — that is, to Ezion-gaber — to compass the I and of Edom, and go up the other side of the mountain district. That is, we have one journey from Moseroth to Ezion-gaber, another back to Mount Hor, where Aaron died; and, as Numbers 21 shews, a journey from Mount Hor back to Ezion-gaber. At the end of the second of these journeys Aaron dies; that is, when they had gone back to Mount Hor.

197 That the last journey from Mount Hor to Ezion-gaber was after the death of Aaron is certain from Numbers 21, because we have the attack of Arad the Canaanite there, and also in Numbers 33: 40. So that after the last verse we have a journey from Mount Hor to the Red Sea (as in chap. 21); but in chapter 33 we had one already from Moseroth to Ezion-gaber through a district called Hor-hagidgad. Hence they must have gone back from Ezion-gaber to the place Aaron died at, still on the west side of Edom; for it is only on the last journey they turned round to go up on the east side.

The first journey from Moseroth to Ezion-gaber was by Bene-jaakan or "the sons of Jaakan," Hor-hagidgad, and Jotbathah. The second journey was back from Ezion-gaber to the place where Aaron died. Now the journey in Deuteronomy is from the wells of the children of Jaakan to Mosera (that is, part of a journey back along the road they had come, at the end of which, in Mosera, Aaron dies); exactly as, in Numbers, we have seen them go back from Ezion-gaber to Hor where Aaron died, and thence set out again for Ezion-gaber.

But this is not all. We have in Deuteronomy some stations after Aaron's death in Mosera, whither they had returned from Ezion-gaber, as in Numbers we have seen they did. They go thence to Gudgodah, and from Gudgodah to Jotbathah (that is, the road back again to Ezion-gaber, which is exactly the route spoken of in Numbers 21 and 33). In a word, Numbers gives us a journey from Moseroth to Ezion-gaber — one back to Hor — and thence back to Ezion-gaber, or the Red Sea, finally to leave the district. At the end of the one back to Hor Aaron dies.*

{*It may be well to refer to the passages together. Numbers 33: 31-35, Moseroth to Ezion-gaber; 36-48, by Kadesh, from Ezion-gaber, to Hor, back on the west of the mountainous district, compassing mount Seir many days. Then, having compassed this mountain long enough (Deut. 2: 1-3), Numbers 21: 4, they go back again to the Red sea, and then turn up to the other side of Edom. Deuteronomy 10: 6, 7, from Bene-jaakan to Moseroth, and back from Moseroth to Jotbathah see Numbers 33: 31, and then 32, 33; 31 is in the opposite direction to Deuteronomy 10: 6; 32, 33 is the same: Moseroth or Mosera being the turning point, and Bene-jaakan omitted in Deuteronomy 10: 7.}

198 Deuteronomy gives us the last two stations on the second journey, or the one back. Then Aaron dies; and then, after his death, we have two stations on the road, which, from Numbers 33: 32, 33, we know was the road back to Ezion-gaber — exactly the one we know, from Numbers 21: 4, the Israelites took on leaving Mount Hor. That is, there is the most perfect exactitude in the account; yet so given as to shew it must have flowed from personal acquaintance with facts, or it never could have come out in the order it does. Deuteronomy 10 gives us demonstrably the end of the second journey (i.e., the one back from Ezion-gaber, and the beginning of the third — Aaron dying at the end of the second, exactly as in Numbers). The only additional circumstance in Numbers is, that Aaron went up Mount Hor to die. Deuteronomy names only the station, which must, by the order of the journey, have been in the district of the Hor range. All the details confirm this order of march.

Thus, instead of being incompatible, they are the fullest confirmation that nobody could have written these accounts but one personally acquainted with the facts. I may add that their passage by Kadesh is omitted in Deuteronomy; but this is no way surprising, as it only gives us the last two stations — Bene-jaakan and Moseroth.

JOSHUA ARRESTING THE SUN AND MOON

Next, as regards the miracle of the sun and moon being arrested in Joshua 10, Mr. N. says, "It has long been felt as too violent a derangement of the whole globe, to be used by the Most High as a means of discomfiting an army."* Long felt by whom? It is a very stale objection of infidels, like most, for they generally copy one another, so that, in the sense of its repetition usque ad nauseam, it has been long felt. But the object was not simply a means of discomfiting the army; it was a public testimony before the world that God interfered for His people, and would answer and put honour upon Joshua. And the sacred writer speaks of it in this way; "The like was never known," he says, "that the Lord hearkened to the voice of a man; for the Lord fought for Israel." The miracle is as plainly stated as physically true. But Mr. N., who always shuts God out of everything, forgets that it was as easy for Him who created the world to stop it as to make it go — to hold it in equipoise for a moment in its place, as to create the laws which kept it in its course. Joshua thought much more of God and His power; Mr. N. (as if there were neither) much more of the earth and its ordinary course, because it went naturally on. It seems to me that Joshua's was a higher, truer, nobler thought than that of Mr. N. The thought that counted on God's goodness to His people and His almighty power was nobler and truer than that which excludes Him out of His own creation, and forgets that, if God did make these admirable general laws, He must sustain their power every moment, and can never abrogate His own rights for a mass of earth. The earth was stopped turning round, and the sun and moon are spoken of just as we do, and as Joshua must have done. We know well it is the earth which turns round, and yet we say, the sun rises, sets, &c.

{*Phases, p. 135.}

199 As to Jasher's being a poet,{*it is a mere copying another's notions without any proof. There is not the remotest semblance of proof that Jasher was a person at all. All this is taken for granted by Mr. N.; yet his whole argument depends upon it. There is no proof of Jasher's being a poet, nor of the word meaning a person. Mr. N.'s prosaic commentator speaks of the moon** as well as the supposed poet. If one stopped, the other must too. But in afterwards stating the effect, the historian speaks of the sun, because it was of course the sun which gave its continuous light for the task which Israel had to accomplish. It is Joshua, not Jasher, which gives the order to the sun and moon to stop; and it is the plain prosaic fact recorded by the commentator, as Mr. N. calls him, which is said to be found in the book of Jasher. It is not said of the elevated poetical appeal. In every particular, what Mr. N. says is totally unfounded. Moreover, it can hardly be doubted, that Joshua was ignorant of the rotation of the earth; and it is remarkable that he should have claimed not the stopping of the sun, but of sun and moon, the necessary effect of that which 'was wholly unknown to him, and yet he asks for that which, unless indeed God had disturbed the whole creation by unnecessary miracle, must have been the effect of the intervention of His power. Untaught by God, Joshua would have said, Sun, stand still. Taught of God, he asks for sun and moon to do so, which is just what God's power acting in the simplest way would do. He could not have answered precisely as to a man fully taught of God, if Joshua had asked for the sun to stop and not the moon, without a very extraordinary derangement of the celestial system. To make the moon go on in its just apparent course, when the earth was stopped, would have put the moon really out of its place. To have stopped the moon, unasked, as well as the sun, would not have been the same testimony to Joshua, though a wonder. But Joshua is taught to ask both. The rotation of the earth is arrested, and all is done at his word, though Joshua never knew the earth turned round, and that sun and moon would thus stop together.

{*"I for the first time observed that the narrative rests on the authority of a poetical book which bears the name of Jasher." And in a note, "This poet celebrated also the deeds of David. He who composed 'Sun, stand thou still upon Gibeon, and thou, Moon, in the valley of Ajalon,' like other poets, called on the sun and moon to stand, and look on Joshua's deeds; but he could not anticipate that his words would be hardened into fact by a prosaic interpreter." (Phases, p. 135.) If the reader looks at the beginning of Joshua 10: 13, he will see that there is no ground for taking the apostrophe to the sun and moon (ver. 12) as a part of the book of Jasher. The beginning of verse 13 is clearly a part of the narrative, and it is only the fact which is written in the Book of Jasher, not the poetical summons.}

{**"The commentator could not tell what the moon had to do with it, yet he has quoted honestly" (i.e., the poet "who composed" the end of verse 12, attributed to Joshua by the narrator).}

200 SONG OF MOSES

As regards Exodus 15,* Mr. N.'s statements are without the smallest foundation. He would again persuade us that the historical account is merely drawn from the poetry of chapter 15. But the historical account is one continuous narrative, out of which it is impossible to take this bit without destroying it all. It is referred to in other books too, continually. Mr. N. says, "This song of Moses implies no miracle at all." The song states the miracle as simply as the history which had previously related the facts — "With the blast of thy nostrils the waters were gathered together; the floods stood upright as a heap, and the depths were congealed in the heart of the sea." (See Ex. 14: 21, 22.)

{*"As for Exodus 15, it appeared to me (in that stage, and after so abundant proof of error) almost certain that Moses's song is the primitive authority out of which the prose narrative of the passage of the Red Sea has been elaborated . . . . The song of Moses implies no miracle at all." (Phases, p. 136.)}

201 FRAGMENTS OF POETRY

As regards Numbers 21* one of the alleged fragments of poetry is a song of Israel at the well. Nothing very extraordinary historically: a very interesting figure of the refreshing springs found when the wilderness is passed and Jordan approached. The other two are perfectly apposite and important. They are well known records, cited to prove that the country in question was in the hands of the Amorites, and not of Moab, when Israel took possession. This was of the utmost importance, because Israel was forbidden to touch Moab, whereas the country of the Amorites was given up to them. Now Israel's statements, of whatever authority for themselves, would have been no record against their enemies. Hence, to maintain the title of Israel to these lands, well known popular memorials of the previous conquest of Moab by the Amorites, and the acquisition of this territory by the latter, are given, and of the border as it then was. And this is so truly the case, that the children of Ammon claimed precisely this territory in the time of Jephthah (Judges 11), and Jephthah goes over all this very ground as that which justified Israel in maintaining possession of the country. It was not Ammon's nor Moab's either. Nor did Balak, king of Moab, pretend to it then. The Amorites, he says, were in possession, and Israel dispossessed them. The common records of the country preserved in their popular songs, and the well known account of the books of the wars of the Lord, were the important point here, and these are preserved in Numbers.

{*"This presently led me to observe other marks that the narrative had been made up, at least in put, out of old poetry. Of these the most important are in Exodus 15, and Numbers 21, in the latter of which three different poetical fragments are quoted." (Phases, p. 136.)}

BOOK OF THE LAW FOUND BY JOSIAH

The next point maintained by Mr. N., namely, that the book of the law was not found in Josiah's reign, but "evidently then first compiled, or, at least, then first produced and made authoritative to the nation" (Phases, p. 137), is too monstrous, I may say, audacious, a disregard of all evidence to bear the light for a moment. All history, all existing testimony, concurs in authenticating these books. They were held in honour as sacred books, watched with jealous care. But this is not all. We have prophecies undoubtedly of the reign of Hezekiah.*

{*Mr. N. calls them "Hezekiah's prophets." (Phases, p. 196.) There were, indeed, earlier ones, as Joel, and Amos. I shall touch on this hereafter.

202 Now I have no pretension to be anything of a Hebraist; but if we may trust those certainly the best informed in the language, the character of the Hebrew of the Pentateuch leaves no doubt as to its being of far greater antiquity than the prophetic writings. Even usages of grammar are different. The use of Hu, as being a common gender for the feminine Hi, is popularly known as marking the antiquity of the Pentateuch, as is the same grammatical peculiarity as to Nahar, a young person.*

{*I may be allowed to extract from Eichhorn, a celebrated German rationalist, his judgment of this part of the argument. He wrote in the early part of this century, and does not believe in inspiration. I quote the translation given by Mr. Stuart.

1. "They do not arise from the forgery of any one individual. Whoever is endowed with adequate knowledge and investigates with impartiality the question — whether the writings of the Old Testament are genuine — must surely answer it in the affirmative. No one deceiver can have forged them all. This every page of the Old Testament proclaims. What a variety in language and expression! Isaiah does not write like Moses; nor Jeremiah like Ezekiel; and between these and every one of the minor prophets a great gulf is fixed. The grammatical edifice of language in Moses has much that is peculiar; in the book of Judges occur provincialisms and barbarisms. Isaiah pours forth words already formed in a new shape; Jeremiah and Ezekiel are full of Chaldaisms. In a word, when one proceeds from writers who are to be assigned to early periods of time to those who are later, he finds in the language a gradual decline, until at last it sinks down into mere Chaldaic terms of expression.

"Then come next the discrepancies in the circle of ideas and of images. The stringed instruments sound aloud when touched by Moses and Isaiah; soft is the tone when David handles them. Solomon's must shines forth in all the splendour of a most luxurious court; but her sister, in simple attire, wanders, with David, by the brooks and the river-banks, in the fields and among the herds. One poet is original, like Isaiah, Joel, Habakkuk; another copies, like Ezekiel. One roams in the untrodden path of genius; another glides along the way which his predecessors have trodden. From one issue rays of learning, whilst his neighbour has not been caught by one spark of literature. In the oldest writers strong Egyptian colours glimmer through and through; in their successors they become fainter and fainter, until at last they disappear.

"Finally, there is, in manners and customs, the finest gradation. At first all is simple and natural, like to what one sees in Homer, and among the Bedouin Arabs even at the present time; but this noble simplicity gradually loses itself in luxury and effeminacy, and vanishes at last in the splendid court of Solomon.

"Nowhere is there a sudden leap; everywhere the progress is gradual. None but ignorant and thoughtless doubters can suppose the Old Testament to have been forged by one deceiver.

2. "They are not the forgery of many deceivers.

" But, perhaps, some one may reply, 'Perhaps many forgers have made common cause, and, at the same time, in some later period, have got up the books in question.' But how could they forge in a way so entirely conformed to the progress of the human understanding? And was it possible, in later times, to create the language of Moses? This surpasses all human powers. Finally, one writer supposes the existence of another. They could not then all have arisen at the same time; they must have existed successively.

"' Perhaps, then,' it may be further said, 'such forgers arose at different times, who continued onward, in the introduction of suppositious writings, from the place where their deceitful predecessors had stopped. In this way may all the references to preceding writers be explained; in this way may we explain the striking gradation that exists in all its parts.'

"But, first, how was it possible that no one should have discovered the trick, exposed it, and put a brand upon the deceiver, in order that posterity might be secured against injury? How could a whole nation be often deceived, and at different periods? Secondly, what design could such a deceiver have had in view? Did he aim at eulogizing the Hebrew nation? Then are his eulogies the severest satires; for, according to the Old Testament, the Hebrew nation have acted a very degrading part. Or did he mean to degrade them? In this case, how could he force his books upon the very people whom they defamed, and the story of whose being trodden under foot by foreign nations is told in plain blunt words?"}

203 This has led Gesenius (rationalist enough not to be anxious to maintain any theory as to the Old Testament, and hence a better witness here) to say, "The point of time at which we should date the commencement of this period, and of Hebrew literature in general, is certainly as early as Moses, even if the Pentateuch did not proceed from him in its present form." And then he refers to different forms in the Pentateuch as proving it.

THE SAMARITANS

Further, the acceptation of the Pentateuch by the Samaritans, even supposing it was in the time of Sanballat, helps to shew the absurdity of this invention (a notion which, though quite modern, is, I understand, fast hastening to the tomb of all the Capulets, like other ideas of the "learned Germans," few of which subsist beyond a moth's life; and, indeed, it is well for them they can prove nothing really, for it would entirely spoil the next discovery; whereas, by dying off thus, each leaves a fair field for the next inventor, while it serves just as well to create doubts for the moment; and if the doubt dies out with the objection, a new one has but the better chance). Besides, the whole Jewish polity was founded on the Pentateuch — the Prophets referred to it: not a sacrifice was offered, not an institution maintained, which was not there recorded. And was ever such an absurdity as supposing that Josiah or Huldah could persuade a whole people, and in the presence of watchful Samaritan enemies — not to embrace a certain system, others have done that — but that they and their ancestors had always carried on this system, though it was then produced for the first time? The temple was there; and, however they might have neglected its order and their duty, there was not a vessel, not a pot, nor a flesh-hook, nor a laver, nor a candlestick, which did not bear witness to the previous existence of what the book said did so exist. And note this, there is a regular history of the Jews uninterruptedly from Moses to Josiah — that of other nations too in connection with them. All had to be invented, as well as the style of the epoch, then unknown; and we are to be persuaded this fabulous account of what they were living in, and their fathers before them, and which connected itself with all this history, only now invented in a book, was palmed on them as their own true history, for the book, it is alleged, was now compiled! Was the account of the temple compiled, which it is impossible to separate from it? These were institutions which bore witness to its authenticity.

204 HEZEKIAH'S PROPHETS

The reproaches of "Hezekiah's prophets" all suppose this history. Their reproaches to the people have to a great extent no meaning if the whole Jewish history be not true. Persuading a people, some fine day, that a detailed voluminous history is their own, demands a credulity to be found only in an infidel, particularly when no proof whatever is alleged of it. Its ground is simply probability. But, it will be said, it was only the book had to be invented to flatter the people with the notion of the antiquity of their neglected worship. But then it did not do so. There was enough to prove the history all true; but the Pentateuch gave the tabernacle, not the temple — one candlestick, not ten; an ark with two cherubim looking towards it, and no cherubim stretching their wings to either side of the house. To invent something different to please the people by its antiquity, was absurd; and if they took the account in Samuel of the temple of Solomon, they found the oxen gone from under the laver, and they found, moreover, the authenticity of the books confirmed, for, in that case, Samuel's book was an authentic account. But, indeed, to suppose a history invented when every existing monument, changed, mutilated, or perfect, proved the whole history true from beginning to end, and its comparative dates at the same time; and that, confirmed by well-known public history,* is an absurdity fit only for the credulity of an infidel, who will believe anything provided it be not the truth, for that is from God.

{*All ancient heathen writers, and infidel opposers of Christianity, recognize Moses as unquestionably the legislator of the Jews, and their first great leader.}

205 The fact of the introduction of "there it is to this day" is the simplest thing possible. Ezra necessarily re-edited the Old Testament on the return from Babylon.* And nothing could be more natural, if I were editing an ancient history, when the origin of ancient monuments is referred to, than to add, as confirming the history, "and there it is still." This is the allusion to subsequent times which is found in Old Testament history.

{*If it be asked on what authority any such book or chapter could be received as inspired, the answer is, "On the authority of the prophets." Hence the canon closes in the time of Malachi, the last inspired prophet — his prophecy, and Esther, being the last books. And this answer is as old as Josephus, who gives this reason for the closing of the canon, saying, there were records of what was done since, but that they had not the authority of the others. The feast of Purim, ever observed by the Jews, is an irrefragable proof of the history of the book of Esther, which the Jews value as they do the Pentateuch, saying these two will subsist when all the other books pass away in the days of the Messiah.}

DEAN GRAVES

The reason why Dean Graves* (Phases, pp. 138, 139) and others take the Pentateuch as ancient, is incomparably stronger than that on which Homer and Hesiod or Caesar are received. They have been handed down for ages as such, translated two or three centuries before Christ, being then counted as the undoubted sacred books of the Hebrews. They are connected successively with the whole history of Israel, which is confirmed throughout by every kind of collateral proof. The whole history of the world is founded on the statements contained in it. The Jews, who detest Christians, preserve them as authentic books just as we have them: the son of Sirach, Josephus, Philo did the same. The style confirms the dates ascribed to them:** every institution of the Jews is inseparably connected with their truth. The alleged inconsistency is accounted for by a well known fact recorded in the book itself. Is it unreasonable to accept these books, historically speaking, as genuine, and answer objections if they are made? The use of the article ὁ in Greek, as a pronoun, proves Homer ancient. The use of the article Hu and Nahar is a perfectly analogous proof in the Pentateuch.

{*"Dean Graves, for instance, always takes for granted, that until the contrary shall be demonstrated, it is to be fully believed that the Pentateuch is from the pen of Moses." (Phases, p. 137.)}

{**Some question, founded on style, is raised as to the date of one or two books, but not so as to affect in any way the general history or truth of the entire. Nor do I believe it, in the least, to be a well-founded doubt.}

206 SHAM SCIENCE

Where is "sham science"* (Phases, p. 138) really found in this case? As regards the difficulty of supposing that the law had been so neglected that the king's attention had not been turned to it, it is really none at all. Sixty-seven years had elapsed, during fifty-seven of which all fear of Jehovah had been wholly cast off — a captivity had taken place, and all was confusion and ruin — the house of God neglected, and out of repair. Persecution had raged; the images of idolatrous groves had been brought into the temple itself, and idolatry and neglect of Jehovah filled the land. That the scriptures were neglected, and not known to the young king, is not surprising. He may have known there was such a thing generally, yet never have examined it so as to see the condition Israel was in.

{*"Oh, sham science! Oh, false-named theology!

O mihi tam longa maneat pars ultima vitae

Spiritus et quantum sat erit tua dicere facta." (Phases, p. 138.)}

207 MR. NEWMAN'S HEBREW MONARCHY

I have looked into the history of the Hebrew monarchy by Mr. N., and examined particularly what relates to this point; but I have found, besides some examination of collateral history and dates, nothing but an imitation of the absurd German self-confidence and theories, whose authors, provided they can invent something which nobody else has thought of, are very indifferent as to its credibility. *

{*There is one happy result of this, that one infidel theory destroys another, and all are shewn to be merely theories without any proof, and far more incredible than the plain history we have. Mr. N.'s book, setting aside of course inspiration, seeks for probable causes and motives for what the scripture history makes as plain as possible. Another characteristic of his history is this, that, as he entirely sets aside God, he reduces everything to secondary causes and motives, many of which may very probably have acted on the minds of the persons concerned, the object being, as always, to sink everything to the level of that, and shut out God as far as possible. But in doing this the history has to be set aside, and this is done by the most incredible theories, which are really, by their irrationalism, offensive to any upright sober mind.}

Mr. N. places the prophecy of Joel about 840 years before Christ, Isaiah in Hezekiah's reign, and recognizes (for this suits his purpose) the destruction of the brazen serpent, the existence of the priesthood and temple. Now the allusions in Joel are all based on the Levitical law, even to the peculiar use of the silver trumpets. Isaiah refers to it in terms, saying, if they spake not according to it, there was no light in them. The deliverance out of Egypt is also spoken of several times; in one case, as affected by the rod of Moses being lifted up over the sea. Again, Micah refers to the ordinances of the law as to sacrifices, in express terms; he refers to Moses, Aaron and Miriam, to Balak and Balaam, and the details given as to them in Numbers. Mr. N. puts Micah in 723 before Christ; Josiah he puts in 651. Yet, in spite of this, he declares that the law was promulgated in Josiah's reign, when, it is pretended, it was found. This being too grossly absurd, he tells us that the first four books of the Pentateuch are to be regarded as a growth, not as a composition. Exodus, Leviticus, and Numbers did not now begin to exist, but now received their final shape, and their public recognition in that shape. That is, that the code of religious laws and ceremonies was never made up till the nation, which had certainly subsisted for centuries, and had established an immense system according to the code, was just on the eve of dissolution!* And mark, the code establishes, as I have already observed, an order of things quite different from what subsisted. It recounts the forming of the tabernacle by divine direction, according to the pattern made in the mount, the authority for the change being given in books written, according to Mr. N., too late to be of any avail for the priestly objects to which he attributes the compiling of the Pentateuch; so that the priests invented a divinely ordered ritual and instruments of worship, which left their own existing one quite unauthorized! There is nothing like the excessive absurdities of infidels to shew what people are reduced to, when their "antagonistic will" rejects the plain revelation of God.

{*And had been formed just during the period in which they were practically abandoning it. Further, if it had been so formed, all Mr. N.'s arguments against its previous existence, because of its being found then in the temple, fall to the ground, as much as if it had been complete Since the time of Moses.}

208 I regret to be obliged to add, that the reader must never trust the statements made by infidels as to books, or passages of scripture, without reading the passages themselves. It is not that there is always an intention to deceive, but a loose general view suits a theory; and when this loose general view is examined, it very often turns out to be wholly unfounded.

DEUTERONOMY

Deuteronomy, we are told, favours the Levites rather than the priests: "In the whole book there is not a line whereby it could be learnt that a Levite was not equal to an Aaronite for all purposes of sacrifices." Now it is the people in Deuteronomy who are put into a peculiar place, such as they are in no other book — their relationship with God being made much more immediate. But the priest is definitely distinguished much more than the Levite. The subject is not sacrifice, in any way; but where they are alluded to, the priest's part is definitely distinguished. Levi is looked at as the head of the whole tribe, as we know he was. Hence in the blessing in the close all is attributed to him, as the Urim and Thummim, which the high priest alone wore. Mr. N. contrasts the prophecy of Jacob and Moses as to him as contradictory. It is, on the contrary, remarkable how both were fulfilled. Jacob threatens him, for his sin, with dispersion in Israel for his cruelty at Shechem; and he is dispersed, as Deuteronomy recognizes, and has no inheritance as a tribe in Israel. Moses declares that, for his faithfulness under Sinai, the priesthood should be in his family; and so it was.

Mr. N.'s statements as to the contents of the first four books are inexact. He speaks of "the scattering of Israel by piracy and invasion, into many distant lands," but says there is "nothing at all clear which needs to be referred to later times." Now this is not at all exact. Leviticus 26 speaks of very much more than scattering by piracy and invasion; it speaks of the total desolation of the land, so that it should enjoy its sabbaths, and of its possession by enemies, of the sanctuaries being ruined, and the people pining away in captivity, and promises restoration on repentance. This was not the case in Josiah's reign. He repaired the temple, governed Judea, and, it may be almost said, reigned over the whole land. The Assyrian holds a place in all prophecy? which the Chaldees do not, because the Assyrian attacked Judah when owned of God; the Chaldees held them in captivity when they were not.

209 Mr. N. says, "the book [the Pentateuch] is familiar with the tribes of Israel, and their distribution." Now Deuteronomy is put aside by Mr. N. as a distinct work from the rest of the Pentateuch; and to Genesis the expression of the distribution of the tribes has no intelligible application. The only one whose locality is spoken of certainly, never had the one there given him before Josiah's time. Now it is perfectly incredible that, if a person was arranging the book with the historical facts before him, he should have invented a prophecy which those facts contradict. If we take in Deuteronomy, the same observation applies. Naphtali is said to possess the west and the south, and, in general, no distribution is given which can in any possible way connect it with Josiah's time. All there is on this point proves it could not possibly have been written then from the knowledge of historical facts preceding that epoch. Indeed, if we embrace Deuteronomy, the whole argument is absurd; because we get in that book, especially in Deuteronomy 32, prophecies which have no kind of reference to anything yet fully accomplished, and which, so far as they are partially, have no reference to anything connected with the history of Israel before Christ's time, and yet are positive and absolute assertions.

On the whole, a saint may gather, if he be following God's will, good out of everything, may turn it to use; but, otherwise, Mr. N.'s book on the Hebrew monarchy, considered as an examination of scriptural history, is not deserving of any serious attention; unless theories without proof, idle speculations which lower everything they touch, assertions as to the records inquired into which shew they have never been really or fairly examined, and statements which destroy all rational grounds of historical proof of anything, be worthy of a sober man's attention and respect. It betrays, also, what we soon find on going farther, the earnest wish to get rid of scripture.

THE REVELATION, ESPECIALLY CHAPTER 17

Why was Luther's having repudiated the Apocalypse an interesting fact, but that Mr. N. wished it? If I am not an infidel, or if I am even indifferent, such a fact is not thus caught at as interesting. I regret it, or I examine it, as affording no proof of anything.

210 As regards the Apocalypse, I leave the question of style, which flows evidently from its being the representation of visions, and many peculiarities of which have been shewn to be similar to those of John's gospel. I leave it, because Mr. N. does not insist on it, though for a reason of very little force, and adopted with a view to govern the interpretation by the date. Mr. N. gives no other reason for judging it spurious but that he doubted about it, and had his doubts confirmed by Neander.

He then gives his view of Revelation 17 in a passage which is just an example of the excessively careless and superficial manner in which he treats every subject. "Chapter 17," he says, "appears to be a political speculation, suggested by the civil war of Otho, Vitellius, and Vespasian, and erroneously opines that the eighth emperor of Rome is to be the last, and is to be one of the preceding emperors restored — probably Nero, who was believed to have escaped to the kings of the east." (Phases, p. 140.) Now I would only beg my reader, learned or unlearned, to read the chapter (it is always the truest way of judging of scripture), and say if he can find the slightest ground whatever for this interpretation, or for one of the thoughts contained in it, save that Rome, and its empire, was in question, and that an eighth head was a restored one, and even then with symbols that shewed that it was shadowed out in ages long beyond John's time — correctly or not I do not now say. Where is there a word of civil wars, or three heads at once? And, further, Mr. N. certainly ought to have more classical lore a great deal than I have: still I do not understand how he can reconcile his statement with universally known history.

This is the succession of emperors: Augustus, Tiberius, Caligula, Claudius, Nero, Galba, Otho, Vitellius, Vespasian, Titus, Domitian.

Now, according to the system adopted in Mr. N.'s book, John wrote in the reign of Galba, for, he says, five are fallen, one is, and Galba is the sixth, Otho the seventh, Vitellius the eighth, and Vespasian the ninth — a very curious reason for judging that the eighth emperor was to be the last. If the civil war between Otho and Vitellius is said to be a reason for considering these two as one, then it must be from historically knowing that the two emperors were, or had been, on the scene — a strange reason for saying that the sixth, Galba, who in that case had already disappeared, was then, and the seventh not yet come. In a word, the pretence that this prophecy is taken from subsisting events, is, I must be forgiven for saying, mere nonsense.* And here I beg the reader to remark, that all relation to the ten horns is unnoticed by Mr. N., yet these were kings which had received no kingdom as yet. Let any one notice, not only the majesty of the statements, but the connection of the beast spoken of with the whole of the latter part of the prophecy, and judge whether the civil wars from Galba to Vespasian in any way meet the announcements of the prophecy. If the prophecy were not even an inspired book referring to future events, nothing which had then happened can be received as giving rise to its statements. A year's fighting between these three chiefs, and the subsequent accession of Vespasian, do not correspond in any way to what the author professes to unfold in his book.

{*It is borrowed from the Germans as usual.}

211 Galba was murdered after a very brief period (about seven months, January 15, A.D. 69), and Otho succeeded him. Otho, beaten by the lieutenants of Vitellius, killed himself, April 16th; Vitellius, his army having been overthrown by Antonius Primus, was deposed, or, rather, abdicated, Dec. 20th, A.D. 69, and soon after was ignominiously killed. The only value of a decision come to against the Apocalypse, on such ground as this, is to shew the value to be attached to the judgment of the objector on such a subject.

THE AUTHOR OF THE EPISTLE TO THE HEBREWS

Mr. Newman settles, with equal facility, the authority, or rather, the question who is the author, of the epistle to the Hebrews.* Now, the enquiry, whether a particular book belongs to scripture, is quite another thing than denying the word of God. It is merely a question whether that particular book makes part of it. Guessing as to it is folly, on such a subject. I have no doubt that the epistle to the Hebrews is Paul's. The omission of his name has raised a question on it from early days. The Roman Church did not receive it for a long time, but I am satisfied it did at the first. I judge that Clement's epistle, addressed as it is in the name of the whole Roman Church, is a plain proof of it. The desire to get rid of passages in Hebrews 6 and Hebrews 10 which seem to favour a peculiar rigidity of discipline, led that church to cast a doubt upon it, on account of the controversies it was engaged in on the subject (the epistle's being addressed, as it evidently is, to Jews connected with Jerusalem and Palestine, making it less known than those addressed to Gentile churches). Its inspiration, I hesitate not to say, stands far above all question. It is different in style from St. Paul's familiar epistles addressed in intimacy, if we except that to the Romans, to particular congregations he knew. In this last, also, we find a long course of elaborate argument, and the use of Jewish scriptures. Still it is addressed to them in a character which extended to those he had never seen. The epistle to the Hebrews is a treatise elaborately composed as a last warning to the Jews, whose polity was just going to be put an end to, and urging them to have done with it as ready to vanish away, and to go out without the camp. The contrary conduct had been borne with hitherto. Now this was urgent. Who so fit for this as Paul? It was at the close of his career; for he refers to Timothy being set at liberty, and himself as free, and to the saints in Italy.

{*"As to the epistle to the Hebrews, I now saw quite a different genius in it from that of Paul, as more artificial, and savouring of rhetorical culture. As to this the learned Germans are probably unanimous." (Phases, p. 140.)}

212 The neglect of his counsel produced the bastard Christianity, if Christianity it can be called, of Nazarenes, and the still worse sect of Ebionites, whose hatred to Paul, consequently, was most violent. They rejected indeed all his writings. The subject of the epistle to the Hebrews is of the highest and most elevated character. It affords instruction, which no other part of scripture does, on the personal glory of Christ, yet it confirms and is confirmed by all. It treats these subjects with a method and reasoning drawn from the depths of divine relationships, and yet possessing perfect clearness — a union which flows from divine inspiration alone characterizes it. Passages of scripture (the connection of which with the whole scope of the divine mind, as revealed in the word, is brought out when Christ is applied as a key to them) are here quoted in a connection which, when the link of thought is given in Him, has a beauty and evidence which leaves no doubt of the divine hand that has been at work — a connection which shews, when given, that that alone could be their full bearing, and yet, without that blessed key, they remained locked up to the human mind, the connection when thus made plain affording a complete testimony to Christ, and, at the same time, by Him, not only establishing inspiration, but giving a divine fulness to the word itself, and such a combination of it as proves the unity of mind in the whole book, and that mind to be God's, who alone could conceive or unfold such a plan.

213 Now the Hebrews furnish, in a very remarkable manner, such an unlocking and connection of scripture, and with a power of reasoning and unity of scope and purpose, pursued with an energy of mind and thought which peculiarly characterizes St. Paul. The blessed apostle is specially occupied with the counsels of God, the divine plan of dispensation, as John with the manifestation and communication of divine life; Peter, with the pilgrim character of it here, connected with the hope of a suffering and rejected Saviour, the Son of the living God, whom he had known, and knew to be risen and gone up, and hoped for again.

With this dispensational character of Paul's writings the epistle to the Hebrews clearly classes itself. It has a more finished style as being an essay. It is, in its contents and reasonings, suited to Jews, because addressed to them. Perfectly satisfied that it is scripture, and a part of it whose loss would be irreparable, having the stamp of the divine gift upon it, I do not in the least doubt it is St. Paul's, from its character and the details alluded to in it. The reader is aware, that in 2 Peter it is expressly stated Paul did write to the Jews. The omission of his name is perfectly according to God. He was not apostle of the circumcision, he was a doctor; for all that he could teach in the Church of God. In the form of the epistle he was in his only we divinely given place in thus writing. The effect of this is seen, and so it ought to be, in the style.

As to the unanimity of the "learned Germans" to whom Mr. N. alludes, it is very possible. Every one admits, without being a "learned German,"* the difference of style; it is natural that the style of an elaborately drawn up essay should be different from that of familiar epistles addressed to those immediately within the exercise of Paul's apostolic office. The question is, What conclusion is to be drawn from it in connection with other far stronger and more important points, which affect the authorship of the epistle? The doubt of its divine inspiration, whatever Rome may have thought for its own reasons for two centuries, would only excite pity in my mind. There are proofs of inspiration which have a character that infidelity does not touch, being connected with the development of divine counsels and wisdom in the word, of which the infidel does not possess the elements, and cannot, because he is an infidel. I admit that these are intellectual proofs to the believer; but they do astonishingly secure and confirm the faith of him who has some acquaintance with these counsels-just as, in the case of a perfect tally, or a broken piece of metal, he who has only one piece has no proof as to the other; but he who has both has not a doubt as to the connection of one with the other. And divine things are yet more certain; for man could imitate in material things, in some cases, though, in most, doubt would be irrational — in divine, he cannot. The connection is unknown till discovered.

{*It was remarked and reasoned on very early indeed by the fathers.}

214 Difficulties, we have seen, have arisen as to the Epistle to the Hebrews, from Paul's not naming himself as an apostle. Besides what I have said as to his not being apostle of the circumcision, there is another point I would notice here. It connects itself with another objection to his being the author — his saying that it was confirmed unto them by those who heard him.

Now, if we examine the manner of presenting things in this epistle, if St. Paul be the author, he could not have introduced himself as an apostle, writing to them as such.

He is addressing the Hebrews, who had already faith in the scriptures, and basing all his arguments on them, in unfolding the person and offices of the Lord Jesus Himself. It was not apostolic announcement of doctrine in the way of revelation with authority, but application of admitted scriptures to Christ, to shew that He ought to be such, and be on high according to them; and to shew the necessary coming in of the new covenant. Old Testament scriptures were necessarily his authority here — the whole matter he had in hand, to which his apostolical authority added nothing. Nay, their authority was what he had to insist on, using the word of wisdom in applying them.

Now this he does in a manner which entirely shuts out all possibility of introducing his own apostolic authority. He brings in God speaking Himself in the Old Testament — an acknowledged truth with the Jews. "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners, spake in time past . . . by the prophets, hath, in these last days, spoken to us in [the] Son [or, more nearly, as Son, that is, in the person of the Son]." Heb. 1: 1. Now this took a ground which left no room for beginning — Paul, an apostle of Jesus Christ. God Himself, who had spoken of old by the prophets, had now spoken in the Son Himself. Hence we have that which at the first began to be spoken by the Lord. That is, it was the great Prophet Himself, nay, the Lord Himself, who had spoken to the Jews. And hence, as referring to what He had said when on the earth, the personal address of Jesus, he speaks of those who had heard Him; God bearing them witness by signs, etc. Now that was exactly the way in which God had dealt with the Jews; and the Christian testimony itself was thus appropriately and peculiarly brought before them; it was by that the nation had been made responsible, and not by Paul's teaching. But it was, in writing to them, just his place to refer to it; and peculiarly his to unfold the whole glorious position of Christ as mounted on high; as indeed it was given to him only to declare; and to show how He put Jews in immediate connection with heaven in this way; and thus to pave the way for the passing away of all connected with the old covenant, and exhort them to go outside the camp, as being no longer of God. The great sacrifice of atonement was offered; the high priest was gone within with the blood; the body was burnt without; the middle holy place of Judaism, suited to its day, was now nought. In spirit we were within the veil; in suffering in the flesh, without the camp, bearing the blessed Victim's reproach.

215 Now the unfolding this was just Paul's place, not Peter's. Yet it was just his place too to refer to that very testimony which made the Jews responsible to do so; which was not his own, but that which he derives down from God speaking by the prophets; and then as in the person of the Son (ἐν υιῳ), thus making it God's direct testimony to them (i.e., the Jews, with whom he joins himself, as a Jew, in the most beautiful and gracious way, as he had said the fathers, not your fathers) and only bringing in even apostles themselves as confirming it. He does not associate these with God's testimony, or with the Lord's; only they come in to assure it to others; and even then he brings in God bearing them witness; and then proceeds to exalt and glorify Christ's person. In a word, he addresses himself perfectly to Jews as such, yet to bring them out of their Judaism. Had he not been thus above the Jewish position, he could not have given it the place he does in the character of the testimony given to it. It was taking them high enough up to the source of the testimony to lift them above the system formed beside it. Indeed prophecy was the link of God with Israel when in the way of righteousness under ordinances He could have nothing to say to them. He interfered by a prophet to bring them out of bondage or back to Himself. "By a prophet he brought them out of Egypt; by a prophet were they saved." It was God's sovereign way when there was no other. God's great Prophet had now appeared to lead them out for a better salvation; He was the Apostle of their profession. Peter could not lead them out of a Jewish position. He had ministered to them still in and under it. Paul's ministry as an apostle was directed elsewhere. He graciously makes Christ their Apostle, while owning in its place that of all the apostles among them, yet as hearers of the Lord.

216 THE SONG OF SOLOMON

I have no remark to make on what Mr. N. says of the Song of Solomon (Phases, p. 140) than that it is just an example of what I have said of the whole system — a bringing down everything to the low level of the writer's mind.

ESTHER

As regards Ruth and Esther,* the first was of the utmost importance, as introducing David's line on which all hung, in a most touching and instructive narrative; and that in connection with the all-important fact of a poor Moabitess coming by grace "under the wings of the God of Israel," and being mother of Messiah Himself. The names bear, in a most evident way, a mystic signification, on which I cannot enlarge here, allying themselves immediately with the subject. Naomi ("my pleasant one") loses her husband Elimelech ("God is King" or "my King"), loses her sons, and becomes Mara ("bitterness"). Devotedness of heart to her in this state brings Ruth (a poor lost one and a stranger) by grace, to raise up the family of the deceased, through the redeemer ("in whom is strength") Boaz, the Goel; and the child is born to sorrowing Naomi, the widow — though in fact Ruth's.

{*As to them Mr. N. says, "The so-called canon of the Jews could not guarantee to us the value of the writings. Consequently, such books as Ruth and Esther (the latter indeed not containing one religious sentiment) stood forth at once in their natural insignificance." (Phases, p. 141.) All this class of remarks are a resume of German infidelity. I do not pretend to be well acquainted with German infidelity, but I have picked up enough of it to know that Mr. N.'s objections have nothing original in them but their audacity, and neglect of all attempt at proof, and of all consideration of answers given to the objections he retails from the great German manufactory. There is considerable skill in the form of Mr. N.'s book in this respect; because, being a history of the course of his own mind, he can say, I gave up this; I gave up that; I was convinced of this, and clear about that: as if it were something satisfactorily proved, without the trouble of telling us how he came to this conclusion. It was convincing — that is certain; so that we are to receive it (for receiving a doubt is abandoning faith): but why we cannot tell. He will allow me to remind him of a point I shall touch on just now, that "an ambitious and unscrupulous Church . . . may say, 'Only believe, and all is right. The end being gained . . . we do not care about your reasons' . . . to a divine teacher [and surely to a human] we should peculiarly look for aid in getting clear views of the ground of faith." (Phases, p. 146.) Yet, certainly, in Mr. N.'s book, while giving many objections to promote unbelief "at second-hand," in general "stat pro ratione voluntas."}

217 The importance of Esther is most evident, besides typical instruction. Nothing could be more so in its place. It is the providential care of Israel scattered among the heathen, when God could not own them at all outwardly or publicly. Hence He does not appear in the book. It is His unseen hand that does it in a providential way.

INSIGNIFICANCE AND SIGNIFICANCE

Mr. Newman speaks then in general of the Old Testament losing its authority. Nothing can exceed the narrow mindedness and want of enlarged scope of view in all these remarks. There is no perception of a whole;* no idea of the unfolding of dispensation, of the ways of God, of various parts of His ways, each brought out in its place, by which He was known. If there is not something which is the expression of the petty mind of man, which may suit Mr. N., then it is ''insignificant.'' A star is insignificant to an ignorant person. It is part of an immense system to an enlightened astronomer, which, as a whole, confounds by its stupendous character. The significance of a thing sometimes depends on the intelligence of him who is occupied with it. The Arundel marbles made beautiful lime for the masons of the Earl's house. To them that was all they signified.

{*I must say that this is also true of such books as Stuart's on the Canon. I have read it since I wrote these sheets, and have been able to extract useful matter here and there: but though it once or twice alludes to the Bible as a whole, yet the ground of his answer (besides details as to particular objections) is present personal edification as it is. Now no man can get fully the real evidence for the Bible, unless he views it as a whole given of God. That is its value; and if God gives me His whole view of man from the creation to the eternal state, is that not instructive, the most instructive possible of all knowledge? And thus, like a dissected map, its completeness, the place of each part, the perfectness of each part in its place, is self-demonstrated for him who knows what the map is. Mr. Stuart might as well complain of the piece that contained Russia because it was not the map of Andover in Massachusetts, as reason as to the suitableness of Esther because it was not moral instruction for a Christian, or did not help a preacher to make a sermon.}

218 PAUL MISREPRESENTED

We get a famous sample of Mr. N.'s reasoning in this part of his book. He says, "That faith in the book was no part of Paul's gospel is manifest from his giving no list of sacred books to his Gentile converts." (Phases, p. 141.) I do not know how Mr. N. knows this. Infidels, it is true, do get their knowledge at wonderful little cost; and the advantage of this is so great that one can never get them to acquaint us with the sources from which they procure it. Still, it is always "manifest." But there are some difficulties in the way of slower minds in admitting the force of this. First, the list was already universally and fully known: half the first converts were Jews, of whom not one had a question as to what they were; and then the apostles, addressing Jews and Gentiles together, appeal to these very books over and over again, as of unquestionable authority. A list by Paul would have been a very foolish thing, because he appealed to them as of already recognized authority. No doubt this was adding his to them; but, besides this, it was drawing the authority of what he himself said from them, which was much more important, and a very much more solemn way of owning their authority. If faith in a book be not proved by Paul's writings, what would prove it? A list would have been ridiculous: the whole book was perfectly well known. He calls it "the scriptures."

And here I must beg leave to say, that Mr. N. most grossly misrepresents what the apostle says to Timothy. He makes him say, "Although now you have the Spirit to teach you, yet that does not make the older writers useless; for 'every divinely inspired writing is also profitable for instruction,"' etc. (Phases, p. 142.) Now Paul says nothing of the kind. There is no contrast of the Spirit with the scriptures, but something totally different. The apostle is shewing what is the especial safeguard of the Christian in the perilous times of the last days, and, besides his own instructions, he refers Timothy in a particular manner to the scriptures (did he want a list?), to the written word of God, as able to make men wise unto salvation through faith which is in Christ Jesus. The apostle is so far from contrasting it with the Spirit's teaching us, that though speaking of the Spirit, as announcing these perilous times, he refers especially to the scriptures, without naming the Holy Ghost, as competent to make the man of God perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works. I am satisfied no one can profit by the scriptures without the Holy Ghost; but here the apostle had occasion to bring in a safeguard for the Church, exterior to her or any man's pretensions.

219 Mr. N. gives us the beginning of the phrase — which he is very careful not to finish — in a translation of his own, without noticing in any way that of the authorized version. It would not, indeed, at all have suited him. Quoted as it is there, in English, it would have utterly overthrown his statement. Now although I admit people may raise a question on it, I beg leave to say, that I am thoroughly convinced the English translation is right, and that the passage (though I know some have so taken it) will not really* bear the sense here put upon it. But Mr. N. might have spared himself the trouble of reasoning thus on the Old Testament — Christ certainly declares, in what amounts to a list, its authority. He, indeed, could give it such. Hence, when Mr. N. did not admit it as having such, as so quoted by Jesus in all its parts, he had given up Christ's authority altogether even as a prophet. He might have saved himself the trouble of commenting on any further details; he was completely an infidel already. All the rest was totally illogical. He did not know what he was about, or he was indulging his "antagonist will" in the hope of troubling others who yet cling to the blessed authority of the life-giving word of God. No doubt the scriptures are "a means" — but what a means — of knowing God's mind is His own communicating it! He who loves Him who gives it will love the communication. He who knows his own weakness and ignorance will rejoice in that which gives him certain, divinely sent knowledge of God and of all His ways. "The Bible was made for man."** No doubt — God be thanked. But by whom was it made? But to set man up in self-importance, and to put God aside, is the natural desire of an infidel — the uniform practice of Mr. N.

{*"He," says Bishop Middleton (alluding to Mr. N.'s way of translating it), "who can produce such an instance, will do much towards establishing the plausibility of a translation, which otherwise must appear, to say the least of it, to be forced and improbable."}

{**"In Paul's religion, respect for the scriptures was a means, not an end. The Bible was made for man, not man for the Bible." (Phases, p. 142.)}

The Irrationalism of Infidelity: Section g.

Being a reply to "Phases of Faith"*

J. N. Darby.

{*London: 1853.}

<06001-129E> File Section g.

220 GROUNDS OF FAITH PROPOSED IN SCRIPTURE

Another general point now opens before us, though some particular objections connect themselves with it. The grounds of faith proposed in scripture. Is moral truth to be received in obedience to an apparent miracle of sense, or are we to believe in sensible miracles because of their recommending some moral truth?* Such is the way in which Mr. N. approaches the question. He proceeds to accuse the Bible of great inconsistency on this point. "In one place Jesus reproves the demand of a miracle, and blesses those who believe without miracles. In another, He requires that they will receive His doctrine (and submit to it as little children), because of His miracles." (Phases, pp. 145, 146.)

{*"Ought we in any case to receive moral truth in obedience to an apparent miracle of sense? or, conversely, ought we ever to believe in sensible miracles because of their recommending some moral truth?" (Phases, p. 145.)}

THE TESTIMONY OF CHRIST

Now, before going further, I would remark that that to which Mr. N. objects here carries the moral evidence of its justice in itself in the simplest and plainest manner. If the moral excellence took effect on the conscience, so much the better. It ought to have done so: man was in an evil state if it did not. But then, with such miracles as Christ did, men were left without excuse in not receiving such a doctrine. Thus Christ says, "Believe me that I am in the Father and the Father in me, or else believe me for the very works' sake." John 14: 11. What can be simpler? Again, "If I had not come and spoken unto them, they had not had sin; but now they have no cloak for their sin." John 15: 22. "If I had not done among them the works which none other man did, they had not had sin; but now have they both seen and hated both me and my Father." John 15: 24.

Mr. N. has, however, stated a question which, as to the matter in hand, is perfectly absurd and irrelevant. Is he to believe miracles on account of morality, or doctrine on account of miracles? Neither. No doubt immorality of doctrine would tend to discredit a miracle, and if the miracle were certain, it would not accredit what was certainly wrong; and purity of doctrine helps to accredit a miracle, as a miracle confirms the authority of a teacher. But we are not called on to believe a doctrine because of a miracle, or a miracle because of a doctrine; we are called on to believe that Jesus is the Son of God, because He offered both these proofs together; so that all Mr. N.'s abstract reasoning on the difficulty of arriving at truth, or the grounds of truth, is an irrelevant question of his own mind. Christ appeals to both kinds of proof as evidence of who He was, and of the truth of what He said: "Which of you convinceth me of sin? And if I say the truth, why do ye not believe me?" John 8: 46. Again, "I told you, and ye believed not: the works that I do in my Father's name, they bear witness of me." John 10: 25. Mr. N. then is astray as to the whole matter in hand.

221 But there is another thing which Mr. N. of course keeps entirely out of sight; he continues, after what I already quoted, "Now this is intelligible, if blind external obedience is the end of religion, and not truth and inward righteousness, an ambitious and unscrupulous Church that desires by fair means or foul to make men's minds bow down to her, may say, Only believe; and all is right. The end being gained — obedience to us — we do not care about your reasons. But God cannot speak thus to man . . . . It peculiarly vexed me to find so total a deficiency of clear and sound instruction in the New Testament, and eminently in the gospel of John, on so vital a question. The more I considered it, the more it appeared as if Jesus was solely anxious to have people believe in Him without caring on what grounds they believed, although that is obviously the main point." (Phases, p. 146.) Indeed! Is the logic, which is to govern their principles of reasoning about it, the main point, when God is there? For we are supposing (Mr. N. as well as myself) the case to be that of God speaking to man, and our enquiry is, How is He to speak? He is mainly (says Mr. N.) to explain to them the logical grounds on which they ought to go! This is quite worthy of Mr. N.; but I avow I know not of whom else. The Lord does give them clear grounds of faith. (See the close of John 5.) John Baptist's testimony — the Father's testimony — His works' testimony — the scripture's testimony. But as to teaching them logic, I must leave it to infidels to count it the worthy occupation of God teaching in the-world. Yet why He should teach this is hardly apparent on Mr. N.'s shewing, for "a question of logic, such as I have had before me, was peculiarly one in which the propagator of a new religion could not be allowed to dictate." (Phases, p. 147.) But a man's reasoning cannot rise above what is in his mind. Think of God being in the world to give "clear views" on "a question of logic," which is yet so the province of man's mind that He "could not be allowed to dictate!" — and this man is to tell us the just grounds of faith!

222 Now I leave to every honest-minded reader, how much the life and words of the blessed Jesus resembled the conduct of "an ambitious and unscrupulous Church." It is a great thing, when we have to do with the vaporous reasonings of infidels, to get at things as they are — man as he is — history as we have it — Jesus as He was. They cannot bear facts; and if an "unscrupulous Church" is not to be trusted, I avow (and Mr. N.'s book has not enfeebled my conviction) scrupulosity is not the burden that weighs down an infidel.

But I say, that if God do come into the world, or if He send even a revelation into the world other than a claim of law, His great end must be to reveal Himself. He has to do so because men have departed from Him, or (for whatever reason) are ignorant of Him; were it not so, there would not be place for the revelation. Now He is the source of all blessing. He knows it, He would make man happy by it. The knowledge of Him, as the Lord states it, and of Jesus whom He has sent, is eternal life. But He will have this, of course, real, moral, in the soul — hence by faith. He is not thus revealed as God exacting, though He will judge all, but acting for us so as to take away every obstacle, while maintaining fully the highest standard of conscience — existing, in order to bless us in Himself, for He is love. Thus, believing in Him, I have perfect peace and living joy in Himself. Now, if He thus come to bless, and by such a knowledge of Him, what can He do but engage men to believe in Him? His words and ways are the revelation of His so coming. In mercy to men He appeals to them; and, seeing how many obstacles there are to the simple perception of what is good and the embracing of it, we can understand that goodness adding sensible proofs by the exercise of power to overcome those obstacles and to shew by that power who it is that is really come. No doubt men ought to see the grace and truth in itself. So the Lord says; but He adds condescendingly external proofs to confirm the testimony and help man's mind. On the other hand, if the conviction as to the glory of the messenger and truth of the message be produced merely by the miracles, the Lord rejects such faith because there is merely a conviction of the mind; the moral perception is wanting, which really recognizes His person and receives the power of the truth. "When he was in Jerusalem . . . many believed in his name, when they saw the miracles which he did. But Jesus did not commit himself unto them . . . for he knew what was in man." (John 2: 23-25)

223 In fine, the ground Mr. N. takes is this, that the question is, Are we to believe miracles for doctrine's sake, or doctrine for miracles' sake?

I say that Christ calls us to believe in His person and revelation by reason of both; and that the question Mr. N. puts on the matter is absurd. The doctrine and works confirm each other. Which of these two statements is according to fact? For it is a question of fact.

REVELATION OF GOD

Next Mr. N. says (I would repeat it with reverence), that when God teaches He should explain the logical grounds of faith to man without dictating; as that could not be allowed in the propagator of a new religion.

I say, that if God reveals Himself, He would give all that love could of the display of Himself, in nature, conduct, word, and work, which would not destroy the responsibility of man* — that He would give the display of His nature in act, doctrine, and power. He would give, in a word, the grounds for faith in its object, not the logical grounds of faith. He would present what the conscience, heart, and intelligence of man ought to recognize as a revelation of who was there. That was what He, He alone, could do for man — what would be a revelation — what man wants; not an humble conversation on what grounds a man might believe; carried on by one not allowed to dictate. That He condescended, as we have seen, to plead with man on the grounds he had for faith, is most true. Nothing was too low for His love, if it might be a blessing to man; but that is another thing.

{*The question of the grace that overcomes an "antagonistic will" in quickening power, is not what occupies us here, but the revelation of the object of faith.}

If Mr. N. merely means that he is quite ignorant of what the grounds of faith are, and wants instruction as to them — that I believe is true. He does not even know what the question is. But that is a strange reason for writing a book on it. His theory is, There can be no possible grounds for believing. Let me suggest, that when we seek a ground for faith, we must look for it in the proofs given of the thing proposed to us to be believed, not in discussing the abstract principles in which the human mind can believe, and neglecting the proofs of what it is called upon to believe; for the grounds of divine faith can be given only by divine testimony, by what God reveals (and hence known only in looking at that), not by settling whether one kind of proof is to be believed on account of the other, where both are direct proofs of something else — proofs which confirm each other.

224 But further, if God presents Himself as the object of faith — He who is the sole and perfect source of blessing, our alienation from whom is our ruin, can He do anything else than call on men to believe on Him? Can He give reasons for doing it other than the adequate display of Himself? Having given them to believe in Himself is everything as to human responsibility, and the necessary pursuit of divine love. He could do nothing but call men to this faith if He meant to bless. And what shall we say of the reasoning of one who compares God calling unhappy man to come to Himself for blessing, to the act of "an ambitious, unscrupulous Church, that desires, by fair means or foul, to make men's minds bow down to her?" It may be said that I am begging the question in saying "God calling." But this is a mistake, because we are enquiring what is suitable if God does address Himself to man. Mr. N. says, "But God cannot thus speak to man." I reply, He must thus speak to man. He must claim obedience as necessary in virtue of the revelation of Himself. He must call men to believe on Him if He means to bless. The Church's pretension to do it sets aside God — God's pretension to do it brings Him in. He must shew that the rejecting of Himself will be everlasting ruin.

If He be really God, it cannot be otherwise. If it be He, He cannot claim less than absolute obedience, nor do otherwise than call to believe in Himself. The taking any other ground would prove it was not He, however He may condescend in grace as to the means of display and proof. Mr. N. is blaming the character of address, as not suiting God if He does speak. Hence His speaking is necessarily assumed. If God speaks, He must do what Mr. N. blames; and what Mr. N. requires is the most unfitting and monstrous thing possible (that is, that if God reveals Himself, He is to discuss the logical grounds on which men are to receive evidence, instead of giving adequate evidence, and throwing upon them the responsibility of receiving Him). The evidence God has graciously offered, in contrast with that afforded by false religions or corrupt systems, is here avoided by Mr. N.; and he puts in his argument "an ambitious Church —  Hinduism — Mahommedanism" —  on the same ground as God, excluding the only real question (that is, the evidence attached to each), in order to discuss the human grounds of judging, without introducing the object about which he is to judge. Now, though God in grace can afford every kind of evidence, and has done so, He cannot subject Himself to man's à priori judgment, but must place man under responsibility to Him, and call him to come to Him, if He means to bless him. And this is what we find in the gospel. God, by positive truth, has met every kind of working in the human mind, groping after means of truth. He has, working in men, adapted His reasonings to their condition. But the thing revealed is always itself, and in its own divine perfection. The manner of revealing and teaching is grace; the thing taught is truth itself, and (blessed be God!) is grace also.

225 PAUL'S REASONINGS LIKE GAMALIEL'S — PLATO, PHILO, THE TARGUMS

This is my answer to what Mr. N. says of Paul's reasoning like Gamaliel, and talking of subjects such as Philo reasons about.* I have no doubt that glimmerings of needed truth were apprehended through the wants of the natural mind. The mind of man (through some traditional rays of light, affected by the creation through which it moved, by its conscience, by its sense of the want of something to meet a thousand questions which arose out of all this, and the heavings of an immortal soul within) felt that something was wanted to answer a craving, a void, which gave no clearness or certainty of what that answer would be. The revelation given in the Old Testament, the secondary effect of which was undoubtedly widely spread, furnished some clue to a large apprehension of the divine nature — opened up enquiries to the mind which it did not satisfy either. These floated about in various forms, and may be resumed in the western world, in Plato and the Targums, or perhaps Philo. The revelation of God in the New Testament met all these by the perfect revelation of God Himself, in His own being, and in every relation in which He stood with creation. Hence, while it gave the whole positive truth as to God, it left no room for the inadequate or erroneous views current on the same subjects in various forms. It took all the elements of truth which floated in men's minds and systems — rari nantes in gurgite vasto — and connected them in their true place with the centre of all truth. Chaos became perfect order, and associated with the vast expanse of heaven, with which it took its true place and relationship; while it left no room for the pride of man to pretend to have stores of wonderful knowledge (for he is proud of everything he discovers himself); for all true knowledge was a matter of revelation, and who can boast of that? Hence we find the hazy notions of the Platos, Philos, and Targums, absorbed into perfect truth, and the gnostic reveries and pretensions anticipated and judged. We get the λόγος with divine certainty and clearness, the πλήρωμα in all its simple, divine, clearly defined truth and perfectness. We get the φῶς and  ἀλήθετα, everything that man might indulge his imagination and his pride about, in the form of real truth. We get infinitely more knowledge, and certain, yea, divine knowledge, but no room for speculation; and (the perfection of the Godhead being revealed in Christ) all the development of ancient or modern gnostics is shut out by that all-important divine word — "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled, of the Word of life. For the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us."

{*"Paul's reasonings are those of a Gamaliel, and often are indefensible by our logical notions. John also (as I had been recently learning) has a wonderful similarity to Philo." (Phases, p. 147.)}

226 Either the living person of the Son of God is not the object of faith, and the perfect revelation of God and the Father in Him not the subject matter of those who speak of development; or the pretence to add anything to it is the blasphemous denial of His perfectness. Infidelity is openly the latter; Puseyism and Popery have their choice to make between the two. In either case they are not Christianity. THAT WHICH WAS FROM THE BEGINNING is the superscription of that book of scripture which, above all, especially guards us against seducing spirits. Modern infidelity professes to be development; so does modern Popery and Puseyism; and, strange to say, when Mr. N. renounced Christianity and became a developed infidel, he renewed, he tells us, happy intercourse with Mr. J. H. Newman, who is a developed Puseyite or Roman Catholic. Let the saint remember, that if he will be a Christian, he must hold to that which was from the beginning — the truth once delivered to the saints; and he may know, if he trusts an apostle, that he "has everlasting life," 1 John 5: 13.

227 FAITH AT SECOND HAND

But it is well to remark some other points on which the chapter we are occupied with depends. Its title is, "Faith at second hand found to be vain." Now the reader will observe that, though "second-hand faith" seems to be a very uncertain ground of confidence, the real meaning of the phrase is this, that there can be no faith at all except by a revelation made to the individual who receives it; and that it can never pass any farther. That is, that as regards the revelation of truth, or any revelation for men in general, none such can exist; for, if Peter or Paul have received a revelation, it is for me a revelation at second hand. That is, all revelation of truth must be a perpetual personal miracle, and exercise of God's power, without, consequently, any exercise of responsibility whatever in its reception. The scripture presents revelation as given, in order to be communicated for the good of others. Which is most rational (I go no farther here), if there is any real blessing — to give a revelation so as to produce absolute divine certainty in the mind, with no possibility of communicating it so as to put man under the responsibility of receiving it, and thus, if a blessing, to require a renewed miracle to each person, — or to communicate divine truth by a chosen instrument, with sufficient evidence to place men under responsibility of bowing to it when it is presented to them? But, further, Mr. N.'s reasonings on it are nothing whatever to the purpose. He requires to be informed how Paul got it. The question is not, What has been the means of assuring him? but, has he given adequate evidence of the truth he preaches, so as to bind me to receive it? It is evident that this last is the whole question with me. If any one has got possession of my father's will leaving me an immense fortune, the question is, not by what means he was convinced it was his, so as to keep it safe and communicate it to me; but whether I have, and can produce in court, adequate testimony that it is my father's, now it is in my possession. Mr. N.'s reasonings here are totally irrelevant. It is merely a denial of any revelation, and discrediting all by a point, difficult perhaps to solve for any of us whom God does not employ as instruments of communicating one, but perfectly irrelevant when the question is, Am I bound to receive it? If I prove my father's signature, and that of the witnesses, how the finder was convinced is all one to me.

228 DIVINE TRUTH COMMUNICATED BY GOD. ADEQUATE PROOFS

The meaning of any one's having a divine revelation is very simple. It is divine truth directly communicated to him by God, with divine certainty, whatever the means of such communication (and they were various) may be. With Moses it was face to face; with prophets, a vision or dream; in the New Testament, often, evidently, the Holy Ghost acting on the intelligence; in certain cases, though the coming of the word of the Lord was certain in the Old, the full bearing was not understood at the time of revelation. This difference may have its interest to the believer. It is nothing to an unbeliever; with him the question is, With what evidence is the truth presented to him? To say that God cannot communicate His thoughts to man, giving certainty to the mind that it is Himself, is to say that He cannot do what man is perfectly capable of. To say that He cannot afford certainty when the truth is communicated to a third person, by adequate evidence accompanying it, is an absurdity worthy of an infidel only. But if he can, "faith at second hand" is not vain. It is founded, or may be so, on adequate proofs. Yet this is the proposition of the chapter. Whether there are such proofs is a question of fact which Mr. N. leaves aside to enquire how Paul received the revelation,* and knew it to be such, which has nothing whatever to say to the matter. Supposing prophecies clearly accomplished, and even finding a meaning by the event, while otherwise inexplicable: — supposing, in him who is the subject of revelation, a perfection of individual walk wholly without parallel, the invention of which, even as a tale, would have been a greater miracle, man being what he is, than its existence, if a divine Person was really there: — supposing this person, after accomplishing prophecies and working notorious miracles, publicly and undeniably over the whole country, promises to communicate, when gone, to others who had it not, a power more conspicuous than that exercised by Himself — that a doctrine and practice, entirely beyond their age and country, characterize these persons, their whole tone and conduct being founded on the communication they impart, and that they perform publicly, in view of their enemies, notable miracles, which there is no gainsaying — that with a few words these men, once ignorant, confound all their adversaries, not by contentious learning, but by the power which, in the plainest terms, guides and fills their speech — that the promise of power from Him gone away is thus demonstrably fulfilled — that ignorant fishermen, whose provincialisms betrayed their country, now suddenly speak many tongues, so that men brought up in each understood them: — supposing all this true, should I not have proof that the testimony about this admirable and unequalled Being was true? That is, I should have proof, moral, prophetic, miraculous, in my conscience, my understanding, that their testimony was divine — that it was a revelation, though many historic points otherwise cognizable might confirm it; for I suppose the thing not done in a corner. In what manner this wonderful Being, now absent, has communicated to them what they preach about Him, does not touch the question whether I am bound to receive it. That depends on the evidence offered to me, not on that afforded to them. Now, it may be said, "You are supposing all this." I am: because the question is not whether Christianity is true, but whether, as a general proposition, faith at second hand is vain; that is, whether a denial of all revelation to man, as being an impossibility, can be reasonably maintained. Second hand faith is the best and highest kind. It has an amazingly higher moral character, and so the Lord assures us in the case of Thomas, John 20.

{*"What does he mean by saying that he has had a 'revelation?' Did he see a sight, or hear a sound? or was it an inward impression? and how does he distinguish it as divine? Until these questions are fully answered, we have no materials at all before us for deciding to accept his results." (Phases, p. 148.) Paul did see a sight — did hear a sound — and tells us he did receive things from the Lord, which I suppose produced impressions. But leaving this, which was the ground of his faith properly speaking (and unless I had an equally strong impression on my mind with himself, it would be impossible for me to know how he discerned its divine character, and then I should not want his reception of it at all) — leaving this entirely illogical and irrational ground taken by Mr. N., I would ask, what he means by — "Until these questions are fully answered we have no materials before us for deciding?" Suppose Paul had opened my eyes, I having been born blind, or any one else's, and had so reached my conscience that I could say, Here is a man who has told me all that ever I did, and shewn me a God that indeed searches the heart and tries the reins, and yet is perfect love — should I have no materials for judging whether he taught the truth and was sent of God — supposing too, in all his life he approved himself as a minister of God — until I knew, to satisfy my curiosity, how he had got it? Was ever more consummate nonsense?}

229 I do not again go over in detail the case of Abraham, here again referred to. Mr. N.'s argument is of no use whatever here, because Abraham went on the supposition of having a direct command from God; and St. Paul and St. James reason on that supposition as to the proof of faith contained in it, and on nothing else. He reckoned on God's restoring him his son, says St. Paul. He showed this faith in his act, says St. James. But Mr. N. is unreasonable, even as to that by which he seeks to act on the feelings of men to set them against the true God, the God of the Bible. There are cases, he tells us, elsewhere, in which it is a mere "morbid notion," to complain of men's being put to death. Men are to be put to death; and it is counted useful and proper as an example for the good of society. That is, there are motives which make it right that man should dispose of human life for the good of others. Mr. N. must think it to be approved of God — not perhaps as absolute good, but as needed and useful to man as he is; and life is taken away accordingly. Now, if there are reasons why we should, there may be reasons why Abraham should have been ordered to do it. There was no malice: it was done because God commanded it, in perfect obedience to Him. Now I believe (indeed no person can deny) that more good, incomparably and beyond all question more good, and of a more positive excellent kind, has been done by the example of Abraham's faith in this, and that for ages, than by the execution of criminal for the space of a year after his suffering. No one ever had the idea, or could draw it from the history, that it was right or allowable for a man to kill his child of his own will — quite the contrary. The sovereign claim of God, who forbids it to man, was enforced by it. There is this difference, that men cannot restore the life of a man whom they sacrifice to the good of society, whereas God could that of Isaac; and so Abraham believed. And, indeed, He could hinder his being even put to death, and did so as soon as Abraham's faith was fully proved in the way presented by Paul and James.

230 Many prophetic accounts which Mr. N. refers to are, evidently to me, visions only, and demonstrably so meant, to represent the character of Israel to the prophet's mind. I shall again omit noticing particularly some of the miserable insinuations which are worthy only of an infidel, or of a corrupt mind, if, indeed, they are to be distinguished, a conclusion to which, certainly, this book would not lead us.

The Irrationalism of Infidelity: Section h.

Being a reply to "Phases of Faith"*

J. N. Darby.

{*London: 1853.}

<06001-129E> File Section h.

231 HISTORICAL OBJECTIONS

CONQUEST OF CANAAN

Some historical objections remain to be noticed.

First, the well-known one of the conquest of Canaan. That, in the public government of the world, men have dealt thus and worse with conquered people, is certain; so that what Mr. N. considers as man as God made him has so acted — and God's government has so ordered it. This is Mr. N.'s notion. The fact of similar conquests is notorious in history. The only difference between Mr. N. and me is, that I hold, though such inroads may be used for judgment, as is shewn in Habakkuk, Joel, and frequently in the prophets (the book of Job explaining, so to speak, the secret springs of all this), yet that it is the sin of man which has given such a character to the government of God.

Now in Israel's history God did not go out of this character of government. He merely took a nation in which He showed its direct operation and the motives of it, so that that government should be learned by a law. So that man should say, "Verily there is a reward for the righteous, verily there is a God that judgeth in the earth." Israel, therefore, is put in relationship with God as a nation, and national laws given to them. As a whole, the law given to them was not a code of everlasting righteousness with a fully revealed God. Christ declares even the contrary. God was hidden behind the veil, and said that He would dwell in the thick darkness. Hence those who walked really with God suffered in Israel, as now in the world — a riddle too hard for them till in the sanctuary they learned the way of God in judgment. Grace, though secretly working and shewn in daily mercy, was unrevealed. Judgment and government were the principles on which God dealt, though patient goodness marked this government. The basis of it is laid in Exodus 34: 6 9; Exodus 32: 33. No doubt individuals saw beyond this to eternal things, as the Abrahams, the Davids, and a crowd of holy men in whom real faith was. But the principle brought out in God's dealing with the nation was God judging in the earth.

This it is that has produced confusion in the minds of many with such a book as Warburton's "Divine Legation of Moses". They could not but feel that they are not to be heard who feign that the fathers did look for mere transitory promises; while, on the other hand, the argument of Bishop Warburton's book is, in the main idea, incontestable. But all is simple if we see that the earthly government, carried on under Moses, did find its public sanction in present earthly judgments, while individual saints (suffering under the sin of others, and even plunged in deep sorrow because God's people were under judgment for their sins, and the public glory of God and His worship cast down through it) still looked, by present personal piety in which their hearts were elevated to God, beyond it all, and became more heavenly by this very means and the non-accomplishment of earthly promises. At the same time the great principles of everlasting righteousness were interspersed through the national enactments of the law, so that they who had hearts to perceive them should learn and be imbued with them; and they are brought out as such by the divine and perfect wisdom of the Saviour, while faith, as to the nation as the vessel of promise, was sustained by the assurance of the coming of a Messiah, who, executing judgment against every oppressor and bringing in everlasting righteousness, would also accomplish, in grace on God's part, the hopes of faith and the infallible promises of God in favour of the residue of the people whom He had called. This is entirely to come: for now God is calling the Church exclusively to a heavenly place, "blessed with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ," that the purpose of God for the administration of the fulness of times might be accomplished, that is, to gather together in one all things in Christ, both which are in heaven and on earth, Eph. 1: 8-10.

232 This is not the time of judging the earth in connection with His people (though providentially, of course, all is under God's hand), but of grace, heavenly hopes, and suffering with Christ. Nothing can be dearer in scripture than this. Christ did not judge the earth when He came; He refused to do it in the least thing. He was condemned by its judges, wielding externally God's power and authority in the place of judgment, Jewish and Gentile. All judgment was set aside, and the Just One was the victim of man's judgment and the bearer of God's wrath. This was indeed, morally, the judgment of the world, and of its prince the enemy of man. But the execution of judgment is yet wholly future, and so is the resulting accomplishment of divine purpose; and this is the true answer to Mr. N.'s cavils against a second fulfilment. The purpose of God declared in prophecy has never been fulfilled at all. Christ's sufferings have been, no doubt, but nothing else, save the consequent dispersion of His earthly people; but this is not God's purpose properly speaking. Particular local judgments have been executed, but neither are these His purpose. That remains wholly unaccomplished. God has not yet shewn Himself, according to His purpose, the Judge of the earth. When the wicked shall be cut off, who are open adversaries of His power, a King will reign in righteousness, and the Prince of Peace will exercise His dominion in the world. Christ, at His first coming, declares that it was not to bring peace on the earth, but a sword. Shall then this blessed character of Prince of Peace remain unfulfilled? Certainly not. For the moment sin had the upper hand in the world, because God was graciously doing a still greater work, and shewing Himself above all man's futile sin in making it the instrument of an eternal and heavenly salvation. But this earth will be the scene of peace and blessing under the government of God wielded by the hand of the Son of man, whom He hath set over the works of His hands. Grace has made us His joint-heirs.

233 Having given this general view of the connection of the whole subject, I return to the conquest of Canaan. The scriptures are express in presenting it as an example of God's positive judgment after all patience had already been shewn to be useless (as in the case of Sodom and Gomorrha); of His power against the enemies of His nature, purposes, and people; and of His faithfulness to these last. Abraham was told that his descendants must go down and dwell in Egypt for a long period, for the iniquity of the Amorites was not yet full; and this took place. Israel was clearly informed of the cause why they were thus judged: "Not for thy righteousness, or for the uprightness of thine heart, but for the wickedness of these nations, the Lord doth drive them out before thee," Deut. 9: 5; Deut. 18: 12. This truth is expressed in the strongest possible manner (Lev. 18) in warning Israel not to fall into the like abominations. "And the land is defiled, therefore I do visit the iniquity thereof upon it, and the land itself vomiteth out her inhabitants. Ye shall therefore keep my statutes . . . that the land spue not you out also, when ye defile it, as it spued out the nations that were before you." Thus a people, allowed to ripen up to their full height of wickedness, are taken as the occasion of shewing God's righteous wrath and power. Israel is fully warned and apprised of the principle on which it was done. It is a great public sample of God's full judgment in the earth. They were to be destroyed by the judicial power of God. It was also (as the case of Achan fully shews) the occasion of shewing God's power and faithfulness, but His strict judgment of evil in the midst of His people.

234 In the case which Mr. N. cites, he carefully omits that, outside these specially guilty people, peace was to be offered to every city, and not one was to be touched if accepted. If they preferred being adversaries, then of those who were thus hostile they were not to make slaves (which would have been their desire and profit), but to slay them as adversaries; the women and spoil, who were not in this case, were given them. But this was totally forbidden as to the seven wicked nations. All, as a judged race, were to be dealt with in God's name. Now this imprinted a clear character on the act; for it is quite certain that, as to national habits and personal interests, they would have made slaves of them all. That these national habits were according to the rude feelings of that age, there is no doubt; and God deals with them nationally according to their state. But He leads them on in various parts of it far beyond all surrounding nations, checks their will and passions by the sense of responsibility, encourages them by the favour of their God, and gives (enchased in their external and passing ordinances) the great principles of everlasting righteousness — love to God and one's neighbour, and maintains the great landmarks of society and family, as men speak now.

All this, I say, is not to be confounded for a moment with the eternal ground of man's relationship with God. The moral law, as far as it went, availed to shew that man as a sinner could have no such relationship on that ground. It convinced man of sin, and revealed nothing else of God but that He was a just Judge who condemned it. For the wisdom of the infidel, all this is jumbled together without distinction.

PURIFICATION OF THE TEMPLE

We have a singular example of the perfect absence of all moral discernment in the reasoning of Mr. N. in his reference to the Lord's conduct in purifying the temple. John 2: 15. A father chastises his child, and the profound wisdom of the infidel discusses whether it is a warrant for its brother to beat it. "Could it authorize me to plait a whip of small cords, and flog a preferment-hunter out of the pulpit?" (Phases, p. 151.) How sovereignly ridiculous such a remark in a moral point of view! Yet Mr. N. is treating it as a moral question. Now there are cases where the offensive character of an act puts the scourge in everybody's hand; and it was really such in this case. The men whom Christ drove out were making God's temple and God's worship an occasion of trafficking extortion as to the poor who had victims to buy. But this is by no means all. The Lord distinctly presents Himself as Jehovah; and (in one of the instances in which He thus cleared the temple) as at the same time the King, the Son of David, the Messiah, to whom such an office belonged. In the early case in John He says "Destroy this temple, and in three days I will raise it up." "He spake of the temple of his body." In the other, He sends for the ass, to accomplish the prophecy of Zechariah, saying "The Lord hath need of him," and enters publicly into Jerusalem as the King Messiah. Think of Mr. N. asking if it would authorize him so to act! He must forgive me saying "such questions go very deep into the heart" of the moral (perhaps I should say, common) sense of the writer.

235 ASSUMPTION OF GOD SPEAKING FROM WITHOUT

I may now come to the second part of Mr. N.'s chapter — the discussion of the grounds of faith as he views them. Many general principles have been discussed in my introductory portion, to which they properly belong; but some details and the answers to some objections and difficulties find their place here. Nothing can be more supremely absurd than one remark which is made as to the knowledge of God — a remark, however, which is the sum of Mr. N.'s book.

"But next the analogy assumes, most falsely, that God, like man, speaks from without; that what we call reason and conscience is not His mode of commanding and revealing His will, but that words to strike the ear, or symbols displayed before the senses, are emphatically and exclusively revelation. On the contrary, of our moral and spiritual God we know nothing without, everything within. It is in the spirit that we meet Him, not in the communications of sense." (Phases, p. 152.)

Was ever anything more futile, to say nothing of assuming the whole question, and deciding it with an αὐτὸς ἔφη  - "We know nothing without, everything within?" A Pythagorean bean-worshipper could not be more certain of truth. But let that pass here, as well as the use of the scripture language to a very different purpose from scripture truth.

What is the sense of this contrast of without and within? "words to strike the ear," or "symbols displayed before senses," in contrast with thoughts within? If words strike the ear, are they not then in an intelligent human being thoughts within? Has not God, by a most wonderful process, which no man can fathom, made the moving of the air by my lungs and lips the producer of the highest and most wonderful thoughts in another man's mind? Senses, no doubt, are in exercise; but is that all? Are not minds and thoughts in communication? yea, these thoughts created in me by this communication from another? This is really too futile, too absurd for a reasonable man.

236 But further: if God does not speak from without but from within, on Mr. N.'s theory, reason and conscience must be God (for otherwise He must speak somehow to reason or conscience); and they must be God in the highest way, for they have God's thoughts (have they all of them?) without His communicating them. This is just the grossest form of the desolating Pantheism from which Mr. N. pretends to deliver us. For, either God is without, i.e., outside reason and conscience, and communicates to them thoughts which they have not within them; or if they have them within themselves without God's communicating them, they are God in the highest sense; they think the thoughts of God themselves without His communicating to them. Good reason had the apostle to say, "No man knoweth the things of God but the Spirit of God." Now if these things are communicated to reason and conscience by the immediate action of the Spirit of God, that is just inspiration. And when speaking of intellectual subjects, that is from without, though not by the senses and not within. The use of anything which may act on the senses is a mere question of means, by which God, in His wisdom, may see fit to act and produce impressions, man being so framed as to receive them in this way. But without the inward power of the Holy Ghost there would by this be no certain revelation. One must be able to add, "I was in the Spirit — immediately I was in the Spirit." Reason and conscience are man — a part of his being. Hence, if they cannot have a revelation (i.e., knowledge which it requires a communication from God to possess), that is, unless it be really from without; or, in a word, if it be, as Mr. N. alleges, from within, uncommunicated, man is God. But then what he says is a contradiction; for it is not then a revelation at all. But to talk of the communications of sense, as if ideas were not conveyed, feelings not produced by words spoken without, is a communication not indeed of sense but of nonsense. If God speaks at all, He must speak from without, in any real sense of the word; if not, man is God, and to talk of revelation is absurd. The employment of the senses as a medium is the merest question of means. Immediate communications (i.e., from God) are inspirations.

237 Faith is within, but not "from within,"* for it must be in a revealed object, the evidence of which is adequate to convince. For I do not here speak of the effectual working of grace in life-giving power overcoming the "antagonist will," which produces faith. Faith ought to flow from adequate testimony. The reception of this is a moral question, because the will and passions indispose to receive such a testimony. Further, as to our responsibility, the evidence ought to be adequate and cannot be overpowering, though grace may lead the heart to receive it, the will being otherwise opposed. Hence, "to try people's faith,"** though we may all understand it, is an incorrect expression; and Mr. N.'s reasoning on it is playing on words. For if faith is there, there is nothing to try. It is the heart that is put to the test. Adequate evidence is offered, and man will not believe. That is the state of his will: the state of his heart is shewn, because, though the thing to be believed be perfectly certain, and adequate evidence be offered, he will not receive it; and when it is said, "overpowering evidence is not given," it merely means such is given as is sufficient if the will be not opposed, and hence detects its opposition if it is. To give what would destroy this test would take away its moral character. Grace does not change this. It acts in disposing the heart; but this is not my subject now. "If thine eye be single, thy whole body shall be full of light." Matt. 6: 22.

{*"All pious Christians feel, and all the New Testament proclaims, that faith is a moral act and a test of the moral and spiritual that is within us . . . faith therefore is essentially from within." (Phases, pp. 153, 154.)}

{**"It had always appeared to me very strange in these divines to insist on the convincing and stupendous character of the Christian miracles, and then, in reply to the objection that they were not quite convincing, to say that the defect was purposely left to 'try people's faith.' Faith in what? Not surely in the miracle, but in the truth as discernible by the heart without aid of miracle." (Phases, p. 154.)}

SIMON MAGUS AND DEMAS

Mr. Newman then puts the case of two men,* one simple-hearted and thus easily deceived, the other acute and shrewd, being exposed to the juggleries of a Simon Magus. Now I do not answer here, that this, as Mr. N. always does, excludes God's care altogether. But I take the mere human ground, and I say an humble godly mind would, in such a very serious matter, wait till it got clear light — would seek for God's guidance. Such a mind has principles to guide it, which the shrewd Demas has not. There are tests of holiness, of truth, of respect for the word of God, which enable "a sheep" to discern the voice of the Good Shepherd. It may not be able to say what another's voice is; but till it recognizes the voice of the Good Shepherd, it fears to follow. A stranger will they not follow, because they know not the voice of strangers.

{*Phases, pp. 154, 155.}

238 Demas has no such safeguard; he must judge the thing himself, for himself, by his own acuteness. If the pretender is cleverer than he, he is deceived. How often is this the case! Nay, in many cases he is pre-disposed by false motives towards error and deceit; for unholy motives and deceit coalesce. At any rate he has no safeguard but his own acuteness; and he may easily fall. Now the godly, serious, simple-hearted man has. If it is not what his soul knows as truth, or according to it, he does not receive it. No new truth ever upsets old truth, but builds upon it — they mutually confirm each other. How many shrewd ones, like Demas, received false Christs and Barchochebahs! How many simple ones refused the Judases and Theudases, and received Christ! How many clever shrewd men have received the most monstrous imposture ever palmed on infatuated man — that of Mormonism! A simple-hearted believer escapes, because he has got what guards him from the motives which lead a man to receive it. Mr. N.'s estimate of the capacity of shrewdness to escape is not borne out by a just moral estimate of what places a soul in safety, nor by facts.

A miracle is a confirmation of truth in scripture — "confirming the word by signs following." Men are not called on to believe the miracle, but to believe because of the miracle, though not for its sake alone. Now this is a very different thing; because, to be useful as a miracle, it must in general be incontestably self-evident to the persons to whom it is presented. This was the case with all scripture miracles. I may have to judge an apparent miracle* in certain cases, and shew that it is only apparent. That which has to be proved does not serve as a proof — as a sign given. On the other hand, I do not deny that professed religion may sink below the standard of natural conscience — the case supposed by Mr. N. in Spain.** When it does, natural conscience will judge it — perhaps be driven into infidelity by it. What then? I admit it freely and fully — have seen it in thousands myself. A strange phenomenon to employ to accredit Mr. N.'s competent human nature, that of pleasure-hunting infidels, or communists and deceiving religionists! I, who believe in the power of sin and Satan, am not at a loss here, though I bow my head in sorrow. How Mr. N.'s "good God," or even his law of progress, has ordered all this, he must explain. But this fact has nothing whatever to do with the concurrent testimony of incontestable miracles wrought on thousands who profited by them and saw them — of doctrines of the simplest truth, and the most elevated knowledge of God, and of a life of perfect holiness, which, if it were imposture, would prove an imposture to be better than all the realities that ever were. This is the case Mr. N. has to deal with. "He healed them all." Would this, repeated over and over again, not prove the existence of power? If not, what would? It was not a case of miracles arranged among favouring people, isolated instances, or pre-arranged individual cases. They were public, when men pleased, where men pleased, and as often as they pleased. Along with this power, truth, and goodness were there. If deceit can do these two things, it is not deceit at all, but the truest mercy that can be. If juggleries accompany conduct which shocks natural conscience, let natural conscience judge it. It is, as we have said, a sad case if there be but that natural conscience to judge deceit, for it is but negative. It rejects, but possesses nothing. Our case is with positive holy truth which judges conscience, confirmed by signs which none could counterfeit.

{*There is this evident distinction between a mass of pretended miracles and scriptural ones, that these were to convince where men were strangers to the doctrine, the others to confirm existing prejudices. Besides this, I may remark that in many instances there was no room for the power of the imagination in the patient — the cure being wrought by Christ's word when He was at a distance.}

{**"Suppose him to be a poor Spaniard, surrounded by false miracles, false erudition, and all the apparatus of reigning and unopposed Romanism . . . 'You bid me not to keep faith with heretics: you defend murder, exile, imprisonment, fines, on men who will not submit their consciences to your authority: this I see to be wicked, though you ever so much pretend that God has taught it you.'" (Phases, p. 155.)}

240 CHRISTIANS UNDER CONSTANTINE

Mr. Newman's historical reasoning only condemns his system. The positive and superior instructions of Christianity were soon, he tells us, corrupted and polluted.* How then is man able to get at truth for himself? He corrupts, on the contrary, what he has got. As to his account of Judaism,** the only thing to be said is, that it is as untrue as can possibly be, as every tolerably instructed person knows.

{*"Hardly was it started on its course when it began to be polluted by the heathenism and false philosophy around it . . . . It became more and more debased . . . . It sank into deep superstition and manifold moral corruption." (Phases, pp. 159, 160.)}

{**"It began in polytheistic and idolatrous barbarism; it cleared into a hard monotheism, with much superstition adhering to it. This was farther improved by successive psalmists and prophets until Judaism culminated." (Phases, p. 160.)}

He tells us that "before Constantine Christians were but a small fraction of the empire." (Phases, p. 161.) In the East this certainly was not the case, nor, indeed, in the West, though it had not prevailed as in the East. But how did the Christian soldiers conquer the empire, if Christians were only a small fraction? Constantine was able to found his pretensions to empire on the strength of the Christian party. No doubt, as Mr. N. says, he conquered the empire for Christianity, but whence came the Christians who conquered it* if they had made no more progress than Mr. N. states? Mr. N.'s assertions are not to be trusted. "There is nothing in all this to distinguish the outward history of Christianity from that of Mohammedism." (Phases, p. 162.) Now I ask any one in the smallest degree acquainted with history, if this is true? Christianity, unarmed and persecuted for three hundred years, had increased to such a degree that an ambitious chieftain could take up the profession of it to secure the empire for himself. No one can contest this, whatever judgment he may form of Constantine's sincerity, or Eusebius's account of his vision of the cross. Everyone knows that all the progress of Mohammedism was by arms. In the thirteenth year of Mohammed's setting up for prophet (that is, the very year of the Hegira, or flight from Mecca to Medina), he and his friends entered into a covenant engaging themselves to fight, and paradise was promised to those who were killed. Six years after this his public warfare began by the attack on Mecca. Indeed, he began in a small way at once, and a battle gained in the second year of the Hegira was (according to Sale) the foundation of his greatness. A person who can say that the first three hundred years of Christianity are not different from this does not deserve to be listened to. He who begins to consider its means of progress only three hundred years after it was established is not much better entitled to attention.

{*"They [Christians] had made no such rapid progress in numbers as to imply that by the mere process of conversion they would ever Christianize the empire. In fact, it was the christian soldiers in Constantine's army who conquered the empire for Christianity." (Phases, pp. 161, 162.)}

241 PROPHECY

Prophecy, St. John's Gospel, tongues, and St. Paul's conversion, are next considered as to the evidence afforded by them — for this is our subject now.

It is well, as to prophecy, to notice a great principle called in question by Mr. N. — what he calls "double interpretation." "No one dreams of a 'second sense,'" he tells us, "until the primary sense prove false." Now I meet this assertion by saying, that there cannot be a doubt that from the fall of Adam there was one grand subject of promise and prophecy, of hope and expectation — the seed of the woman who should bruise the serpent's head — the seed of Abraham — the seed of David. To say that this was not produced in the universal mind of Israel, at all times with which we are acquainted (and with no nation are we acquainted so long, or so well at this early date), would be to deny the most certain fact, sustained by the most incontrovertible evidence. It is much more certain than that Mr. N. is author of "Phases of Faith," and was once a Fellow of Balliol. The testimony of Josephus, Tacitus, and Suetonius concur, it is well known, as stating that through all the East a notion prevailed, that, at the time Christ arose, He should arise who would possess the empire of the world. In a word, so strong was the testimony and the expectation, that all over the East it had reached the Gentiles, and was well enough known in the West to be recorded by the two Gentile historians of those times. All prophecy must (if God's promise was such and true) have centred here; and so, in fact, it does — sometimes clearer — sometimes more obscure — sometimes given as a relief and encouragement to oppressed saints — sometimes breaking through the dark cloud of judgment, like the sun in a stormy day; but, from Genesis 3 to the last chapter of Malachi, beginning, middle, and ending, every ray of light converged to this point, that Messiah was to come. This is the first enduring sense, the key and object of all prophecy. All the rest is subordinate to, and conduces to this.

242 I have no doubt myself that this leads us to the sense of "private interpretation" in 2 Peter 1: 20. We have not God's mind in it unless we take His scope in the whole. No prophecy of scripture is ἰδίας διαλύσεως, of its own interpretation. It must have its meaning as part of a great whole. Now, no doubt, partial temporal judgments were announced, which were parts of this great whole; and the prophetic word passed on to the grand summing up at the close, when all the parties to the wondrous drama that is enacting will meet in its eventful dénouement on the stage of this world. In this way only is there a double sense. That partial displays (of the spirit of that which is to be judged in its full manifestation) may be dealt with as anticipative of the great final event, is an unquestionable scriptural principle. "Ye have heard," says St. John, "that antichrist shall come, and even now are there many antichrists, whereby we know that it is the last time." 1 John 2: 18. Here the manifestation of the same spirit is taken as indicating the epoch, and accompanied by the clearest testimony that it is not the fulfilment. I believe that various passages, applied by some to previous events, are spoken of final ones: others, completely fulfilled in previous ones, have been applied to ultimate ones.

Prophecy is much simpler, in general, than is supposed. But that characteristic evil may be partially, as well as fully developed, is undoubted; and as prophecies have generally a moral character, and those in whom the character is judged, a local habitation and a name, the principle of application to characteristic things or events, while fulfilment is to be sought at another time, is perfectly sound and easily intelligible. There has been mischievous spiritualizing. But no one can doubt that Jerusalem, Babylon, and even Egypt, embody certain great principles and systems, which may be variously developed, and judged according to this development.

Now, this is not a question of a "second sense"; it is a sound and enlarged view of what is undeniable in principle, and unquestionably true in its application to scripture. What the believer has to do is to ascertain the principle involved, and the facts referred to in connection with it. The actual accomplishment of the prophecy is to be sought according to the plain testimony of the passage.

243 And here I would add a remark or two. Nothing can be simpler or more natural than that some great characterizing principle should be embodied in some system, and this have its centre in some place or people where it finds its development and full maturity, as we speak of Rome being this and doing that, meaning the corporate system of papal power. Now scriptural statements, as to these systems and places, are most useful, as guiding the mind in its judgment of the principles embodied. Prophecies declare the ultimate judgment of God on these systems, shewing out the principles judged therein. When Christians apply these prophecies to partial developments of the principles, it is not morally false, although as an interpretation it is inadequate, and may be mistaken as to the letter. But the soul is guided in the judgment of the real principles by the actual judgment of it at the end. It does morally what God will do in power; and while there may be mistakes in interpretation, there is moral rectitude of judgment. The ultimate judgment of God is the application of power to the judgment and removal of the whole system, which is justly judged meanwhile morally in all its partial manifestations. Of course it is important, in interpretation, to keep to what is really and fully meant; without this, even our moral judgment will not be correctly formed.

The addresses to the seven churches call for even individual application and use of the judgment pronounced on what was locally verified in certain places, as to which the Lord declared His mind, and the results which would follow from the neglect of it.

ACTS 13 33-35

I may now turn to some particular assertions. "The three prophecies quoted (Acts 13: 33-35) in proof of the resurrection of Jesus are simply puerile, and deserve no reply." (Phases, p. 169.) I doubt the application of Acts 13: 33 to the resurrection. Raising up Jesus is in the same sense as raising up a deliverer. Why "Thou wilt not leave my soul in hades, nor suffer thy Holy One to see corruption" does not mean resurrection, I do not know. Mr. N. should shew us the puerility of it. In reading the psalm (the application of which to Messiah is, in my judgment, incontestable) we have the plainest evidence that it is the resurrection. What should make flesh rest in hope, and lead to the presence of Him in whom is fulness of joy, "and at whose right hand are pleasures for evermore," if it be not the resurrection? The words themselves also depict it, and that it should take place without His seeing corruption, in the clearest way. A man's soul not resting in hades, and his body not seeing corruption, can only be by a speedy resurrection. I am aware of the difficulties raised as to Shachath, one of the words here used, but I see nothing in it to shake the certainty of the Septuagint, Vulgate, English, and other translations (maintained by the soundest Hebrew authorities). The context makes the meaning certain, and the whole psalm treats of the humiliation of Jesus in the most beautiful manner possible. The beginning of it is cited by Paul, as containing, among many other psalms, the great leading principle of this humiliation. Though a divine Person, He took upon Him the form of a servant. Messiah takes a place in which He calls Jehovah His Lord, and declares all His delight to be in the godly remnant of Israel.

244 ISAIAH 55, 50, 53; PSALM 22; ZECHARIAH 12, 13

I turn next to the quotation from Isaiah 55, and its application to the resurrection of Christ. This also is objected to in the supercilious language above quoted. If the sense and meaning of a prophecy is to have any influence on the interpretation of it, we are led here at once to the subject of which the apostle speaks. The chapter is a summons, in the fullest largeness of grace, addressed first to the Jews, but so as to open it out to all by the terms of the invitation — "every one that thirsteth" — to all who sought after righteousness from God. Thus in principle, though not in immediate address, it lets in the Gentiles, so that, according to the whole tenor of scripture, we must look for Messiah, and for a change in the relationship of God with Israel. Still the address is to Israel. Thus it is the apostle Paul constantly draws out this class of passages, shewing the address to the Jew first, and yet a principle contained which let in the Gentile if he had faith and spiritual need. This is further developed in the following verses. Verses 4 and 5 proclaim some remarkable personage, who is not named, but who is supposed to be known by the previous testimonies of God, who is to be a witness and a leader of the nations — translated people, in English, but which is in the plural le-ummim — and then the call and influx of the nations through his means is announced. But then in verse 3 this includes an everlasting covenant to be made, particularly with the people of God (the Jews), that is, the assured mercies of David. These mercies of David are incontestably the establishment of permanent blessing in the promised seed of David, in whose time the righteous should flourish (in a word, in Messiah, the Christ). Hence the existence of Messiah in the power of an endless life is most certainly announced here. Nor is this a new thought. The Jews say, "We have heard out of the law, that Christ abideth for ever: and how sayest thou, The Son of man must be lifted up?" John 12: 34. Yet, if it were Messiah (as a Jew under the law), known, as the apostle calls it, "after the flesh," the Gentiles could not have thus been let in in common with the Jews. Indeed, we who know the need of redemption can say "the corn of wheat" would have abode alone. Thus we get elements in the passage which shew that, for their accomplishment, Christ must have been raised. An everlasting covenant in the accomplishment of the sure mercies of David, and Gentiles called, supposed (when duly weighed) a closing of the strict Jewish system, and yet a Messiah who was to abide for ever — a difficulty felt by the Jews in the question above referred to when our Lord alludes to His rejection. Now Christ was rejected and put to death. Hence the apostle introduces to the Jews (objects of this everlasting covenant and holding themselves to be such) the resurrection, as alone accomplishing, or securing the accomplishment of, the sure and abiding mercies of David.

245 Nothing could more largely and perfectly bring together all the elements of dispensational truth, and give the key and keystone of the manner of their accomplishment. It is nothing but the miserable narrowness of mind of those who can see nothing of God's ways out of their own petty circle of ideas, which could make the objections which German sceptics, and their imitators, do. They comment on a book of which they know nothing, the object and import of which they have not even studied — an immense scope of connected thought and system, reaching from Genesis to the melting away of time into eternity — all its parts hanging together, and developing every form of relationship between God and man, historically pursued, yet morally and individually realized — in which each part fits into the other, like the pieces of a dissected map, proving the perfectness and completeness of the whole — all this system, I say, making a complete whole, in absolute unity, yet written (for written it was, as the best testimony proves) at long intervals, over a space of some fifteen hundred years, pursued through every various condition in which man can be placed, of ignorance, darkness, and light, with principles brought out into intended contrast, as the law and the gospel, yet never losing its perfect and absolute unity or the relationship of its parts — all this is passed over by these sceptics. They are not conscious of the existence of it. They have about as much knowledge of the Bible as a babe who took the dissected map and would put together two parts from the antipodes, because they were coloured red and would look pretty.

246 That Mr. N. (who does not believe it himself, and evidently did not at the period of his history) should have found difficulty in pointing out the sufferings of Christ in the Old Testament, is very natural. Had he as much faith as a Jew in the Bible, he would have had none. Let the reader turn to Isaiah 50, 53; Psalm 22; Zechariah 12, 13, and indeed a crowd of other passages, which, having cited these, it is needless to enumerate, and he will be at no loss to find a suffering Messiah. Besides, a crowd of sacrifices (for, as I said, all the parts of scripture unite in one whole) shewing atonement for sin, which certainly the blood of bulls and goats could not effectuate, pointing to a suffering Messiah; the portion of Joseph and David (which, though not direct proofs, all confirm by analogies which shew the mind of God in quite as strong a way when we have the facts and doctrines as direct proofs); the universal position of the saints; the expression of sentiment provided in the Psalms for those who were associated with Messiah, and for Himself, and so used in many instances by Him — all, as does the whole tenor of the Old Testament, point to the sufferings of Him who was to be "exalted and extolled, and very high," but had "his visage so marred more than any man, and his countenance more than the sons of men." I am not aware what Isaiah 53 has to do with a double sense.* I know that the Rabbis have sought to apply it to Israel, to avoid its application to Christ; but this is a simple sense, and, to any one who reads the chapter, simply absurd. To make of "He" in the phrase, "He was wounded for our" etc. to be a personification of "our," both meaning Israel, and so on, is an effort worthy of the natural opposition of a Jew in raising an objection, and of a German sceptic to be stopped by.

{*"I still rested on Isaiah 53, as alone fortifying me against the Rabbis, yet with an unpleasantly increasing perception that the system of 'double interpretation,' in which Christians indulge is a playing fast and loose with prophecy, and is essentially dishonest." (Phases, p. 169.)}

247 DANIEL 9

As to Daniel 9* some terms may fairly be contested in the English translation. The only just change, however, in the words which affect this point, confirms their application to the death of Christ. "Messiah shall be cut off, but not for himself," goes, I apprehend, beyond the force of the words of the Holy Ghost. It should be "Messiah shall be cut off, and shall have nothing" — that is, shall then possess nothing of the kingdom and glory which belongs to Him in Israel. For the prophecy relates to Israel, and the accomplishment of prophecy as to that people, and the taking away their iniquity and re-establishing them in peace. Consequently, after this, the wars and troubles which are to come on till that which is determined be poured out are announced. Daniel never goes on to the time of peace, but only to the putting an end to evil.

{*"The prophecy in Daniel 9 looks specious in the authorized English version, but has evaporated in the Greek translation, and is not acknowledged in the best German renderings." (Phases, p. 168.)}

De Wette's translation is "An anointed one shall be snatched away, and no one is there [or existing] who belongs to him." Now the Hebrew is simply "there is nothing to him." De Wette's is a paraphrase which, while giving the sense, fixes it to a person, "no one," and adds "there" (or existing). With this difference, it gives the sense so as to afford us the clear certainty of the grand meaning of the passage. His translation (it is a learned and rationalist one) is, wird ein Gesalbter weggerafft, und keiner ist vorhanden der ihm angehört. The Hebrew is yekarith Mashiach, "Messiah shall be cut off," as simply as possible; Messiah, as all know, means anointed; ve-aen lo "and there is nothing to him," i.e., He has nothing. Now take this plain and simple passage in the best German renderings, and what has "evaporated?" Something perhaps of an effort to undo the application to Messiah; only that the text was so plain and strong that the Anointed One's cutting off is impossible to be got rid of; and we have the fact of his having nothing as the consequence — His labouring in vain, as He says (Isa. 49), with regard to His then taking the kingdom and glory in Israel. That He will have it, Isaiah 53 and Daniel 7 tell us plainly. We know (as Daniel 9 teaches us) that He was cut off and that He got nothing. No one can deny that De Wette's is a paraphrase, and that "ve-aen lo" means "and had nothing." Interpreters have confined the passage to Christ's death, and its application to the Church now; whereas I have not the least doubt (whatever the present efficacy of His blood) that the passage applies to Israel, their establishment, their treatment of Messiah, and their consequent sorrows, which we have before our eyes, till God takes them up again in grace. But the cutting off of Messiah is as plain as words can make it. The word employed is that always used for "that soul shall be cut off from his people," or from Israel — just what happened to Messiah. De Wette elsewhere always employs another word for the Hebrew one than that which he has used here.

248 I may just add, that Messiah (translated an anointed one by De Wette here) is not used with an article in Hebrew, as far as I can find; and, when used without a possessive pronoun, is elsewhere always translated by De Wette with the article (der Gesalbter, the anointed). Here, as it must be applied to Messiah if so translated, he puts ein Gesalbter, an anointed.

In fine, the passage of Daniel is as clear as language can make it of the cutting off of Messiah.

MATTHEW 24: 32 to 25: 30; AND DANIEL 12

I turn to Matthew's prophecy chapter 24.* The Lord gives in this chapter down to the end of verse 31, the position of the testimony of His disciples, and in general of the elect remnant in Israel; their position in the exercise of their testimony down to the end of verse 14; from verses 15-28, the position of the faithful remnant during the tribulation, when testimony was useless, and they were to flee; and then, from verses 29-31, the coming of the Lord and the gathering of the scattered elect of Israel from the four winds. I beg the reader to mark, I am stating the contents of the passage, and not interpreting them. That this applies to Jews is on the face of the passage from the reference to Jerusalem, and Daniel, the holy place, the sabbath, &c.

{*"The prophecies of the New Testament are not many. First, we have that of Jesus in Matthew 24, concerning the destruction of Jerusalem. It is marvellously exact, down to the capture of the city, and miserable enslavement of the population; but at this point it becomes clearly and hopelessly false." (Phases, p. 169.)}

From Matthew 24: 32 to 25: 30 the Lord gives a practical comment on this solemn subject, and in these parables instructs the disciples as to their just position as Christians during His absence; verses 31 to the end take up the consequence to the Gentiles of His coming to judge the earth. Thus we have, in connection with the Lords going away, what concerned the Jewish people, Christian responsibility, and the judgment of the Gentiles in connection with their responsibility as to receiving the messengers of the kingdom, Christ's disciples (His brethren, as He calls them here), when sent to them.

249 DANIEL 12

To return to the prophecy which regards the Jews, the testimony of the disciples was to be carried on in the midst of difficulties and reach out to all the world for a witness to all nations, and then the end should come. This was the general history of their position. Whatever we may gather of dates from comparison of other passages, which is not my business here, it reached down from the time of Christ to the end of the age. Remark here that the end of the age is not only not the end of the world, but it is not the age of Christianity, but the end of the age of the temple standing under the law till Messiah came. This was the object of the question. Of this, whatever light may be given by the Lord, there can be no question if we read the passage. But in verse 15 a specific definite time is marked out by a particular event — the abomination of desolation spoken of by Daniel the prophet. This leads us at once, and in a positive manner, to the subject of which the Lord speaks. His own words, moreover, establish in the most complete and evident manner, that He is speaking of Jerusalem and Judea. Of this there can be no question.

Now Daniel (Dan. 12, where the abomination of desolation is spoken of) speaks of twelve hundred and sixty days and twelve hundred and ninety days, at the end of which the Lord would interfere in favour of Israel, dating them from that to which the Lord here referred. Let the reader pay attention to this. Daniel declares that from the time the abomination is set up, there shall be twelve hundred and ninety days, and the blessing in thirteen hundred and thirty. Further, he connects this — indeed it is the grand subject of the last three chapters of his prophecies — with the closing history of Israel. He speaks of a king who will prosper till the indignation be accomplished at the time of the end.

It is indeed the grand topic of the book, and must have been: for the ultimate fate of Israel would have been the thought which governed the prophetic writing, whether it was God's love to Israel, or Daniel's which was in exercise; and it was undoubtedly both. Hence we have the last beast destroyed in Daniel 7; the image ground to powder in Daniel 2, and the kingdom of blessing set up and filling the world. So, in the details in Daniel 8, the prophet is shewn what is to happen in the last end of the indignation, when the king of fierce countenance is to stand up against the Prince of princes, and be broken without hand. He gives the series of Gentile monarchies from the first of them, which was set up in his days, and set aside the throne of God at Jerusalem, established in the family of David, to which all the promises were attached; and he pursues these Gentile monarchies in two symbolical prophecies, which gives the whole series (chapters 2 and 7) on to the end, and the setting up of the kingdom of the Son of man.

250 Nothing can be clearer than what the prophecy thus professes to do. Objections to the execution of it will be considered hereafter, when we meet with them. This is not the point now. Then, in some particular prophecies, the grand crisis which settles the fate of Israel is discoursed of in connection with particular nations and events (besides facts then happening), which realized and at the same time foreshadowed the principles which would characterize the apostate Gentiles, who were the possessors of power, and the adversaries of Israel (for all in Daniel relates to Israel). Now the particular prophecies which relate to the ultimate fate of Israel, though they may be linked on to those among the beasts which had their power established in the countries in which Palestine is situated, yet necessarily speak of and have for their object what closes the scene. That close is yet future, as is seen, not only by the plain testimony of scripture, but in the fact that we have the Jews yet as a nation with their ultimate fate unsettled. This is a living fact around us.

That Daniel does go on to the end is unquestionable, whatever ideas we may have of the time he expected it to happen. We have alluded to the proofs, which indeed lie on the surface of his writings. His book closes with a promise that he shall stand in his lot at the end of the days — a promise which leaves no obscurity as to the period which he was looking for and referring to in his prophecy, be he right or wrong. The difficulty of interpretation arises precisely from the circumstance we have mentioned — i.e., that Daniel links (Daniel 8 and Daniel 9) the state of things at the end with the Grecian monarchy which possessed the East, where all was certainly to happen, for that was where Canaan was situated; but he as certainly teaches that another monarchy was to arise which would take a great, and even principal, share in these events. When we set about to interpret the prophecy, the difficulty is to allot its proper share to each of these powers. His introduction of the one certainly does not exclude the other; and many other prophecies declare that all the heathen shall come up against, or be in possession of, Jerusalem in the latter day. We have now, however, to do with the particular prophecy of Daniel 12.

251 In the beginning of that chapter Daniel speaks, just as the Lord does, of the time of trouble such as never was; when Michael shall stand up for the Jews. So that we have the grand final desperate trouble of Daniel's people; and yet at a time when the power of God interferes to deliver them. Just as Jeremiah also represents it: "Alas, for that day is great, so that none is like it; it is even the time of Jacob's trouble; but he shall be delivered out of it. For it shall come to pass in that day, saith the Lord of hosts, that I will break his yoke from off thy neck, and will burst thy bonds, and strangers shall no more serve themselves of him: but they shall serve the Lord their God, and David their king, whom I will raise up to them." This last prophet declares, moreover, that it shall embrace the whole nation of Israel, as well as Judah in a very particular manner; and that it shall be by a new covenant and not by the old; and that, as sure as the heavens stood, Israel should be a special nation, and Jerusalem be restored. All this, observe, refers to God's government of the earth and the nations. The heavenly blessing of the Church in no way meets it.

That is, we have in Matthew, in Daniel, in Jeremiah, a time of unparalleled trouble at the close of Judah's history; and Judah delivered out of it, and full blessing brought in (the Lord declaring in Matthew that He referred to what Daniel spoke of; and all in their prophecies, not merely in this, but in other prophecies, professedly referring to this closing scene, declaring that it would be brought to an issue by the raising up of the seed of promise in David's family by the coming of the Son of man, by God's interference in favour of His people, whom He never would give up). With this all prophecy, from Moses downwards, coincides; and in many all the details are entered into. It is the grand subject, though many events leading to it, or illustrative of the principles and motives of God's government which is to be fully displayed in it, are noticed for the instruction of the people in them, and as samples of God's ways.

252 Now what Daniel spoke of in Daniel 7, as arriving at this epoch of divine judgment, when the saints would have the kingdom (namely, that the Son of man would come in glory), the Lord also expressly declares; referring, in a positive and most remarkable manner, to another prophecy of Daniel, relating to the same epoch, and unfolding the special tribulation of which He spoke, and His coming in glory, which would be consequent on it. Every statement of scripture, in various parts of it, and by different prophets, concurs in this, and concurs in placing these events in the grand closing scene of God's government of the earth, viewed as the scene of man's national responsibility, Israel being the centre, in God's view of it (see Deut. 32: 8), of all this government. The Lord (or Matthew, if Mr. N. pleases), so far from confounding anything, gives warnings for the conduct of the disciples in their testimony in the midst of Israel, while that testimony should be carried on there; adding that the testimony of the kingdom should go out to all nations, and that then (not before) the end of the age (not of the world, as every scholar knows) should come. Then, with verse 14, He closes His general history and directions. This is beyond controversy; because the question of the disciples was as to the end of the age; and He says (ver. 14), "Then shall the end come." Then He takes up a very particular point, which He definitely connects with Daniel's prophecy of what was to happen at this "end of the age" (that is, that at that epoch, or twelve hundred and sixty days before the end, it would not be a time of testimony, but that they were to see). The sign would be an idol set up in the holy place, which idol was to cause the desolation of Jerusalem. Now this has never yet taken place at all. Titus did destroy Jerusalem, but no idol was set up in the holy place, which caused the desolation. Michael, the prince, did not stand up for Daniel's people — and to this the New Testament writer refers; nor was any deliverance of Jacob wrought, nor did Daniel stand in his lot, nor did the sign of the Son of man appear, nor did thirteen-hundred-and-thirty days bring any blessing. That is, to the believer there certainly was not the accomplishment of the prophecy. But what is the conclusion we must draw? No person writing, as Mr. N. supposes, after the event, would have written an account, of which the contradiction and falseness was in the hands of all, and of public notoriety. He could not pretend that the Son of man had appeared, and that the elect Jews were gathered — that the blessing of Daniel was arrived. If he lived after the event he might have given a flaming description of Titus's siege, which history would have furnished him with; but at this point it becomes (to use Mr. N.'s phrase) "clearly and hopelessly false" in Mr. N.'s application of it. That is, it certainly was not written after the event. No man would write, in forging a prophecy, what was already clearly and hopelessly false at the time he wrote it. For, as Mr. N. justly insists (by putting it in italics), it is stated that "immediately after that tribulation," etc. So that nothing but the utter nonsense of infidel credulous invention could have explained Matthew 24 as Mr. N. does. That infidels should be ignorant of the abundant confirmation given in the prophets of the real force of the passage, was only to be expected. They have never really examined the contents of the book. They are not capable, by their position, of getting beyond literary speculations. Perhaps we must also expect from them that they should seek to persuade us that a rational account of the passage is, that the writer composed, to deceive them, an account of what was happening among themselves, which was notoriously false at the time he wrote it, to gain the credit of a true prophet for his master!

253 It may be asked by some, if I give no place here to the destruction of Jerusalem. I think it had a very important one. It closed altogether for the moment the application of the passage we are considering, and of all such, to the testimony in the midst of Israel, to which it referred. God's ways were then to be looked for solely in the Church, whose portion is in heavenly places; and hence (though Providence ever governs all things) not the proper occasion of the display of God's government of the earth. It was, as Paul says to the Ephesians, the proof to principalities and powers in heavenly places, that the wisdom of God was "πολυποίχιλος" very various in its character.

This interruption, as regards God's ways on the earth, is developed in Luke, who looks at all these dispensational questions in a Gentile point of view, when he says, Jerusalem should be trodden down of the Gentiles, till the times of the Gentiles be fulfilled — exactly the general instruction we have found in Daniel. Jerusalem would be set aside, and all God's dealings consequently with it, till the period allotted in the decrees of God, for the Gentile supremacy was closed. Then the signs and judgments should take place. So Paul, in Romans 11, "blindness in part" happened unto Israel till the "fulness of the Gentiles be come in" — till, during this time of dealing specially with Gentiles (though every Jew is equally received) all that have ears to hear were brought into God's fold. And then God would begin again with His earthly people in exercise, judgment, and deliverance, and so accomplish all His promises (on earth) in a restored people. The broken-off branches would be grafted in again into their own olive-tree, the fruit-bearing tree of promise springing from Abraham — of course, in the highest sense from God Himself.

254 Mr. N. may seek, perhaps, to escape from the absurdity of supposing that a forger would invent a prophecy, proved (to be false) by well-known public events, though he does not dare to say it very clearly,* by supposing that though it be said "immediately after the tribulation," yet that the author would have time between the tribulation and the "immediately after" to compose and publish his book, that thus he could give a history up to that, and to be mistaken as to what followed. Now, to say nothing of the universal testimony to the contrary (because suppositions are always more attractive to an infidel than history, because they are the fruit of one's own mind, which is a great point with them), the supposition is of this probable character, that a forger would commit himself to a very full and clear statement of what was immediately to occur; and thus determine his book to be a forgery as soon as it should be read! And this is only a trifling part of the difficulty; for we must also suppose that the book was received and read as true, without its being found out that it was falsified by facts — that such a thing as the coming of the great day of judgment should be announced and not arrive, and nobody suspect that the announcement of it was false. That is, he leaves us with the choice of two cases: either that he forged a prophecy, false upon the face of it, and publicly known to be so, in respect of such an event as the non-arrival of Christ for the grand judgment; or, that the pretended prophecy, published "very soon after," preceded what was to happen "immediately after," and committed itself to what would immediately prove it false in the most public way, and yet that thousands, who, by their existence, proved it was false, and knew that the great day of judgment had not arrived, immediately after believed it to be true all the same.

{*Page 109. He cannot shake off the suspicion that Zacharias son of Barachias, was Zacharias son of Baruchus, slain in the courts of the temple during the siege of Jerusalem by Titus. (Phases, p. 129.) The dream of Joseph is "reported to us by a person wholly unknown, who wrote seventy or eighty years after the fact." This (seventy or eighty) would leave, at all events, several years' margin for the immediately after. The taking of Jerusalem was A.D. 70. If the reader asks what authority there is for this date of Matthew's gospel, the reply is, There is none: but universal testimony to the contrary. Matthew is quoted by Barnabas just after the siege of Jerusalem. But we must not expect any authority for sceptical statements. I opened Parker's "De Wette," to see why he rejected Daniel. I find "It appears Daniel is not the author of the book." How? "From its legendary contents it is full of improbabilities." Other reasons, of which a word hereafter, about as solid are given. It is merely an idle opinion given as a proof.}

255 And mark this. All testimony is directly contrary to the date necessary to Mr. N.'s system. He has nothing for it but its own probability. Yes, I am wrong there: there is his assertion, and yet scarcely that — it is insinuated. To insert the publication of the gospel between the destruction of Jerusalem and "immediately after," would have suggested the enquiry for some proof — a thing not to be had. Hence, where it suited him, there "it is unreasonable to doubt that the detailed annunciations of Matthew 24 were first composed very soon after the war of Titus" (Phases, p. 170), after the siege. When a dream is in question — it is written by an unknown person seventy or eighty years after the nativity. The former date would be either the year of the siege, according to the vulgar era, or (by the correction of chronology, generally received) four, or according to others, five years before it; but then seventy or eighty left margin for that, if the four years' error was known by the reader; and a loose period of five or six possible years after left it possibly just at the critical moment, without too much danger of interfering with "immediately after." It is very nicely arranged.

One point remains — the expression "this generation shall not pass till all these things be fulfilled." Now the whole state of things did, for the time, close some forty years after; and Israel no longer existed as the place of testimony. Still I have no doubt that the word has another force than this. "Generation" is habitually used in scripture otherwise than for the period of human activity, or from the birth of a son to the birth of his son — the length of a man's active life; and it is peculiarly used in reference to Israel in the other sense, which the following quotations present — "the generation of the wicked shall never see light" — "a crooked and perverse nation [the word is the same] among whom ye shine" — "this is the generation of them that seek him." So, many others. That is, it is a class of persons having a given character, as well as those who have their common period of life together. If the reader turn to Deuteronomy 32, he will find, in verses 5 and 20, the word used in this sense in immediate reference to Israel during its protracted rejection up to the end. "They are a perverse and crooked generation." "And he said, I will hide my face from them, I will see what their end shall be; for they are a very froward generation, children in whom is no faith." And then Moses speaks of the bringing in of the Gentiles, in a passage which Paul quotes, in reference to the very time we are treating of: the Lord declaring that that generation should not pass — a declaration of which we see the accomplishment to this day. God has hid His face from them to see what their end shall be; yet they have not passed away. There they are till every jot and tittle of Christ's word be accomplished.

256 The objections, then, to what Matthew says are without foundation; the prophetic declarations in chapter 24 are distinctly referred to Daniel (the application of which leaves no doubt as to the sense and application of Matthew), and clearly establish its reference to the end of the age, of which indeed the Lord was speaking. On the other hand, the suppositions advanced to prove it forged are the most absurdly improbable that can possibly be, besides being contrary to all historical evidence.

THE APOCALYPSE

We have already seen the value of Mr. N.'s objections to the prophecies in the Apocalypse, to which he again briefly refers without adding any new matter. That not "one of these can be interpreted certainly of any [past] human affairs" may be granted without the least detriment to the book; for (while I doubt not that some have had accomplishment by systems, the principle of which judged in the book was partially developed, and that certain objects of the prophecy have appeared — though not full grown — on the scene) I myself believe that its proper accomplishment has not yet arrived. I think the language of the Apocalypse proves it is not, because we have what the prophet had seen — the things that are — and the things after them. It is to my mind certain, that "the things that are" are not yet passed; and hence the prophetic part, beginning with Revelation 4, has not yet begun to be accomplished, though many things symbolized in it exist more or less.

257 COMING OF THE LORD

As regards the coming of the Lord, the purpose of God is evidently to make saints always wait for it as a present expectation; and this is shewn in never telling them the moment. Nothing can be more explicit than scripture on this head. St. Paul then made no mistake in expecting "the speedy return of Christ from heaven."* He waited for God's Son from heaven and taught others to wait for it continually. He never prophetically announced the time. In each he was perfectly guided by the Spirit of God. That this was the Lord's mind as presented in scripture, the following passages shew: But "let your loins be girded about, and your lights burning, and ye yourselves like unto men that wait for their lord, when he will return from the wedding; that  . . . they may open unto him immediately . . . . And if he shall come in the second watch, or come in the third watch, and find them so, blessed are those servants . . . . Be ye therefore ready also: for the Son of man cometh at an hour when ye think not." So again, "If that evil servant shall say in his heart, My lord delayeth his coming; and shall begin to smite . . . the lord of that servant shall come in a day when he looketh not for him . . . and shall appoint him his portion with the hypocrites." Matt. 24: 48. Yet in the very same discourse, directly after, the Lord says, "While the bridegroom tarried, they all slumbered and slept. And at midnight there was a cry made," etc. That is, if the heart counted on delay, it betrayed its wickedness; yet the Bridegroom would delay, so trying the faith of His own. Yet, adds Peter, "the Lord is not slack concerning his promise, as some men count slackness; but is longsuffering to us-ward, not willing that any should perish . . . the longsuffering of our Lord is salvation." 2 Peter 3: 9. That is, the delay is not slackness in His promise to us, but God's patience with men prolonging the time of grace and salvation. But the same apostle warns us that there would be scoffers, saying, "Where is the promise of his coming?" 2 Peter 3: 4. The apostle, then, taught of the Holy Ghost, acted in the spirit of Christ's direction to His disciples in holding and nourishing the lively, and joyful, sanctifying, yea, energizing constant hope of His coming, and yet never predicted the time, which He had put in His own power who had said "Sit on my right hand till I make thine enemies thy footstool."

{*"There is nothing in them to countenance the theory of supernaturalism in the face of his great mistake as to the speedy return of Christ from heaven." (Phases, p. 170.)}

258 Mr. N., pressed by proofs, seeks to avoid the effect or what he does not dare deny, while shewing his unwillingness to admit it, "That God has been pleased to reveal something of coming history to certain eminent men of Hebrew antiquity," adding, "That is all."* Now I call this profoundly immoral, and an absurd state to be in. Because, to say of divine communications to man, and in mercy, "That is all!" is, in the worst sense, immoral. And it is absurd; because, to suppose that God should have revealed something about Moab, and Ishmael, and Tyre, and Edom, to some eminent men of the Hebrew monarchy, and nothing at all else, is unreasonable. To have given some local facts about some petty nations, and to have concealed everything about all the temporal and eternal interests of men, His own government and salvation, is an absurd supposition.

{*"As for the Old Testament, if all its prophecies about Babylon, and Tyre, and Edom, and Ishmael, and the four monarchies, were both true and supernatural, what would this prove? That God had been pleased to reveal something of coming history to certain eminent men of Hebrew antiquity. That is all." (Phases, p. 170.)}

But, further, these eminent men to whom God has been pleased to give this, have said a great deal more on more important subjects, and give the particular revelations spoken of as minor parts of a vast scheme of government, ending with Messianic glory, with the same evidence of truth — the same power of testimony. As to the former, according to Mr. N., they are the confidants of God, and as to the rest impostors and deceivers; yet such as God chose as eminent men, to make them the special confidants of these particular revelations: and all this is logic and philosophy! But this is not our subject now. Mr. N. "receives this conclusion" — i.e., of their inspiration on these points — "with an otiose faith." But his logic has failed him here; because then, at any rate, second-hand faith is not vain. Mr. N. may be indifferent, "otiose;" but that is not the point. Here is faith at second-hand — real and convincing to those concerned — of vast importance to sustain their hearts, to encourage them to trust in God, and to avoid the powerful current of all which was set in, through the assurance of divine interference in favour of the faithful, and the powerlessness of human resources; in a word, through the assurance that God governed and was to be trusted. This was the effect of faith, second-hand faith (i.e., the truly excellent kind of faith subjectively). For while, for the purpose of testimony to others, eye-witness was the just means employed; yet, even as to the eye-witnesses, it was the spiritual sense of the value of these things that was real, moralizing, efficacious faith before God. Even as to Israel, they happened to them for figures, and are "written for our admonition on whom the ends of the world are come." That is, the admission of this one paragraph totally sets aside the whole chapter. It is not true; it is totally untrue (evidently untrue for one who has examined scripture) that these prophecies have nothing to do with Christianity.* They are part of one vast scheme. They are not Christianity of course. We have the true light; but the first fresh dawn of mercy, and God's patient ways with ignorant man — always His ways — have not lost their interest for those who can see clearer.

{*"With Christianity they have nothing to do." (Phases, p. 171.)}

The Irrationalism of Infidelity: Section i.

Being a reply to "Phases of Faith"*

J. N. Darby.

{*London: 1853.}

<06001-129E> File Section i.

259 DANIEL, AND DESOLATION TO THE TIME OF THE END

We now come to the Book of Daniel in general.* The reader will remember the positive and direct proofs, from different parts of the book, of the fact that Daniel distinctly refers to God's final dealing with the Jews. He must do so, if shewing God's ways as to them in government. For what else should definitely display these? All the prophets who so take them up do so; indeed, all do when rightly understood. Daniel positively declares it. And remark here, that we have positive historical and ocular testimony that he who does this must (whatever the final result be with this people) leave an immense gap unfilled up, because they have been set aside as a people for a long period. Hence, again, Daniel gives us specifically the "times of the Gentiles," whether it be the apostate principles on which they would govern,** or general historical views on to the end;*** or particular prophecies connected definitely with the end, which was the grand epoch in view, as the Spirit declares to the prophet.

{*"At the same time I had reached the conclusion that large deductions must be made from the credit of these old prophecies. First, as to the Book of Daniel: Daniel 11 is closely historical down to Antiochus Epiphanes, after which it suddenly becomes false . . . . Hence we have a prima facie presumption that the book was composed in the reign of that Antiochus." (Phases, p. 171.)}

{**That is, these are idolatry (Dan. 3.); blasphemous insults against God (Dan. 5); and setting up to be God Himself, as far as pretending to exclude all other. (Dan. 6).}

{***As the statue (Dan. 2), or the beasts (Dan. 7).}

260 These particular prophecies (i.e., Dan. 8: 10-12, the last three chapters being one prophecy) refer to the Eastern or Grecian kingdom; for there the final scene was to be unfolded. Not that the Western power would not come in — that was the grand general power at the close; but another local one was also to be depicted.

We may now examine Daniel 11, to which Mr. N. objects. Here we shall find exactly what I stated — a particular prophecy, as to the Eastern or Grecian power, taken up from its commencement and pursued quite to the end. The king of the north comes to his end, and none helps him; and Michael stands up at the same time, in the time of trouble which has no parallel — of which the Lord speaks in Matthew. Further, in Daniel 10, the messenger of God declares, "Now I am come to make thee understand what shall befall thy people in the latter days: for yet the vision is for [many] days"; and in Daniel 12: 4, "But thou, O Daniel, shut up the words and seal the book, even to the time of the end." So also in Daniel 11: 40 — exactly the prophecy in question: "And at the time of the end shall the king of the south push at him," etc. — that is, at the king who does according to his will. So that we have in the writer's mind details down to Antiochus Epiphanes, as I agree; and afterwards, right or wrong, other details as to what is to happen at the end in the latter days — those days in which Michael was to stand up; and at the close of thirteen hundred and thirty days blessing comes in, and Daniel stands in his lot. But this, it will be said, leaves a great gap. No doubt. To be exact, it must do so, because, as we know, the Jews have been set aside for centuries.

But let us see with greater exactness, how and where the gap comes in, and is introduced. The prophet does, as alleged, pursue the history down to one who, I doubt not, is Antiochus Epiphanes — that is, the last king of any importance of Grecian Syria, and the great persecutor of Israel, who profaned the temple, and destroyed, or at least sought to destroy, all the books of the law, and prohibited the Jewish worship. The ships from Chittim are then introduced upon the scene, that is, the Romans — the power under whom the whole Jewish system was to remain in abeyance. But another important element was still more in the mind of the Spirit here (that is, the alliance of the local Gentile power with the apostates of the Jews). This, and the profanation of the temple, were to be, and will yet be, the special characteristics of the last days. A full picture* of this state of things is drawn so far as the elements go which characterize it (that is, the intervention of the Western Roman power, apostasy among the Jews, profanation of the temple, and interruption of Jewish worship, and of all service rendered to the true God). This will be the final state of the Jews, as presented in scripture, till delivered by the coming of the Lord. Hence the elements and vivid picture of it in these comparatively early days is given to us.

{*I say picture; for I have no doubt that Daniel 11: 30, 31, 32, applies to the time of Antiochus Epiphanes, the Maccabees, &c.}

261 But there will be a remnant active and energetic then, but having also another general character, instructors of the people of the Jews in the truth. Still the people shall fall under their enemies [many] days. God shall permit even those who, having been faithful to God, might have hoped to escape, to be cut off also by their enemies: but it is for purifying and making white even to the time of the end. That is, we have just the gap onward from the introduction of the Romans at the close of the SyroGrecian kingdom, and that up to the very end.

We have not here the Roman destruction of the Jewish polity in detail: that had been given at the end of Daniel 9, and could not be the anticipative picture of the latter days, because the Jewish affairs are to take the form they had in Antiochus Epiphanes' time, that of the apostasy of the Jews, and their being linked up with the heathen. This was in no way the case in the time of Titus. The unclean spirit of idolatry was not entered in with seven others more wicked than himself, so as to make their last state worse than the first. They were empty, and swept, and garnished. They stumbled on the stumbling stone and were broken: in the end it will fall on them.

But we have the general desolation to the time of the end. Then, when that has been shewn, we get a king doing according to his will, setting up idolatry, rejecting the God of his fathers, which Antiochus never did, disregarding all Jewish hopes as something which is supposed to belong to him, exalting himself above every god, and distributing the land among his chiefs. The king of the south pushes at him at the time of the end (that is, he who shall be in Ptolemy's geographical place); and the king of the north comes against him (that is, he who shall have Antiochus's geographical place); so that the wilful king cannot be Antiochus Epiphanes. Yet it is a full and minute prophecy of what is to be at the time of the end, when the great gap is over; and it goes on to state the course of the king of the north, and his ruin; and in Daniel 12 the trouble that accompanies this period, the duration of the trouble, and the deliverance of Israel — the contrast of the wicked and the wise; all of which would come out at the time of the end, not before; when Daniel also, as we have seen, would have his share in the blessing in the end of the days.

262 This part it is which the Lord also quotes as to be fulfilled at the end of the age. There is, then, as much particularity as to the events at the end as there is to those previous to, and during, the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes. With the speculations of interpreters in applying it I have nothing to do, with Mr. N.'s objections I have; and they, as to the facts of the chapter, are totally groundless. As to the enduring days of desolation and captivity, we are witnesses of its truth, that is, of the truth of the very part where Mr. N. says it breaks down. The fulfilment of all the rest cannot yet be proved, because it is at the time of the end, which we all know is not yet come. No one can say it becomes false. The triumphs of the Maccabees, and the long period of desolation and captivity, are true; and that is what is stated.

As to Daniel 7, Mr. N. informs us that "the four monarchies in chapters 2 and 7 are the Babylonian, the Median, the Persian, the Macedonian. Interpreters, however, blend the Medes and Persians into one, and then pretend that the Roman empire is still in existence." "Chapter 7 also is confuted by the event; for the great day of judgment has not followed upon the fourth monarchy." (Phases, p. 171.) There is nothing like being bold enough: somebody will believe it, or at least, somebody will doubt; and nothing will be certain. "Interpreters, however, blend the Medes and Persians into one." Indeed! It is not very extraordinary; because, though distinct nations, they are blended in history, though "the highest came up last.*" But is it only interpreters who do this? What does Daniel do? He says, in interpreting Upharsin, "Thy kingdom is divided and given to the Medes and Persians." That is, he brings them in on the scene together. It may be said, "But Darius, who was of the seed of the Medes, was set over the realm of the Chaldeans." One "interpreter" has used this to prove that it was still the Babylonish empire. Where was this distinct empire of the Medes to which the Persians succeeded as another?** Cyrus, king of Persia, takes Babylon, and the temple is built by his orders. Darius may have ruled in Babylon till Cyrus had finished his conquests and had settled the empire; but the Persians were, at the epoch of the fall of the Babylonish empire, joint possessors with the Medes of the imperial power as a people.

{*Sculptured heads of rams have been found at Persepolis, with one horn higher than the other.}

{**I do not doubt that the Median branch had the supremacy at first. The prophecy so states it, as does profane history; "the highest came up last." And Cyrus succeeded to a Median prince, though as to this, there is some confusion; but that is not the question here, because Cyrus took Babylon; and the Medes and Persians were, undoubtedly, at that time a united empire. Evil-Merodach was slain by Cyrus before the close of the Babylonian empire.

At any rate, as the kingdom, according to Daniel, was given to the Medes and Persians, his four monarchies cannot be made out by making of the Medes and Persians successive kingdoms.}

263 Mr. N. says, consequently, on his Median scheme, that the last empire is the Grecian. The ten horns have no kind of analogy with the Grecian kingdom, which Mr. N. supposes the prophet to be describing as a thing past. But not only so: Daniel himself most positively describes (for, unhappily, he is, as to this point, one of the "interpreters," or, at least, the angel who explained the vision is) the Medo-Persian empire as one beast, and by the well-known Persian emblem: "The ram which thou sawest, having two horns, are the kings of Media and Persia. And the rough goat is the king of Grecia." That is, it is absolutely certain (for he says so) that Daniel considers the Medo-Persian as one empire, or beast; and that, consequently, the whole of Mr. N.'s argument is not worth a straw, unless it be to shew that the prophet does really give ampler details of what was future, and is so yet, on to the day of judgment, than he does of what Mr. N. would make historical. For, if the Medo-Persian empire be one empire (that is, the second), then the Roman is confessedly the last — that with the ten horns. Now, even supposing the unfounded assertion to be true, that the author of the book ascribed to Daniel wrote in the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, yet still the Roman empire (that which is given with far the greatest detail, and whose division into divers kingdoms is a matter of history) was future. That is, he acts, wherever you put him as w date, as a prophet, and commits himself fully to the details of future events, such as the subdivision of the Roman empire into ten kingdoms, its final blasphemous character, and judgment. Not only so; but the fact of the declaration of the writer, that the Medo-Persian kingdom is one only, considered as a beast destroys the whole foundation of Mr. N.'s reasonings. He states that "he [Daniel] gives the Grecian kingdom, under which he lived, as the last, and then passes to the general judgment," "the great day of judgment has not followed upon the fourth monarchy. * Now, if the Medo-Persian be one only, then he gives a beast or empire after the Grecian, and that with very much greater detail than as to those which preceded; and the allegation is so far from having any foundation, that we have historical proof that he is right; for another kingdom has succeeded the Grecian, divided into many horns — that is, he is a prophet. I need not say, that I agree with all existing testimony, that it was Daniel the prophet, the captive in Babylon, who wrote it.

{*"The four monarchies in Daniel 2 and Daniel 7 are the Babylonian, the Median, the Persian, the Macedonian.''}

264 In fine, Mr. N. says the book of Daniel cannot be proved to have existed earlier than the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, that is, than the last events it describes. The reader will remember that this is casting off the New Testament altogether — that is, really, Christianity — because the Lord there cites his book as that of a prophet. But, as to other proofs, it is beyond all controversy that, at all times of which we have any evidence, this book has been received by the Jews as Daniel's, written during the captivity. The Talmud has put it among the Cherubim, or Hagiographa, with Chronicles, Psalms, Proverbs, &c. But none has called its inspiration in question. Josephus is very particular he gives the number of the books of the Old Testament, and refers to Daniel as the most renowned of prophets. He moreover declares, that the Jewish canon was closed in the reign of Artaxerxes, that is, with Malachi; so that he bears the strongest possible testimony to the date of Daniel as an authentic book.

It may be asked, "On what are the assertions founded of the recent date of the composition of the book?" The answer is, "On nothing. The objectors think there cannot be prophecy: hence, they argue, there is not. Hence, when an era is spoken of, the book must have been written after it. In this case, indeed the book of Daniel must have been written after the division of the Roman empire; for he speaks of that; and the history of Josephus must have been also written subsequent to that division into two kingdoms, for he speaks of the book of Daniel which refers to it. But Mr. N. cuts this all short by saying nothing about the passages which speak of the end; and by making (contrary to history and the positive assertion of the book itself) the Median and Persian two consecutive empires, and maintaining a profound silence on the ten horns.

265 Not only does Josephus present the number of the books of scripture as composing a whole, divided into three parts, and Daniel as one of the most admirable among them, thus assuring us the Old Testament such as we have it was a known volume, but the Wisdom of Jesus, the son of Sirach, refers to this volume, though not distinguishing the books, in the same threefold division — the law, the prophets, and the other books. That is, he shews the body of scripture complete. Not only so, but he refers to these being translated, declaring that the law, the prophets, and the other books had not the same force in the Greek tongue. That Daniel lived in the time of the captivity, we have proof from Ezekiel, who names him by name, and who wrote at that period. The book of Daniel, moreover, had its place in the Septuagint translation. It is not, indeed, the one we have, which is Theodotian's; but there was one, of which fragments are now extant in the Chisian MS. Now this translation was probably as early as the beginning of Antiochus's reign, that is, B.C. 175,* Mattathias's revolt being in B.C. 167. The book of Maccabees, probably from the contents dating about B.C. 130, refers to Daniel. In sum, if we receive the New Testament, we have the authority of the Lord Himself for Daniel's being a prophet. Further, we have (for the historical truth of his existence as a remarkably well-known man at the period the book of Daniel refers to) the testimony of his contemporary, Ezekiel. We have Josephus, thoroughly versed in Jewish lore, bearing witness that Daniel was of special eminence among the prophets, and the complete volume of the books of scripture specifically noticed, saying that they had not a multitude of books, but twenty-two (now made twenty-four by the separation of Ruth from Judges, and Lamentations from Jeremiah); that they were all completed by the reign of Artaxerxes, thus letting in Malachi and Esther, and no more; that there were indeed other books among them, but that they had not the same authority because there were no prophets to authenticate them.

{*It is generally agreed now that the Septuagint was made at different epochs: the law, in the reigns of Ptolemy Soter and Philadelphus, or during their joint possession of the throne (according to Hody, about B.C. 280, in the reign of Ptolemy Evergetes). The son of Sirach seems to speak of an existing translation; and if so, of this, about B.C. 130. The other books we have no positive date for, unless it be Esther in the reign of Ptolemy Philometer.}

266 Nothing can be simpler than this. Without entering into details which change nothing of the substance, we have, on dear and intelligible grounds, the canonical scriptures and the Apocrypha. The canonical books are divided into three parts: the law, prophets, and hymns; or, as the Lord says in Luke, the law, prophets, and psalms. But this is not all. The first book of Maccabees refers to Daniel, and no doubt to the LXX translation. This book was written some hundred and thirty years before Christ. Jesus, the son of Sirach, refers to the canonical books, by their well-known tripartite division, and to a translation of them; that is, Daniel existed then, and was translated into Greek. The lowest date for this is B.C. 130. Some place the son of Sirach B.C. 200. The Septuagint translation, of which Daniel formed a part, was made from B.C. 280 by degrees. The revolt of Mattathias was more than a hundred and ten years after it commenced to be made. It is supposed by some that Esther was translated in the reign of Ptolemy Philometer, and this would tend to shew that the translation was complete earlier. Now we have no authorities whatever to refer to during the interval between Malachi and the Septuagint translation. But we have the concurrent voice of all the authority we possess that Daniel is authentic; and the fact of its being part of the Septuagint makes it to the last degree improbable that its date could be any later one; while the Jews, who certainly knew their own canon, most undoubtedly received it as the book of the prophet (Josephus also, who was thoroughly versed in the question, giving, not his opinion, but clearly and elaborately the Jews' judgment upon it, and the very intelligible grounds of it). All other authorities agree, not merely as authorities, but refer to these very books as the books known (settled by authority) and received of the nation. We have not an earlier testimony than the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes, for none exists; but we have a testimony to the earlier and universal reception of these books as scripture. Hence, it can be proved to have existed earlier, for it was then fully received by all as an authentic book, and translated as a part of scripture, probably some time before the period referred to, certainly then as being fully acknowledged, which is exactly the same thing as to our present question (that is, that it was not written for the occasion, for it was then translated as a well-known book).

267 PROPHECIES OF THE PENTATEUCH

In order to connect the Pentateuch with the time of Hezekiah, Mr. N. declares the first reference to be in Micah 6: 5. The reader may remember that in another part of the book Mr. N. declares that it was never given out as an authentic book till found in the eighteenth year of Josiah's reign, that is, it is referred to by Micah about seventy years before it was brought out, and referred to as well known to the people. But Mr. N. is on slippery ground here. His friend, Mr. Theodore Parker, the translator of De Wette, thus gives his author in English (vol. 2, p. 154, second edit. Boston, 1850): "About B.C. 790 we find that Amos unites the Elohistic and Jehovistic fragments in Genesis 19: 29. Therefore he must have had the book of Genesis in its present form (see Gen. 2: 9), he says, 'Yet I destroyed the Amorite before them.' Accordingly, he seems to have been acquainted with the book of Numbers. About B.C. 785 Hosea affords us a trace of its existence. (Hosea 12: 3-5.) Here the allusions are obvious to the story of the birth of Esau and Jacob in Genesis 25: 26 . . . . Again chapter 9: 10. This refers to Numbers 22: 3." I do not go any farther. He refers to Isaiah, Micah, Jeremiah, whose "acquaintance with our present Pentateuch," he says, is pretty clear. Moreover, I apprehend no unprejudiced, intelligent person can doubt the reference of Joel 2: 1, 15, 16, to Numbers 10: 1-10. Now De Wette, as do many others, places him in B.C. 810; some so far back as B.C. 870, 865; Mr. N. (in his Hebrew Monarchy) between B.C. 840 and 818. That is, mark, that the Pentateuch is quoted as soon as there is a prophet to quote it. But to apply these facts to Mr. N.'s statements; if we take in Joel, we have prophecies referring to the Pentateuch about a hundred years before Hezekiah's reign, and nearly two hundred years before Josiah's. Omitting Joel, we have, at any rate, prophecies in B.C. 790 and 785, which, according to De Wette, prove that these prophets had two books at least of the Pentateuch in its present form.

{*"Next as to the prophecies of the Pentateuch, they abound, as to the times which precede the century of Hezekiah. Higher we cannot trace the Pentateuch."*}

{{*"The first apparent reference is by Micah 6, 5, a contemporary of Hezekiah, which proves that an account contained in our Book of Numbers was already familiar." (Phases, p. 171, and note.)}}

Josiah, according to Mr. N., mounted the throne In B.C. 40. The law was found in his eighteenth year: that gives us B.C. 622 That is, according to De Wette and Parker, the prophets had the Pentateuch, as we have it now, about a hundred and seventy years before it was composed as it is now, and published, according to Mr. N. And the proofs of Dr. De Wette are founded on the newest and most accurate discoveries of Elohistic and Jehovistic documents afforded us in the book which Mr. N. himself refers to. I should add, perhaps, to make every allowance, that Mr. N. places Amos in B.C. 770; so that, according to his shewing, the Pentateuch, as we have it now, would have been quoted only a hundred and fifty years before it existed!

268 This paragraph of Mr. N.'s has puzzled me a little: "Next, as to the prophecies of the Pentateuch, they abound, as to the times which precede the century of Hezekiah; higher than which we cannot trace the Pentateuch." (Phases, p. 171.) He adds, in a note, "The first apparent reference is by Micah 6: 5, a contemporary of Hezekiah." The object of this is obvious: it is to prove that they were composed just then, and gave out history for prophecy. That is plain enough — a very strange thing to urge, when they were most certainly, as he tells us elsewhere, compiled and published in Josiah's days, and never before. "As I considered the narrative, my eyes were opened. If the book had previously been the received sacred law, it could not possibly have been so lost that its contents were unknown, and the fact of its loss forgotten. It was, therefore, evidently then first compiled, or, at least, then first produced and made authoritative to the nation." (Phases, p. 137.) But the former was a discovery. His eyes were opened. But I pass from this now: it lasted thirty-three pages; and that is something for a German discovery — provided, that is, that it suffices to raise a doubt. But now why this singularly vague expression — "as to the times which precede the century of Hezekiah?" They contained accurate accounts, it is to be supposed, as to the times preceding his century. Now we have found from De Wette that these books existed, and were referred to as well-known public documents nearly seventy years before Hezekiah's accession, about eighty years before his sickness in the middle of his reign. Now where are we to begin "Hezekiah's century?" If we set fifty years before and fifty years after him for his century, then we have prophecies existing twenty or thirty years before it, and so clear that Mr. N. takes them for histories. If we take B. C. 800 to B. C. 700 as Hezekiah's century, we have according to De Wette and Parker, prophecies proving the Pentateuch to be well-known public books, appealed to by prophets in Judah and Israel in the first ten years of his century; and Joel, whom De Wette does not mention, but in whose prophecy the reference is equally dear, proving their existence before Hezekiah's century some thirty years, perhaps many more. That is, the Pentateuch, according to Mr. N., is full of prophecies as to the times in which it is proved to be publicly referred to as a well-known authentic book already in existence. What does this prove? And why all this vagueness as to times in Mr. N.? Why this omission of the testimony of the book he recommends, in which passages are given as a certain proof that the Pentateuch existed long before Hezekiah's reign, Micah alone being referred to by Mr. N. — a book, too, as infidel as Mr. N. could wish — nay, which is his grand armoury?

269 Of course, Mr. N. is not bound to adopt the opinion of the author he recommends; but is it quite candid to say the first apparent reference is Micah without alluding to the citation of passages of the Pentateuch in Amos and Hosea, in the book he himself uses and recommends? But a doubt upon a doubt is a shocking thing when all depends on boldness of assertion to create one in the mind of the reader. But to return: it is true that, vague as it now is, the passage in the "Phases of Faith" will, if not closely examined into, disarm the testimony of De Wette and Parker of its effect, because their proofs of the existence of the Pentateuch are within the century preceding Hezekiah; and the note, if we do not compare it with the text, will bring proofs down to Hezekiah's own days, and cut off, for him who does not pay attention, about another century of proof. But this is, to say the least, a strange passage, not helped out by a declaration elsewhere, that they were compiled in Josiah's days, and could not at any rate have been known before. The fact is, the Pentateuch is referred to most distinctly in the earliest of the prophets, whom Mr. N. puts about B.C. 830, so that the only thing Mr. N. proves here is, that the Pentateuch abounds in accurate prophecies, written, at any rate, a good while before the event.

THIS OLD TESTAMENT A CONTINUOUS HISTORY

But if the Old Testament be attentively examined, we shall soon see that it is a continuous history, whoever was the means of making it so (God, as its divine Author, I doubt not), with moral and prophetic addresses joined to it, beginning with the creation and ending with the re-building of the temple and city, after their destruction by Nebuchadnezzar; not setting aside, however, the Gentile dominion, which had taken the place of God's throne in David's family in Jerusalem — a dominion which will continue till Christ takes His, and that at Jerusalem again, as David's son. But this continuous history is in each successive book carried on, with just so much reference to the previous parts, and especially to the Pentateuch, the foundation of all, as was real and true in the state of the time they refer to; the last verse of Malachi throwing back (while announcing the coming of the great day of the Lord) the thoughts of the hearer to the days of Horeb and of the law. In first Samuel we have seven references to the Pentateuch, one to Joshua; in the second, two. That the law was forgotten in practice is most certain. But the whole of the Old Testament has the character of a successive history stamped on it in the very plainest possible way. This is its clear, natural, intrinsic character.

270 Mr. N. states that "no prophecy of the Pentateuch can be proved to have been fulfilled, which had not been already fulfilled before Hezekiah's day." (Phases, pp. 171, 172.)*

{*Here we have slipped on from the times before Hezekiah's century to Hezekiah's day; that is, a margin of about a century is left. We have the Pentateuch cited 830, or at any rate 800, years before Christ, according to De Wette. Hezekiah's accession was, say, B.C. 725. Now suppose a prophecy in the Pentateuch was fulfilled in 750 before Christ, it was twenty-five years before Hezekiah's day, and yet fifty years after the prophecy was certainly in existence. Hence it was better to leave the date as vague as possible. The consequence is, Mr. N.'s statement proves nothing — a hundred years is rather a long epoch to leave out and pass sub silentio, in order to escape the necessity of proving one's point We have Hezekiah's day bold enough in Phases, p. 172; the times which precede his century (ib. p. 171), as if it were the same thing; and in the note (ib. p. 171), the first reference to the Pentateuch is in Micah, his contemporary (leaving out Joel, Amos, and Hosea, preceding prophets by whom it is quoted), and that makes a bridge from the times preceding his century to his day. Had I not looked into De Wette, who proves in due form that the Pentateuch, as we have it, is cited "in the times preceding Hezekiah's century," I could never have discovered what this singular phrase was worth; or why Hezekiah's name was introduced for dating quite a different epoch from his own. But then it glides, with Micah's help, much easier into "Hezekiah's day" in Phases, p. 172.

I take the opportunity of this note to insert a statement from Lightfoot, in reference to the period at which the Magi came up, the sheet to which it properly belongs being already printed off. He supposes, as I have done, that the Magi came up some time after the birth of Christ, making the interval at least a year.

"Since, therefore, only fourteen years passed from the nativity of Christ to the death of Augustus, etc., we must reckon that Christ was not born but in the last years of Herod. Thus we conjecture:

"In his thirty-fifth, Christ was born.

"In his thirty-seventh, now newly begun, the wise men came: presently after this, was the slaying of the infants — and after a few months, the death of Herod."}

271 This assertion is so flatly contradicted by the contents of Leviticus 26, and the well-known public history of the Jews, that it is needless to go farther. It is quite clear that Israel had not been scattered among the heathen before Hezekiah's reign, and quite clear they have since, and that God's sanctuary has been destroyed.

THE GOSPELS

We now come to the Gospels. In the first place, though there is a remarkable similarity of spirit and doctrine in the gospel and epistles of John, they are very easily distinguished by any attentive reader. The presenting of the person in the way of historical fact in the one, and the deduction of the nature of God, Christ, and the new man, from that manifestation in the other, are respectively the characters of the gospel and epistles. This renders the epistles much more abstract; and hence the connection of the reasoning is known only where the inward thread of divine life, which links it, is known; whereas Christ in the gospel is clearly and definitely presented, though the divine glory of His person is brought out.

I do not in the least agree with the assertion, that the divine nature of Christ is not clearly taught in the first three gospels.* Take the word Emmanuel, "God with us." Again, "Thou shalt call his name Jesus; for he shall save his people from their sins." I cite these as examples which present themselves at once. A multitude are found at the beginning and end of the gospels, if we except the beginning of Mark, which commences with His service; and the same truth is found there in the course of that service — as for example, the comparison of the healing of the paralytic with Psalm 103, and of the feeding of five thousand with Psalm 132. That the Holy Ghost selected for its communication by John what related to the Lord's person is beyond controversy: that, with the sending of the Holy Ghost, is the grand object of the book. Hence he has given what John Baptist taught his disciples, and not merely his public testimony. Moreover, there are but two verses in what John Baptist says, which can give occasion to any remark (John 3: 35, 36).** The rest is a touchingly beautiful comparison by John of himself with Christ. Otherwise there is nothing like John the Baptist's testimony. The testimony that he that believes has everlasting life is the only thing that passes in its character the general spirit of John's teaching, that is, the witness to the person of Christ. But it is not in elevation of doctrine more than being Son of God — Lamb of God — Baptizer with the Holy Ghost — and this last is even more remarkable because it belongs to the display of Christ's power after His departure, as much and more than as having eternal life by Him, and is immediately connected with the Father as having put all things into His hand. There is one thing very clearly proved by Mr. N.'s remarks in this page — his insensibility*** to divine things; for it is notorious that John's gospel has delighted, fed, drawn out, and comforted the hearts of thousands, perhaps more than any other book of scripture — for a simple reason, that it presents more of Christ Himself, and more immediately Christ Himself. Mr. N. finds it "monotonous."

{*"That the divinity of Christ cannot be proved from the first three Gospels was confessed by all the early Church, and is proved by the labouring arguments of modern Trinitarians." (Phases, p. 173.)}

{**"I saw it infallibly to indicate that John had made both the Baptist and Jesus speak as John himself would have spoken; and that we cannot trust the historical reality of the discourses in the fourth Gospel."}

{***"The monotony also of the Gospel had also excited my wonder." (Phases, p. 172.)}

272 THE DISCOURSES OF THE LORD

I recall to the reader the very convenient form of Mr. N.'s book for administering doses of infidelity: as he is merely recounting the course of his own mind, he can give a conviction as it formed itself, without the least proof. Thus he has a "high sense of the lucid force with which he [Strauss] unanswerably shews that the fourth gospel is no faithful exhibition of the discourses of Jesus." (Phases, p. 174.) What has produced this conviction we are left to imagine; of course it is supposed to be something Before this, however, Mr. N. says, "It had become quite certain to me that the secret colloquy with Nicodemus, and the splendid testimony of the Baptist to the Father and the Son, were wholly modelled out of John's own imagination." (Phases, p. 174.) How did it "become quite certain?" It is left to be supposed because it is "quite certain." One can only, to such kind of assertions, answer in the negative — that it is not "quite certain."

273 Such assertions have this immense difficulty standing in the way: — that it is a "splendid testimony" on subjects which Alexandrian philosophers have essayed to teach — that this testimony contains the holiest and truest teaching on man's real condition, and what he needed — the profoundest knowledge and application of the Old Testament, and the connection between the universal principles it contains and the particular application in which a Jewish doctor ought to have understood them — and yet the clear distinction as to how, in their universality as applied by God in grace, they would reach to all (besides the positive revelation of what introduced the heavenly development of the character to which these general spiritual principles lead), and that connected with what we know to be historically true, and prophetically announced, though contrary to all Jewish thoughts, and in its actual form only discoverable in prophecy by the key which the person of Christ gave to it — yet, with that key, as simple as possible. All this, and much more than this, in the compass of a few verses (and such is John 3), we are told, is the invention of an impostor, and quite certainly such. It is a pity Mr. N. does not tell us why. If imposture be such, and so true, and has such a stamp of divine knowledge on it, what is truth? And what must the original living witness and exhibition of this truth have been? And besides, however profound, nothing can be simpler. There is nothing obscure and mythically mysterious about it.

SPECIAL VIEWS OF CHRIST'S PERSON

It may be well here to say a few words on the manner in which the discourses of the Lord would be given to us, assuming the Holy Ghost to record them. For it is the character which would result, not the proof of the fact by evidence, that I now seek. First, it is perfectly certain, that we have a very small portion indeed of the discourses of Jesus. The Holy Ghost would give us those which divine wisdom considered permanently useful to the Church in all ages — that which brought out great principles and abiding doctrines; and such is in fact the case. Take the sermon on the Mount, Matthew 13 Luke 15, 16, and the discourses in John, and the like: all bring out some special view of Christ's person, God's ways with men, or the principles of His rule as Father. Even in the same discourse He would give us, according to the connection in which it was recorded, that part which applies to the subject treated. Thus, supposing it had been said, "They killed at Jerusalem the Son whom the Father had sent," I might say, if the guilt of favoured Jerusalem was in question, "They killed the Son at Jerusalem;" if the mere extent of their guilt in respect of the dignity of His person, "They killed the Son." If I sought to shew the slight of the Father and the contempt of His love, I might say, "They killed the Son whom the Father had sent." And all these representations would be perfectly true; and in the pursuit of an object, such as God must have in recording these things, my leaving out a part which did not immediately bear on the purpose of God in the revelation would only give a truer force to the words — more of the sense and meaning, according to the mind and teaching of God. Now each gospel might give only one of these (much more pertinent and instructive, but) incomplete citations; and hence there would be a difference. But so far from there being an inconsistency, there would be a great help to understanding the mind of God in the word.

274 Would any man say of these, that any one was not a true account? It would be a great deal truer if the object be to communicate God's mind in the discourse to me; and what else can it be if God inspired the account of it? I repeat, we have not a hundredth part of Jesus's discourses. We have what the Holy Ghost was sent to give for the permanent good of the Church — the very words Jesus used, if needed, for the divine teaching, perhaps the substance perfectly fitted for future ages, or some of the words which had a permanent application.

Again, suppose there were a question of blaming me for taking some one to a distance, and it were affirmed that I had, on the contrary, said to him, "Come into the next room;" whereas I had said, "The next room is airy and will suit you: come into it." The report made to justify me is not literal, but it is exactly true. Now I do not doubt that the Holy Ghost, by the apostle, has given the discourses of Jesus, not necessarily in every case literally, but in the way alluded to in the example I have given, so as that they exactly communicate the mind of God in them which He meant to be preserved in writing, and word for word when that was needed so to do. Many things may have been said, and undoubtedly were, by which what He said was adapted to the persons and circumstances which surrounded Him, but made no part of the truth to be conveyed. These would be only so far preserved as would be needed to give a perfect idea of what He said to them, and how. Hence the force of the discourse would be, as the Holy Ghost used the mind and pen of John, or any other writer, exactly what the Holy Ghost meant to communicate.

275 Now this is much more really a divine communication by the Holy Ghost, than a mere repetition by human memory of what the Lord meant only for the good of the individuals at the moment, or forms of expression adapted to suit what He said to them, and not for the permanent good of the Church, and the full revelation of Himself. I have His instructions with divine perfection, as He meant them to be given for the permanent use of the Church, written by the power of the Holy Ghost. If the Holy Ghost employed John or Matthew to convey a particular part of the truth as to Jesus, as He undoubtedly did, their writings would necessarily take the form of the particular truth or aspect of Christ they were employed to set forth. Thus Emmanuel shines through Matthew, and Jehovah King in Zion; in John, the Son's relationship in every way with the Father, both in nature and mission: Judaism is quite set aside. The vessel used was fitted for its use, but conveyed exactly what it was meant to convey. The form, as we have said, of the jet was according to the fountain-maker's design, but the water which took that form was unmixed and pure.

JOHN'S ACCOUNT OF THE RAISING OF LAZARUS, AND OF THE HEALING OF THE MAN BORN BLIND

Mr. Newman objects to John's account of the raising of Lazarus, and of the healing of the man born blind,* on the ground of their not being mentioned by the other evangelists, and John's writing long after. Now the miracles Mr. N. objects to were immediately in connection with the subject the Holy Ghost employed John to treat of. One was in demonstration of His Sonship in the direct way of power; and the other, of the light-giving power which accompanied the recognition of His mission, leading to the owning of Him as Son. Now I repeat here what I have already said, that the Holy Ghost must have an object in writing such histories. He is not — could not be — a biographer, to write a life with circumstances which there was no divine reason for communicating. He was revealing Christ under various characters of glory, Son of God, Son of David, Son of man, Emmanuel.

{*"How was it that the other writers omitted to tell of such decisive exhibitions? . . . When, where, and in what circumstances did John write? It is agreed that he wrote fifty or sixty years after the events, when the other disciples were all dead." (Phases, pp. 174, 175.)}

276 Now let us examine whether there is not such a definite bearing of the two miracles referred to as is to be expected in a history given of God; whether they do not bear the stamp of a divine revelation of Jesus. From chapter 4, John's Gospel had systematically unfolded the new thing in contrast with Judaism. Spiritual worship of the Father instead of at Jerusalem or on Gerizim. (John 4) Life-giving power, instead of human strength using ordinances; judgment executed to secure Christ's glory in those who rejected Him: here He is the life-giving Son. (John 5) Next, He is the humbled Son of man instead of King Messiah in Israel, the spiritual food of faith while away, having come down from heaven and been crucified. (John 6) Then, the time for His glory before the world being not yet come, the Holy Ghost is to be given to believers, witnessing His heavenly glory as Son of man. (John 7) Then He is the light of the world in contrast with the law; but His word is rejected (John 8); as is the evidence of His works (John 9), of which hereafter. He will at any rate have and save His sheep. (John 10) That closes the direct revelation of Christ in the gospel.

From John 11 we have the public testimony given by God to Him who was rejected: — first, as Son of God, life-giving, resurrection-power was His proper glory; and Lazarus is publicly raised.* This sickness was not unto death, but for the glory of God, and that the Son of God should be glorified thereby. Hence all say, "If thou hadst been here, he had not died." They knew His miraculous power of healing; but now close to Jerusalem, the most public testimony possible is given to His life-giving power as Son of God. How truly this is in its place is seen by this, that after this we have His glory as Son of David publicly proclaimed by His entry into Jerusalem, and the time come for His glory as Son of man marked by the Greeks coming up; and then the Lord shews that to this the cross is necessary, and looks in spirit at the coming hour. Thus the peculiar bearing of this remarkable miracle is clearly seen — the public indication of Christ as Son of God who raises the dead.

{*There is no "Tell it to no man" here.}

Now Matthew is employed by the Holy Ghost to present Christ in another way — that of Emmanuel, Messiah. Hence the Spirit does not give what was specially used to prove another point; but He does give with much more detail the riding in as Jehovah, the King Messiah, with all that followed on it — in the judgment of Israel, chief priests, Pharisees, Sadducees, Herodians — every class, in a word, and the whole moral position of those who rejected Him; and then shews from Psalm 110 that the Messiah ought to leave them, and to ascend up on high, because He was David's Lord as well as David's Son. That is, he gives in greater detail what was suited to his subject.

277 Again in the case of the blind man, the same considerations apply. We have the contrast between the blind receiving sight from Him who is the true light of the world, and the judgment of those who set up to be lights, and that by the most ignorant believer who finds his place with the rejected Son of God. And mark the process. First, in the typical act, He puts clay on the man's eyes — a figure (I doubt not, from what the apostle says) of Christ come in the flesh. But this operation in itself produces no effect; but the moment he washes in Siloam (which, says the apostle, signifies "sent"), he sees. That is, the moment he, by the purifying word and Spirit, recognizes that Christ is the sent One, all is clear. In result, the poor man, the subject thus of the delivering power of Christ, honest of heart, bears witness to the power of which he had experienced the effect, knowing Jesus only as a prophet; but, having received in his heart the authority of His word and mission, he immediately receives Him as Son of God, and prostrates himself before Him. The rest are blinded; for the effect of His mission is, that they that see not might see, and that they that see might be made blind.

CHARACTERISTICS OF JOHN'S TESTIMONY

Now this unfolding of particular testimony to Sonship, in contrast with the blinding of the Jews, is John's subject all through. Matthew's, as we have seen, is different; as is Luke's, who gives us the Son of man, and what is suited to the display of that truth. But there is such total and profound ignorance in all these infidel writers of the purpose of the author, that they do not understand the scope of a single passage. How should they? It is as if some wise housemaid should clean out a powerful voltaic battery, because dirty wire and plates and useless water were in it.

And I beg the reader to call to mind, that if God was writing a book, He must have such objects. Adequate evidence of the facts proving His mission in Israel among the Jews was given in Matthew's Gospel among themselves, and I suppose (it is hardly to be doubted from the evidence we have) in their own tongue as well as in Greek, before the destruction of Jerusalem. John was employed (when Christianity was now, in one sense, established, and no longer in the cradle of Judaism) to give the great leading truths concerning the person and glory of Jesus, and the presence of the Holy Ghost needed for its building up and consolidation, and the guarding it against the inroads of heretical pravity. Could anything be more suitable, more timely, or more gracious on God's part? He preserves also an apostle himself, that, as external proof, we might have an eye-witness, and one most especially intimate with Jesus — one we may reverently call His bosom friend — to shew what really was the true doctrine of Christ when there was danger of departure from it, and need of building up in it; when it was no longer sufficient to believe that Jesus was the Christ in order to be preserved from the machinations of the enemy. And this is what we have in John. He is occupied entirely about the person of Christ, and the testimony of the Holy Ghost operating in the saints, whether to convict the world by, or to build up the Church in, the glory of that Christ. Meanwhile, if God chose fitting instruments, the Holy Ghost Himself, as Christ had promised, was the Author and Inspirer of all, whether in Matthew or in John, or any other. Now John was just the person fitted for this. The time was the time it was required, the thing done exactly what was called for: just as the general course of Christ's working was recorded by Matthew; but in Matthew, hundreds of miracles in a verse or two, to introduce the true character of the kingdom of heaven, which was his subject (all his detailed miracles bearing on his subject, as the few John relates do on his; and Luke's in an equally remarkable manner on his — the healing, cleansing, forgiving, and quickening of man lost in sin).

278 OBSERVATIONS ON MIRACLES

Hence nothing can be more out of the way than Mr. N.'s remarks. If John had in Asia Minor (if he was there), after the destruction of Jerusalem, and the dispersion of the Jews, given the general history of miracles and acts as a proof of the truth of his mission as Messiah to the Jews, then, though it would not hinder one taught of God from believing, there would be something plausible in what Mr. N. says, in objecting to a new history of miracles at so late a date.* This was already done; and that John should then develop Christianity doctrinally and in its spirit, relating only two or three miracles of Jesus, specially connected with this, is exactly in place and keeping. John's testimony as eye-witness was just as valid. These events must have been much more vividly impressed upon him than more recent ones. The Holy Ghost, while acting suitably as to His instruments, and for His purpose, always acts in His own divine power.

{*Note, here, infidel candour. It suits Mr. N. to accept the usually received date of John's Gospel; and he says, "It is agreed that he wrote fifty or sixty years after the events;" but it is much more universally agreed that Matthew and Luke wrote much earlier, though the precise year is. not known. But this has no weight with him.}

279 Mr. N.'s low and disgusting introduction of John as a witness is without sense or force. He puts a question* which only shews his ignorance of the matter. The Holy Ghost acted on his memory, "He shall bring to your remembrance." Does he mean to say that God cannot call to a man's memory what He thinks fit? Such a notion is ridiculous — a man can do it. But He puts the memory into activity, and recalls to it the images of what had passed before it. How many scenes and thoughts has the sight of a person called back to our minds! How well does the sinner know that when God acts convertingly on his conscience all his sins come up fresh into his memory! Could God not do as much as to the life of His blessed Son, and control the memory in its activity so as to give what He wished, if He purposed to give a revelation by eye-witnesses? This is what Jesus said the Holy Ghost should do. Hence it is not a "romance," but a history — a real history by eye-witnesses, and a real history by God Himself through their instrumentality. It is much more incredible that He should have sent and given His Son, and not given such a history of Him, but left it unknown, or only traditionally guessed at in after ages.

{*These are the words: "O aged sir, we understand that you have two memories: a natural and a miraculous one . . . . Be pleased to tell us now, Is it from your natural or from your supernatural memory that you derive your knowledge of the miracle wrought on Lazarus?" (Phases, p. 176.)}

Further, I repeat, miracles may arrest and draw attention to truth; and truth may arrest and fix attention on divine power shewn by miracles; but the fact is, both were concurrent testimonies to the person and glory of the Lord Jesus Christ.* On this point also Mr. N. only shews he is far from the plain and very simple state of the case. Suppose the anxious father, who entreated deliverance for his son, found that the fever left him exactly at the moment that Jesus said, "Go thy way, thy son liveth"; and thus, giving ear to Jesus, found that truth, the entering in of which gives light and understanding to the simple, would an infidel's scepticism or the parent's conduct be more just?** In the main, the Gospels just give us an authentic history of those things, and of plenty of scepticism too, which has not happily succeeded in anything save confirming, in the state of the sceptic Jews, the prophecies and warnings which they disbelieved and rejected.

{*Compare John 6: 14; John 7: 40.}

{**Note, here, the clear proof of power in miracles done on one at a distance unconscious of what was said.}

280 Suppose, on the other hand, one heard Him who spake as never man spake, and received precious truth in his soul, yet remained pondering as to who He should be who spake, and whether all His claims were real, and, as John's messengers, saw that the blind received their sight, the lame walked, the lepers were cleansed, the deaf heard, the dead were raised, and, in the absence of all the pride and selfishness of religious grandeur, the poor had the gospel preached to them; was it not a just means of receiving Him who spake grace and truth itself, and confirmed the word by signs following? Or must he have settled the knotty, logical point whether miracles were to be believed on account of doctrine, or doctrine on account of miracles, before he did; or remained in torturing doubt if the Saviour he wanted was there, or in proud and indifferent ignorance? He had nothing to settle. Truth and power concurred in assuring his soul that Jesus was the Christ the Son of God. If he did not believe it, it was that his heart was so hard that it resisted both. We have lost the sight of the miracles and possess the truth more complete as a whole, and an historical testimony which nothing but folly and self-will can dispute: an historical testimony which makes the whole course of miracles more powerful morally, though less impressive to the senses. Christianity exists. It arose from something. What it did arise from is believed by all the world except voluntary sceptics and mythical dreamers like Dr. Strauss, who will serve for a nine years' wonder for the Germans, as the Paulus school did before them.

It will be said, "But people believe Mohammedanism too": so do I historically, though far less fully authenticated in detail than Christianity. The difference is this, that if the history of Mohammedanism be true, it is an imposture. If that of Christianity be true, it is incontestably divine. But you might better deny the history of Mohammedanism than of Christianity. I turn to the examination of St. Paul's testimony.

281 MR. NEWMAN'S REMARKS ON TONGUES

I think I never read more thorough nonsense than Mr. N.'s remarks on the tongues. The Irvingites were a convenient loophole of escape, indeed, as regards the remarkable testimony afforded by the tongues; but I cannot say that Mr. N. has managed it well, though in some respects subtly enough. Indeed it was a difficult task. St. Paul's speaking tongues more than they all is slipped in at the end as "hallucination." It was an awkward fact to deal with. And now let us examine Mr. N.'s dealing with the facts of the case. They were the same, he says, as the Irvingite tongues. St. Paul's "moral sobriety of mind was no guarantee against his mistaking extravagances for miracles." So that the tongues which Paul spoke were extravagances like the Irvingite tongues. And "Luke (or the authority whom he followed) has exaggerated into a gift of languages what cannot be essentially different from the Corinthian, and in short from the Irvingite, tongues." (Phases, p. 179.) So that Paul, in speaking the tongues he boasted of, was never understood. They were mere extravagances, "hallucination!"

He, whether through delusion or imposture, encouraged others in the thought that they had these tongues, and only boasted of having more "extravagances" than they, and of course different kinds of extravagances; for he spake several tongues — a thing hard to conceive, that he should speak several kinds of jargon as if they were languages, and yet remain an honest man. Did he mistake his own diversified extravagances for miracles? It is very credible for a sceptic, but for no one else, I should think. If it comes under the class of logic or philosophy, I know not; but it certainly seems an "extravagance" to a plain mind that a man should speak a number of tongues which were no tongues at all, and never find out he was deceiving himself, nor think of deceiving others; but appeal to others who indulged in like extravagances, and without smiling, like Cicero's augurs, when they met each other. I have known some who held that Paul's tongues were; simply languages that he had learnt and was thankful to use. Mr. N. treats this notion as cheaply as it deserves, by not noticing it, and distinctly declaring the tongues to be an extravagance; whereas it is clear enough there is no extravagance at all in speaking a language we know to those whose language it is. Nothing more wise or simple. I say as cheaply as it deserves; because to suppose that people's speaking a language they had learnt at school was a proof that the Holy Ghost had come upon them, is really not worthy of consideration. And not only on the day of Pentecost, but at Samaria, and at the reception of Cornelius, the speaking of tongues is advanced in a very specific and distinct way as a proof of the descent of the Holy Ghost, and in the last case as a warrant for receiving the Gentiles into the Church of God (God having given them the like gift as to the apostles). Now, that a man's speaking a tongue he had learnt in an ordinary way should be a warrant for so doing, is too absurd an idea to entertain for a moment. No: they were extravagances or a miracle.

282 But there is this untoward difficulty in the way of their being fancied tongues, that all the different nations to whom the tongues belonged understood them. "Are not all these which speak Galileans? And how hear we every man in our own tongue wherein we were born?" And then Peter speaks to the Jews in theirs. Now this fact is the substantial point of the whole affair. It was that which struck the multitude. Three thousand people were converted by it. The Church begins its existence, and was formed in virtue of this multitude understanding what was said. Christianity was planted and rooted in the world by it.

It was this was the proof that the Holy Ghost was indeed come down. It marked and characterized the day of Pentecost. Mr. N. says, it "cannot have been essentially different from the Corinthian." Surely not; but there was this difference, that there was nobody at Corinth who understood the strange tongues. It was not needed, and it was not for edification; and, therefore, with his usual "moral sobriety," Paul forbade the exercise of this gift unless there was an interpreter, because then, as is evident, it would edify.

He would not preclude its use, as it was a sign of divine power, provided it was for edification: all was to be subservient to that.

Thus all was the very opposite of extravagance. An immense aid was given to the propagation of the gospel, obvious to all, as well as a sign of divine power accompanying it.

283 Now it seems to me, not only was such a miraculous aid peculiarly appropriate for a religion propagated by preaching; but, besides that, there was a very special and gracious meaning in this gift.

In Babel, where man had once been of one lip, and one language, God had confounded their pride, and men were shut up into a dissociable condition, used of God for providential purposes, but which set up barriers which precluded common communications. Israel had one of these tongues perhaps, and, probably, the original one; and the true knowledge of God was confined to them. When Christianity came in, power was not yet going to set the world right, but grace was overstepping these barriers, and the over-flowing love of God saluting the heathen where they were, in their darkness and misery, without compelling them to bend their neck under the galling yoke of Judaism. What could be more expressive of this than speaking to every one of them in their own tongue? The barrier was gone — at least God's love had over-stepped it, and visited every heart where it was at I home, where judgment, indeed, on man's pride had placed it. Was there not something most beautifully significant in this? Surely there was. Hence it became a kind of distinctive miracle.

So when Samaria was received, they spake with tongues. When God would outstrip man's tardy love, and He visited the Gentiles in the person of Cornelius, He put His seal on the Gentiles before the Church had put hers — an unusual act. Yet surely the first place in grace belonged to Him; and how could the apostle refuse those to whom God had given the same seal as to the Jews and the apostles themselves? But when they were used for personal vanity, and not for edification — for of what is not man capable? — then they are restrained; not absolutely, which would have taken away a just testimony to the Holy Ghost's presence, but unless there was an interpreter who could turn it to edifying, which was certainly the Holy Ghost's purpose. With Mr. N. this is the same thing as Irvingite extravagances. What profound moral judgment, and estimate of facts!

But I must here (without any reproach to Mr. N., as it is a matter of memory) recall some facts, and rectify some statements. At Pentecost the languages were universally understood by those who spoke them; the Irvingite tongues never by any one: a notable difference. And this is so true, that after first trying their hand at making Chinese of it, it was suggested among them that it might be the tongue of angels, as it was said, "If I speak with the tongues of men and of angels" — delightful idea!

284 Mr. N. is not quite exact in his account of the report of the "Irish Clergyman," or at least of what the "Irish Clergyman" saw and heard. There was a pretended interpretation. Two brothers (respectable shipbuilders at Port Glasgow, of the name of M'D — ), and their sister, were the chief persons who spoke, with a Gaelic maid-servant, in the tongues, and a Mrs. J — , in English. J. M'D — spoke, on the occasion alluded to, for about a quarter of an hour, with great energy and fluency, in a semi-latin sounding speech — then sung a hymn in the same. Having finished, he knelt down and prayed there might be interpretation; as God had given one gift, that He would add the other. His sister got up at the opposite side of the room, and professed to give the interpretation; but it was a string of texts on overcoming, and no hymn, and one, if not more, of the texts was quoted wrongly. Just afterwards there was a bustle; and apparently some one was unwell, and went into the next room; and the gifted English-speaking person, with utterances from the highest pitch of voice to the lowest murmur, with all strange prolongation of tones, spoke through (if one may so express oneself, as if passing through) the agony of Christ. Once the Gaelic servant spoke briefly in "a tongue," not, if the "Irish Clergyman" remembers right, the same evening. The sense he had of the want of the power of the Holy Ghost in the Church made him willing to hear and see. Yet he went rather as deputed for others than for himself.

The excitement was great, so that, though not particularly an excitable person, he felt its effects very strongly. It did not certainly approve itself to his judgment; other things contributed to form it. It was too much of a scene. Previous to the time of exercising the gifts, they read, sung psalms, and prayed, under certain persons' presidence (one of them a very estimable person, whom he has since seen free from all this, and a minister of an independent or some dissenting church in Edinburgh, then a church-elder). This being finished, the "Irish Clergyman" was going away, when another said to him, "Don't go: the best part is probably to come yet." So he stayed, and heard what has just been related. He was courteously admitted, as one not believing, who came to see what was the real truth of the case. The parties are mostly dead, or dispersed, and many freed from the delusion, and the thing itself public; so that he does not feel he is guilty of any indiscretion in giving a correct account of what passed.

285 It may be added, without of course saying anything that could point out the persons, that female vanity, and very distinct worldliness, did not confirm, to his mind, the thought that it could be the Spirit's power. The M'D — s were in ordinary life, quiet, sober men, and, he believes, most blameless. Their names were so public that there is no indelicacy in alluding to them, but the "Irish Clergyman" did not think they had that kind of peace and deliverance from legal thoughts, which is a sign in another way of the Spirit's power. They never received the apostolic pretensions of London and Albury, but repudiated, in the strongest way and on full enquiry, the blasphemous doctrine of the Irvingites as to the person of the Lord. Mr. N.'s reporter, the "Irish Clergyman," doubts that they were in the least aware of it at the time they professed to receive the gifts; but they certainly entirely repudiated it when he saw them afterwards.

It may not be generally known that the "gifts" among the Irvingites were founded on this doctrine of Christ's being a sinner in nature like ourselves. Mr. Irving's statement was, that he had long preached the "gifts," but there were none, because there was nothing for the Holy Ghost to testify to; but that when he preached this doctrine, they came as a witness to it. His teaching moreover on the subject was confirmed by what was received as the prophetic power amongst them. I am afraid the tongues are not quite "exploded" yet, as they have allied themselves with other influences suited to the world (that is, the spirit of Romanism and Puseyism). At any rate, there is one consoling fact, that as yet, in God's patient mercy, in spite of efforts from without and provocations of many Mr. N.'s from within, the lapse of eighteen hundred years, instead of three, has not "exploded" the effect of Paul's "extravagances" and "hallucinations," and Luke's "exaggerations." We possess the blessed testimony that the Holy Ghost has given to the glory of the person of the Lord Jesus; and, despite their many sins, mercy is yet extended to the Gentiles.

The rest of Mr. N.'s remarks on the tongues are not worthy of an answer. The term "barbaric jargon" is avowedly used because it was not understood by the hearers. He that spoke was "as a barbarian." The rest is composed of a kind of sneer, which, in the presence of the proofs and facts, throws scorn on the sneerer, not on the things sneered at.

286 PAUL'S PREACHING OF A GLORIFIED CHRIST, PETER'S WITNESSING

The next point noticed is St. Paul's preaching a glorified Christ, not a lowly One. It is quite true: and equally true that he was not called to be a witness of Christ's oral teachings. So it is declared in his mission as distinguished from that of the twelve. He was to be the great witness of that part of truth which put Jew and Gentile on the same footing in a heavenly way, which could only be in connection with a glorified Christ. But if that be supposed to mean, that he attached no importance to the history of Christ's humiliation,* nothing can be more false; only he takes it up, as he does all else, as a part of the vast counsels and plans and purposes of God.

{*"Paul shews total unconcern to the human history and earthly teaching of Jesus . . . . The Christ with whom Paul held communion was a risen, ascended, exalted Lord . . . . He surely therefore must have been wholly and contentedly ignorant of the oral teachings of Jesus." (Phases, pp. 180, 181.)}

The following passages, not to speak of unnumbered ones which speak of the cross, will prove what I say. In John 15: 26, 27, it is said, "But when the Comforter is come, whom I will send unto you from the Father, even the Spirit of truth, which proceedeth from the Father, he shall testify of me: and ye also shall bear witness, because ye have been with me from the beginning." They were eye-witnesses of His life down here. As to Paul's ministry, it is said, Acts 26: 16, "But rise and stand upon thy feet: for I have appeared unto thee for this purpose, to make thee a minister and a witness both of these things which thou hast seen, and of those things in the which I will appear unto thee." Here we have the two commissions clearly stated.

So Peter calls himself a witness of Christ's sufferings, and a partaker of the glory to be revealed. Paul not only speaks of "the gospel of the glory," but says, "for the excellency of the knowledge of Christ Jesus" his Lord; and, instead of speaking of himself as a witness of the sufferings and partaker of the glory, seeks "the power of His resurrection and the fellowship of His sufferings." Phil. 3: 10. He descends, so to speak, into the sufferings, because of the glory, and as the way to his high calling above He does not speak of waiting for its revelation. And this was so very distinct, that Peter proposes, in Acts 3, to the Jews repentance, that Christ may return to them; Paul never. Peter's testimony had been rejected, and Stephen killed and received on high; and there was no thought then but receiving Jew and Gentile through the ministry of him whom grace had called away from Stephen's martyr-ground, and from the apostleship of Jewish hatred, to Christ, to be the witness of heavenly things connected with that glorious Christ, by the vision of whom on the way to Damascus he was arrested, and his pride laid low. The Holy Ghost also opened his spiritual eye on the Lord, leading him to preach Him whom once he destroyed.

287 Hence he boldly declares, after speaking of the "gospel of the glory," that he does not know Christ in the former or Jewish way, after the flesh; and that if any man was in Christ, there was a new creation — he belonged to what took him out of Jew and Gentile; as it had been said to him by Christ, when He appeared to him by the way, "Delivering thee from the Gentiles, to whom now I send thee." Acts 26: 17. But this only fills up. the perfectness of the gospel revelation in its place. And the humiliation of Christ takes, in Paul's view, all its immense and vast importance in the counsels of God, and is not a mere personal history, perfectly interesting and divinely instructive as that is in its place; for the gospel has a thousand aspects in one divine truth.

Paul was eminently the vessel of the counsels of God in Christ. Does that make the personal history of Jesus less interesting, less profoundly, divinely, though humanly, instructive? No; the heart goes back to study in every detail, One who in every detail was divine love and holiness, near enough to man's eye to study it for himself. But how does Paul speak of this? See the sweep of truth with which he brings Christ's humiliation in: "Now that he ascended, what is it but that he also descended first into the lower parts of the earth? He that descended is the same also that ascended up far above all heavens, that he might fill all things." Eph. 4: 9. What a place does His humiliation fill here! Again, take His, so to speak, official exaltation: "Let this mind be in you, which was also in Christ Jesus: who, being in the form of God, thought it not robbery to be equal with God: but made himself of no reputation, and took upon him the form of a servant, and was made in the likeness of men: and being found in fashion as a man, he humbled himself, and became obedient unto death, even the death of the cross. Wherefore God also hath highly exalted him, and given him a name which is above every name, that at the name of Jesus every knee should bow."

Thus the history of Christ's humiliation was looked at by Paul, through the Holy Ghost, not in the touching detail of Christ's individual life, of which he was not witness, but as one immense fact, and a cardinal one, in the vast scheme of God. This was exactly in its place, and in keeping with the service for which he was employed. John gives us the divine nature; Paul, the divine counsels; Peter, the walk of him who has a lively hope through the resurrection of One whose walk he had known and followed in its bright display on earth, towards the heaven into which resurrection is meant to introduce us (all founding the accomplishment of blessing on the redemption which He has wrought out for us).

288 Mr. N. next complains of Paul not affording us the grounds on which he believed the facts as to Christ's resurrection.*

{*"But I now saw that this independence invalidated his testimony. . . . It avails not to talk of the opportunities which he had of searching into the truth of the resurrection of Christ; for we see that he did not choose to avail himself of the common methods of investigation." (Phases, p. 181.)}

I have, in principle, answered this. The business of a revelation is to afford the objects of faith in such a full display as makes the evidence of it, not to discuss the logical grounds of its reception. Nothing can be more absurd, more demonstrative of the petty narrowness of mind which cannot discern the true character of what is before it, than the claim of such a logical discussion in scripture. Moral appeals of the most touching character to all, the evidences given and slighted, are indeed found. That we can understand. But I venture to say, there is not a right-thinking man in existence, who would not (if he had found in the New Testament a discussion on the logical grounds of evidence) have at once concluded that it was not, or at least that such a portion formed no part of, a revelation of God.

Even as to logic,* I must beg to be entirely exempted from partnership in that of Mr. N. "Our" is a very comfortable, comprehensive word; as if his reasoning were the universal grounds of enlightened modern conviction. I must beg to think, poorly as I esteem men's competency in such matters, that is far from being the case. Take the example Mr. N. appeals to — Paley. He has examined all these subjects with a clear and accurate mind; he has come, and written to show why he has come, to the full conviction of the authenticity and divine authority of that to which Mr. N. denies both. What kind of logic had he?

{*"How different was the logic [Paul's] from ours! To see the full force of the last remark, we ought to conceive how many questions a Paley would have wished to have asked Paul; and how many details Paley himself, if he had had the sight, would have felt it his duty to impart to his readers." (Phases, pp. 181, 182.)}

289 But let us ourselves examine the evidence St. Paul affords in writing to the Corinthians. The question was, Will the saints rise again? The proof of the resurrection, insisted on as evidence, is the fact of Christ's resurrection; for if there be no resurrection, then Christ is not raised; and the whole gospel, which is really founded on it, falls to the ground. Besides, therefore, a doctrinal statement (to which the evidence of his own mission, already afforded, gave authority), he appeals to historical proofs. And what are they? Some one apparition to an excited individual, whose imagination may have misled him? No; different and repeated manifestations of Himself by Christ to persons who very well knew Him. The apostle states (besides these manifestations of Christ taking place often to those who were intimate with Him) on one occasion He appeared to some five hundred persons, of whom the apostle takes care to say that the greater part are still living to testify, if needed, to the truth of the statement. Now what so good evidence can you have of a person being actually there, as being repeatedly seen by those who knew him well, his daily companions; and (if prejudice or feeling may be alleged as leading a dozen of them to concur in and continue a most elaborate falsehood, and suffer for it) having the certainty of the truth confirmed by His being seen by above five hundred persons at once, who were then most of them living to tell the story? It is difficult to imagine what "our logic" could have, in the way of evidence, more convincing.

St. Paul, it is true, does not discuss its validity; but he produces what is valid; and that is just what he had to do. We are discussing it now; we do not want St. Paul for that. When he wrote, they were living to be examined who had seen Him. What other kind of evidence would Mr. N. require? What other could he have? Would he require some palpable proof of its being real? Christ eats and drinks with them after He arose from the dead. Is he still unbelieving? Thomas, happily for us, had the same scepticism; and Christ's wounded side and pierced hands extorted the acknowledgment of the fact, and of the divine person to whom such a fact testified.

And remark here, we are discussing the nature of the evidence afforded.* It will be said, "You should bring the proof of enemies as well as friends." Were such adduced, it would have been equally alleged, they would not have known Him; and if convinced, were they to be excluded as witnesses, because they were honest enough to become friends? Must a man be necessarily a sceptic to have truth and sense? I judge a man more honest who avows his convictions and suffers for them. I can produce thousands, ay, millions, of sceptics, who are constantly making profession, for their ease' sake, of this and many things besides, which they do not believe. This was certainly not the course of those who received and professed the testimony of Jesus. But I do bring the best proof of that kind (that is, of thousands of enemies thoroughly convinced by the evidence they had where the facts occurred, so that they embraced and suffered for the truth of it).

{*Mr. N. says, "He does not afford to us the means of sifting and analyzing his testimony;" but he did, in the fullest way, to those to whom he wrote — giving the names of those well known, and adducing five hundred others who were, he declared, mostly then alive; so that there was the fullest means afforded to sift his testimony. As far as the lapse of eighteen hundred years allows, there is the amplest opportunity given now.}

290 Among them was St. Paul, who, not for his conviction but that he might be an eye-witness, did see Him when he was an enemy. He very modestly introduces this, with the expression of the sense of his own unworthiness, but declares expressly here in Corinthians, as he does elsewhere, that he saw the Lord. St. Paul then produces five hundred witnesses, and declares they are alive. The simplicity of the proof needed no comment. It has the dignity of a plain, unanswerable testimony. It wanted no "extravagating,"* no "revelling" in it. It carried its own weight. He adduces his own testimony in the same simple way — "Last of all he was seen of me also."

{*"Conceive, farther, how a Paley would have dealt with so astounding a fact, so crushing an argument, as the appearance of the risen Jesus to five hundred brethren at once! How would he have extravagated and revelled in proof! How would he have worked the topic! . . . Yet Paul dispatches the affair in one line." (Phases, pp. 182, 183.) What is so crushing? If it be the effect, we have it. What more does Mr. N. want? If it be crushing, it is all we want. Why is Mr. N.'s reasoning crushed by it?

Mr. N. asks, "Did he see Him as a man in a fleshly body, or as a glorified, heavenly form?" (Phases, p. 182.) There was such a manifestation of glory as left no mistake with any present, though they were not intended to be eye-witnesses of Jesus, nor to hear His voice. The general blaze of glory and the sound from heaven confounded them, and they fell to the earth. Paul, to whom the Lord meant to reveal Himself, then saw the glorified Lord, and heard His voice speaking to him — answered Him, received His reply at large and in detail. He made no mistake as to the glorious light; and when One who gave such plain proof of glory, and whom he saw in a glory which surpassed the sun's brightness, declared to him Himself that He was Jesus, Paul believed the glorious One he saw from heaven. Perhaps Mr. N. might not have done so, might have been "disobedient to the heavenly vision;" but I know not that he would have proved his wisdom in his disobedience. And, though Mr. N. does not like threats, there certainly is a day which will declare it, or the grace (as the Lord grant it may be!) which has forgiven it.

291 But this was not all the evidence Paul had, nor all he refers to. A godly, sober man, well reported of by his enemies and the truth's, but whom he did not know, comes to him unsent for, and declares to him that he has had a vision, and that he has been sent to him by the same Jesus who had appeared to him by the way; and not only this, but that he had been sent to give him back his sight, which accordingly took place, and moreover that he should receive the Holy Ghost. Accordingly we find Saul, previously astounded by the vision, and the immense revolution it must have produced in his mind to find he was fighting against the Lord of glory, and that all the heads of his religion were the bitter enemies of the glorious Christ of the God they professed to serve — we find him, I say, boldly, with great force and conviction, proving that the Jesus whose disciples he persecuted was indeed the Christ, and soon naturally becoming himself the object of persecution, but persevering to the end.

Now was the glory seen by all — the confounding voice from heaven — the vision of His person by Saul — the detailed conversation in which he was convinced and his mission given to him, confirmed by the independent evidence of Ananias the righteous Jew — his receiving his sight and such spiritual power as confounded the Jews that dwelt at Damascus — all confirming the reality of the positive declaration of One whom he saw in glory, that He was Jesus — evidence which changed the man's whole life — of such a character as proved a man had "lax notions of evidence,"* because he was convinced by it? I apprehend that when he had himself seen the Lord, talked with Him, received from Him sight and power, he did not think much about notions of evidence, because he had a full revelation for himself. He might leave it easily to sceptics, and wonder at their notions, well convinced that "if his gospel was hid, it was hid to them that are lost, in whom the god of this world hath blinded the minds of them which believe not, lest the light of the gospel of the glory of Christ, who is the image of God, should shine into them." 2 Cor. 4: 4. He had seen that Just One and heard the words of His mouth. He had told him who He was. All was confirmed by signs of power and holiness and truth. What needed he more?

{*"How can I believe, at second hand, from the word of one whom I discern to hold such lax notions of evidence?" (Phases, p. 183.)}

292 And remark here, that all the testimony of the apostle bears the stamp of this for some thirty years after. His gospel is "the gospel of the glory of Christ." He knows Him only in this way, knows Him for himself — his doctrine, the union of the Church with Him who said, "I am Jesus whom thou persecutest" — the deliverance from Jewish habits of thinking in so remarkable a way — the very hatred of the Jews perpetuated to this day — all bear the stamp of the origin of his mission by this vision of Christ. As to the character of his testimony, Mr. N. does not deny it; but effects shew, more or less, their cause. And then here it was exactly what was needed, if it be true; just the point of progress at which Christianity had arrived. The Jews who sent Saul had denied and rejected it. The time was come to bring out the Church as such, and the Gentiles into a place common to them and to the Jews, dropping the privileges of the Jews (forfeited by rebellion persevered in against mercy); for they had "filled up their sins, and wrath was come upon them to the uttermost." The doctrine of Paul (of the reception of the Gentiles, and the building of the Church in union with its Head, Christ in glory) all flows naturally and necessarily from the vision on the way to Damascus; the sovereign grace which gave it to a Saul, stamped its character throughout.

My business is not with the logic of the apostle, but with his truth, with his testimony. I may look for it in Mr. N.; and his reasonings, which expect logic from a witness instead of his testimony, are as illogical as they are narrow and petty in their scope of apprehension of the character and effect of the evidence.

Mr. N. says, "Peter does not attest the bodily, but only the spiritual resurrection of Jesus." (Phases, p. 184.) I can only say to this, that Mr. N.'s views of Greek are as narrow as of logic. Indeed, he must be a hardy man, and have very "lax notions of evidence," who could allege Peter as one who attested only the spiritual resurrection of Jesus. He it is who declared the twelve were witnesses of it, having eaten and drunk with Him after He rose from the dead. They preached Jesus and the resurrection — that neither did His soul remain in Hades, nor His flesh see corruption. He it was who proposed that one of those who had constantly accompanied Jesus should be with them — a witness of His resurrection.

293 But will Mr. N. say that ζωοποιηβεὶς πνεύματι or τῳ π. means simply that His spirit was raised and not His body? Is that the simple force of the dative in Greek (viz., to be the direct object of the active power of the verb)? Mr. N. knows just as well as I do that it is not; and that his remark has no solid foundation whatever. For if Mr. N.'s remark has any weight, it is that ζ. π. meant that His spirit was made alive. On the face of it this would be absurd, because the only thing put to death, if we so take it, was the flesh; for it is said, θανατωθεὶς μὲν σαρξί. The enquiry as to the Messianic prophecies remains.

The Irrationalism of Infidelity: Section j.

Being a reply to "Phases of Faith"*

J. N. Darby.

{*London: 1853.}

<06001-129E> 1 File Section j.

GENERAL REMARKS

MODERN LOGIC

One or two general remarks may be in place here.

The rationalists, having not the least idea of God's thoughts and plan in scripture, never of course can weigh the bearing of its parts in reference to it. Hence their comments are the most childish things imaginable.

Their system — "our logic" — is this: They first settle that there can be no prophecy nor miracle. Consequently, when certain facts are prophetically stated, it is an evident and necessarily conclusive proof that the book containing them was written after the event referred to. Then they discuss all the possible events alluded to, and each has his notion, so that you are in a sea of conjectures. Divers documents are discovered; good Hebrew and bad Hebrew — at any rate contradictory Hebrew is set in movement to settle the dates; and Jewish malice against the Gentiles, and every other notion imaginable, is referred to, to explain what Hezekiah's or somebody else's prophets mean. The false prophets were as good as their neighbours; only, not supporting the Levitical priesthood, they went to the wall. In my judgment, it is impossible to conceive anything more puerile.

294 But there is one thing in "modern logic" that I confess is a riddle to me, i.e., why such amazing time and labour is spent — why year after year some new Einleitung appears, so that a man must have a good constitution to "keep up" with the ephemeral systems which teem from German imagination, and a memory (hopeless in attainment for most) to keep in all he gets through — why, I say, all this labour should be spent upon a book, of which the contents are but the lucubrations [elaborate fancies] of a very ignorant age, a very prejudiced people, and upon productions which are the grossest impostures, pretending to be prophecies, but written après coup.

Think of persons writing long introductions to the Sibyl oracles, which they believe to be a fabrication, or even on the Koran, which is only an imposture!

Mohammedans, no doubt, discuss this; but at least they believe it. Targums and Talmuds expound or add to the law, add to the prophets; but their authors own what they comment on to be divine. It was reserved for rationalists to exercise their laborious ingenuity, one after another, in expounding and discussing the merits, dates, circumstances of publication, character, object, intentions, style, and import of what they believe to be a priestly and prejudiced imposture.

How mighty is the word of God! It not only flows deep, clear, fructifying, gladdening, saving, for him who drinks its exhaustless waters, but extorts the inevitable homage of those who deny it.

If I must go to Germany, I would say we had thought that our Rhein Ström was ours; but if its Wegthal serves as a barrier only between us and our enemies, our stream shall excite their wonder and admiration; and they will seek to profit for themselves and their glory of what they would deprive us of. Though dwelling on the other side of the barrier, they must still speak the language of this. If the wickedness of Ashdod is come in, they half speak the Jews' language.

But another difficulty presents itself here to our reception of Mr. N.'s and the rationalists' view of the origin, character, and authorship of the prophecies of scripture. The prophets delivered their prophecies to the people. They were published prophecies. "Hezekiah's prophets prophesied publicly in Hezekiah's time." Is it not a singular thing that they should have been able to impose histories as prophecies on those who heard them? They must have written them afterwards, we are told; because, after all, they do not speak of certain events. But then how could they appear to be prophets to persons who knew the history, and who must have been glad enough to have shewn that they were not prophecies, on account of the way in which these prophets denounced their conduct? Either the events are not so spoken of as to prove they wrote after them, or it is for rationalist credulity alone to suppose that they could present them at the time as prophecies of the future.

The Irrationalism of Infidelity: Section k.

Being a reply to "Phases of Faith"*

J. N. Darby.

{*London: 1853.}

<06001-129E> File Section k.

295 MESSIANIC PROPHECIES

But I turn to what is more important. The result of the rationalist system is, that they never examine the prophetic scriptures as a whole, and hence are totally incapable of estimating the value or real bearing of the parts. Mr. N. has had greater advantages than they, and often seeks to use them against the Christian faith. It is a painful thing to see how often he speaks the language of Canaan, while he labours in the spirit of a Philistine. Still he has chosen to take up the rationalist system. Now, I affirm, that according to its own clear contents, be they true or false, all scripture is Messianic from Genesis to Revelation. From the promise that the seed of the woman should bruise the serpent's head — yea, from "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth" Gen. 1: 1. (for according to scripture all things were created by Him and for Him), — until "Even so, come, Lord Jesus"*Rev. 22: 20, — "the first and the last," the testimony as well as the purposes God refer to (have as their object) Him who, the Wisdom of God before the worlds, was all His delight in this, who first descended and then ascended that He might fill all things.

{*"The really Messianic prophecies appeared to me to be far fewer than is commonly supposed." (Phases, p. 192.)}

Now there are two great subjects of scripture besides. That is, first, it speaks of man's sin, the change in him needed to enjoy the blessing, and the redemption accomplished, that we may be with God, with all its varied effects and glories; and, secondly, of the government of this world. Some true and devoted Christians have looked only at the first, as being the great vital necessity (as it is), but, having thus dropped the other when the scriptures which applied to it were before their minds, they were bewildered as to the interpretation of them. There are the sufferings of Christ, and the glories that should follow. These glories include many parts, inasmuch as God, for the administration of the fulness of times, will head up all in Christ, of things in heaven and things on earth. Every family* in heaven and earth comes under the name of the Father of our Lord Jesus Christ.

{*In the English translation it is "the whole family;" but πασα πατρια, I apprehend, is "every family" (nor "the whole family"). It is in contrast with the idea "Thee only have I known of all the families of the earth," addressed to Israel.

296 Now, no doubt the Lord Jesus suffered amongst the Jews; and this made one ground of Jehovah's judicial dealings with them, as Isaiah and Zechariah and the Psalms abundantly testify. But the government of the world is the great subject treated of in the prophetic books. And we are expressly told in Deuteronomy 32: 8, that "when the Most High divided unto the nations their inheritance, when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the peoples according to the number of the children of Israel." God made Israel the centre of His earthly government. The profane history of nations, in fact, centres round it; Egypt, Assyria, Babylon, Persia, Greece, Rome, all contend for it; are known in connection with it, or actually get their full imperial possession and character at the time they acquired possession of it — I do not say by gaining possession of it, but at the epoch at which they did. Clouds of dark traditions, scarce pierced by modern researches, hang over all the rest, and obscure the history of nations, while they reveal their existence.

In the neighbourhood of Israel all is light. Prejudiced, ignorant, barbarous as they may have been, they possess and shed the light of their history on all the nations around them. It is preserved almost with modern accuracy, when a few fragments scarce rescue from entire oblivion other ancient histories. We must disentomb the remains of Thebes and the Ninevehs to get at the history of their ancient monarchs, to know their dynasties, and say even if there were two Assyrian empires or one, while, by God's providence, that which gives some historic data to the glories of Mizraim and Asshur confirms in its detail that of which we have already the minutest particulars in Israel's authentic history. We find, in pictures yet fresh on the lore-covered walls of the country of the Pharaohs, the very kinds of overseers over the Jews making their bricks, of which Moses speaks in the Book of Exodus. Modern research alone has given the place and importance to these countries which the scriptures had already assigned them.

297 Now, when is this great drama of this world's history to find its dénouement and its close, according to the scriptures? Not clearly till the end. It would be an absurdity to suppose such a thing — a denial of the terms in their proper meaning. Scripture places it at the end — speaks of the Lord coming in glory, of the destruction of the Assyrian, of the beast, of the false prophet, of Gog, and that by a grand day which should "burn as an oven" — a day in which the glory of the Lord should be revealed, and all flesh see it together, in which by fire and sword the Lord would plead with all flesh, and the slain of the Lord should be many — a day when a man should be more precious than the fine gold of Ophir; when God would punish the world for its evil, and the wicked for their iniquity; when the Lord would come forth out of His place to punish the inhabitants of the earth for their iniquity; when the earth would uncover her blood, and no more cover her slain. Is it not equally declared that when He came there was no man, when He called there was none to answer — that He should give His back to the smiters, and His cheeks to them that plucked off the hair, nor hide His face from shame and spitting — that His visage should be so marred more than any man, and His countenance more than the sons of men, even that Servant who was to be exalted and extolled, and be very high — that He was to be despised and rejected of men, to make His soul an offering for sin, and bear their iniquities — that they should look on Him whom they had pierced, and mourn for Him? Accordingly we find in the Psalms the expression of the deep sense of these sufferings, as 22, 69, Psalm 102, and others.

Do not these scriptures, in their general tenor — confirmed as they are by hundreds of others and the constant course of God's moral ways in putting suffering on the path of glory — do they not most clearly point out two distinct scenes: a time when the great subject of prophecy, the Son of man, the Son of God, should suffer; and a time when glories should follow, in respect of the government of this world, and that by judgment being in His hand?

See Psalm 2, compared with the general expression of feeling in the Psalms. Is not the first a declaration of Messiah, He who is King in Zion, and Son of God, set as God's King in spite of all enemies — Adonai laughing to scorn their efforts in the day of His wrath? Yet are not the Psalms, as a whole, the expression of the sorrows and sufferings of the righteous, and of Messiah with them? Is He not David's Lord, called to sit at God's right hand, till He makes His foes His footstool, and the rod of His power goes forth from Zion, ruling in the midst of His enemies? Such is the uniform tenor of scripture in every part. The first song we have after the exodus (Hannah's, in the beginning of Samuel) sings with a heart confiding in goodness, after its sorrows, the same truths as to Christ, naming Him as the object of hope.

298 Now, I ask, Is the destruction of the Assyrian connected with deliverances in power and judgment, or with the suffering of Christ?* No one who has read scripture can hesitate for a moment as to the answer. The destruction of this powerful enemy, no doubt, will be connected with Him who suffered, but not with the time of His suffering. The two parts of His history (not the length of the interval, because that did not belong to Israel, but to the Church) are as clear and distinct as possible. The argument, therefore, of Mr. N. that Messiah could not be Jesus, because the prophecies relating to Messiah are connected with the destruction of the Assyrian (Phases, pp. 192, 193), is worse than worthless. I am persuaded he knows better than his pages bear upon their face. That these testimonies of future glory and deliverance then given were comforts to the souls of believers, and sustained their faith in the midst of evil, and the consequent judgments which fell on the beloved people, I do not doubt; and they were, I doubt not, meant to be so; but the things they prophesied of were different from the present comfort conveyed, though rationalists cannot distinguish these things, nor suppose, with the evident reason for it in the history before them, that God was merciful enough thus to consider the broken-hearted faithful whom He had taught to confide in Him.

{*"The Messiah of Micah however was not Jesus; for He was to deliver Israel from the Assyrians, and His whole description is literally warlike . . . . This undeniable emptiness of Micah's prophecy extends itself also to that in chapter 9 of his contemporary, Isaiah — if, indeed, that splendid passage did not really point at the child Hezekiah. Waving this doubt, it is at any rate clear that the marvellous child on the throne of David was to break the yoke of the oppressive Assyrian with a battle of confused noise, and garments rolled in blood, with burning and fuel of fire. This has nothing at all to do with Jesus." (Phases, pp. 192, 193.) The statement is incorrect. It is said, "Every battle of the warrior is . . . but this shall be," etc. I need not dwell on this; but it shews that an ordinary battle was not in view.}

They understood it; and, though with much obscurity of mind and many prejudices, gracious confidence in God was maintained; and, through all their darkest times, there were those who feared the Lord and spake often one to another, and who waited for redemption in Israel. I do not spiritualize it; I believe it. I do not believe Jesus has fulfilled the prophecies which speak of the revelation of His glory in judgment and government; but I am sure that that Stone on which those who stumbled have been indeed broken, as we know, will grind to powder those on whom it shall justly fall — that "Stone which the builders rejected, and which is become the head of the corner" — when Hosanna shall be sung, not only by babes and sucklings, to confound the adversary, but by a people to whom every promise shall be fulfilled, and by a world dwelling in peace under the blessing of Him for whose law the isles shall wait, and whose sceptre shall be their confidence and their blessing — the King of righteousness and King of peace.

299 I will now show that on this point Mr. N. is as incorrect in detail, as he is narrow and superficial in his apprehension of the whole — more than narrow; for he connects parts of which the least attention or understanding would shew the distinctness. Indeed, his remarks prove, either that he has not attended to what he is talking about, or that he is incapable of seizing its bearing. Not a prophecy connects the Assyrian with the sufferings of Christ. But Mr. N. refers particularly to a passage in Micah, which he declares cannot apply to Jesus: "The Messiah of Micah however was not Jesus; for he was to deliver Israel from the Assyrians, and his whole description is literally warlike." (Phases, p. 192.)

We had better have the passage: it will help to shew the value of "our logic," and of rationalist comments in general. It is as follows: — "Now gather thyself in troops, O daughter of troops: he hath laid siege against us: they shall smite the Judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek. But thou, Bethlehem Ephratah, though thou be little among the thousands of Judah, yet out of thee shall he come forth unto me that is to be Ruler in Israel; whose goings forth have been from of old, from everlasting. Therefore will he give them up, until the time that she which travaileth hath brought forth: then the remnant of his brethren shall return unto the children of Israel. And he shall stand and feed in the strength of the Lord, in the majesty of the name of the Lord his God; and they shall abide: for now shall he be great unto the ends of the earth. And this man shall be the peace, when the Assyrian shall come into our land," etc. Then we have victories attributed to the Jews; and they become the source of blessing to the earth — are as a lion and yet as a dew among many people. (Micah 5.) Now, whatever the explanation of the details, which I do not think indeed exceedingly obscure, it is quite clear that the smiting of the Judge of Israel on the cheek is followed, not by the destruction of the Assyrian, but by being given up for a period designated by "until she which travaileth shall have brought forth." Whatever may be in the womb of God's purposes, till it be accomplished the Jews will be given up. There is, first, one period or order of things; the Judge of Israel not warlike, but smitten, and they given up in consequence. Then we have another, He stands and feeds in the majesty of the Lord, for now shall He be great to the ends of the earth; and when the Assyrian comes into their land, this Man — this same Jesus — will be the peace, and Israel great and glorious. Can anything be plainer than the distinction of these two conditions of the Judge of Israel, and of the two states of Israel — given up at one time; and at another defended, in peace, victorious, and a blessing?

300 And this is adduced to shew "that the Messiah of Micah was not Jesus, because he was to deliver Israel from the Assyrians, and his whole description is literally warlike" — "and Micah conceived of a powerful monarch on the throne of David." But it is a singular sign of power that He should be smitten on the cheek, and Israel given up, none could say till when — till the birth of the fruit of some great purpose of God! Such interpretation entitles us to lay aside the conclusions and the judgment of him who has pretended to speak of the passage, and to put no further confidence in anything he alleges about the scriptures.

The same train of reasoning applies to Isaiah 8 in even a stronger way. "Sanctify the Lord of hosts himself; and let him be your fear, and let him be your dread. And he shall be for a sanctuary; but for a stone of stumbling and for a rock of offence to both the houses of Israel, for a gin and for a snare to the inhabitants of Jerusalem. And many among them shall stumble, and fall, and be broken, and be snared, and be taken. Bind up the testimony, seal the law among my disciples. And I will wait upon the Lord, that hideth his face from the house of Jacob, and I will look for him." And then he goes on to describe the misery of the great and final vexation of Israel,. after He had already arrived, and then (by Messiah) their deliverance from every yoke, and His glorious reign, through this battle, not like that of ordinary warriors, but of fuel and fire. Can anything more clearly distinguish the two dates — one, God's hiding His face from stumbling Israel; and another, the glorious subsequent deliverance by the Lord?

301 But it is well to pursue the spirit of rationalism into some further details.

I admit that Psalm 72* has never yet been fulfilled. The Son of David has never yet sat on the throne of His glory as such. We may leave it; as Mr. N. himself must be a prophet to say that this prediction never will be fulfilled.

{*"Psalm 72, by the splendour of the predictions concerning the grandeur of some future king of Judah, earns the title of Messianic, because it was never fulfilled by any historical king. But it is equally certain that it has had no appreciable fulfilment in Jesus." (Phases, p. 194.)}

Isaiah* 11 "may be verified by Jesus hereafter." Well, I believe the greater part will; so here we have not much to contend about. Still Mr. N. repents of the seeming candour of his acknowledgment, and so says it cannot be, for Judah and Israel had been reconciled long before the time of Augustus. When? A few of the ten tribes had from the beginning thrown themselves into the kingdom of Judah; but when were the ten tribes reconciled? I never heard of it; I thought they were carried away captive by Shalmaneser and others. That faith always owned them as a whole, from Elijah on his Carmel to Paul and James, is true; but that is nothing to the purpose. Besides, the prophet is speaking of what they will do, when as tribes they are restored in blessing and power to their land. Then will there no more be these quarrels. The distinctions of Philistines, Moab, and Ammon are lost to Mr. N.: they are not to this day by the Jew; and such distinctions are much more preserved than people suppose, and will, I doubt not, re-appear, and Israel will dispossess the people inhabiting these countries. These testimonies, as to the future, must have their credit, it is perfectly evident, from the general proof of the authority of the prophecy: no one can, as to the future, have any other proof, unless he sets up to be a prophet himself.

{*"A paradisiacal state is to follow. This general description may be verified by Jesus hereafter . . . . Indeed the latter part of the prophecy is out of place even for so late a time as the reign of Augustus . . . . Take all these particulars together [verses 13-16], and the prophecy is neither fulfilled in the past, nor possible to be fulfilled in the future." (Phases, p.194, 195.) "Philistines, Moab, and Ammon were distinctions entirely lost before the Christian era." (Phases, p. 194.)}

302 ZECHARIAH AND JEREMIAH

I will not here discuss whether Zechariah 9-11 be really the prophecy of him whose name it bears. Many sincere Christians have doubted it, though not doubting its inspiration, partly on account of the word "Jeremiah" in Matthew. Mr. N. says it is agreed to be really from a prophet of unknown name, contemporaneous with Isaiah. But we must never trust these kinds of statements of rationalists. "It is agreed," means merely, "it suits our views," or "our logic." Thus De Wette himself, in his last edition, translated by Theodore Parker — an authority logical enough, I suppose, for Mr. N. — after stating the opinion alluded to, re-examines the language and allusions to previous prophets, and concludes, "These circumstances shew that it could not have been written before the exile . . . therefore it may seem the most advisable to suppose that those parts which seem to belong to an earlier period were written with reference to the future, and that the form of a prediction was adopted in part." I have nothing to do with what it is "advisable to suppose," which is generally the just measure of rationalist proof. But the statement of De Wette gives a just measure of another thing; that is, the value of such phrases as "it is agreed." Nor is this all. "The genuineness has been defended by Carpzov, Beckhaus, Jahn, Rosenmuller, Koester, Hengestenberg; Blayney also attempted it," so says Theodore Parker. It may be said, "Yes; but there are some of them at least twenty or thirty years past, some more." But then we have the awkward fact, that De Wette, in the fifth (and, I suppose, even in the fourth) edition, more modern, and, we must suppose, more mature than the first three, undoes the previous theory started originally by Mede — not from orthodox prejudices, certainly; but, it must be supposed, from his more exact enquiry. Koester, others think, has demonstrated the genuineness of these chapters; that is, their being the work of Zechariah.

One thing is certain, that those who do not receive it as genuine not only do not agree with one another, and demonstrate, each to his own satisfaction, what upsets the opinion of his neighbour (such as Flugge, Berthold, Hitzig, Credner, referred to by T. Parker), but they do not agree with themselves. De Wette, we have seen, concludes he was quite wrong in referring it to an earlier date. So Hitzig once placed the whole in the time of Uzziah, but is now compelled to place it after that time. In a word, it is a mere collection of guesses, without any real foundation to build a sober judgment upon. For my own part, I have not a doubt on the subject. The mention of Jeremiah,* in Matthew, creates a critical difficulty as to the quotation; but the solution which refers Zechariah to some unknown prophet of Isaiah's time — with the convenient formula "it is agreed," when nothing at all is agreed about among themselves — is, of all solutions, the most unfounded. Very few of the boldest agree in this.

{*It is well known, that Lightfoot, and other learned men, as Surenhusius, consider this as a well known formula of Jewish citations, that is, using the first book as the title of the part of scripture, as the Lord does the Psalms — the Law, the Prophets, and the Psalms. It appears that, in the Talmudist's age, Jeremiah had this place; sundry reasons are given for its being there, as on account of kings ending in sorrow, and Jeremiah taking his sorrow up, while the Talmudists say Isaiah was put after the historical prophets Jeremiah and Ezekiel in order to comfort the reader, etc. I am aware Stuart and others say this was only so in the Talmudist's age, not so early as Christ. Gesenius argues that it was much earlier the case, and states that Jeremiah and Ezekiel come before Isaiah in the German and French MSS; after in the Spanish. I do not pretend to decide this question; but the expression, "Jeremiah or one of the prophets," certainly tends very strongly to confirm the idea that it was so in Christ's age.}

303 The proofs that Zechariah wrote after the captivity are, to my own mind, decisive — I mean, wrote these chapters; for none question his prophesying after it. In the first place, they have always been received by the Jews as his prophecy. They form part of the Septuagint translation, which, allowing the Prophets to have been translated even a hundred years after the Pentateuch and Joshua, yet gives us Zechariah as we have it, more than a hundred and fifty years before Christ.* Hody supposes the Prophets translated in the reign of Philometer, that is, it was then publicly and universally received by the Jews, as we have it. But the internal evidence is to my mind demonstrative of its being written after the captivity. Zechariah 10: 6 to the end clearly shews the condition of Judah and Ephraim. The cutting off the chariot from Ephraim, and the horse from Jerusalem, connected with the dominion of Messiah, is the taking away war from the earth when the universal dominion of Messiah is established. The prophecy applies to the time "when the eyes of man, as of all the tribes of Israel, shall be toward the Lord," that is, to a time when the glory and dominion of the Lord, yet future, shall be completely established. The conflict of all Israel would be with Javan or Greece; a statement which would have no kind of sense on Mr. N.'s rationalist theory. What had Greece to do with the times of Shalmaneser?** Indeed, as to his account of the prophecy, the best answer is to ask my reader to read it through; the flippancy of Mr. N.'s assertions will be apparent to every one who does. Obscurity we may doubtless find; but that it has "no remote or imaginable similarity to the historical life of Jesus," is an assertion which no reader of Zechariah 11 would have ventured, unless one who counted on the credulity of his readers, or upon, what is always an unwise thing, their confidence in the assertions of a rationalist. The accomplishment of the prophecy in its main intent is, I have no doubt, future, as is that of all which completes and makes good God's government of this earth; and necessarily so, for the result of that government we all know is not yet come.

{*The postscript to Esther, in the Septuagint translation, has led authors to ascribe this date to it. Hody refers to other circumstances in his account.}

{**"The prophecy which we know as Zechariah 9-11 is agreed to be really from a prophet of unknown name, contemporaneous with Isaiah. It was written while Ephraim was still a people, i.e., before the capture of Samaria by Shalmaneser, and Zechariah 11: 1-3, appears to howl over the recent devastations of Tiglath-pileser. The prophecy is throughout full of the politics of that day." (Phases, p. 195.)}

304 I turn to Isaiah 50, 53.* Mr. N.'s "pseudo-Isaiah," a title than which there cannot be a greater absurdity imaginable.

{*"Chapters 50 and 53 of the pseudo-Isaiah remained; which contained many phrases so aptly descriptive of the sufferings of Christ, and so closely knit up with our earliest devotional associations that they were the very last links of my chain that snapt. Still, I could not conceal from myself, that no exactness in this prophecy, however singular, could avail to make out that Jesus was the Messiah of Hezekiah's prophets.

There must be some explanation; and if I did not see it, that must probably arise from prejudice and habit." (Phases, p. 196.)}

These famous rationalists, because the prophet places himself as if in Babylon,* or at least speaks of it as a present thing, have "agreed" that the author must have lived there (as if it were not the style of the prophets in unnumbered other instances), and thus one of the most complete, perfect, and connected prophecies in existence (developing the present relationship of Israel with God, God's intentions as to their restoration; the witness against idolatry to which they were called; rejection of Messiah; return in the latter days to idolatry; the Lord's judgment; and their final glory unfolded in incomparable language, which does not for a moment, in point of style, admit the supposition of the Babylonish captivity as a date) has been foisted by some unknown author on the Jews, as that of Isaiah! The prophecy is the noblest incomparably of all scripture. It is very little matter, to us who believe it to come from God, whether Isaiah or any other prophet be its author, save collaterally, as shaking the general credibility of all testimony; but to suppose that nobody ever heard of the real writer, though his prophecy entitled him to the very first place, and hence that it was ascribed to a more obscure one, is perfectly incredible. Supposing I were to say Isaiah was the author of chapters 40-66, and that men have ascribed the former part to him, that it might get the credit of the great name of the author of the latter part, the only answer would be, "You may say anything."

{*"This prophet writes from Babylon." (Phases, p. 196.)}

305 The reader may judge of the candour of rationalist arguments from the following: "The one continuous prophecy of Isaiah 40-66 has given a colour to the style, which is unique. Some expressions, such as 'burden of the Lord' are not found in it."* This could not be otherwise if the subject be considered. It is a long moral reasoning with Israel on idolatry (they being witnesses of Jehovah), in contrast with Babylon — Messiah's rejection — their state in the end of time — the admission of the Gentiles — and their future glory. The burdens on particular places had no application here whatever. They would have been wholly out of place. This is a proof it is not Isaiah's! But there are peculiarities of Isaiah's language which are found to be such as are connected with essential and permanent subjects. How are these to be got rid of? "But these peculiarities, which it has in common with the genuine portion, and others adduced by Jahn and Muller, prove nothing." Will the reader guess why? "Their agreement in this respect cannot have been accidental, and must be explained as an imitation of the genuine, or in some other way."** Our logic! Here are the reasons given by the chief of the learned rationalist school: "There is a difference in style." Of that in a moment. "There is a difference in the political relationship of the people." This is because restoration is predicted as if Jerusalem were already desolate. Were it even so, it would not be less prophecy; but the fact is, it proves nothing. The prophet, as is so constantly the case, transports himself into the times he speaks of. He does so as to John Baptist; he does so as to the times of Christ (Isa. 53) — as to the times of the Jews owning Christ, in the same chapter. They say, "He was wounded," etc. So Isaiah 65 the admission of the Gentiles, "I am sought," etc. So in what is confessed to be Isaiah, "To us a son is born, to us a king is given." This, therefore, proves just nothing. "The internal condition of the nation is different." The proof of this is Isaiah 56: 10-12: "It has only overseers or watchmen to govern it." But in Babylon it had not even these, nor is there a word about government. Besides, we have already seen the prophet himself in the scene he describes, only that this proof contradicts the theory, because in Babylon they had nobody to govern them but Nebuchadnezzar and his successors. Moreover, the reader may see that the prophet refers to quite a new dispensation, in which those excluded by the law, and the Gentiles, would be admitted into God's house. (Isa. 56: 3-7.) His house is to be called a house of prayer for all people.

{*This, according to Gesenius, is no proof of genuine writings of Isaiah (indeed the word "burden" is not in the first treatise which in the main is owned to be Isaiah's): he says that many of the collection with "burden" are not genuine, and notably the first, which has the name of Isaiah attached to it, cannot possibly be his, but belongs to the Babylonish captivity. Gesenius says that the word "burden" is added by the collector of these prophecies, not Isaiah's. Such is the certainty of these critics: one tells us chapter 40-66, cannot be Isaiah's, because the word "burden" is not there; another, that the word "burden" is not Isaiah's at all.}

{*Parker's De Wette, second edition, chap. 2, p. 368, note.}

306 It is said, that the idolatry mentioned "chapter 57: 3, seqq." may very properly be ascribed to the Babylonian Jews. In Isaiah 57: 3 there is no idolatry mentioned at all; but this "seqq.," thus slightly passed over, has something rather awkward in it. In verse 5 it is said, "Enflaming yourselves under every green tree." It is hard to suppose that the hanging gardens made for Nebuchadnezzar's queen were the resort of the "Babylonian Jews." But, further, we have "slaying the children in the valleys under the clifts of the rocks." I am afraid this was beyond even the royal imitation of Median mountains, and that this "seqq.," if we look beyond the four letters, is a very serious obstacle to this Babylonian "internal condition of the nation." But the writer slips off with an "especially" to Isaiah 65: 3-11. But here other difficulties arise. Verses 1, 2 give the call of the Gentiles, which hardly suited Babylonish times. Not only so, but verses 6, 7 declare that the Lord is going to judge them and recompense them for their iniquity — a singular threat, if they were already Babylonish Jews. We are told that in Isaiah 66: 1-3, "it is not supposed that there is an actual temple existing, where service is performed." "Where is the house that ye build me?" is the word. Not in Babylon, I suppose. But we have not our "seqq." here; which, however, I must beg leave to introduce, as having something to say to the point in hand. "A voice of noise from the city, a voice from the temple" — I suppose that implies "an actual temple existing." And yet we have the Lord coming to judgment and to plead with all flesh, yet rejecting the mass of the Jews, and only sparing a remnant; destroying these idolaters, Jew or Gentile, yet at a time when all flesh come up to worship Jehovah, and bring Israel as a clean vessel unto the house of the Lord; and the carcases of the transgressors are found in the neighbourhood, as a spectacle to them who come up.

307 Now what has all this to do with writing in captivity in Babylon, or even a return at that time from thence? Why do I cite these things? To shew that rationalist statements must never be credited without examining for oneself; to shew that they are most excessively "superficial," and their authors totally ignorant of the scope of scripture, and indeed of the contents of the books on which they pretend to comment.

"There are references to earlier prophecies." God challenges the idolatrous prophets to utter a prophecy which should shew their divine knowledge. He declares that He knows the end from the beginning — that His former words had taken effect. Well, I believe that; but how it proves that it was written when the Jews were in Babylon, or why Isaiah could not have said it, I am, I avow, unable to discover. The reader has only to examine the passages, to see that there is a general statement of the certainty of God's word, and the folly of idolaters. No particular prophecy is referred to, though there were such, and had been many in Israel's history. Not a word of Samuel's fell to the ground; and a multitude of others had appeared, noticed in the historical books, to say nothing of Joel, Amos, &c.; so that this reference to God's prophetic word does not prove much.

Lastly, "there are predictions of a splendid future uttered with as much distinctness as if it were present, and not in harmony with the state of things in Isaiah's time and the actual result." Well, "there are predictions of a splendid future." But how does that shew the Jews were in Babylon? "They are uttered with great distinctness." But why could not Isaiah, the son of Amoz, do that in Jotham's, Ahaz's, or Hezekiah's reign? But they are "not in harmony with the state of things in Isaiah's time."* What are not? The "predictions of a splendid future, uttered with as much distinctness as if it were present?" But I suppose they were "not in harmony with the state of things in Isaiah's time," or it would not have been "a splendid future" at all.

{*I dare say many of my readers will be utterly at a loss to understand the meaning of this argument. I must remind them that rationalist writers always assume what they have to prove; namely, that there cannot be prophecy. Then, in order to prove that this part of Isaiah was not written by him, they allege that the description of blessing does not suit the time of Hezekiah, when such could scarcely be expected. It is clear, if it is a prophecy of Israel's portion at the end of time, after Christ's rejection it is all one whether it is written in Hezekiah's time, or at some other moment. Having assumed that it is not, the rationalist seeks about to find some time when an impostor was likely to have spoken in this way, and to try to deceive the people with similar hopes — a notable employment for time and learning. and a convenient kind of logic, which assumes, without a blush, what the whole argument depends upon.}

308 You have now, reader, all the reasons alleged by the most learned rationalists — those Mr. N. particularly refers his readers to — for stating, without leaving room for a question, that the last twenty-seven chapters of what we believe to be the word of God by the mouth of the prophet are the production of a pseudo-Isaiah. As to the style, which does resemble in many peculiarities, and must be disposed of by supposing imitation, or in some other way, the following is the judgment of one who has examined it with the help of all the rationalist writers and the answers to them: "The argument has been completely taken out of the hands of those who regard the latter part of his [Isaiah's] prophecies as unauthentic."*

{*Davidson on Biblical Criticism.}

I turn to what Mr. N. says of the contents. We have more rationalist logic here, but which I shall notice without dwelling upon. "Still," says Mr. N., "I could not conceal from myself that no exactness in this prophecy, however singular, could avail to make out that Jesus was the Messiah of Hezekiah's prophets. There must be some explanation." (Phases, p. 196.) That was settled, at any rate: the only business was to find it. Let me suggest one here to Mr. N., which he need not have been very long looking for. He had told us in the page before, that it is a pseudo-Isaiah; so that he was not one of Hezekiah's prophets at all. How hard to remember one's own system, if it is only made up!

Mr. N. says that the prophet "introduces to us an eminent and 'chosen servant of God,' whom he invests with all the evangelical virtues, and declares that he is to be a light to the Gentiles. In Isaiah 44 (ver. 1: also ver. 21), he is named as 'Jacob my servant' . . . Isaiah 49: 1-12 is eminently Messianic to the Christian ear, except that in verse 3 the speaker distinctly declares himself to be (not Messiah, but) Israel . . . . It is essential to understand the same 'elect servant' all along." (Ib.) The word "servant" does give the running key to all this part of Isaiah. In Isaiah 42 the servant is described as one in whom God's soul delighted, on whom He would put His Spirit, and He should shew forth judgment to the Gentiles. It is the well-known passage universally applied to Christ, in which Israel is not mentioned; but some one on whom the Spirit should be to shew judgment to the Gentiles. In general, in this part of the prophecy, Israel is called God's "servant," though in this description Christ is introduced. From Isaiah 42: 19, Israel, "the people robbed and spoiled," is repeatedly referred to as Jehovah's servant in contrast with the worshippers of idols; thus in this verse (19), then all through Isaiah 43 (see ver. 10, Isa. 44: 1), "Israel my servant." All here is controversy with idols. Cyrus is introduced by name. (Isa. 45: 1.) Jacob is God's servant. (Ver. 4.) Babylon is judged. (Isa. 46, Isa. 47.) Rebellious as Israel is, the Lord hath redeemed His servant Jacob. (Isa. 48.) This closes that part of the prophecy, with the word repeated at the end of Isaiah 57, "There is no peace, saith the Lord, unto the wicked." Jew or Gentile (for in this part of the prophecy the Spirit opens out into larger spiritual views, without departing from God's actual government in Israel), he must come under God's moral judgment.

309 Isaiah 49 introduces an entirely new ground of controversy with Israel — their refusing to listen to and receive the Christ. Hence chapter 49 drops the question of idolatry. It introduces Israel, in a formal way, as God's servant on the scene. "Then," if Israel is he in whom Jehovah is to be glorified, "I," says some one, "have laboured in vain." If Israel is the one, my labour is fruitless. That this "I" is not Israel, as Mr. N. would make it,* is beyond all controversy. It is easy to say, after speaking of the servant of Isaiah 42. "In Isaiah 44 he is named as 'Jacob my servant, and Israel whom I have chosen.'" (Phases, p. 196.) He is not named at all. It is easy to say, "The speaker distinctly declares himself to be (not Messiah, but) Israel, in verse 3." Yes, the speaker in verse 3 is Israel undoubtedly, and says so; but that is what makes the speaker in verse 4 say, that he has laboured in vain; and if my reader desires a proof that it is so, he has only to read verse 5 — "And now, saith the Lord that formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob again to him, Though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of the Lord, and my God shall be my strength . . . . Thus saith the Lord, the Redeemer of Israel, and his Holy One, to him whom man despiseth, to him whom the nation abhorreth," etc. Is this speaker Israel? Is it "in vain to call rationalists superficial?" I find them astonishingly so; that is all I can say.

{*"The appellations recur in chapter 45: 4, and in a far more striking passage, chapter 49: 1-12, which is eminently Messianic to the Christian ear, except that in verse 3, the speaker distinctly declares himself to be (not Messianic, but) Israel. (Phases, p. 196.)}

310 We have, then, clearly some one substituted in the place of Israel as the servant of God in testimony, and the rejection of Him (for He was Jehovah, though He had got the tongue of the learned to speak a word in season to him that was weary, and hid not His face from shame and spitting), assigned as the reason for Jehovah's divorcing Israel. This is the subject of Isaiah 1. The full result in final blessing for Zion and Israel is pursued to Isaiah 52: 12 (the remnant who listen to the servant, at the end of the age, being marked out in the midst of the sorrow in Isaiah 1: 10). In Isaiah 52: 13 the servant is introduced again; and it is shewn that He whose visage had been marred more than any man's shall in that day be acknowledged by Israel with profound and touching repentance, which referred itself to Him and to His rejection. He had, indeed, in His rejection, borne their iniquities. Then some truths in general terms are introduced, to allow of the bringing in of the Gentiles; and Israel, as a whole, is judged for its moral state at the end — as, indeed, in the prophet's day. This is the general character of the prophet's reasoning to the end of chapter 57. In a word, Gentiles can come in; all will be judged by their works.

Isaiah 57 addresses itself specially to Israel, and goes on, after denouncing their sin, to their final glory, to the end of Isaiah 60. In Isaiah 61 Christ appears as coming in His grace, as when on earth; but His character is pursued until He executes judgment, Isaiah 63: 6. From Isaiah 63: 7 to the end of Isaiah 64 is a touching pleading of the prophet with God for the people of His holiness. In Isaiah 65 we have the answer of the Lord, unfolding the letting in of the Gentiles, His patience with the Jews, their return to idolatry and extreme wickedness in the latter days, the sparing of the remnant, the rejection of the temple they would build, and their sacrifices, but the taking possession of it by the Lord in judgment, the full blessing of Jerusalem, the judgment of all flesh, and the bringing in of the whole dispersion of Israel to worship, all flesh coming up, but recognizing the judgment. In this we find the servants definitely distinguished — the remnant who hear and obey, and are faithful amid unfaithfulness (Isa. 65: 8, 9, 13, 15); who are then manifested as the elect people in joy, prolonging their days under the government of Him who will then no more allow evil to abide on the earth. If any one be surprised that the Jews should turn to idolatry again, I reply, The Lord declared that the unclean spirit, which went out and had left the house empty, swept, and garnished, would return with seven others worse, and the last end be worse than the first. Daniel 11 teaches, I doubt not, the same truth.

311 Thus we have, first, Christ set forth as the true servant of Jehovah; then, in the order of God's dealings, Israel is found to be so. Christ takes their place, they refusing to hearken; He is rejected; and then, redemption being accomplished, and Gentiles let in, the remnant of Israel in the latter day enter into the position of servants.

Mr. N. borrows the views by which infidel Jews seek to meet Christians; but the examination of the chapters leaves no ground for the argument to stand upon. "He was wounded for our transgressions," meaning "we were wounded for our own," may suit a Jew or a rationalist, but I know not whom else. Still Mr. N. is forced to admit, "It still remained strange that in Isaiah 53 and Psalm 22, 69 there should be coincidences so close with the sufferings of Jesus;" for, after all, whenever it was, they were written centuries before that great event. No doubt. "But I reflected, that I had no proof that the narrative had not been strained by credulity, to bring it into artificial agreement with these imagined predictions of his death." (Phases, p. 197.) Had he any proof that it had? Not a trace of one. We have Mr. N.'s own answer to this question in the preceding page: "There must be some explanation."*

{*The italics are Mr. N.'s own.}

Quod volumus facile credimus. "And herewith," says Mr. N., "my last argument in favour of views for which I once would have laid down my life, seemed to be spent." Accordingly, he turns to arguments against these views. He continues: "Nor only so; but I now reflected that the falsity of prophecy in Daniel 7 (where the coming of a Son of man to sit in universal judgment follows immediately upon the break up of the Syrian monarchy), to say nothing of the general proof of the spuriousness of the whole book of Daniel, ought long ago to have been seen by me as of more cardinal importance. For if we believe anything at all about the discourses of Christ, we cannot doubt that He selected 'Son of man' as His favourite title, which is a direct annunciation to us that He based all His pretensions on Daniel 7 from which that title is adopted. On the whole, then, it was no longer defect of proof which presented itself; but positive disproof of the primitive and fundamental claim." (Ib. pp. 197, 198.) This is a startling leap indeed; but I confess I am at a loss here to know the ἀφορμὴν, the starting point of this amazing result.

312 In vain I look for some proof here. "Our logic" does not condescend to give a hint here of any proof of what is asserted as to Daniel 7, that the fourth beast is the Syrian monarchy. I turned to De Wette: "Chapter 7," he tells me, "in Chaldee contains Daniel's vision of the four beasts, which signify so many kingdoms. They are the same as in Daniel 2; but their meaning is contested." Then the note tells us "the first is Babylonian. Secondly, doubtless the bear means the Medo-Persian kingdom, though some think only the Median; in which case the three ribs are only emblems of frailty(?). Then some think the third Alexander and his successors; some, only Alexander. By the fourth beast some understand the Roman empire [a good many, no doubt]; some Alexander's successors; some, Alexander and his successors." In conclusion, we are told, since the last explanation is necessary in Daniel 7: 7, therefore those which harmonize with it are the true ones (that is, the third beast is Persia). "Necessary" it is, no doubt, to the system — there must be "some explanation." Because, as there cannot be prophecy (for a Jewish prophet cannot, even like an oracle, hazard a mistake), therefore the last event spoken of must be in the time Daniel lived (that is, as he certainly speaks of Antiochus Epiphanes, in the days of that king). But then, if we examine the passage (which, indeed, for a theory which has settled all by begging the question, is not "necessary"), there seems to be no sort of applicability of the fourth beast to the Syrian monarchy. Four wings on a Grecian beast every one would understand. The division of the Grecian empire into four is given by Daniel himself in Daniel 8. What had they to do with Persia? Then, how does chapter 7: 7 go on? It describes a fourth beast, dreadful and terrible, and strong exceedingly; and it had great iron teeth; it devoured and brake in pieces, and stamped the residue with the feet of it, and it was diverse from all the beasts that were before it; and it had ten horns. What has this really. to do with the Grecian empire, Alexander and his successors? What are the ten horns? "Four" is intelligible; but who are the ten? But with Mr. N. it is the break up of the Syrian monarchy; but there is no break up here at all-quite the contrary. The other beasts broke up; their dominion was taken away, but their lives prolonged; but this was slain, destroyed, and given to the burning flame. And this, mark, is the judgment. There is no "break up," and then the judgment. The Son of man, then, takes not the judgment, but the kingdom. The ten kings were ten kings that shall arise. So that they were future in Daniel's time, which in the rationalists' theory they were not. And who were the ten up to Antiochus Epiphanes? There had not been even ten kings of Syria. In a word, the moment the passage is looked at, there is not the smallest possible ground for Mr. N.'s assertion.

313 The examination of the explanation in the latter half of the chapter makes it still more absurd; for the fourth beast entirely occupies the scene. To make Alexander's successors a fourth kingdom, Alexander being the third, and to leave out Egypt, Thrace, and Macedon, is itself an absurd idea for one who is supposed to have the history before him. Again, in what were Alexander's successors more destructive, more powerful, more all-subduing than Alexander? Did the Syrian monarchs stamp with their feet more than the mighty conqueror of the East? Who is the little horn who subdued three others? If it be Antiochus Epiphanes, how did he do that? If not, what are the three and a half times? But the fact is, there is no breaking up of a monarchy.

CHRIST'S ASCENSION

I have already answered the rest of Mr. N.'s chapter. His supposition, as to Newton's system of physical truth not being alleged as a proof of his going up to heaven one night, is too absurd to refute; because the ascension of Christ is the proof and basis of all that morally affected man in His religion. It was the accomplishment and proof of the glory of His person as Mediator, on which the whole religion was founded. If that is not true, none is; it is all an imposture. This is not the case in what Mr. N. supposes. There is no analogy whatever. "Our logic" is no great thing here either. Besides, a heavenly priest, a man always in heaven, gives its character to the whole moral system. The person of the Lord Jesus Christ claims the adoring recognition of the soul; it is entitled to it as divine — as human by His work of love. This is neither history nor a proposition. Owning Him for what He is, is the first of all affections, the highest of all moral claims. Thus God Himself is known; to this He claims subjection. One thing is clear from Mr. N.'s statements as to himself — that he never knew the gospel. Indeed, he says, "Undoubtedly, I cannot prove that I ever felt as they now feel." (Phases, p. 201.)

314 FAITH AND CONSCIENCE

He adds, "My first business must be to save my soul from future punishment."* That this may awaken the soul is quite true; but our first business is to believe that Jesus is the Son of God. Once known, we bless God for present enjoyment, and for present sorrow; for we know He loves and has saved us, and we rejoice in hope of His glory. But Mr. N. knew nothing of this love to Jesus. Hence the doctrine of the coming of the Lord only "awoke now and then, to reproach and harass me for my unfaithfulness to it." (Phases, p. 204.) What a wretched state! instead of looking for that Bright and Morning Star, the loved object of one's soul, and saying "Even so; come, Lord Jesus," while sure, if He tarries, it is His love, His long-suffering, not willing any should perish; so that we heartily acquiesce in the delay which His love counts as long as does ours. It is the word of His patience we keep.

{*"Secondly, Its theory was one of selfishness. That is, it inculcated that my first business must be to save my soul from future punishment, and to attain future happiness." (Phases, p. 203.)}

Mr. N. trusts much his moral powers; but he mistakes astonishingly when he talks of "conscience being benumbed by disuse," because scripture is used.* Does a holy rule benumb conscience? It awakens it from its torpor, and, "sharper than any two-edged sword," it brings it into the presence of God. That is not the way to "benumb the conscience, by disuse" — it is its only quickener.

{*"The Protestantism which forbids us to trust our moral faculties, and pities those as 'without chart and compass' who acknowledge no infallible written code, can mean nothing else, than that 'the less occasion we have to trust our moral powers, the better; that is, it represents it as of all things most desirable, to be able to benumb conscience by disuse, under the guidance of a mind from without." (Phases, p. 207.) Did the doctrine which "awoke only now and then, to reproach and harass me for my unfaithfulness," benumb his conscience?}

The Irrationalism of Infidelity: Section l.

Being a reply to "Phases of Faith"*

J. N. Darby.

{*London: 1853.}

<06001-129E> File Section l.

315 FACTS AS TO MR. NEWMAN'S CONNECTION WITH OTHER CHRISTIANS (WHILE STRIVING AFTER A PURER CHRISTIANITY); OR, THE NARROWNESS OF DOGMATISM

I turn now briefly to notice some circumstances to which Mr. N. refers in his narrative, which have importance only so far as they concern the alleged narrowness of which he accuses dogmatism. That those who were decided in not owning Mr. N. as having the faith of our Lord Jesus were not very wrong, this book pretty clearly proves. But I must correct some things as to his reception, and the grounds of his rejection. Mr. N.'s account of what led to the "Irish Clergyman's" visiting Oxford, is inexact; but there is nothing that is of the smallest importance to any one. What led him to call in question Mr. N.'s claim to be amongst those who held the full truth as to the divine glory of the Lord Jesus Christ, was this: — A companion of the party who set out for the East (J. H.) returned while they were still in the East, his health suffering from the climate. The person (Mr. J. G. B.) to whom, as I suppose, Mr. N. refers as a "most intimate spiritual friend," who wrote him word that "painful reports had been everywhere spread abroad against his soundness in the faith," and pointed out the channel, asked J. H. if he thought of returning. At least Mr. J. G. B. did write to Mr. N., stating the doubt as to his soundness in the faith; and he did so, from J. H.'s answer, which was, that it did not suit his health, but that, indeed, at any rate he could not, for that Mr. N. denied the true divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ. Mr. J. G. B. rebuked him for allowing himself to suppose such a thing, refusing to believe it. J. H. declared that, before they arrived at Bordeaux, on their way out,* Mr. N. was seeking to persuade them of it. The consequence was, Mr. J. G. B. wrote to Mr. N., when in quarantine. The "Irish Clergyman" also wrote, and had a correspondence with Mr. N. Mr. N. admitted fully to him that Jesus was Jehovah. He pressed on him that, if so, the Jehovah of the Old Testament was the only true God. He seemed to be irritated with the conclusion; and, though the "Irish Clergyman" pressed the passage, "He is the true God, and eternal life," declared that he would not go from the plain passage: "The Father, the only true God, and Jesus Christ whom he had sent." He has not now (it is nineteen years ago) Mr. N.'s letter to him containing this avowal of Jesus being Jehovah; but he has in others abundant proof of it, which will be produced in a moment. He was, however, quite clear that he could not own him as holding the truth of God. Mr. N. states, that the "Irish Clergyman" declared that, in the passage alluded to, the Father meant the Trinity (one of the fathers says so as to a passage). The "Irish Clergyman," through mercy, has doubtless made progress in the truth, and if not kept through mercy, would be always liable to err, and to say foolish things; but he must certainly doubt that he said the Father meant the Trinity, until he sees some proof of it.

{*They had taken this route by steam from Dublin.}

316 Mr. N. makes a great outcry against the Christians amongst whom he sought to enter, for their bigotry and narrowness. Of course, as Mr. N. now thinks God a very little matter, provided people are amiable, his denying Christ, or having a false one, and worshipping what was not the object of worship, was no matter, provided people were good friends. It is a current doctrine now, much in vogue. But there are still Christians, who believe that God, in His supreme love, became a man and so died for them in love — that the first of duties, the truest affection, without which all others are vile, is to appreciate this, and Him who did it, as we ought — that the first of all obligations is to the Saviour — and that to slight this, and to attempt to sustain love in despite of this, is the chiefest wickedness and the worst of all dispositions. We owe something to Christ; and if He be dishonoured and slighted, I may seek to win, but I cannot be the loving companion of, one who has deliberately denied my Lord. To me, to live is Christ. To own Him, and dishonour Him, is worse than heathenism: it is to own and acquiesce in His dishonour, when I know better. The man who believes Christ to be God, and is the professed christian companion of him who denies it, is worse than the latter. We may all, alas! err; but he who knows the truth, and accepts what he knows degrades Christ, is deliberately preferring ease and companionship to Him, though he may dignify it with the name of love. Every effort to recover is right; but a step in acquiescence is a step in disloyalty to One whom no one would have dared to dishonour if He had not come down in love.

To return: efforts were made and every pains taken, and that, until Mr. N. called any further reference to the subject persecution. And the fact is, Mr. N. declared that he fully believed Christ to be Jehovah, and was admitted on that ground. He professes amazement at finding others had such a thought. He declared then he held it fully; and, instead of not being received — shut out in the cold way he speaks of — he was received, and expressed his joy in the happy fellowship he found.

317 My proofs will be very simple. I commit no indiscretion in giving them. As Mr. N. has thought right to give an account of these circumstances, I am surely warranted in giving an exact one, and affording adequate evidence of it.

The points are very simple. Mr. N. professes himself astonished that the saints he had to say to believed that Jesus was Jehovah. I shall shew that he professed that doctrine himself. He complains of bigotry which rejected him. I shall shew that he was received, and that he professed himself very happy among them.

One or two circumstances in addition may be added. The Christians, among whom he sought to be received, did ask him whether he believed Christ to be Jehovah, on account of what they heard, and of his urging the derivation, subordination, and inferiority of Christ in His Godhead, and insisting that the Father was the only true God, though Christ was true God, and declining to say if He was derived in time or not. He replied, as I have said, to the "Irish Clergyman," who wrote to him on account of the first general report of his unsoundness, that he did believe Him Jehovah, but that his arguments from the Old Testament would never make him relinquish what he saw to be taught in the New — that the one God was the Father only. The "Irish Clergyman" never was satisfied, nor was Mr. J. G. B. But to one in London, who conferred with him, he declared he believed Him to be Jehovah. I have the letter of this person before me: he says, "No doubt is entertained by him [Mr. N.] as to the essential nature of Jesus: he confesses Him Jehovah, Lord of Sabaoth, God of God, and adores Him as Immanuel that bore the punishment of sin due to us. He foolishly as I think braves the name of Arianism." This Christian received him, judging it was only believing, as the ancient fathers, "the Father to be the fons deitatis." With these expressions, the "Irish Clergyman," to whom it was addressed, did not meddle; his difficulty was in the heart of the matter, not in terms. Did his soul own Jesus to be, in the true full sense, God manifest in the flesh — not, as it is commonly slipped out of now also, the manifestation of God in the flesh, but God manifest? The "Irish Clergyman" was satisfied he did not, but that he believed that, though Christ partook of the divine nature, by generation, not by adoption, He was an inferior God. And so he did, though he avoided owning it. Hence the question put by the former, as to Jehovah, and his pressing when he owned it, that Jehovah was God and none else; and Mr. N.'s accusation of Tritheism, or Sabellianism, repeated in the work now replied to, in the very words of letters then written, and still in existence. But the Christian in London, with whom he was staying, was satisfied. He adds: "My laxity has not been condemned by the saints at P — to whom F. W. N. — is gone, and by whom received in love."

318 From P — one wrote to the "Irish Clergyman," "I do not see that we can fairly charge with Arianism one who is willing to confess that Jesus is Jehovah of hosts, and that He is to be honoured even as they honour the Father, though I cannot help feeling afraid lest the doctrine of His Sonship, as the Word, should not be sufficiently checked by such texts as Philippians, and, 'before Abraham was, I am.'" He was thus received, and thus himself speaks in a letter addressed to the "Irish Clergyman," of those whose bigotry he now exclaims against: — "In truth, no one knows what we have lost in our various church systems, till he tastes the sweetness of the love of God, and savour of Christ, shed forth in a company of believers, professedly united as such. I greatly bless and thank God for bringing me hither, though for a little time, to receive and impart the consolations of Christ; and never have I been more drawn out into continual supplications than that the Lord will keep them meek, humble, and loving, as now. I am so struck with the contrast between the congregation here, and that at B — ," &c.

Mr. N. was received then; and, as it appears, abundantly happy with those amongst whom he came.

In Ireland, I apprehend, there were still difficulties; and he did not go there, and went, as he states, to another place in England, to be in fellowship there. There he was freely received, and stayed some time, the ministers being quite satisfied. Mr. N. wishes peace to this congregation; and he tells us how he came in among them, but not why or how he left them. All this part of the story is passed under silence. Did they suddenly become bigots, or under the power of dogma? How did he lose the comforts of fellowship with those on whom he confers his present blessing? Did he give it them in parting too? He glides from his reception here into his renouncing Calvinism; and the "phase of faith," or whatever it was, which made him part company with their good-will and simple kindness, is not told.

319 Yet surely at such a point, when he was really giving up Christian society — and we can now say, Christianity — some information of how he came to do so would have been important.

I think these Christians, estimable as they were, were quite wrong. I do not understand Christian communion where the true Christ is denied, neither in this case nor in any other. Some of my readers may learn, from this affair of Mr. N.'s that such is not a new principle with saints; at least, not with some.

But Mr. N. after all had said to some of those who received him, that he saw nothing in scripture to forbid him to suppose a beginning to Christ's existence; and correspondence was renewed with those who at P —  had received him; and in a very long exposé of his creed he states, "The ancient test was, to confess Christ to be (ἐχ τῆς οὐσίας), made of the essence of the Father, and not made out of nothing (ἐξ οὐχ ὂντων); in short, begotten, not created. The modern test is, to confess that Christ is Jehovah. I do not think that Athanasius ever dreamed of the distinction between Jehovah and Adonai being of importance to the doctrine of Christ's divinity, or cared any more to distinguish the two words, than did the writers of the New Testament. When H —  urged me to this confession, I enquired whether Jehovah meant simply very God; and supposed it immaterial whether I confessed Christ to be Jehovah or to be true God, and was willing to adopt the former to quiet any fancies that I took God in any lower sense than the essence of Godhead; and I truly believed and believe the Lord Jesus to be ἐχ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ Πατρός. But now I see I had better have kept to this ancient confession." And further on: "And now let me ask, Whom am I to believe to have died for me? Did MERELY the man Jesus die? as the Sabellians generally say (which convicts their system of practical Socinianism); or did the Word and Son of God die? Unhesitatingly I believe the latter. But can any one say that Jehovah died on the cross, and yet that Jehovah is but one individual? One Jehovah lives while one Jehovah is dead, yet there is but one Jehovah," etc.

I have no wish to drag the reader's mind into these already infidel questions. They shew what the real value of the confession of Jesus being Jehovah amounted to.* I cite them only for that purpose.

{*The reader may see the immediate consequence in Mr. N.'s mind, in page 93 of his book. "If Christ was one person, all Christ died. Did God then die, and man remain alive? For God to become non-existent is an unimaginable absurdity . . . . At length I unawares dropped from semi-Arianism into pure Arianism by so distinguishing the Son from the Father, as to admit the idea that the Son of God had actually been non-existent in the interval between death and resurrection." Mark that Mr. N. had already taken this ground in his correspondence with those who had received him at P___, as may be seen in the extracts in the text; and what comes of his admission (I suppose as an intellectual dogma) that He was Jehovah?

Mark, too, that this notion affects the existence of the soul — our soul, as well as the divinity of Christ. Certainly the difficulties of the "Irish Clergyman" and those of others, were not without foundation. He was telling them he believed Christ was Jehovah, yet at the very time held that about Him which, he now admits, involved His absolute non-existence at death, yet justified it by patristic formulas of  ἐχ τῆς οὐσίας τοῦ πατρός. If some expressions lead to hope there was life, all this leads one sadly to fear that all was an intellectual dogma. Still I say, The Lord forbid; for His grace is our resource, as above all.}

320 But at that time Mr. N. was fully received into the congregation to whom he wishes peace in his book, with the approbation of their ministers. Hence, if others who earnestly denounced (and the "Irish Clergyman" did) this acquiescence in his doctrine were bigots, he had, as he states in this book, "gained time and repose of mind." The result of his repose, and twelve long years of leisure added thereto (for this took place at the end of 1833, and he was among his new friends in the beginning of 1834), we have in this book — i.e., a total denial of all claim of Christ to be the Messiah.

The perusal of all these letters has awakened the hope that he cannot have been entirely deceiving himself as to the joy in Christ he then thought he possessed, nor his declaration that He was his all, his salvation, and his reward, as taught of the Spirit. God grant it may be so! and only a solemn example of the rapid downward course of one who, "leaning to his own understanding, is a fool." That it was intellectual dealing with scripture, no one, as I judge, reading the letters, can doubt a moment. He still speaks of the doctrine (of Christ's being the true God) being a mere intellectual dogma. Now this, on the face of it, is absurd. To say, that the question whether the One I worship is entitled to worship as the true God is a mere intellectual dogma, is a contempt of all sense which needs no comment to put it in its true light. A person who thinks, as Mr. N., that he might worship Gabriel if he were as morally perfect as God, has evidently lost all spiritual sense of what God is at all.

For my own part, I hold what I held then. I believe that Christ, not opinion, is the centre of union; but I never meant, nor do I mean, that a true Christ and a false one were equally good as a centre, provided people are amiable one with another; for this means that union is man's amiability, and the denial of Christ. What do I want of union if it be not union in Christ, according to the power of life, through the Holy Ghost?

321 The business of those united is Christ's glory. If Christians ever unite on a condition of that not being essential, their union is not Christian union at all. I have no reason for union but Christ, the living Saviour. I do not want any union but that which makes Him the centre and the all, and the hope of it. We know that we have passed from death unto life, because we love the brethren; but to make that a plea for indifference to Christ's personal glory, in order to be one with him who, calling himself a brother, denies and undermines it, is, in my mind, wickedness.

The Irrationalism of Infidelity: Section m.

Being a reply to "Phases of Faith"*

J. N. Darby.

{*London: 1853.}

<06001-129E> File Section m.

321 CLOSING REMARKS

I have nearly closed my task; for task it has been.

I somewhat fear I have tired my reader, and certainly I have tired myself. For the wide waste of infidelity, without an object and without an affection, without a link with God, is a wearying thing; the dreary waste "seems lengthening as I go." I look upon myself as a mere "hewer of wood and drawer of water," nay, as a mere "watchman" round the house of God. How often I have felt this in respect of learned writers! That they were useful, no doubt; but just as supplying materials to negative the unfounded but constantly renewed allegations of infidels (to whom it is so easy to allege a thing without feeling bound to prove it — to catch at anything as an objection, where there is sufficiently obscurity to hinder any one giving a clear answer*), while the faithful feed on the green pastures of God within. I little thought it would come to my turn, without any pretence to learning, to undertake such a task. The mischief done to one I knew led to my reading the book I have answered. The perfect horror I felt on reading it led me to examine its statements more carefully, as I found it had done mischief to several. Its emptiness, and a tone I will not characterize, astonished me. It is cleverly written,** so as to attract, and in some respects with very measured subtlety; but to a moral, spiritual mind, there are traits in it which are most deeply painful. It borrows, moreover, from old infidelity and new all it can pick, and dresses it up as the history of the progress of the author's mind. Certain elements in it are calculated to mislead, and just those which most show the want of genuineness of conviction in the writer. It has been impossible for me, of course, to write an apology for the Bible; I should not feel myself competent to do it. I have answered Mr. N.'s book in moments which incessant occupation scarce afforded me. The reader, and finally the Lord, must judge how rightly.

{*The love of objections is one of the worst moral features possible. It is quite right to weigh them, and see that one is well founded in what the soul builds on. But there is moral proof in the power of an object to produce (where the soul is capable of feeling) affections which are the moral reflex, in a rightly constituted mind, of the object itself, and which are thus the proof of power, because the fruit of power. Now where there is this power in the object rightly exercised, the love of objections is only the proof of insensibility to the power which attracts and fixes the soul. It is moral incapacity to estimate what is excellent. The qualities displayed in the object do not convince and silence cavil. Why? Because the heart is incapable of estimating, by its own sentiments, these qualities — perhaps does not like their superiority. This is infidelity.

A true heart loves what is excellent, because it is able to appreciate it, or at least to discern it; it is glad it should have its superiority, because, capable of appreciating excellence, it feels, in virtue of its own love of it, that it ought to have, and it desires that it should have, this place of superiority. This applies in an infinite degree to God in Christ; besides His immutable title to this place. Hence, for faith to be occupied with the positive object of it is the best and truest means of proof It carries its own unquestionable power with it.

There is another thing that helps our judgment; that is, that when the object is known and valued, the moral aim of the infidel is judged. "Their device is only to pull Him down whom thou wouldest exalt." The sagacity, and here the spiritual sagacity, of affection easily detects this. "Give God the praise!" — the modern compliment of infidels also — "As for this man, we know that he is a sinner," will not hide it. There is a kind of reasoning which flows from being oneself the subject of power, which infidel Pharisees cannot reach: theirs only creates astonishment, by its evident nonsense, to the simple mind who knows the power. "Why herein is a wonderful thing, that ye know not who he is, yet he hath opened my eyes." There is no mistake then. Mr. N. may ask, "What has this to do with scripture, or an historical document?" He is found there. No doubt Mr. N. has not found Him there; he does not know Him. He says, indeed, to the evangelical — imitating language he has heard — that he has tried both; he has a double experience — the believer's and the infidel's. But this poor imitation of what converted persons, who have come to the knowledge of Christ, have said, is too miserably transparent to be anything but the shame of him who uses it. What did he experience at the first? The effect, on his own showing, of believing a lie — of supposing true what had no existence in truth. "A deceived heart hath turned him aside; he cannot deliver his soul, nor say, Is there not a lie in my right hand?" Let not the language seem hard. Mr. N. declares it is a lie; and that Jesus is not the Messiah. (Phases, p. 225.) What was his first experience? — "To any 'evangelical ' I have a right to say that, while he has a single, I have a double experience." (Phases, p. 201.) Now how can he tell what the effects, "the spiritual fruits," if a living knowledge of the Lord Jesus Christ are, since he does not believe there is such a person at all? His only past experience was, as he avows, a wholly false one. I ever hope it may not have been. "Spiritual fruits," in his case, are not those of the true knowledge in power of the Lord Jesus. He never had such; for if he really knew Jesus to be the Son of God, it was and must have been because He was so — if He was so, He is so. Now Mr. N. declares it is (and hence was) all a delusion. His "spiritual fruits" were the fruits of a delusion — of belief in an imposture. Think of a person coolly speaking of this in his own case! To what a state of moral reasoning, of moral susceptibilities, must he be reduced! "It was really operative," he tells us, "on my moral tastes, pursuits, and conduct." (Phases, p. 2.) What was?

But I have said, infidels love obscurity. God allows, indeed, faith to be tested. We had seen self-boasting learning, at the end of the last century, relying on Hindu Yugas of millions of years, and Chinese chronology of any length you please. Egyptian hieroglyphics being then illegible, the Zodiac of Dendera disproved the dates of the Mosaic account, by the long period of the earth's existence demonstrated by this very ancient monument. All here was obscure, and it suited infidel reasoning. Alas! Western astronomy and science examined Hindu calculations and proved that the observations must have been made — indeed, profess to be made (that conjunction being assumed to have existed at creation) — in a certain position of the movable bodies of the heavens, and all the rest calculated backward, like Scaliger's Julian Period, making the great Calpa, or epoch, of similar conjunction; in fact, they were mere astronomical cycles. And still worse, hieroglyphics were read, and the Zodiac of Dendera was found to have been made in the reign of Augustus Caesar. Chinese chronology has suffered the like diminution, the Emperor Hoangti (B.C. 213) having destroyed all records, that everything might be dated from him. It is ascertained, as far as obscure traditions allow, that the real Hindu dates of historical events agree pretty much with scripture history, and belong to epochs as recent as that history gives them. I do not here enter into details of course. It seems ascertained that the most ancient Hindu astronomical treatise is not above seven hundred and fifty years old. (Hales' Chronology, vol 1, p. 195.) It is of little moment. I refer to these circumstances to shew the disposition of infidels to get into the dark to make objections. The light dissipates them: they turn to others undaunted and unashamed. Their will is engaged in it.

So now their researches into the historical origin of the books of the Old Testament. On these points they can throw doubts, as they do not own the authority of the New. And why? Because the books, though we can trace their existence as far back as we have any records (and they are confirmed by references to the history contained in them as authentic, by fragments of the earliest known authors quoted in such books, as Josephus, Eusebius, etc.), yet are themselves the only existing records of the times they belong to. They are, beyond all controversy, the most ancient records in existence. Hence, when their own intrinsic power is not perceived, and their coherence as a moral whole, as a key to the whole world's history before God, is not understood, ample scope is found for speculating in the dark and raising objections. Still even here God has confounded them by such means as Egyptian antiquities, where the details of Exodus are found painted in yet brilliant colours on the walls of long lost buildings.}

{**Strange to say, the English is often, to say the least, very incorrect; but as to this, I do not trouble myself.}

324 I close with noticing some instances of reasoning or sentiment which could hardly be taken up in the general argument, but which will help to characterize and give a just idea of the book.

Mr. N. complains that Calvin "supposes God to have created the most precious thing on earth in unstable equilibrium, so as to topple over irrecoverably at the first infinitesimal touch . . . surely all nature proclaims, that if God planted any spiritual nature at all in man, it was in stable equilibrium, able to right itself when deranged." (Phases, p. 98.) Where is this proclamation? We see misery, degradation, idolatry, a vast extent of prevailing wickedness: this Mr. N. avows. Did God create it so? If not, man has lost his equilibrium, and has not righted himself. Perhaps, indeed, Mr. N. thinks God created man wicked; for he avows that man has an "antagonist will." If so, there was indeed no "unstable equilibrium," no deranging any, and certainly no righting itself. If not, then the equilibrium was lost, and is not righted. Perhaps Mr. N. thinks an "antagonist will" to God no harm at all. But his eternal morality is then of a very singular kind.

"I saw," he says further (Phases, p. 98), "that the Calvinistic doctrine of human degeneracy teaches, that God disowns my nature (the only nature I ever had) as not His work, but the devil's work. He hereby tells me that He is not my Creator." This, if it have any sense, must apply to being born in sin; but sin is not my nature as a creation, but a certain state of my nature — its departure from God. And independent creation is sin in existence, because it is the creature God created, and is not dependent on Him. The sin is not the nature, it is its corruption and fall — the negative of its state as a creature in the nature of things. God made man upright; but he sought out to himself many inventions. Mr. N., as we have seen, owns an "antagonistic will." Does he mean to say that God owns that as His work? God disowns man's present state, not his nature. Mr. N. owns our state of sin. Does he think God owns or disowns sin? It is well our minds should recollect that sin, evil, and misery are there, before the Bible begins to account for them. The infidel denies the scriptural account of the fall. How does he account for the evil which exists?

325 Mr. N. insists much upon "eternal ethics," in order to shew that that outward government of God which He exercised over Israel, as scripture teaches, could not be from Him. I say, outward government of God, for such it was, without a full revelation of Himself (the only true ground of all ethics, as laying the foundation of the first of obligations), a government which He patiently exercised toward Israel for special ends, but which contained within it, as a kernel which Christ was able to draw out, the eternal and immutable and perfect rule of right and wrong — love to God and our neighbour. What, then, is Mr. N.'s measure of right and wrong? "I saw that it was an immorality to teach that sin was measured by anything else than the heart and will of the agent." (Phases, p. 78.) It is not pardon, he alleges, to befit God, it is not patience; it is judging, according to the opportunities of light, them that are without law, them that are under law. No — the measure of sin is "the heart and will of the agent." That is "eternal ethics" in earnest. If such is the eternal law of ethics, let us now see the history of the knowledge of God — Mr. N.'s theological notions.

"The law of God's moral universe, as known to us, is that of progress. We trace it from old barbarism to the methodized Egyptian idolatry; to the more flexible polytheism of Syria and Greece; the poetical pantheism of philosophers, and the moral monotheism of a few sages. So in Palestine and in the Bible itself we see, first of all, the image-worship of Jacob's family, then the incipient elevation of Jehovah above all other gods by Moses, the practical establishment of the worship of Jehovah alone by Samuel, the rise of spiritual sentiment under David and the psalmists, the more magnificent views of Hezekiah's prophets, finally in the Babylonish captivity the new tenderness assumed by that second Isaiah and by the later psalmists. But ceremonialism more and more encrusted the restored nation; and Jesus [read here, an impostor] was needed to spur and stab the consciences of his contemporaries, and recall them to more spiritual perceptions; to proclaim a coming 'kingdom of heaven,' in which should be gathered all the children of God that were scattered abroad; where the law of love should reign, and no one should dictate to another." (Phases, p. 223.)

326 Singular, that this systematic series of impostures should be the means of producing spiritual perceptions, and the knowledge of the true God! Still more singular, that methodized idolatry, flexible polytheism, and poetical pantheism, should be the law of progress, of God's moral universe! The contemptibleness of such a passage vies with its cool wickedness. "The law of God's moral universe" is idolatry of the most wicked, polluted,* and degraded kind. But "we trace," it is said, "from old barbarism" But how do we trace it to it? It is not "known to us." Be it so: ignorance has its convenience, even for an infidel, sometimes. But was "old barbarism" man's original state? Progress begins with something: old barbarism was brutal ferocity of manners, and grosser though less developed forms of idolatry — the worship of the serpent, of the sun, and moon. Did God create man then in this "old barbarism?" If not, how came he there? what progress brought him to it? Is there no law of progress in God's moral universe but barbarism, and methodized worship of bulls, onions, and crocodiles? Is that all that Mr. N. has to tell us of God's moral universe? He must have a strange idea of God. This, added to acquiring spiritual perceptions, and a law of love, by imposture, constitutes all he knows of God's moral universe, save (I had well-nigh forgotten) his good opinion of his own "higher spiritualism." Can anyone be fallen lower in his ideas of God's moral universe, and its law?

{*Mr. N., however, I perhaps should add, does not (apart from its accompaniments, and the immoral character of its deities) think so very badly of polytheism. He says (Phases, p. 89), "It thus became clear to me, that polytheism as such is not a moral and spiritual, but at most only an intellectual, error." His indifference to the true God is a remarkable phenomenon. He had long ago been convinced "that the Spirit is evidently God in the hearts of the faithful, and nothing else." Now he "believed the Son to be derived from the Father, and not to be the Unoriginated," and was not a Ditheist: — "No doubt! yet, after all, could I seriously think that, morally and spiritually, I was either better or worse for this discovery? I could not pretend that I was." Perhaps so; but then your state had nothing to say to God. Had you been a polytheist, you would not have been morally or spiritually the better or the worse for it, for it is not a moral or spiritual error. Noble ideas you must have of God, certainly! Let me caution my reader here, that if he finds "the Spirit" used in such writers, he must not fancy it is in any Christian sense. This use of Christian language, which keeps up to the eye a delusive appearance which hinders the mind being shocked, is perpetual in Mr. N.'s book. "I now," says he, "understood somewhat better his whole doctrine of 'the Spirit,' the coming of which had brought the Church out of a childish into a mature condition." Now when he wrote this phrase, he did not believe a word of the coming of the Spirit. It would be endless to multiply the instances of this kind of language — in a word, of Christian language preserved, when he does not believe a word of it. This use of language which the author does not believe does not startle, because it seems to belong to the period of his history which he is relating; but the book was written when he had discovered it was all false.}

327 But his facts are rather peculiar. He says, "In the Bible itself, we see, first of all, the image-worship of Jacob's family." This phrase, so singularly turned to bring in the teraphim of Rachel, ill covers its own deceit. I say nothing now of Moses's account of creation. It may be considered dogmatic, or mythical, or I know not what, and to be dated as of his time; but Mr. N. accepts Moses's history of Jacob — necessarily, then, of Isaac and Abraham, to say nothing of Noah, or even Enoch. Whatever he accepts, it is totally false to say, "In the Bible we see, first of all, the image-worship." We do not see it first of all — quite the contrary. No; not even in Palestine, which is foisted in to save appearances. What we see in the Bible is this: the knowledge of one true God possessed by Noah; that knowledge of the true God lost, and men serving "other gods beyond the flood" (that is, the Euphrates); one of these men called out by the true God's revealing Himself to him, and this person worshipping the one true God "in Palestine:" so did his son; and as did Jacob, though wandering back to the East, his wife, whom he married there, had brought with her her father's household images. Mr. N.'s statement of what we "see in the Bible" is a false statement; and he knows enough of the Bible — alas for him! — to know very well that it is so.

I do not know what he means by the incipient elevation of Jehovah by Moses. Moses's teaching is as clear, more full, more elaborate, more absolute as to the sole deity of Jehovah, than that of Samuel, and he too declares that he knew Israel would corrupt themselves.

That polytheism is a part of God's moral universe is quite worthy of the heartlessness of infidelity; that "old barbarism" should be its only idea of what man began with, without a thought of going farther as to man's connection with God, or an enquiry whether he was created in "old barbarism," is worthy of its "superficiality;" and the statement as to "Jacob's family," worthy of its truthfulness. I am aware this may be accounted hard. I ask, What else can an honest man, with his senses about him, think of this paragraph? There are cases where you may hesitate between indignation and contempt; but the absence of both is a proof of want of moral sentiment in him in whom they are not found.

328 But take another example of the moral justness of the reasonings: we have seen Mr. N. stating, in his attack on Calvinism, that "all nature proclaims, that if God planted any spiritual nature at all in man, it was in stable equilibrium, able to right itself when deranged."

Now I can understand in physical nature, where there is no will, an action of attractive forces which keeps in order the movements of bodies in various and periodically contradictory directions, or self-correcting contradictory directions, or self-correcting contradictory influences, because one will has imposed them all; but the application of this where there is a will is wholly false. Besides, "stable equilibrium," which, if "deranged," is, I humbly conceive, flat nonsense; because, if "deranged," it is not "stable;" nor, if deranged specially by the action of will, is there any reason why it should necessarily re-arrange itself; indeed, it has proved itself unstable. It did not maintain, far less is able to restore, a deranged equilibrium.

This is not the case with the movements of the moon's nodes, or mutation of the earth's axis, or other astronomical self-correcting motions. This is not derangement; it is the variety of order arising from one common principle; it is the proof of stable equilibrium. It is always going on, and always going on regularly, by the constantly operating effect of the same power.

But this is not all. I must cite another passage of Mr. N.'s to shew what the moral equilibrium of infidel thought is. "To me," I read (Phases, p. 101), "it appeared an axiom, that if Jesus was in physical origin a mere man, He was, like myself, a sinful man, and therefore certainly not my judge" — singular, let me say in passing, that we can judge God or His revelation by "a pre-existing standard of moral truth," and our "inward power," and be incompetent to judge of man's state because we are sinful. But, if the fact of Jesus being a man, made Him necessarily a sinful man, what becomes of the stable equilibrium? Is a state of sin moral equilibrium, and a stable one? Indeed, the whole phrase is worthy of attention, as shewing the necessity to which infidelity is reduced, when it has, by circumstances, got the external light which Christianity affords. Sin is, according to Mr. N., a necessity; at the same time, to maintain his system, man's state is one of stable equilibrium; yet he would not allow that God created man a sinner, nor will he admit the fall, save as a common necessity to all. What confusion, not merely of reasoning, but of all moral thought, is here, from abandoning the simple and clear testimony of scripture, which has its witness in every conscience! The man who would recognize both necessary, sin and a stable equilibrium, has, indeed, a harder task than a believer. Sin is in the world without the Bible; the infidel cannot get over that. Revelation tells us much about it; but it exists — revelation or no revelation. The infidel makes it a part of God's moral universe; the believer, of man's immoral condition.

329 And then, in Mr. N.'s system, the deranged stable equilibrium is to be set right by an "antagonist will." This is hopeful.

See the kind of statements, too, indulged in. "It is clear that Paul longed, above all things, to overthrow the wall of partition which separated two families of sincere worshippers." (Phases, p. 225.) Were idolaters sincere worshippers? Worshippers of whom? He taught that converted Jews, and converted Gentiles brought out of their corrupt worship of devils by the knowledge of Jesus, were to worship together. But an idolater is a true worshipper for Mr. N.; it is a part of the law of progress of God's moral universe, that men should worship demons and stocks and stones!

Nor am I wrong in supposing this indifference to exist in Mr. N.'s mind as to truth and error as to God Himself; that it is all one, if it be

"By saint, by savage, or by sage;

Jehovah, Jove, or Lord."

"We now see stronger and higher walls of partition than ever between the children of the same God . . . . The cause of all this is to be found in the claim of Messiahship for Jesus" (Phases, p. 225 — the italics are Mr. N.'s). That is, a worshipper of Jove, and stocks and stones, is a sincere worshipper — children of the same God, with those who follow "a higher spiritualism." The only intolerable mischievous thing which makes barriers, is believing that Jesus is the Messiah.

It does make a barrier against such notions of God as would make "old barbarism" the beginning of God's moral universe, and flexible Polytheism its desirable progress; and which would call themselves, with perfect self-complacency, "higher spiritualism" Mr. N. is astonished, too, at being treated as an infidel.

330 But how powerful, after all, is scriptural truth! In Phases, p. 223, we read:

"We trace the law of God's moral universe in the progress from old barbarism to the methodized Egyptian idolatry, flexible Polytheism, and poetical Pantheism."

In page 230: "The great doctrine on which all practical religion depends — the doctrine which nursed the infancy and youth of human nature — is 'the sympathy of God' with individual man." This was succeeded by Paganism and Pantheism. "Among pagans this was so marred by the imperfect characters ascribed to the gods, and the dishonourable fables told concerning them, that the philosophers who undertook to prune religion too generally cut away the root, by alleging that God was mere intellect, and wholly destitute of affections." No doubt. But where is the progress, which is the law of God's moral universe, which we trace from old barbarism upward to the higher spirituality? It would seem that the infancy was the best part of progress, only, unhappily, it was at the beginning — I suppose before even the "old barbarism."*

{*I do not know where Mr. N. got it, but Epiphanius speaks of the first worship being barbarism and of Scythism and Ionism succeeding it — Barbarism from Adam to Noah, Scythism from Noah to the tower of Babel, and, some time after, Hellenism from the time of Serug.}

Would you know, reader, how this precious doctrine of God's sympathy with individual man was preserved and developed? Hear Mr. N.'s account of the book he is rejecting, traducing, and leading you to regard as an imposture. He continues: —

"But happily among the Hebrews the purity of God's character was vindicated; and with the growth of conscience in the highest minds of the nation, the ideal image of God shone brighter and brighter. The doctrine of His sympathy was never lost, and from the Jews it passed into the Christian Church. This doctrine applied to that part of man which is divine the well-spring of repentance and humility, of thankfulness, love and joy. It reproves and it comforts — it stimulates and it animates. This it is which led the Psalmist to cry, 'Whom have I in heaven but thee? There is none upon earth that I desire beside thee.' This has satisfied prophets, apostles, and martyrs, with God as their portion. This has been passed from heart to heart for full three thousand years, and has produced bands of countless saints." (Phases, p. 231.) Now, in the first place, all these saints have fed undoubtedly on what Mr. N. denies, and got this temper and character from believing *. They were prophets of — apostles to promulgate-martyrs for — the truth of that which Mr. N. says is a falsehood and an imposture, the cause of all the mischief — the Messiahship, and, when Jesus had appeared, the Messiahship of Jesus. This last has been for two thousand of these the governing motive and principle of their lives and testimony. They have lived by it, and died for it. They have avowed this as the one thing which gave them full faith in this sympathy of God. This has produced all these admirable effects. Yet, according to Mr. N., it was all a mistake; and "more entangling to the conscience, and more depressing to the mental energies, than anything in the Levitical law . . . . This gave a premium to crooked logic . . . . This perverted men's notions of right and wrong . . . . This gave a merit to credulity." (Phases, p. 225.)

331 But mark another thing. We have seen Mr. N. obliged to confess, that this sympathy of the true God with individual man was that which nursed the infancy and youth of human nature; that it was succeeded by Paganism and Pantheism, and then passed into infidel coldness in philosophy; but that one little, obscure, detested, despised, bigoted, exclusive people (who had impassable walls of separation from all others, and possessed and valued as inspired the books which Mr. N. is attacking as an imposture of Josiah's reign), alone in the midst of the universal corruption, "methodized" or "flexible," "happily vindicated the purity of God's character" — that through their means "the doctrine of His sympathy was never lost, and from the Jews it passed into the Christian Church." Why, this is exactly the history the Bible gives. It verifies to a letter its whole contents. It shews why, when the pagan barbarism had destroyed the truth which had nurtured the infancy of man, Abraham was called out in order to vindicate the purity of God's character; how thus the doctrine of His sympathy was never lost; why there was such a wall of partition raised up between Israel and the pagan nations, by a system of ordinances "imposed on them to the time of reformation;" while the great central principles of truth were preserved within. It shews that, at the same time, it was, as a whole, only a temporary provision for this particular purpose, in connection with the people thus kept apart to preserve this truth, and who did thus preserve it; and how, through the well known history of Christ, and His rejection and death by the Jews (by which they forfeited by their own act the title to claim anything exclusive), it passed by grace to every Gentile, who (through faith in Him, who was the deepest living expression of that sympathy, and accomplisher of that in which the whole power of it was shewn) believed in and came to it in truth.

332 The admissions of Mr. N. — and history compels these admissions — are the extorted confession, not merely of particular acts, but that the whole system of scripture is the undoubted truth of God, and that the notion of progress as applied to moral condition (for it is true in civilization and science) is as baseless and unfounded as can possibly be. Indeed, this kind of statement awakens in my mind the longing hope, that he who makes them is so forced to be a witness to scripture truth, that that truth, which I know to be eternal life, may have a hold within — deep as it may be covered, and hardily as it may be intellectually braved — which will produce a glorious testimony in the person of the author to God's patient grace, before the day which will prove all truth to the confusion of those who have denied it. The Lord grant it may be so!

Mr. N. says (Phases, p. 95), "In short, I could not find the modern doctrine of the fall anywhere in the Bible . . . that is, of a permanent degeneracy induced by the first sin of the first man; and when I studied Romans 5, I found it was death, not corruption, which Adam was said to have entailed." A strange state of mind! The passage is, "As by one man sin entered into the world, and death by sin." "By one man's disobedience many were made sinners." Does not the apostle state, in the Romans, that men were in a state of permanent degeneracy — in Ephesians, that all were by nature children of wrath; that there is a law of sin in our members (Rom. 7: 23); and that the flesh lusts against the Spirit? (Gal. 5: 17)

And why is it so carefully noted that Adam begat a son in his likeness after his image? But this is more a question of theology than of rationalism. I only note it as shewing how easily Mr. N. disposed of scriptural truth.

The best answer is to read what is said in Romans and elsewhere, and see whether permanent degeneracy is not taught, and as the fruit of Adam's sin.

I would just remark also the strange notions, the singular moral contradictions (and moral contradictions are serious things), which pass unnoticed in Mr. N.'s mind. From the want of all objective truth, not only is a worshipper of demons a sincere worshipper of God's family for him, but, as to his own mind, he thinks falsehood can have the same happy effect as truth. Thus, in his early days (p. 2), when under evangelical influence: "Such was the beginning and foundation of my faith — an unhesitating unconditional acceptance of whatever was found in the Bible . . . . And as to my creed, I must insist that it was no mere fancy resting in my intellect: it was really operative on my temper, tastes, pursuits, and conduct" — that is, a delusion and a falsehood was! And now that he thinks it so, he tells us it took real effect on him (that is, believing a lie to be of God did). This is singular.

333 Again (Phases, p. 99): "I was conscious that, in dropping Calvinism, I had lost nothing evangelical: on the contrary, the gospel which I retained was as spiritual and deep hearted as before, only more merciful." As "spiritual and deep-hearted!" And yet it was all a delusion from beginning to end. It was an imposture carried on by an impostor who rode in on an ass — "a deed which he appears to have planned with the express purpose of assimilating himself to the lowly king here described." (Phases, p. 195.)

What, then, is Mr. N.'s notion, a common notion, of truth — of love of truth? It is the total uncertainty whether anything is true or not — the keeping the mind perpetually open, without acting on it at all. It is not, as in the progress of sound science, the relinquishing hypotheses for the investigation of facts.

"They left off," as he expresses it, "to dogmatize, and approached God's world as learners." They did well. But "God's world" was a certain existing thing to be learned — a known existence, though much was yet to be learned about it. Now, when the love of truth is spoken of in this book, it is entirely a different thing. There is no existing truth to be investigated. That is the position of him who receives the Bible as the truth. Be he right or wrong, he approaches, not GOD'S world indeed, but GOD'S word, as a learner. The man of science receives creation as existing; he investigates it. The believer receives the Bible as the existing revelation of God; he investigates it. Truth to the man of science is merely the ascertaining the laws of admitted facts, or the discovery of facts already existing. Now the rationalist has no object before his mind. Mr. N., in order to discover what God is, works in the mine of his own intellect; and, just as Des Cartes would hold that such things must be, because nature abhors a vacuum, or others theorize on the fortuitous concourse of atoms, so Mr. N. settles that God must be the projected image of man's mind. It is just like the hypothesis which preceded Baconian science; an hypothesis — a theory; not an existing object already before us, investigated by our minds if capable of it. What then does all this love of truth amount to when it is not mere hypothetical speculation about what must be? It is merely that a person is unprejudiced!

334 Mr. N. would persuade us that he is the most unprejudiced person going, unless it be the whole company of his friends. I do not doubt their good opinion of themselves, or their disposition to state it. But I somewhat doubt about this entire absence of prejudice. I see marks of will working very strongly in Mr. N.; I have noticed some. The joy manifested at the discovery of a difficulty, or a slur thrown by others on the credit of a book of scripture; the plain proof often given that their "wish was father to their thought." When a man speaks of being "justly encouraged to apply similar criticism;" when he thinks he has found a flaw — is there no will there? When I read the passage I already ventured to translate,

"O mihi tam longa maneat pars ultima vitae,

Spiritus et, quantum sat erit tua discere facta."

Is there no will at work here? When I read, "But as soon as it begins to discern error in the standard proposed to it, we have the mark of incipient original thought which is the thing so valuable and so difficult to elicit." Is there no love for getting rid of a standard here as well as love of truth? Now, I would remark here, that universal openness at all times to receive everything is not the proof of love of the truth, but of incapacity at all times to ascertain it, and of perpetual uncertainty in consequence. Supposing the human mind, by itself or by divine aid, capable of ascertaining truth with certainty, love of the truth when it is ascertained is shewn in holding it fast, because it is truth. Not to do this is merely, I repeat, to say that perpetual uncertainty is the only possible state; that is, that there is no such thing as truth for the human mind, and that the love of it is nonsense. Truth in this case does not exist for man; and therefore the theory, the notion of the love of truth, is a contradiction in itself. If there be truth as to anything, as to what God is, what Christianity is, when I have ascertained it, and know that to be the truth, I hold it fast because I love it.

In a word, either the truth cannot be ascertained, and then there is no truth for man; or it can, and then if we have ascertained it, we hold it against all cavils. It is true, our minds may be prejudiced, and we may also receive solid truth mixed with other things. Hence patience, discrimination, and readiness to hear become us; but not readiness to call in question what is certain. This is the love of doubting, not of truth. Further, if the positive proofs of a thing remain, the difficulties connected with it are not disproof. They may be proof merely of my incapacity to solve them. But, besides, the proof of divine things is upon quite a different principle from that of human experience; and must be, because they are divine, and cannot be the subjects of human experience till received. And the kind of knowledge possessed about divine things is not reached consequently by human cavil. Thus Mr. N. speaks of an "intellectual creed" being held to be an essential criterion of God's people (i.e., such an historical proposition as "that the Jewish teacher, Jesus, fulfilled the conditions requisite to constitute Him the Messiah"). Now such a conviction would not constitute a person a believer at all.

335 Mohammedans believe it; and they are not "the people of God." Thousands who would not understand Mr. N.'s phrase are devoted believers in Jesus. There has been an action on their hearts and consciences connected with his name, which is more certain to them than their existence — more powerful than the love of it. It characterizes their life — fills them with joy in death: their whole life is formed by it. A person has been revealed to them whom they love, by whom they know God, and are at peace: — I do not say how, for I am not writing on theology. Christ's account of it is, "They shall be all taught of God." They are quiet, sober, unenthusiastic persons, who know themselves, confess faults they hid or excused before, yet are happy and peaceful. They know in whom they have believed. And all this is identified with the word of God which has produced it, orally or in writing, and is recognized by it when studied. Hence too their convictions have an elevated and deeply moral character and bear the impress of divine action. This, as to the proof of its source, though partially mixed with other things in the stream it flows in, is of the highest importance. Now questions as to historical contradictions do not touch the ground on which this faith is built. Be it foolish or wise, that is not my question now. I only say that historical questions and genealogies do not reach it; for it never was founded on them, but on something else. There may be complete ignorance of what the difficulty applies to, and yet a profound knowledge of the person it applies to; and such an appreciation of Him and all that regards Him that difficulties of genealogies have no weight. He is a sinner and does not keep the sabbath — "yet He opened mine eyes," says the man. The disproof, in its nature, did not touch the kind of proof. The reasonings of learned men were lost upon him, because he was the subject of a power which it needed no learning to know the force of when a person had been subjected to its influence. Such a believer reasons from the power, of which he is quite certain, to judge that which would call so certain a thing in doubt. And he reasons justly.

336 Now that is the divine way of teaching — God acts and makes Himself known in acting, and a man thus taught of God believes and with divine faith; that is, with certainty. He leaves intellectual propositions to those who make them; he possesses the subject of them. This is not logical. No; not if you mean conclusions drawn from human knowledge. It is divine teaching. I repeat what I said at the beginning, that God can act on man's conscience and heart so as to make Himself known, though the conscience and heart would have never so known Him if He had not acted on them. It is not a "pre-existing standard" in the human mind but a susceptibility of receiving impressions with the certainty of what produces them, without the independent power of forming the ideas for itself, or of judging them by a complete measure already formed. I admit fully the conscience and the heart; and that there is a sense in all that there is a God. But then conscience always takes notice of the authority and just judgment of God, and judges self, or it is not conscience.

The question really is this, as I have already stated, Can God communicate His mind and thoughts to man with the certainty that it is He who does so? To deny it is an absurdity. It makes God inferior to men, who certainly can do so — almost to some beasts, who in a small measure can. But if man has been created with a capacity for receiving thoughts of and from God (and of and from have really the same force here, so far as that all that is from must be of Him), and that God can communicate such, is it not very much more than a probability that He would do this?*

{*This does not prove, as a fact, that He has; but it makes it unlikely that He has not. But while it cannot prove that God has communicated to man the knowledge of the things of God, it does prove that the supposition that He would not is a gross absurdity — is merely the desire not to have to say to Him in His own way: and in spite of the infidel effort which takes effect when the morality of religious pretenders sinks below the standard of natural conscience, the need of some divine communication is such that, I may say, the universal feeling of man proves it by its cravings — cravings which are so strong, that in the long run the most absurd and corrupt pretensions to it are preferred to none at all. It is of this all forms of priesthood have taken advantage.

And here I would notice a very remarkable circumstance, that, elevated and peculiar as was the priesthood among the Jews, they were not, as with false religions, the peculiar and chief communicators of divine knowledge. The prophets had this office; and God's character was maintained independently of, and often reproving, those who might have made an interested use of their nearness to Him. In Christianity there are no priests (save as all Christians are, and Christ above all). Judaism being founded on law, and God yet much hidden from man who could not come near under such a system, a priesthood was necessary, but betrayed the real state of things, thus expressed by the apostle — "The way into the holiest was not yet made manifest, while as yet the first tabernacle was standing." Christianity being the manifestation of grace, and having brought men to God, there is not a priesthood, but a ministry to make known that grace, and build up those who have received it in further acquaintance with it; while all believers are themselves in the presence of God — have access to the Father who Himself loves them — are brought to God. Hence as to this point, ministry and the absence of a distinct priesthood essentially characterize Christianity. Priesthood characterizes the religion of Judaism, though God interfered sovereignly by prophets in mercy.}

337 It does not at all follow that man would know by other means the same things. Nay, it is rather the contrary that would follow. Even in human intercourse, a person may communicate things to me which I fully understand and receive with certainty, which I did not know — perhaps never should have known — nay, take the full scope of human education, certainly never should have known — if they had not been communicated; yet I have the certainty of them when they are. It is not the judgment I form of them; but that I am so formed, so circumstanced internally, that they carry conviction when announced.

But another point is clear, that is, that if God does communicate knowledge, it will be in its purpose the knowledge of Himself; that is, it will have a divine character — be a divine communication. If I am communicating algebra, the communication will be algebraic. If God communicates divine knowledge, the communication will be divine. Man may be (I do not doubt he is) such as can be acted on by such communications when God so acts; but the communication does not lose its own character; it cannot cease to be divine, or it would wholly miss its object, it would cease to be what we suppose it. Yet, as such, God can (for I assume this now) accompany it with the certainty that it is He who does so. It carries, where He does, its own proof of the power and authority of the communication, so as to bind the conscience and soul of man. God is known in the obedience of faith. The question of judging is out of place. "The entering in of thy word giveth light and understanding to the simple." Now God may, to put man to the test (I believe He has), communicate truth by means which have a permanent character, so that men should have them always before them. He may use means of doing so adapted to men's faculties, and as means, within the scope of man's moral investigation; yet with fully adequate proof of the authenticity and power of the communication, and of who made it. Here it is that infidelity has its scope and play. Now such a communication puts man to the test, and, adequate evidence being given, demonstrates an "antagonist will" — the moral evil of his condition, that he does not like to come to or receive the knowledge of God as having authority. Such a state of mind will receive no communication from God, though there be one before it; but it proves its unwillingness to receive one.

338 Nay, there is more than this; because there is not merely adequate proof within the scope of man's intelligence in due moral exercise, but there is, in the divine word thus communicated, a direct action on the conscience, which is its own witness. For conscience man has, whether he will or no; and Felixes will tremble before the word their will rejects and their passions slight; and they do tremble: for God will make Himself known to man in his conscience, if He pleases (and He does please); and every secret work shall be brought into judgment.

But if God can make Himself known to man, He alone really can. He has addressed adequate testimony to man's responsibility. But what shall change man's will? His people shall be willing in the day of His power. This is grace. God really reveals Himself in gracious, life-giving power; and the word, which is His, acquires at once the authority which a known God has over a soul to whom His holiness becomes true and His mercy precious. God is known. His word is His word. The permanent testimony delivered to men in every kind of condition, adapted to them, copied for three thousand years, and transmitted from man to man, may present difficulties. It may present such as arise from his own defective spiritual apprehensions and intelligence, and (which in part is the converse of it) the depth and vastness of the communication made, embracing all God's ways with man from first to last, and His counsels for the glory of His Son. It may present difficulties, which arise from the circumstances of its transmission by man during so long a period, considered as "committed" to him, though guarded by Providence. But "Who has spoken?" is no longer a question. He who thus knows God is called upon diligently to enquire what He has said — to use all diligence as far as he is capable — to see that man has not deceived him either by design or by carelessness; and he may count on gracious divine aid in doing so. He has now, not perfect capacity, but a sense which helps him much in this, because he does know God. But these enquiries suppose an existing truth communicated, which is loved because it is God's truth. There is something (as the existing world for science) which enquiry is occupied about. The infidel's love of truth means that he has no known truth to love; it is an immoral thing, a self-wasting affection without an object. If man be framed to know God for his happiness, in what state is he till he finds Him? Yet that is what is called "love of truth above all." It merely means subjecting everything as it occurs to the assumed competency of our own mind to judge of it. It has no object which is truth, which it values as such.

339 "Morality and truth are principles in human nature both older and more wide-spread than Christianity or the Bible," says Mr. N. Now that man has a conscience, and judges right and wrong, is most true — knows good and evil, as the scripture expressly teaches; and so it is, that the divine word addresses and acts on this. But it is not true that this is truth, or a standard of moral truth; because, though it recognizes the authority of God, yet as we are sinners impressed with fear, we do not really know God thereby. It craves, though it fears, that knowledge. It does judge men's acts, but it does not reveal God's nature, ways, thoughts, and purposes. Revelation (and oh what grace to have it!) is the answer to its need. Conscience deals with man as man, and man subject to God in judgment; but it does not reveal God as God, though it dreads the authority it has despised. Now, if God does thus reveal Himself (and how immense the privilege!) that becomes the standard of moral truth. Thus Christ was born under the law; but He was God manifest in the flesh. He became the standard of moral truth, and the pattern of divine ways in man. Others may, through grace and "partaking of the divine nature," have followed him — He may graciously call them His companions. The day that comes will mark out some one in this walk, proximus at longo intervallo. It was reserved for Mr. N. alone, not to delight in the blest resemblance in those who followed Him, but to shew his own state — to proclaim his capacity for discerning divine perfectness in man — to raise (what horror would it have occasioned him!) the devoted and gracious Fletcher to a level with Jesus.* We may thank Mr. N. for this: a man's tastes shew, not what that which he likes is, but what he is. A Rousseau could see farther than this. We have a tolerable specimen of the standard of moral truth in Mr. N.'s mind. It is true that Fletcher was not, as Mr. N. makes the blessed Jesus, an impostor. That would make some difference in excellency, though it appears not a great deal with Mr. N; for, after all, it is this imposture which, even for Fletcher himself, "has vindicated the purity of God's moral character."

{*This is not so very surprising in Mr. N.'s case; he says (Phases, pp. 101, 102) "But I now discovered that there was a deeper distaste in me for the details of the human life of Christ than I was previously conscious of." In page 210 he says, of Benson's Life of Fletcher of Madeley, "And at this day, if I were to read the book afresh, I suspect I should think his character a more perfect one than that of Jesus."}

340 But let us leave this miserable display of an infidelity effoeta veri. The Christian does not reject the ascertaining the truth of Christianity. The proofs are there; and Mr. N., with his associates who pretend to the "higher spirituality," will be judged by the positive proofs which nave been afforded them — proofs to their conscience — proofs to their heart. Would that they would listen to them, and not merely to their understanding! But the Christian thinks that, if God speaks, however He may condescend to man, He speaks as God; and, in examining a professed revelation, he must expect this; and hence it is not by a pre-existing standard of moral truth, nor by the inward powers of the hearer that he will be judged. He will address the conscience which man by His appointment has, and the heart that needs Him. He will adapt Himself to it; but He will speak in His own character, and must, if He be God, give the standard of moral truth. He is it in Christ. The weapons of this warfare are not carnal, but mighty through God to the pulling down of strongholds, casting down reasonings, and every high thing that exalts itself against the knowledge of God, bringing every thought into the captivity of the obedience of Christ. He will not contradict what He has taught. He will act on the conscience He has given. If the Being, presented as divine, is, in His own desires and character, below the standard of natural conscience, conscience may reject Him, and man become an infidel. If I have the truth from God, I shall judge by it what pretends to be so. I shall not talk of the inward powers of the hearer as a judge when I am hearing God.

341 I do not deny a conscience. I believe that there are obligations flowing unchangeably from relationships in which we are by nature (in that sense ethics are eternal), and from such as redemption places us in. But I deny a pre-existing standard of moral truth possessed by man, and his competency, or his inward powers, to judge God. Where is it? Conscience does recognize evil and good, and it bows, by its very nature, to God, when He speaks to it. I speak of the fact, but the subjection of conscience to judgment is not judging. It does more; nay, it is the opposite. It puts God in His place: judging puts Him out of it. Does His speaking enfeeble man's sense of right and wrong? It adds divine authority as a sanction to it, and enlarges vastly the knowledge of it by new relations of an infinite character. But God has far more fully (nay, only then really) His place; for He speaks in love, and that is what He is. The soul does not want to judge God; it is glad to know Him.

I have only one word to add — that difficulties which arise may exercise the heart as to its faith, but do not touch the consciousness we have of the knowledge of God, where the will is not corrupted, nor, consequently, the authority of His word, nor its evidence. I have been conversing with a man, with my father, with intimate acquaintance of his and my history. He has told me things which, in connection with it, prove their own truth; and one comes and proves by inferences, that from dates, and the like, he could not have been where I was. I cannot solve the difficulty, but I do not doubt my intercourse with him. Perhaps I detect that he who would persuade me of the contrary, does not like that I should believe what he has told me. At any rate my certainty is unshaken. I solve the difficulty, if I can; if I cannot, I leave it unsolved. I have got the knowledge I want, and I know my Father's care and love. May you, my reader, thus know it. Let me only add a very simple but all-important remark. The question as to Christianity is not, if it be true (Mohammedanism is true), but if it be from God. The kinds of proof and their effects will be quite different.

The Irrationalism of Infidelity: Section n.

Being a reply to "Phases of Faith"*

J. N. Darby.

{*London: 1853.}

<06001-129E> File Section n.

342 APPENDIX

1

Mr. Newman refers to one subject on which I will touch, as I think it will be generally useful. He objects to mediation as mischievous. Having never had any just conviction of sin, he does not feel the need of it. No one who has for himself felt what sin and grace are can hesitate a moment as to the value of it. Let the reader consult Job 9, and he may see the working of a true yet vexed soul under God's hand. It is all well talking of awe and reverence, etc., and love, as Mr. N. does: but the denial of the need of a mediator is the denial of a holy judge, and our sense of God's being so. But it is important to have a clear apprehension of the nature and work of the Mediator.

Mr. N.'s objection to it is this: that all moral profit arises from being brought into the presence of God, and that the notion of a mediator is a hindrance to this. Now this is plausible, because moral profit does arise from being brought into the presence of God; but it is altogether a fallacy. For our sense of the need of a mediator arises from the effect of our being brought into the presence of God; or (what is morally the same thing) so true an estimate of what God is, as makes us feel the impossibility of our standing before Him.

In the passage I have referred to in Job, this is evidently seen, whatever temper he met it in. He could not answer God "one of a thousand." If he called himself "perfect," his own mouth would condemn him. If he would "leave off his heaviness and comfort himself," God would not hold him innocent. If he should "wash himself with snow water, and make his hands never so clean, God would plunge him into the ditch." And he adds, "Neither is there any daysman betwixt us, who should lay his hand upon us both." Now I am not commenting here upon the spirit in which Job takes the matter up, for it was a wrong one: I adduce it to shew that the sense of the need of a mediator arises from the conviction of sin, and does not hinder it.

This doctrine is sometimes used in a way calculated to give a false idea of God — not precisely as to the effect of the presence of God upon the conscience, but as hiding divine love. The effect, as I have already said, of that presence is to present God as simply a Judge, and very often, while this thought of God remains unchanged in the mind, Christ is, on the other hand, looked at as One in whose love we can confide. But scripture is not answerable for this. God is a Judge; but Christ is never presented as an Intercessor with a Judge.

343 The scriptural doctrine of a mediator is quite different from this. It not only leaves the full effect of God as light upon the soul, but brings it down close to the moral eye; and does it in the way of love, that we should be able to walk in that light. Christ is God manifest in the flesh. But while He is the light itself, this manifestation is love.

See how John puts this point: "That which was from the beginning, which we have heard, which we have seen with our eyes, which we have looked upon, and our hands have handled of the Word of life (for the life was manifested, and we have seen it, and bear witness, and shew unto you that eternal life, which was with the Father, and was manifested unto us) . . . . This then is the message which we have heard of him, and declare unto you, that God is light, and in him is no darkness at all. If we say that we have fellowship with him, and walk in darkness, we lie, and do not the truth." Here we have no hindering the full discovery of God to the soul: it is that discovery, "The darkness is past, and the true light now shineth." "The life was the light of men. That was the true light which lighteth [shineth upon] every man." And, it did tell upon men's consciences, the presence of that living Word; and, if sin was confessed, attracted in grace; if sought to be hidden, it vexed, irritated, and alarmed; humble and unassuming as was the garb in which grace, for love's sake towards men, had clothed the light. So it is with the truth. It is indeed grace in testimony; but it reaches the conscience, and judges all men by the revelation of God Himself.

What could have brought light and love (and morally speaking that is God) so near to man as the incarnation? It was in the way of reconciling, not imputing trespasses; but this was to engage man, away from sin (if that had been possible), by coming in grace and goodness towards himself. Mediation is, in this respect, the revelation of God Himself close to us, bearing directly on the conscience and heart of man; and so is the word of the gospel now.

But there is yet more in Christianity, that we might be fully brought into the presence of God.

Christ is not merely God manifested to us down here, He has suffered in our place, the Just for the unjust, that He might bring us to God. Looking at God as righteousness, as having "purer eyes than to behold iniquity" (and surely this does not hinder the effect of His presence as regards conscience), the just sense of sin would make us feel that we could not come into His presence, nor appear, defiled as we are, before His holy majesty. There is no just sense of sin, no real effect of His presence on the conscience, till this is felt — no proper jealousy of right and wrong, till we estimate it thus, and bring God and ourselves together in thought, so as to produce it — ourselves, who owe everything to Him. But we could not. He ought not, in justice, to allow such in His presence. But Christ gives Himself for these sins; and, putting them away, appears in the presence of God in the efficacy and in virtue of that work.

344 I go into the presence of God with His full character maintained in holiness and love. He is more glorified as to both of these in what has been done by Jesus about sin, than if there had been no sin at all; and it is Jesus' glory in every way to have done it. I now appear, in virtue of (yea, being) this divine righteousness, in God's own presence, through infinite love and righteousness, which I thus know, and never should have known else; for it is not mere human righteousness. God is known as He is in glory, which Christ alone could meet in face, so to speak; and I am there with the full light of it upon me, without fear, because in virtue of the redemption in which that glory has been morally displayed and satisfied, and that as to and about sin itself now put away for me, and I appearing as made the righteousness of God in Him. My being there is that righteousness; it is the righteous answer to, and fruit of, the travail of Christ's soul; and what that was, He alone can tell who knows what wrath is to Him who dwelt in the unity of love — what sin is to Him who was in the unity of the divine holiness. I am in the presence of God in a righteousness adequate for His glory — and it is according to that glory that I judge sin now — a righteousness, as wrought out in Christ, competent to take righteously its seat at the right hand of the Majesty on high; for, God being glorified in it, God's glory was its just reward: and this in the fullest sense connected with the person of Him who accomplished it.

Now I find my place in God's presence in virtue of this. I sit down in heavenly places. Not where the personal accomplishment places Him who accomplished it, as a just reward; but, morally, as fully in the presence of God. Yet, in fact, I am a poor, feeble, erring creature; rising above sin in a heavenly way in mind, through the Spirit, but, alas! by virtue even of that which I see, seeing the wretched inadequacy of all my steps down here. There is always feebleness, often failures. Here mediation comes in again — not to obtain righteousness, but to maintain a feeble, failing creature in the enjoyment of the place where our being made righteousness in Him places us. It is the reconciling the state in which I actually am with the position in which that has set me. It is the only thing which can maintain a poor, feeble creature experimentally up to the height of that divine presence. To pretend to be there in the condition in which we actually are, would be mere madness, and prove we had never known it. We should even, as men, rather fall at His feet as dead. Yet if not, we must lose the full power of that presence to judge evil and good by, to know love by, to estimate the glorious counsels of God by. But Christ appears in the presence of God for us. His blood is on the mercy-seat. He is there in virtue of this blood-shedding, which places me there. I can abide there in peace to learn it all.

345 Am I to ignore, then, my feebleness and failing? No, I judge what I a n by what I see of this glory, which is mine; and my feebleness and failure become the occasion of the exercise of grace, which does not lower God to the level of my failures, but which meets in the way of mercy the wants they prove to be in me, and lift me up out of them. We have a High Priest touched with the feeling of our infirmities, who was in all points tempted like as we are, without sin; so that we come boldly to the throne of grace, that we may obtain mercy, and find grace to help in time of need. Hence, in this also, mediation maintains for us the full display of God to ourselves, and alone can do so, and in the way of faith and grace, so as to be morally elevating while judging all inconsistent with itself. If Mr. N. thinks he could stand in the presence of God's majesty as he is and what he is, and compare himself with it, he knows neither himself nor God. Divine righteousness sets me there according to God; constant mediation obtains all the grace I need in the actual state I am in, and maintains me (without hiding my actual worthlessness from myself) in the full enjoyment of divine favour as known there, — restores me if need be, — maintains a just, practically holy, intercourse with that glory. Who has not this has none. Hence it is said, "If any man sin, we have an advocate with the Father, Jesus Christ the righteous" (that never alters) "and he is the propitiation for our sins."

The first part of Christ's mediation is the revelation of Christ to man here, so that he might be directly in His presence. The second part is when righteousness has given man a place in God's presence in glory, and made him know it, and placed him in it through redemption, maintaining the intercourse of a feeble, failing creature with God in love, in the place where righteousness has set him; that is, in the presence of God fully revealed, as Christ the righteous Son is there — keeping us, on the one hand, in the sense of that glory unobscured, and, on the other, the true and sweet sense of a weakness which is the occasion of constant and unfailing mercy, which is working in it to bring us up to the actual enjoyment of such glory as that righteousness is entitled to. Such are God's wondrous, perfect, and gracious ways with us, which alone reconcile divine perfection and human weakness, and find in the latter, and even in its sin, the occasion of the display of the former in its highest glory, His ways in Jesus Emmanuel, to whom — Lamb of God, who takes away sin — belongs all glory for ever and ever, the joy and crown of those who trust in Him, the everlasting delight of God the Father.

346 May he whom I now answer know how sovereign is God's goodness — how great the grace in Christ — by finding all his attacks and blasphemies against it forgiven through the very grace which he has attacked and despised!

2

I pass by a multitude of passages I had marked as shewing the excessive looseness of argument indulged in by Mr. N., and the marvellous absence of all spiritual apprehensions. Thus, as to this last point, he speaks of his old belief as depending on the interpretation of "the old scriptures," and of establishing "how much of the biography of Jesus in the new is credible. To judge wrongly about it may prove one to be a bad critic, but not a less good and less pious man." (Phases, p. 203.) That is, the credibility of Jesus's history is absolutely devoid of any moral element whatever. "In point of fact, I never did look much to futurity, nor even, in prospect of death, could attain to any vivid anticipations or desires, much less was troubled with fears." (Phases, p. 203.) Neither death nor Jesus could awaken a moral element of any kind in his mind, nor had the Lord's coming more effect, save to trouble his conscience; but none in the affections of his soul. It "awoke only now and then to reproach and harass me for my unfaithfulness to it." (Phases, p. 204.) What an expression of incapacity to receive a spiritual idea above the level of his own mind! "If I am not [to criticise Jesus by the received laws of human morality], then I have no ground for praising or admiring Him!" (Phases, p. 210.) What a denial of any capacity in the human soul to receive a thought of excellency beyond its present acquirements and apprehensions, any above itself as it is! My delight is to have some new excellency, which, as far as I know it, the human measure has never yet reached. But I leave all this, and the "clearlys" and "therefores," of which there is no proof, to touch on one subject, which, as a scripture one is important, and which will afford me an opportunity of referring more fully than I have done to one of the most interesting and important in its place of all the books of scripture.

347 "The old Hebrews," says Mr. N. (Phases, p. 189), "believed only in evil spirits sent by God to do His bidding, and had no idea of a rebellious spirit that rivalled God. That idea was first imbibed in the Babylonish captivity, and apparently therefore must have been adopted from the Persian 'Ahriman,' or from the 'Melek Taous,' the 'Sheitan' still honoured by the Yezidi with mysterious fear. That the serpent in the early part of Genesis denoted the same Satan is probable enough: but this only goes to shew that that narrative is a legend imported from further East; since it is certain that the subsequent Hebrew literature has no trace of such an Ahriman."

This is a curious passage, in point of argument, singular in its logic, but more singular still in shewing how a theory forced into one's service to get rid of truth fades away, in spite of the effort, before the truth it seeks to get rid of. First, reader, you have it all clearly settled, "that idea was first imbibed in the Babylonish captivity." Now if you believe this (though why we should we are not told. However, Mr. N. says so; and it is not certainly second hand faith with him: he believes it on his own authority), we may indeed be "peculiarly vexed to find so total a deficiency of clear and sound instruction on so vital a question" as "why we are to believe it;" as if one "were solely anxious to have people believe without caring on what ground they believe, although that is obviously the main point." But if you do believe this, then you have a singularly nicely graduated logical progression: it was first imbibed then, and "apparently therefore" "must have been" — so that now it cannot be otherwise than "adopted from the Persian Ahriman." So that now we have indeed got "further East." — from the Hebrews to Babylon; and, since it certainly was imbibed in the captivity, it must have been from Persia. Well, I thought we had here got far East somewhat rapidly. But the reason puzzles me.

348 Mr. N. admits that the serpent in Genesis denoted the same Satan. But, then, why travel so far East for it? We have it in the first literature of the Hebrews — why is its being in the ante-Babylonish period a proof that it came from the farther East? Why might not Abraham have brought the same doctrine with him from Ur of Mesopotamia, if it was lost afterwards, or found it in Canaan? For, after all, Mr. N.'s account is, that we have it in the earliest writings of the Hebrews, but not in the subsequent ones — a very curious reason indeed for its being first imbibed in the Babylonish captivity. This is what is called "modern logic." But then other difficulties arise. The Pentateuch, in which this history occurs, was first completed and published, as Mr. N. assures us, in the reign of Josiah, when it was pretended the book of the law was found. Now this was about a century before the captivity; but it is there the serpent, Satan, is found. Why it should then be imported from the further East, or be first imbibed in the captivity, one is at a loss to tell. If we are to believe De Wette, as we have seen, it was certainly taught two hundred years before the captivity — at least two hundred years; for he says, the Pentateuch, as we have it, is quoted at that period (that is, by the earliest prophets whose writings we possess).

But if we abide by Mr. N.'s theory, "our logic" is in still greater embarrassment. The reason that its being in Genesis shews that it is a legend imported from further East is, that the subsequent Hebrew literature has no trace of such an Ahriman. Now if the Pentateuch was first published in Josiah's reign, there was no subsequent Hebrew literature previous to the captivity, save at the utmost a small part of Jeremiah. All Hezekiah's prophets preceded the Pentateuch, as of course those of "the century preceding his reign;" and then, in what is subsequent Hebrew literature, Satan is certainly found. Thus Zechariah and Chronicles use the term unequivocally. Why then does Mr. N. say that "subsequent Hebrew literature has no trace of such an Ahriman?" It can only really be thus: he forgot his theory; and his conscience, more true than his memory, in happy forgetfulness, recognized the Pentateuch as the genuine, ancient, most ancient, "literature" of the Hebrews, written long and long before Hezekiah's prophets, time enough for the nation to have forgotten the doctrine of the Persian Ahriman, if they ever did.

349 But, if we come to examine the facts, instead of what "apparently therefore must have been;" if they first imbibed it in the Babylonish captivity from the further East, where they were not that we know of, further difficulties start into view. Psalm 109 speaks of Satan, and Job very fully and largely indeed: where did these scriptures get it? I am aware that Psalm 109 is decided by "learned Germans" not to be David's. But it has not yet, as far as I can learn, found its place among the "latest positive results of criticism," so as to fix a date for it. So that it stands either before Hezekiah's prophets, and Mr. N.'s date of the Pentateuch, and disproves his whole theory; or, if after these, subsequent Hebrew literature has such an Ahriman. No one that I find has placed it after the captivity. And Job — where is he to go? Here the "latest positive results" are most untoward. De Wette, in his first four editions, had fixed the date of this book after the captivity. Whether his finding Ahriman in it had any influence in producing this judgment I know not; at any rate in his last we find: "We cannot place its date so low as the Chaldee period, but near it; in the time when the kingdom of Judah was sinking into ruin." Ewald and Hirzel place it, one at the beginning, the other at the end of this century (i.e., the seventh B.C.) — from Josiah to the captivity. That is, the fullest instruction we have as to Satan in the Old Testament is, according to the latest authorities, before the captivity, and exactly in "the subsequent Hebrew literature, which has no trace of such an Ahriman." It "apparently therefore must" not have been adopted from the Persian Ahriman, or "Melek Taous."

There is indeed a way of getting rid of this, suggested in Parker's De Wette, vol 2, p. 563.

"For the sake of the perfection of the poem, we could wish these historical passages were away. Accordingly they have been rejected by Hasse, Stuhlmann, and Bernstein" — what lively jealousy for the reputation of the unknown author! But De Wette's conscience seems to have been growing as he advanced in his enquiries and his years; he continues: "But the prosaic style, the occurrence of Satan therein, the use of the name of Jehovah (while Eloah is elsewhere used in the book for its poetic effect), prove nothing against the genuineness of these passages."

But here we get a most curious discovery. Herder, Eichhorn, Stuhlmann, and Bertholdt, think the Satan mentioned here "is not the common one!" However, we are assured in the same note, that "this is contrary to all analogy." What the analogy is I must leave to the reader to discover in De Wette's Biblische Dogmatik. But I must say, if ever there was a specimen of incapacity to seize the purpose of a moral author — self-sufficiency and a total want of all intelligence, it is in the learned German's account of the merits and contents of the book of Job, as given in the American edition of De Wette.

350 Discussions as to the date of a book which affords none, which affords no direct proof of any, so that it is to be drawn from internal criteria, cannot be surprising; and such there have been amongst those who fully bowed to the book of Job as the word of God. It does not seem to me a very difficult question; but I should not presume to impose an opinion, or dogmatize upon it. That it is inspired scripture no true believer doubts. It is cited in the New Testament, and certainly referred to by Ezekiel. When it was introduced into the canon is comparatively immaterial. I have not myself the least doubt of its antiquity. I am not Hebraist enough to pretend, in any way, to judge of the style; but many of those who are have not found it an obstacle to their conviction.

Besides, I confess I have not very great confidence in the decisions of sceptics as to Hebrew language. I open one writer of credit on these points, and he tells me, "In respect to the language, to the contents and entire spirit, the book belongs not at all to the golden age, but to the later period of Hebrew literature." I beg leave to demur to the contents and spirit; I cite as to the Hebrew. I open another book of credit, and I find: "The nature of the language employed is of itself sufficient to shew that its origin must be referred to a period antecedent to the compositions of the Psalms. In Job the use of Aramaisms is strongly marked, evidently pointing to a period prior to David, in whose time language was purer. Besides, these Aramaisms differ essentially from the later ones, exhibiting an ancient and primitive character quite distinct from the corrupt and degenerate Aramaisms of a later age," and then several examples are given. Indeed, in a language of which so little remains as there does of Hebrew, it requires uncommon nicety of judgment and depth of knowledge, both of the language, and, I may add, of cognate dialects, to judge from such a criterion (except in very clear cases, such as comparing the Pentateuch with the Chaldean period, or even with books written earlier than that). Gesenius mentions a fact which shews the full examination such a ground of judging of age requires:" The ancient Hebrew agrees, in its grammatical structure, more with the modern Arabic than with the ancient." He states how this has arisen, which is not my present subject. He places Job in the golden age of the language in his grammar; in his history of the language, next to Proverbs; in date of style, between the golden and inferior style.

351 It may be well to mention here, that it appears modern German critics have abandoned their old notion of the Josiah date of the Pentateuch, to which Mr. N.'s "eyes were opened" as "he considered the narrative." It is, even for them, at least as old as David and Solomon; for opinionum commenta delet dies. I may add that the greatest masters of the subject are clear that writing began two thousand years at least before Christ, or, as another expresses it, "more ancient than any history is able to disclose. It was a privilege enjoyed by the Shemitish nations a long time before Moses made his appearance in history."

I cite the opinion of German rationalists.*

{*I cite from English translations accessible to me at the moment; I have not the German originals.}

I recall this, as attempts are made to becloud this point too. The result is, that we have Satan (according to Mr. N. himself; the believer cannot have a doubt of it) referred to in the earliest historical books, in the history of the serpent. He is very largely, and with very particular development and purpose, introduced in the book of Job. He is spoken of in Psalm 109; and fully in Zechariah and Chronicles, after the captivity. That is, from the beginning to the end of the Old Testament. So much for "no trace of such an Ahriman," and legends "imported from further East." The latest authorities and best Hebrew scholars of Mr. N.'s views place Job before the captivity (many making it very much earlier; some, indeed, the most ancient book in existence).

But the criticisms on the book of Job are useful to refer to in this way. When the discussion is on historical prophecy, many subjects come before the mind to which natural intellect can apply its powers (dates, historical facts, and the like). The results are just as false as in books more properly didactic; and some unhappy English sceptic, unable to go at the pace at which light German wit and diligent German labour travel in doubt, finds his "eyes opened" some years too late on something on which those of his more assiduous neighbours have already closed again; and we get some Josiah date of the Pentateuch published in English, when no one of the originally opened eyes can see it any longer. But the moral scope of a book abides for every one to examine. Job pretends to no ostensible date. The ways of God are simply and directly in question; and here the glaring incompetency of these unhappy sceptics becomes too evident to bear the light. A converted child — nay, any one who had retained some respect for God — could judge the unimaginable flippancy, the utter incapacity to seize hold of the purport and connection of the divine writings, exhibited by these critics. "Elihu's speeches are spurious; they do not introduce God well; they subvert the scope of the book."

352 I may feel unable to judge whether an Aramaism is an old one or a new, whether there are Arabisms in Job, or whether they are not such as have passed through an Aramaean crucible, and become genuine poetical Hebrew; but Elihu's speeches are before us all; and an English reader, if he has not the linguistic niceties, has the subject fully before him. It is a relief to turn to it. It has been, at least, a comfort to me in my present task to have an opportunity of occupying myself and my reader from time to time with the contents of scripture.

The reader of the book of Job is let in at once into what was really going on, that he may know God's purpose and ways. Job is not. It would have destroyed the effect of the gracious, though painful, process. God takes notice of His saints — "Hast thou considered my servant Job?" Satan's attention thus attracted to them in a way which shews that God, whatever Satan's malice, is the real source of all that is to follow, he becomes the accuser Thus the great scene, of which man (and, we must add, the saint) was the object, really opens.

God, whose purpose is only disclosed at the end in the profit done to Job's soul (though His being the source of all is revealed), leaves Job, in a measured way, in the hand of the adversary for temptation and trial. Such is the scene and spring of action from within. But all comes on Job from without by apparently ordinary causes. The predatory hordes of Sabaeans, Chaldeans, and the like, make razzias on his flocks and herds; a violent wind from the desert throws down his house when his children are feasting; and at last a disease of the country attacks his own body: rapidly accumulated no doubt, but all ordinary events, however trying. What was Job's own character? He was, in his general character, a godly, upright, gracious man, fearing God, eschewing evil, and gracious with those around him. Why should evils, if there be a divine government, fall on such a one? If this world be simply the present manifestation of divine government as such, then indeed it would be incredible. But though Providence overrules all, and God delights to bless even temporarily; and though in result, when He takes to Him His own great power and rules, the blessing of the righteous will fully arrive; yet now, in a world of sin, He is carrying on another purpose, the perfecting of saints for the full enjoyment of Himself. This, since sin and will are come in, is wrought in two ways — judgment of self, and submission to God.

353 Now Job needed, and God saw that he needed, this. He was gracious and pious, but he did not know himself; and he had never so seen God as to be brought to a real knowledge of himself in His presence. God deals therefore with him in a way to bring his sinfulness fully out, and then places him with it, manifested to his conscience, in His own presence. Elihu's place we shall see in a moment. He gives the key to God's ways in grace, in order that the soul which God was dealing with might be brought into God's presence, as under discipline, not under judgment. Job had acted well, for grace had acted in him; but he did not know himself before God. Thus he speaks: "When the ear heard me, then it blessed me; and when the eye saw me, it gave witness to me; because I delivered the poor that cried, and the fatherless, and him that had none to help him. The blessing of him that was ready to perish came upon me, and I caused the widow's heart to sing for joy. I put on righteousness, and it clothed me; my judgment was as a robe and a diadem. I was eyes to the blind, and feet was I to the lame. I was a father to the poor; and the cause which I knew not, I searched out." All very right and gracious; but was it all that was in Job's heart? What did the thinking of it produce there? What did it shew? Men waited for Job, no doubt; but where was Job's heart? What was it? Well, God allows Satan, in his malice, to sweep all he could entirely away; and here more good is displayed in the sufferer. He is patient in his sorrow: he blesses God, and bows his head to Him who gave and saw fit to take away.

But Job's heart was not yet reached. Its reflections on itself there was nothing to change. Men would have said, "What more can you want than grace in prosperity, and patience in adversity?" Such a knowledge of myself as makes God everything to me, and me morally capable of enjoying Him. Had God stopped here, though outwardly preparation had been made for His further work, Job would have been better pleased with himself than ever. Had God restored him now, mischief would have been done. Satan had done all he could. Job's friends arrive, and sympathy or shame (for God will have His blessed work fully done) reveals Job to himself; and he who has become the type of patience curses the day in which he was born. The surface is broken through, and Job, and his friends too, come out in their reality. His friends take the ground of a present certain government of God manifest in all His ways; in which they are wholly and in every sense wrong. Did He directly govern, He could allow no sin at all. He who could suppose this present evil world the expression of the just and adequate results of God's character in government must have an awful idea of God Himself. They were pretty much on Mr. N.'s ground. They had a pre-existing standard of morals, and judged God and all things by it. God loved righteousness, and hated iniquity: Job was under His afflicting hand; consequently, he was a hypocrite. They pronounce, indeed, many "wise saws," common-place truisms, which explained nothing, and reacted no man's conscience, not even their own; and hold their tongues, vexed that their wisdom is despised.

354 In Job two things are brought out — an unbroken, impatient will, which set up to judge God and say that he was more righteous than He; but, at the same time, a heart which had a sense of relationship with God, though in rebellion against Him and writhing under His hand — a perception of qualities in God which shewed a personal knowledge of Himself, which only longed to find Him, and knew when he did he should find Him such. He could not indeed find Him: He was in one way, and who could turn Him aside? But if he did, he would order his cause before Him: God Himself would put words in his mouth. There was that confidence in Him, that he counted upon His heart towards him. When he can get rid of the stupid importunities of his moralizing and heartless friends, he turns to cry after God with an "O that I might find Him!" In justice, he sees it is no use. How can a man plead with God? But in heart he will trust Him, if He slays him. Nothing can be more beautiful than the way he turns thus, casting aside his friends as he may, to throw himself into the arms of God, if he could only find Him. But all was not ready yet: the confidence would be sustained; but the will must be broken, self-complacency destroyed. In this process all manner of feelings come out — impatient anger presumptuously arraigning God, acknowledging present government in pious justification of his ways; clearly proving that it was no present adequate proof of what God thought of a man, a deep personal heart sense of what God is expressed in confidence in Him. The heart was fully exercised: its evil brought out, its good — its faith in God — brought into play: but the riddle was not yet solved.

355 Elihu then comes in, an interpreter, "one among a thousand," and brings in this truth — that God deals personally with man. A general superintending government no doubt there is — a God that judges the earth; but there is another kind of government — that of souls. He turns man from his purpose. He hides pride from man. He hides not His eyes from the righteous. They are with kings; but He binds them in affliction and cords of iron to shew them their works, their transgressions, that they have exceeded. He chastens, He restores, He governs with a view to blessing — and souls in a moral relationship with Himself. He was not God to terrify Job; yet Job could not answer, when God, acting in respect of an unjudged conscience and an unsubdued heart, was brought out.

Yet, while judging the conscience and shewing the sin of the will and pride of heart, such reasoning shewed God's active, condescending, painstaking grace to a soul that had the integrity that was found in Job. Thus God's ways were revealed by the interpreter, and self-righteousness totally set aside. Still one thing remained: where gracious ways had softened the heart of the wilful one for submission, God's own majesty was to be revealed to shew Job his utter folly — worms and sinners that we are. Hence God is displayed in majesty and power; and Job acknowledges his vileness, first by shutting his mouth before God, staving his presumptuous words, and then by opening it in unfeigned confession before the gracious God who dealt with him, in whose presence he now stood in a truth and reality he had never been in before: "I have heard of thee, by the hearing of the ear: but now mine eye seeth thee. Wherefore I abhor myself, and repent in dust and ashes." Then God can fully bless him, and pardon his friends, putting each in his place.

These were, so to speak, the parties in question — self-righteousness referring to present government now; a saint, yet unsubdued and not knowing himself as a poor sinner before God; and the God of majesty with whom they all had to do. Elihu was but an interpreter by the way, and hence not seen when the judgment is to be pronounced. He answers to the intelligent spirit of Christ, acting by the word to teach God's ways as the Church ought to know them. Thus "we have heard of the patience of Job, and have seen the end of the Lord; that the Lord is very pitiful, and of tender mercy." We can add that the Daysman, whom Job sought in vain, has presented for us a perfect, divine, and accepted righteousness before God. Surely He was not one on earth in whom God brought His terror on the sinner. Such, I apprehend, is the purport of this book for every soul — the most instructive revelation of God's ways with men. I do not doubt its application to Jewish's history; for in the Jews God will ultimately display His government of the earth, as He has already to those who have spiritual intelligence to discern it. But that history is but a large picture of man's heart and God's ways that we may learn them.

356 There are higher revelations no doubt in the New Testament. But the sovereign grace and righteousness there revealed have not superseded these principles of intercourse of God with godly men — with the redeemed, and with men in general — which are brought out, independently of all particular dispensations, in this wonderful and most beautiful book. It carefully shuts out thus all special dispensational character or Jewish legal form of knowledge, or God's taking a people specially to Himself, while picturing the dealings developed in them. I have no doubt, from the kind of idolatry referred to, the patriarchal manners and other characteristics of the book, that it is of Mosaic date at least; but however this may be. of its spiritual place and purpose in the holy book of God I have not the least doubt — a godly man, standing with God in government in the earth, and his acceptance before Him.

The reader will remark that sacrifices are introduced as the means of escape from the consequences of our folly and sin in respect of God. The book of Job is the testimony now (independent of all peculiar dispensational truth and blessings; and it was the testimony before there were any) of the great fundamental truths on which all relationship between God and man on earth rests, dispensationally brought out.

I would add, that I have no doubt that 1 Corinthians 7: 37, 38, applies to the man's own state, and not in any way whatever to his daughter's.

Mr. N. speaks of the difficulty which scientific men have of determining what a miracle is; and that the course of nature must be known to know what a deviation from it is. This remark shews how reasoners create difficulties for themselves. The object of a miracle is to shew the intervention of God. If God did, in favour of some one or many, in a day what man would take ten years to do but could do if he had time, it would be a miracle in the truest sense of the word. But if Lazarus was raised from the dead, did any one doubt it was out of the course of nature? If a blind man received his sight from clay and the pool of Siloam, did he doubt it? If a cripple of forty years old from his birth, not expecting it, could leap and walk in a moment, does Mr. N. think that he, or any one in his senses, would wait till science had settled the course of nature to know whether there was a miracle or not?

357 Let the reader remark, I am not now discussing whether these things happened or not, but the difficulty of ascertaining their character, supposing they did happen.

IS GOD OTIOSE, OR ACTIVE IN GRACE?

One point yet remains of the general moral character of the system which I would bring under the notice of the reader. The principle which Mr. N. sets forth as excellent, and the basis of all practical religion, is the sympathy of God with individual man. "The Bible," he says (Phases, p. 188), "is pervaded by a sentiment which is implied everywhere; namely, the intimate sympathy of the pure and perfect God with the heart of each faithful worshipper." Be it so. But sinners with "an antagonist will" are not faithful worshippers. The same Bible declares "there is none that understandeth, none that seeketh after God"; and we all know that it is the case with a vast majority, and has been, if it be not yet, our own case. What is to become of these — in truth, of all? Mr. N.'s philosophical system leaves them to any possible desire which an antagonist will may have to approach. One from whom as such it desires to be free, and whose presence awakens an uneasy conscience which would desire anything rather than to be there. The mass of men — all really — are left in the hopeless condition of those who are not faithful worshippers and care not to become so.

God must reveal nothing — must sit in otiose indifference, till some one changes himself and comes: no word may He speak to engage him. It would be a revelation. Does Christianity leave sinners in this desolate state, and present a God who, if love be in His heart, is helpless to shew it? It is just the contrary. There God is revealed as One who, in Christ, comes to seek and save that which was lost. The Good Shepherd at all cost to Himself seeks His sheep — -gives His life for His sheep. Christianity does speak of more than "sympathy for the worshipper" — it speaks of communion. But it is first of all the activity of God's love towards them that were perishing by their own fault far from Him — a love exercised towards them though their will was antagonist. It reveals a God of love, who cared for — thought of — those who did not care for Him — who has compassion on sinners, that they may become thankful worshippers. Judaism did own faithful worshippers, though at the outset it had, as a figure, sought out an enslaved and suffering people. But in Christianity God is fully revealed, not helpless to shew His love, but coming in goodness to the sinner where he is, that thus love may give assurance to the heart, and the work of redemption peace to the conscience; so that the sinner may have boldness to approach because God came to him in grace, when he dared not — could not — come to God.

358 It is this which is the answer of the Lord to the Pharisees, who reproached Him for receiving sinners and eating with them.

The shepherd sought his sheep from the earnest care of his own heart for it. The woman used all diligence to find her piece of money. The joy was the shepherd's, and the woman's. And how is the sinner received when he turns to God? The returning prodigal had his father on his neck while in his rags, and the best robe to enter into the house. It was his father's joy to have him back there. Such is the God revealed in Christ. Where is Mr. N.'s? It is a philosophical god, to be found by philosophers. Trouble Himself to seek you! How should a God reveal Himself? It is an unplausible thing. And if I have found Him, and found Him to be love — silence! to speak of Him would be a revelation; to listen, second-hand faith. Let others find Him if they care to do so; if not, nobody knows what will become of them. Nor does the philosopher mind this much more than the helpless careless god he professes to have found.

I leave to Mr. N. to say why he writes against a book in which is found the basis of all practical religion, which is pervaded by it, and which alone, as he admits, has preserved and produced it.

Dialogues on the Essays and Reviews, section a.

Christianity and the Education of the World.

J. N. Darby.

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Well, H., have you read the "Essays and Reviews?"

H. I have; I am somewhat late in doing so; I thought I might have seen them abroad, but the book was not sent me as I expected. But my sojourn there has enabled me to judge somewhat more distinctly of the character of this effort. As might be supposed, it is not an isolated one in the remarkable working of principles, both good and evil, which we see in the present day.

W. You do not mean that rationalism is on the increase in Germany (I think you were last in that country).

H. By no means. It had found the extreme of its limits both religiously and philosophically, and the reaction has necessarily set in: for truth there is, and good there is, at least in God, in spite of man; and when men have displayed the extremes to which the evil of human nature and human will and its revolt against God can go, there is, under divine light (at least till man, as we read, be given up to believe a lie) a reaction of natural conscience, and the instinct which knows and feels that a God there is, and that He is and must be good. Under this influence man revolts against what shocks a conscience informed by Christianity, and, in a general way, desires to have to say to God, because he has learned that He is good, and feels that a bad God, a God with whom we have nothing to do, and a revelation that is only deceit and falsehood, can give no comfort. I have no thought that a man can go right without grace; but there is a natural conscience which sees through dishonesty, and wants truth and grace — sees, at least, that the contrary is not a true representation of God. It wants something more sure in a revelation than a product of man's mind, a history of the Hebrew monarchy, or an inspiration somewhat, perhaps, superior to Shakespeare, which learned men can criticise. This may do for Essayists and Reviewers, but it will not do for the wants of the soul in daily life. It will not do for the poor. Such views may make pretentious infidels of them, retailing what they have read, and thinking themselves wise, because they have a certain number of objections against what is good and blessed; but they can give no help or food to any. I have always remarked of infidels, or infidel writers (for it is better to call things by their names), that they can make you doubt (no wonder) of many things, but they can give you nothing. They never give you one certain truth. The word of God gives you many certain truths. It makes you doubt of nothing It has no need; for it possesses the truth, and gives what is positive. This is an immense difference: it stamps both morally. When infidel minds speak of a love of truth, they never, that I can see, go farther than Pilate: What is truth? It is never a holding fast truth they have got, but a casting doubt on what others believe, and, professing to search for it, always to be ready to receive it, I suppose because they have never got it.

2 W. But when you speak of the wants of the soul, do you believe that in the mass of men these spiritual wants exist?

H. I believe there are hidden wants everywhere. I do not say a new nature, a changed will, but cravings of a soul that has capacities beyond the sphere in which it is imprisoned; rarely shewing themselves in the toil and follies of life, but which press into notice on particular occasions through the disordered throng of thoughts which crowd the avenues and people the busy interior of a dissipated and care-burdened existence. But it is not of this I speak now. I think that the mass of the poor have more reality of thought than reasoners — see more justly the true character of things. The occupation with labour gives this. They toil to exist. That is now God's ordinance. What they get outside it must be real. Speculation has no place here. They may know nothing of a revelation, but if they have the thought that there is one, they want one that is a revelation from God — something He has told them, not an improved Shakespeare. If they have Diana and Jupiter, they take Diana and Jupiter as realities. If they are under the law of Moses, they will not spiritualize everything with Philo, or his modern imitators. They will take it as Moses gave it, or not at all. If they are idolaters, they will be idolaters bona fide, not readers of Lucian. If they are sceptical — if this pervades the population — not merely religion but the state is near its end. By that I mean society. When man speculates on the sanctions of social life — when the divine ever-living power of faith is gone, what holds man subject to something superior to himself — when what links man to man is gone, self is dominant, conscious that it is self. A few minds may speculate on how much may be true, and seek refined notions out of the condemned mass of materials: the mass of men will be indifferent to all. Despotism or anarchy ensues. How long did the Roman empire survive Lucian, who was but a sign of the times? or the French monarchy the Encyclopedists? On the fall of Rome Christianity came in as a bond; now I see not what will, save the faithfulness of God and the Lord Himself from heaven. This does not prove that anything is true, I admit; but it proves that there is moral power in faith, and that the absence of faith is the destruction of society. And upon the face of it, the faith of the masses is not discriminative speculation.

3 W. But are you one of those who take religion to be a means subservient to society?

H. God forbid. The revelation of God is, for me, the putting an immortal soul, through grace, in communication with the eternal fountain of blessedness, of light, of love — with God Himself. Doubtless, most important revelations accompany it, necessary for the existence or full development of this. I have God manifest in the flesh. I have the blessed relationships of Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, without which it is impossible for man to be thus connected with God. Besides, I have the Church united to Christ — subjects into which I cannot enter now, but which (while, when revealed, they give to us conscious links of union with what is divine, and develop divine affections in the relationships they place us in) must be the subject of revelation. Man's mind cannot go beyond its own sphere. It is not God, and, if it is to be really elevated, must be elevated by something that is outside and above itself. That is, there must be a positive revelation of something not within the sphere of its own proper apprehensions. It may develop its own powers, it may create poetically what is within the sphere of those powers; but in the nature of things it cannot by itself get beyond itself. You may have Shakespeare to give all the scope of the human mind, all its workings, in a course of pictures, from its highest to its lowest forms, with a graphic truth which may interest in the most absorbing way minds inferior to his — minds which cannot do this for themselves; but it is always and must be the human mind, and within the sphere of its own limits, or it would not be the human mind. The consequence is that, though it may elevate these inferior minds above their level, it contents them with man, and in result, by excluding God, degrades them from what they might be. Poetry is the effort of the human mind to create, by imagination, a sphere beyond materialism, which faith gives in realities. But then it cannot rise above the level of its source, whatever displays of force there may be by its being conducted in a secret channel, and not exposed to be wasted in the open intercourse of the world. In result, it sinks down to the level towards which all human nature runs, and then settles, not to rise again. There may be a certain subjective development of mind in its use, but no more.

4 W. But men speak of the inspiration of Shakespeare and others — even of ordinary men under happy or religious influences.

H. There is a confusion of language and thought between revelation and inspiration. We may use the latter term figuratively of the animated efforts of the human mind, compared with the platitudes of ordinary life, or, as is habitually done, of the instrumental power by which unknown truths are communicated by God to the human mind. But revelation is quite another thing, of which inspiration in the highest sense is but the form or instrument (for it is both) — that is, the actual presentation to us of an object, or a truth, or a fact not otherwise known. Here I get an additional object not otherwise obtained for the human mind. As to will, moral or spiritual qualities, the mind may or may not be capable of discerning or appreciating it. That is a theological question, a most important one, but not exactly our topic now. But revelation is the declaration, the actual promulgation, of otherwise unknown truths — often those which could not otherwise be known. Sometimes of those which in the actual condition of the individuals could not be known.

There is another enormous moral mistake, that internal power is that by which man advances in the moral scale of being. Power in man is limited to what man is. That is no advance beyond what he is. An acorn may become an oak, but in its nature it is never but an oak. Even so power is not the real thing that elevates man (though in man there is another question: an oak is not a corrupt fallen thing). "I can do all that may become a man; who can do more is none." There is man's power at its limit. If I may quote one who amongst men had hardly his like, I find more; I only say now, he pretends to more: let history and facts judge of his claim: — "I can do all things through him that strengtheneth me." Phil. 4: 13 Here I find another and divine source of strength carrying him morally beyond man.

5 But (to state to you distinctly the principle I refer to) a dependent being (and a creature is a dependent being or a revolted one, perhaps a revolted dependent one) is elevated by its wants, not by its powers. Its powers may develop it, but cannot elevate it. But if I have a want, which is not power, and there is that which meets my want outside myself, I become acquainted with it. I appreciate it, not by power, but by dependence on the quality by which my want is supplied. Hunger is not power; but it enjoys and appropriates food which gives power. Weakness is not power; but if my languid body leans on kindly and supporting strength, my felt weakness makes me know what strength is. But I learn more by it. I learn the kindness, patience, goodness, readiness, help, and perseverance in helping which sustain me. I have the experience of independent strength, adapted, suited to my weakness. I know its capacity to sustain what is beyond itself, which is not my power elevating itself in internal development — self-filling power. There is love.

Now this relationship of wants to that which supplies them in another is the link between my nature and all the qualities of the nature I lean on, and which supplies these wants. I know its qualities by the way it meets my not having them — my want of power. It is a moral link too. I know love by it, and all the unfolding of goodness; self-power never does. The exaltation of what is human in itself is the positive loss of what is divine, that is, infinite positive loss. There is immense moral depth in the apostle's word: When I am weak, then am I strong. And the more I have of God, and the more absolutely it is so, the more I gain. All is appropriated, but self is destroyed. It is not that I cease to exist, or to enjoy. It is not a Buddhist or stoical pantheistic absorption into God. I am always the conscious I for ever; yet an I which does not think of I, but of God in whom its delight is. It is a wonderful perfection — an absolute delight in what is perfect, but in what is perfect out of ourselves, so that self is morally annihilated, though it always is there personally to enjoy. This is partly now in the form of thirst, though there be enjoyment — hereafter, for those who have it, perfect enjoyment face to face. God alone is sufficient for Himself, is αὐταρχες, and hence not self-seeking, for that comes from not being satisfied, not sufficient for self. Out of Him the αὐταρχεια is pride, satisfaction with misery, and itself a sin; dependence is the right, holy, loving, excellent place. To be independent, if we are not God, is folly, stupidity, and a lie, living in a lie. If we are God, we must be the only one, or we are not it at all. Yet in Christianity we are made partakers of the divine nature, in order to our having the fullest capacity of enjoyment; but for that very reason we have (He being perfectly revealed) such a knowledge of Him as makes us undividedly delight in His infinite excellence, and makes our dependence to be our deriving in love from infinite excellence, and in our normal state unmingled delight in it.

6 The connection of the derivative and perfect objective character of divine life and love is what is so brought out in John, particularly in his epistle; it makes its essential depth and beauty, and, when not seized because not possessed, its difficulty and apparently mystic character. It is this which makes the Trinity have so sure and perfect a place to the soul. I do not use this as a proof, save as the real present enjoyment of anything proves to the heart it is true. In the Father I have absolute Godhead in its own intrinsic permanent perfection. In the Son I find what is divine (if not in the same perfection, I have not God revealed) brought out in man, fully wrought into all that is sinlessly human; so that it is not only suited to man but to be apprehended (if morally capable of it) by man. All the fulness of the Godhead dwells in Him bodily, at the same time in the personal relationship of Son. And the Holy Ghost (besides my having a life from God, and so being partaker of the divine nature) is the power in me (morally as well as in power of apprehension) by which I apprehend and enter into communion with God, with the Father and the Son; while this presence of the Holy Ghost secures in my feebleness the truth and purity of this communion, because any inconsistency grieves Him; and He works in the conscience by the revelation of God, though not then in communion.

Now you must see that there is much that must be directly revealed in such subjects as these. Even of what is bodily brought before us, as in the life of Jesus on earth, though in itself a revelation, an account of it is needed, not only to perpetuate it — which is quite true — but also to give a divine view of the thing revealed, which, it is evident, man by sight would have hardly seized in its full extent or bearings; or could not in its links with other unseen or unknown things. But besides this we want a divine account of what is short of the revelation of God Himself to man; namely, a revelation of the terms on which man stood with Him, and of His ways with man. This will involve man's imperfection, and, if historically given, the expression of that imperfection, but will be God's account of it.

7 W. Yes; but it is just when we get on this ground that there are difficulties and objections which perplex the mind difficulties I mean both as to the record of truth, and as to the moral proprieties of evangelical truths.

H. I do not deny it, not that I judge they are very weighty. But as to the first point, it does not surprise me that, in a record which reaches over some fifteen hundred years or more, committed to the care of man — for that it professes to be — I should find the traces of the infirmity of man, while its state in those circumstances, and its whole history, is the most striking possible proof of the providence of God. It is of the essence of a revelation made in grace, to be adapted to man, connected with man, to pass through the medium of man's moral nature, and be put, so to speak, into his hands. It could not draw the sympathies of his nature in the same way if it did not. It would not associate man with God, if it did not connect God and man in interests, affections, moral nature, if it did not give a common ground of moral association. Hence the New Testament does it much more than the Old — is more familiar, more human, takes its place more in every element of human circumstances.

In the Old, after the revelation of the creation, as a starting-point and sphere of God's manifestation by and in man, I find history as to which I am left to judge morally — most instructive history, if I know how to use it; but a public government of this world, or occasional relationships between God and man, in which I have to form a spiritual judgment how far men are up to the height of a true association with God. For the true link was not yet formed by the full revelation of God in grace: only a partial revelation of it anticipatively, and particular communications; and God dwelt in the thick darkness; then oracular dicta, a "Thus saith the Lord" — God shewing grace, speaking to man, but speaking Himself alone — no doubt by the mouth of men, His word using them so as to approach man in sovereign goodness where man had failed. The word of the Lord came to such a one, it is said. But it was as an instrument, a channel of communication, so that they searched out the meaning of their own prophecies.

In the New, I find a history of perfection; for God is manifest in the flesh. It is not communications from a God not revealed, but the revelation of God. Hence it is perfect on His part in that association of which I spoke. It is the Word made flesh — God in man moving in the circumstances of men amongst men, and is not what I have to judge of spiritually in man, but the perfection which judges all else — the truth, an object, which, if I have a heart capable of seeing it and loving it, engages it absolutely, because it is God, because it is man, because it is God in man and I am a man; the perfect object linking itself with every moral delight of my new nature, meeting at the same time every want of my moral being in perfect grace; finding in those wants, yea, even in my sins, the occasion of manifesting grace to it, of making me know God by them — at least by the perception of the way He meets them in love. It forms and fills the capacities of my nature in what is divine, as beauty does a capacity to perceive it. Yet it meets all my wants with good, which puts man in his right place of dependence, in grace, on God; but gives entire confidence, because He is come as myself, as far as being a man in everything but what is a defect in man (that is, sin). He is that by which I judge everything, not which I have to judge as a history of man, though it be of man in various relationships with God.

8 Besides, I have in the New Testament another immensely important element of our relationship with God. This blessed One was rejected. Such is the history we have. It is the full discovery of this solemn truth, that the carnal mind is enmity against God. And the other part of the New Testament is the unfolding of the way in which, through God's being sovereign in love over man's evil, He has, in the perfect display of righteousness, been able — glorifying Himself perfectly in the work of Christ in the putting away of evil — to associate man in his new nature with Himself, out of the reach of the evil, and according to His own perfection, where the feebleness and the misery will and can exist no longer. Thus a perfect heavenly relationship is formed, ourselves holy and without blame before Him in love, and His own children in His house, associated with and like Him who became a man for us in grace. To this are added the various exercises accompanying the knowledge and faith of this in weakness, and the fitting display of the fruits of it in those partakers of this life, in connection with heaven, but in the weakness of an earthly vessel. This display of the divine in man, and the bringing man up to God in His own blessedness, form the contents of the New Testament: we may add, the setting the world right ultimately, in peace, by the divine government in man.

What I have just remarked, if you examine it a little closely, you will find to be the difference between the writings of Paul and John, and the reason of the special attractiveness of the writings of the latter. John brings God down in man to earth. It is the divine down here, and it is the perfection of loveliness and truth. Paul brings man out of the earth and up to heaven. You will see that, save in casual allusions necessarily made or complementary to the main subject, John never takes even Christ up to heaven. He brings the divine person- down here in human kindness, diffusing what is perfectly divine into the hearts of men that can receive Him, through his own person, and at any rate manifesting it among them. And hence too it is, that it was John's part to go on to the Apocalypse; because, though in certain respects on much lower ground, inasmuch as it is the government of the world, it is still the display of God's ways and character on the earth.

9 W. This to me, though thus briefly sketched, is profoundly interesting. But what place do the Psalms hold in this view of the character of the Old and New Testaments?

H. I was going to say a word on them. They have their own and a very peculiar place. We have no devotional pieces prepared for the Church in the New Testament, which gives this point more importance, and I think additionally shews the grace of God, and the perfect and divine harmony of that book we call the Bible. I say, that book; for, though there be many authors instrumentally, it is one book — though our Bibliotheca Sancta, as Jerome says.

In the New Testament the saints (having the knowledge of perfect divine favour, the love of God shed abroad in their hearts by the Holy Ghost given to them, and that blessed Spirit dwelling in them) are supposed to be capable of praising God freely. It is expressed in a very wonderful manner in Psalm 22. After giving prophetic utterance to the sorrows of Christ, and His being forsaken of God, He is heard from the horns of the unicorn. As soon as He enters into the full light of His Father's countenance, according to the power of redemption and the work that He had wrought, He declares His Father's name, as He thus knows it, to His brethren: He puts them in relationship with the Father as He is Himself; as He historically did, "Go tell my brethren . . . I go to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God." John 20: 17 This was a position entirely new, consequent upon His resurrection, in which He had not only taken a new place as man, but acquired it for them. Then in the psalm He says, "In the midst of the church will I sing praise unto thee." Heb. 2: 12 Our praises then are the free and joyful following of Christ in the praises which He can raise, as man, in entering into the full light of His Father's countenance, according to the work He has wrought. But this could not be till perfect and intimate love was revealed to man, and men were brought, according to a righteous exercise of it, into the enjoyment of the light of God's countenance, according to the value of that work which had given them the title to be there.

10 Hence, if I should find the same perfection portrayed in the Old Testament as in the New, I should know it was not true. Before the revelation of God Himself, and our being brought on a new footing into His presence (that is, in the Old Testament), the dealings of God with man, on the moral condition in which He was as a child of Adam, are unfolded — God never leaving Himself without witness, for He is good, but for a time leaving man without an express revelation; afterwards giving one of promise or of law, so that the moral nature of man should be wrought on by hopes, fears, promises, warnings, judgments, and mercies. In a word, God was dealing with man on the ground of man's responsibility, and trying the effect of motives. Could man in flesh, walking on the earth, be in relationship with God? It was not God Himself revealed, and man reconciled to Him according to His unclouded heavenly character, but God governing the earth in mercy and righteousness, and man's moral condition tested thereby: on the one hand, wickedness and self-will breaking forth, and, where there was really grace, failure no doubt, but faith in God, confidence, hope, integrity, acknowledgment of sin, dependence on and delighting in Him, in spite of all. But man, not being reconciled to God, knows God only by His ways, and a word adapted to man in this outside position. How, with failure and conscious sin, could that confidence be maintained, without which no heart-link could exist? If we are reconciled to God, where the Spirit of adoption is, when by one offering we are perfected for ever, praise is easy and spontaneous, though acknowledgment of failure be called for. If repeated sacrifices give momentary ease, yet even these were the witness that sin still subsisted. The way into the holiest was not yet made manifest; nor was God revealed outside it. He was a God of hope, not of communion.

Here the Psalms, in the most gracious and lovely way, find their place, not the peaceful breathings of a reconciled soul, but God furnishing the true but tried soul with divinely given and therefore surely accepted expressions of every feeling which a soul in such a state could need to express, and the witness of the entire sympathy of the Spirit of Christ in all their sorrows and exercises of heart. To be perfect, man must be within — children in a new accepted state. But for the heart divinely quickened, and exercised without — wishing, hoping, fearing, confiding, yet tried, guilty, sometimes almost despairing, yet still clinging — the Spirit of Jehovah puts His word in the tongue of the Psalmist to give a divine utterance to otherwise a perhaps distrusted feeling, or to draw the heart from a feeling of distrust: and the Psalms become the comfort of every tried and godly soul. Hence it is that, as the expression of a soul tried in the present dark government of this world, the judgment and destruction of enemies in this world is looked for — a judgment which must take place for the power of evil to be removed by government out of it. The Christian has nothing to do with that, because he is entirely associated with heaven, enters within the veil by a new and living way, and will leave the evil to go to heaven, and is above it morally all his life long. Hence the thoughts and feelings of spiritual minds in the Old Testament must be imperfect. They are the fruit of grace, giving confidence to the soul when yet far from God, and the expression of its feelings at that distance, and according to the state it finds itself in, looking to God in and out of that. And all this I must have to know what the true condition of the human heart is, looked at in its exercised responsible condition out of paradise: man with a knowledge of good and evil; the goodness and righteousness of God as regards that state being revealed to him, and all the various workings of his nature under this provided for, with the promise of a better deliverance to come. Christianity is another thing altogether: exercises there are, no doubt, but they are the exercises of a reconciled soul, which has its place and dwelling with God, known Himself in love.

11 W. But you do not feign that Old Testament saints looked only for temporal promises.

H. I do not. I do not doubt that, according to the measure of their faith, though they did look for the exercise of God's government for deliverance here, yet in the delay of this they looked out of it all to a better place, though obscurely enough. But this changes nothing. They looked to it as a resource out of a scene they belonged to. The Christian dwells in it if in his right place, and has to cultivate the affections which belong to his Father's house as his own home. You will remark that I do not merely mean that in result Old Testament feelings are imperfect, for that may well be said of ours; but that the basis of them, the moral sphere in which they moved, necessarily made them imperfect; they were not in place, if they were not. God might inspire feelings right for those without — hope, desire, confidence; but He could not truly inspire to those without the feelings which expressed being within, for those feelings would not have been true. My feelings, if right, are the feelings of one within in my Father's house as a known home, reconciled to God. Theirs, if right, were those of persons without, looking for the present government of this world, and confiding in God in spite of subsisting evil in a world to which they belonged. He that is of the earth is earthy, says the greatest born of woman, and speaketh of the earth: He that cometh from heaven is above all; and what He hath seen and heard that He testifieth.

12 W. I think I understand you; but it was very great grace God's entering into the very sorrows and condition of an earthly people, at least, by His Spirit and word, furnishing them with assurances of His faithfulness, and expressions for a heart which could not speak as at peace, reconciled, and within, and yet needed the sense and sustaining of favour. Yet of course it is better to have affections which belong to the house developed within as children of the house. It gives a wonderfully interesting and enlarged scope of thought in reading scripture, and makes God more familiar with the soul as truly estimating and dealing with its thoughts. But these saints will be in heaven.

H. Doubtless they will. They received that divine nature which has its place there, but not in the conscious heavenly relationship formed on known redemption. God had reserved some better thing for us, that they without us should not be made perfect. They will be made perfect in resurrection; but what a lesson shall we have learnt — ay, will the angels have learnt, of the ways and dealings and goodness of God, and, instead of that miserable αὐταρχεια which was the heathen's boast, what a moulding of a thousand excellent feelings through dependence on God, in the midst of evil and in the sense of imperfection, which He met by His word as a resource for faith! How tender and familiar, while exalting His majesty by goodness, God thus becomes! Yet it was right we should understand that by a perfect sacrifice we could in a new nature enjoy God as He is in Himself, and that is our christian place. This is what the apostle unfolds in its elements in Romans 5. Being justified (for it must be a divinely righteous thing, or it is not really introduction to God's nature) we have peace with God: as regards all evil the question is settled; grace or favour wherein we stand; our hope that of the glory of God Himself. These, you would say, are all. Yes, as regards my place, but not my exercises of heart. "Not only so, but we glory in tribulations," not looking out of them merely in hope, but glorying in them as a refining work, because the love of God is shed abroad in our hearts by the Holy Ghost given to us; and I have the key to all my sorrows: God's love is the joy of my heart. Hence, again, not only so, but I joy in God, through our Lord Jesus Christ by whom we have now received the reconciliation.

13 W. It makes rationalism and infidelity appear very superficial.

H. There is nothing more characteristic of it than superficiality. It never gets beyond the bark and shell of the divine fruit of the word. In the midst of the most admirable development of divine ways, it will stop to complain that the numberings of Israel and Judah are not the same in Samuel and Chronicles. How, they ask me, do you account for that? Suppose I answer (though in this case there is not much difficulty) I cannot account for it at all — I should not be a bit the worse off. I have a positive proof of perfect divine wisdom in the book and in all its details, for these details give to the whole the character it has. Man's estimate of things, partly influenced by the Spirit of God — his thoughts, his feelings, the evil, the rebellions, the faults, the unbelief, the way God met it all go to make up the picture of what man was before God, and the scene of God's dealings in mercy and truth with men, till, as it is expressed, mercy and truth meet together, and righteousness and peace kiss each other. Every detail lost, would be a loss of the completeness. Some trait would fail of these wonderful unfoldings of what man is in relationship with God. Suppose my intelligence of some of the details fails me, that I cannot account for some phenomenon, I lose something of course — the proofs of the completeness. The dealings of God, however, have not disappeared. I cannot (I suppose the case) explain some particular point, nor solve an apparent discrepancy in a number. I pity the person whose perception of the perfection of all is hindered by a difficulty he cannot explain. To my mind the greatest part of these difficulties is the fruit of the ignorance and traditional views of the objectors. This volume proves it. I may not be able to solve, God may try our faith by, some such things, through the human weakness of those to whom these divine oracles were entrusted; but He will always answer and bless our faith.

W. Have you any case on your mind?

14 H. I judge that superficiality is universally characteristic of rationalist views, but I will allude to one prominent subject with them. Before I heard of rationalists I had, as others no doubt, clearly seen the Petrine and Pauline and Johannean characters into which parts of the divine revelation were thrown. Of the beauty and moral harmony, the goodness of God in this, the enormous gain and advantage to us, which fill the believer's mind, they have not the smallest perception. They can only spell out possible historical inconsistencies, and think of the books as the fruit of some ecclesiastical intrigues to reconcile christian factions, or give the authority of apostolic names to cover resistance to heresies come in long after. That God in perfect love to man should give in one instruction how far the Christian, redeemed from the world, should, as a pilgrim in it, be connected with its government by God as more directly displayed in the Old Testament, as Peter does; that the blessed revelation of God Himself (as it is expressed, No man hath seen God at any time; the only begotten Son, who is in the bosom of the Father, He hath declared Him) and of eternal life in Him in all its nature and qualities, should be given in John; and man presented to God in righteousness and resurrection, and conferred privileges in heaven, be developed in Paul: — all this is lost on them. They are trying to prove it imposture, or reconcile dates, or discuss the possible author, provided no one pretend it to be genuine. There is an incapacity to perceive the divine which is difficult to conceive. Yet I believe it is useful. Happily the most advanced of these wise men are so entirely unhistorical, that they have no credit with sober minds, even with those who are not much affected by the divine.

English theologians are so shut up in traditional lore, that they think rationalists have upset all inspiration, if they overthrow their own traditions; just as a poor Roman Catholic turns infidel often, if he comes to think a bit of bread is not the body, blood, soul, and divinity of the Lord Jesus. Thus our Essayists tell us as a great discovery, that no man can now suppose that the tower of Babel was built to be high enough to escape the flood — a puerile conceit of which there is not a trace in the scriptural account, but, instead of it, an immense moral historical fact. Their declared object was to make themselves a name, to have a centre, which should hinder their being scattered abroad upon the face of the whole earth. It was centralization; not with God for a centre, but to combine the whole race in one system of united power. This God confounded, and made them into nations, which they had never been before at all. This immense fact in the history of the world they see nothing of, and think they have made a great discovery which upsets the scripture account in shewing that it could not be to escape the flood. "No doubt they are the men, and wisdom shall die with them." Job 12: 2 We get in this part of scripture the two great elements on which all the world has proceeded since — nationalities, and individual ambitions seizing imperial power. But you must never trust the statements of this class of persons as to anything. There is the greatest pretension to new light; and some very questionable hypothesis of a moment is stated as a settled ascertained fact, with a coolness which is a mark of the want of the honesty of a conscience fearing God. In these Essays and Reviews there are statements which are a disgrace to any upright or honest man — Jesuitical to a degree which is sufficient to destroy all moral confidence in one who could have such sentiments; the publication of which proves that those who publish them are arrived at a point of moral insensibility at which they have lost the sense of shame in making their shame known. They are not aware how bad it is.

15 W. But this is rather strong language.

H. To be sure it is; there are acts and traits in which, if they do not excite indignation, one is a partaker morally. What do you say to this? —

"It is stated to be the affirming, that any of the Thirty-nine Articles are in any part 'superstitious, or erroneous.' Yet an Article may be very inexpedient, or become so; may be unintelligible, or not easily intelligible to ordinary people; it may be controversial, and such as to provoke controversy and keep it alive when otherwise it would subside; it may revive unnecessarily the remembrance of dead controversies all or any of these without being 'erroneous;' and though not 'superstitious,' some expressions may appear so: such as those which seem to impute an occult operation to the sacraments . . . .

"The other canon which concerns subscription is the thirty-sixth, which contains two clauses explanatory, to some extent, of the meaning of ministerial subscription, 'That he alloweth the Book of Articles,' &c., and 'that he acknowledgeth the same to be agreeable to the word of God.' We 'allow' many things which we do not think wise or practically useful; as the less of two evils, or an evil which cannot be remedied, or of which the remedy is not attainable, or is uncertain in its operation, or is not in our power, or concerning which there is much difference of opinion, or where the initiation of any change does not belong to ourselves, either of the things as they are, or of searching for something better. Many acquiesce in, submit to, 'allow,' a law as it operates upon themselves which they would be horror-struck to have enacted; yet they would gladly and in conscience 'allow' and submit to it, as part of a constitution under which they live, against which they would never think of rebelling, which they would on no account undermine, for the many blessings of which they are fully grateful — they would be silent and patient rather than join, even in appearance, the disturbers and breakers of its laws. Secondly, he 'acknowledgeth' to be agreeable to the word of God Some distinctions may be founded upon the word 'acknowledge.' He does not maintain, nor regard it as self-evident, nor originate it as his own feeling, spontaneous opinion, or conviction; but when it is suggested to him, put in a certain shape, when the intention of the framers is borne in mind, their probable purpose and design explained, together with the difficulties which surrounded them, he is not prepared to contradict, and he acknowledges. There is a great deal to be said, which had not at first occurred to him; many other better and wiser men than himself have acknowledged the same thing — why should he be obstinate? Besides, he is young, and has plenty of time to reconsider it; or he is old, and continues to submit out of habit, and it would be too absurd, at his time of life, to be setting up as a church reformer . . . .

16 "We have spoken hitherto of the signification of subscription which may be gathered from the canons; there is, also, a statute, a law of the land, which forbids, under penalties, the advisedly and directly contradicting any of them by ecclesiastics, and requires subscription with declaration of 'assent' from beneficed persons. This statute (13 Eliz cap. 12), three hundred years old, like many other old enactments, is not found to be very applicable to modern cases; although it is only about fifty years that it was said by Sir William Scott to be in viridi observantiâ. Nevertheless, its provisions would not easily be brought to bear on questions likely to be raised in our own days. The meshes are too open for modern refinements. For, not to repeat concerning the word 'assent' what has been said concerning 'allow' and 'acknowledge,' let the Articles be taken according to an obvious classification. Forms of expression, partly derived from modern modes of thought or metaphysical subjects, partly suggested by a better acquaintance than heretofore with the unsettled state of christian opinion in the immediately post-apostolic age, may be adopted with respect to the doctrines enunciated in the first five Articles without directly contradicting, impugning, or refusing assent to them, but passing by the side of them — as with respect to the humanifying of the divine word and to the divine Personalities." — Essays and Reviews, pp. 182-186.

And remark here, this does not refer to minute discrepancies of view which are often connected with the very structure of individual mind where there is no real difference in substance. It is directly referred to the fundamental doctrines of the Incarnation and the Persons in the Trinity; as to this they justify signing your assent, meaning that you do not agree, but "pass by the side of them." Now I say, that a person who could unblushingly avow such opinions does not deserve to be heard on any moral question whatever.

17 W. But you cannot charge them all with the views of one.

H. Not of course as to details; but when they agree to appear together, and bind up their articles in a common volume to act together on the public mind, by a common testimony, they are practically associated — I admit, not in details of opinions, but in the general purport and moral aim and character of the book. And I do say, that such pages as 180-186 put them out of court as to their title to be heard on divine things.

W. They are very bad, in truth.

H. We will leave that, though to my mind it is not an evil that the minds of all who believe in the revelation God has given should know where the system of rationalism leads morally — at any rate, when it is attempted to be connected with established Christianity.

W. What were you saying as to the tendency you had observed on the Continent?

H. We have indeed had a long preface, but the perfect beauty of scripture leads one on.

W. It is no loss to have had this much. I believe that the positive perception of the excellency and beauty of what is true and good is the best security against cavil and difficulties. These difficulties take their right proportion and their right place. The truth is divinely certain. And there are difficulties, not objections.

H. Surely, and the difference is of all-importance. A person who makes an objection out of a difficulty proves the spirit he is animated with, especially when the thing he objects against is supremely lovely. He shews himself incapable of judging. Either he does not perceive the loveliness, or he dislikes it. But what you refer to was this, an effort to popularize, in France, as well as England, the infidel conclusions drawn from German research. I bought a translation of Job, by a first-rate oriental scholar in France, not heeding his opinions, but hoping to find some profound examination of the text. I found in his introduction merely the assumption, that all the German infidelity was a conceded matter, and putting it into plain French. This is just what the "Essays and Reviews" are attempting. Now where there is divine faith, this does not do much; but the mass may have educational faith in the scriptures, so that they are respected as true, and have a hold on the conscience. They cannot have by this the proof that the believer has, in that the word has divinely reached his own conscience. But when the confidence of those who are believers in the word as such, by habit and education merely, is gone, you have to begin farther back in the matter; the population are tending to apostasy, not mere heart unbelief; and that is what Satan is seeking to do now. It is not the open honest denial of the old deist, against which the claims of a denied Christianity raised with most a rampart in the conscience too strong to be overcome; but the keeping up the name and garb of Christianity, and blunting its edge and undermining its foundations, so that what is of God in it may be wholly given up, and the authority of God's word over the conscience gone; for if it be God's word it has absolute authority. A man that would speak of Shakespeare having authority over my conscience would be a fool. They may parade human inspiration, and compare degrees of it. God's authority is wholly gone, and man is free in the perversion of his will. Shakespeare never made a saint. Modern infidelity will allow Christianity as much as you please, provided Christ be, as another, a minister to elevate humanity as it is — comes in in his own place as one eminent instrument, and man, "I," be all. I maintain the authority of God's word because it is God's, that man is lost in himself, and that God has appeared. Owned, we possess Him in blessing; rejected, we are His self-condemned enemies. I maintain redemption which brings man out of the condition he was in into another new and blessed one before God, according to His own righteousness and holiness. I do not want humanity educated, but God known.

18 W. I see you have finished your preface, at any rate, and that your zeal has landed you at Rugby. Let us hear what you have to say of Dr. Temple.

H. I am sure you will excuse my zeal. I have not an unkindly feeling that I am conscious of towards a living being; but when I see what is divinely perfect and good and reverenced flippantly assailed, I have no wish to exhibit indifference: and when men jeopard the faith of millions, as far as their acts are concerned, when they treat with a light hand the Lord of glory, and the authority of His words, they merit scornful rebuke for what they do, if even its execution be pretentious and superficial.

Such, whatever my feebleness in shewing it may be, is the judgment I have formed of these "Essays and Reviews." They are mischievous, not by their depth and seriousness, for they are neither deep nor serious; but, as in a warehouse filled with oil, a spark that falls among shavings. I agree with two Irish Archbishops, that they are dishonest, and with an English one, that they are very feeble. But let us examine Dr. Temple on the education of the world.

19 The first thing that strikes me is, that there is no glimpse or appearance of a thought of anything in man, but of the lower part of man — of man arriving as a race at a certain result down here in this world. God and a soul in connection with Him are altogether shut out. Supposing, what I do not believe, a succession of races, beginning and running through the same career in a succession of cycles, which is just the Platonic and Alexandrian idea; this would render, Dr. Temple tells us, the existence of each one of them unnecessary: the annihilation of a whole human race is absolutely nothing. Now as to progress in this world, or a development of man, as man merely, that is quite true. But what about the relationship of the souls which compose the race with God? Is that nothing? Or is that under the iron rule of a cycle which leads to no result? The supposition leaves out altogether every relationship between God and the soul. Redemption being an infinite thing in its nature, I do not believe there can be a repetition of such cycles, because I believe the Second Man is the Last Adam. Of course, this christian doctor and instructor of youth does not trouble himself about redemption in his education of the world, nor will I here insist upon it; but if there were uniform cycles, and the result of each the same as to the public result, as to humanity in this world, the difference might be infinite as to everything of the highest nature in man, unless man is morally an absolute slave to the circumstances through which he passes. To say nothing of redemption, that is, God's actings about men, which makes the whole theory of the education of the world nonsense, the whole reasoning of Dr. T. excludes the idea of God and a soul.

W. Excuse me: he speaks of the effect on the souls of men in the second paragraph of his paper.

H. To be sure he does, and this is the clearest proof of what I say, and that it is true in the most offensive way. He says that, on the supposition of his uniform cycles, the lives and souls of men become so indifferent, that the annihilation of a whole human race, or of many such races, is absolutely nothing. Now this makes the souls of men absolutely nothing, but for a result of progress in this world. It goes so far that the soul's non-existence after death is absolutely indifferent; for their annihilation is nothing if progressive result as a race is not induced. And supposing the soul were not immortal, and were annihilated after death, the progress of the race could go on just as well; the succeeding generation would inherit the progress of the preceding, and go on towards the ultimate result. Those that were dead need not exist at all for that.

20 W. Yes, my friend, but there is an aspect of this you have not considered; it may be alleged that the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is necessary for this progress.

H. Excuse me, my dear W: I have considered it. Either the doctrine of the immortality of the soul is true, or it is not (and the doctrine itself proves the doctrine true). If it be not true, I have, on the supposition you make of its being used, an imposture which involves considerations leaving this poor world and its progress in the shade of nothingness, used for the sole purpose of leading the race to progress, as its result — a use which makes the immortality absolutely nothing — which is really as absurd as it is false and dishonest; or immortality and the all-important considerations which accompany it are true; and they make the progress of the race a mere accident comparatively, and all Dr. Temple's views miserably false, to the shame of one who could have held them. No, he has a world without souls, and souls without God.

W. I see you have considered it, and what you say is true. It is evident that this system ignores (or worse) God, and all the higher parts and relationships of man.

H. But it is as intrinsically feeble as it is morally low. His statement is, "Now, that the individual man is capable of perpetual or almost perpetual development, from the day of his birth to the day of his death, is obvious of course." If he had said development, and decay, and extinction (that is, as far as this world goes), he would have been right; but that would not have served his purpose — a cycle of education of the race which ended in decay and extinction is a poor kind of progress. Yet this enters essentially into the condition of man. The sense that he is mortal is a necessary part of his moral existence. A Christian knows it has come in by sin — that it is a silent yet loud-speaking witness of it, and of God's judgment against it. But is the education of the world to end in its progressive death, as well as the rest of its development? If not, the analogy is wholly false, for this is as real and true a part of the course of the individual as his growth from childhood.

W. It is true. I suppose, however, Dr. T. does not consider the world as arrived at its dotage.

21 H. No; of course, all the world were infants or boys till now. Now the human race is left to itself to be guided by the teaching of the Spirit within.

W. The human race! Is he a quaker then?

H. Oh! you must not look for anything like exactitude of thought in drawing-room rationalists. That the mass of men are heathens is all nothing, or that the Bible, of which they profess to be teachers, declares as one of its most solemn truths that the Spirit is given to those who belong to Christ. To speculation, heathenism, or Christianity is all alike. It is an element of progress of the human race. You must not be so particular as that. You must believe that the human race is left to itself to be guided by the teaching of the Spirit within.

W. Well, but there is a revelation. Surely Christianity is something. Do they believe that the Son of God is come to seek and to save what is lost?

H. Oh! that is part of the progress — one of the things you can sign your assent to as agreeable to the scriptures, and pass by the side of. It is "humanifying the divine word."

W. Now do not be bitter. That is not Dr. Temple.

H. It is not; but it is one with whom Dr. Temple, the head master of Rugby, has associated himself, and given his weight to, in the hope that it will be received as an attempt to illustrate the advantage derivable to the cause of religion and moral truth from a free handling, in a becoming spirit, of subjects peculiarly liable to suffer by the repetition of conventional language, and from traditional methods of treatment. You see, however independent of each other, it is a Band of Hope Review. They approve of each other, they consider the Articles as handled in a becoming spirit, though evidently some were a little squeamish in doing it. But we will go on with Dr. Temple.

Man, he tells us, cannot be considered as an individual.

This is a most startling but instructive statement, which I must take up, though I have touched upon it. Note, his soul is individual, his responsibility is individual, his moral state is individual, his feelings are individual, his conscience is individual. All that is elevated, excellent, and that raises him above the common stream of passions, is individual. All that constitutes him a moral being, all the inward man, all in which he is personally related to God, everything that does not perish with his death: and all is ignored, cannot be considered, by Dr. Temple. He is part of a great machine formed by the influences around him, that is all. Neither is he morally individual in himself, according to Dr. Temple; nor raised to be so by a known relationship to God. And this leaks out further on. In speaking of elements of progress, he says, The conviction of the unity and spirituality of God was peculiar to the Jews among the pioneers of civilization. Think of the unity and spirituality of God, or at any rate the conviction of it, making men simply the pioneers of future civilization!

22 Dr. T. argues that a child, brought up from its birth apart from its kind, becomes rather a beast in human shape than a man in the full sense at all.

If he used this merely to shew that God had so constituted man, that he should learn intelligently from others, and not grow up as animals with a mere instinct, I suppose he needed not have feared much opposition; but when he uses it to shew that man cannot be individually considered, it is utterly illogical. That man learns from others does not prove in the least that he is not a responsible individual when he does learn. Dr. Temple's statement destroys totally the whole moral responsibility of man.

That there is progress in knowledge, in civilization, up to a certain point in man's development as a race, is partially true. That a part of the race has been placed under progressive religious light is also true. But that that is the obliteration of individuality, or individual responsibility in and according to that state, is utterly and degradingly false.

If the education at Rugby were necessary to enable a man to go up to Oxford, does that prove he cannot be considered an individual when he is gone up? But all is so carefully generalized as to be false the moment we apply it to facts. Thus Dr. T. says, "We may expect to find in the history of man, each successive age incorporating into itself the substance of the preceding." Now I suppose no intelligent person would deny, that where European civilization has prevailed, the acquirements of one age become, in many points, that is when discoveries are concerned, the elements of the next. Every child who learns astronomy learns the Newtonian, or if you please, the Copernican system, not the Ptolemaic. But when you say the history of man, it is entirely false. The vastly greater part of the human race remain in statu quo. The Chinese are not more advanced than they were centuries ago; nor indeed, may we say, any of the Asiatic nations, that is, the greatest part by far of the population of the globe. Indeed, they have in many respects retrograded. None of the Africans have advanced; on the contrary, there also they have fearfully retrograded. In America, Europeans have supplanted the native population, but there has been no advance save in the conquerors. It is a question if Mexico and Peru are as civilized as when Aztecs and Tezcucans possessed the country of Anahuac, and Incas exercised their mild despotism as the legitimate descendants of the sun. There has been a history of man in those races that have come in connection with the despised people of God, but nowhere else. Somehow or other, the people whose records rationalism delights to call in question are the necessary centre, and I may say foundation, of all known history. The mind of man may speculate with interest on other histories, the ruins of Nineveh, and the hundred-gated Thebes; and Babylon may furnish evidence for antiquaries to build dynasties and histories on; but a documented history of those early days belongs to Israel only. It may of course be attacked, and conjectures hazarded to disprove it, as they may be hazarded to make kings out of tombs, and centuries out of priestly traditions; but in Israel alone are the documents there to be disproved. In this history only do we find the principles which Dr. T. speaks of as the true education of man. We will speak afterwards of the influence of Greeks and Romans on the present age and education of man, but they have nothing to do with his analogy of educational epochs, which are, the law, Christ, and the Spirit: for of course we must decently christianize everything, that is, reduce Christianity to the level of man and his progress. And this introduces another immensely important point carefully suppressed by Dr. T. in his account of this progress of man. I mean, the fact of revelation. He speaks of the progress of man; but the facts in which the progress is estimated are, really, exclusively revelations and interventions of God. He says, "First, the law, then the Son of man, then the gift of the Spirit." Is this progress essential to a spiritual being? Is this each generation receiving the benefits of the cultivation of that which preceded it?

23 But let us consider the facts. However he may borrow the principles of his education of the human race from scripture — except to array himself in these borrowed plumes, revelation is totally ignored and all it contains. If there has been a fall, the progress of the human race, save in its lower aspects, comes to nothing at once. We are fallen beings. There is a guilty soul before God: the whole scene is one departed from and out of the condition He set it in. It is a progress in what, then? It wants, and wants individually, and in every way, restoration — progress in its highest relationship. Christianity, and all the revelation from which the head master of Rugby quotes his principles of progress, treats man as in this state of alienation from God. It is false, or the theory is false. The law was given, but broken. The Son of man in the world, but rejected out of it by man, and a work of redemption revealed for a being not in progress, but lost. I reserve the consideration of what thoughts that man must have of God, who, looking at this world's universal state, does not believe in the fall of man.

24 But further, as to the world's history. The flood has taken place: so the Old Testament teaches, so the Lord declares; as Peter warns that it is by wilful ignorance it is forgotten. But if the flood has taken place, the whole race has been judged once, and judged for the progress it had made. That judgment will, it is true, not be repeated, but the now world is reserved for fire. At what point of progress will that come? Has Dr. T. ever heard of days in which mockers will be, who say, Where is the promise of His coming? for all things continue as they were — of perilous times that will come, in which the scriptures will be the resource of the faithful who continue in the things they have learned?

But I am wrong to reason on scripture with them, as if they believed it. Let us take their own system as they take it up professedly from scripture. That I am not unjust in charging them with ignoring this mighty dealing of God with the world, which, while keeping the place they do, they have not the honest boldness to deny, while introducing what sets it aside, you may easily see. Dr. T.'s words are these: "The education of this early race may strictly be said to begin when it was formed into the various masses out of which the nations of the earth have sprung. The world, as it were, went to school, and was broken up into classes." Now that refers to the confusion of tongues at Babel. You would suppose that, before this Rugby education of the race, when a wise master began to deal with and educate it, in order that there might be some hope of the race's turning out well, it had been as yet nurtured in the graceful affections and first confiding impressions of the home of its childhood. Alas! no. It was a world outcast from God — so bad that He had to destroy it. The childhood of man, before it went to school according to Dr. T., was violence, and that followed by sensuality, fallen or not. But the flood — no trace of it is found.

We are told, that the earliest commands almost entirely refer to bodily appetites and sensual passions. This may suit the theory, because they have to be corrected as children, but is otherwise a dream. There is no command before the flood, and after it the one declaration is, "Whoso sheddeth man's blood, by man shall his blood be shed." Gen. 9: 6 It appears that wilfulness of temper, germs of wanton cruelty, characterize childhood, and are easily corrected by a mother; but here there was no education, no wise educator. The Governor of the world left the childhood of man to itself, to run into wanton violence unrestrained, to perfect its evil education without any restraint at all. This was a singular system of the education of the human race. "Each generation receiving the benefit of the cultivation of that which precedes it." "The easily corrected cruelty was here," we are told, "developed into a prevailing plague of wickedness."

25 Now let the reader remember that this was, to take Hebrew dates, as long a period nearly as since Christ — some sixteen hundred and fifty-six years; but this is not all; from thence to the giving of the law there were some eight hundred years. That is, during some two thousand five hundred years the race did not get any education at all; and, if that history is to be believed which Dr. Temple uses as his proof of the value of the education, the whole race, save eight persons, had been destroyed because of the result of the education they had given themselves. But this is not only a discrepancy in the analogy, but it upsets the whole system. There was no such education going on. The world went on on another principle; leaving man, not without witness indeed from God, but otherwise to himself and with no education. And, if scripture is to be believed as to one of the most solemnly attested facts in it, the whole world was judged once, before its alleged education began.

But here we stumble on another strange instance of the falseness of all this. I quote still Dr. Temple. "The world was once a child under tutors and governors, until the time appointed by the Father . . . . The education of the world, like that of the child, begins with the law." Now, note, not only was there two thousand five hundred years of the race without any education at all, if we pass over the flood, and the whole world judged if there was, and the theory an absurdity; but, even supposing this left aside, the facts are mis-stated. "The education," Dr. T. tells us, "of this early race may strictly be said to begin when it was formed into the various masses out of which the nations of the earth have sprung." That was at Babel or in Peleg's time; but there were some seven hundred years between Peleg and the law, so that the education of the human race began seven hundred years before it began. And I pray you to remark, that this is not a question of confounding chronology with a great principle. The theory of Dr. Temple is, that the dividing into nations strictly begins the education; it was the forming them into classes. But the very vital principle of his system of analogy with individual education is, that it began with law, but there were more than seven centuries between the two. I suppose the classes at Rugby are in before Dr. Temple. That we may admit. At least they used to be, as the rule, at Westminster, when I was there; but if Dr. Temple were to leave some period analogical to seven centuries before he came, I am afraid the sanction of the law, not the law, would be wanting. What riot in the schoolroom! It is true, the present generation may have profited by the cultivation of the last; but at any rate, in my time we should have had notable confusion. But we will be serious. Dr. Temple will forgive my recollections of these early days; he tells us they are often vividly remembered. But I turn to our scripture history; and you will see the whole principle of the theory proved false.

26 Scripture treats man as a sinner to be restored to God or judged: rationalists, as a race to be educated, and the previous parts sacrificed to the condition of a little fragment at the end. It is a base idea, but it is its justness we have now to think of. Now in scripture we are carefully told that, in the sense in which there was an education and progress in it, law was not the beginning. The promise came four hundred and thirty years before it. Now this is an all-important principle. It brings in God, whom Dr. Temple leaves out. Grace, only in germ it is true, precedes law, and law comes in by the by as a needed convincer of the conscience. That is the divine, the blessed, form of education revealed in the word, because it reveals God, and must reveal, therefore, love and grace. Law may be needed. It was needed. The question of righteousness must be raised. But God had to say to it, and grace and goodness and love must be the point of departure with Him, because He is it, and is it with man. Dr. Temple's is an education of man without God; and therefore, as he cannot deny "the prevailing plague of wickedness," he begins with man's only remedy, commandments, to an unintelligent nature. But think of such a scheme which lets the person to be educated get to a prevailing plague of wickedness before he begins to educate him! It is well Dr. T. leaves God out.

27 But this confusion of Peleg's time and the law, this lapse of some seven centuries, omits facts which shew in another respect the falseness of the whole system. After Babel or Peleg's time, when nationalities and races had been formed, a kind of departure from God came in of which we find no trace before. Not violence and evil; that is the recorded state of man before the flood. Now, man had been forced to recognize divine judgments. But, far from the true God, yea, not liking to retain the true God in his knowledge, he changed the truth of God into a lie, and worshipped and served the creature more than the Creator — changed the glory of the incorruptible God into an image made like to corruptible man, and to birds, and four-footed beasts, and creeping things. Your fathers, says Joshua, worshipped other gods beyond the flood (Terah, the father of Abraham, and the father of Nahor). Now the God of glory appears to Abraham, and calls him to leave entirely the system into which, as Dr. Temple justly remarks, God had formed the world — countries, and kindreds, and father's house. The world was broken up into classes; but when God began to educate, He called out of all the classes one to be for Himself; not indeed by law, but then He gave the promises. The principle of a called people, or saint, was brought out, and Abraham became, as an immense principle, the father of the faithful, who were known as called out of the world. That the world was educated by it is absolutely false. The world, or the nations, had rejected God altogether, and taken devils to be their gods; and God, patient in mercy, begins a race of His own, calls Abraham and his seed, be they in the flesh or in the Spirit.

I have partially noticed some particular proofs of the progress of the world according to Dr. Temple and his companions; but, as they belong to this epoch, I will refer to one or two of their discoveries here. Lamech makes no comparison of himself with God whatever: it is all a dream, unless taking vengeance is comparing oneself with God, because vengeance belongs to Him. If so, many are guilty of it still, I fear. At any rate, he compares himself with Cain, and he is not God, I suppose. As to the gross ignorance about building a tower high enough to escape God's wrath, it is, without any contempt of Dr. Temple, his ignorance, not that of the sons of Noah. They acted very wisely according to man. They made (what Nebuchadnezzar tried afterwards, and a man who founds empires ever does) a great public centre which could be a name — which God alone ought to have or give — that they might not be scattered, but have united force. It was to be a Rome in the world. It was not ignorance, but profound political skill; but it met the power of one who had other purposes, and under His hand it brought on the very thing they wished to avoid. They built a city and a tower, a central capital to unite them all as one great company, and a tower which should distinguish itself, and to which all should be bound as belonging to it. Dr. Temple's notion is ignorance of the nineteenth century after, not of the twenty-second before, Christ.

Dialogues on the Essays and Reviews, section b.

Christianity and the Education of the World.

J. N. Darby.

<09001E> file section b.

28 But to return to our history. God separates a people carefully from the world, and gives them a law when He has separated them. The world was never under tutors and governors at all. When God dealt with the world, He returned, and returned necessarily, to the principle of grace, on which alone, even if law existed, He could really deal with a sinner. The education of the world never began with law. The world never had any law. God did give a law to a carefully isolated people, and carefully isolated them by it; made, as it is expressed, a middle wall of partition, so that if a Jew associated himself with the world, he was a defiled and guilty Jew. No doubt in this law great principles of moral government lay (I may almost say) concealed; but this only proves still more the great truth. God must separate a people out of the world to deposit, in a system carefully excluding others, the perfect rule of creature estate; and to preserve the knowledge of one true God in a world given to idols in their will, and given up by Him to a reprobate mind to work all uncleanness with greediness (as every one who has studied the working of heathen idolatry knows they were, and indeed are; and the whole system to be a consecration of vice in its filthiest and most abhorrent shapes). Yet these efforts of God with Israel were fruitless, and the law given in vain. Israel first went after idols; and when that unclean spirit was gone out, their house was empty, swept, and garnished. They neglected the pearl which the blessed Lord drew out of the setting of the law, turned its outward ceremonies, which unregenerate flesh could perform, into their righteousness, and hardened themselves against grace and Him that brought it.

So true is it that the law was not given to the world to educate it, and the education of the world is not in God's thought, that Israel, in order to be taken as a people, is redeemed out of it. Till that redemption there is no dwelling of God with man — not in paradise, not with Abraham. When redemption is even figuratively presented, it is said (Ex. 29), "I have brought them out of the land of Egypt that I may dwell among them." Hence, as God's dwelling with man is never seen, so holiness is never spoken of till then. Because redemption is necessary to man's being near God, and that is (morally understood) holiness. The moment (Ex. 15) Israel is out of Egypt, holiness is spoken of. No doubt, all this was in an outward carnal way then; but the principle taught is all-important. Doubtless there were holy persons before; but here great principles are revealed.

29 W. Well, I must say that this effect is produced on my mind by the facts you have gone through: If we are to take the scripture account of facts — and what you have remarked is true that, save ignoring the flood, Dr. Temple's statements are based on scripture statements), but if we are to take them — not only is he mistaken as to the alleged facts, but (what is far more important) if the scripture view be true, his is totally false. It is not a question of details of ancient history which a rationalist might contest, but the whole principle on which God has dealt with man is the opposite of that on which Dr. Temple estimates what has taken place. It seems to me very shallow indeed. It shelters itself under references to scripture, which might seem to give credit to the statements with those who have not yet thrown off all respect for those wonderful records; but when examined, it has not a shadow of foundation. The Bible is false in its own teaching, or Dr. Temple's views are as unfounded as they are trifling and superficial. I am glad of this conversation: for, though I rejected the principles of the book as really infidel, and morally unsatisfactory, I had not an idea of the hollowness of its views, at least thus far. The utter want of honesty of the part which speaks of consenting and allowing had offended me, as contrary to all uprightness. I confess that turned me at once away from all confidence. I cannot conceive how a man could openly avow such principles. But I had not examined the reasonings.

H. Mark another thing, dear W. It is a point to me most striking in the character of this system. You may have the law for a schoolmaster, Christ and the primitive Church for an example, the Spirit to set you free and leave you to yourself to be guided by the Spirit within; you may have Greece to teach you taste, cultivation, and logic; Rome self-restraint, obedience, and patriotism; mediaeval popery to keep Clovis in order. But God revealing Himself, revealing Himself in love, so as to draw out the heart, to teach it goodness by its enjoying it, so as to link the heart with Himself, and raise it above carnal and worldly and selfish interests of this low and sin-ridden world — God producing the reflection of His own nature in the thankful and enlightened heart — God revealing Himself to man, so that he should taste and enjoy what He is — no, that must not be; the thought of being thus imitators of God as dear children — you must not seek it here. Everything but God, everything for man to think well of himself by, to be what Paul calls gain to him, that is, the nurture of self, but God — no: no revelation of Him must enter into the education of man.

30 W. It is true. This is immensely important. How often one reads books without seeing what is underneath the surface! But this is indeed grave; the whole moral education of man, without his being brought into heart-association with God by the elevating revelation of Him. I see it is anti-christian in principle, anti-divine. It lowers the whole of what is carrying on in man to what he is in flesh, and thus separates from God, instead of bringing to Him in living capacity to enjoy Him, and making man morally like Him. I have difficulty (do you know) in expressing what the effect is on my mind: for leaving God out makes all so false, that it is impossible to express anything then fully. A being who can exist truly only in relation to another can have no truth of his existence without introducing the other.

H. To be sure; and then if he be a sinner, introducing that other must be accompanied by that which reconciles the sinner to that nature according to its own holy and blessed qualities. This brings in redemption; and the education of the world is trifling, immoral nonsense. You must give up that which alone elevates man, his association with God, or associate him with Him according to what He is. The nature and character of God must be maintained, or it is not with Him I am associated. And I must have morally the qualities which judge of good and evil as He does to be really associated with Him. But I do judge the evil, and see the guilt. Now Christianity meets this, and gives me a full blessing, because it gives me life. "He that hath the Son hath life." 1 John 5: 12 He is a life-giving Spirit. But then, besides that, it takes away all guilt from me. I can judge evil fully in my heart and conscience, because I know I shall never be judged for it — that Christ has by Himself purged my sins, and sat down on the right hand of the Majesty on high. I affirm that, without these two principles, a new life, and the perfect purging of sins according to God's nature by redemption, no real moral elevation of man can take place; because he cannot be spiritually associated with God according to the perfection of God's nature. The communication of the divine nature, though absolutely necessary, does not suffice, because the communication of that nature makes one judge evil as God does, at any rate in principle. I see the selfishness and impurity that is in man's mind — that is now in mine; and, for that very reason, I see guilt and wretchedness in myself; I have the conscience of evil or guilt (not necessarily by crimes or vices, but by comparing my whole inward life with the loveliness of the divine nature) on my soul; my conscience must be purged for God, as a consciously responsible creature before Him, that my heart may be free before Him, that His holy nature, which must repel evil, and which is the very source of my delight, may be maintained even for my soul to enjoy.

31W. I see this very plainly — what God is must be morally maintained for my soul, if I am to enjoy Him. If it is, I must judge sin as He does (that is, if I am honest myself). It is a gain, in a certain sense, to have a bad conscience in this way.

H. Yes; but a terrible burden, because sin separates from God, though we see He is love. But the purging the conscience by a work done without us, and which is perfect in glorifying God, gives me an unhindered delight in Him, and, I may add, in the love which has done it. God has put this in the simplest way (blessed be His name!) for simple souls, but it is of the deepest moral necessary truth. You may have amiable men, but no God if you have not this. When reading a work of Maurice's (a person of whom I know nothing, and speak, of course, only of his works) —

W. You mean him who wrote a work on sacrifice, and essays. I should like to know what you think of him.

H. I speak only of his books, I repeat, for I know nothing of him. I should say he was an amiable man, with many elements of a fine nature, though with amazing confidence in himself — a trait which sometimes accompanies a fine benevolent nature, when it is not humbled in a christian way by the knowledge of itself and the supreme excellence of God and what we are our wretched, selfish, approbation-loving hearts. I should think, too, his books shew wants, perhaps divinely given wants, in the soul; but I should think the influences his soul had been under were half Socinian and half Quaker. But he has no knowledge at all of the effect of having a conscience before God. I said all along as I read (I forget which of his books), This man does not believe in guilt; and when I had got on a very considerable way in the book (two hundred or three hundred pages, I should think), I found, "guilt, that is, guile."* Now there you can get the key to his whole story. He may have judged some evil, but he has never had his conscience before God at all. Hence he can turn what that gives into a play on words, or a question of etymology; but what a tale that tells! Ah! what a difference it makes when a soul has to say to God.

{*I apprehend this is a mere blunder. Guile is the same as wile; and guilt, a Saxon word, fine or punishment (as now, in German, "vergelten").}

32 W. I see plainly now both what was attractive in his views and the mischievous tendency they had, the mischievous influence they exercised on my soul. In fact, it strikes at the responsibility of man, our relationship to God.

H. To be sure it does. Holiness is the quality of a nature which repels evil in its nature, and delights in what is good. Righteousness is founded really on the same principle, but brings in the authority of God, which judges of this and the responsibility of the creature. Now man will admit holiness, because that exalts man, makes him like God, excellent in himself — he has "no guile;" righteousness he does not, because this asserts God's authority — the creature's responsibility. It is making good God's authority against evil by judgment — our real relationship to God. This man will not submit to. He is willing to be free from guile: it exalts him in his own sight. But to be under guilt — no: that humbles him.

W. How subtle evil is!

H. Yes; but a personal conscience makes all simple. I do not discuss with a bad conscience; I can principles with my reason. With a bad conscience I want cleansing, and, because I have offended a loving Father and God, forgiveness too; and, thank God, I have it in Christ. There is no personal having to do with God without this. I may theorize, and honestly enjoy my ideas; but theorizing is not the knowledge of God. A truly upright soul, a divinely taught soul, has a moral need that the love of God, the favour which is its light and its joy, should be a righteous favour (as scripture speaks, Grace reigns through righteousness) — hence, that God should righteously not see sin upon it; it has need, therefore, that the conscience should be purged. And this it has through the truth, that the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses from all sin. Without it, God's love would be an unholy love — would not be God or love at all. We walk in the light, as God is in the light; and the blood of Jesus Christ, His Son, cleanses us from all sin. Hence comes that bright and blessed testimony, though there in outward figures, "He hath not seen iniquity in Jacob, nor beheld perverseness in Israel."

33 W. I confess I see no moral perfection maintainable without this (for sin there is in the world), no true assurance of heart with God, no uprightness in man. And association with God, fellowship, is the one true and excellent blessing that belongs to us in this world, and the next.

H. Surely. But we will pursue our essay, though I have not, I believe, much more to say.

The principle of the essay is, each successive age incorporating into itself the substance of the preceding. The analogy is, the law, Christ, and the Spirit. But this wholly contradicts the principle. These are no incorporations of past growth or acquirements, but specific revelations of a full and absolute character in themselves — indeed, as to the last two, the actual coming of divine persons. Not only so, but the law was given when men had plunged into every loathsome wickedness, and had learnt to worship devils instead of God; so that God had given them up to a reprobate mind, even as to what became them as men. And it was given therefore to a people carefully separated out from the rest of the world. It was no progress; it was a revelation to a peculiar people. When Christ came, it was after this had been broken, and the people become a whited sepulchre. He likewise, though introducing universal principles, separates a people to Himself, and is entirely rejected by men. When the Holy Ghost comes, we know, on the Lord's own authority, that the world cannot receive Him, "because it seeth him not, neither knoweth him."

In a word, it was no progressive incorporation by one age of the acquirements of the last; but revelations given to a people separated to receive them. The first, because men had departed utterly from God; the second, because the depositories of the first had broken and falsified it, as they crucified Him who came. As to the third, it was manifested in power at the first; and instead of progress or development, there has been a corruption by the denial of the presence of the Spirit, and setting aside the word, which has made the annals of the Church the most painful history the world can shew (as has been insultingly said, the annals of hell); and if the degradation of heathenism was more open, it was not so morally abominable, nor clothed with the forms of christian grace. Sin among heathens was horrible to the last degree, and consecrated to deities who were only devils to help men's lusts; but there were no christian indulgences to allow or forgive it; no tax for what it was to be compounded at; no selling of grace and license for what was condemned. This was reserved for what is called the Church (and in the outward sense justly).

34 And remark here another point of vast importance in the present day when development is so much spoken of. What God reveals is revealed perfect in its place and for its purpose at first; and man declines from it. There is progress in the character of God's revelations, compared with one another; but in themselves, none. There cannot be progress in a revelation. It is itself. There may be in revelations. A revelation is given perfect. Man declines from it or corrupts it. That man should make progress in a revelation denies its nature. Now the things Dr. Temple speaks of were revelations — different in nature, but still revelations. And when I come to Christ, I find another immensely important truth — to talk of progress here is blasphemy. He is God manifest in flesh. He is perfection. Hence the apostle John tells us to abide in that which we have heard from the beginning.

And I find here too a principle of scripture, the ignorance and denial of which is the root of all these errors and modern reasonings. The scripture (I am not now to enquire whether its whole system be false) presents Christ as a second man, a new starting point of the human race, the last Adam. There is no progress of man in flesh spoken of: he is to put off the old man, or has done so, and put on the new, which after God is created in righteousness and true holiness. He is to reckon himself dead, he is crucified with Christ. He speaks of when we were in the flesh. That is, the blessed and admirable doctrine of scripture is the absolute moral judgment of man as man, a child of Adam in flesh, because sin is there; and, through the delight the new man has in God, he cannot bear this. He has crucified the flesh with the affections and lusts, and lives as alive to God in the last man. "I am crucified with Christ; nevertheless, I live: yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." Gal. 2: 20

And the great ordinances of Christianity declare this as its nature. We are buried in baptism unto death, risen again, and we celebrate a Christ in the Lord's supper, not who has instructed us (though blessedly He has done so those who are quickened, and warned the dead) but died for us. Thus Christianity is founded on the total condemnation of the old man (only that Christ has died for it in grace, and thus as a sacrifice for sin condemned sin in the flesh), and the introduction of a new, but a new connected in the power of Christ's resurrection with that which is heavenly, where Christ now sits. The object of this new life is not here, though its display is. It is the true character of power in a creature to live in the circumstances it is in, from motives and a power which are not found in them, or else he is governed by them (that is, is weak). So with the Christian, with peace in his conscience through a dying Christ, he has a heavenly Christ before him, and, his motives being wholly out of this world, he has, through grace, power to live in it according to the character of the motives which govern him.

35 This is not the place to unfold all the exquisite internal beauty of this principle, wrought out for its perfecting in dependence on grace, in the midst of the conflicts in which we are in a world of evil, with a lower nature in itself prone to it; and the continual association with Christ, our glorified Head, the Man at God's right hand, in which it is made good, so as to grow up to Him who is the Head in all things. This would be to unfold the contents of all the epistles as the development of it in teaching, and the gospels as the exhibition of the perfection of it in Christ: but I have said enough to shew that the system of the New Testament is the setting aside of the old man, the flesh, the first Adam, because there is sin (and sin is become unbearable when the true light, Christ, is in the heart as life), and the possession, the substitution for that, of the new man, Christ our life, unfolded in a life which we live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved us, and gave Himself for us. Was He a point of progress in the development of human nature or Adam fallen life? or the perfect exhibition of a new thing — that eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested to us, and became the source of it to others, while He has died for the guilt and sin which characterized the old?

W. I see it is indeed an immensely important principle. It strikes at the root of all this system. This builds up what scripture calls the old man, and develops it. You say, its principle in fallen man is sin and self, and that God has in Christ introduced a new life in Christ, and to others through Him; and as He has cleansed from sin, so He has given a heavenly object out of this world. But then do you mean that no one had this life till Christ came down to earth?

H. No, of course not. Life and incorruptibility were brought to light by the gospel; but this life did not begin to exist then. Christ, who is the Lord from heaven, is a life-giving Spirit — has not merely a living soul, though that He had of course; and He communicated this life to others, from Abel, I may well say and doubt it not, from Adam downwards. But then, for that very reason, though the great contrast, the enmity of man — of the carnal mind — against God was not brought out till the cross, when the perfection of God revealed in flesh was fully presented, those who partook of this life through grace were hated and rejected of the world, whose boasted progress is depicted to us by the new philosophy. "He that was born after the flesh persecuted him that was born after the Spirit." They were moral contradictions: one loved God, judged self, and owned God's authority; the other sought self, and would none of God for that reason. Conscience there was and is in all; conscience judges good and evil: but a new life is good in a divine way. Hence you will find that, with all this modern school of rationalism, even in its most infidel forms, Christ will be recognized, provided He be a restorer of what the scripture denounces as flesh. They will use what appears christian language to many a simple mind. But the just condemnation of a sinner, the absolute condemnation of flesh, and a new life in Christ, and atonement for the sin of the old — all this will not be heard of; and into the antichristian system even Christians fall. It exalts man; and all the blessed light of God, the heavenly place into which Christ is entered, is lost.

36 W. But what do you say to the other elements of human progress, Egypt, Greece, Rome, and the like?

H. If you mean civilization, arts, and mental development, and cultivation, and more particularly science, I do not of course deny it; though I think there is a good deal of mistake as to it. Discoveries, by which the knowledge of nature or the power of man over it is advanced, are undoubtedly multiplied. We know more physical facts than our ancestors. Astronomy, geology, on the one hand, and railroads, telegraphs, chemistry, on the other hand, have enlarged, not the domain, but the appropriation of the domain, allotted to man. And with every increase of knowledge there is a reaction. There is more reality and less hypothesis on all these subjects; but I doubt the development of much more than materialism by it. That this is a progress I more than doubt. As regards taste and cultivation, or intellectual powers, I should think also progress more than doubtful. All now is at best imitation. Take Grecian architecture or Gothic styles (whose ideal conceptions are the opposite one of another), or even Italian, all attempted is imitative. In intellectual power, I suppose Grecian or Roman was as developed in itself as any now. Plato, Aristotle, or what was more profound than either, the British triads or Bardic philosophy,* present the expression of as powerful thought. And as to language, it is admitted that, as an instrument of thought, the Greek stands, of all commonly known languages, unrivalled. The powers of Sanscrit I am unacquainted with, and but little with the capacities of the daughter which most resembles it, they say, the Irish. In philosophy there is more truth in modern times, so far (not, as there has been progress, but) as revelation has exercised an influence on it, and no farther. So that I do not see great progress even in these earthly things. As to philosophy, all is necessarily false at all times, because it reasons upon the present state of man as a normal one, or else it becomes theology, and thereupon, as its necessary point of departure, upon his relationship to God, and what God is. Hence it is all necessarily false, both as to God, and as to man. It is in vain to say that you must not bring in religion into philosophy, because, unless religion be fable, it is the truth, so that it is only saying that you must not bring in truth. There, I believe, they have told the truth. That man is not fallen is a calumny against God. A God who made this world directly as it is would be a weak or a cruel God. But if man be fallen and in rebellion, and have to say to God in that state; if his whole moral condition be the acquired knowledge of good and evil, far from the source of good, then reasoning upon his relationships to God to prove what they are normally is to reason always against the truth. And that goes far deeper into the whole system than men are generally aware of. It affects every possible relationship of life. It is the reason there are magistrates, the origin of property, of labour, death, inheritances. I take the commonest, every-day, outward things on purpose. Philosophy, since it ceased to be cosmogony, is reasoning on morality, ignorant of the groundwork of the highest obligations, and of the whole state of things on which moral relationships are founded. Nothing can be right or set right, if the world has departed from God (because all its state is wrong — the central obligation is, which was the groundwork of all others, though those others be true) unless we bring in the restoring power of revealed goodness applied to that state, and this is Christianity. Hence it is a necessary consequence, that all philosophy is, and must be, false. There is evidence enough that evil exists. The man who will say that things are morally as they ought to be is a devil, and not a man, take heathens or Christendom. If they are not, there is no sense in not beginning with the truth of this slate and its remedy, if there be one. But this is religious truth.

37 {*But here the influence of Christianity is evident, as in Neoplatonism.}

38 W. But you have made a sweeping clearance of philosophy.

H. Truth always does. The mind may be interested in it as an exercise; my own has been, though I never pursued it far. Truth, as to its title at least, had too early possession of my mind. But you cannot deny that speculation, whose starting-point is false, can but plunge the mind farther in error the farther it goes. There is no ποῦ στῶ. It is far worse than the play of Hamlet with the part of Hamlet left out. That to which all refers is wanting. If I leave out God, all is essentially false; and if I bring Him in and omit the groundwork of all present relationship with man as he really is (that is, a state of sin), all must be equally false. Sin is the groundwork of all God's dealings now.

W. Dear! How do you mean that? That is a strange statement, is it not?

H. Is not judgment in respect of sin?

W. Well, of course it is.

H. So much so that there could be none without it — hence in itself can only be condemnation. If God judges His own workmanship as it came out of His hands, He is judging Himself, not the work, or, if you please, in the work. But if it has departed wilfully into rebellion, judgment as such must be condemnation.

W. But if man had never fallen, would there not have been a judgment?

H. A judgment of what?

W. Well, I do not know.

H. Nor can you know. There was nothing to judge, speaking of human nature: all was then as God made it. If man has abandoned God and gone into sin, I repeat, judgment must be condemnation; and that is the ground Christianity goes upon. Christ comes to seek and to save the lost. And so every divinely taught soul: "Enter not into judgment with thy servant, O Lord; for in thy sight shall no man living be justified." Ps. 143: 2 But I pursue my theme a little. Is not the exercise of mercy in respect of sin?

W. Of course.

39 H. And law?

W. Why yes, law forbids it.

H. And grace?

W. Of course.

H. And salvation, and judgments, and patience, or vengeance — all is in respect of sin. Hence, the immensely deep moral development in the soul in its relationship with God. No angel would know God, or be in the kind of relationship in which a sinner brought to God is. All the highest attributes and qualities in Godhead are brought out — mercy, patience, goodness, condescension, love in its perfect exercise in the shape of grace, on one side, and restoring in righteousness on the other to perfect delight in itself, in a word, redemption. The intimacy which the working of grace, whether in the incarnation or in the soul of one in whom grace is, the estimate of good and evil, by the proximity of what is divine to evil as it is in us; yea, the communication of what is divine to one who, on the other side, is weakness, and yet wilfulness and self, the dependence of a creature who has both on continual grace, and yet the capacity of the enjoyment of the highest good — all this, which is not Christianity exactly, but its working in us, gives a display of divine wisdom, a purifying and elevating process, a knowledge of God in His highest nature, most intimate, and yet most adoring, which makes philosophy puny and dry beyond all belief, empty, utterly empty. Christianity is light and love come into darkness and selfishness, and in the human heart reaching all its springs, and destroying self, by shewing it and replacing it by God; and this, not by the flimsy spinnings of the human brain, but by a divine person; who, if divine desires are wrought in me, takes me out of myself by divine affections, instead of exalting self, by producing in it qualities to be admired, which being by self makes them bad and false. The Christian, quâ Christian, has divine qualities, but sees, and because he sees, only God.

W. Why, you are growing quite eloquent! But is it true?

H. There is nothing so eloquent as Christianity itself. Did you never remark, that Christianity makes the poorest mind eloquent? What is eloquence? Is it not elevated thoughts, clothed in what is perfectly adapted to the meanest capacity, and enjoyed because it lifts the poor heart, wearied with commonplace life and toil, out of itself? Now, this is what Christianity does, because it reveals a divine person, God Himself, who has adapted Himself to the lowest, yea, the vilest; who is holy enough (for He is perfect in it) to bring love into all the recesses of the human heart, because never defiled Himself, and awake, even by its sorrows and its miseries, the want of, and to the enjoyment of, the love that has visited it. It has set too, by a glorious redemption and atonement, the poor soul, that by love has learned to delight in light, at liberty to enjoy it, because it is spotless in it, and the adoring object of the love that has brought it there.

40 I look around. What can I see? Heathenism, men worshipping stocks and stones; Christendom, what would often disgrace a heathen; yet goodness and wisdom evidenced in the midst of it all. What can I think? All is confusion. The goodness and wisdom I see lead me in spite of me to God, and the thoughts of God confound me when I see all the evil; philosophy, poor philosophy, would justify evil to justify God. But when I see Christ, the riddle is gone. I see perfect good in the midst of the evil, occupied with it, and then suffering under it. My heart rests. I find one object that satisfies all its wants — rises above all its cravings. I have what is good in goodness itself. I see what is above evil which was pressing on me. My heart has got rest in good, and a good which is such in the midst of and above evil, and that is what I want; and I have got relief, because I have found in that One what is power over it.

But I go a little farther, and I get a great deal more. I follow this blessed One, from whom all have received good, and who has wrought it with unwearied patience, and I hear the shouts of a giddy multitude, and I trace the dark plans of jealous enemies — man who cannot bear good; I see high judges who cannot occupy themselves with what is despised in the world, and would quiet malice by letting it have its way, and goodness the victim of it. But a little thought leads me to see in a nearer view what man is — hatred against God and good. Oh! what a display! The truest friend denies, the nearest betrays, the weaker ones who are honest flee; priests, set to have compassion on ignorant failure, plead furiously against innocence; the judge washing his hands of condemned innocence; goodness absolutely alone, and the world — all men — enmity, universal enmity, against it. Perfect light has brought out the darkness; perfect love, jealous hatred. Self would have its way and not have God, and the cross closes the scene as far as man is concerned. The carnal mind is enmity against God.

But oh! here is what I want. Oh! where can I turn from myself? an I set up to be better than my neighbours? No, it is myself. The sight of a rejected Christ has discovered myself to myself, the deepest recesses of my heart are laid bare, and self, horrible self, is there. But not on the cross: there is none. And the infinite love of God rises and shines in its own perfection above it all. I can adore God in love, if I abhor myself. Man is met, risen above, set aside in his evil, absolute as it is in itself when searched out. The revelation of God in Christ has proved it in all its extent on the cross. That was hatred against love in God; but it was perfect love to those that were hating it, and love when and where they were such. It was the perfect hatred of man, and the perfect love of God doing for him that hated Him, what put away the hatred and blotted out the sin that expressed it. There is nothing like the cross. It is the meeting of the perfect sin of man with the perfect love of God — sin risen up to its highest point of evil and gone, put away, and lost in its own worst act. God is above man even in the height of his sin; not in allowing it, but in putting it away by Christ dying for it in love. The soldier's insulting spear, the witness if not the instrument of death, was answered by the blood and water which expiated and purified from the blow which brought it out. Sin was known, and, to have a true heart, it must be known, and God was known — known in light, and the upright heart wants that, but known in perfect love, before which we had no need to hide or screen the sin; no sin allowed, but no sin left on the conscience. All our intercourse with God founded on this — grace reigning through righteousness. Shall we turn to learn of Greeks and Romans after this?

41 W. God forbid. It is a wonderful scene. There is, in truth, nothing like it.

H. Nothing in heaven or earth, save He who was there for us. The glory we shall share with Him; but on the cross He was alone. He remains alone in its glory. Associated with Him there nothing can be, save as it is the expression of the nature which was revealed and glorified in it. That we find ever in God who is thus known. Eternal life is become thus association with God.

But, though reluctantly, I must turn again to our essay, to the effort to supplant the cross, for such it is, by the progress of corrupt human nature — the cross, which writes death on corrupt man, and brings in a new and divine man risen up out of that death, and a walk in newness of life. The system, however, we have discussed, as far as a brief conversation will allow; but there are two or three passages which it may be useful to notice, some of them shewing the animus of this and of all these essays, and of the whole school, and the miserable ground on which they stand.

42 As to mere intellectual progress in the sphere of knowledge, no one, of course, questions it. I may pass over Egypt, though boasted Greece was, as the Egyptian priests told Herodotus, a shallow copy turned into poetry of far deeper moral intuitions found in Egyptian mythology — deeper, because nearer the source of ancient truths. But as to Greece and Rome, no one denies that, as regards the upper orders, they exercise an influence over the minds of the present age in virtue of their education. Whether it be in all respects an advantage may be doubted. They are not what is highest in motive or thought, I judge; but so it is. That there is progress, I cannot exactly see in it, because we go back for models and influence. If Rome had been forgotten, and we were a fuller and riper development of what was gone by, I should understand progress. But this is not so. We try and get back to what they displayed. How that is progress, I do not understand. In progress I leave behind what preceded me. Copying Raphael (if I can) is not progress in painting beyond Raphael, though that copying exercise an influence over me. Then as to patriotism; it is human nature. Εἷς οἰωνὸς ἄριστος ἀμύνεσθαι περὶ πάτρης was before Rome was heard of. If we desire to learn how consummate selfishness, which broke through every honourable and generous feeling, and trampled on all the world, disguised itself under the name of patriotism, we may surely learn it in Rome; and how democracy or human will closed in servility, and tried to hide its pain when oppressed in letting loose the same will in vice, we may go to Rome. If Greece have given reason and taste, I can only repeat, this is not progress in us. If heartlessness and poetry for conscience, if vanity and talent are a model, Greece may shine pre-eminent. Cultivation I admit, as far as it can go on without morality. But immoral beauty, and such was the mind of Greece, which excludes the truly divine (for even Plato declared the impossibility of any direct connection between the supreme God and a creature, whence probably Justin Martyr did too), which has the creatures of imagination, not of spiritual need for gods, which does not look at another world — such beauty as this, admitting in the fullest way its very high development there, is a very doubtful subject of admiration, however it may call out certain faculties, which no one denies. A lively imagination connected with excessive vanity, and identified with immorality, is not a picture which attracts me. "What sort of morality the Gentiles would have handed down to us . . .," Dr. Temple tells us, "is clear." I do not know (though the destruction of mental purity is a great evil) whether, with the present attempt to exalt human nature, it might not be well that maturer minds, at any rate, should know the excessive, atrocious, disgusting immorality of all classical, and indeed all heathen iniquity, the universal depravity, besides what is discovered by mythological and historical research. It might be painful to such minds, and they abhorrent from it; but it would act as a warning and preventive against such views as those of the "Essays and Reviews." It has been said, and said truly, that no decent persons would allow on their tables n English what is learnt by all classically educated youths at school. I may be told they do not rest on it — be it so; but they become familiar with it in what they are taught to admire. Any one may see the picture of vaunted antiquity in Romans 1. That, Dr. Temple tells us, is what is to teach the world; aye, the christian world too. There is beauty, there is patriotism. What do I learn from this? That these passions of human nature and elements of his being are perfectly compatible with the most degraded possible state in which human nature can be found. Nothing could possibly exceed the degradation, by vices which eat out everything naturally noble even in nature, in which these Greeks and Romans lived. The beauty and the patriotism amused or absorbed them so that they should not find it out. Stifled conscience needed folly or pride.

43 W. But it is difficult to know what to do. Are we to leave young men uncultivated?

H. Difficulties there must be in a world in which sin has made deadly confusion. But there comes in the noble active principle of Christianity: "To him that overcometh;" Rev. 2, 3, "Be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." John 16: 33 Christianity gives motives, objects, energies, which deliver man, when under their influence, from slavery to the scene through which he is passing. He has a right to be a stranger and a pilgrim in it. His ear has heard the solemn warning (which elevates, yet sinks, with a sanctifying sorrow as to all around, in the depths of the heart): "Arise and depart: this is not your rest; it is polluted." Micah 2: 10 And he takes up his cross, and sets out, solemnized, broken in spirit perhaps (it is good in such a world), but cheerfully, because he sees that Christ has gone before, and that the victory which overcomes the world is his faith. For "who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God?" 1 John 5: 5 He can be himself, Christ being his life, in a world of evil and confusion, not conformed or belonging to it; not formed by it in motive or principle of life (though naturally as to mere outward circumstances not uninfluenced by it), but acting in it according to his own; happy to have companions in the excellent of the earth, but a Leader and a Lord in Christ. By this he judges of everything. He has seen perfection in Christ, and he is led by it. Greece and Rome were all judged by that. The assimilating power is one only — Christ — God manifested in flesh; folly to the world, of course. But he knows he has believed; he has no doubt as to the excellency of the object and model, nor of its absoluteness and completeness. The Christian believes that Christ gave Himself for our sins to redeem from this present world. Let not man tell me that meant the heathen world. What world was Greece and Rome?

44 But I must lead you to notice some particulars which shew further the shallowness and superficiality of this school. "The conviction of the unity and spirituality of God was peculiar," we are told, "to the Jews among the pioneers of civilization." You see how they never get beyond this point: man (not the Godman) improving, exalting self. It is deplorable. But it is another point I must refer to now. "To every Jew, without exception, Monotheism was equally natural." This with purity "are the cardinal points of education. The idea of Monotheism out-tops all other ideas in dignity and worth. The spirituality of God involves in it the supremacy of conscience, the immortality of the soul, the final judgment of the human race."

W. You surely do not object to that.

H. Patience, good friend. In the main, though Monotheism be a poor word, I do not. But, you know, these good people have other elements of instruction. You know, too, that Babylon was a cup of prostitution (as idolatry is justly called in scripture) for all nations; that Babylon and Jerusalem stand as the two seats of the two systems of idolatry, and Monotheism. No doubt, however faithless the Jews were, it was faithlessness to a known truth; which truth was Monotheism, involving, as Dr. Temple assumes, the immortality of the soul.

W. Well, that is quite just; but what conclusions do you draw from that?

H. How was I surprised — no, I was not, from some acquaintance with these rationalist doctors, particularly superficial borrowers, as English rationalists are: I correct myself, I was not surprised — to find: "She [Asia] had been the instrument selected [!] to teach the Hebrews the immortality of the soul; for whatever may be said of the early nations on this subject, it is unquestionable [what rationalists say is always, you must understand, unquestionable], that in Babylon the Jews first attained the clearness and certainty in regard to it, which we find in the teaching of the Pharisees." It is clear, therefore, that Monotheism involves the knowledge of the immortality of the soul; for it was taught to those who held Monotheism by the most idolatrous Polytheists in the world. Is this philosophical or historical? It is unquestionable, of course.

45 W. Now, do not be bitter.

H. Contempt is not bitterness; yet, I admit, no human being should be despised. It is the glory of Christianity to make it impossible; but reasonings and pretensions to light and superiority of mind of this kind I may despise, and do.

See again the superficiality of such a statement as this: "The New Testament is almost entirely occupied with histories — the life of our Lord, and the life of the early Church;" and he refers to the Epistles. Now, that the New Testament does give us truth in living evidence of it, and works truth out in the actual living relationships of the soul with God, and is not dry systematic theology, I admit with all my heart; but it is exactly the use of this blessed character of scripture to deny the truth on which these relationships are founded, which shews the excessive superficialness of this remark. That all the Epistles were "the fruit of the current history" I admit fully. Very often mistakes and faults were their occasion; but what then? The doctrine is grace meeting need, not treatises for the competency of the human mind. But does that say that the revelation of grace to this need was not doctrine, and doctrine of the deepest and most wonderful character? Nothing but the incapacity of apprehension which cold-hearted rationalism produces could ever have such an idea for a moment. "That early Church;" we are told, "does not give us precepts, but an example" — fine words; but as stupid as they are false. They will have only man. The Church gives. God must not be brought in — must not even give. What a heartless system it is! Did God, by whatever instruments, give nothing to "that Church?" Were the epistles not given to it — not by it? Nothing, moreover, can be more false than the statement itself. There is not what Dr. Temple states, save in the smallest degree; and there is almost exclusively what he states there is not. No doubt in St. Paul, from his very nature, the letters disclose the man; but the epistles are entirely composed of doctrines and precepts: whoever doubts about it has only to read them. All this is theory, perfectly regardless of facts. They are all "letters for the time," and all "treatises for the future." When Dr. Temple says, "To these pages, accordingly, the church of our day turns for renewal of inspiration," though somewhat acquainted with the pretensions of rationalism, I confess I can hardly understand it, unless it be a very common-place fact put in a bombastic way, to exalt men now to a level with the apostles, make the epistles a mere aroused energy of man, reference to which may arouse energy in us. They "turn for renewal of inspiration." I ask you, what does that mean?

46 W. Well, I really do not know. I remember Balaam went to seek enchantments: perhaps it is that in a good sense.

H. I know of no such going to God for inspiration in scripture. There is enquiring of the Lord. That, in the modesty of scripture — and how lovely it is in everything! — I can understand; and that a man taught of God, reading scripture may be animated, his soul refreshed and filled with the truth and Spirit of God; but "turning for a renewal of inspiration" I must leave to the high-flown pretensions of modern despisers of revelation. I remember once speaking to the very chief of this system in a foreign country, one who has largely spread it among evangelical men. He denied inspiration as held in the common belief of the Church of God. I said to him, "You speak of avoiding the question of the inspiration of the Old Testament. That is a very easy way of avoiding the difficulties of your subject, you who deny inspiration in the vulgar use of the word; because the Lord and the apostles plainly declare the Old Testament to be inspired." "O yes," he said — declining to answer as to the Lord, as he had already given too much scandal by it — "no upright honest man can deny that the apostles treat the Old Testament as inspired and quote it as such, but they deceived themselves." He said this with an aplomb that was inconceivable. I only said, "Then it is a question as to your or the apostles' competency and authority as to Christianity. That is soon settled." And so I must say to Dr. Temple, if he turns to biographical scripture for a renewal of inspiration in himself. He must forgive me, if I still trust somewhat more to the old inspiration than to the renewal of it — more to the divinely-given teaching of those who were sent by the Lord and by the Holy Ghost, and fitted for this work, and separated to it, and who could say "He that is of God hears us;" and "if any man be spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord; and if any be ignorant, let him be ignorant." He who can go there for renewal of inspiration, and find only two lives there, must have a singular process of blinding himself.

47 Remark too the assiduous confounding what is divine and human. "The age of reflection begins . . . . The spirit or conscience comes to full strength; and assumes the throne intended for it in the soul." Be it so, though the confusion of the spirit and the conscience is a mischievous one, as we may see. But mark what soon follows: "Now the education by no means ceases when the spirit thus begins to lead the soul." "The office of the spirit is, in fact, to guide us into truth, not to give truth." Note here the use of scriptural terms, so as to humanize and destroy their force: the spirit is first conscience; it is grown up at the age of reflection, and takes its seat on the throne; then it guides into truth. This in the scripture is said of the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, who was to be sent down from heaven, who was to shew them the things of Christ. Here the spirit, which was just now conscience, guides into truth, but gives no truth. That is, the Holy Ghost reveals nothing — shews nothing; the Comforter is only the conscience of man.

Further, note, there are no precepts to be found. The Holy Ghost is thus dropped into mere conscience, and no truth is given. But let us proceed in the description of this state of full age. "He is free, but freedom is not the opposite of obedience, but of restraint." "The law, in fact, which God makes the standard of our conduct, may have one or two forms. It may be an external law — a law which is in the hands of others, in the making, in the applying, in the enforcing of which we have no share — a law which governs from the outside, compelling our will to bow, even though our understanding be enlightened or not . . . . Or, again, the law may be an internal law; a voice which speaks within the conscience, and carries the conscience along with it; a law which treats us, not as slaves, but as friends, allowing us to know what our Lord doeth; a law which bids us yield, not to blind fear or awe, but to the majesty of truth and justice; a law which is not imposed on us by another power, but by our own enlightened will." Remark here how all subjection to God, or authority of God, is wholly denied. But this all gets a distinct character, uniting the first and last quoted passages by words in a previous page describing this time of full age. "Thus the human race was left to itself, to be guided by the teaching of the spirit within."

48 Now I hold, as you know, that a Christian is not under law at all; he is dead to the law by the body of Christ. Rom. 7: 4, Gal. 2: 19. But it is one of the characteristics of modern rationalism, to take certain advances in truth, which the Church at large does not see, and to pervert them to evil. Here the conscience and spirit are identified; and the spirit gives no truth, but guides into it (that is, it is man's growing up into it); but there is no revealed truth. There is a life, an example, we are allowed "to know what our Lord doeth." The human race is left to itself, to be guided by the teaching of the spirit within, which is only conscience. But it is left to itself; no truth given, no precepts ever found in the word; and in addition to all this the authority of God wholly set aside. The law we have is this conscience or spirit within — is not a law imposed on us by another power, but by our own enlightened will: we bow to the majesty of truth and justice, to God never. He may neither give truth nor impose a command. God's word — His precepts, the Spirit giving any truth, the authority of God, obedience — is wholly denied.

Now the scheme of Christianity is the opposite of this. It teaches of a Comforter, the Holy Ghost, who is sent by Christ from the Father, whom the Father sends in Christ's name, who comes and convinces the world. He testifies of Christ, and the disciples also bear witness. He does not speak of Himself, but what He hears He speaks. He was to teach the disciples all things, to shew them things to come, to bring what Christ had said to their remembrance; and he who loved Him would keep His commandments. Now this Christianity of the apostle John, these words of Christ, every honest man must see, are contrary to and contradictory of Dr. Temple's statements. He may think that he knows Christianity and Christ's teaching better than John. His opinion of himself in that respect I cannot doubt; but that his is the opposite of apostolic teaching is most evident. I prefer apostolic accounts of Christianity. Dr. Temple may think his conscience, and his, of course, enlightened will, superior to the Holy Ghost which Christ promised. I confess I prefer Johannean Christianity, if we are so to call it — the commandments of Christ — the truth taught and given by the Holy Ghost, to the first essay which is to illustrate moral and religious truth. It may be prejudice; it may be stupidity; but the shining of these modern stars does not, to my spirit and conscience, eclipse the teaching, ay, the giving of truth, of the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven (for so the word of God speaks). Hear the apostle, who most clearly teaches, we are not under law as risen with Christ: "to them that are without law, as without law. Yet not without law to God, but rightly subject (ἔυυομος) to Christ." 1 Cor. 9: 21 How carefully he shews that there is subjection to God. So John, "This is love, that we keep his commandments." 1 John 5: 3 So Christ Himself, "I have kept my Father's commandments, and abide in His love;" John 15: 10 and in the highest of His free acts of grace, His offering Himself, He says, "but that the world may know that I love the Father, and as the Father has given me commandment, so I do." John 14: 31 It is with us, as it was with Christ, the law of liberty; because the new man finds its delight both in what is commanded and in obedience itself, as Christ did: "I delight to do it; yea, thy law is within my heart." Ps. 40: 8 But we are sanctified unto obedience, the obedience of Jesus Christ. It is not a law stopping, or attempting, for it did not do it in fact, to stop an evil nature, but the will of God, the motive of the new man, as of Christ. It is not yielding to the majesty of truth and justice, but to God. The doctrine of the essay is the casting off wholly God's authority, the principle of revolt and apostasy; denying the Master (δεσπότην την not χύριον) that bought us, the only Lord (δεσπότην) God. The heathen were partially a law to themselves when they were ἄθεοι atheists, in the world. This, with increased light, is what is recommended. It is a denial of redemption, of obedience, of God's authority; a denial of the Holy Ghost as giving any truth; it is merged in an enlightened will, our spirit or conscience. "That early church (i.e., the epistles) does not give us precepts even."

49 W. But he speaks of obedience.

H. He does, but it is "obedience to the rules of his own mind," not the child once obedient to a parent, now in direct subjection to God in love as Christ was, but the rules of his own mind — all he knows. Christ's delight was to keep His Father's commandments; the saint's delight is the same; the rationalist's to be left to himself, and have nothing to say to God. It is the dignified liberty of a grown man, competent to guide himself, instead of being a child.

"The church, in the fullest sense, is left to herself, to work out, by her natural faculties, the principles of her own action." Can anything more completely deny the presence of the Spirit, and the authority of the word, that is, of God in every way? What makes her the church in this case, I am sure I do not know. It is an epoch when men have learned beauty from Greece, patriotism from Rome, the immortality of the soul from Babylon through the Jews when departed from God, seen an example in Christ and that early Church, whatever it was, and then are left to themselves to follow their own enlightened will: that is all the Church means. How the apostles blundered about the whole matter, to think that they were sent by the Lord, and laid down their lives for — I am sure I do not know what! and were so bigoted, that they say "he that is of God heareth us, and he that is not of God heareth not us; hereby know we the Spirit of truth, and the spirit of error." 1 John 4: 6 Why the Spirit does not give truth at all! What a pity Dr. Temple was not there to instruct them! I suppose men were not ripe for it in the apostles' days. And they were obliged to be thus bigoted, or did not know any better; and now in this advanced age we can profit by and appreciate the teaching of these men grown to full age. I wonder whether they think that they that are of God hear them; though I do not know why they do not leave men to the rules within instead of writing essays.

50 W. I do not exactly see, to say the truth, how these men call themselves Christians, and clergymen too.

H. Oh, you see they can consent to many things they think very inexpedient. And though they have said that the Articles are not superstitious or erroneous, yet some expressions may appear so. If they have acknowledged the same to be agreeable to the word of God, some distinctions may be founded on the word "acknowledge." They have allowed them, but "we allow many things we do not think wise or useful." "He does not maintain it, nor regard it as self-evident, nor originate it. Many better and wiser men than himself have acknowledged the same thing: why should he be obstinate? Besides, he is young and has plenty of time to consider it" (when he has signed it of course), "or he is old and continues to submit out of habit, and it would be too absurd, at his time of life, to be setting up as a church reformer."

W. But Dr. Temple does not say all this: it is not in his essay.

H. No; he only joins in publishing the volume, in the hope that it will be received as an attempt to illustrate the cause of religious and moral truth from a free handling, in a becoming spirit, of subjects peculiarly liable to suffer, etc.

51 But I have nothing to say to Dr. Temple. I know nothing of him but that he is master of Rugby. I have a book before me with these principles in it.

But there is a short episode in the progress of the world's education, which is somewhat curious. The progress of the patriotic Roman empire was such, that its utter decay gave occasion for the well-known swarms from the officina gentium to break in upon it. Now as they had neither Grecian cultivation, nor christian enlightened will, and their patriotism was rather rough-handed, what was to be done? Why the Church instinctively, not intentionally, gave up — for herself of course, it was very gracious — gave up her full-age Christianity, in which she had been fully left to herself and her own faculties, and took up law — the only means of taming these myriads that had escaped the general education of the race — gave up Christianity, and subjected herself (that is, the whole Church under its name) to the old principle of childhood — the law, to tame these barbarians. It was more than apostolic. Paul kept his liberty, but condescended to the weak; but the church (not "that early one," but the mediaeval one) gave up Christianity for herself (of course, any duty to God or the truth was out of the question; she followed her instinct, the rule of her own enlightened will), and "had recourse to the only means that would suit the case — a revival of Judaism."* I admit the fact: only there was a deliberate mixture of heathenism with it. How it was a progress, kind and instinctive as it was, it would be hard to tell. Paul had struggled hard against this kind of progress; he thought it a falling from grace. Christ became of no avail if people did it, he thought. However, there is nothing an enlightened will and the Spirit guiding into truth, without giving any, will not do. It was, in fact, neither more nor less than the old schoolmaster come back to bring some new scholars to Christ.

{*Remark how infidelity always excuses popery, and sides with it in these days.}

"Of course, this was not the conscious intention of the then rulers of the Church; they believed in their own ceremonies as much as any of the people at large." But this is somewhat obscure. Did they believe the legal system before they imposed it? If so, they had set up the schoolmaster before he was needed for Clovis and his Franks; and it was no instinct at all, but they had sunk back by their own evil instinct to law. If they were in the full light of the age of reflection and enlightened will, they must have known what they were about. This does not quite hang together. Did they get into it themselves by their instinct, or, knowing it was retrograding themselves, impose it on others as necessary, and themselves adopt the revival of Judaism? Here I am at a loss. However, "nothing short of a real system of discipline, accepted as divine by all alike, could have tamed the German and Celtish nature into the self-control needed for a truly spiritual religion." But then, if they accepted the schoolmaster, they were not under it before, and must have known the difference. How they accepted it as divine is very difficult to understand, since they had recourse to it as the only thing that would suit the case. It was a singular procedure. They believed it as much as the untamed Germans, accepted it as divine, and yet had recourse to it, because it suited the case of the latter. Their believing it divine, and giving up an enlightened will, was a self-sacrifice of an unexampled kind, rewarded with darkness that made them think it divine.

52 When are they thus to get the truly spiritual religion? I suppose that it is not modern Popery and the immaculate conception of the virgin Mary. We have had some thousand years already to tame the German and Celtish nature into the self-control needed for a truly spiritual religion. The Celts are under it still perhaps. Dr. Temple thinks the Germans have got the start of them. But then this instinctive act of the Church assumes in the same page quite a new character. The question arises, why the less disciplined race — Germans or Celts (though these last had been a good while under Roman discipline — of full age too, for they were in the empire that was attacked) — why, I say, they could not have learned spirituality from the more disciplined. You see they had the spirituality, and it was by this leap into the schoolmaster's hand out of instinct that they accepted the unspiritual, the Judaism, the divine, as much as the Germans. But why was the reverse not the case?" This may happen when the more disciplined is much the more vigorous of the two, but the exhausted state of the Roman empire had not such strength of life left within it. There was no alternative, but that all alike should be put under the law to learn the lesson of obedience."

The more disciplined, the Church, had then the spirituality to teach, but had recourse to a revival of Judaism as the only means which could suit the case. Still it was not the conscious intention of the Church. They believed in the divine character of what they had recourse to. And do you see the reason of this astonishing mystification of having recourse to a thing as the only means suited to this case, yet without any conscious intention, yet possessing the spirituality which would shew what it was? It was the state of exhaustion of the Roman empire, and that is progress. How charming is divine philosophy! They retrograde out of spirituality to Judaism, reculent pour mieux saufer, I suppose, to begin the progress over again. But alas! there is no good in meddling with low principles. They believed they were divine; they who were of the full reflective age had to be put themselves under the law to learn the lesson of obedience. Who put them, God knows; but why had they, the spiritual ones, to be put under law, when they had already learned obedience of a far higher kind, and were disciplined and had spirituality to teach, only that the others needed the law?

53 Ah, the truth will leak out in spite of theories; the professing Church, like man in all states, progresses backwards. What is perfect in its place is given of God first, and man corrupts it; so did Adam innocent, so did Noah, so did Israel under law, so did the priesthood, so did the royalty, so did the Church under grace. The whole of this statement is a wilful perversion of history: the progress of darkness and superstition, and the legal spirit, and of hierarchical and then monarchical power, is as notorious and well known as possible. The inroad of barbarians gave politic Rome the means of reducing it into a governmental system under Hildebrand. But the corruption itself had been growing from the time the mystery of iniquity began to work, and was ripened by degrees into the Papacy, which partially supplanted the empire by an influence of a new kind. But that the Church had to be put under law to learn the lesson of obedience, though thus laboriously obscured by inconsistent statement, is the admission that it had utterly fallen from its first estate. That going back to law was an advance towards spirituality, no true Christian will think a moment in presence of Paul's statements. The return to law was the corruption of Christianity, mingled, and avowedly mingled, with heathenism as it was. The rulers of the Church used this with a perfectly conscious intention, as the mission of Augustine to England proves, to bring them under their own hierarchical power. History shews, too, that, as to the first great inroad of barbarians, its whole history was different; the Goths were Arians; and the theory, confused as it is, has no historical ground at all.

54 W. Are you sure that you do not take a one-sided view as to a previous point? Is not Dr. Temple merely insisting upon the use of revelation as light rather than as a law, and while insisting on one point as that which he feels important, not denying the use of revelation, only urging the spirit in which it is to be used? A somewhat exclusive one-sided view is natural, when we are absorbed by one view of a subject important at the moment.

H. Your question is a very fair one. We all are liable to such excess in reasoning, if not very watchful. But my answer is very simple; and it shews that all this train of reasoning is a dead set at revelation; that is, an effort with unconscious intention, perhaps instinctive, as the only means which would suit the case. Dr. Temple says, "If they could appeal to a revelation from heaven, they would still be under law; for a revelation speaking from without, and not from within, is an external law and not a spirit." Is not this as plain as plain can be, that progress means emancipation from revelation? You see, too, what a spirit is. God, any expressed authority of God, or given truth, must be absolutely excluded; it is the childhood of law.

W. It is fatally plain. I had no idea it came to this. It is not even Deism.

H. It is remarkable, that a friend of mine once heard Mr. Powell (now no more, I believe) preach; and he said, "It is in vain they seek to escape mysteries. They must become Atheists, for the greatest mystery is the existence of God." What loss there is I need not say. The Lord says, that the Holy Ghost, the Comforter, which should come, should take the things that were His, and shew them to them; and all that the Father has is His, all the infinitude of the unseen heavenly, and, I may say, divine world, was to be revealed, and that in the intimacy of the relationship of the Father and the Son, so that we should have fellowship with them. And no man had gone up there, but He who descended thence. He could speak what He knew, and testify what He had seen — declare the Father as in His bosom. He and He only had seen the Father; but this is truth given by the Spirit (all of it, even what Christ said). All of it is lost by this system. Instead, we are to have the spirit or conscience assume the throne intended for him in the soul, and draw from the storehouse of youthful experience, and legislate upon the future, without appeal, except to himself — a law which is not imposed upon us by another power, but our own enlightened will. All that God can give of the heavenly blessedness of the Son, now a glorified man, is lost, for ever lost; and man is only to seek the development of what is within man.

55 W. It is, indeed, a loss — a strange progress! It is inconceivable to me how any who respect Christianity, can put their sons under the influence of such principles.

H. Alas! my friend, the greater part of the world, and particularly the upper classes, go with the stream; and if God, in chastisement, sees fit to let loose Satan's influence, they float with circumstances. The air — I use it only metaphorically — is darkened with the smoke of the pit. And this rejection of objective religion is as unphilosophical as it is unchristian; for all creatures must be formed by objects. God alone is self-sufficient. He can create objects in the display of His love; but He needs none outside Himself — a creature does. Man has no intrinsic resources within himself, whether fallen or unfallen; nor even angels. Take away God, what are they? Nothing or devils.

So man: if money is his object, he is avaricious, or covetous at any rate; if power, ambitious; if pleasure, a man of pleasure; and all other objects are judged of by the ruling one. In every case of a creature, what is objective is the source of the subjective state. In Christianity this is connected with a new nature, because the old will not have the divine object which characterizes and is the foundation of faith; but the principle remains unchanged. "We all, with open [unveiled] face, beholding the glory of the Lord, are changed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord." 2 Cor. 3: 18 See what a magnificent picture we have in Stephen of this! — in a remarkable way, no doubt; but still exhibitory of it morally, as well as by a vision. The whole question between Christianity and Dr. Temple's system is brought to an issue. The progress of human nature, with the very elements he speaks of, and the contrasted result, is stated. "Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye." Acts 7: 51 There is the relationship between man and the Spirit. Next, "Which of the prophets have not your fathers persecuted? and they have slain them which shewed before of the coming of the Just One, of whom ye have been now the betrayers and murderers." Acts 7: 52 These were their ways with those who unfolded the law in a more spiritual manner, and with the great living witness of perfection Himself. Such was man — flesh in contrast with the law. Such was his state: he always resisted the Holy Ghost. Now note the contrast of the objective spiritual man. Stephen, "full of the Holy Ghost, looked up steadfastly into heaven and saw the glory of God, and Jesus standing at the right hand of God, and said, I see the heavens opened, and the Son of man standing at the right hand of God." Acts 7: 56 And what was the effect, the subjective effect in one full of the Holy Ghost, of his objective perception of heavenly objects? In the midst of rage and violence, and while being actually stoned, in all calmness* he not merely bears, but kneels down, and says, "Lord, lay not this sin to their charge." Acts 7: 60 So Jesus: "Father, forgive them; for they know not what they do." Luke 23: 34 Then he said, "Lord Jesus, receive my spirit;" as Jesus had said, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit." Luke 23: 46 He beheld, with unveiled face, the glory of the Lord, and was changed into the same image from glory to glory, as by the Spirit of the Lord. 2 Cor. 3: 18 But how full and complete a picture! — man always a resister of the Holy Ghost; under law, not keeping it; with prophets, persecuting; with the Just One, a murderer; with the witness of the Holy Ghost, gnashing his teeth and slaying in rage. Christianity, in contrast — a man full of the Holy Ghost, seeing Jesus the Son of man in heaven, changed into His image, and killed by man, falls asleep, Jesus receiving his spirit.

{*The same calmness marks his whole discourse. He recites the Jews' history, their own boast, so that they could have no word to say; yet it said all. They had rejected Moses the true deliverer, Joseph their sustainer and help, and the temple they had trusted in, God had rejected by the mouth of their prophets.}

56 Dr. Temple goes over this ground, rejects Christianity as an external revelation (that must be a law), takes up exactly the same elements as Stephen, and declares that man is progressively educated by them to do without that which Stephen enjoyed. Which am I to believe? Yet I have but coldly sketched the elements of thought. I must leave you to meditate over it, and appreciate the beauty and spiritual importance of it. It is a most enchanting picture, and the deepest moral principles are contained in it; but scripture is a wonderful book.

W. But, then, this was a vision.

H. No doubt; but what he saw is revealed and written for my faith to act on.

W. True; I see plainly that Christianity judges wholly that nature which Dr. T. educates for itself — I cannot say for God. This rejection of Christ in the world made evidently a turning-point in the world's history, as to the proof of what it really was; and this history of Stephen shews man resisting the testimony to Christ's heavenly glory, as they had killed Him when He was the witness of perfection and of God on earth.

57 H. Just so. There is a silent witness to the divinity of Jesus, and, while truly and really a man, a contrast between Him and all other men, which has profoundly interested me. When man is blessed, morally blessed, elevated, he must have an elevated, and, indeed, to be taken out of self, a divine object before him. Jesus was the object even of heaven, instead of having one. When Stephen is before us, heaven was open to him as it was to Jesus; but he sees the Son of man in the heavens, and that fixes his view, and lights up his regard with the glory he saw. Heaven is opened upon Jesus, and the angels are His servants; He sees it opened, and the Holy Ghost descends, witness that He is Son of God. But He is changed into no other image by it; He has no object to which to look up, but heaven looks down on Him, and the Father's voice declares, "This is my beloved Son, in whom I am well pleased."

W. That is deeply interesting, and supremely beautiful. What a word, indeed, scripture is! I find often these traits, which, to the renewed soul, stamp the person of Jesus as divine, more powerful as witnessing who He was, than even positive texts.

H. They are; but that does not diminish the importance of the positive texts. We enjoy these revelations of His person, but the declaration that the Word was God (and many such like) is a declaration which has authority over my soul. I make God a liar, as John speaks, if I do not believe it; and so I can use it with others. God has declared it: he that believes not has made God a liar, because he has not believed the record which God has given concerning His Son. He that believes has the witness in himself. And all these traits which clothe, or rather reveal, the beloved person of Him who was humbled for us, are ineffably sweet; but the positive declaration is of all importance, too.

Note, in a passage I have alluded to, two other ways in which Jesus is presented, besides the actual declaration that He was God, and the Word made flesh. He gathers round Himself. If He were not God, this would be frightful — a subversion of all truth — a destructive impossibility: He would turn men away from God. He accepts this place. All that is attracted by what is good flows around Him, and finds there its perfect and all-satisfying centre. That is God. No one else could or ever did do this, except in sin or violence. The Church can say, Come and drink, I have the living water; so she has, but not, Come to me. That marks the spirit of apostasy. The stream (blessed be God!) flows there, but she is no fountain to which to go. This must be divine, or it is false. But mark, this is a new gathering by a divine revealed centre, not the educational progress of the race; it is the opposite, though blessed instruction for the whole race. The other way Jesus is revealed is in the words "Follow me." We have the same perfection, but now by and in Him as man there is a path revealed through this world of evil. It is one, only one, following Christ. There can be no way but a new divine one, yet necessarily a human one; there is no way for man, as man, in the world at all. When Adam was in paradise, he did not want a way; he had only, in blessed and unfeigned thankfulness, ignorant of evil, to enjoy good and to worship. When man has been cast out, and the world has grown up away from God — away in nature, in will, there can be no way in a rebellious world, in a sinful corrupt system, how to walk aright, as in and of the world, when its whole state is wrong. But if what is divine comes into it as man (what has motives not of it, nor of human nature, though truly man); if it gives a path in which the divine nature is displayed in grace and holiness in these circumstances, yet always itself manifesting what it is in them; now I have a way. I follow Him truly — in everything — a man; but a man displaying divine qualities in the ordinary circumstances of human life. He says "Follow me," but when He has said "Ye are not of the world, as I am not of the world," and goes into glory, sanctifies Himself even externally, in His ascension, from the human race, that we may be sanctified by the truth. How thoroughly opposite, to be sure, Christ's system in every detail is, to Dr. Temple's!

58 W. It is. But what you refer to gives a scope to Christianity, and a character which elevates, indeed attracts to an object — a divine object; yea, we may be allowed to say, attaches to it: but it shews that our ordinary Christianity is poor work indeed — I mean poor in principle. I am not comparing persons: take myself, the first.

H. It is. Yet there is more of it practically, where it could not be unfolded in terms, among the poor of the flock, than we may be aware of. Still I am sure, alas! you are right. But it is the beauty of Christianity, that, being objective, being truth, "the truth shall set you free," John 8: 32 and a person, "the Son shall set you free," John 8: 36 it works effectually in those who receive Christ, and requires no intellectual development to receive its power. Christ is received into the heart, and, dwelling there by faith, produces the effect in us. Yet it takes us out of ourselves, because it is objective; and we, filled with delight in an object, in what is perfect, are like Him, but so forget ourselves (and are filled by doing so), as He did in grace.

59 W. How skilful God is!

H. Yes; it is divine wisdom. Man would produce virtue by the love of virtue in himself; but then he thinks of himself, and all his virtue is rottenness. God gives us a human but divine object, and our affections are divine, because we love what is so (and morally we are what we love); but we love it in another, and are delivered from self. I would just add, that I believe that this adaptation of the character of walk to our entirely new position in Christ is what is meant by "created again in Christ Jesus unto good works, which God has afore prepared that we should walk in them." Eph. 2: 10 Hence, we are the epistle of Christ, engraved in the fleshy tables of the heart by the Spirit of the living God.

W. This contrast with the Christianity of the scriptures is, I think, what strikes one most, because it is not merely particular errors or difficulties, but evidently the whole system and principle of relationship with God, of moral influences, and the formation of the soul in God's image (and I must add, though I do not see any reference to such a thing in Dr. T.'s system, for communion with God) is in question. The whole system is the opposite of the christian one. I must reject one, if I receive the other. They are more than contrary — they are contradictory.

H. Undoubtedly they are. The very starting-point is opposite. Christianity treats man as a fallen being, not merely as imperfect, but as departed from God, and needing a new nature and redemption. Christ meets Nicodemus at once on this ground.

The rationalist or infidel system takes in Christianity by the by, as it does Greece and Rome; but man, as he is, is to be educated.

Dialogues on the Essays and Reviews, section c.

Christianity and the Education of the World.

J. N. Darby.

<09001E> file section c.

59 There are a few points it may yet be well to take notice of. Can anything prove more completely how moral intelligence is lost, or does not exist, in the minds of these teachers, than the following statement? — "The Pharisees had succeeded in converting the Mosaic system into so mischievous an idolatry of forms, that St. Paul does not hesitate to call the law the strength of sin." Nothing could shew more ignorance of the human heart or of Paul's reasonings. His principle is that "the carnal mind is enmity against God, and is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." Rom. 8: 7, "When the commandment came, sin revived and I died; and the commandment ordained to life became to me death." Rom. 7: 9, "If a law had been given which could have given life, verily righteousness should have been by the law." Gal. 3: 21. He sees an external exigence of righteousness, which imputes sin and gives no life. He goes to the very depths of our moral being; he shews the law to be spiritual, and our flesh carnal, and takes man out of the flesh, makes him dead to the law by the body of Christ, that he may live to God. All this which ploughs up the whole moral nature by its word, "thou shalt not lust," sinks in these eminently superficial men into the effect of a mere converting the Mosaic system into a mischievous idolatry of forms. The Lord Jesus did judge the neglect of substance for form, but, once the flesh had fully proved itself by rejecting Him (for lawless sin and lawbreaking were complete when He came), then its nature is judged, instead of the law educating it. It is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be. And how even our hearts feel that Paul is truer, knew more about it, than the rationalists, if one morsel of spirituality be in us! But, turn on whatever hand you will, you are met by the superficiality of these pretenders to progress. Do you think, my dear W., that grace overcomes the lusts of the flesh?

60 W. So we have learnt, through mercy.

H. Not at all; "The moral toughness of the Jewish nature, which enabled them to outlive Egyptians, Romans, Mussulmans, was well matched against the baffling evil." And so it has been communicated, I suppose, to our natures, which are not tough at all. Is it not deplorable? There is only one more principle produced in this essay, but an important one of the rationalistic school, on which I would make a remark — their view of the Bible; for they boast of the Bible and of Christ in their own way. "The Bible, from its very form, is exactly adapted to our present want. It is a history; even the doctrinal parts of it are cast in an historical form, and are best studied by considering them as records of the time at which they were written, and as conveying to us the highest and greatest religious life at that time." It has its value "by virtue of the principle of private judgment, which puts conscience between us and the Bible, making conscience the supreme interpreter." Now that every man has a conscience is a truth of the last importance. God has taken care that man, falling into sin, should, in and with the sin, acquire the knowledge of good and evil — a profound and admirable ordering of divine wisdom, as it was impossible he could have that knowledge before. The knowledge of good and evil, in one necessarily above all evil in nature, is the sphere of, and inseparable from, holiness. In man this is impossible. He is in innocence, or with a conscience in sin. But then if conscience come with sin, while in itself it is the knowledge of good and evil, i.e., of the difference of right and wrong, it may be deadened, perverted, gives no motives more than approval and disapproval, no power, no living object, save as fear of judgment may come in.

61 To man in this state a revelation of God is made from the beginning a promise of deliverance in another than himself; the all-important principle we have seen of the mind being taken out of self — affections, thankfulness, adoration of heart, introduced in contrast with judgment, while the truth of judgment is owned, law confirmed, but deliverance given from it. But God gives a full revelation as to the whole of His relationships with man, in responsibility, and in grace. That is, He either puts Himself in relationship, or shews a relationship which exists, with the being who has the conscience. We must consider it in both these lights. The latter is law, the former grace. Both were already seen in Paradise. In and out of Christianity, men have sought to reconcile them. Out of Christ they never can. But there they were, responsibility and life — a command (not knowledge of right and wrong, but a command), and free communication of life — responsibility and giving of life. Man took of the first tree, and never ate of the second. He goes out a sinner, with death on him and judgment before him — the promise of a deliverer, but in another (no promise to him, for he was in sin, but for him), the Seed of the woman, which Adam specifically was not. The first creature, man, flesh, was no longer in communion, or heir — he was lost. Then came God's witness to men, and temporal judgment of the world on that footing (i.e., the flood); then promise unconditional, again confirmed to the Seed, to that one only, as Paul says, and as is strictly and profoundly true. (Gen. 22) No question of responsibility is raised; God would bless all nations in the promised seed. But could the question of righteousness be left as indifferent? Impossible. It is raised by law, obedience and blessing, disobedience and the curse. This is broken before it is formally given in its first and chiefest link — that which bound man immediately to God. They made other gods — turned their glory into the similitude of a calf eating hay. Then, after various dealings in mercy, and Christ presenting Himself to the world's responsibility, the work of God comes, not dealing with the responsibility of men, but recognizing it; grace, which brings salvation, sealing the truth of all the previous responsibility (for otherwise salvation were not needed), but going on another ground and meeting the case. Christ takes the effect of the broken responsibility on Himself, dies for sin, and is the source of life, and that according to righteousness. The whole question of the two trees of paradise (life-giving, and good and evil, and man's ruin in this) is settled, for those who receive Christ, for ever, with the largest — yea, a perfect — revelation of God as Father, Son, and Holy Ghost, in all His riches and ways.

62 Two points come before us in what Dr. T. says: — how we are to view the Bible, even the doctrinal parts of it; and conscience being between us and the Bible as supreme interpreter.

The whole question is, Is there a revelation? Is anything heavenly to come within the scope of man's thoughts? Has God to be known, or merely right and wrong discerned? And if He has to be known, must He not reveal himself?

Now I say, if we are to be blessed, God must be known. If I am away from God in sin (and so the scripture treats man, and conscience cannot deny it), doing right and wrong cannot be settled but by returning to God. If a child has wickedly abandoned his father's house, he may leave off particular faults, but he can never be right till he returns and submits to his father. But the true knowledge of God is lost, and the more man reasons in sin, the more it is lost. It will be said, God must be good. I can say this when once He has been revealed; for heathens did not know this as truth, though instinct looked for it — wants looked for it: but they did not in their notion of God rise above the passions of men. When they did rise above them, they held that God could have nothing to say to men. But now God has been revealed, even the poorest man knows God must be good. But if I begin to reason, what do I see? An innocent child perishing in agony, the mass of the world degraded to the lowest degree by heathenism. How is He then good? An infinitesimal part of the race for centuries alone knowing the unity of the Godhead, and they almost worse than their neighbours; sin having power over myself; brutality in families, wars, tumults, and miseries — how is He good? If I say, Ah! but that is fallen man departed from God: then I ask, How then can he be received back again? I cannot with any sense deny that he is a sinner; and if God did not make him bad, he is fallen. The cravings of nature prove he is. How can he be back with God, whom I must then think to be holy and pure?

63 A revelation from God and of God is the first necessity of my nature as a moral being. I get both in Christ. "He whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God." John 3: 34. I set to my seal, on believing Him, that God is we; but then it is not only the word received from above — that a prophet, that John, had, and spoke of earthly things, moved in the sphere in which God dwelt with man as a creature on earth responsible to God; but He came Himself from above. God spoke in the Son; His words were, in a personal and complete way, though a man, the words of God. They were spoken by the Lord. Now he that receives His testimony sets to his seal that God is true. And note how this is stated: "No one is ascended up to heaven, but he who is come down from heaven, even the Son of man who is in heaven," John 3: 13, and "what he hath seen and heard that he testified." John 3: 32. Oh! what a blessing is here, which none else can give! for none else has gone up to heaven to tell us what is there. In this poor distracted sin-beset world I have the sweet and holy ways and divine objects of heaven brought down to my heart, by One who is the centre of its glory and delights, and come to bring them to me in love, yet without leaving it.

W. But is there not a conscience which must and does judge what is before it? For instance, if a God were revealed who was not good, or who was not holy, how could I possibly receive such a being as God?

H. How long has that been the case with man? Was there ever a case where conscience made a difficulty when a revelation had not been given? Was there ever such a thing as a holy God thought of, or the need of holiness in God dreamt of, in any religion but a revealed one? We may find partial traces of goodness as to human need and deliverance from tyranny in India, in the avatars of Vishnu, in that otherwise monstrous idolatry; but all idolatry everywhere proves that the notion that goodness and holiness were required in a divine Being by the conscience of man is utterly false. The gods were the reproduction of men's passions with a superior degree of power. When revelation was given, and redemption was made known by God, then holiness and goodness were made known and estimated, but nowhere else. That is, instead of the conscience being between us and the Bible (or a positive revelation), there must be a revelation between God and us, and our conscience, or if you please, between God and us, in order that the conscience may feel that God must be good and holy to be God at all. When the revelation has been given, the conscience recognizes it, but never before. Now this is essential and conclusive on the question before us, and shews us that conscience within is wholly incapable of judging. But there is a conscience, and when a divine revelation or light comes to it from God, it is susceptible of impressions from it, so as to have a right judgment, but never without, as to what is divine. Modern infidels are reasoning from the effect of divine light to deny its necessity. As when light comes in, the eye can see; with none it cannot, and would never know it could. Scripture is true; when men had the knowledge of God, they did not discern to retain God in their knowledge.

64 W. I had not weighed these facts, or rather I had not thought of them; but they are true, and they certainly put the pretensions of infidelity and of man's mind in a very peculiar light. They are really vaunting themselves as competent to judge Christianity; whereas the only light they have to judge it by, they have got from it or from Judaism. Without it man's mind sank into the grossest idolatry and moral degradation. A revelation alone enabled them, by revealing what God really is, and so forming their understandings, to judge of what He ought to be. There is another point strikes me in our conversation — how little their themes bear the test of history and facts! They make boast of philosophy; but it is well known that up to Socrates it was little but cosmogony, and Plato's morality was communism, and his theology demonism, and in truth metempsychosis. This argument from conscience was what I felt least able to meet, for I was conscious that an unholy God, or one that was not good, I could not have borne for a moment.

H. You could not, I am sure, because you have a revelation. It is their great theme abroad. But it is always useful to meet infidels on their own ground — I mean on its untenableness. I have already referred to this. If God is simply good, and the fall and redemption are not God's truth, explain to me this state of this world, three-quarters heathen, and of the other, a great part mussulman or papist, and every kind of misery and degradation dominant, and selfishness the dominant spring of all its activities, where lusts and passions are not so. If man be not fallen, where is God's goodness? And if God be not good, what is? Christianity tells me man is fallen, and reveals to me God in goodness in the midst of misery, and redemption as an issue out of it: and the history of man, not succeeding generations, sacrificed to rationalists' theories of progress of the fifty-ninth century; but revelations of this goodness and deliverance for faith to lay hold of from the day of man's fall, though the time was not come to accomplish the thing promised.

65 And, allow me to ask you, if man be so competent, how comes it there is so much difficulty, and conflict, and uncertainty? Why is there so much difficulty in finding out God? Why any question of discovering Him, if men have not lost Him? Why men believe in Jupiter, or Siva, etc., or Odin king of men, or Ormuzd and Ahriman, or Khem, or a host of others which it is useless for me to follow? Why have they such difficulty, when it is owned God must be good and holy, in coming to Him and walking with Him?

No; it is evident man has got away from God, many horridly, degradingly; and that the fairest of Eve's daughters are caring more for a pretty ribbon, and of her sons for gold or a title, than for all which God presents to them to win their hearts in the Son of God's sufferings, and offering up Himself in grace for them. No; man is fallen, has lost the sense of what God is, and of His love — has not his heart's delight in that which God is, or what is supremely good. Nothing proves it more than his not finding it out. God has given a conscience, but it does not judge the word: the word of God judges it. In one sense, every man must judge; but his judgment reveals him in presence of the word. A man's judgment of other things always reveals his own state. He is certainly lost, condemned, if he does not receive the word. God speaks, and gives adequate witness of who He is. "He that believeth not is condemned already." John 3: 18. Light is come into the world. If men prefer darkness, it is not their conscience. Their will must be at work. Dr. Temple professes to believe, I suppose, that the Son of God is come. I ask, Is man bound to receive Him or not? There He is, to test every man's soul by His reception, or the contrary. It does test the soul. He has a right to judge, you tell me. If he does not receive Him, he proves himself bad, bad in will. He has to judge; but if he rejects what is perfect in goodness, his own state is shewn. He is judged by his approval or disapproval of what is there, because perfection — because God manifest in the flesh — is there. Because God is speaking, woe to him who does not hearken! Yes, he has to judge. It is not his right: he is a lost creature; but he is tested by it — it is his responsibility. How he can meet it, I do not enquire here. I believe the grace of God is needed; but there is God speaking — speaking in grace. Is He received or not? The two things John speaks of, in the passage I allude to, are the words of God, and One come from above who is above all. Am I not bound to listen? am I not bound to receive? You ask me, Must I not judge whether they are His words, and whether He came from above? I answer, Yes; but you are judged by the result you come to, because God knows He has given a perfectly adapted and gracious witness; yea, that He is it. If you have rejected this, you have rejected Him, and remain in your sins and under wrath. To them that believe He is of price, as He is to God; to them that are disobedient, a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence. It is a savour of life to life, and a savour of death to death; and the presentation of the truth and words of God and of the Son of God must be so, because their present rejection is the rejection of Himself.

66 Talking of conscience between us and the Bible is all foolishness and nothing else.* The Bible is God's word in direct contact with us, telling to our conscience all that ever we did; that God is holy, but (blessed be His name!) that He is grace and a Saviour. What is conscience as distinct from us? It is that on which the word of God acts. If light comes (and God is light, and Christ was the light of the world), it makes all manifest, and acts on the eye. If the eye is in an ill state, it avoids the light; it does not judge the light: its state is proved by it; it judges colours, forms, and so on, by the light. But a conscience that is not "us," or a conscience between us and God, is an utter delusion. Conscience is the knowledge of good and evil in us: that it is, without any further revelation of God. It has the sense of responsibility, and, though obscurely, of judgment and the consequences of sin (at any rate, as far as vague fear goes). But if Christianity be true at all, the Son of God has come, and speaks God's words. The moment He is received (that is, that there is faith in Him) the first judgment of conscience and heart is to bow to Him; the first right thing (for right is the just maintenance of the duties of relationship) is to listen, and obey that word; the most essentially wrong thing is not to bow and receive His word. To judge God, when I know it is Him, is the height of sin.

{*It is really a question between faith and infidelity. If I believe the Bible to be the word of God, the judgment is formed; I have only to bow. If I reject it, I am an infidel; my judgment of it is formed. I may be ignorant of it, then there is no judgment to be formed; though I am sure, if a new nature be in us, it will be received by us as light is by the eye, and known. The rejection of the word, it being what it is, is the judgment of what rejects it.}

67 If Dr. Temple or these rationalists do not believe that He has come and spoken, I will seek to prove to their consciences that He has. There is God's way of doing it. They must judge whether He be come. To be sure; but this I tell them with certainty, from His own lips, that He is come, and if they do not believe in Him, they are condemned; if they do, they have eternal life. But if He be there, if they do believe He has spoken, their part is to listen to Him, not to judge Him. With the blinding of conscience by passions, ignorance, education, it is of the utmost importance to have a sure witness of God's mind, not dependent on the varying views of man. If I lose the Bible, I lose communications from God; I am infinitely, irreparably sunk. Dr. Temple, it seems, does not like God's word — does not like He should reveal Himself. If he has a professed revelation, he "likes to consider it as records of the time at which they were written, and as conveying to us the highest and greatest religious life at that time." That man should be developed, that may be allowed; religious life, that too; but communications from God — no. Now there have been such — God's word spoken in this world, or Christianity is all a falsehood from beginning to end, a holy imposture! which there is nothing like in the world. But if there have been such, have we lost them for ever? Are we returned to darkness? for since the true light shone — shone in one speaking the words of God, am I to have them no more, no more this revelation from God, no more any communication from Himself as such? I have lost all that was precious and elevating in the world; I have lost communication with God. I may speculate about Him — may know something of right and wrong, but I have lost all communications from Him — wretched man that I am! What was man when he had not it? What is man when he has not it?

To reduce divine communications to apostolic life is to shew a will not to hear God directly, not to have to say to Him — a dislike to have to do with the words of His mouth. It is not, "Thy words were found, and I did eat them, and they were to me the joy and rejoicing of my heart." Jer. 15: 16. If God have spoken, and if we deny it, we are infidels; to exalt the conscience of man above it, as a judge, is to set corrupt sinful man above the authority of God. I read that the word discerns the thoughts and intents of the heart. It makes its truth and the authority of God known by its action in the conscience; it tells a man all that ever he did; but it reveals a God of grace not that the conscience judges the word. Christ did speak the words of God. Are they lost to us? If I have them, is my conscience to be between me and them? What profound nonsense such a sentence is! If you do not know them, I will not call you an infidel, but you are an unbeliever. You have not yet set to your seal that God is true. Do not, at any rate, pretend to teach others, when you admit that God has spoken, and you cannot yet tell what is His word, and what is not.

68 W. I am glad you spoke of this question, for it is one of the practical difficulties to my mind in their way of speaking; because I feel I have a conscience, and yet I recognize the supreme authority of the word.

H. But do you not see, my good friend, that the whole object is to get rid of revelation, and its authority over us? If God has spoken, if there be a revelation, would not the first act of conscience be to turn and bow to it — of the heart to delight in what God has revealed? for He has surely revealed Himself.

W. Of course it would be the proof that there was conscience in activity, and not will, a heart to taste the blessedness One alone can tell of.

H. That is the very point, at least a very principal one; and it is connected with the fall, which is always ignored in this system. There are two parts of conscience: one, the knowledge of right and wrong; the other, sense of responsibility, and that to God. The first, sin has practically greatly darkened; the last, will resists, though it cannot deny. The word of God comes in, gives perfect light to the conscience, and much more, and presents the authority of God to the will. Men plead conscience as a competency against God and His word, saying they must have conscience supreme. God will settle that question, whether His light and word is perfect for conscience, His authority in it sufficient to claim obedience and submission. A child has departed wickedly from its father's house, and thrown off his authority. He professes to desire to go right; his father sends a message, yea, comes and speaks to him, communicating to him his mind, and will, and grace. He replies, "Oh, all that is a thing external to me; the real thing is the inward disposition in me." My answer to him is, "All very fair, my good lad; but the trial and test of your disposition is your submitting to your father's word, and receiving and bowing with a thankful heart to his testified kindness."

W. But suppose he were to say, But I must know if it be my father's word.

69 H. All quite right. But I reply, If your heart were right, you would be only too glad to know it is. And when you say, that, even if it be, it is only an external thing, and my conscience after all must judge, I see you take your own judgment still, and do not want your father's word. I know your disposition, your will likes to be master yet. Besides, let me tell you, had you been staying in the house, you would be familiar enough with your father's voice and words to know them at once. You are proving your own incapacity and evil. If you do not receive and understand his words, you will remain without, and prove that incapacity — that is all. If your disposition were right, rebel as you have been, a word from your father would be heaven to you, and the heart would delight in bowing to his authority; and this very readiness is the disposition which, directed towards his own words, is that which, morally speaking, gives capacity to receive them; for the heart is right, and the will broken. If any man will (desire, be willing) to do my will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God, or whether I speak of myself. If you talk of your conscience being supreme, when your father has spoken, it is quite clear that you wish to be independent of your father; the first proof of the true return of heart and conscience is the self-subjection to your father's declared mind and will. You are not returned to him yet. Your whole place is wrong, conscience and all.

There is the knowledge of right and wrong as a faculty without God; but where God speaks, conscience is proved by bowing to it. See Saul: "I thought I ought to do many things contrary to the name of Jesus of Nazareth, which thing also I did." Acts 26: 9. There was conscience. Once he has to do with the Lord, once he is right, it is "Lord, what wilt thou have me to do?" Acts 9: 6, "Speak, Lord, for thy servant heareth." 1 Sam. 3: 9. All short of this is alienation from God. A conscience that wants to be away from God, to judge for itself, is not an upright conscience. It is will and sin. Conscience is not only judgment, it recognizes the authority of God (we are sanctified to obedience) and loves it, because it is true conscience, and the will of independent self is given up, the soul restored to God. For the word has authority as well as light. It tests the truth of conscience by giving light, but it speaks with the authority of God. Hence the Lord says, The word that I speak unto you, the same shall judge you in the last day. Judge it now, if you dare. I do not believe in the conscientiousness of a man who pleads his conscience against the word of God.

See how the apostles speak: "If we receive the witness of men, the witness of God is greater; he that believeth not God hath made him a liar." 1 John 5: 9, "He that heareth my word hath everlasting life," John 5: 24, says Christ. "Why do ye not understand my speech? Because ye cannot hear my word." John 8: 43, "Because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not." John 8: 45, "He that sent me is true, and I speak to the world those things I have heard of him." John 8: 26, "As my Father hath taught me, I speak these things." John 8: 28. Because man has abandoned God on his original created ground, God has sent the testimony of heavenly things to bring him to a higher relationship with himself. And he — the wretched sinner — tells me he must listen to conscience, because this revelation is an external thing! To be sure heavenly things, and the record of them, are very external to him. He has told the truth. He is out of Paradise. This world is the scene which has grown up in man's exclusion from God, who comes with the revelation of what is divine and heavenly to bring him out of that, and into what is heavenly; and he puts it off, and says it is external to him. He is right. Only if he does not receive it, he will be external to it. He will have a conscience too; he is all right in that, and it will tell him what he has done, when the time of gracious reception is past. His sheep hear His voice. "But ye," says the Lord, "believe not, because ye are not of my sheep." John 10: 26.

70 The word and confirming works are given, adequate testimony is given. Woe to him who does not receive it! He will die in his sins, and the same word will judge him in that day. If God has come and spoken and revealed Himself from heaven, and we do not receive it, He and all that is heavenly is external to us, and there is nothing but self within. But even in this notion they only shew their ignorance; for "he that believeth on the Son hath the witness in himself." 1 John 5: 10. The measure of the conscience becomes divine, which natural conscience never can be, even when it is right — it must and ought to be human; whereas, when born of God through the word, on receiving the word I receive Christ, the revelation of God, and of what is heavenly. He is my life, He is within; and I am called on to be an imitator of God as a dear child, and walk in love as Christ has loved us, so that I am, if needed, to lay down my life for the brethren; for Christ has thus proved His love to us. My measure of conscience is divine, acting because I have both seen and received what is divine in receiving Christ by His word. So that, speaking of its fulness, the apostle is not afraid to say, filled with (up to) all the fulness of God. Hence, John says, "which thing is true in him and in you; because the darkness is past, and the true light now shineth." 1 John 2: 8. And all this heavenly revelation of and by Him, who came down from heaven, I am to give up, to have patriotism from the selfish and treacherous Romans, whose patriotism was the deceitful oppression of the world; and to learn that courage, which I may find in a cock or a bull-dog, has been ignorantly forgotten by Paul! It is hard to have patience with such contemptible stuff.

71 W. But we ought. The Master you speak of had.

H. You are right. He was perfect in everything, and fleshly and unchristian feeling is apt ever to mingle itself with our state in such cases. Still though we are imperfect in it, indignation in itself is not wrong in such cases.

W. But there is still a question which I should like to put to you here.

H. Well, do so.

W. I enter into your feelings as to Christ. He whom God had sent spoke the words of God, and he who received His testimony set to his seal that God is true — an immense principle evidently every way. I see plainly that, in receiving the word the very name given to Christ in this respect, I receive truth, submit to divine authority, am restored to God, enter in a heavenly way into a new relationship with Him, according to that which is revealed, and know grace, and indeed glory. But then the apostle's words — how can I regard them? because the personal speaker is, so to speak, lost.

H. As regards Christ Himself, the ineffable loveliness of all He said and did, of course, necessarily bears the stamp of heaven, of one who came thence, and yet could say, who is in the bosom of the Father — who spoke what He knew, and testified what He had seen. This is necessarily wanting in the subsequent communications; but, on the other hand, there is gain. "It is expedient for you that I go away; for if I go not away, the Comforter will not come; but if I go I will send him unto you." John 16: 7. Besides the perfect expression of divine good in Christ on earth, the question of good and evil was settled for ever. Christ being made sin, and God perfectly glorified by His offering of Himself, and His being the sin-bearer, the question of good and evil was morally settled. Thereupon man takes a place in heaven. This was a new thing. Thus you will find that characteristically (for, of course, the same truths are found in both) John gives us the divine thing, the heavenly thing — God Himself manifested upon earth, Paul, on the ground of sovereign grace, man brought righteously into heaven. Now Christ must have suffered, risen from the dead, and gone to heaven, to have this before us, and the message or testimony of it given. Yet it must be divine testimony to have any value; and that I have through the Holy Ghost sent down.

72 W. You mean, that the New Testament gives us a witness and a record, with, of course, many accessory truths, of the divine — God Himself, Θεότης as well as Θειότης manifested in man; and man brought in a new and heavenly way completely to God.

H. I do. The former, as to its fruit in us, takes the character of life; the latter, of righteousness (but divine life — that eternal life which was with the Father, and was manifested to us, and by which, Christ being our life, we now live; and divine righteousness). It is thus wholly a new thing — a life that was with the Father before the world was, manifested in Jesus, communicated to us — not in Adam innocent more than in Adam a sinner.

W. But, then, this becomes a kind of independent life — at any rate, once it is received.

H. In no way. The character of this life, even in Jesus as man, was the perfection of the condition in which God has given to us eternal life, and that life is in His Son. "He that hath the Son hath life." It was obedience and dependence, and a constant heavenly regard. He was the ἀρχηλὸς and τελειωτὴς faith, a Man with His eye always out of Himself on God. So with us. When I say Christ lives in me, I must add always "the life which I live in the flesh, I live by the faith of the Son of God, who loved me, and gave himself for me." Gal. 2: 20. Divine life in a creature nature is always objective; that is its essential excellence, as indeed we have already seen.

W. Let me ask you what place you give Peter, then?

H. What there is of connection in this life with the previous ways of God he pursues. It is government; and this in the strongest way confirms to me the authenticity of the second epistle. The first is government in favour of the just; the second, as regards the predominant and licentious wicked. Hence he goes to the consuming of all things in the stability of which they rest. The saint for him is a pilgrim. I he great fact of redemption, of course, is fully stated for this. But we are not risen with Christ, but He is risen, and we have a living hope through His resurrection; meanwhile the government of God is displayed in favour of His people upon earth. This evidently connected it with the Old Testament, though on new ground. Hence the quotation of Psalm 34, "He that will love life," etc.

73 W. Have you ever thought of the likeness of Jude and 2 Peter? There is something strange in it.

H. How it came about may be a difficulty — perhaps a difficulty never to be solved, as many such external questions, after eighteen hundred years — interesting in their place, but immaterial. But the difference as to divine teaching in them is clear and important. Peter speaks of wickedness, and God's dealings with it as such, God's government, as I said: Jude, of apostasy, or leaving the first estate, going briefly through all the characters of this, angelic, the natural man, ecclesiastical, and final rebellion against Christ, on which actual judgment will come; especially, of course, tracing it as regards the Church from false brethren first creeping in, till Christ comes to judge ungodly men. Thus Peter speaks of angels that sinned; Jude of angels that kept not their first estate, but left their own habitation. Thus scripture fills all parts of moral truth up. Like a dissected map, it proves its own perfectness.

In the gospels, which these ignorant wise men are talking about, as to be harmonized and compared, and synoptic and supplementary, we get in Matthew Christ presented to the Jews, Emmanuel, Messiah, and the result of His rejection, but still referring to the Jews (hence no ascension); in Mark, Christ the servant prophet; in Luke, Christ the Son of man in grace, leaving them, on going to heaven, under the blessing of His thence outstretched hand (that is, the various revelations of Christ on earth as man); and in John, out of all dispensational relationship, Christ, God manifest in flesh, the Word and Son, and divine life displayed, and the giver of the Comforter, but even here no ascension, because it is not man in heaven, but God on earth. Hence we shall find another distinct characteristic of John. The three so called synoptic gospels present Christ to the responsibility of man to receive Him. In John He is seen unknown or rejected in the first chapter and becomes the divine object of divinely given faith to those born of God, the Holy Ghost the Comforter being given on His going away. Were we to enter into details, we should only find this admirably, and of course perfectly, brought out. I confess when I read rationalistic views of the books (I do not mean, of course, criticism of the text, though even this be influenced by their state), I am astounded at their absolute moral incapacity. Eternal it is to them, sure enough; at least, all that is in it, all that is divine. They have hit here on the right word, condemned out of their own mouth.

W. But as we are speaking of this, what do you make of James?

74 H. It is equally admirable in its place; not a high revelation of what is divine, but the fruit of the patient and perfect grace of God towards us. When Paul had been in the third heaven, after all he was a poor mortal; and as, speaking reverently, God had put him in the danger, though by blessing, He sent him a corrective. It was Paul's evil, no doubt, that needed it; but it was God's own goodness, which thinks of all our evil in grace, that sent it. And Paul, as you may see, got profit and advantage through it (that is, as an occasion). Now I do not say that James' epistle is a thorn in the flesh, but it is an excellent corrective of it; it is a girdle about the loins. Our loins are girt about with truth by it; the exceedingly high and heavenly truth into which we are brought; the elevation to which faith brings us; its being faith (that is, a principle which takes us out of ourselves to rest on what is in God and His revelation) might lead us, not by its own nature, but by our utter perverseness, like Paul, not to be out of the flesh as it ought, but to be puffed up in it — to use liberty for a cloak of licentiousness It is dreadful it should be so; but such we are, poor wretched creatures that we are.

James, that is really, God, comes in and meets us, and with an appropriate moral energy which is mighty in the conscience, shews that the real power of faith connects it with life. Its reality is shewn — that is the testing word — by its fruits. And no one speaks of this as more of sovereign grace than he, in all its Pauline excellency, so as to show the connection. "Of his own will begat he us, that we might be a kind of first-fruits of his creatures." James 1: 18. He too connects it with the law of liberty — that is, when the nature, the new man, and the prescribed will, go together. If I command my child to go where he longs to go, and tell him the way, it is obedience, but it is the law of liberty. He speaks of three laws, or law in three ways. First, the law as such — here, if guilty in one point, guilty of all. The authority of the law given has been despised in the point in which lust was active. We are wholly guilty. Secondly, the royal law of subjective perfection: Thou shalt love thy neighbour as thyself. That is doing well. Thirdly, the perfect law of liberty into which I look; that is, the revelation of the path of the divine nature, of which I am made partaker. Revelation shews me the perfection of it, the divine nature gives me the delight in it. I am as a present thing blessed in the doing it.

That James speaks purely of fruits of faith in justifying by works is evident from the fact that the examples he takes were no examples of the fruit of natural conscience at all. One was a father slaying his son, the other a harlot betraying her country. I do not know what the Romans or Dr. Temple would have said to her. But one was giving up everything, even the promises according to flesh, to God, in absolute obedience, counting on Him even to have Isaac again, according to His word; the other identifying herself with the Lord's people when they had not yet gained one victory in Canaan over their mighty enemies. No one pierces more deeply by the word than James into the principles and workings of the human heart, or takes grace and faith as all; but he will have it real and practical, not speculative knowledge. And we need this, and delight in it, if true of heart. Nothing shewed more the really weak side of Luther than his calling this an epistle of straw. And I have no doubt at all that it greatly hindered him entering into the blessed excellences of Paul himself. But you have led me away from our subject.

75 W. I do not know that I have. The natural flow of our delights in divine things is itself a testimony, and a powerful one. Besides, I apprehend, the positive production of what is good is an argument for it (it makes its very beauty), as well as, at least as strong as, mere reasonings against objections.

H. Well, I believe so; besides it keeps charity alive as regards those who do not taste them, which there is danger that reasonings which occupy themselves with evil may not do. You cannot be filled with the blessedness that is in Christ and the word, without both loving the persons of those that are simply wrong, and desiring they might partake of them. There are adversaries. This is somewhat different. There is such a thing as righteousness as regards wilful evil, and it is charity; but we have to watch ourselves close as regards this. If you saw a deliberate sinner seeking to corrupt a young practically guileless mind, would you not be indignant, and charitably indignant?

W. I should.

H. It is not reflective but it is right, and a high kind of right. It shews a soul living in what is right and caring for it. Seeing the connection between souls and God, which the other is disturbing or hindering, a millstone about such a one's neck and casting into the sea would be better for a man than his so doing; and that is felt. How far these rationalists are thus guilty I leave to God.

But to turn to our subject — the word of the apostles as compared with Christ. 2 Corinthians 5 states the change from one to the other. God was in Christ, reconciling the world unto Himself, not imputing their trespasses unto them. There was the direct witness of God Himself in the person of His Son in grace; and when asked who He was by the Jews, He refers to His word: ἄρχηυ, in principle, utterly and entirely, what I am saying to you (or, as in the English, "from the beginning"). His words expressed Himself. Then we have a third point, committing unto us the ministry of reconciliation. "Now then we are ambassadors for Christ, as though God did beseech by us, we pray in Christ's stead, be ye reconciled to God; for he hath made him to be sin for us, who knew no sin, that we might be made the righteousness of God in him."

76 God had Himself in Christ testified perfect grace in His words and ways with man — revealed what was heavenly as one who had come down from heaven, and was the Son of man who was in heaven. It was the blessed gracious revelation of what was heavenly to men, meeting all their wants and sorrows withal. But man would none of it. "No man receiveth his testimony." John 3: 32. He then accomplishes the work which was to bring His redeemed into heaven. "Father, I will that they whom thou hast given me be with me where I am;" John 17: 24 and He goes to prepare a place for them. But thus His ministry by the word was closed, and He, having secured everlasting righteousness and the glory of God in their admission, sends down the Holy Ghost to be to earth a witness of it in chosen vessels, and, practically, in all who should receive their testimony. He tells them that it should not be they that spoke, but the Spirit of their Father who spoke in them; and so far from inferior was that testimony, that He encourages His disciples, by saying that a blasphemy against Him who spoke in it would be unpardonable, while a word against Himself as humbled might be forgiven. (Luke 12: 10-12.)

Hence John says, "He that is of God heareth us; he that is not of God heareth not us; hereby know we the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error." 1 John 4: 6. And the apostle Paul: "If any one be spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord." 1 Cor. 14: 37. Again: "Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things which are freely given to us of God; which things, also, we speak, not in the words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, comparing," 1 Cor. 2: 13, or, as I have no doubt is the sense, using a spiritual medium for communicating spiritual things.

77 That these things animated their life too is true; but where did they get them? The Holy Ghost was come down from heaven, as the Son had come down. He was to shew them the things of Christ; to guide them into all truth; shew them things to come. I suppose, if they lived in the things, they must have learned them somehow. What wretched pleading it is, to say it is the expression of the highest and greatest religious life of the time! To be sure it was. But where did they get the things to communicate on which they lived? What was the power in which they communicated them? Can Dr. Temple, who fancies he sees this life clearer than his neighbours — can he tell us anything he has not got from their revelations? He, we may hope, is living on what they communicated; but who communicated them for him to live on? All this is shuffling about the matter to deny revelation. No one could testify of what was in heaven directly but one who came thence. Christ did, and says so; the Holy Ghost did, and communicated through suited vessels the glory of Christ and the Father's love in Him.

Thus it was. After the law, the rule of God's government on earth, the prophets shewed the coming Messiah, His sufferings and glories; but it was as seeing it afar off, and recalling to the law, not announcing the kingdom as then coming — the law and the prophets were until John. By him the kingdom is preached. He goes before the face of Jehovah to prepare His ways. He receives from above his testimony and place; but his testimony was of the earth, repentance, judgment, the kingdom — Messiah coming amongst them. Then Christ comes, but does not receive from heaven, but comes from heaven, and can tell directly what He has seen and knows and has heard. He is in the bosom of the Father, and can declare God; and He does so. "No man receiveth his testimony." Man wills not what is heavenly.

But what an infinite blessing is this of which these rationalists would deprive us — the positive revelation of what is heavenly, the blessed communication of what is there above! To talk of life and religious life is all simple nonsense. Can religious life reveal what it has never seen, the blessedness in which it has never yet been? True religious christian life is formed by this revelation; and think of reducing men to mere conscience! and rejecting the revelation of what is heavenly even to conscience! What a lowering thing it is! No; the Son speaks what He knows, and testifies what He has seen. It is the very essence of Christianity, and sole source of blessing. But, man being so evil as to reject it, God is not frustrated in His love; the need of it as above all is made manifest; redemption is accomplished, and thereon man takes his seat on high on the throne of God, and the Holy Ghost is sent down the witness and proof of it, and testifies of the glory he (man) is in, his relationship with God his Father, all the wisdom and glory of the counsels and work by which he is brought there; the Church's place with Christ, founding a perfected and purged conscience on the work of Christ, so that holiness is righteously connected with the entrance of a sinner into the glory he had come utterly short of. This links the heart to what is heavenly; while the testimony of the Holy Ghost is the sure foundation on which the soul can rest for the certainty of it as truthful, and thus a living enjoyment. God's will and counsel; Christ's accomplished work; the Holy Ghost's testimony (Heb. 10); that is what gives liberty and boldness to enter into the presence of God. The scriptures are the recorded testimony for all times. Ministry does not cease, but revelation does, when all is revealed. The word of God is completed.

78 W. I see the divine system in what you say, and its wisdom and completeness, while we have to live by faith. But there is a question I should like to ask you in connection with this — What place do you give to criticism in this?

H. I use it with all my heart. If my father had left a will of his, copied for the various members of the family, which we felt bound us all, in which all had an interest, and were all subject to; of course, in copying, some errors might have crept in. So in the scriptures, the oracles of God were committed to men (mark the expression — the oracles of God, it is formal; that is, not mere life expressed), while Providence watched over them. But there was as to this the responsibility of man; as in all God's ways with us, there is this connection of responsibility, and yet security by grace. Well, errors have crept into this will; but we are all desirous of knowing accurately our Father's mind, assured that it is in the will. We compare copies to have it as accurately given as possible. I do so, because it has authority, absolute authority, over me the child: had it not, I should not do so. The multiplication of the copies which has so far multiplied occasional mistakes, quas aut incuria fudit aut humana parum cavit natura, has also multiplied the certainty that the whole will is right, and has enabled me to correct isolated errors in each one copy by comparing it with the others. If a word or two remain illegible, or not to be ascertained, I must leave that word, I lose its force, if the same disposition be not elsewhere. But it is evident I should, if I attached value to my Father's will as such, carefully compare all to have it exact. This has been done by men skilled in it, proving how little was uncertain, and that little affecting doctrine nowhere.

79 W. This I see very distinctly. The proofs of the divine record lie elsewhere. This is mere care for its correctness, because it is so estimated, in which providential care and divine faithfulness are to be trusted, as in everything we are blessed in.

H. Just so. There is no divine blessing but by faith, nor can be, when it passes beyond mere temporal enjoyments, and they are never divinely enjoyed but by faith. This is the necessary link between the soul of man and an unseen God. In truth it was needed when He was manifested; for no man can see God, morally speaking. Therefore it was said then, "He that seeth the Son, and believeth on him, hath everlasting life." John 3: 36. Were it possible to see His glory and live, it would be no moral link of the soul with Him. If man were even kept from sin by it, which outwardly he might, it would be no real enjoyment of Him, nor living spiritual fellowship.

I think we have pretty well exhausted the subject of this essay, and enjoyed some excursions by the way to scenes it opened out to view as we passed. Many details might be taken up, but I do not know that we should gain anything material by referring to them; such as the habits of false moral estimation introduced by the heathen apprehension of things often current. His three witnesses quarrelled, but that proves nothing, if they had different partial elements of truth. It is seen every day in poor human nature, so that I do not insist on this; but some I will refer to. Two of these witnesses — Rome and the early Church — disliked each other. Yet that dislike makes little impression upon us now. What an advance through indifferentism to an anti-christian state! For so absolute is truth, is Christ's claim, that "he that is not with me is against me." This dislike, that Dr. Temple and his school remain unaffected by, is the deadly persecuting hatred of Christians, of the saints (certainly, whatever faults there may have been, the excellent of the earth), by the heathens — the hatred of Christ and His people by the worshippers of idols and devils — the enmity of man and Satan (for we are not going to give up our belief that Jesus was the Christ of God for these gentlemen) against the Son of God and all that owned Him. This makes little impression on them, no doubt. In the fourth essay we read, "It was natural for a Christian in the earliest period to look upon the heathen state in which he found himself, as if it belonged to the kingdom of Satan, and not to that of God; and, consecrated as it was in all its offices to the heathen divinities, to consider it a society having its origin from the powers of darkness, not from the Lord of light and life." And what do these clergymen and professed teachers of Christianity believe?

80 What were the heathen gods and goddesses? I read in the first essay, "The natural religious shadows projected by the spiritual light within, shewing on the dark problems without, were all in reality systems of law given also by God, though not given by revelation." No doubt, they say, they distorted and corrupted, etc. But can you for a moment believe that the worship of Jupiter, and Venus, and Bacchus, and horrors which are simple facts as they may be read in Romans 1 (which after all, though in just language, passes over the surface of turpitude, not to defile itself by sinking into details I cannot here refer to either), were systems of law given by God? The worship of passions and devils, gloating in the unutterable degradation of God's most wonderful creature, a system of law given of God!

And it is false as to its history. Heathenism was, even in this aspect, the departure under devilish influence from the knowledge of God: Noah had this; and they did not like to retain God in their knowledge, and God gave them up to dishonour themselves. They degraded God to a brute, and themselves to worse after. It never was a training parallel to, and contemporaneous with, that of the Hebrews — a system of law given of God, and then corrupted. There was the knowledge of the true God, and men gave it up — as far as the history of these dark ages can be traced, a system deliberately taken up in Babel, to leave God, and separated into two hostile branches: — the Sabaeans, who did not go farther than taking fire as a representative of God, as the modern Parsees; and Ionism, a system of horrible wickedness and idolatry pervading India, Egypt, Phoenicia, and thence Greece, which made (possibly through Orpheus and the Cabiri, certainly in Hesiod and Homer) pretty poetry of it, and so passing on to Rome, and, I have little doubt, far and wide elsewhere, modified according to the spirit and character of nations — at any rate, in historically known nations, a common universal system.

It is a perfect iniquity to say as to the principle of it, and false as to the history of it, that these were systems of law given of God, though not by revelation. There was a knowledge of God departed from. This was corrupted, and man with it. Devils and deified passions took the place of God in the heart. To say, "Ultimately the gospel was to have sway in doing more perfectly that which heathen religions were doing imperfectly," has only to be stated to revolt every divinely taught mind. What did heathenism do? Hold the State together. Be it so; but they admit this only decorated the surface of it. But morally in relationship to God, what did it do? That these educators of the world do not, I suppose, care about. Christianity, they say, was not only to quicken the spirit of the individual (what is that?) but to sanctify civil institutions — heathenism decorated the surface. But even as to the Church, heathenism, they tell us, had its national churches.

81 This defence of heathenism seems to me, dear friend, as immoral in its character as it is false historically. In heathenism there was, as there must be in man, an instinct as to God, but laid hold of by Satan to pander to the passions of men — God, with some instinctive remains of a supreme God (testimonium animae naturaliter christianae), turned into calves, cats, and monkeys, and beasts!

There were four principles as it seems to me at work in heathenism: — the instinct of a supreme Being, or a superior one, at any rate, above man, impossible to be got rid of; heroism, or the deification of ancestors, traceable everywhere, and connecting itself, in its earlier and oriental phases, with Noah and his family and the ark (the idea is carried to excess by Bryant, but it seems to me incontrovertible); thirdly, the stars, as something wonderful, instinct with movement, and acting on the earth; and, lastly, what led to such horrible corruption, the sense of a generative power of nature, partly abstract, partly running through every sphere of thought and connected with the ruin of nature, and a certain resurrection in power, which linked it with day and night, and summer and winter. This, helped by various traditions, formed various systems; but all of man without God, to be found if at all, as the ἄγυωστος Θεὸς in India, in certain respects, the most elevated, but the most monstrous, more of God's interest in man and His coming down, though there was Apotheosis — in Egypt one more wise and applied to human morality and organization, yet the same system thoroughly, with more of the sentiment of a definite judgment of God, and conflict of good and evil, in the history of Osiris, Amenti, and Typhon, dead men not execrated were called justified — in Greece, the lowest and poorest of all, which made man and poetry everything (gods became men, or swans, or bulls, to indulge their passions). It was the deification of man, and morally more contemptible than all. No gods but gods of human passions, money, war, corrupt lusts — gods in which there was no single association with conscience, except a dreary Tartarus for those who might despise them, and an Elysium so poor that Achilles complained bitterly of being there It is the system of the deification of human passions, and another world only used to make gods of them, and these gods, that is devils, important, and this world the only excellent place. This was a system of law, we are told, given of God. I am silent. I fear I should be rebuked by you for something contemptuous and bitter, and say nothing of what I feel.

82 As to Rome there was nothing new, they were not poetical, but political; and their religion too. The god Terminus was immovable. Can these clergymen shew me one single proof of any heathenism being a system of law given of God? The instinct that there is something above him is in man — cannot be eradicated; a conscience accompanies him, in spite of the devil. Is there anything to be found in heathenism besides this fact, perverted to men's offering the things which they offered to devils, and not to God; and the consecrating the worst passions, and their most intolerable effects to these devils or dung-gods, as scripture calls them, so as to destroy that conscience, if it had been possible? Do our Essayists think their judgment of heathenism, or that of scripture in the Old and New Testament, the most correct? Their admirable Trajan they must view as a heathen to admire. They turn round the other side, and see that the subduer of Dacia, the mighty emperor, is with heartless indifference of character the cool persecutor of those who owned the Son of God, and the restorer of sacrifices to devils. "They are so eager for light, that they will rub their eyes in the dark, and take the resulting optical delusions for real flashes." Excuse me I quote this not very elegant image of Dr. Temple's, as a singular but not inapt description of a state of mind in which, of course, he has not described himself.

In fine, the foundation of the whole system is false. There was progress in the revelation of God's mind, because of the alienation of man from God, and the ignorance that was in him; but it never was the education of the world at all. It began, not by law, but, as became the God of all grace, by promise, yet not by promise to the world, though in favour of it, and for all that should believe it at all times; then law, yet not given to the world, but to a people separated out of it because of the horrible state the world was in, and a careful separation made between them to keep at any rate, in one little corner, the knowledge of the true God, that all might not be wholly debased; then the Son of God coming into it, but the world knew Him not, His own received Him not, and they joined in crucifying Him. He was the Shepherd of a little flock. Then the Holy Ghost sent, whom the world cannot receive, because it seeth Him not, neither knoweth Him; but given to those who believe; but with the fullest witness of grace to all who do believe the record God has given concerning His Son. Does Dr. Temple believe these facts, or deny them? Is he, that is, a Christian or an infidel?

83 Heathenism was not different contemporary systems of law given of God, but the giving up the knowledge of the true God, and plunging into devilish idolatry and bestial corruption, though God did not allow, let Satan do what he could, that they should destroy the instincts that there was a God, nor flee from the torment of a violated conscience. The whole system is historically and actually false. I believe, dear friend, in Christianity, not in the reveries of those who (to use their own somewhat vulgar simile already quoted, which I only do use as theirs) "are so eager for light [not having God's and reflecting it, Christ come as light into the world in darkness], that they will rub their eyes in the dark, and take the resulting optical delusions for real flashes." It suggests to me the word addressed to poor Israel on lower ground than ours, for the true light now shines: "Who is among you that feareth Jehovah, that obeyeth the voice of his servant, that walketh in darkness, and hath no light? let him trust in the name of Jehovah, and stay upon his God. Behold, all ye that kindle a fire, that compass yourselves about with sparks, walk in the light of your fire, and in the sparks that ye have kindled. This shall ye have at my hand; ye shall lie down in sorrow."

You know well, your heart knows, dear friend, how utterly far my spirit is from an ungracious feeling towards the authors of these essays, of whom I have no knowledge whatever, and desire unfeignedly from the bottom of my heart their good and blessing. But such is their path. I speak of the system — a system so hard and unfeeling, that it has no idea but of beginning with law; that even a mother's tender care of the fruit of the womb is known only as correcting wilfulness of temper, and germs of wanton cruelty; that it sees no promise, no grace, but God beginning with a law to repress already ripened wickedness — a system which ignores the fall, yet sees only wanton cruelty and wilfulness of temper in an infant; and begins God's history after some two thousand five hundred years resulting in a plague of wickedness, to ignore the flood.

84 I believe in a revelation which contains an external law, brought in by the by to test man, and shew him what he was, but in a revelation of grace, life, redemption, the revelation of the Son of God, of God Himself, bringing down heavenly things which the human heart cannot spell out or divine if unrevealed; which brings a revealed God and light to man; and man, made fit for it by love, into the perfect light by redemption, and gives him a new nature capable of enjoying it, and soon (how soon One only knows) glory out of this world; a revelation through which (to close what I have to say in the blessed words of scripture — how does it meet everything!) those who have received it, instead of learning from heathens, own in moral uprightness the ruin of the old man, and have put it off, "and have put on the new man, which is renewed in knowledge after the image of him that created him; where there is neither Greek nor Jew, circumcision nor uncircumcision, Barbarian, Scythian, bond nor free; but Christ is all, and in all."

W. I am uncommonly glad I met you. The system is a judged one for me. It is not of God. It is evidently exalting man and heathenism at the expense of Christ. I am not master of all the points to which you have referred, but I see enough to have the distinct conviction of the hollowness of the system, even as to facts. But how happy it is that the scripture itself gives so fully all that is needed, not only to save, but to make a man wise unto salvation, through faith that is in Christ Jesus, and then thoroughly furnished unto all good works!

It must be distracting and defiling to wade through these mythological systems, with all their aberrations and pollutions, but, with the holy judgment of God, the word of God in a few short verses tells us all its history. How admirable this is; how evidently one sees the hand and Spirit of God in it! There certainly is a stamp in the word of God of what is divine, which is unmistakeable, even where it is most human.

H. In truth there is — a simplicity, a dignity: no one ever produced anything like it. You have only to read apocryphal books. There is effort in them; there is none in scripture. Not once do you find an epithet attached to Jesus (that were a human feeling, perhaps a right one), but what He is to tell its own tale of what He is. What human writer, in recording His history, would have kept uniformly to this? Yet how it becomes a divine person! Every epithet would lower. They may be put as the expression of my sentiment, but not as the cause of them. And how it has forced man to deal with it! Infidels or not, they must deal with it where it is. It is God telling us in grace, but telling us of Himself, telling of heavenly things, and for man. What can man do? It concerns him. He may be angry with the grace — angry to be forced to say he does not like what is heavenly, he may exalt heathenism which has been tired of itself; but there it is, and he has to say to it. Blessed they who have tasted that God is in it — speaks in it, and that have found Him to be holy, as He must be, but love in revealing Himself to them, and in bringing them by redemption and divine righteousness to Himself to enjoy Him for ever! But we must part, dear friend, in the common enjoyment, I trust, of this hope.

85 W. Shall we not meet again, and take these questions up? There are more of these Essays, and we may find means, through God's grace, to get profit in weighing them in the light, particularly as these questions are current.

H. Perhaps God may permit it to be so. We have gone over, I believe, the fundamental questions as to it. I am, as you know, constantly occupied with more direct work. Yet I fully recognize the importance of these subjects. These Essays, which seem to me very superficial, are but the sign of a state of feeling of a large class, or they would not be worth notice. It is an effort of Satan to pervert and really heathenize the country, and swamp revealed religion. It is going on everywhere in Christendom. The attempted counteraction of ordinances, whether Stahl and Hengstenberg in Germany, or what is called Puseyism in England, cannot meet the wants of a soul, even though there may be personal piety, which is anything but required for that system. In France it is the ultramontane system, which is the counterbalance. In the feeble Protestantism which is there, there is none. It is infidelity, or the new evangelical party infected with rationalism, with many individually pious persons. But I shall see you, and, if leisure permits me, will take up any further questions that may occur.

I would refer you in parting — you who do believe in the word of God — to 1 John 5 where the exactly opposite view to Dr. Temple on every point is given. For this is the will of God, that we keep His commandments. There is obedience to a commandment, the proof of love; and His commandments are not grievous. For whatsoever is born of God overcometh the world. There is a new nature, and the world not educated, but overcome. Who is he that overcometh the world, but he that believeth that Jesus is the Son of God? There is faith on a perfect external revealed object, the only means of obtaining the victory. At the end of 1 John 3 you will find, as in Romans 8, the Spirit, the Holy Ghost given, carefully distinguished from the spirit or conscience within. Christianity is a deliverance sent by God to form the spirit according to a new life on an object supremely blessed without, so as to take out of self, and fix the heart on that supreme object of blessedness. Dr. Temple's or the rationalist's system is a rejection of it, for the spirit or fallen nature of man to form itself by heathenism and Christianity as pretty nearly on a par, the latter being reduced by him to within a shade of the level of the former.

86 If you would have blessing or holy and divine affections, hold fast the revelation of a divine object, and the divine revelation of that object.

A Second Dialogue on the Essays and Reviews

What has the Bible taught? And what has Geology proved?

J. N. Darby.

09002E> 87

W. I am glad to meet you again. Though the subject was a painful one in some respects, I enjoyed the conversation we had when we last met. It embraced a large field of view: and though we could only step from mountain-top to mountain-top, and look down into the rich valleys below, still it showed me there were such, and I see we possess a goodly country where I saw little but rock before or misty mountain. Scripture has something of another aspect to me as a whole. Could we not continue our researches in examining some of the other Essays? I have been interested in this new science of geology, and you are aware how the cosmogony of scripture has been attacked, the genesis of the world.

H. I shall most gladly accept your proposal: I cannot pretend to be a very scientific geologist, but the very objections of infidels you have referred to have made me examine it in the results professed to be arrived at, if I have not the science of details. These would require one to consecrate, to say the least, a large portion of a life to it and to the kindred sciences of comparative anatomy, and natural history, and of scientific botany; and this I neither can nor would I do. But our main object will be scripture, and, to tell you the honest truth, while these Essayists are very ignorant of scripture, I have not learnt to trust the depth of their science on any point. But our object will be: Is the scripture, viewed as a divine revelation, inconsistent with the facts discovered in the earth's structure? I do not say, with the conclusions of geologists, for it will be found that these are not very solid. The discoveries are full of interest, the results extremely uncertain. But some collateral subjects will meet us, which will diversify our conversation. You must always remember, that it is the habit of rationalist infidels to assume, that what their doctors, or rather doubters, have laid down as hypotheses are admitted truths — things as unfounded as possible. It is one of its common deceits to allude to in passing, as to an admitted truth, what, if they had to prove it, they would find themselves utterly at a loss to do so. "It is settled," "universally recognized," "an admitted truth," merely means that German rationalists have satisfied themselves or pretend to have done so, even if that be the case.

88 We first find, in the Essay you refer to, the ignorant and stupid theory of Elohistic and Jehovistic documents. Now I should have no difficulty in supposing two, twenty, or twenty thousand documents, provided I have God's relation of the matter out of them. Human instrumentality I can admit to any extent, provided I have divine certainty and divine intention. These are necessary to my accepting anything as a revelation, because a revelation must flow from the intention of God to make known, and what He makes known is made known with certainty, and as He meant it to be presented to my mind. It is not that all contained in a revelation is right. I may have the devil's words, wicked men's words, imperfect men's words; but I must have all these things presented to me exactly as God meant it to be presented to me, and His own words besides. The account given must have His authority.

The use of the word "revelation" in this paper on the Mosaic cosmogony is, I cannot say merely as loose, but as nonsensical as anything I ever read. If such a use of terms be allowed, we may use any word about anything, and find we have one of Ossian's grey skirts of the mist, instead of our lost friend. What do you think a revelation, a divine revelation, is?

W. Well, I suppose something that God has revealed.

H. Ignorant man that you are, why, you are a plain Englishman! You do not know German depths, still less German depths brought to the surface in English vessels.

A revelation does not mean a revelation at all. It means, "God made use of imperfectly informed men [for the plan of Providence for the education of man is a progressive one] to lay the foundations of a higher knowledge, for which the human race is destined." "Is it wonderful, therefore, that they have committed themselves to assertions not in accordance with facts?" "As imperfect men have been used [in this progressive scheme] as the agents for teaching mankind, is it not to be expected that their teachings should be partial, and to some extent erroneous?"

W. Well, but then men could give no more than they knew themselves, and this is not a revelation; or else God gave it, revealed it, and then it was from Him, and had His authority stamped on it as His truth.

89 H. You are all out again. "It has been popularly assumed that the Bible, bearing the stamp of divine authority, must be complete, perfect, and unimpeachable in all its parts."

W. Well, but how could it bear the stamp of divine authority if God did not give it? You cannot make the notions of a particular time at which men had arrived, and erroneous ones, a revelation. It is simply absurd to talk of the stamp of God's authority, when they are merely the fancies of men. Why then the Ptolemaic system is a revelation.

H. No, no; you are all wrong again. "The humble scholar is willing to accept such teaching as it hath pleased divine Providence to afford. To do otherwise is presuming to point out how God ought to have instructed man. But, if we regard the Mosaic narrative as the speculation of some Hebrew Descartes or Newton, promulgated in all good faith as the best and most probable account that could be then given of God's universe, it resumes the dignity and value of which the theological Geologists have done their utmost to deprive it."

W. But what dignity or value is there in the errors of men ignorant of all true science, or how can that bear the stamp of divine authority?

H. Ah! you are not initiated.

W. Well, but God, according to this theory, made use of men to teach error. Why should He stamp that with His authority? Let them write for themselves, or, at least, God not give His authority to it.

H. Why, you see, the education of man was to be progressive: so He must begin, I suppose, in their infancy, by teaching them error. It is not for you to guess of His methods of providence, and then in that age "the early speculator was harassed by no scruples as to asserting as facts what he knew only as probabilities. He asserts indeed, solemnly and unhesitatingly, that for which he must have known he had no authority. But the difficulty as to this arises only from our modern habits of thought. Modesty of assertion is taught only by the true spirit of science." But then these things are better done now of course.

W. But then modern science is not a revelation, but founded on discovery, and the Mosaic narrative is merely an obsolete and erroneous supposition, when the truth was not discovered.

H. To be sure, and that, for our Essayist, is a revelation.

W. But is it honest to call that a revelation?

H. Honest! what a strange word. This way of using language so as to save appearances, though it be not what the word means, arises from our modern habits of thought. It is the spirit of true science. "It is the free handling, in a becoming spirit, of subjects peculiarly liable to suffer by the repetition of conventional language and from traditional methods of treatment."

90 W. Well, but speaking of revelation is the repetition of conventional language.

H. Yes, no doubt of it; but the use of it is the becoming spirit, and the rest the free handling.

W. But this seems to me profoundly immoral, in the highest and deepest sense — to talk of revelation and deal thus.

H. Oh! "our respect for the narrative, which has played so important a part in the culture of our race, need in no wise be diminished." "For ages this simple view of creation satisfied the wants of man, and both its consistency and grandeur may be preserved, if we recognize in it, not an authentic utterance of divine knowledge, but a human utterance, which it hath pleased Providence to use, in a special way, for the education of mankind."

W. But this is a deliberate denial of revelation. Providence uses what man has uttered.

H. Yes; and see what a convenient word Providence is, because there is no sign how it came to be used. As to the education of mankind, it is a bubble we have already seen burst; for none but those who received it as an absolute revelation of God (God providentially leading them, we are to suppose, to believe this lie) ever were educated at all. The heathen have their own cosmogonies, which it may be worth comparing; and we have got geologists to settle ours, or at least unsettle what was supposed we. Rabbin and fathers may have believed, in their superstition, the Mosaic account. The whole thing was a happy mistake, into which Providence led them, nobody knows how — a singular operation of Providence to make man believe a lie, and that a false account was its own utterance!

W. Do you know anything of cosmogonies?

H. Well, popularly; but we may say in general that the immense fact of creation was unknown to the heathen. "By faith we understand," says the epistle to the Hebrews, "that the things which are seen were not made of the things which do appear." What we now feel must have been, was repelled by all the proud reasoners. A poor obscure ignorant Hebrew alone knew it. For all others ex nihilo nil fit was the practical maxim. That is a striking fact. What are the cosmogonies of other nations? Never, as I said, a creation. Matter was eternal. In India, it was pantheism. God was the soul of the world; or human passions were perfected into powerful and mysterious beings, moved in chaos, or in darkness; and systems impossible for our cold western reason to grasp were concocted. But a personal God and a creation did not enter into their minds. Brahm was at ease, asleep in the unconscious enjoyment of this state; he woke up, and the mundane egg split, the upper part becoming heaven and the lower earth. Their more serious philosophical views were, "The universe is Brahm; it comes from Brahm, it subsists in Brahm, and returns into Brahm." All the rest is a kind of maya or illusion. It is only Brahm revealing himself in various ways, first disengaging a female from himself, and then by emanations of gods who have each their goddesses, and thence into all nature, — Brahma, Vishnu, and Siva, and so on, identified with created existence, while Brahm is awake, and which perishes by a great catastrophe, when he is tired. The Kalpa then is over, and he goes to sleep, and the same story (for they had not learned Dr. Temple's philosophy) exactly is reproduced over again. In this way, what our Essayist calls Providence provided for the education of an immensely greater number of the human race than it did by the Hebrew Descartes. It was pantheism connected with the powers of nature, and the idea of decay and reproduction. So that the destroyer, Siva, was the god of life. The female deities were the productive power of the gods they were connected with, while the history of Adam and Eve, whose very names were used, and Noah and his sons, ran through it all; and even the names of Shem, Ham, and Japhet, in Sama, Cama, and Prajapati (the "a" at the end not being sounded, and "Pra," meaning Lord).

91 In the laws or institutes of Menu we have it directly stated that, the sole self-existing power having willed to produce various beings from his own divine substance, he divided his own substance, and the mighty power became male and female. This gives perhaps the most complete original system of idolatry which exists, its most stupid and early form being Grecian mythology; but the same was really current everywhere. You can see these things, if you are anxious, in Guigniaut's Kreuser, or Faber, and the Asiatic Researches, and in many curious facts in Bryant, in Wilkinson for Egypt, and Cory's Fragments for Orphic and Phoenician.

In more modern less metaphysical theories, matter was eternal. I will give you the Phoenician one by Sanchoniatho[n] preserved by Eusebius. I give the quotations of it from Cory's volume. He supposes that the beginning of all things was a dark and condensed windy air, or a breeze of thick air, and a chaos turbid and black as Erebus, and that these were unbounded, and for a long series of ages destitute of form; but when this wind became enamoured of its own first principles, and an intimate union took place, that connection was called pathos (Cupid or desire), and this was the beginning or origin of the creation of all things; but it knew not its own creation, but from its connection with the wind (or spirit) was produced Môt. This, some call Ilus (mud), but some the putrefaction of a watery mixture, and from this was produced all the rest of creation, and the generation of all things. He then proceeds to details.

92 The Egyptian was more strictly mythology, not cosmogony, though in ancient systems these are indeed the same. The unity of deity, or subsistence, does not appear; but their Vedas, the books of Hermes Trismegistus, are lost. But it was essentially the same as the Hindoo, save that the system common to both had adapted itself to the circumstances of the country. It was a more terrestrial and less imaginative system. Human nature took a tinge less kindly, but more righteous. The unity of the deity was less in relief, decay and return to life more prominent, and generation more than emanation, though these were all found in both. The original deity, Nef, or the Spirit, came down more into the ordinary rank of gods than Brahm; and while the eight great gods and goddesses were found in both, yet a triad of another kind was prominent — male, female, and child, as Nef, Saté, and Khonso — Osiris, Isis, and Horus: the former the more active principle, the second the passive or earth (the great mother as everywhere), and the order produced out of these. The latter triad, the Nile, or sun (for Osiris was both in certain respects, i.e., not the sun as sun, but its action on the Nile and Egypt for blessing), Isis, Egypt, and Horus, the return to blessing after Typhon, or the burning sun, had dried all up. There are traces of one divine origin, out of which all proceeded, but having no book like the Institutes of Menu, it is comparatively speaking lost. Ptha, though a great god, and the formative power, was in a certain sense a secondary one. He formed more than was an origin of all things. The Phaenician system was more historical and mythic. In all, the worship of Yoni Lingams attached to Siva, the same with Khem, and the history of Osiris, and Phallic processions of Bacchus, were, from Hindostan to Rome, the origin of a degradation of ideas and manners which need not be recalled. But it is universally recognized, that creation was unknown in these systems. There was pantheistic emanation, or eternal matter.

93 The Gnostic systems evidently linked themselves up with all this — an effort of Satan to bring the old mythology spiritualized into Christianity. This I shall beg leave to call the devil's education of the world. The point of departure being an idea of one God, which man can hardly get rid of, he turned it by false human wisdom into idolatry, by deifying attributes, powers of nature, stars, and ancestors. All this was afloat in the world before Moses' account of things was written. There were traces of primeval history both of Adam, Noah, Babel, the giants, and the judgment of Babel, but all turned into idolatry. When this ripened, God gave a divine account, perfectly suited to the age, not science, which would have been unsuited to divine action, but rescuing the great facts in such a way that the divine actings — necessary for man to know morally, and as far therefore as they concerned man on the earth, with which he had to do — should be distinctly set out, and with the simplicity, dignity, and beneficence towards man, which bore the stamp of God. The whole world is witness that no man, neither the simplest nor the wisest, ever could have known, or ever did discover, such a thought as to creation as is given in Genesis. It stands not pre-eminent, but isolated and alone; short, simple, unscientific: no mental elaboration, no recognition of nature's powers (such as Jews fell into, not only in the gross way of idolatry, but in the refined Alexandrian system of Philo), no emanation or pantheism, no eternal matter, no deification of mythic ideas; no visible world counted for the Logos, as again Philo; every human thought is denied, but the fiat of God Himself brings the world into existence, and everything into order; and the relationships of God, the world, and man, are perfectly established. Had there been no cosmogonies, the value of this statement would not have been felt. The simplest mind would have known the truth, but the truth meets every error of every mind.

Let us just look, after the poor conceptions and wild imaginations of heathen cosmogonies, at the simple statement of the word of God. We shall see at once, in the former, the laborious efforts of the human mind in what it cannot reach, heaping up powers and conceptions to fill the imagination, and account for effects, because it does not know God, and is oppressed with the effect of His power; and in the other, God speaking with the simplicity of one who had made it all and knew it all. The Word that had made could tell what it had done, and creation takes its place of a mere creature, and Elohim maintains His own.

94 W. Before you go farther, I should like to hear what you say to the two alleged accounts of creation, Elohistic and Jehovistic.

H. From Genesis to Revelation, there are two ways of speaking of God, either as the one divine Being in contrast with men; God known as God (only that it is applied to the representations of His power as such, whether angels or judges hold that place); or in known revealed relationships with men. Of these relationships (besides that of Most High, in which He takes His great power and reigns — is possessor of heaven and earth) there are three, Almighty, Jehovah, and Father — the last never revealed till Christ the Son came. Elohim was revealed to Abraham as Almighty. He was to trust in Him in that character. It was to be the object of faith. To Israel, He was revealed as Jehovah, and He was to be known and trusted as such; to us, as Father, and especially as Holy Father, in which name He keeps us, and we who have believed in the Son, know and trust Him. Thus, in Exodus 6 Elohim specially tells Moses that He had revealed Himself to the fathers by His name El-Shaddai, God Almighty, but not by that of Jehovah, which He now took with Israel; and Christ particularly notices that He had manifested the Father's name to the disciples — had declared and would declare it, the Holy Ghost becoming a spirit of adoption in us. Hence the apostle, beautifully connecting all these revelations of God, says (2 Cor. 6: 18), I will be a Father to you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty. That is, He who had been the God of Abraham as Almighty, and the God of Israel as Jehovah, now took His name and place of Father. Surely, He was ever Father in respect of the Son, ever Almighty, ever Jehovah; but He had not taken it as a name of known relationship.

Now there is never, in any case, confusion in this respect. In the Psalms, the difference is of the deepest interest, and when understood greatly facilitates reading them with intelligence. It is equally true now. God I may seek as God, thirst after as God, bow to as such. With a Father I am in sweet and blessed relationship according to the terms of that name. It was not in vain that Christ said, "I go to my Father and your Father, to my God and your God." During His life here below, He ever said "Father;" on the cross, "my God, my God" — perfect in faith, yet not enjoying the relationship. After His resurrection He uses both, according to the full perfectness in which He now stands in them according to accomplished redemption, and introduces His disciples in virtue of that into the same. Hence, too, when all was finished, even in the act of dying, He says, "Father, into thy hands I commend my spirit."

95 Now if you examine Genesis 2 from verse 4, you will see that nothing but the utmost prepossession could speak of it as a second account of the creation. Have you ever looked at it in this point of view?

W. I have not. I have, of course, often read it; but for positive instruction, not to meet any particular doctrine.

H. Far the best way too. But if you do come across rationalistic assertions, never accept them without reading the passage in question; because thus the divine intention of the passage is, with God's help, present to the mind, and in nine cases out of ten that suffices to make all their assertions utterly null. It is the case here. In Genesis 1 and Genesis 2: 1-3, we have the simple but magnificent account, and magnificent because simple, of the creation of all things, and the orderings of the earth, the world, as subjected to man and in reference to him. This was God creating.

In the rest of Genesis 2 we have the sacred historian entering into all the special circumstances in which man was placed in this world. He alludes to the fact of the rest of the creation subsisting without man, then speaks of the garden being planted in Eden, of the tree of knowledge of good and evil, how man was made and became a living soul, by which his special relationship to God existed, of the forming of Eve out of his rib, of his dominion over all animals (these and other circumstances being taken as symbolical expressions of higher things all through scripture). In a word, we have passed out of creation into the whole scene of moral, mysterious, and symbolical relationships between God and man. It is, first, responsibilities in an historical way, and then the figures of all the blessings and rights to come in and be conferred on man in the second Adam. I am not now arguing whether the application be just or not which subsequent scriptures make of this history; but to say it is a second account of the creation is simple nonsense. Not one subject in chapter 2, except the fact that a man was created and a woman, is spoken of in chapter 1. The fact that there were plants without a man is mentioned in chapter 1, and these are spoken of in chapter 2 in a wholly different aspect, and carrying the subject on to a farther point.

96 Now, it was of the last importance that he who wrote for Israel should shew that Jehovah, the God revealed to them, was the one supreme and only Elohim, the Creator, though He was their national God; and this the account most fully does. Chapter 1 shews that it was simple Elohim, God, the only one; chapter 2, that when special conditions of man came out, that one Elohim was Jehovah, the God of Israel. Had He put Jehovah in chapter 1, it might have been only the particular national God known by that name. But it was Elohim, God. There was none but He. Had He omitted it in chapter 2, it might not have been the God of the Jews at all. Had he laboriously affirmed it, it might have been a national assumption: the simple statement left it in its own eternal truth. So, when the great truth was restored under Elijah, the convinced people shout, "Jehovah, he is Elohim! Jehovah, he is Elohim!" The question being, whether Baal was Elohim, or Jehovah.

It would be well we should read the chapters; it will bring them, in the way I said, before our minds, and the contrast with the deplorable cosmogonies of the heathen, by which in fact the world was educated (and cosmogony and theology were identical), and the bearing and relationship of chapters 1 and 2 will become evident.

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. And the earth was without form, and void; and darkness was upon the face of the deep. And the Spirit of God moved upon the face of the waters.

97 And God said, Let there be light: and there was light. And God saw the light, that it was good: and God divided the light from the darkness. And God called the light Day, and the darkness he called Night. And the evening and the morning were the first day.

And God said, Let there be a firmament in the midst of the waters, and let it divide the waters from the waters. And God made the firmament, and divided the waters which were under the firmament from the waters which were above the firmament: and it was so. And God called the firmament Heaven. And the evening and the morning were the second day.

And God said, Let the waters under the heaven be gathered together unto one place, and let the dry land appear: and it was so. And God called the dry land Earth; and the gathering together of the waters called he Seas: and God saw that it was good. And God said, Let the earth bring forth grass, the herb yielding seed, and the fruit tree yielding fruit after his kind, whose seed is in itself, upon the earth: and it was so And the earth brought forth grass, and herb yielding seed after his kind; and the tree yielding fruit, whose seed was in itself, after his kind. and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the third day.

And God said, Let there be lights in the firmament of the heaven to divide the day from the night; and let them be for signs, and for seasons, and for days, and years: and let them be for lights in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth: and it was so. And God made two great lights; the greater light to rule the day, and the lesser light to rule the night: he made the stars also. And God set them in the firmament of the heaven to give light upon the earth, and to rule over the day and over the night, and to divide the light from the darkness: and God saw that it was good. And the evening and the morning were the fourth day.

And God said, Let the waters bring forth abundantly the moving creature that hath life, and fowl that may fly above the earth in the open firmament of heaven. And God created great whales, and every living creature that moveth, which the waters brought forth abundantly, after their kind, and every winged fowl after his kind: and God saw that it was good. And God blessed them, saying, Be fruitful, and multiply, and fill the waters in the seas, and let fowl multiply in the earth. And the evening and the morning were the fifth day.

And God said, Let the earth bring forth the living creature after his kind, cattle, and creeping thing, and beast of the earth after his kind: and it was so. And God made the beast of the earth after his kind, and cattle after their kind, and every thing that creepeth upon the earth after his kind: and God saw that it was good.

And God said, Let us make man in our image, after our likeness: and let them have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over the cattle, and over all the earth, and over every creeping thing that creepeth upon the earth. So God created man in his own image, in the image of God created he him; male and female created he them. And God blessed them, and God said unto them, Be fruitful, and multiply, and replenish the earth, and subdue it: and have dominion over the fish of the sea, and over the fowl of the air, and over every living thing that moveth upon the earth.

And God said, Behold, I have given you every herb bearing seed, which is upon the face of all the earth, and every tree, in the which is the fruit of a tree yielding seed; to you it shall be for meat. And to every beast of the earth, and to every fowl of the air, and to every thing that creepeth upon the earth, wherein there is life, I have given every green herb for meat: and it was so. And God saw every thing that he had made, and, behold, it was very good. And the evening and the morning were the sixth day.

Thus the heavens and the earth were finished, and all the host of them. And on the seventh day God ended his work which he had made; and he rested on the seventh day from all his work which he had made. And God blessed the seventh day, and sanctified it: because that in it he had rested from all his work which God created and made.

These are the generations of the heavens and of the earth when they were created, in the day that the Lord God made the earth and the heavens, and every plant of the field before it was in the earth, and every herb of the field before it grew: for the Lord God had not caused it to rain upon the earth, and there was not a man to till the ground. But there went up a mist from the earth, and watered the whole face of the ground. And the Lord God formed man of the dust of the ground, and breathed into his nostrils the breath of life; and man became a living soul.

98 And the Lord God planted a garden eastward in Eden; and there he put the man whom he had formed. And out of the ground made the Lord God to grow every tree that is pleasant to the sight, and good for food; the tree of life also in the midst of the garden, and the tree of knowledge of good and evil. And a river went out of Eden to water the garden; and from thence it was parted, and became into four heads. The name of the first is Pison: that is it which compasseth the whole land of Havilah where there is gold; and the gold of that land is good: there is bdellium and the onyx stone. And the name of the second river is Gihon: the same is it that compasseth the whole land of Ethiopia. And the name of the third river is Hiddekel: that is it which goeth toward the east of Assyria. And the fourth river is Euphrates. And the Lord God took the man, and put him into the garden of Eden to dress it and to keep it. And the Lord God commanded the man, saying, Of every tree of the garden thou mayest freely eat: but of the tree of the knowledge of good and evil, thou shalt not eat of it: for in the day that thou eatest thereof thou shalt surely die.

And the Lord God said, It is not good that the man should be alone; I will make him an help meet for him. And out of the ground the Lord God formed every beast of the field, and every fowl of the air; and brought them unto Adam to see what he would call them: and whatsoever Adam called every living creature, that was the name thereof And Adam gave names to all cattle, and to the fowl of the air, and to every beast of the field; but for Adam there was not found an help meet for him. And the Lord God caused a deep sleep to fall upon Adam, and he slept: and he took one of his ribs, and closed up the flesh instead thereof; and the rib, which the Lord God had taken from man, made he a woman, and brought her unto the man. And Adam said, This is now bone of my bones, and flesh of my flesh: she shall be called Woman, because she was taken out of Man. Therefore shall a man leave his father and his mother, and shall cleave unto his wife: and they shall be one flesh. And they were both naked, the man and his wife, and were not ashamed.

How refreshing is the word after all the cavillings of men!

W. It is most truly so; but I seize your remarks on the different relationships in which God reveals Himself with men. It opens a wide field of interest in the study of scripture, and I see that it rests on the plain testimony of scripture itself. I confess I begin to think these essayists and rationalists excessively superficial; they seem always to rest in the mere outside of scripture, and in no case to get hold of the mind of God in it.

H. Naturally enough. They set out by not believing there is one; and the truth is, as scripture states it, the god of this world has blinded the eyes of them that believe not. They think themselves wiser than apostles, exclude God from the whole matter, and, of course, sink to their own level.

99 W. The passage from 2 Corinthians has singular beauty in respect of these relationships.

H. It is indeed of exquisite beauty; and these connections of scripture — which unfold a whole scene of moral truths and elements, diverse in themselves, yet revealing the full force each of the other; and thus related in the deepest way one to another, bringing out what God is, and evolving in the revelation of it every exercise of the human heart towards God — shew a divine unity of mind in scripture, which all the petty cavils of essayists cannot shake. That one verse embraces all the divine relations of God, and the dispensational connections of man with Him, and takes them all up to introduce them, though as isolated relationships quite different from one another in their abstract power, into that one new perfect one which has been revealed as the perfection of grace through Christ. But He hides these things from the wise and prudent, and reveals them unto babes. The moral need of the soul, the wants of a new nature, it is by which we get to understand scripture, not our intellectual powers. But let us turn to our geology.

W. Well, how do you reconcile the Mosaic account of the creation with geological discoveries?

H. To tell you the honest truth, I think the Mosaic account of the creation much more certain than any geological system. First, the direct proofs of scripture are to me infinitely more solid and sure than any geological conclusions; and the geological conclusions I have seen arrived at seem to me to rest in fact on very doubtful evidence.

W. But surely there are a number of well-ascertained facts and principles?

H. There are a number of facts which to me at least are of the highest possible interest. But (perhaps my mind is slow and apt to see difficulties, and not to come to a conclusion before they are cleared up) the results put together into a system are to my mind surrounded with difficulty. I have no disposition to controvert extraordinary facts. If it is proved to me that the tomb of Mahomet in the Caaba is suspended in the air, I say, Very well, I may be able to explain it, or I may not, and if so I wait till I can. If a man can cause a table to be suspended in the air, it is to me a mere question of physical fact — is there such a power? Lifting my hand is just as wonderful in itself. I believe that in a certain sense the physical world is subject to man, and, if God allow him, I know no limit to his employing the powers of nature. Miracle is divine power over nature, the will of God in exercise, not ordinarily but extraordinarily, whoever may be the person who brings that will into play. The powers used are, to my mind, immaterial; they may be natural or supernatural; but when natural powers are in exercise according to the prescribed course of things, there is no miracle. The power exercised may be as great or greater, but it is the ordinary course of nature. But when not in that course, even though it be the same power, but by an extraordinary occasional action of the divine will any event is produced, that is a miracle. If I remember right, I am repeating the idea of John Wessel, Luther's forerunner; but I must not make him responsible for it; but I think I owe it to him. Of course, if the power itself is absolutely supernatural, as raising the dead, that itself proves a miracle.

100 W. I think, at any rate, the idea of miracle is just; it is one which has been a good deal discussed. It is referred to in these Essays.

H. It is. Take an example. A mighty east wind was a natural power at the Red Sea; yet it was a miracle, because it was an extraordinary exercise of the divine will, just as much as at Jordan, though there the river was arrested in its course supernaturally (i.e., by no known natural cause). However, I am ready to admit any extent of power over natural objects, subjected to him by God, being exercised by man. If he has found a means of making a table rap on the ground, the only question with me is, is it a power given to man? If he pretends to bring souls up, I do not believe it; because I do not believe God has put the souls of the deceased in his power. He may have devils deluding him, pretending to be the souls of the dead; but souls are in God's keeping, and cannot come unless He bring them.

W. And what do you make of the witch of Endor?

H. God brought up Samuel, I do not doubt a moment; the woman was as frightened as Saul at his coming.

Now the discovery of geological remains and the theories of successive formations are full of interest, and there are strong grounds to believe there have been such; nor can I see that the deluge accounts for all, because if — but it is if — the upheaval theory be correct (to which I have nothing to oppose, but presume to be true), or if, as others think, the breaking in of the crust of the cooling earth be added, then the mountains which existed already at the time of the deluge have broken up strata which had various fossils already buried in them; that is, the flood does not appear to have brought them, while unconformable strata prove deposits after the upheaval. Thus there is a proof of strata of different ages.

101 But I am not satisfied entirely as to all the data. If the present surface of land were submerged, and there were fossil English and fossil Australian remains, the Marsupia and duck-billed Platypuses of Australia would be treated as proofs of a necessarily anterior formation, because the Marsupia are an inferior class of mammalia, a transition order. The proofs might exist, I admit; but as far as this goes, why do Marsupian fossils prove in themselves an anterior formation? Superposition under certain conditions may, but remains do not.

Again, in the Wealden formation, fresh water remains are found and salt too, and I think alternating, and turtles. Well, this is a great difficulty. It is concluded that it must have been an estuary in a large bay; all very ingenious. It is alleged, however, after disputes between the chalk and jurassic or oolite formations, to belong to the Jura sea. But then, if it belong to either, according to the ablest geologists, as Vogt, who adopts the idea of the estuary and the Jura sea, there could have been no great river there at that time, nor a bay into which it ran, according to the limits which geological data give of dry land and the Jura sea.

But there are more serious objections. It is alleged that for certain sandstones some twenty thousand years must have passed to have a bed of such thickness deposited; but at Craigleith, near Edinburgh, a tree some sixty feet long, lies slanting at an angle of 40° across the strata in its whole length. Now that a tree remained twenty thousand years slanting thus, while the sea deposited this strata, is not to be believed. Again, they tell us that the formation of certain beds of coal would require twenty thousand years to make a bed of coal a foot thick, and some one hundred and twenty thousand years for the coal measures of England. Now one used to bogs may well doubt this. You may find some ten or twelve feet of bog formed in a comparatively short time, as in Ireland; in cut down forests, in a quarter of the first mentioned period. A particular kind of grass has always turf at the roots, if only a single plant; and I have seen trees retaining their form, but grown through by the roots of grass, forming the whole into a compact mass little different from coal. Where water is found, the progress is very rapid. In Lincolnshire I have understood that the number of the legion which cut down the forest has been found in the bog. Nor is this all; at South Joggins' cliff in Nova Scotia, and somewhere near Manchester, sigillaria grow through the coal, the roots being in and below it, and the stems rising up in their original position through the superincumbent sandstone and shale. So, in the Isle of Purbeck, dicotyledonous wood in limestone. Even Phillips says "the nearly vertical position of certain fossil plants, a phenomenon by no means rare among sandstone rocks, affords good ground for caution in assigning very great extension of years to geological periods; the accumulation of transported sediment must have been so rapid as to prevent the decomposition of the vertical portions of the plants. No one doubts that the bed of stone three feet thick, which encloses equisetum columnare at High Whitby, was laid by a single inundation; and again the sigillaria in the coal sandstones of Yorkshire pass through more than one, sometimes four or five beds of stone." Such facts as these, and they are their own facts, subvert, as far as I can judge, the whole system of geologists as to the time taken to form deposits.

102 Again, it was a settled point that human remains, according to the known geological progress of orders of fossil Fauna, could not be found in any deposits before our present world. The human petrifaction from Guadaloupe, in the British Museum, was held to be recent, as were some since discovered; but the question after all remains if that is just. Now, infidelity makes strenuous efforts to prove the antiquity of man, and the opposite theory is maintained. It is alleged that in Brazil and in North America (in the last case in so old a deposit as old red sandstone), unequivocal human remains have been discovered in strata too old for them, according to geological systems. In the caves of Gaylenreuth, they are mixed up with fossil remains of species, belonging (it is alleged) to anterior formations; and at Mialet in a cavern in which the hunted pastors of the églises du désert found constant refuge, and a place of common meeting and resort, human bones and those of the cave bear and others have been found. But here both rude Roman and still ruder Celtic implements have been found; but Dr. Phillips says as to this. "he will not hazard a definite conclusion." "In the meantime we may remark that the principal arguments for the co-eval existence of man, and extinct pachy-dermata and carnivora in the south of France, are the intimate mixture and equal conservation of the bones. And these arguments should not be slighted, for they would probably not have been resisted in any case of the mixture of quadrupedal remains." And Tepier, who examined them, finds that the human bones, much rarer where the bears' bones are, may have been carried back into the cave by subsequent natural or artificial means. Besides all this, however, rude instruments, constructed by human skill, have been discovered in drift of an epoch, according to geologists, very long anterior to that in which man ought to be found — I think in the Eocene formation. The alleged colonies of Mr. Barrande in Bohemia, also inconsistent with the due succession of Fauna, and alleged to be carried there by currents, require evidently more explanation.

103 W. And what conclusions do you draw from these facts?

H. None; save that geologists, as Lyell has admitted, are but on the threshold of the science; that the conclusions of the earth's antiquity, and of the formation of strata, cannot be sustained in their details; and that we must wait for further light and additional facts, before any conclusion can be drawn.

W. That is a most lame and impotent conclusion.

H. Better to wait till I have adequate grounds to judge, than bewilder myself by premature assertions. Take an example of precipitancy in a confessedly able man. Sir C. Lyell gave in his second edition at least one hundred thousand years for the formation of the delta of the Mississippi, and human remains had been found deeply buried there. In his third edition he says his data were wrong and it was at least fifty thousand years. How can we trust conclusions liable to such errors as that? Further, he insists that in the cutting through the gravel brought down by a torrent at the head of the lake of Genoa, iron, bronze, and stone remains were found, and a skull connected with the latter which must have been long anterior to the date assigned to man's creation. But I know members of the Antiquarian Society at Lausanne who examined the locality; and one of them assured me they all thought him wrong, and that one side of the skull was evidently stained with bronze. On the other hand, that which is alleged as the most ancient of human remains, as the cave at Aurignac, has its antiquity only proved by the presence of Elephas primigenius, Rhinoceros tichorinus, and perhaps Ursus spelaeus. But the first and second have been found with the flesh on them frozen up in Siberia, and Ursus spelaeus does not appear to be more geologically ancient, and similar species are found in Market Weighton in Yorkshire with existing local species of fresh water shells. So that there is nothing in the extinction of the species to prove any geological antiquity of man. It is as likely the beasts were late, as that man was early. As to Albeville, Eliè de Beaumont, President of the French Geological Society, declares the strata to be quite recent ones.

104 There is another point, whether Lyell's system of the progressive effect of subsisting causes, acting with the power which they yet do, or that of other geologists of great catastrophes, is the right one. Our Essayists embrace Lyell's, and of course treat it as a settled point, as they ever do when it suits them. I judge with many (I believe most) English geologists, that, admitting the possibility of catastrophes, in general similar powers have been in operation, but in a far higher degree. It is absurd to compare the elevation of a mountain, such as Jorullo in Mexico, of sixteen hundred feet high, formed in seventeen hundred and fifty nine, with the Alps, Pyrenees, Himalayas, or its own kindred Cordilleras. Sir R. Murchison justly warns his readers more than once against comparing them; he calls them infinitely more intense. And if we are to believe D'Orbigny, the geologist who has most diligently searched into the subject in detail in France (confirmed he says by all his researches in South Armenia and elsewhere), no species survived these catastrophes. These last he enumerates, giving the species belonging to the periods between them. If I have rightly apprehended his statements, there were a few species the same after the last catastrophe as before. He connects these catastrophes, not simply with volcanic action, but with the breaking of the earth's crust as the earth cooled. It is only in the very latest that we get difference of climates connected with latitude.

W. But why should they find that suit them?

H. Because then miracles, by a faint analogy, are merged in the operation of ordinary causes.

W. Dear, what a poor and unsolid foundation to build on!

H. Yes, but it shuts out a living intervention of God in men's matters, and that is their great object. God may give an impulsion, but the intervention or intercourse with a living God does not suit the dignity or independence of man

W. In result, where do you think, supposing there are Hypozoic, and Palaeozoic, and Mesozoic, and Kainozoic periods, they come in in the first of Genesis?

H. I have no kind of opinion or moral objection to the system of the days being lengthened periods, but it seems to me somewhat forced; McCausland's (a barrister of Dublin) is the cleverest book on the subject.* And I have heard another thought expressed by a christian friend, that the day is an actual day, the state produced by it being of unqualified duration; but I was not persuaded by it. The structure of the chapter itself and the connection of the parts lead me to take it, after the first verse, as a statement of the formation of our present world, or χόσμος. Once we have seen the laborious efforts at cosmogony which occupied the heathen world, and that not one ever arrived at the simple fact of a creation, the force of Hebrews 11: 3 becomes obvious; one sentence of revelation from God settled what all the profound elaborations of man never could arrive at; and, what is not very much to the honour of man's intellect, once the fact is stated, there is the consciousness that it could not be otherwise. Yet, instead of the best and most probable account (as the Essay calls it) that could be given, it is in absolute opposition to the uniform and universal view of the matter in every known record. Ex nihilo nil fit was the admitted maxim. Nothing can come of nothing, whereas the divine maxim is, Ex nihilo omnia hunt. Emanation, or, when the Grecian mind would not bear these oriental systems, the eternity of matter, taken for granted, was the only idea men had of the origin of the world.

{*Dr. Dawson's book adopts this system.}

105 Hence we have, In the beginning Elohim created the heavens and the earth — not the expanse simply, but in general and absolutely those objects we have before us: Eth hashamaim ve eth haarets. This great truth once laid down — whose importance redemption only surpasses, as indeed it does infinitely — what concerned man, the earth as we have it, was all man had to be taught by God. It would have been utterly unsuited to give a revelation to teach science, or to allude to it. The phenomena are explained, so far as it is needed to put what man saw before his soul as the work and ordering of God. What came between the first verse and the second does not enter into the object of the revelation; creation, and the forming of the present earth did.

As regards the words used, Maimonides has discussed them. He refers to Bara, Hasa, Chasa, and Yatsar. The last he affirms is never used of creating out of nothing, the three former may. I do not deny that bara may be used of what is not formed out of nothing, but it is not used for forming or moulding out of something. Bara speaks of the thing made as the absolute act of the Maker: the One who has simply caused it to be such. Hasa refers to the form into which it is put: he made it a man; but bara — he created — a man, or a whale. Yatsar refers directly to the material cause: he moulded something into a form (hence, yotser a potter). Bara refers to the efficient cause, hasa to the formal, yatsar to the material. Create and make quite sufficiently represent bara and hasa. I could not say a carpenter created a table: he made it. I could almost say Stephenson created railways, figuratively of course.

106 As to birds being formed out of the water, the margin would have removed the difficulty. The objection is either clap-trap or ignorance. Zung and De Wette both give gevögel fliege, "let fowl fly:" so the excellent Dutch, and Diodati's Italian version; the English has followed the Septuagint and Latin; the Hebrew ve yoph yopheph in the second member of the verse seems plain enough. Perhaps remains of ancient prejudices may have led our Essayists to follow the learned Patrick, who says, that it is clear fishes and birds have the same origin, for they both lay eggs, and both guide themselves with their tails!

W. Well, that is naïf enough, at any rate. What strange creatures we are! But you think, then, that the whole geological period, if such there be, comes between verses 1 and 2.

H. Would come; for the object of the chapter is to treat, as I have said, the fact of creation, that everything is made out of nothing; and then, our present earth, and nothing else. Hence, in the second verse, He confines Himself to the earth. The earth was tohu vohu. There is no idea of the heavens being in this state; and I confess I should not suppose chaos to have been a first creation of God. It looks like the result of some catastrophe. Here all the Orphic, Grecian, and Phoenician cosmogonies begin, and the Romans, as in the lines well known to boys, "Ante mare et terras et quod tegit omnia coelum, Unus erat toto naturae vultus in orbe, Quem dixere chaos." Only they personify, in general, chaos, and erebus (or darkness), the mundane egg coming out of the former. We get the historical fact here (primeval creation properly speaking being distinct), chaos. They personify in general chaos, darkness, the waters, and the Vishnu Narayana of the Hindus. (I refer to those only to shew where the traditions fall into the ranks.) The Spirit of God moves upon them.

Now comes the fiat of God upon this scene of darkness. Darkness, mark, was only on the face of the deep. "And God said, Let there be light, and there was light." He spake, and it was done. This was the great fact. But God distinguished darkness and light, and there was night and day. The how is not said — we can well believe, by the turning of the earth round, which would suppose a fixed light; but God is not teaching science, nor is it mere observation, for observation would have led to speak of the sun, which, every one knows, lights the earth. Moses's is not the most probable account. The difficulty is one unnecessarily created by the writer in apparent divergence from what every one sees and knows. The difficulty overthrows the theory of infidels. The writer departs from the evident and apparent phenomena, not to raise mystic fables, but to state a singular fact gratuitously, if it were not a revelation.

107 Then the expanse is formed, or for a Jew the first heaven, as we see it. God set it over the earth. It is spoken of as we speak of it. Rakiang is an expanse, but there is no definition of it. Firmament is merely a word taken from the Septuagint and Latin. God produced what we see daily, this blue sky over our heads, and call sky, and heaven. It is not mere empty space, as our Essayist says: all but what the sun shone on would be pitch dark if it were, and the bottom viewed in a telescope is black. It is the air which is blue, yet we all say blue sky, and so on. It sufficed to say, that what was thus before us God had so ordered.

I am not aware that the waters above the heavens are more than the supplies of rain in the clouds. It has been alleged, that there was no rain till the Deluge, and that these waters came down then. It may be so. I see no proof of it.

Earth now comes out of the waste to be fruit-bearing. The notion that there were no heavens till the present sky was formed, the atmospheric heavens, is an utter mistake. We left the heavens as distinct from the earth behind us in verse 1, to speak only of the earth and what referred to it. This was the heathen idea, as may be seen in Ovid. The Mosaic account is much more just and true, when none else was. It distinguishes the empyrean heavens from the atmospheric heavens. In heathenism, man spoke; in scripture, God. The word used for what was now formed is not what is spoken of in the great act of creation; it is expanse. But this has the name of heaven, and that only is said, and this is true now. The rakiang is called heaven, and it is quite right it should be. Do I not rightly say, I shall go up to heaven? I do not excommunicate a man for believing there are antipodes; but I should think a man who should tell me, "I must not say go up to heaven, because my friend in New Zealand or Australia would then go down," a very unprofitable and foolish person. Moral ideas are associated with physically unscientific ones; and I am afraid we shall speak and sing of the sun's rising and setting, and the moon's waxing and waning, though the advanced science of rationalists in the happy age that is coming may have convinced incipient philosophers at National Schools that it is all a mistake, that suns do not set or rise, nor moons wax or wane. We are set in a system where these phenomena are meant to act on us, a wondrous world of images which are more true than science, because mind is more real than matter. And in moral things (and the scripture is throughout a moral book) God speaks to us according to this, not according to the (after all) petty discoveries of science. I call it petty, because it is only occupied with material things. All knowledge is the proof of ignorance: for what a man has learnt he did not know before; yet, if he has rightly learnt it, it was before, and he did not know it.

108 W. Is that all you make of man and his powers?

H. That is all. As Pascal has said, "All matter never produced a thought, and all intellect never produced charity." As to the day that is now before us, it is a mistake of the Essayists that fruit-trees and seed-bearing plants are first noticed. Grass, the green herb, is first noticed, which was not given for man's use. Of course the divine account does not set about botanizing to study what are the best kinds for man or beast. God created all. All are respectively given, and what is best is used. It is the fact of Elohim's making the beautiful clothing of this earth, and trees, and herbs to reproduce themselves, which is noticed as the great general fact.

We now arrive at what is the great difficulty presented to us, but which I have partly anticipated — God's making lights for day and night. I repeat what I said: if this be not a revelation, it is a difficulty gratuitously created for himself by the writer; if it be a revelation, he must give it as he received it; and this explains why it is thus set forth. If it be not a revelation, it is perfectly inexplicable why He should have made light, and lights for day and night distinct things; for every one knows day and night come from the rising and setting of the sun. That it ever was otherwise must be a matter of revelation. But as a phase of truth the difference is great: light in itself is not a light, a governing central power that has light in it; and it is in this way it is brought before us here. Some doubts have arisen as to the sun's atmosphere in the mind of the distinguished French astronomer, who observed the last total (or, at any rate, annular) eclipse in Spain; but we may take it as an admitted fact, that the sun, as a body, forming a centre of gravity for the planetary system, is not in itself necessarily a light. The reproduction of light, before, was only to dissipate the darkness that brooded on chaos. Now we have a beautiful centre of order identified with light, just as Christ could speak of truth and say, "I am the truth." Nor, while taking the historical parts of scripture as plain facts, are their analogies of no import. Imagination may play us false; but that there is a world of images of truth the most stupid can hardly deny. Scripture is full of it. Language is formed on it. The mind of man is bred and fashioned in it. You must make him a materialist and a brute with physical wants (that is, destroy his higher nature), if you set aside this. You cannot utter a sentence without it, unless on mere material subjects. God has taken this up in the highest way. He is light. The right hand of His power makes all equal. His eyes run to and fro through the earth. No one is deceived by it, no more than they are by going up into heaven. They are taught by it. What is, strictly, materially inexact gives more truth than the contrary. Destroy it, and God cannot communicate with man, for he has not the same nature; nor man with man as a moral man. Language, the wonderful though imperfect expression of thought and feeling, ceases to serve man as a moral being.

109 W. But you take this Mosaic account of creation as literally true.

H. Undoubtedly; but I do not doubt it is so framed, as the world is of which it speaks, as to furnish images for higher relations. If the facts were not there, the images would not. If there were no cleanness, I could not speak of the heart being clean; but the last is a figure. Remember this, that science, however useful, is material. Phenomena, on the contrary, are connected with the higher and divine part of man; and these are for all the world. I do not believe, while no doubt demonstrating the wonderful works of God, that Lord Ross's telescope has awakened a higher feeling than breathed in the heart of the shepherd of Bethlehem, when, keeping his flock in the fields by night, he viewed the heavens, the work of God's hands, the moon and the stars which He had ordained, and God gave him to image out that Second and perfect man as the answer to his wants and aspirations, who should be crowned with glory and honour, and have all things put under His feet. Perhaps the first man may exalt himself by the discoveries which prove how little he is; but what has he gained by it?

110 I believe fully God set at this time the sun and the moon to be for signs and seasons and years, and to make day and night; but they are viewed here solely in this aspect towards the earth, and only as lights. God made the two great lights, eth shenee hameoroth, and God gave them as such. There is no creation of the bodies. There is the establishment of the phenomena, and their purpose. Hence, when he speaks of the stars, he only takes care to remind us, that God had made them too. Instead of men's worshipping them, God had distributed them to all men under heaven; but, as not having any other place with this earth, it is simply left in that way.

We have no revelation of the creation of angels. Man, Israel, is to be instructed as to what they were in danger of abusing, and told how it came from God. It is not, as Hugh Miller thought, a vision, or the impression of it related, but phenomena put in their right place in man's mind, or God as to the phenomena. And that is what we want.

W. It makes it very simple and infinitely more important when we see it in this light. I quite feel it would be utterly out of place to make of a revelation a course of science. Yet the distinction of creation, and the arranging the present order, the χόσμος, of which Moses could have had no natural knowledge, leaves all discoveries of science their own place. It supposes a knowledge of them which God only could have, and yet does not take the mind from what was before it in all ages, and important for the development of truth in all ages, and the true condition of the masses in reference to God and the creation at all times. In this I see what is wholly divine in this account. There must be love and purpose in God's revelations: and in revelations to man, that love and that purpose must refer to man while it reveals God; and this the first of Genesis does admirably. It seems to me, as indeed I do not doubt it is, perfect in this respect.

H. Surely it is. And the question between us and the rationalists is, not whether the scripture gives scientific knowledge — most surely it does not; but whether its contents are God's thoughts or man's thoughts of the subject it treats of. It does give us man's thoughts when man stands responsible (and that of course it must do to have a full moral picture), but God's view and thoughts of all this scene, with the perfection of man in Christ, but a second man. In the case before us, in this most simple account, we have all the needed phenomena on which man speculated ascribed to the right source, and put in their place, and all man's thoughts met. Elsewhere we have man's thoughts, schemes of emanations, personifications, and theories. One little chapter answers them all divinely.

111 W. I feel thoroughly satisfied as to the divine and perfect character of this account as given by revelation. It seems to me that it bears the stamp of a revelation on itself. The review of human systems shews evidently that it was not the product of man's mind.

H. I would notice only now a few statements of our Essay to shew its fallacy. Many such have been noticed in our general review of the subject. It is stated, that theologians should have accepted frankly the principle, that those things for the discovery of which man has faculties specially provided are not fit objects for a divine revelation. All quite right; I quite agree with this. But it does not touch the question. I have not even to discover the sun, nor the stars, nor the moon; but what man never did discover, but lost when he had it, was, that God had made the sun, the moon, and stars. Instead of which, man took them for gods and worshipped them. That God in mercy should give a revelation to deliver man from this, even though he was without excuse, is very worthy of God.

But now mark the consequences these reasoners draw: "Had this been unhesitatingly done, either the definition and idea of divine revelation must have been modified, and the possibility of an admixture of error been allowed; or such parts of the Hebrew writings as were found to be repugnant to fact must have been pronounced to form no part of revelation." Now this conclusion is totally false. If objects of scientific discovery are not proper objects of revelation, the conclusion is not by any means that there is error in scripture, but that what is a revelation does not set about to reveal them, and therefore has no occasion to be in error about them.

The writer's statement amounts to this: there is a revelation which God has given, and as scientific facts are not a proper subject of revelation, therefore there is error in the revelation God has given. I should have thought, as God was the revealer and THERE COULD BE no other, that if they were not objects of revelation, He would not have revealed anything about them, not that He must have been in error. If He revealed anything and there be error, He must have known the truth of it, and have wilfully deceived. If He has not revealed any object of scientific discovery, the position falls to the ground. I have found no revelation of Cephalopodes, or Trilobites, or Megalotheria, Megalosaurias, and Ichthyosaurias or huge Pterodactyls. Man has discovered them. I am not aware of any revelation on an object of science. I find the word of God as to natural things resting on the ground of phenomena, and God correcting the horrible wanderings of men's minds, by revealing Himself, whom man never discovered as the Creator of all. Let man resolve nebula with his telescopes, and find they are composed of stars. Scripture tells us that He made the stars also. Let him discover, if he can, that the whole world is made up of infusoria, if revelation be not true, he dies and becomes part of it in his turn. We must distinguish between the facts of geology and the conclusions of geologists. I admit the former; the latter are extremely uncertain, in some respects impossible to be true. There is nothing to conciliate, as I have said. The facts of geology are there. Scripture, which does not reveal scientific facts, is totally silent as to them, but leaves a gap which may have been filled by millions of years when we were not: but it does tell us the origin of the world (which no man could find out — so horribly stupid was man without a revelation), namely, that God made it. If He did not, who did?

112 Our writer would have us learn from the history of man what God's procedure has been. History! where? India, or Egypt, or from the Edda, or Ahriman and Ormuzd? Where am I to find the history? The vast, vast majority of the world were in the most horrible state possible: is it from that I am to learn God's procedure towards man? Did God give him Kali, and Juggannath, or the Grand Lama, or Khem, and Yoni-Lingams, and Brahms? Where is this procedure? What history is it found in? History! Go to it, and see what man is. I do not say books of philosophy, though they are bad enough (and how truly judged in Romans 2!) but history, ay, rationalists, history! What a God you must have, if that be His procedure with man! And alas! our cosmogonists are only returning to what the first of Genesis brought the believer in it out of; for, "here geology steps in and successfully carries back the history of the world's crust" (think of that!) "to a very remote period, until it arrives" (where do you think?) "at a region of uncertainty? where philosophy is reduced to mere guesses and probabilities, and pronounces nothing definite." What a satisfactory result — successfully arriving at a region of uncertainty! How these men tell the truth about themselves! Divine philosophy, occupied with the earth's crust till it successfully arrives at uncertainty! but, if reduced to guesses, it will guess: and, "to this region belong the speculations which have been ventured upon, as to the original concretion of the earth and planets out of nebular matter" (is there such a thing?) "of which the sun may have been the nucleus." It must have been a prodigious comet to have been concentrated into the sun, for they have no sensible power of gravity at all; but let that pass. Who made the nebula? The Hindu could set the world on an elephant, and the elephant on a tortoise (his back was tolerably suited for it); but the tortoise on — a guess perhaps. Mr. Godwin would be greatly benefited by one text of scripture, in which there is no scientific fact: — "In the beginning God created the heavens and the earth."

113 As regards carnivorous animals, and one man and one woman, the fact is a question of God's power. It is distinctly stated, that herbs were given for food to the beasts of the field, not clearly from ignorance, for lions were eating men in Moses' time, but, with the deliberate intention of alleging a revelation, Moses contradicts the whole existing order of facts as to animals. He had no need to be a comparative anatomist to know that there were wild beasts. He declares that at first they were given the green herb for food. Scripture gives us to understand they ate that in the ark, and speaks of it as representing the reign of peace. Whether God, who foreknew the fall, made them as they are, or whether they were changed in disposition and internal organization, I do not pretend to say (but I believe man fell the first day); but the passage is not ignorance of science, for no science was needed. It is a direct contradiction of universal experience, and professes to be a revelation. To say that it cannot be true is absurd. It is morally appropriate. All men had a tradition of a golden age of blessing. Plato said the beasts used to converse then:

"He did not ask Jean Jacques Rousseau If beasts confabulate or no."

As regards the single pair, Christ and His apostles, particularly Paul, speak of the first man and woman as alone; and all Paul's doctrine is based on it. I am aware that our Essayists, and all their party, think themselves far wiser than the apostles; but, as the same Paul says, "not he that commendeth himself is approved." I suppose they would have a little modesty as yet as to treating the Lord as a person of inferior wisdom; but the whole account in both chapters speaks, as the Lord says, of one man and one woman. He planted a garden, and there He put the man whom He had formed. He was alone, all the beasts subjected to him, but no companion; and then Eve taken out of his side: when fallen and driven out, he begets a son in his own image. It is not merely the doctrine of Paul, but the historical statement is as clear as possible. The fall and redemption are all set aside in the part of the essay I allude to.

114 I have already commented on the pretension that it is a second narrative. The whole subsequent history goes on the supposition that there was no other man. The whole moral meaning of the history is a brutum fulmen, if there were others. The history is written to shew an innocent man fallen and driven out, as the head of a race, from God. If this is not so, what does the history mean? Genesis is a book in which all the elements of the divine history are brought out, and anticipatively passed in review. In the first chapter the man is carefully spoken of in the singular, and then plural when the woman is added. It is quite evident that all kinds of traditions were afloat in the world as to creation, or formation rather; and when God called out a people, He informed them as to the origin of the world around them, put them into a right relationship to Himself as to it, and only spoke of it as far as that was needed; but did that, knowing everything and speaking according to that knowledge. We may rest in peace in that. Discoveries may interest us deeply, like the discovery of antiquities of Celts or Saxons in an old castle we live in. Our own relationship with God flows from the revelation He has made of Himself in Christ.

At the same time, according to the ablest enquirers (as Pritchard, Cuvier, and others), all races of men are derived from one stock. The American efforts to shew the contrary are excessively poor; contradictory as to Africa, and false as to America. Their object is to make of negroes another race. Livingstone's facts go to shew their physical peculiarities to be a natural result of heat and damp. But I am content to be ignorant of its cause.

W. I am perfectly satisfied. I see as clearly as possible that the light we have in the first of Genesis is of God, not of man, and is suited to and worthy of God; that man was incapable of it in every way; that its silence and its eloquence are alike of Him; its wisdom, and the absence of all that is not simple or what might be called science; that it is silent as to the contrast, and yet distinguishes creation and formation in a way no man ever in fact was capable of, shewing an account coming from divine knowledge, and yet fitted to human ignorance in its most childhood days, yet giving all morally important and elevating for any of us, testing our faith in some things, and proving itself divine for the faith that is to be tried. I am satisfied that none but God could have given such an account, though I could not have so judged if I had not had it, and the Essayists could not have commented on it as they have done if they had not had it. What conclusions would have been drawn from the discoveries of geology, if Christianity had not come? What a comfort it is to know one has God's own word, the communication of His thoughts and mind in the interest He takes in us!

115 H. In truth it is — I am glad you are satisfied.

W. Satisfied, yet ignorant of many things; but the tone and spirit of these Essayists are sufficient, it seems to me, to prove that they have no sense of the divine; and even the historical comparison we have made, brief as it has been, of human thoughts and divine revelation, is sufficient to stamp its true character in the latter.

Well, I suppose we must part for the present. If spared, we may perhaps take up some other point of the Essays, though some, from their occasional nature, hardly merit any notice.

A Third Dialogue on the Essays and Reviews,

section a.

Modern Philosophy and Modern Theology, both compared with Scripture.

J. N. Darby.

<09003E> 116 file section a.

H. Shall we take up the review of "Bunsen's Biblical Researches" today? It has specially as its object the spreading the German system of discrediting the scriptures as we possess them. It is evident that the mass of readers cannot enter into arguments founded on linguistic or even historic criticism. And if the scriptures have not authority as the word of God, substantially as they are, that authority is gone, and with it every direct communication from God. If scripture be not this, certainly nothing else is; and mankind are deprived of all direct communication from Him. The immense bearing of this is self-evident. The great question is, not whether there are defects through lapse of ages and man's want of care in the record of divine communications — defects which every possible research may be used to remedy, but, first, whether there are such communications, and next, whether there be a divinely given record of them.

It is freely admitted that it is through man, and in a large portion of it the history of man just as he was, with a measure of divine light, or without it, in special if imperfect relationships, or with the divine light come down traditionally from those in more direct communication — in a word, that scripture gives us the whole working of divine light in all its phases and its effects, and the workings of man's mind under it. It is admitted that the very object of a large part of it is to shew the results in man put thus to the test in various ways, that man may know himself; and that this is accompanied by the patience of a condescending God working in the midst of this. All this is admitted — yea, insisted on. The question is not there. The question is, Are the scriptures a divine record of divine communications, in which God has unfolded all this before us, and given us besides, His own mind and thoughts as to it, and the ground of our relationship with Him?

If this be the case, then the scriptures are wholly and absolutely in contrast with every other book. Other books are not a divinely-given record of God's thoughts; the scriptures are. They have taken up humanity in all its forms, and held it up such as it is in the light, and under the eye of God, and given us that light, so that the darkness is past and the true light now shineth. We may have aspirations after God, the working of conscience, thoughts of need, giving much more real sense of what God must be to help us than the pride of intellectual reasoning. But the revelation of God is the full answer to all this; and that no man can give. God has in scripture given us the helpful description of these workings, so that the answer may be better understood. He has brought out, in historical realities and moral searchings of heart, without law, and under law, these wants and cravings, and the display of man's incompetence to meet God. We have the struggles of a Job, and the heart-exercises of the Psalms, the experience of all under the sun in the Preacher — man left to himself before the flood, man on the ground of obedience to law, man in obedient royalty in Israel, and man in unfettered supremacy in Babylon. The results of all this are given, and in Christ, the last Adam, God is fully revealed; and He is (dying withal that it may be righteous) the way to God.

117 This is not a speculation of what God may be. It is a revelation of what He is and the way to Him. If Christianity be true, it is this. When, 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. It is not the speculations of man's mind, but Christ crucified; to the Jews a stumbling-block, to the Greeks foolishness; but to us that are saved, Christ the power of God and the wisdom of God. God has made foolish the wisdom of this world. He has chosen the foolish things to confound the wise, and weak things and things that are not to bring to nought things that are. Such was the divine system, and such it is. If Christianity be true at all, it is the express opposite of all the system advocated by these Essays.

W. Of that I am fully convinced. I see plainly that the very essence of Christianity as a revelation is the bringing divine light into the course of this world and of the human heart; it is to show, not indeed that there are no amiable natural qualities (for there are), but that, with them or without them, man is alienated from God — that in his flesh dwells no good thing. I see plainly, too, that man's moral estimate of good must be lowered, if he does not so judge. But with this he has a perfect revelation of love, and of a righteous way for man through the cross into the perfect enjoyment of it. But the difficulties are to be met. I feel I am in the evening darkness when I take up this book, with all its pretensions; but it is difficult to catch a flitting bat who is in his element when he is there.

118 H. The main thing, I apprehend, in these cases is to bring in the light. Bats are gone when it comes, and crouch into more natural darkness. What they have of Christianity has given them this twilight — a perplexing kind of light; their home is darkness. I speak, of course, of the principles, not of the men. There may be first last and last first.

Scripture calls God light, and it calls Him love, which are the titles you have used in speaking of Him. He is these. He is not holiness, for that is relative; He is not righteousness, though He be holy and righteous. To be holy, there must be knowledge of good and evil (and so of righteousness); but that, i.e., evil, cannot be within God; but perfect purity, and that which manifests all, He is; and the perfect activity of goodness, that is, love; and so scripture speaks. And this makes the cross so glorious, of which you speak as the way. God meets sin there. Oh, what a glorious meeting! yet in perfect love, but in perfect righteousness and holiness; yea, exalting them by it. Hence He says, Now is the Son of man glorified — for it was glorious for a man to do it — and God is glorified in Him. If God be glorified in Him, God shall also glorify Him in Himself, and shall straightway glorify Him John 13: 32  -  shall not wait for the outward display in the coming kingdom, but shall glorify Him in Himself, who was glorified in Him. This is man's place in hope and in spiritual nature and affections now; hence not of the world, as Christ, who came from heaven and as a divine person was in heaven, was not of the world. This nature may display itself in a thousand exercises and relationships here, as it did in Christ, and in us — mixed with failures, alas! for which there is provision in Him; but the proper association of our nature and standing as Christians is with Him in heaven.

Hence it is said, Jesus, knowing that the Father had given all things into His hand, and that He came from God and went to God — in presence of all He was and was going to, and in presence of treachery and failure — takes the place of a servant to wash His disciples' feet, that they might have a part with Him. He could not stay with them in this polluted earth. Hence, too, when Peter would have other than his feet washed — his need through defilement from daily walk — the Lord says, He that is washed — really partakes of this divine nature (for they were, save Judas, clean through the word spoken) — needeth not save to wash his feet, but is clean every whit. What a picture of grace! what a witness of our portion or part with Him! and while giving the assurance that the truth of the divine nature is there (for here He speaks of water, not of blood), to give us morally elevating confidence in intercourse with God, and yet allow of not the smallest daily stain, yet learn grace in it.

119 W. It is a picture at once most lovely and elevated of the Lord's grace.

H. If you examine it. closely, you will see that it comes after His earthly claims are witnessed and closed. As Son of God, He raises Lazarus; as Son of David, He rides into Jerusalem. When the Greeks come up, He says, The hour is come that the Son of man should be glorified; but then adds, He must fall into the ground as a corn of wheat and die. In chapter 13 He shews how we have part with Him when He could not with us. But note this well. If we are to be really elevated, it is taking us in spirit really out of this world. He gave Himself for our sins, to deliver us from this present world.

However we will turn from scripture to Dr. Williams and Baron Bunsen, if you are so disposed.

W. If you please. I should gladly pursue our enquiry into the whole of John's gospel; but I suppose for the moment we must pursue our subject.

H. Note, then, the principles Dr. Williams lays down. "There is hardly any greater question than whether history shews Almighty God to have trained mankind by a faith which has reason and conscience for its kindred, or by one to whose miraculous tests their pride must bow." I deny the alternative altogether.

But what shall we say to his account of English scholars at the universities? "They stand balancing terror against mutual shame. Even with those in our universities who no longer repeat fully the required Shibboleths, the explicitness of truth is rare. He who assents most, committing himself least to baseness, is reckoned wisest." What a picture!

W. It is no great compliment. Their faith has not reason and conscience for its kindred, at any rate, whatever kind of tests they may have to bow to.

H. It is just the effect of narrowness such as theology without scripture gives, tied up by system, and turning in its will to unlawful fields of delight. Sober research is not followed out, and as liberty cannot be had, to seem free, pretensions to it, which are really infidelity, must be had resort to. But though such a position be sufficiently despicable — and we have not assigned it to them, nor do I see any good in discrediting thus morally the educational and religious heads of the country (I should at any rate leave it to themselves to do so) — yet the evil is deeper. It is reducing Christianity to man, not raising man by Christianity. "Devotion raises time present into the sacredness of the past" (that is, what we have now of spiritual power is pretty much equivalent to the apostolic energy); "and criticism reduces the strangeness of the past into harmony with the present" (that is, the times of Christ and His works were no more than what we have now). Heathenism must itself be on the same level. We are not to "acknowledge a Providence in Jewry without owning that it may have comprehended sanctities elsewhere" — not a very lucid statement, but which means, that if the Jewish religion was something more, yet heathenism was as much owned of God. "Its religions appealed to the better side of our nature, and their essential strength lay in the good they contained." So Bunsen "traces frankly the Spirit of God elsewhere, but honouring chiefly the traditions of His Hebrew sanctuary." Nor will they hear of anything superior to man. "Our author then believes St. Paul, because he understands him reasonably."

120 Now, it is difficult to follow the statements of the paper of Baron Bunsen, because, with an immense store of reading, Bunsen (evidently personally a most amiable and attractive person) skimmed everything more than he thoroughly searched anything; sought to reduce all events to their most abstract ideality, which was its only truth for him (and it is in this last point its fallacy and infidel character consisted); and indulged an imagination amiable by its very wantonness. You see a man who can believe anything, if he thought it, and mean no harm; but put that as truth, while research after certainty was too prosaic for him. Endless supposition and ideality; truth not necessary to the structure of his mind. He has read and studied a vast deal, thought a great deal, written a great deal, to shew what might be or must have been; the prose of what was does not seem to have occurred to him as a subject of enquiry. He felt, like our Essayists, the narrowness of conventional Oxford-like education and system, and sought (in emancipating himself and being suggestive, as our Essayists say) liberty, not truth. A balloon is free, but as yet no one has known how to guide it.

In his history, "giant shapes of ancient empires flit like dim shadows, evoked by a master's hand." The only misfortune is, they are only shadows — they never existed. Then some twenty thousand years are needed for them. There must have been to form the empires, and the language too; but the empires were only shadows, and the twenty thousand years flit away necessarily like the empires. None of the allegations bear serious examination.

121 Next, the whole system is founded on believing in the goodness of man. He believes, as the reviewer says, in Christ, because he believes in God and in mankind. There you have the real truth. What is believing in mankind? That they are sinners? lost? So Christianity undoubtedly teaches. So the reviewer speaks of God's giving us, through His Son, a deeper revelation of His own presence. Present He always was in man: only this was somewhat fuller, and "the incarnation becomes as purely spiritual as it was with Paul."

All truth disappears under Baron Bunsen's musings. Ideas remain; nought else. Christ is an idea. This levelling of all facts to exalt man by ideas is followed out by the reviewer. "First, as regards the subject-matter, both spiritual affection and metaphysical reasoning forbid us to confine revelations like those of Christ to the first half century of our era, but shew at least affinities of our faith existing in men's minds anterior to Christianity, and renewed with deep echo from living hearts in many a generation . . . . We find the evidences of our canonical books, and of the patristic authors nearest to them, are sufficient to form illustration in outward act of principles perpetually true; but not adequate to guarantee narratives inherently incredible, or precepts evidently wrong." We will speak of this hereafter.

But the first thing, in this chaos of words and abstract principles, which it is important for our minds to dwell on is, what Christianity professes to be. I say, professes to be. My business now is, not to prove it true, but to shew that the idea to which it is reduced here is false, and impossible if it be true. The reader must remember that the reviewers profess to be Christians, to be Christian teachers, and to be teachers of those intended to be teachers. They cannot say we deny Christianity. They are only wiser Christians; they would suit Christianity to human nature, to men, to man's progress. They would not have the narrowness of ancient orthodoxy, and they abhor evangelical truth; but they must be Christians, or leave the position they hold. The explicitness of truth, they tell us, is rare. Now Christianity is very explicit. It does not speak of revelations of Christ — that is, thoughts communicated by Him — but found in living hearts in many a generation. It declares that the Father sent His Son to be the Saviour of the world. It is a religion of facts, and so suited to the poor. Half the population of England would not understand the sentence I have quoted above. The gospel may, alas! be rejected, but it consists in facts suited to every man's heart and conscience. Christianity states deep things, which, if received, reveal God in a way that makes Him possess the heart; but it states them simply, because what is perfectly known can be simply stated, and God knows perfectly what He reveals in grace.

122 But to return to the point I insist on. Christianity is a religion of immense facts — facts which contain unspeakably important principles, but facts which connect those principles with God (being a revelation of Him), and not with man's thinkings or aspirations. Thus "the Word was made flesh and dwelt among us (and we beheld his glory, the glory as of the only begotten of the Father), full of grace and truth . . . . For the law was given by Moses, but grace and truth came by Jesus Christ." "I," says Jesus, "came forth from the Father, and came into the world: again, I leave the world and go to the Father." John 16: 28. Now principles are here: law contrasted with grace and truth; but the former in the facts which happened at Sinai; the latter in the fact that the Son of God is come from heaven into this world. And the essence and substance of Christianity was to believe that this person was the Christ, was the Son of God; it was to believe these facts which He asserted of Himself, or His apostles after Him declared to be so, alleging that they worked miracles to aid men to believe. Christ declares that, if men did not believe Him, they would die in their sins; that he who believed on the Son had everlasting life; that he who believed not was condemned already. He declares that nobody had ascended up to heaven so as to tell of heavenly things, but He who came down from heaven; but that He spoke that He knew, and testified that He had seen. Paul, too, for whom incarnation was so spiritual, sees that just One returned into glory, and hears the voice of His mouth, that he might be, as he insists he was, an eye-witness that in very deed He, who thought it no robbery to be equal with God, had made Himself of no reputation, and taken on Him the form of a servant, and was found in fashion as a man. Although his mission was mainly to shew man righteously exalted to heaven, John's to shew God come down in grace to the earth, still the same great facts are distinctly declared by him as by all. Stephen declares the wondrous fact, which in the order of revelation led the way on to Paul's ministry, that he saw the Son of man standing at the right hand of God.

123 If we take other facts constituting the bases of Christianity — the incarnation; it lies at the outset and foundation of its history that Christ was not born as men are born, but conceived of the Holy Ghost; that a holy thing was born of Mary, through this miraculous interposition. This fact gives us a sinless man born of God — a Son of man, indeed, but a Second man, a last Adam. An immense fact, involving an immense principle, completely brought into light by the rejection and death of this blessed One (for man, with all his analogous revelations out of living hearts, would none of a living Saviour; He was by wicked hands crucified and slain): the principle that man was a hopeless sinner and a new man to be set up.

But then comes another fact. The Saviour rises; the power of death is destroyed. I do not know what affinity, or deep echo, there is of resurrection in men's minds. I have not heard it. It has not reached the world of history. In what dell has Dr. Williams been where its echo has sounded concealed from all? The sound of resurrection once reached the ears of instructed men; but what echo did it bring back? When they heard of the resurrection of the dead, some mocked; some, happily startled at the strange sound which spoke relief to dying man, said, "We will hear thee again of this matter." Acts 17: 32. Death — ah! its echo has sounded far and wide. Yea, it needs none. It speaks in its own voice on the right hand and on the left. It says, Who can escape me? who can tell what has brought me? who shall return out of my hand again? Is Paul wrong who tells that sin brought my terror-striking power on man? Who can tell where I bring those on whom I lay my hand? Is it to judgment? Where is it? Who has returned to tell the tale? What affinities shall help me here? What living hearts tell me more than I know? They fear or hope like me. Death makes them as serious as it makes me. If Christ be my God, it is a gain, the brightest moment of life; it is to depart and be with Him. But if not, who of these fancied revealers has ever revealed what is beyond? Hope. Yes; since Christianity, infidels can.

But resurrection goes farther; it destroys death's power wholly. What came in by the first Adam is destroyed by the Second, and brings into glory. The resurrection is an immense fact: glorious truths and principles in it; the power of divine life paramount to death; acceptance of man in a wholly new state, reasoned on largely by the apostles, especially Paul — still a simple but immense fact. That God should become a man; that the Son should be personally revealed as man on earth; that He should die as man on the cross; that He should triumph over death, and rise again, and ascend as man in a spiritual and glorified body into heaven, assuring to those who believed on Him that they would be with and like Him: these are facts — if Christianity be true at all — which make it simple nonsense to talk of "affinities of our faith existing in men's minds anterior to Christianity, and renewed with deep echo from living hearts in many a generation."

124 No doubt aspirations there were before in men's hearts, through the moral desolation of the world; prophecies too, before Christ, which, in a chosen and called people, kept alive the hope of something better; and every Christian of course believes that these facts, and the principles of grace and truth they involve, are received in many living hearts since, with more or less depth of feeling, and find an echo there. But the prophecies were not the thing prophesied of, the aspirations were not the divine answer that met and more than met them. Nor is the blessed echo in the believer's heart, he well knows, the fact that has awakened it — that heavenly sound which it echoes with joy in its praises. There is realisation of it all, living realisation, affinity, because the believer is partaker of the divine nature. If God be love, the believer loves. If God be holy, the believer is made partaker of His holiness. Is Christ glorified? The believer will be like Him, and seeks to be spiritually like Him now. But the person of Christ, His death, His resurrection, remain great and unchangeable facts. He does not speak of revelations of Christ (i.e., by Him), and affinities in other men's minds. But he knows that the Son of God is come; he knows that the Father sent the Son; that Christ is a person come down from heaven, so that He could reveal what is there (not merely aspire after it); that He loved us and gave Himself for us — appears in the presence of God for us; that we have forgiveness of sins through Him — salvation in no other; and that if He was God upon earth, the Word made flesh, He is man in heaven.

There can be no affinities to facts in men's minds; there may be effects produced by them, which bring the mind into suited feelings; there may be dark aspirations after what is better. But a revelation, and the Son of God coming into the world to create the one and to meet the other, are different things. The statement of Dr. Williams is a covert denial of Christianity. It reduces it to thoughts and feelings in men's minds, not confined to the revelations of Christ; and here Dr. Williams is even farther from Christianity than Bunsen.

125 Now Christ did reveal most blessed grace and truth. But Christianity rests on what He was, what He suffered, and on His resurrection. If that be not true, our faith is vain, we are yet in our sins, and, as the apostle confesses, if it be not, they were false witnesses of God. He had seen the Lord after His resurrection, and he could appeal, not only to the apostles, but to hundreds, as eye-witnesses of the fact. The apostles were to be witnesses of His resurrection, of this immense fact. What affinity is there to that? No; however covertly it may be done — however Christ's revelations may be spoken of, and moral beauty be sought elsewhere as well — the putting Christianity on this ground is the denial of it; for if Christianity consist in the great facts I have referred to, there is, and can be, no affinity to it as such. Affinity to resurrection is nonsense, if resurrection be related as a fact on which moral truth is based.

How wise is God! My thoughts are not God personally incarnate. My being dead to sin and alive to God is not the Son of God passing through death actually and rising again that I may be so. Let any one admit the facts (that is, that Christianity is true), and the views here given by Dr. Williams are at once seen to be the denial of it; because what passes in men's minds are not such facts. If Christianity be only what the affinities of men's minds are, Christianity, as a revelation, is not true. If there be affinities to Christianity, then the Christianity of the Bible and of the universal Church is false, for one states and the other has believed it as a religion of divine facts, however much they have disputed about doctrines. And no honest man can read the scriptures without seeing that the men who relate and reason on Christianity, the original promulgators of it to the world, rest all on these facts, declare themselves often eye-witnesses of many of them, and rest Christianity on their truth. It is impossible to read the New Testament, the references to the origin of Christianity in fathers, heretics, enemies, or pagans, and not see that it rested on a series of facts alleged to be supernatural and divine, which Christians believed, and their adversaries, save as to the fact of the cross, denied. The miracles they did not deny, but accounted for. With these facts the affinities of men's minds have nothing to do. He who makes Christianity to consist in them denies Christianity altogether as a religion of God. If it be not, is there any such? If none, where are we? where are we going?

126 If we take the character of the revelation of these facts, the contrast is equally great. He that hath received His testimony hath set to his seal that God is true. Not that what is said is truth merely: he has owned God to be true, as He has spoken. For he whom God hath sent speaketh the words of God. John, who spoke as a prophet, yet says "He that is of the earth is earthly, but he that cometh from above is above all, and what he hath seen and heard that he testifieth, and no man receiveth his testimony." John 3: 32. So Christ Himself (John 8: 47), "He that is of God heareth God's words." Read the whole chapter, and see where are the affinities of living hearts. Again, "He was that eternal life which was with the Father and was manifested to us." 1 John 1: 2. The whole of the New Testament presents the testimony of Christ as a directly divine testimony; not the thoughts or aspirations of the human heart, but God's words, the words of one who could tell what was in heaven, if man was darkly aspiring after it, because He came down from heaven, and spoke what He had seen, heard, and known there.

In a different way the Holy Ghost has done the same in the apostles. It was not what passed in man's mind, but a clear revelation from God, because man's mind could not find out the truth and God, as history plainly proves. The world by wisdom knew not God, and it pleased God, by the foolishness of preaching, to save them that believe. It presents itself in this form in contrast with, and as exactly the contrary of, what Dr. Williams says. If it be not such, it is false, and a horrible imposture, and yet a holy imposture, which there is nothing like in the world, to reveal all that is in man and all that is in God. Let any one produce anything at all like it. Take away this, and what have you as a revelation? What have heathens given us at best? — a despairing recognition that, if man was to have any moral deliverance, it must be thus. The highest heathen philosophy held it impossible that the supreme God could have directly to say to a creature or to the creation. The fact of Christianity is that He Himself became a man. God is not afraid to compromise His name. He is God everywhere — nowhere more so than when He is a man, for He is perfect love.

W. It is quite evident that Christianity and the whole system are in essential and total opposition. If the ideas of Dr. Williams are true, Christianity is false; and yet there is nought that approaches to it in excellence, nil simile aut secundum. If Dr. Williams's views are false, they are high treason against the goodness of God. That is plain enough.

127 H. Remark another thing — their moral incapacity to seize the bearing of their own or their adversaries' views. There is a conscience, a sense of good and evil, without a revelation — more of that anon. But Christianity, as a revelation of God, gives us entire confidence in goodness, but an object out of self, delight in goodness out of ourselves, faith in that which is revealed in another. The infidel party bring us back to self, to confidence in self, to value for self. Man is as good in other ways as what has been had in Christ; at any rate, it is a question of degree. All is man; that is, Christianiy takes out of self by a divinely perfect object. Infidelity exalts self — lives in what is really degradation. What is exalted in this system? What is exalted in Christianity? I spoke once to an intelligent artisan, nurtured in this doctrine, of the beauty and perfectness of Christ. "Oh," he replied, "you will never see me do anything unworthy of a man." What man? Himself to be sure.

At the cost of his own humiliation the Christian admits the divine excellency which condemns him. These unhappy men, as we can again find here, in order to reduce all to a dead level, lower — or rather see nothing divine in — Christianity; and then, what really is disgraceful morally (as we have seen in Dr. Temple, and see again here), they put heathenism on a level with it, or as nearly as they dare. I confess this seems to me a vilifying themselves beyond all belief. But so they do. It is the direct point of the paper we are considering. "Devotion," it is said, "raises time present (i.e., ourselves) into the sacredness of the past; while criticism reduces the strangeness of the past into harmony with the present." What past? Why, revelation; that is what is criticised. That is, the object is to reduce what is divine, or presents itself definitely and absolutely as such, as the "words of God" and "works of the Father," to the level of what men say and do now, and give sacredness and importance to ourselves by saying we are as divine as what is revealed to us. Remove God Himself, whom Christianiy has revealed, far away — lower what is divine, and exalt self — that is the avowed object of Dr. Williams.

W. Well, it really cannot be denied. It is but spargere voces in vulgum ambiguas at present; but the interpretation you give does but put it in plain language, and it condemns itself.

128 H. Plain language they cannot boast of. I read, "we cannot acknowledge a Providence in Jewry without owning that it may have comprehended sanctities elsewhere." Now that God's providence acted sovereignly everywhere, that the confinement of specific relationship to Israel was only because historically men had everywhere departed from God, every Christian owns, and the Book of Job is the special witness of it. It is asserted in a thousand places by prophets, and in Psalms. Jonas is the public witness of its subsistence when Israel was fully formed as a people. But what is the meaning of this precious phrase, "Providence comprehending sanctities elsewhere?" If we are to be permitted to take a meaning out of it, as our Irish fellow-countrymen say, it is simply that the heathen were as holy as God's people, and as really in direct relationship with Him. If so, of course the Old Testament, and Christ's statements, and the apostles, and the whole scheme of scripture, are totally false. These do teach us that Christianity has broken down the middle wall of partition, but that, before, God had not had His name called on any other people, but had chosen Israel for Himself out of all nations. The whole scheme of scripture is on this shewing false; salvation was not of the Jews, as the Lord asserts.

The passage which follows, however, justifies the interpretation I have given of Dr. Williams's oracle. He adds, "But the moment we examine fairly the religions of India and Arabia, or even of primeval Hellas and Latium, we find they appealed to the better side of our nature, and their essential strength lay in the elements of good which they contained, rather than in any satanic corruption." So thought not Paul: but let that pass. Dr. Williams has, of course, keener spiritual perception than he. He was in conflict with the evil, saw it around him, would feel its evil and corruption, and could not take so philosophic and cool a view of it as Dr. Williams now. Indeed, it would have sadly cooled his zeal; his idea of revelation would have widened and deepened. Jupiter, whose ways appealed to the better side of our nature, would have had a part in his sympathies.

You may have remarked what is said in the essay on national churches. I will recall to you a specimen of this moral levelling: —

"It was natural for a Christian, in the earliest period, to look upon the heathen state in which he found himself as if it belonged to the kingdom of Satan, and not to that of God; and consecrated as it was in all its offices, to the heathen divinities, to consider it a society having its origin from the powers of darkness, not from the Lord of light and life. . . . But the primitive Christians could scarcely be expected to see that ultimately the gospel was to have sway in doing more perfectly that which the heathen religions were doing imperfectly; that its office should be not only to quicken the spirit of the individual and to confirm his future hopes, but to sanctify all social relations and civil institutions, and to enter into the marrow of the national life; whereas heathenism had only decorated the surface of it. Heathendom had its national churches; indeed the existence of a national church is not only a permissible thing, but is necessary to the completion of a national life, and has shewn itself in all nations when they have made any advance in civilization." (p. 168.)

129 Paul could bend himself, however, to human condition and human infirmity in a wonderful way, to seek a point where he could meet those he dealt with, and at Athens meet a weary and wandering conscience with an unknown God; and bring the true one to ignorant and more savage Lystrians, as not having left Himself without witness, in that He did good, and gave rain and fruitful seasons, and filled men's hearts with food and gladness. He could lead people to the true God by this; but he could not justify corruption and devils, like Dr. Williams, nor call evil good, and good evil, and put darkness for light, and light for darkness. The true picture of it he gives in Romans 1. There is reason, as Dr. Williams alleges, and conscience; and I see Paul meeting, with the utmost earnestness of love, and the delicacy of tact which love gives, the point in man's state accessible to it, in order to draw him to the goodness and holy grace of the true God, out of the evil he was in; but never seeking, as Dr. Williams, to widen the idea of revelation, and lower it to the level of the heathenism it was to draw men out of, and thus make them content with their degradation. When Christianity sank morally, Porphyrys and Jamblichuses sought to do this by refining on heathenism, and making myths of it, as Julian sought in vain to moralize it to make a stand against Christianity, which, by its fruits, told on the conscience; but never did an apostle, or any one who had a sense of the excellency of Christ. Paul can quote their own poets, can use all means to win all, but never to sanctify evil, and so degrade the moral judgment of man. This was reserved for the pretenders to higher moral discernment of the nineteenth century.

But a word more on this. We have already spoken on this sanction of heathenism. It is characteristic of the system — this moral levelling all excellency to make an unwholesome swamp of man's mind, where all stagnates and never rises above its own level. But some particular features of it occur in this paper. It is called widening revelation and deepening it. Widening means giving it so large a meaning that that should be considered a revelation which is no revelation at all. Man's mind works; thoughts are produced. How that is deepening revelation I confess I do not know. I suppose they think men's thoughts are deeper than God's. Less simple they are. All is seen in obscurity, and thought to be profound. But where are they — these revelations? Is Jupiter a revelation, or Brahm and Siva? I deny all revelation save what revelation means, God's communications to man. Let it be produced. I do not deny shreds of the knowledge of God, but I deny revelation. There is conscience in all, and conscience of God; and there is reason; and there was a knowledge of God from His original revelations of Himself, which men had not discernment to retain, and there was the evidence of nature. This conscience could not be got rid of, nor reason, however fearfully perverted, nor the consciousness of superior power. But this was corrupted.

130 This side of human nature is found in heathenism, as the apostle largely declares; but heathenism itself is a vast system of diabolical corruption and sanctifying of lusts, which was obliged to let this in, for Satan can only act in and by what was in man; and conscience and the sense of superior power was in man. But the heathenism was the exclusion of God in unity as far as possible, and the deifying of lusts and powers of nature. It was only the connecting of man, such as man was in sin, with devils; a departure from God without being able to destroy the idea of one, or the conscience which God had taken care should accompany sin; but it in no way sought to maintain the one or to meet the other, but to exclude the one and deaden and pervert the other. It took the character of each distinct nation. In Greece it was gay, poetic, and corrupt; in India, a wonderful apprehension of the powers of nature, with a tinge of kindness interspersed; in Egypt, wisdom, and sobriety of judgment as to man; in Canaan the filth of inveterate corruption: but in all, without exception, sanctified corruption. In the north, perhaps, the wilder and more warlike passions, but in all passion. It was the devil's revelation of a lie, if it was a revelation, unless Siva, and Jupiter, and Khem be truths. It seized existing facts, but only made a lie of them.

There is no "repressive idea of revelation," as regards conscience or reason. There is an authoritative revelation of facts, and teaching of truths by God, which act on conscience and give reason its best light. Reason judges probably, but never more, of the truth and falsehood of anything as a consequence. A revelation gives certain truth, or it is not one. If it be truth, conscience, liable to be misled, is rightly led by it. Reason, as to the direct reception of a revelation, is out of court, because reason draws conclusions, and a revelation is received as a testimony. To say that reason and conscience are absolute judges, or competent to be so, is palpably and historically false. Reason and conscience received Brahminism and Buddhism, and Ionism, and the Egyptian system, and Odin King of men, and Druidism — all false and different in form. Did they judge rightly in this? If not, are they not at least incompetent to hold the balance, and rule above the will and corrupt influences? Why am I to trust them in judging of what is infinite in excellence? They could not secure man's judgment in the grossest cases imaginable of superstition and moral vileness.

131 I admit conscience, when acted on, recognizes holy truth and divine authority. But when it begins, not to judge good and evil in itself, but to determine the will as competent to judge for itself, as reasoning, it has ceased to be conscience; or rather conscience has ceased to act, and influences and motives are in play. Conscience knows murder, fruit of hatred, is wrong; that stealing is wrong, disobedience to parents wrong: did a religion come saying "that is good," as such, conscience could say "that cannot be from God, for it is not good: that is a lie, not the truth." But if, not conscience, but pride, begin to say, "God ought not to have done this: miracles do not suit man's better knowledge;" I reply, "Ah! my poor conscience, you are putting on these peacock's feathers, are you? You are too late. Why did not you judge all the juggling of oracles, false gods, and priestcraft these four or five thousand years? This is all very fine. Christianity has saved you from all this long-lasting shame, from which you never could save yourself, and never did, with all your fine pretensions now; and you now turn to set up to be competent to judge about what it ought to have been, and reject the very pretensions the power of which alone gave you any sense to judge at all. No, no; keep in your place, according to the light which you have got back to. In your own measure call good good and evil evil. This you have only learnt really to do through Christianity. Let us see how lively you will be as to this under its influence, and we will applaud it. And do not speak to us, at least by the mouth of those who tell us 'they stand balancing terror against mutual shame.' The eye, though capable of seeing, wants light; but do not fancy because you are the mind's moral eye, that you are therefore God, to know how in His workings and ways He ought to behave. Why did you not judge what man had to do when he was under your care? What did you make of him? Let history tell. If God has graciously used miracles, not against conscience, but to arouse it, and help man against influences tending to incredulity, and to shew that there was a power in God above the evil to which you, conscience, had succumbed, do not you complain or set up to judge God for a deliverance which, without this, you never did effect. Do not say it could be done without it. You can tell that, you say. Why did you not then do it in the four thousand years — twenty thousand if you please — which had elapsed? Your pretended competency to judge of means, and reliance on your own power in behalf of man, is an historically proved falsehood. You let him sink into the grossest superstition and corruptions. The Christianity you are calling in question delivered him somehow or another; that is a fact (deep as, spite of conscience and reason and all, he is fallen again in corrupt Christianity and rationalism): you never could."

132 I do not talk of "kindred reason and conscience." I admit both, and revelation speaks to both; but I say that it is an historical fact that with them man fell from the light he had into the pit of degradation. Christianity delivered him, and set reason and conscience in the light, and on their right ground; and nothing else did. I am talking of history. I trust my reason for things of reason, as far as it is reasonable; that is, as to what is subjected to it. I have to act according to my conscience when this is in the light; indeed it is more honest to do so when imperfectly enlightened; but trust to man's pretended competency to judge of revelation by them and of what a religion ought to be, I cannot, because with them man has received everything as true that is false, base, and wicked to be God, and that is corrupt and abominable to be a duty, until God in power came in to deliver, and has rejected what was excellent and holy. I have got my senses, now I am in the light, to see that with my senses I fell into the ditch when I had not the light, and that all the eyes in the world could not make a ray of light, though now I have the light I know it is light. And I have no inclination, now I have it, to put it out, or to say that eyes without it were competent to see, kindred to light; and widen the sense of light, to make it comprehend men walking, and walking in darkness, and their feeling their way, an almost equivalent to having the light — a deepening of the idea of what light is.

133 W. I feel that your estimate is just. I must get rid of history and facts, as well as every moral sentiment of my nature, to receive the theories of these men. Yet they use the name of Christ, while setting conscience above revelation.

H. Of their speaking of Christ anon; but conscience being above revelation is nonsense upon the face of it. A man may deny revelation; this I understand. I reject his thought as a horror, a moral impossibility, that man should be so left; but it is not nonsense. But if there be a revelation really, that is God. Conscience is man; and a conscience above revelation is man above God.

W. But must not I judge of a revelation?

H. It is not the common way of receiving it, because it acts with divine light on the conscience. I cannot say the eye judges light: light makes the eye see. A revelation, being holy, convicts of sin, and so proves itself. But when we have to judge of a revelation, if it be one, I am judged by my judgment. If I judge a beautiful picture to be a bad one, and that the painters ought to have distributed the lights so and so, what is judged when one knows what really is beautiful? Why I am. Our judgment proves what we are. There is no escaping that unless finally man is to judge God, not God man. Oh, what a judgment it would be! Yet that is really the question, and in truth we have seen it brought to a trial and issue in Christ. Golgotha can tell that tale. Our reception or non-reception of the truth is our judgment, and so the New Testament declares. Both analogy and history give us to understand this important principle, wholly overlooked by these unbelieving reasoners, that for the use of a faculty, power outside itself may be needed; so that when the power is not there, the faculty is useless. When it is there, it acts rightly and freely; but its action is wholly dependent on a power independent of it. It exists without the power, but cannot act without it. Conscience is a faculty of the soul, as the power of seeing is of the eye; but conscience without revelation, without light from God, has never judged rightly. Man with this faculty has received all the devilish horrors and corruption it is possible to imagine; he walks in darkness and knows not at what he stumbles. But light is independent of the eye, and the eye judges not light, but everything by the light Conscience judges, not revelation, but by revelation, or perfect divine light, that is, Christ Himself. God is light, and Christ is that light in the world. If men have had it elsewhere, let them say where.

134 W. It is clear. After all, it is only saying there is a God, and that as such He must be above man's judgment and the power of it. It is all confusion to speak of revelation being contrary to conscience, or having reason and conscience for its kindred. God, and God revealing Himself, has His place; and if God does not reveal Himself, we are godless creatures — not without a sense that there is a God, but ignorant of what He is; in the deplorable condition of knowing there is a God, and not knowing Him; with conscience enough to know we are in evil, but ignorant how to get out of it. History, the complaints of a Socrates, the puny efforts of others, shew and tell — the world by wisdom knew not God.

H. Surely, surely; and the sense of excellency gives the sense of wretchedness; of excellency (blessed be His name!) — in God; of wretchedness in man; but then of infinite love towards us. If the world by wisdom knew not God, it did not know love; if it did, where is the knowledge to be found? I defy Dr. Williams, conscience and reason and all, to tell me. If God does reveal Himself, He reveals Himself as God. Man is not a judge of the way. He has received every kind of lie as God, then laughed at it in the end, in the mockery of despair, without finding out it was his wretched self he was laughing at. But this revelation does not exclude but awakens conscience, makes it for the first time see good, which it in this light can recognize. For God, who is light, is goodness or love manifested in the midst of men. Conscience is not the instrumentality of revelation, as they say. Such a statement is nonsense.

A revelation is God's making something known which was not otherwise apprehended, perhaps could not have been. Conscience is no instrumentality in revealing. It is a positive essential faculty in man, knowing or discerning good and evil: but that is not an instrument of revelation. It is a proper independent faculty, which the believer knows to have been acquired in the fall. But it must have its object before it, to say it is good or evil; that is, it has nothing to do with revealing. Its object must be there and then; when not perverted, it says, if good be before it, That is good; if evil, That is evil. Reason discerns cause and effect, and as reasoning draws consequences; in moral things it runs closely into conscience. But it is never an instrument of revelation, unless in the sense that the Holy Spirit uses a man as an instrument in revealing, but in itself never is. It must have its object to reason about. Revelation gives objects otherwise unknown, or fresh truth about known objects, or it is not a revelation. This neither conscience nor reason do in their very nature. I may figuratively say, It really was a revelation: that is, the perception of reason was so quick, that it was, in comparison with other minds, like one. But this only proves the difference I have stated.

135 In a word, conscience and reason must have objects to judge of. A revelation communicates objects which men have not. There is no contrast with revelation; they are no parts of its instrumentality. Reason and conscience have their own proper power in their place, needing, in order to act in divine things, a light wholly independent of them, that is, a revelation. In their place they are like every other faculty, and, as the most important ones, blessed. As I have said, when conscience has got light, it can say, Jupiter and Saturn cannot be gods; and reason can say, when it has got the idea of God, there cannot be two. Reason can never say, "is," or "is not," but "must," and "cannot." Ideas, and not facts, are its sphere. Revelation says "is" — another most important difference. I believe the idea of God is, in spite of Locke, at the bottom of every heart — corrupted and dimmed, but in every heart; and so, of course, are conscience and reason, though blind and corrupted, till light comes, and through passions, interests, and Satanic power, losing the light and being blinded when men have had it. They did not discern to retain God in their knowledge.

I have been, I am conscious, long in my lucubrations on this subject, but hope I have not lost your attention. Those who have followed the phases of the new school, and particularly abroad in its French forms (for it uses, but is not the old rationalism), know that their battle-horse is this point of conscience. All their statements are, however, error and confusion, and, like everything they say, as superficial as it is pretentious.

W. I have listened diligently to what you have been saying. It has not, of course, the interest which unfolding the range of scripture, or touching on its main beauties, has; but I see plainly the need of getting clear hold of the true place of conscience and reason, insisted on as they are by them; and it has deep interest as general truth. Happily history is there to refute man's pretensions, and the proof it gives of the need of light — that is, of revelation — to give conscience its power is all important. Whatever the cause (I do not doubt the fall, and Satan's power, man's utter alienation from God, is — but whatever the cause is), the fact is so. By the Christian revelation, partially by the Jewish one, man had light to judge the absurdities and corruptions of paganism; without that, in point of fact, he never did. Conscience, one may see, existed, but was religiously incompetent — incompetent to judge of a revelation, that is, of its truth or falsehood. I might question whether Dr. Williams's conscience and reason be much better or sounder in his judgment of the matter. I doubt it very much; but that we may leave. I refer to his attempted justification of heathenism in presence of Christianity, and, while favouring those horrible corruptions, questioning the divine character of both Christianity and its testimony. It seems to me as perverted as the heathenism it defends.

136 H. In a certain aspect, I judge more so, as it comes after the light. But we will turn to another part of the subject — some of the scientific researches by which they call in question scripture accounts. It is easy to speak of chronology, of which Dr. Williams remarks, "Dr. Bunsen says with quaint strength, 'there is no chronological element in revelation.'" I see neither quaintness nor strength in the remark. I do see sophism and ignorance of the scope and nature of scripture; because it is impossible to separate chronology and history, and the enquiry into chronology is here with a view to history. Now the moral history of mankind is a large feature in revelation — one of deep import; and the researches or rather suppositions of Dr. Bunsen, in which Dr. Williams revels, are calling in question the chronology in order to set aside the history. Whether Adam lived one hundred and thirty years (as the Hebrew Bible says) and begat a son, or two hundred and thirty years (as the Septuagint), is in itself of little moment. It shoves on dates one hundred years, but that is all. Quite right to find the truth, if we can; but if it be sought to disturb the history — if (this Dr. Bunsen has too much sense to believe) Adam be not the head of the race, if even Noah be not, and other races escaped the flood, we lose the judgment of the world; the scripture history, in its deepest moral elements, is trenched on; the perishing of a world is only a national fable belonging to a race, drawn from some local phenomenon. And a flippant remark that chronology is not an element of revelation is impertinent or dishonest. But I confess I fear somewhat to enter on scientific questions, having really no pretension to be a learned man. My only encouragement is that experience has so taught me the superficial and flippant character of neology, and particularly of English neologists, that I have been emboldened — using books current on the subjects referred to, and the little knowledge I have — to examine the statements that are made, and see how far they are to be relied on. The result for me has been that there is a mass of charlatanism. "A little knowledge is a dangerous thing." I have only a little; but in their waters I venture to wade.

137 I would first draw your attention to the kind of statements and reasonings: "He could not have vindicated the unity of mankind if he had not asked for a vast extension of time, whether his petition of twenty thousand years be granted or not." Is this serious? "Do we see the historical area of nations and languages extending itself over nearly ten thousand years, and can we imagine less than another ten thousand years during which the possibilities of these things took body and form?" Chronology imagined at this rate ceases to be a dry study, no doubt; but a serious one it can hardly be called.

"Questions of this kind require from most of us a special training for each; but Baron Bunsen revels in them, and his theories are at least suggestive." Will the reader believe that such crudities are brought to make out history, and the revelling of Baron Bunsen in suggestive theories is to settle chronology and overthrow scripture? Why? Because it is scripture. As an ancient document there is nothing to be compared with it. Again: "The Semitic languages, which had as distinct an individuality four thousand years ago as they have now, require a cradle of larger dimensions than Archbishop Usher's chronology. What further effort is not forced upon our imagination if we would guess the measure of the dim background in which the Mongolian and Egyptian languages, older probably than the Hebrew, became fixed, growing early into the type which they retained!" "Efforts forced on the imagination" (hardly forced when a man revels in it) to guess the measure of the dim background of "languages, older probably than the Hebrew!" You have in this, my dear W., a very fair picture of Baron Bunsen and his suggestive theories. In point of fact, the only probable evidence we have is that these languages were contemporaneous; but the evidence is late; as to writing, the most ancient known in the East received it from Semitic language. Burnouf has proved this in his enquiry into the cuneiform inscriptions of Hamardan. But the date of Mongol is dim enough, no doubt.

138 But let us leave this. His excessive carelessness you may judge from other instances I lit on in Stuart Poole, in Smith's Dictionary, the other day. Bunsen ridicules Baumgarten for making fifty-six pairs out of seventy souls. He had never looked at the chapter, where it is evident that sixty-seven of the seventy were men. It would seem that he has taken Shaul the Levite for Saul the king in 1 Chronicles 6: 22, ff. But this is so gross, he may (in copying Lepsius, whom he greatly follows) have not seen that it was only a synchronism. I have not Lepsius here. At any rate it is the greatest carelessness. Bunsen set aside, to start with, the divinely-given history. Chronology was not an element of revelation. At any rate, that was the glory of liberal christian views. And then he revels in suggestive theories. Man has it all to himself. I will examine some; but I thought it well to notice Dr. Williams's own account of Baron Bunsen's procedure.

Dr. Williams asks, How many years are needed to develop modern French out of Latin? — say nine hundred, that is, from six hundred to Francis I. Well, what then? How many, the divergence of the members of the Indo-European family? Probably, very various; some very early, some much later. The dispersion of the Aryan race is beyond history; and they seem to have had already dialects. The only supposed date is within Septuagint chronology. The Vedas do not go more than to about fourteen hundred years before Christ, leaving one thousand years within even Hebrew chronology to the flood. Circumstances influence the growth of dialects immensely. A tribe moves from a mountain to a plain, or to another climate; the names caused by local circumstances disappear — plants, cattle, terms connected with culture and the like, all change. When long remaining in one place, a language changes; but it is easily seen it is in its forms by civilization. When tribes are entirely separate, with little intercourse, they become distinct languages very rapidly, though grammatical forms are analogous, or the style, as in North America. When a language is widely diffused, and there is much communication, it remains one, and is only developed according to a pretty constant rule, generally of abbreviation of forms. But if nine hundred or a thousand years sufficed to change or form a new language, that time can well be allowed to the history of the Sanskritian or Zend — not more than there is room for in scriptural chronology. Take notice, too, that all this reasoning sets out with treating the history of the tower of Babel as a fable. It is not a nicety of interpretation, but a total rejection of the whole theory.

139 But I should think, while confessing that I am no comparative philologist, that Dr. Williams can know little or nothing about the matter. He says (and all the world is always to understand that the new theology brings from its stores well-authenticated results, mentioned as if every tolerably well-read man should be aware of it): "When again we have traced our Gaelic and our Sanskrit to their inferential pre-Hellenic stem," etc. Now I apprehend this sentence betrays total ignorance of the whole subject. Hellenism or Greek, as well as Latin, is a comparatively modern daughter of Sanskrit itself; Zend, as its twin sister, has its mixed or corrupted mediaeval derivation in Pehlvi, and its direct one in modern Persian and the Teutonic languages. Sanskrit is not traced to a pre-Hellenic stem. It is the root or stem of Hellenistic and Latin language, Zend and Sanskrit are very closely allied dialects of what is often now called Aryan — Zend north of the Himalayas, Sanskrit south. The classical Sanskrit of the Vedas is still more closely allied to Zend than the common Sanskrit. Zend is hard in pronunciation, Sanskrit soft. Gaelic or Irish is held by some able philologists to be the closest existing representative of Sanskrit in the West, with the richest vocabulary of words. Others cite the Lithuanian as having the closest resemblance. This is from the use of soft instead of hard sounds in both, which characterizes Sanskrit, as contrasted with Zend. But Irish is pronounced hard and gutturally. Lithuanian German is very soft; but, as is well known, southern German differs from northern in the hardness of its guttural pronunciation. The aspirates and ellipses in Erse arise from the utterance stopping half-way between the preceding and following sound. If you examine bata (battha), mo wata, ar mbata, you will find the change — that w is half-way between o and b, and in between r and b. It is an imperfect, undefined utterance.

To return to our dates. The most careful research into monuments compared with Berosus (whose chronology the monuments constantly confirm, and other chronological elements and dates) gives about two thousand two hundred and thirty-four years before Christ for the foundation of the first Chaldean kingdom. The common biblical chronology gives for the flood two thousand three hundred and forty-eight. It is alleged by German critics following Berosus (I say German, as freed from scripture authority), that there was a Median dynasty of eight kings, and this is conjecturally carried to 2458 B.C., one hundred and ten years before the ordinary Hebrew date of the flood. According to the Septuagint chronology, the flood was 3155 B.C., leaving six hundred and ninety-seven years between the flood and the first kingdom known to Berosus in Chaldea.

140 This Median kingdom I should not be disposed to reject, though its duration and character be conjectural and uncertain. Because the Chaldean or Babylonish, as we know, was the seat and centre of idolatry, invented and established as a system. Previous to and concurrent with this was another and less outwardly gross idolatry — the worship of fire, and so far the sun and stars — Sabaeism contrasted with Ionism. This did not reject star (or at any rate planet) worship, but connected it with making gods of men, of their ancestors — and first of Noah and his sons. Now this Median kingdom would be the prevalence of Sabaeism, the first Chaldean (simply the kings of Babel from Nimrod) setting up systematic idolatry. All tradition points to such a change in these days. Epiphanius — no great authority, it is true, but a witness of tradition in this respect — says it took place in the days of Serug, Abraham's great grandfather. That idolatry had then come in, we learn from Joshua 24. It was the occasion of calling out Abraham to be the stock of a separate people that the knowledge of the true God might not be wholly lost; so that probably it was then quite established and prevalent, yet not very long established. The uniformity of its fundamental elements in India, Egypt, Greece, and Rome, shews a regularly invented system connected with the deluge and Noah, and the prevalent principle in all countries connected with it of the setting up their first ancestors as the gods of their country, gives its fixed principle — this, with their identification with some planet.

Thus we have 2234 B.C. for the first Chaldean monarchy; 2348 B.C. according to the Hebrew chronology, the date of the flood; 3155 B.C. according to the Septuagint, when our review says 2234 for the first Median conquest of Babylon. It is very certainly an error of Bunsen's, or a blunder of Dr. Williams's. It is the date of the first Chaldean kingdom, which overthrew the Median — Berosus calls it Chaldean, at any rate; and the monuments, if not using the word Chaldean (which does not occur till the Assyrian inscriptions in the ninth century before Christ), confirm the fact of a series of kings reigning in the countries whence Abraham came called by Berosus Chaldean, or by scripture Ur of the Chaldees.

141 Now learned men may discuss these dates. We have no objection, but we have data, not suggestive theories. Research into Egyptian chronology and history leads to the conclusion that the suggestive theories of Baron Bunsen fall before the facts. The attempt of Lepsius to set up the long period which Manetho's lists would make out, and on which Baron Bunsen greatly builds, has no foundation to rest upon. The whole is utterly superficial. Not only does Manetho speak of contemporary princes, but the stelae and tablet monuments give unequivocal proofs of the co-existence of kings of different dynasties, sometimes subordinate one to another. I need not enter now into the details with you. But the names are brought together of two and even of several dynasties on the same monument, so that the chronology founded on their being in succession one to another is a delusion from beginning to end. But, leaving all reference to scripture chronology out, the commencement of Egyptian history has been estimated at some two thousand six hundred and fifty years before Christ.

Now no one, I suppose, pretends to give these dates accurately; but the coincidence of the Asiatic and African empires gives a general probability; while Baron Bunsen's is founded on want of research, on speculations from the boastful and legendary lists of Manetho, and the desire to make the time long, and chronology no element of revelation. He has neglected the evidently important evidence furnished by the monuments (some, perhaps, ascertained indeed since his time), of the co-existence of dynasties, and of very many too — perhaps eight at a time. Moreover, his whole theory as to old and middle and new empires falls to the ground wholly, save so far as the fact of the presence of Hyksos kings goes, and with these other dynasties subsisted nearly all the time. His whole Egyptian system is, as Dr. Williams has described it, revelling in suggestive theories. The speculative result of elaborate enquiry into the great Aryan or Iapetic emigration supposes it was three thousand years before Christ, and this is avowedly mere theory. This you will find in Pictet's book.

I have thus taken up the historical part, and, I think, shewn that all is theory. But I would still draw your attention for a moment to the kind of reasoning. Even Dr. Williams, however gluttoning in the helps to incredulity, is obliged to demur, and finds puzzling circumstances in the strained etymologies which are made its foundation; but adds a justification of Bunsen, which reaches far beyond all my conceptions of the possibilities of logic: "That our author would not shrink from noticing this, is shewn," that is, noticing how he strained etymologies to make the two antediluvian genealogies legendary, "by the firmness with which he relegates the long lives of the first patriarchs to the domain of legend." Is not that a proof? It is this. His arbitrary boldness in making a legend of scripture statement shews that he will judge his own arbitrariness in making legends of genealogies by strained etymologies! At any rate, Dr. Williams admires him — revels in the Baron's firmness.

142 W. But it is difficult to consider all this to be serious. I am glad you spoke of the Assyrian and Egyptian history; but the style of Bunsen's and Dr. Williams's reasoning seems to me trifling almost, hardly worth notice.

H. It would not be, if it were not an attack against scripture; but, though it be wearisome, it is well to shew the stuff these neological reasonings are made of. Bear with me yet a little, while I quote a passage or two. "The idea of bringing Abraham into Egypt as early as 2876 is one of our author's most doubtful points, and may seem hardly tenable." (According to monuments, it was before Menes, when the gods or heroes were reigning.) But why is this date? Some proof, perhaps, is given. Here it is: — "He wanted time for the growth of Jacob's family into a people of two millions" — (a question discussed on the shortest supposed period by Fynes Clinton, and others). However, Baron Bunsen wanted time for it, and he felt bound to place Joseph under a native Pharaoh — therefore before the shepherd kings. He also contends that Abraham's horizon is antecedent to the first Median conquest of Babylon, in 2234 B.C. (We have spoken of this point: as far as I can gather, there is no proof or sign of such an event.) So the stay of the Israelites in Egypt is extended to fourteen centuries (it is well he let them go there at all); the 215 years is the time of oppression. Baron Bunsen's history puts me in mind of Vertot's account of a siege — I forget of what town. He had written to have an accurate account of it from one present, but when it came, he said he was very sorry, but he had written his siege. Then Bunsen takes Manetho's wild account of the lepers and Avaris, quoted in Josephus, as confirming the exodus under Menephthah — (the date is very possible: Wilkinson, after the Duke of Northumberland, is disposed to accept it — I think Osborne too); but then says, you must accept the whole history, if you do the confirmation. That is very critical. In this case, no sober person does. And hence it was an invasion by the Jews; and the high hand with which Jehovah led His people, the spoiling of the Egyptians, and the lingering in the peninsula (!), are to be taken as signs, even in the Bible, of a struggle conducted by human means. Can absurdity go farther? What do you think the avenger who slew the first-born was?

143 W. Well, what?

H. "It may have been the Bedouin host, akin nearly to Jethro, and, more remotely, to Israel."

W. But, my dear H., enough of these excessive puerilities. Surely we need not go farther, or waste our time with the foolish and unbridled licence of an imagination which leads to no result. It is refreshing to turn to the gravity and simplicity of scripture accounts. The moral truths so richly encased in its simple tale are enough for a mind rightly tuned to see its divine character. It is well, perhaps, to see the contrast, and how God allows a most amiable, learned, and attractive mind to run into absurdity and senseless suppositions, when it lends itself to speculations which baser minds seek to profit by against all truth.

H. I have done. But it was well that the true character of these speculations should appear. We will turn to other points.

W. But I should like to ask you a question. How comes it that Dr. Williams recognizes the untenableness, as in this last case, of the statements and the straining of etymology for proofs, and yet delights in bringing forward the conclusions, and presses with satisfaction the results?

H. Allow me to reply by asking a question too. Do you believe that on any subject but one he would admit the premises to be false, and delight in the conclusions?

W. Well, I suppose not. No one would. Where the will is not engaged, no man pleads that premises are false, and conclusions excellent.

H. You have answered yourself. See what is said: "It is easier to throw doubt on some of the arguments than to shew that the conclusion . . . is improbable." He is speaking of Bunsen's requiring twenty thousand years.

The truth is, the idea of human excellency and their own superior powers of criticism has led them to reject scripture a priori, because it sets down man as wicked and lost; and then to loosen by speculative suppositions the bands of all proof whatever. Bunsen, building on an excessively uncritical unphilosophical estimate of Egyptian periods — speculations which have neglected all careful research into the facts — has concluded that the emigration into Egypt was ante-Noahic, the flood only partial, and scripture not worth a straw, save as bright and eminent individuals gave an impulse suited to their day. His writings are a kind of skating over the surface of facts. I will give you here a specimen of scriptural interpretation to shew how far solidity of judgment can be looked for in Bunsen's writings: — "In the event of Pentecost, not only the first legislation of mankind, founded on the permanent law of the conscience, became a reality, but the whole distinguishing character of the eighteen centuries, which separate us from that event, was typified and foreshadowed." All well, save that the Holy Ghost is not alluded to, only permanent conscience. I will refer to this farther on.

144 But now: "In what did that miracle consist? One hundred and twenty persons — not only Galileans, as they were naturally supposed to be, but believers from various parts — assembled together on that festive day, expecting the end of the world. Suddenly, during a violent storm of wind, accompanied by lightning, the persons so assembled felt moved apparently to praise God, not in the formularies of their sacred language, but in the profane sounds of their heathenish mother tongues, of which the Greek was foremost, as the Spirit gave them utterance." "What more portentous or deeply significant sign could there be that religion was henceforth to cease to be an external or sacerdotal and ceremonial worship? At this moment, and with that sound, the true temple of God was opened. This was in reality the temple which Christ had said He could raise on the ruins of the old." "The speakers themselves were overpowered by the sudden wind and scintillating flashes of the electric fluid (ver. 3)" — the verse is, "And there appeared unto them cloven tongues, like as of fire, and it sat upon each of them" Acts 2: 3 — "while those who gathered round and listened to them were no less awe-struck by hearing the praises of God and wonderful things uttered in their own tongues, which they little expected to hear from Galileans. (Ver. 4-8.) The speakers at first made convulsive sounds, but soon recovered their equilibrium [I feel it hard to preserve one's own]; not like those who, in the time of St. Paul, after having lost, in the midst of the divine service, the power of articulation (that is, speaking with a tongue, note), were unable to express their emotion otherwise than by sounds of the brute creation, extorted by their overpowering sensations. Nor, according to St. Luke's account, were the pious hearers overcome to such an extent as some later learned interpreters appear to have been. They did not regard the screams which had been uttered at the first moment, but listened to what they heard spoken in their own tongue. If this be a rationalistic explanation, it is that of St. Peter. [!]. Where does that apostle state that he and his friends received the power of speaking languages not their own, or that the utterance of convulsive sounds was a proof of Jesus of Nazareth being the Christ, and of the Spirit of God having come down upon the believers in the Galilean?"

145 W. It is inconceivable; one's only comfort is that its folly proves honesty.

H. I agree with you. I believe there was a love of good, and that from God, in this amiable man. Are you aware that he declared, on his death-bed, that Christ was all, and that only was life all else nothing?

W. It is a sweet and joyful thought to know it. How wonderful, and wonderfully above man, is the grace of God!

H. It is, and sweet to turn to, and dwell on.

W. But how is it possible that one can be blinded to such a point?

H. It is hard to tell. That man should say, "I do not believe the account," is intelligible enough. But to take it and make this out of it is hard to understand. I account for it by the divine instinct which cannot bear to give up the words of eternal life, and the vanity which would go on with the supposed progress of science. All is the contradiction of the scripture statement. There was no wind, but a sound like one. The scintillating electricity of the storm resting on their heads would be rather awkward. There are no convulsive sounds, no screams; they are all Galileans, contrasted with devout men from every nation under heaven. Peter had no need to say they spake with tongues, because it was heard by all, and is stated by the historian. He does, both here and in his defence as to going to Cornelius, refer to it as the proof of Christ's glory and the seal of faith; and tells them if they repented and were baptized they would receive it too. Each particular is exactly contrary to the history, and the wind and electricity contemptible. Think of Paul saying they were not to speak with a tongue except there was an interpreter, when they were the sounds of the brute creation — he spake with tongues more than they all — I suppose of different brutes! But the explanation of Baron Bunsen is important here as regards the system of the school. "With true prophetic spirit St. Peter applied to this event what had been foretold of the Spirit of God, which was to come in the last days, and to be recognized by the outpouring of intelligence and wisdom over the unlearned men and women even of the lowest classes." Now this is not true. He speaks of visions and dreams, not of wisdom and intelligence. But further: "No, he tells them a story as simple as it is true; the great event of his days, and of all days — the glorification of God through Christ, not as an external fact, but as a divine principle of life in mankind."

146 Now how striking it is that an upright mind, for such I doubt not was Baron Bunsen's, under the influence of this deceit of Satan, can misrepresent a statement, or rather, just as the Baron does in Egyptian history, give what he thinks ought to be here instead of what is! There is not one word of the glorification of God through Christ, but of God's glorifying Christ, whereupon the Holy Ghost was shed forth. He speaks of the power of God raising up from the dead and setting Christ, as man, at His right hand, and that He, having received the Holy Ghost from the Father, had sent, not a storm and electricity to rest on the disciples' heads, but the Holy Ghost. Nor does he even say one word of a principle of divine life in mankind. Christianity is that; but here there is not a word of it. The Baron adds, "On that day, accordingly, not only the christian Church was born, but also the christian state." I only add this to shew how all is the theory of his mind without reference to fact. Where is "the christian state" on Pentecost?

I need not say I do not quote this to refute it — it would not deserve it; but to shew the character and spirit and materials of which the new school is made up God's exalting Christ — overstepping the narrow bounds of Judaism to visit all nations in grace — the blessed truth of another Comforter whom Christ had promised, is not seen for a moment. An invented storm, an electricity which would have left very few Galileans there — what folly replaces it?

W. Refuting it would indeed be absurd; but it is a singular phenomenon, such an entire aberration of mind.

H. It is a state, and the proof of the folly, of man's mind, when, as such, it pretends to judge of God's acts. But I have a quotation from another part of Baron Bunsen's works which distinctly shews his notion — the school's notion — of revelation, and with this view I quote it: — "Such a direct communication of the divine mind as is called revelation has necessarily two factors, which are co-operating in producing it. The one is the infinite factor, or the direct manifestation of eternal truth to the mind, by the power which that mind has of perceiving it; for human perception is the correlative of divine manifestation." "This infinite factor is, of course, not historical; it is inherent in every individual soul, but with an immense difference of degree."

147 "The second factor of revelation is the finite, or external. This mode of divine manifestation is, in the first place, a universal one — the universe is nature. In a more special sense, it is an historical manifestation of divine truth through the life and teaching of higher minds among men. These men of God are eminent individuals, who communicate something of eternal truth to their brethren." "The difference between Jesus and the other men of God is analogous to that between the manifestation of a part and the totality and substance of the divine mind." I cannot follow the wild idealism of Bunsen in all its details. I may give as an example of it his interpretation of "Marvel not at this: for the hour is coming in the which all that are in the graves shall hear his voice, and shall come forth, they that have done good to the resurrection of life, and they that have done evil to the resurrection of damnation." He translates, he says, from Semitic into Iapetic language; so he speaks thus: "The history of mankind will prove to be the judgment of God. Nations will perish by this judgment, and new nations will arise, and the truth and justice of God will become manifest as well by the destruction of empires as by the awakening of new national life." This is not exceptional. The Son having life in Himself, as the Father in Himself, and authority to execute judgment, means — "This new period of mankind is now beginning; individuals of all nations will be awakened by divine consciousness [nota bene], and in process of time this divine principle in man will become the principle of all social relations, governments, and states."

Now how entirely opposite this is to Christianity I need not say, which speaks of man as lost, of redemption, of a new divine life given. But I only introduce it now as shewing the excess of spiritual idealism which makes all Baron Bunsen's views and statements a will-o'-the-wisp. The only thing I know like it, and from which much (at any rate in the form and habit of mind) seems to be drawn, is Philo. Of course to Bunsen it came philosophically through Hegel — perhaps Schelling; but Philo is so extraordinarily like, because he connected Judaism and a like system, as Bunsen does Christianity with Hegelianism. I shall recur to this. My present point is the revelation of Christ. I believe Christian instinct gave Bunsen a sense of what Christ was, which pierces through — so great is God's grace. But I will give his ideas of Christ to complete the picture, and then turn to his ideas of revelation. I say "idea," for Bunsen is an honest man, and gives it; but we must never trust words in these men's mouths, because they all use common Christian terms, but they mean with them totally different things.

148 W. That I see plainly enough. I am getting gradually hold of the system. We must have the key to the cipher. When once, however, one sees this, it produces a just distrust of all they say. They cover themselves with the mantle of Christianity to pierce it under the fifth rib. They are very Joabs in their character. They speak peaceably to Abner in the king's gate, but one has to learn to be aware that they have a hidden sword. However the fraud is tolerably apparent. God ever takes care of His people.

H. In a very angry correspondence in France, which I have seen published as a pamphlet since our first conversation, it is seriously proposed that they should openly say what they mean and think on the great truths of Christianity, that the mass of professing Christians may know what they really hold. They speak of Christ, His gracious life and the like, and unsuspecting persons assume commonly-received truths as at the basis; but the select few are initiated, and propagate doubts and unbelief; and the work is actively carried on. Such at least is the distinct statement in these papers; and one sees the shrinking from open dealing, or meeting it clearly, in the replies. At any rate, the first part is true, for that I have met with — the speaking of Christ as if all were right, while not one word of commonly held Christian truth was believed, yet the same terms largely employed. This is the case with Bunsen: only he honestly states what he thinks. Thus he speaks of judgment. But what does this mean? "The conscience of man, now represented by Jesus of Nazareth, will be the judge of man — first, as to individual conduct, and in process of time, through faith in His Spirit, as to national affairs." What becomes of the judgment of quick and dead now? Christianity is gone for a reverie.

Again, he speaks of Christ's unity with the Father. He is identified and one with God. That sounds well enough. But what is it? "The willing self-sacrifice of Jesus is the cause of His unity with the Father." It is a mere moral idea. The truth is gone, and see how it works. He adds (Christ speaks), "What I say of myself, that I am one with God, is true of all men."

149 Having shewn the genius and character of all this teaching, I will now, before applying it to revelation, quote to you his interpretation of the apostle's (John's) teaching concerning Christ; —

"Before the visible universe existed, there was in God the conscious thought of Himself, as active reason. This thought was identical with God, the substance of the universe; it was God thinking Himself, making Himself objective to Himself." (As the Neoplatonists say, the intelligent no longer as existence, but in activity becoming the intelligible. For this is mere Neoplatonism, and, indeed, so does Bunsen explain it.) "This, then, is the divine existence of the word, as active reason;" according to Philo and the Alexandrian fathers, ἐνδιάθετος. "The creation of the universe is the manifestation in space and time of the same thought of God of Himself. There was nothing created which has not the principle of existence in that thought of God of Himself." These are the ideas of Plato, the νοητὸν of Philo. "The universe, thus created, continues to have the principle of life in this divine self-consciousness; this principle of substantial existence is also the intellectual principle in man."

"God's eternal thought of Himself became personal in finite existence in a man conscious of his divine nature. In this man that divine word lived amongst us, and we behold in Jesus divine glory and truth. He alone, therefore, could declare to mankind the nature of God, for that primitive consciousness lived in Him constantly and perfectly."

I rejoice to think that true divinely-given faith in Christ pierces through Bunsen's idealism; I rejoice heartily in it. It is swamped in idealism, but there is not the cold calculating infidelity of the Essays and Reviews. Dr. Williams's language is, "The son of David by birth is the Son of God by the spirit of holiness" (a false citation). "What is flesh is born of flesh, what is spirit is born of spirit." This he calls the incarnation becoming purely spiritual. Having gladly owned this as to Baron Bunsen, which is my real feeling, we may pursue the research into the system. Save the last phrase I have quoted, it is merely a reproduction of Philonian (that is Alexandrian) Platonism, adapted by idealism to scripture statements.

The Logos was first ἐνδιάθετος — immanent reason in God; then προφοριχὸς and thus the universe (not in matter, but existing in the thought of God in idea) was the λόγος. Then the λόγος became the band and support of it when it took a form. So here with Baron Bunsen, in the wild notion that the universe, thus created, continues to have the principle of life in this divine self-consciousness. It is a living being. All this is pure Philonism. So is the notion that the "eminent" man — "the wise man," says Philo — has this partially in him, partakes intrinsically of the divine logo" in his reason. As in Bunsen, repeated in a passage I have not quoted: "In the progress of history, this principle (life in divine self-consciousness) manifested itself as intelligence" — the σοφὸς and ἐπιστήμη of Philo. The only point where Bunsen leaves Philo, as far as I can see, is when he speaks of Christ as having the fulness of this in a finite person; but even here, with a very slight modification, Philo applies this to Moses. He could not see God Himself, but entered into the darkness and saw the original pattern of heavenly things. He is called God. "But what, did he not enjoy also a greater fellowship with the Father and Maker of all things; having been counted worthy of the same title? for he was called the God and King of the whole nation, and is said to have entered into the thick darkness where God was, that is, into the formless and invisible and incorporeal pattern essence of beings, mentally contemplating what cannot be seen by mortal nature." (De Vitâ Mosis, Mangey, 108 for 106.)

150 The prophets only enquire, and get answers. So the law of Moses is the perfect expression of the divine mind, and serves as such, and will be for all ages. It corresponds to the harmony of the universe, and is in unison with the reason (λόγω) of the eternal nature. (De Vitâ Mosis, Mangey, 2: 142.)

Bunsen's notion of the prophetic spirit in all eminent men is also Philo's, πάντι ἀνθρώπω ἀστείω ὁ ἱερὸς λόγος προφητείαν μαρτυρεῖ. But the word of prophecy has Moses for its name (Man. 1: 652.) Moses has power over all the elements of nature; each one of them obeys him. (Man. 2: 105. So Mangey, 2: 107 — for 105.) He took the divine excellencies as preferable to worldly goods, so that God rewarded him with great and perfect riches. The reading is then said to be faulty in the text, ἰσοτης (equality). It may be so, but I am not quite clear. Mangey reads, those (riches) of all the universe. But it then goes on: For having been thought worthy of being declared partaker of his own lot, [God] granted him the whole world. The elements own him Lord. "Nor is," he adds, "that wonderful; for if, as the proverb says, all things belonging to friends are common — and the prophet is called the friend of God — as a consequence as to usufruct, he will be partaker and companion of all His possession." What is this but Bunsen's Jesus of Nazareth's self-sacrifice — the cause of His unity with the Father?

151 It is, I think, a mistake, unless I have overlooked some passage, to say that Moses is called ὁ ἱερὸς λόγος, the sacred word, as has been alleged by Gfrorer. This applies to the scripture, but he is set in the same place really in the de migratione Abrahami. He is the διανοία, the mind and thought of God, and Aaron His prophet to declare it. This under another name is the same thing, but it is not immanent as the λόγος, but more a gift. But then, on the other hand, the πνεῦμα ἄγιον abode always with him. In most it visits and goes — in an afflatus, but in Moses abides, τούτω μὲν οὖν το Θεῖον ἀεὶ παρίσταται. (De Gigantibus, Man. 1: 269, 270.)

I will not go further. He largely insists in more than one place on his entering into the thick darkness — so as prophet he knew all that as king, lawgiver, and priest he could not; and all completed his knowledge, he is (M. 2: 145) inspired, has breathed into him heavenly love; what he says is an oracle λόγιον ἐχ πτοσώπον δἰ ἑρμηνείαν unmixed, not as others from enquiry and answer. (Man. 2: 163.)

A Third Dialogue on the Essays and Reviews, section b.

Modern Philosophy and Modern Theology, both compared with Scripture.

J. N. Darby.

<09003E> file section b.

151 W. It would be curious if Bunsen's wanderings were only a reproduction of Philo. But where are you leading my thoughts with all this?

H. Not an unnatural question. First we are examining a professed review of Bunsen, and enquiry into his real views is the best answer; and it shews the true character of the teaching sought to be introduced. Philo indeed was, while for ever allegorizing, so far soberer, that he recognizes the literal history, though, like Augustine, saying, when it is dishonouring to God's thoughts, it must be taken mystically. Still he respects the written word far more than Bunsen and our Essayists.

But I had also a more precise object. I have only, could only, in our brief intercourse bring forward points of contact, but the more Philo's views are before the mind as a whole, the more the similarity — the identity, I may say, is apparent. Another character of the λόγος which Philo gives will lead me to the point. The λόγος, or divine reason, is faith in us; that is, the λόγος, or divine immanent reason, becoming in its acting in man intelligence, the ὀρθὸς λόγος, or right reason in the abstract, which is divine, is, as far as it acts, right reason in man (i.e., in the wise); and the archetypal idea is in the mind of man faith; he has seized it as having, as the wise man, this right reason in himself, it being in himself so far as he is wise. That which is seized is the idea in God, but it is the idea in the man's mind, the λόγος being his intelligence. It is a copy of the original copy, or production of the inherent mind of God. As inherent, it is unknown. As become intelligible in the λόγος, an idea, it is νοητός, capable of being a subject of thought; and the human mind, which is the action of the λόγος in us, thinks it, has the idea, believes it as truth. Thus it is faith. This seems subtle, but it is not difficult to understand. The thinking power is not thinking. When I think, I have a thought. Thus what was simply intelligent, capable of thinking, is intelligible, becomes in the produced thought a possible subject of another's apprehension. If the same intelligence is in another as his mind, it is the spring of the same thought in him. The λόγος as immanent reason in God is unknown, but as a whole of thoughts, when thinking has taken place, when the divine mind has had or produced thoughts, is not all known, but νοητός knowable; and then archetypal ideas become by the λόγος being also our reason, our ideas. Hence the λόγος is the archetypal idea, and faith, according to Philo. Forgive me this dose of Alexandrian philosophy. You will see its application to revelation in a moment.

152 W. I begin to catch it already. But it denies positive revelation. It is a kind of deifying the intelligence of man, making him, in some strange way, the proper source of the same thoughts, called faith, and so, eventually, a part of God.

H. Yes. This comes from the connection of conscience and reason on moral subjects, the judging process of the mind and perception of good and evil. Thus, where the will, or that in which we take pleasure, coincides with the conscience — the judgment of good and evil, there is moral perfection. God is realized; or, as Bunsen says, man is God.

W. But then, if I understand this, it is a direct denial of all revelation. It is a partial possession of the divine nature, which may be morally complete, in virtue of which man has in himself the thoughts of God, and that naturally, which equally denies what is revealed — the sinful alienation of man from God. Scripture says, "All the imagination of the thoughts of his heart were only evil, and that continually;" Gen. 6: 5, and the deep practical experience of one who understood the spirituality of God's law could say, "I know that in me — that is, in my flesh — dwelleth no good thing;" Rom. 7: 18, and that, even when to will was present with him, how to perform that which was good he found not.

153 H. Precisely. It is a denial of revelation, and a denial of the truth as to man; and, in revelation, a dropping — I will not say denial — of every divine object.

W. But I have a difficulty here, because Philo surely recognized a divine revelation.

H. Your remark is quite in place; but it leads to the confirmation and clearing up of the real truth on this question — "What is revelation?" From his education and habits as a Jew he distinctly recognized the inspiration of the Old Testament — particularly of Moses' writings, but of all; and inspiration in the fullest sense, the operation of the Holy or prophetic Spirit; so that man was wholly shut out. He was far more a believer in his theory on this subject — very far — than Bunsen or the rationalists, even the most moderate of them. But two things are to be observed: first, he philosophized independently of the scriptures, though he sought to bring them in as confirmatory, and allegorized them even where he owned them to be historical. Abraham meant one idea, Israel another, Jacob another. He often admitted only ideas — no literal history at all. He was the most outrageous spiritualizer, but reducing all to man as he is looked at as virtuous. Hence evident inconsistencies. But, what is more material, there was no divine object in revelation for him. God remained necessarily unknown in Himself. The revelation he had was of ideas. The λόγος — the universal idea of all — the universe; the bringing this idea into finite man's mind, a little world of answering ideas, formed a microcosm as the philosophers called it. Man was, when virtuous, when partaker of θειῶν ἀρετῶν (divine virtues), an ἀστεῖος ἀνὴρ (Bunsen's "eminent" men), a possessor, as we have seen, of the ὀρθὸς λόγος, which, in its infinitude, was a kind of middle being between God and creatures (the evident origin of Arianism, and the early philosophical Christianity of Alexandria). The law for him was the expression of this perfect or right reason, and was to be perpetual and universal. But there were thus only great principles and ideas to be made good — there was no divine object at all. God was inaccessible. The λόγος comes out as a universal archetypal idea, realized finitely in creation, but not as a personal object of faith, though sometimes treated almost as a person, because acting in power; and this λόγος was man's intelligence. Messiah is only referred to as a conqueror to come, subduing the Gentiles, and making good Jewish hopes; beasts to be tamed — men too; sickness to depart; the Jews to be a kind of world priests. There is no proper revealed divine object of faith. The soul is an ἀπόσπασμα, a shred, an ἀπαύγασμα, a shining forth, a ray, an ἐχμαγεῖον ἐμφερὲς corresponding impress of God. It existed before, came into a body, and so was lowered and dualized (and this circumscription of our spirits in the limits of flesh and time, practical selfishness, Bunsen reckons the fall); and when it dies, goes back to heaven, restored to unity. There is a reproduction of the word in the soul, but no revealed object before it. This part of man is reason and conscience.

154 Now you will find that this makes the ground taken by the new school most distinct. They claim the title of reason and conscience to judge of all, that is, of the finite λόγος, so to speak, in man — the moral perceptive power in man to judge of everything. By what? By itself. Man, as he is, is the measure of right and wrong and good and evil. Now, if the Word has been made flesh — God revealed in man, this cannot be. He is the true and perfect measure, and His words, expressing what He is, will judge men — not now, unless inwardly, but when the time of gracious revelation is over, the same will judge him in the last day. Now this is Christianity in its great elementary truths. It declares man has failed and is evil, though he had a conscience. God had taken care that when he left God and sinned, and sought independence (i.e., sin as to will, as corruption is sin as to lust), he should carry a conscience, a knowledge of good and evil with him. He has sinned without a law, and wallowed in corruption; he has sinned under law, which forbade the corruption and denied the independence, claiming obedience, and therein righteousness. Nay, he has sinned in rejecting goodness itself when it came into the world after all this. Now, wrath is revealed from heaven against both ungodliness and unrighteousness of men who hold the truth in unrighteousness. But withal God's righteousness is revealed, not on a principle of works — man was judged and condemned on that principle — but as God's righteousness by faith, and so to every one, without law or under law, who believed. But how? In a divine object presented — God Himself manifested in grace, as man dying to put away sin, that blessing might be in righteousness, and no allowance of evil, and a new divine life communicated. In a word, God is revealed in Christ to be the condemnation of flesh and man, but to be a new eternal life come down from heaven, making men thus partakers of the divine nature; and, while putting away sin, and glorifying God in this respect, giving a perfect object of this life — the Father revealed in the Son. A divine object is before us — the Word made flesh, "we beheld his glory, the glory as of an only-begotten from the Father." He "dwelt among us, full of grace and truth."

155 I have here (very imperfectly, but sufficiently at this moment) sketched the revelation — a revealed object. My purpose here, of course, is not to unfold doctrine, but give the character of the revelation. Now the new school comes in and says, "But I must judge this by what is in man." Nay, I say, it judges what is in man — in grace and for his good; but it is the truth. Christ is the truth and judges man. It is a revelation after man has had full scope, with conscience, reason, and a perfect rule for it, the law; and all in vain. It is a revelation coming because that was insufficient, because man was incompetent, and proves it; and brings in salvation in a new revealed object, which is not what was in man, but in God — a second man, but the Lord from heaven.

Let us now see how Bunsen's statement as to revelation embodies the evil principle I have referred to. He says, "Such a direct communication of the divine mind as is called revelation has necessarily two factors which are co-operating in producing it. The one is the infinite factor, or the direct manifestation of eternal truth to the mind by the power which that mind has of perceiving it; for human perception is the correlative of divine manifestation." Now, absurd as this is, it is plain enough. It is Philo's ὀρθὸς λόγος, right reason, and faith, or the reason and conscience of the new infidel school. A manifestation to, by the power of perceiving, is absurd — absurd in every case. It supposes an object, but an object by a power of perceiving. Now God can will an object, but needs then no revelation, of course. If man perceives, he must have something to perceive; it is not manifested by his power to perceive; or he creates, or has the divine nature, with its thoughts, as a given mind. This is just Philo, and is false, metaphysically and morally, because he is not infinite, and he is evil. Scripture makes the contrast, and refers the knowledge of the divine mind to the believer only and the Holy Ghost who shews things to us. "What man knoweth the things of a man save the spirit of man which is in him? so no man knoweth the things of God but the Spirit of God. Now we have received, not the spirit of the world, but the Spirit which is of God, that we might know the things which are freely given to us of God." A man knows the things of a man by the spirit of man; the things of God (these are new, freely given things, objects not inherent in the mind), the Spirit of God only. He is given to them that believe, takes the things of Christ and shews them unto us. I am not arguing now whether scripture be true; but shewing that the Christian system is directly in every part in antagonism with the system we are examining.

156 W. Most clearly, and, I may say, rationally and morally so; but perfectly opposed in every particular.

H. What I think striking is, that it goes over the same ground, the mind, its thoughts, conscience, relationship of God to man, our being His offspring; but in every point, instead of building up the competency of man in his old position, treats him as incompetent and fallen, and brings in a new thing, the Second man, the revelation of God, and of the Father, and of the Son. It shews liberty from rites and legal ceremonies, the bondage of the law, the higher prophetic light, even before Christ; but instead of reducing it into the limits of the Adam nature to exalt man (that is, self), it uses it to shew him condemned in his Adam condition, incapable of thus knowing God, and gives new life, new objects, a new state, and a perfect revelation of all that was needed to introduce it, and to be that on and in which it lived.

W. But Baron Bunsen gives a second factor.

H. He does, but we do not gain much there. It "is the finite, or external." This mode of divine manifestation is, in the first place, a universal one; the universe, or nature. In a more special sense, it is an historical manifestation of divine truth through the life and teaching of higher minds among men. These men of God are eminent individuals, who communicate something of eternal truth to their brethren, as far as they themselves are true. They have in them the conviction, that what they say and teach of things divine is an objective truth, "will last" therefore; but mark, only a truth. "The difference between Jesus and the other men of God is analogous to that between the manifestation of a part, and of the totality and substance of the divine mind." Thus Christ is a perfect revealer at best, not a personal object of faith to whom we are subject as the Son. That is, my mind perceives truth partially. His completely, and so teaches. Thus it is expressed, "God's eternal thought of Himself became personal in finite existence in a man, conscious of His divine nature." Remark, He becomes personal, and is then finite. He is Son, and God is Father only in a finite way. Otherwise, "He is God's thought of Himself in space and time." "It has the principle of life in this divine self-consciousness." "That primitive consciousness lived in Him constantly and perfectly" — in Jesus. The former part is pure Philonism; the latter, the incarnation of God's eternal thought of Himself in a man, who thus lived in the consciousness of His divine nature is of course not Philo's.

157 But we know now what revelation means, and why the reviewer speaks of the revelation of Christ, and of not confining it to Him.

I proceed with Bunsen. "God reveals, that is to say, manifests Himself directly to mankind by the mind. This manifestation addresses itself to man's rational conscience, or to the consciousness of truth and goodness. This direct manifestation is that of the eternal word or reason, and is the key to the indirect manifestation of God to man through the creation and through history." Hence, "there must be faith in the divine element in the soul." "The contemplation of God in the history of mankind is the most natural and most universal means of strengthening the innate faith of the soul in its own destiny."

"The scriptures of the Old and New Testament exhibit such a record of humanity;" "bearing eminently the character of humanity, they are eminently prophetic."

"Christ is the centre of the universal development, typically exhibited in the Jewish records."

He adds, "Moses had coined out of the law of conscience, which Abraham had made the distinctive law of his family, the ritualized law of that nation which he formed out of Abraham's descendants." In another place, he says, "the wickedness and stubbornness of the people obliged him (Moses) to surround this spiritual law (contrary to his original intentions) with ritual and ceremonial regulations."

"Jesus proclaimed it the law of mankind by attaching it directly, without any national medium, to the consciousness of God Himself dwelling in man and in mankind. He divinized man because He realized God." "He based upon faith in her (the soul's) origin and destiny . . . the whole social life of mankind." Hence he holds that, by revolutionary destruction of hierarchy and empires, there will be by the prevalence of conscience a kind of moral millennium.

Now here God dwelling in man, the direct revelation to man's rational conscience, is the infinite factor, the judge of all. The finite (and even Christ comes in here, though personally Bunsen ascribes to Him a perfect consciousness of the whole of God's thought of Himself) is a secondary and external one. Mankind's history strengthens the internal, but no more. Jewish records give man's expression of this. Christ is the centre of this finite external one. Eminent men have given it out, as far as they thought they had the perception of truth. Christ is not a part but the whole reason of God in a man, to whom God gave eternal life, for so He says.

158 But revelation is, as a direct thing, merely and only the perception of truth by man's mind as man, through the eternal reason of God dwelling in him as man. And he must have faith in this divine element in himself. Eminent men may give out their consciousness of it, and, if true, give it out with a conviction that it is lasting truth. But this is all secondary and indirect. Direct revelation is only the inward perceptions of man's natural mind. And the Bible is prophetic in general, not because of its divinity, but because of its humanity, and that it is the expression of what passes in the human mind. The eternal reason of God dwells in man, and man by it perceives, and that is revelation in all. What makes some to be eminent, we are left to conjecture. Philo was dreadfully embarrassed here too. However, is this a denial of a revelation or not? Is it a denial of Christian doctrine or not? That is the positive announcement of the word of God claiming absolute authority over the conscience, partial and preliminary by the prophets, fully and openly by Christ and His apostles. Men were to receive it as the word of God which was effectual in those that believed. It was for the obedience of faith among all nations, man being darkness, alienated from the life of God through the ignorance that was in him.

W. It is most clearly a positive denial of revelation altogether. For the secondary or finite one is only reproducing the first, and is good only as far as the conviction of the speaker goes (i.e., not God's word). It is a positive denial, too, of the whole doctrine of Christianity, as to the fall of man, and a redemption, and a new life.

H. You can now, too, clearly see why in this system rational conscience is to judge of all else, be it what it may; and this is the essence of their system. Man is to have faith in the divine element in his own soul. Hence "the evidences of our canonical books and of the patristic authors nearest to them are sufficient to prove illustration in outward act of principles perpetually true (is that revelation?), but not adequate to guarantee narratives inherently incredible or precepts evidently wrong;" i.e., we are finally judges of right and wrong. Now, the Gospels are, in another sense, an "illustration in outward act of principles perpetually true." For God Himself is love and man hatred against Him. But it is a mere record, according to Dr. Williams, of the truth and falsehood, the right and wrong, of which we are judges as of any other book. It is not a bit more the word of God or a revelation from God than any other book. It may be better, if those of whom it relates correctly the facts and sayings were better. But it is no revelation. We are judges of its contents, and select as we please. That is, God has given no revelation at all; for, if He has given a positive revelation of His mind, it is quite clear it must both guide and judge us, not we it. The whole system is infidelity without the honesty to own it, and nothing else.

159 And what, consequently, is man according to Baron Bunsen? "The finite realization of the Spirit of God as good in individual consciousness developed in time." We see that all this is historically false, and that man has received everything that is vile, and crucified Him who by their own confession was goodness and truth. No man received His testimony; those who did receive Him were born, not of man, nor of the will of the flesh, but of God. It was a work, a new work, wrought in them. They, and they only, set to their seals that God was true. St. Paul further declares, that what he had was communicated to him by the Holy Ghost, that He imparted it in words taught of the Holy Ghost, and that it could only be received by the Holy Ghost in contrast with the natural man.

I conclude that the system is historically false, theoretically false: i.e., its pretension that it is rationally Christian is false. It is diametrically opposite to the theory of Christianity and all the principles of scripture; and in doctrine not merely infidel but anti-Christian. Take away Christianity, and what have you? Let history tell.

I must add, that I think it dishonest to use Christian language for the purpose of denying all that the words mean. To say that the perceptions of a man's mind are a revelation from God, is deceiving by an abuse of words. But it is well to get at the fact that the question is: Is there a revelation or not — a revelation addressed to man, claiming authority over man because it is the word of God? If they say there is not, we know what we are about, which they are doing their best to conceal. In my judgment their views are from Satan himself — the direct work of the enemy — devilish in their nature. I do not use the word as vulgar and abusive, but in its strict and proper sense.

W. Well, I suppose we must admit them to be such if they are not of God; for they are not simply human mistakes and reasonings (though that may be the case as to individuals), but a systematic antagonism to a divine revelation of the truth, and of the truth revealed.

160 H. We have one or two points which we should do well to consider. The value of moral and miraculous evidences. It is a subject treated in these Essays, and has its importance.

W. It has considerable importance. Infidelity is evidently natural to the mind of man, i.e., when God is revealed, and the truth. And this question of evidences meets with this propensity in the heart as much as the truth itself.

H. First of all you must remark, that evidences suppose either reluctance to receive or difficulties inherent in man as to the reception of truth. If man's mind met the truth as such at once, there would be no need of any evidences, no need of our new school investigating so much; but men do reason to prove the truth (i.e., it is not intuitively known or necessarily received). The new school declare the human mind productive of truth as being an intelligence which is the divine word in finite action in man. Christianity declares the truth to be revealed in and by Christ, and those sent by Him; and, as to ordinary men, He has declared, "Because I tell you the truth, ye believe me not." John 8: 45. And again, "He was in the world, and the world knew him not. He came to his own, and his own received him not." John 1: 11, "The light shineth in darkness, and the darkness comprehended it not." John 1: 5. That truth was found by man is false; it was not. He arrived at "What is truth?" Christ came to bear witness to it.

Now, assuming that there is such a thing as truth (and there must be, or there is nothing; for if there is something, a true statement or knowledge of what it is, is the truth), either man is omniscient, or he wants the truth to be made known to him. If he does, he needs evidences, unless he be so absolutely proper for its reception, that to state it is sufficient for its reception (i.e., unless the truth be self-evident). If he be not so receptive of truth (and we are sure he is not), he needs evidences of it, because he has reluctance or difficulties.

But I go farther: truth cannot really be self-evident to a creature, because, let men be as proud as they will, in a creature the moral condition depends on the object he is occupied with. Is it gold? he is covetous. Power? he is ambitious; and so on. Hence the moral condition is the fruit of the object. There may be lusts and tendencies dominant; but actual character is determined by an object. Now, to know goodness as a creature without a revelation of it, I must be perfectly good. But I am not — far from it. When therefore it comes, it finds me not perfectly good (i.e., so far averse to what is good). I do not know whether any one pretends to being perfect goodness; if not, he is something as a morally active being; he is selfish. Is it not true?

161 W. Alas! yes.

H. That is, a revelation of perfect goodness meets selfishness which is incapable of receiving it. Besides, in fact, there is corruption, prejudice, superstition, into which selfishness has formed itself. And God, who is light as well as love, makes havoc with this. "No man, having drunk old wine, straightway desireth new, for he saith, The old is better." If your infidel says, Man is innocent, and education has given him prejudices, and connected his will with his lusts, so as to make passions; I say, Be it so. I do not believe it; but be it so. But man is educated; he is a Jew, a Romanist, a Heathen, a Protestant. Pure truth comes; it meets his prejudices, and evidences are needed. If these are sent, it is the activity of grace. They are not simply to prove the truth (to a mind who sees the truth as truth, it needs no proof), but to prove it to man, because man is prejudiced, and deeply prejudiced. But man has a conscience (and the truth does reach it even when will is opposed), has a heart, yea selfishness, and is miserable; and can feel goodness, though opposed to the claim of God over his will as light and love (for if God reveals Himself He must claim subjection, and to bless must make man give up his will, that own will, which is alienation from God, and mixes in his lusts). Attraction is felt, the claim felt in conscience, the claim of goodness, the beauty of what is holy felt in conscience, what God is, is felt; but there are deep obscurities through prejudice and lusts, and reluctance through feeling how much it will cost. Ignorance of what God ought to be, prejudice against what He is. "Can any good thing come out of Nazareth?" John 1: 46

What is to be done? Man ought to receive grace and truth, light and love. Yet he would not want it revealed if he were not morally in contradiction of will with it. God gives adequate evidences to overtop the prejudices, to force on the mind that what is presented to it must be a revelation of God. Men have enquired as to receiving truth because of miracles, or miracles because of truth. Both and neither. Men ought to receive truth because it is truth — abstractedly, ought: for unfallen he would not need a revelation; fallen puts the case that he is indisposed: but, abstractedly, a nature suited to truth would receive the truth. "If I tell you the truth, why do ye not believe me?" John 8: 46

162 But this is not so. Man does not like to come to the light, because his deeds are evil. God therefore in grace gives evidences, miracles if you please, when the revelation of the truth is there; not when, to speak historically, it has been admitted as truth. But this is great grace. "Believe me," says Christ, "that I am in the Father, and the Father in me, or else believe me for the very works' sake." John 14: 11. There is the place of truth and of miracles, "which at first began to be spoken by the Lord, and was confirmed unto us by them that heard it, God bearing witness by signs and miracles," etc. Heb. 2: 3, so "confirming the word by signs following." Mark 16: 20. Where faith was founded only on miracles, the Lord did not own it; there was nothing moral in it. But He did give miracles to help men to believe the holy truth of love.

But men say, all is to be reduced to general laws: and if anything cannot, it cannot be believed. God would not disturb general laws. The most general law is that God is love, and miracles, used as I have said, shew this more than a physical law. I affirm that, compared with miracles, general laws are nothing as a revelation of God. There are general laws, I admit: an increasing number of phenomena may be reduced to them — perhaps, had we all the secrets of nature, all of them. I will suppose that, however irregular phenomena may appear, all can be reduced to general laws; but I do not know hereby a personal God; I do not now Him morally. All goes on admirably. I am so constituted — for this is the real fact — that, seeing a creature, I suppose a Creator. As has often been said, a design proves to the human mind (rather it is inherent in the idea, that is, in the constitution of man) a designer. When I say design, I think of a person, a cause for what exists. Constituted as I am, I cannot help doing so. Now, this proves I cannot know God; for I cannot think of a thing's existing without a cause. But He exists without a cause, as we have said — that is, His very nature of God; and what makes me know there is one proves I cannot, in the nature of things, know Him. But that is not my object now.

The knowledge that there is a God is no personal revelation of God — no revelation at all. I conclude there must be. I am right. I conclude to immense power, and pretty surely to His unity, as the apostle says, His eternal power and Godhead — a solemn truth, from which many an enquiry may arise. Where is He? Who is He? Is He good? Does He think now at present of men? Does He govern all things? I have only a conclusion of my own mind that there must be a God of power who made the universe; not that there is. No conclusion gives this, because my conclusion is only the sequence of an idea. But am I in any relationship with Him? am I part of a system governed by general laws and no more? — for the absoluteness of these is insisted upon. If I am not a part of these general laws, what relationship have I with God? My new-school man tells me I have a conscience and reason, am free, and so forth; that is, I am not governed, like a planet, by general laws. Ah! ah! Then, in all that is really important — that is, what is moral — I am not a mere machine, under a general law; and you would persuade me God is, and cannot help Himself, nor act freely in respect of my freedom! I am free, and He is not. Then certainly I am God, not He. Now, general laws give me no revelation of God personally; and when I enter into detail, I am lost even as to my conclusions. My conscience tells me He must be good. But I look around and see misery, evil; men worshipping Jupiter, Venus, Pluto; men in every degradation that human nature is capable of; babes in torture, grown man in sin, oppression; and a groaning creation. Is that a general law? Where is the goodness? There is another world, you tell me. Perhaps; I hope so. Will the oppressor, the seducer, the corrupter, the tyrant be there? What proof have you? Your instinct tells you so. Is that all you have to comfort me? Has the instinct of men given them any clear idea of it? Had the heathen such? Are life and incorruptibility brought to light anywhere? In theory, a God of mere general laws is a dead God for me as to present moral relationship; and, when I turn to facts, I see it is false, or evil must be a general law too.

163 Now, where there is One who reveals the truth and works miracles, I am brought into relationship with a God who acts personally, so that I know Him. I see what He is, what He is about. He is righteous, He is love. He thought it worth while to come down into a world full of misery, which man's free will had brought in, to shew Himself good in it, more mighty than the evil, to reveal Himself as a resource, to make Himself known, on the one hand, and to make the moral revelation of Himself in the truth valid to the hearts of men paramount to all prejudices, on the other. If it be love, it cannot be a general law. Not that love is not the general law of God's nature, as I said; but love in exercise must have its occasion — suited occasion; must be free, or it is not love. But if God acts in this world to make Himself known, He thereby works miracles; for God's acting thus is a miracle. He does not contradict, does not suspend, the general law as a law. Men die as they died before; nay, they died again if He raised them; but He acted by a power which was not subject to the general law, because He is God, taking an individual out of it by His own power, without touching the law. The queen does not abrogate a law when she pardons. That power is part of a more general law. The most general law of all is, that God is always God — cannot act contrary to Himself; but can always act as God when He pleases. Thus I know Him — His own mind, spirit, disposition, interest in man, goodness, love. I know what sin is thereby; for it is departure of will from Him.

164 But, unless this new school deny all the truth of Christianity, their theory of general laws is wholly false. Is the resurrection by God's power or not? Does man rise of himself by some common law of his nature, or is the resurrection the fruit of the intervention of God in power? If so, the system of general laws adduced against miraculous Christianity is all nonsense. God does interfere by power, freely, to bring the great result of moral dealings to an issue. Besides, the theory of judging by general laws is false in principle. It takes man's experience of the physical course of things (for that this world is an adequate witness of God's moral government, though there is one, is a horrible lie) as the sole and absolute measure of what God is and can do. What proof is there of this? I am told it is complete. It is not; morally, it is no such thing: and your experience of what God is in the laws of the universe is no adequate measure of what God is. But, I repeat, miracles are a far more real revelation of God Himself than general laws, moral revelation. I am not personally in relationship with God by general laws; I am by free miracles, not done necessarily on me or for me, but in which God's free action shews what God personally is in His actings. I ask if Christ's miracles did not do this? — did not shew the intervention of God in goodness in a world of misery? There are instances of judgment when it was to deliver others, and that is part of the character of God, permitted displays of Satan's power, that we might know it. Why are any of them inherently incredible? Who is the judge — man's experience? Nonsense! He cannot have an experience of miracles. It is merely saying There can't be because there can't be; because I do not think God ought to do them. You do not. What is incredible? Was God not powerful enough to do them? You cannot say that. Was He not good enough? Ah! that is perhaps what is incredible to you. I thank God it is not for me.

165 But, if in a world of misery God was winning the confidence of men's hearts to His goodness, what more credible than miracles? i.e., extraordinary displays of power, sufficient to shew God's intervention, so that men might know not only that evil was not of Him, but that He had come to man's help as good. That may be incredible for the new school; they may study the movements of Jupiter, and speculate on the fall of empires, as based on general laws; but a personal God of goodness they do not like to know. It has inherent incredibility for them. But there is no personal relationship with God without it. I delight in the thought of seeing God manifested here below, spending Himself to win the confidence of hearts who as offenders were afraid, and using the very wretchedness they were in by sin to draw their hearts to God out of it. True, it was inherently incredible to Pharisees and Sadducees then. He could not be of God; He did not keep the Sabbath. They were grieved that the apostles taught the resurrection. But Jesus cared for the poor of the flock, and, in spite of the Pharisees, would win by speaking "as never man spake," and doing so that "it was never seen on that fashion." If power acting in goodness to win the hearts of the poor to God is inherently incredible, I know where the heart is to whom it is so. Such, then, is the place of miracles. The abiding thing is the truth of the being of that personal objective God who is revealed by their means. Miracles are a means of knowledge as evidence. The truth, and the Son, who is the truth, revealing the Father, revealing God, is that which is evidenced.

W. Do you admit what Hippolytus says, that miracles are useless when unbelief ceases?

H. I do not in an absolute way. They are useless as evidence; but, as being the fruit and exhibition of the power and love of God, they remain always the object of increased delight: and in Christ's miracles it is impossible to separate His ways and feelings and thoughts from them, when we have any detail. Have you not felt this?

W. Surely I have. I admit fully the justice of your remark, and it helps to judge of the nature of these signs.

H. Miracles, then, have a double character. They are confirmatory signs graciously given, and, especially Christian miracles, a present witness of the intervention of power in grace. Where Christianity is believed and professed, so far as they are proofs, they lose their importance, are out of place. So far as they have the second character, the record of them (which is here supposed to be received) is a witness to the heart that God is come in to help, and how He is come in. The word alone reveals this directly as revelation. At any time faith founded on miracles was nothing worth, because miracles do not quicken. We are begotten by the word of truth, and so children by faith. When believed only by reason of miracles, the Lord did not trust Himself to them; He knew what was in man. As removing opposing hindrances in the mind, and strengthening man against unbelief, they are precious to our compound nature. There is much that removes unbelief, acts on our old nature (even solid reasoning does), that does not give faith nor a new nature; but removes the opposition of nature, and silences it, and attracts the heart. This if alone is nothing; there must be something positively new which a man cannot give himself, and which no proof produces.

166 W. You believe, then, in a really new nature and life which man receives?

H. Undoubtedly. It is a first principle, and one of the main vital questions of the day. That which is born of the flesh is flesh, and that which is born of the Spirit is spirit. Except we are so, we cannot enter into the kingdom of God. Of His own will begat He us by the word of truth, that we might be a kind of first-fruits of His creatures. Infidelity seeks to set up man as he is, will accept Christ if He serves for that. The doctrine of scripture is that there is a Second man, a last Adam; and as is the earthy, such are they also that are earthy; and as is the Heavenly, such are they also that are heavenly.

W. But miracles now have to be proved, instead of being proofs.

H. There is truth in that. We have not now to do with heathenism and Judaism (I mean in our present inquiries, for we know with delight there are missionaries to tell Christ's blessed grace to them). When we meet with infidelity now, it has the character of apostasy and antagonism. It may be open as in the last century, or covert, as in this, but it has essentially this character. Early opposition was not apostasy; nor did it, indeed, deny the miracles; they were too recent. They ascribe them, as Celsus, to magic, or cited Apollonius Tyanaeus as having wrought such too; or the Jews to magic learnt in Egypt, and the theft of the Shem hammaphoresh out of the temple. Still that was antagonism, and had to be so treated. Now it is more. It is apostasy in principle, and has to be treated as such; covert I admit, using Christ's name, but only so much the worse. Christianity has been publicly admitted as the religion of God, its record accepted as the record of God, miracles and all; and then men begin to cavil and oppose and undermine, not being honest enough to throw it off, or sometimes happily kept back by spiritual instinct; but, as a system, it is apostasy in principle. Hence there is less hope, and the record has to be proved, objections answered, miracles to be proved, not a proof. In this case we must shew their folly as reasoners, and trust to the word, if God peradventure will give them repentance to the acknowledging of the truth. For them I should look much more to the power of the word in grace. If the record have power in them, they will see the miracles with it, and the perfect beauty and suitableness of them in such a revelation of God. Proofs may shew the absurdity of doubts, and so far are useful. They may put to silence the ignorance of foolish men, but cannot give faith. Of this we have sufficiently spoken, and I suppose of general principles so delighted in by Dr. Williams. One soon sees there is not the soberness of inquiry, but delight in one like Bunsen, who, he thinks, may aid in overthrowing scripture as a divine record. You will soon see how little they are to be trusted. I may not be able to answer every objection; but if I find a man make a hundred, and ninety-nine are shallow and foundationless, and his will pierces in it all, I am not much troubled with the weight of the hundredth. Facts and principles will both come before us.

167 W. Proceed.

H. We have spoken of Abraham and Egyptian dates as one great battle-horse of Bunsen and his uncritical admirers. Asia was only alluded to. I would now touch on it. It is known from Layard that Assyrian monuments have largely confirmed scripture history. It is interesting, though of course no ground of faith. But then we are in historic periods, and it is pretty plain sailing, with difficulties in arranging names and dates incidental to ancient times and human accounts of them. I speak here of profane history, and the connection of Babylonish and Assyrian history. This is not touched on in the Review. But more ancient days are of course obscure, and here our Bunsens revel, and evoke the spirits of empires. But we will follow them there: not to prove all with certainty — that no man can do as to these empires with the remains we possess and the imperfect knowledge of them — but to prove that Bunsen's admired assertions are foundationless, wholly so, and against the documents we have. "He also contends," says Dr. Williams, "that Abraham's horizon in Asia is antecedent to the first Median conquest of Babylon in 2234" Let us examine this. He puts, we have seen, Abraham's descent into Egypt in 2876; his departure from Ur, of course, many years earlier.

168 The question is this: the observations of the Chaldeans, according to Berosus, give 2234 for their commencement; 1903* from Alexander the Great. The length of the second dynasty is lost from the MS. The rest are there, or in modern history. From these we have 224 (lost), 458 (2nd Chaldean), 245, 526 Assyrian, and from other sources 209. Then Babylon was taken by Cyrus; that is, after 34,080 Mythic Chaldean, we have

224 Median.

-  Chaldean.

458 Chaldean.

245 Arab.

526 Assyrian.

209 Do. and Babylonian.

All the dynasties to Cyrus  1,662 + lost dynasty.

208 Persian.

All the dynasties to Alexander  1,870 + lost dynasty.

{*If we include the Median, or first historic dynasty, in the 1903 years of observations alleged by Berosus, then the duration of the first historical Chaldean is only 34 years. But I certainly judge the other scheme preferable.}

The Chaldean observations reached to 2234 before Christ, 1903 years before Alexander. The date of Callisthenes' visit being 331 before Christ, the third (second historical) dynasty must be added to complete the term. Cyrus was about 538 before Christ; 1662+538 =2200. If we add 258 for the dynasty missing from the MS, the first Chaldean, we have 2458 for the whole; but the first was Median, not Babylonish, if at Babylon: hence, subtracting 224 (2458 - 224), we have 2234, exactly the alleged period of Babylonish astronomical observations; these Chaldeans being known observers of planetary movements in connection with their idolatry, which the Medians were not, so that it is unlikely the 2234 years of observations extend to their time. That is, the known date of Alexander, added to the alleged duration of stellar observations, agrees with the length of dynasties exactly, if we leave out the first which was not Chaldean, and give 258 to the lost one. Some would count back from Cyrus, because the empire was then transferred from Babylon to Susa. Bunsen finds the name of Zoroaster, and connects 2234 with the first Median dynasty; but this is far less likely as it was not religiously or historically probable. Not religiously, for the planet-gazers were the Chaldeans; not historically, as, though Babylon had fallen as the imperial race in Cyrus' time, the priests' observations were given to Callisthenes at Babylon. Such is the judgment of the ablest German critics. It does not affect much our enquiry. I know Bunsen attempts to deny a Euphratean Cush; but his notion is contrary to all testimony of history, names, and accounts of races and their movements. I shall therefore take this system. It is Niebuhr's and other Germans he quotes, as well as Rawlinson's, and a German whom he quotes; quite admitting that, though the proofs are remarkably strong, in these ancient dates and readings there is uncertainty. That is, the Median, not idolatrous as the Chaldees, was the first historic kingdom; then a Chaldean. Of this the earliest known monarch, Urukh, has left his name on the foundation of the earliest cities of Lower Babylonia, Ur (or Mogheir), Warka (probably Erech), Senkereh (Larsa), and Niffer. Here first idolatry is found — the worship of sun, moon, and planets. He calls himself king of Ur, and Kinsi Akkad — a supposed ethnical or national designation. Erech and Akkad are mentioned in Genesis. We have a known date of a king Ismidagon from an inscription of Tiglath-Pileser, which places him in 1861. This is, say, 340 years after Urukh.

169 When Babylon was founded does not appear from the monuments that I am aware of. The astronomical observations date from 2234. This, which is the date of Berosus, is not only from him, but from Callisthenes, a Greek, but probably from the same sources. Others seem to confirm it. And, 1861, or Ismidagon, being ascertained with some precision, we have bricks with the names of kings not doubted to be anterior to Ismidagon. Babylon does not appear on these. About 1750 Naramsin reigned there. Merodach Namana is the first who has been found named king of Babylon somewhat later. But we have seen the records at Babylon go to the beginning of the kingdom exactly according to the chronology adopted by the ablest enquirers, as preserved there, B.C. 331.

It is evident the kings changed their capitals. Werka was probably, it is thought, Ereck. Akkad we find Urukh king of Senkereh is Larsa in the monuments, supposed to be Ellasar. I need not enter into further details here. This will give an idea of dates. Language is a difficult medium of proof, because probably Turanic or Turano-Aryan (for there are Aryan words), Hamite and Semitic terms are mixed in the vocabulary; and the cuneiform signs represent, it appears, all. Afterwards Semitic prevailed in Assyria; but the older forms being preserved apparently as sacred, what seems older is sometimes more recent. I now turn to Abraham. A king is found on the bricks of not exactly ascertained date; but very early indeed in the above dates, part of whose name is the same as Chedorlaomer's — perhaps the whole — and who is called the Ravager of the West (ravager being questionable, west certain). There are probabilities from names that he was connected with Susa or Elam, but of a Cushite race. The great Chaldean empire of Berosus begins 1976 before Christ. The first lasted from 2234 to 1976. Chedorlaomer, if the name be right, comes somewhat later; not the first king of it. Scripture Hebrew chronology puts the arrival of Abraham in Canaan about the year 1922 before Christ; 54 years after the beginning of the first idolatrous kingdom: but he had been some years in Canaan, and been down to Egypt, when Chedorlaomer arrived, so that that was perhaps ten years later — perhaps 1915 before Christ — that is, Chedorlaomer was 61 years after Berosus' date of the setting up of the second Chaldean empire. Now Abraham comes from Ur, because idolatry was there; and the dates agree with the common date given to Abraham; the cause of his being called of God existing at that time, as is demonstrated; that is, idolatry was established. Indeed, it is at this epoch, it appears, that the Semitic races spread and left Chaldea, though not all escaped the idolatry, as we see in Assyria. But the date of 2876 for Abraham given by Bunsen, with an Asiatic horizon, is in any case long before any historical data whatever. It is in the fabulous addition of 34,080 years (or 33,091 invented probably, as Bunsen himself supposes, to make up 36,000 — the first lunar, the second reduced by Eusebius to solar years). Nor could it be exactly said the Medians worshipped other gods. They worshipped one under the symbol of fire. The date Bunsen gives for Abraham, to indulge his fancy as to what ought to be as to Israel, and his mistaken chronology from Manetho unverified by monuments, is about a thousand years too soon, according to all that can probably be ascertained from monuments; and these monuments shew scripture to be right. No one can pretend to precision, but all the data we have prove that Bunsen indulged his imagination. I proceed to other points, concluding with Dr. Williams that Bunsen's details on some (and nearly all) these points are sufficiently doubtful to afford ground of attack; and with all due deference, that we are most logically and rationally free to more than distrust his conclusions, instead of holding them for certain when his premises are false, and the fruit of his imagination.

171 W. The character of his views seems to me pretty clear. It is simple idealism, and running a principle of his own to excess, and not sober research; merely using a mass of reading to controvert scripture, not to ascertain the truth.

H. Simply that. I proceed. Take another instance of careful research, cited by Dr. Williams, used to prove, what I have noticed, that the slaying of the first-born was by Bedouin Arabs, most choice in the effect of their successful inroad; only it is a wonder they did not carry off, in their razzia, the first-born of cattle. Perhaps they ate them; but the proof is, that it is, as the pestilence of the Book of Kings becomes in Chronicles, the more visible angel. Now, this is a mere dream. I suppose he means Samuel (called Kings in the LXX). But it is alike called a pestilence and an angel, both in Samuel and Chronicles (1 Chr. 21: 14, 15; 2 Sam. 24: 15-17). In the case of Sennacherib, it is called an angel simply in Kings and Chronicles.

W. But this shews great carelessness. It is trifling.

H. Yes; trifling with truth. Never trust the alleged facts of this school. Make that a rule: I have learnt it by experience. Mark the excessive looseness of Dr. Williams in what follows: "It is no serious objection that Egyptian authorities continue the reign of Manephthah later." All these reigns in Egyptian authorities are confusion itself as to their length; but let that pass. Its objection means here no objection to Exodus 15. "A greater difficulty is, that we find but three centuries left us from the exodus to Solomon's temple." Here the difficulty is in Bunsen's scheme. Nothing can exceed the carelessness of the article; but this very carelessness is employed to cast a slur on the chronology of the Judges. "The uncertainty and popular character of which makes the difficulty [in Bunsen's scheme] of no moment." We are told the numbers in the book of Judges proceed by the eastern round number of 40. Now, it is possible that in the East they say — though I am not aware of it — (it is a sacred number, whatever its import) "this forty years," as we say, "this hundred years," which may be given in round numbers, though I see no reason to think so. In the case of the wilderness and David's race determinative details making forty years are given; in one oppression also. But we have thirteen other oppressions or judges of precise dates. One thing that has misled most computers of the dates of Judges is, that they have not seen that Samson and Eli are expressly during the oppression of the Philistines, and that Samuel and Saul are for a long time together. But these are details for enquiry, as every one recognizes.

172 When it is said, "Baron Bunsen feels himself compelled to see growth in the Pentateuch, and he makes it Mosaic, as embodying the mind of Moses rather than written by his hand," one can only say it is very little matter what he makes of it. A great part of it professes to give direct communications from God. They are true or false. The style is confessedly the earliest Hebrew as shewn by the use of hu for hi, nahar for nahara. That it was edited by Ezra and others may be very likely. That, and its being done by the great Sanhedrim in his day, is an old Jewish tradition, and may have so far general truth in it, as some such work of editing may have been called for after the return from the captivity. Josephus distinctly rests all on the authentication by the prophets, and hence owns none after Artaxerxes as scripture. This accords with what we read in the historical parts.

What Dr. Williams means by "the whole literature grew like a tree rooted in the various thoughts of successive generations," I do not know. If he means that they modified the older books continually as their habits changed, it is the most improbable absurd idea of any nation, and particularly for the Jews, and especially with books which they disobeyed, and which reprove and reproach them, as these do, which yet they held as sacred, coming from God Himself (persecuting the prophets, too, because they spoke so plain). There cannot be conceived anything more improbable or more purely an imagination, contradicting all the facts, than this gratuitous theory. That Moses and Joshua, for certain historical events, used popular documents — as Paul Grecian poets — is stated in scripture. That Moses may, under God's guidance, have used others which are not stated, is very possible. The question for us is, Was he guided of God, so that what we have is scripture? For this we have the authority of Christ and the apostles (which I suppose has little weight with Dr. Williams), and, I may add, the divinely given conviction of every child of God, and of every saint under the Old Testament too.

All the theories of Jehovistic and Elohistic documents are the merest claptrap; we have only to examine the passages to see their fallacy. We have spoken of Genesis 1, 2, and need not return to it. The history of Noah equally proves the perfect absurdity of it. I repeat, all through scripture, Jehovah is the name of relationship, as Almighty and Father are, and stated so to be; God, the simple name of the divine Being.

173 Again, I read here, somewhat to my astonishment, "When the fierce ritual of Syria, with the awe of a divine voice, bade Abraham slay his son, he did not reflect that he had no perfect theory of the absolute to justify him in departing from traditional revelation, but trusted that the Father, whose voice from heaven he heard at heart, was better pleased with mercy than with sacrifice; and his trust 'was his righteousness.'"

W. What!

H. You may well say "what!" Only, it is well to let these people talk, to shew what their talking is worth. How does the good man know there was such an event? Why, from the history; and yet to please his fancied wisdom, he upsets every fact and principle of the history.

Abraham had been called out from his country and traditions in the most absolute way by the "God of glory." Gen. 17: 5. He was not a Syrian idolater, and never worshipped with them, but had his tent and his altar apart: that is the gist of his whole history, its essence. It has no meaning else. It was not a traditional revelation for him; he had a theory of the absolute to justify him, both at first in departing from all idolatry, and now in not returning to the ritual of Syria. God had revealed Himself to him. The Syrian ritual had no divine voice for him; and instead of finding righteousness in not sacrificing his son, when the awe of a divine voice from fierce devils bade him, the whole point of the story is that he was blessed, because he did not withhold him. So the story states. It has no other meaning; and so James reasons in his epistle, and the epistle to the Hebrews quotes it as his glory.

They had better make popular stories for their views, a new Mormon Bible of their own, than edit such senseless stuff as this. It is a good specimen of rational literature. His comment on it is this: "So in each case we trace principles of reason and right, to which our heart perpetually responds, and our response to which is a truer sign of faith than such a deference to a supposed external authority as would quench these principles themselves."

I quote this that you may remark the object which we detect throughout — the substitution of man's judgment, and what philosophers have called moral sense, for obedience to God; the putting them in contrast, so as to make a revelation needless, or an evil, because it is external. The λόγος, or word, may be allowed to work in man, in man's mind; hence man, as he is, is sufficient, but no word from God allowed. It quenches the natural conscience. Now, there is a conscience; but all history declares, and every-day life confirms, that it is not competent to guide man, and that man is wicked, and naturally hates the light because he is, and is in darkness if there is no revelation. All history proves it. Now, Christianity owns this conscience, but brings God in grace, and perfect light, into contact with it. And this is what they object to — in a becoming spirit, they tell us. But, in fact, in the passage I quote from Dr. Williams, their avowed aim is to resist a revelation of God external to man's mind, and claiming obedience.

174 Now, it is an unhappy — I had better say happy — instance in which to make such a remark. No honest man can controvert that the whole and sole meaning of this history of Abraham is, that absolute deference to external authority was claimed, at the sacrifice of all natural affections in the case of an only son, and, what was more, in giving up all the promises lodged in his person. And this shewed absolute faith in God's faithful goodness. Abraham, as the epistle to the Hebrews tells us, was sure God must give him Isaac back, if even He raised him; for God would fulfil His promises, and fulfil them in him. When the sacrifice of self was made (for it is always self), God did not allow the sacrifice.

W. The contrast of principles between scripture and this school is as clear as day, and their desire to get rid of God revealing Himself — the one great blessing of our souls — in order to exalt man and his moral competency. It is war against revelation, and against obedience; for simply knowing or doing right is not obedience. And they resist the claim of God to obedience, as well as the revelation of God in grace. This exclusion of God is dreadful, and clearly proves what they will. It is moral wickedness in character, and here shews itself in direct opposition to the mind of scripture. The effort to give the character they wish to scripture is contemptible (happy, I agree with you), because it shews what their state of mind, and what their reasonings, are worth.

H. We will proceed to some other remarks; for, as Dr. Williams speaks of scripture, we must meet him in detail.

"The famous Shiloh is taken in its local sense as the Sanctuary where the young Samuel was trained; which, if doctrinal perversions did not interfere, hardly any one would doubt to be the true sense."

175 The sentence is this: "The sceptre shall not depart from Judah, nor a lawgiver from between his feet, till Shiloh come." Gen. 49: 10

What the training of the young Samuel has to do with it I cannot tell. If it refer to this, it is still a prophecy; but, I should judge, a prophecy very badly interpreted. It seems to me it is very irrational to suppose that it is a divinely inspired prophecy about the name of the place where the young Samuel was trained, because the tabernacle was there. What is "till Shiloh come?" — and yet more, "to him shall the gathering of the peoples be?" What has that to do with the place the young Samuel was trained in? It is not "people" (fancy might have spoken of the tabernacle so), but "peoples." But the truth is, this use of Shiloh for the name of the place is a modern Jewish opposition to the faith of Jesus being the Messiah. All the old Jewish interpreters referred this to Messiah with one consent, though the root of the word be disputed. R. Lipmann first proposed to read it, till they come to Shiloh; as in 1 Samuel 4: 12, where the words are so translated, and this a certain Teller in the last century defended, applying it to the fact in Joshua, that at the close of the wars they pitched the tabernacle in Shiloh, and then Judah ceased to have the lead which had been given him in Numbers in the wilderness, Reuben and Gad left, etc. This interpretation has been adopted by the rationalists, as Eichhorn, Ammon, Bleek, Tuch, etc., denying any application to the Messiah. The soberest and best Hebrew scholars, even rationalists, take it as referring to peace, and see Messiah in it as Prince of Peace, as the sceptre signifies dominion. They do so on Hebrew grounds, without troubling themselves about prophecy and its fulfilment. It is also translated, till he, Judah, come to rest; seeing in it the full accomplishment of the promises to Israel when the nations of the earth will be subject; some adding the coming to Shiloh, when the land was distributed as a first instalment and turning-point; because Israel got its rest of promise in first provisional fulfilment there.

Now, these questions of interpretation I cannot enter into here. The objections of some, as Kurz, to a personal Messiah being as yet the subject of prophecy, are null. It is said this was not within view of the faith of the patriarchs. That is a mistake; the Lord Himself says, "Your father Abraham rejoiced to see my day, and he saw it and was glad." In principle, I see nothing to object to in seeing a germinant accomplishment in responsible Israel, to be fully accomplished in their final glory with Messiah. That the chapter is a pretended prophecy after the event, has been shewn to be absurd on the face of it, for the statements are, in almost every particular, such as no one speaking from the events could have made. You must always bear in mind that these rationalists never search even whether a passage may be a prophecy. They start with the assertion, there can be none, and then seek to shew how the passage may have otherwise arisen. In this case the absurdity of their notions lies on the surface. Jacob declares that he speaks of the end of days, that this goes on to the full final blessing of Israel; and the gathering of the nations is therefore the natural interpretation for those who believe in prophecy and the divine inspiration of scripture.

176 That there was a provisional bringing in of blessing, and the first proposal of it on Israel's responsibility in the first coming of Christ, is the belief of all Christians, and the express teaching of Peter in Acts 3 — now put off till Israel repent (while the Church is being gathered, and yet to be fulfilled), and then to be accomplished by a glorious intervention in the last days, I have no doubt. And Judah is preserved as a tribe (I do not see more necessarily in "Shebet") for that day. It certainly never will be fulfilled till then. It has had, in the progressive development of Israel's history, preparatory events. To make It Samuel's training place is simple nonsense.

It is a question whether the name be not itself given from the fact of Joshua's sitting down there to distribute the conquered land. The point difficult to receive from the words is Israel's coming to Shiloh; either it is, "until rest come," or "until Judah come to Shiloh;" if not, the sentence is broken off, and there is no antecedent to "come." It is people, "they," as the French "on," with no one mentioned before. If the ancient interpretations, Targums, etc., which all take it as Messiah, be not received, it is, "till rest come," or "till Judah come to rest." The words, "to him shall the gathering of the peoples be," is the difficulty then. If it be not translated "till Shiloh come," the gathering will be to Judah, looked at as representing the people, as Judah did, and specially the stock of the house of David and Christ, in contrast with the ten tribes. That the people first should be the vessel of God's testimony, and Messiah take their place on their failure, and gather the peoples, is the distinct declaration of prophecy. It is fully developed in Isaiah 49, where Messiah declares He has laboured in vain, if it be Israel; and then His gathering the remnant of Israel and the nations is fully set forth, going on to the rest and glory of Israel. It is the great subject of prophecy — Messiah taking up the promise as a faithful servant when Israel had failed. Hence He is the true Vine, as Israel was the old vine but was fruitless, or bore wild grapes. Bunsen's and Dr. Williams view is too puerile to pay attention to.

177 The alleged "Bible before our Bible is indicated . . . rather than proved as it might be." This merely means the old story of Jehovistic and Elohistic elements, book of Jasher, book of the wars of the Lord, of which we have spoken. It may be seen expanded elaborately, as to the former, in De Wette, after many others, and is, I hesitate not to say, contrary to fact, and pure ignorance. Take Genesis 6, indeed the whole account of the flood, and see if any man with his senses, without a theory to support, could make two documents — one with God, the other with Jehovah. Joshua also has referred to documents, to prove the truth of what he said to unbelieving enemies of Israel; so Jephthah used it against Ammon. The Kings and Chronicles constantly refer to the public records. This only says that the prophetic Spirit used but did not copy them. The statement of a bible before the Bible has no kind of ground whatever. We are told, "he rightly rejects the perversions which make the Psalms evangelically inspired." Who ever thought they were? Why is "evangelically" thrust in? Who ever supposed the Psalms were the gospel? The Psalms refer to the government of God, not to His intervention in grace, save as delivering Israel. For this their enemies must be destroyed, and this they look for. But it has nothing to do with the Christian now. He has "to do well, suffer for it, and take it patiently." The Jews in the latter day will look for their oppressing enemies to be destroyed when God comes in; and He will answer their cry. Jerome and Augustine I leave to answer for themselves; only their imagination was moderate compared with the system we are enquiring into. I admit fully the absurdity of much patristic interpretation; but calling Chaldeans demons, whose instruments they were, is not more absurd than saying: "the Father" (Semitic): Japetic interpretation: the eternal will of the realization of good in man (eternal decree of election). The Son: Man, mankind (Jesus and children of God) struggling with self for the realization of good in time. In an eminent degree Jesus of Nazareth as the conscious realization of God's goodness. "Man, the Son of man:" The finite realization of the Spirit of God as good in individual consciousness developed in time. "Resurrection:" The awakening of the consciousness of this divine life in the soul. "Eternal life:" The divine element in man's ethical life as union with God's will in time.

178 W. But whose interpretations are these strange bewilderments of mind?

H. Baron Bunsen's last improved.

W. Is it possible? It is well to know what kind of mind we are dealing with. I am not surprised at his idealizing history too, having his siege written before the history of it comes

H. It was the Alexandrian manner of interpreting; and came into the church. It is very absurd, save in so far as facts carry moral ideas in them. As to Messianic prophecies in the Old Testament, It is insisted that they refer partly to a present historical sense. This is not true of all. It is introduced here, as a great admission of the orthodox bishops, and I know not whom, as a discovery now forced on people which is to undermine these prophecies. As to the greater part of them, I do not doubt the principle at all. All Christians, since scripture has been studied, with a very few exceptions, have so understood them, applying the principle with more or less intelligence. God in goodness, who had announced from the outset a deliverance and a deliverer, when dealing with details, encouraged faith — present faith — by prophecies which had application then, but expressed the mind of God, which saw to the end of the vista; clothed it in language which went back to the original promise, and surrounded it with dearer light. God wrought in present deliverance, and encouraged hope. The prophets acted as revealers of His mind in this, but kept alive with growing light the hope of the full deliverance yet to come; so that the prophets searched into the meaning of their own prophecies, and saw it was not for them but for us But all this is so little new, that it is a principle laid down by Lord Bacon, who calls them germinant prophecies. Deliverance is promised as to Sennacherib, but the Holy Ghost takes occasion to point to a final deliverance from the Assyrian in the latter days Both were important, and both given.

If Paley could only find one Messianic prophecy, he was very ignorant of scripture. I do not say that none have an inferior application to circumstances, or that the prophet does not rise from circumstances to be "rapt into future times;" but if it be meant that there is but one prophecy in which the Holy Spirit meant to point out Christ, it is utterly false.

179 Baron Bunsen admits no prophecy, but a kind of second sight — a spirit of prognostication in man, in which he is fallible, but conceives future things. The rationalist school deny all prophecy.

But take the Psalms: Psalm 2 is prophetic of Christ; Psalm 16 is; Psalm 22 is; Ps. 69, Ps. 72, Ps. 102, Ps. 110 are. I do not say that some part of some of these may not have had a partial application to other sufferers or triumphs. But they have Messiah directly in view. Many others rise up to His case while dealing in divine sympathy, more generally with the suffering remnant, whose place and part He took. But these speak directly of Him; some of Him only. For this we have the authority of Christ and the apostles. I am aware that is nothing with this school; but it is with Christians something. They think Paul, and Peter, and the records divinely given us of Christ, on which Christianity is authentically founded, are of more authority than Dr. Williams; for, soberly, that is the question. Can any one but a neologist doubt that Isaiah 8: 13 to Isaiah 9: 7 connects, and is meant to connect, the present circumstances of Israel with a great future deliverance by a glorious personage who meanwhile is a stone of stumbling and a rock of offence? that is, encourages Israel in those days in their distress, but goes on to an alleged glorious deliverance hereafter, when the distress should be yet greater, but a deliverer there? I say alleged. I am not enquiring here whether it be false or true, whether it was a fanatic prophet, holding out hopes of false deliverance, or the Holy Ghost predicting sure events; but I say, the prophet (or impostor) meant — though connecting it with present events — to encourage the people with the hopes of a glorious deliverer in future times, but who would be a stone of stumbling meanwhile, and who would have disciples. The character and terms of the prophecy prove it could not be an impostor; they are too detailed, and speak too much of the evil of Israel. But, be the prophet what he may, I say, a man wants either sense or honesty who will attempt to deny that the alleged prophet intended to point out a mighty future deliverer, who is said to be Jehovah, long hiding His face from the house of Israel, a sanctuary or refuge, but a stone of stumbling, and then a public deliverer in battles of fire. An unbeliever may deny Christianity, and any accomplishment.

If we begin by taking for granted it cannot be, we may spare ourselves the trouble of proving it is not. As a Christian, I believe a part is accomplished — the last part clearly not until Christ comes again. All I say now is, that here is a passage which, referring to Israel's fears then and connecting the testimony with present facts, goes on through a series of alleged events to the time of a great deliverer, of the increase of whose government there will be no end, on the throne of David. Let it be a false prophecy or a true one, it is a prophecy, and a prophecy of Jehovah's being a sanctuary, a stone of stumbling, having disciples, the breaking of Israel on the stone of stumbling, to which the Lord and Peter apply this, and then a triumphant deliverer.

180 I will now take another character of prophecy referred to — the servant; shewing that Israel is taken up as the servant, and replaced by Christ, who will deliver the remnant as again servants of Jehovah, who had long, as we have seen, hidden His face. I take this the rather as Dr. Williams has referred to it. Isaiah 42 says, "My servant whom I uphold; mine elect, in whom my soul delighteth; I have put my spirit upon him; he shall bring forth judgment to the Gentiles. A bruised reed shall he not break," &c. This we know is formally applied to Christ in the Gospels. In verse 19, and more distinctly and definitely in Isaiah 43: 1-10, the servant is Israel. In Isaiah 49 this is again declared in express terms, "Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified." Then says one, If that be so, I have laboured in vain, and spent my strength for nought and in vain; and then goes on, "And now, saith the Lord that formed me from the womb to be his servant, Though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of Jehovah, and my God shall be my strength." His judgment was with Jehovah, and His work with His God. Then comes the answer, "It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant, to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and restore the preserved of Israel. I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, and to be my salvation to the end of the earth." Yet afterwards Israel is brought back, and Zion is remembered and glorified, and kings her nursing fathers.

Now here I have Israel a servant, apparently a total failure, because they are not gathered by a person who appears on the scene to do it, yet declares His work owned. Then the Gentiles brought in (a passage which Paul uses for his ministry); and then, after all, Israel restored and blessed. Now I am not saying again whether this is a false prophecy, or a true one; but it is there — was there — as a prophecy before the time, is not yet all accomplished certainly, but speaks of Israel as a servant supplanted by another who fails in gathering Israel, and turns to the Gentiles, and looks on to the end then even for Israel. It is (true or false) Messianic, predicts one who seems to fail — outwardly does as to Israel, and then turns to the Gentiles. It is used by Paul in Luke's account in the Acts, and by himself in 2 Corinthians; the former to authorize his turning to the Gentiles, the latter to the gospel time, 2 Corinthians 6: 2. Every one can judge whether Christianity, or the ribaldry of the Neologists and the idealism of Baron Bunsen most justly meet the statements in it. At any rate they are there. A man may reject prophecy, or say it is not fulfilled; but he who says there is not avowed prophecy, and prophecy of Israel's future glory (and glory through a glorious deliverer, commonly called Messiah), is not an honest man, or is in wilful blindness.

181 I will take up Isaiah 53 by itself as so important; but see Isaiah 59: 16-21, and all 60. Now I am not arguing for their truth now, much as I believe it; I only say they exist.

W. I understand you. It is a vital point; because if they exist, which Dr. Williams attempts but hardly dares to deny, we should soon be brought to the conviction, not that all interpreters of course are right (for I apprehend, for my own part, that when Zion and Jerusalem are turned into the Church, you must make confusion, though there may be some analogies); but that in fact God has accomplished in part what He has prophesied of beforehand.

H. And remark, I insist on the truth of what they make an objection of, namely, that there is the connection with present circumstances in Israel; that God had foretold a deliverance by the Seed of the woman; and then, when the world had fallen into idolatry, which no one can deny, chose out a people to preserve the knowledge of the one true God, Jehovah, and made them the centre of His earthly government: as it is said, "When the Most High [His universal name of dominion over the earth and all powers] divided to the nations their inheritance; when he separated the sons of Adam, he set the bounds of the people according to the number of the children of Israel. For Jehovah's portion is his people, Jacob is the lot of his inheritance." Deut. 32: 8. This did not set aside the promise made before, though for a time He suffered all nations to walk in their own ways. But the promises as to the earth centred in Israel as a people. When the fulness of time was come, the promised deliverer came and presented Himself to Israel as a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God. Israel is not gathered. He is a stone of stumbling. Then the promises centre, as we have seen, in Christ. Israel has voluntarily forfeited them, and ceases for a time, save by the hiding of God's face from them, to be the centre of His earthly government, and remain, as we know, without their own religion, and without a false one.

182 Meanwhile believers are called to follow a rejected Lord, take up their cross, and have their treasure in heaven. Though not a sparrow falls without our Father, and all is under God's hand, yet it is not the time of God's direct government in respect of an earthly people. In due time God declares He will take up the Jews and Israel again; and while the saints who have suffered will have a heavenly portion, the earth will be governed in peace. But this will be introduced by a time of evil, tribulation, and judgment.

Now the prophecies all declare this, and we must not confound the government of the earth (and the promises made to the Jews and connected with it) with our heavenly hopes. God does not prophesy of heaven, but of events in the earth. These prophecies, while the Jews were connected with the present government of God, were addressed to them to warn and encourage them then; but God, knowing what they were, went on to the end, to the infallible accomplishment of His purpose, knowing that what rested on man's responsibility must fail. Hence prophecies do apply largely at the time, only they go often on to the end; and are all a part of this large general scheme — are not of private interpretation, and not only as to Messiah, but as to Jews and Gentiles, all whose history and circumstances at the close of the world's history are much more fully gone into than the circumstances of the day. Christ's humiliation is spoken of, His rejection, as we have seen; but then prophecy, as it speaks of the government of the world, once He is gone on high, passes over to His future re-appearing in the world's government: for this was the subject of prophecy. Hence Christ and the apostles leave out often the last part of a prophecy — it belongs to the end of the present order of the world — and stop at its first coming or its effects. Thus Christ says "To proclaim the acceptable year of the Lord," but does not add "the day of vengeance of our God:" this is to come Isa. 61: 2. So Paul, quoting Psalm 68, says "He hath received gifts for men," but does not add "Yea, even for the rebellious, that the Lord God might dwell among them." This will be true when Israel is restored in the latter day.

Take another prophecy cavilled at — Micah's prophecy; one, perhaps, as I have found, that strikes a Jew the most. Dr. Williams represents Baron Bunsen so as that, if he would quote Micah as designating Bethlehem for the birth-place of Messiah, he cannot shut his eyes to the fact that the deliverer who was to come from thence was to be a contemporary shield against the Assyrian. Why is "contemporary" added? Contemporary with what? Where is there a word in the passage about contemporary? This is dishonest.

183 Micah 4, which precedes it, and is the same prophecy, after denouncing Jerusalem, and declaring that she shall be ploughed as a field, declares that in the last days all shall be changed, and the mountain of Jehovah's house established on the tops of the mountains, and exalted above the hills; and the peoples (not "people" — a frequent unhappy mistake in the English version) flow unto it. And many nations shall come, and full blessings are promised to Zion in the last days after judgment. All the nations shall be gathered against her (as Zechariah prophesies also, and Isaiah 17, and other passages), but she arises and threshes them as sheaves on the corn floor. In the midst of this it is announced (not as before, Micah 3) that wickedness led to desolation (as Isaiah had in Isaiah 42 and Isaiah 48), but that there was another great event in the interim — the Judge of Israel should be insulted and rejected, and that therefore God would give them up. This Judge of Israel was to be born in Bethlehem; but His goings forth have been from the days of eternity. Therefore will He give them up until she which hath travailed hath brought forth; then the remnant of his brethren will return to the children of Israel. Israel will be taken up again, and this man, this Judge of Israel, will be the peace, when the Assyrian comes.

Now the Assyrian is, numberless times, designated as the great enemy — I do not say oppressor of the Jews — in the latter day; and the prophecy speaks explicitly of the latter day after Israel had been given up, because they had smitten the Judge of Israel with a rod upon the cheek. Now "contemporary" here is a dishonest word born of neology.

The prophecy I leave to any one to read through, and I would press the necessity of taking the context of passages as well as a single verse. I do not fear the result of reading the prophecy of Micah by any unprejudiced person; and the more he knows the scheme of prophecy in all the prophets, the clearer he will be, and the more he will be convinced that one Spirit wrote them. Holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. If the Jews of whom the prophets speak are excluded from the interpretation by Christians to apply it to themselves, they must distort them. If Jeremiah says, God had plucked them down, and He would build them up; and the plucking down is applied to Jews, and the building up to Christians, nonsense is made of it at once, because passages are found immediately which it is impossible so to accommodate. But if we take them as they are delivered, they are comparatively speaking perfectly simple. Yet it is into this very error this new school falls. "The typical ideas (of patience or of glory) find their culminating fulfilment in the new," says Dr. Williams

184 W. But let me interrupt you with a question here. This ideal element recalls it to me. You quoted the Baron on resurrection does he not believe in one?

H. No; as far as I can find out. "He shares," Dr. Williams tells us, "in the aspiration of the noblest philosophers elsewhere and of the firmer believers among ourselves, to (sic) a revival of conscious and individual life, in such a form of immortality as may consist with union with the Spirit of our eternal Life-giver." It is Buddhism, and that pretty much avowedly, for he defends Buddhism from the charge of seeking annihilation. It is Philo who taught that the soul was in dualism in the body, came down from God, was a portion of Himself, and returned to be rejoined to Him. Save in Philo's respect for the scriptures, which is only in vague language held by Bunsen, and denied in fact, all the main points of his view are, as I said, Philo's. With all its pretensions to philosophy and science, it is only a return to the doctrine of that vain but active-minded Platonic Jew. Only that Bunsen necessarily brings in Christ, but reduces Him to be a mere completing the ideal system of which He is a more perfect expression. It is remarkable that Philo speaks little of Messiah, and only as an earthly king — does not connect with Him the λόγος, of whom he speaks largely philosophically. I apprehend myself the whole ideal system came, as to parentage, from the Feroohers of Zoroaster, from whom Plato borrowed them, and Philo from Plato. You may find the account of Zoroaster's system in Heeren

W. But it is the utter subversion of Christianity in all its truths.

H. What do you think Bunsen makes of the fall?

W. I know not; though I think you referred to it. All their system denies it altogether.

H. It is "ideally the circumscription of our spirits in limits of flesh and time — then practically the selfish nature with which we fall from the likeness of God."

185 W. But then the fall and creation are the same thing; for, surely, our spirits were then circumscribed in flesh and time; and the selfish nature is only viewed as a practical state into which we may now come when free.

H. What you say is perfectly just — the fall is simply creation; but this is again Philo. The spirits were pure spirits, part of God, and were lowered and brought into an inferior state by coming into the body. So, indeed, Origen; only, inconsistently, he made it partly the effect of previous conduct. This is the secret of the teaching of Origen, and Clemens of Alexandria, and of Bunsen's liking them, as having the spirit of freedom in the church, which was lost afterwards. But I will take up some more of the cavils against scripture, because that is important. Forgive me if I am tedious.

W. Continue. All this examination of scripture is full of interest.

H. Dr. Williams says he "cannot quote Nahum, denouncing ruin against Nineveh, or Jeremiah against Tyre, without remembering that already the Babylonish power threw its shadow across Asia, and Nebuchadnezzar was mustering his armies." Now, all this vague language is very convenient to make mere human foresight out of divine prophecy. But there is no manly grappling with the subject. According to the best research, theological and other, Nahum lived in Hezekiah's reign. This is drawn from reference to historical facts alluded to in the prophecy in connection with Assyria, Egypt, and Philistia, and Isaiah 20. Now, Jeremiah was more than a hundred years afterwards. In Nahum's time Babylon did not cast its shadow over the East, and Nebuchadnezzar was not born. Merodach-Baladan reigned in Babylon, and cherished, probably, ambitious views against Assyria, Babylon having been long a capital before Nineveh. But, though he revolted, in the confusion of Sargon's usurpation, as it appears, he was attacked and driven from Babylon into the marshes; and, though a party of his own race held to him and his family, so far was Babylon from rising then, that Esarhaddon ruled without any subject king at all in Babylon; and Assyria under Sennacherib and Esarhaddon was at a pitch of splendour it had never reached before. After that it began to decline; but it was not Nebuchadnezzar who attacked it. The last king — as to whose name there is some difficulty — sent Nabopolassar against Cyaxares, king of Media; but he joined him, married his daughter, and they attacked Nineveh together. Then, a hundred years after the prophecy, as Nahum had said, the gates of the rivers were opened, the Tigris washed away the brick defences, and the king burnt the palace over his head. Modern research has proved in detail that the fire devoured her palaces. The statement, therefore, as regards Nahum, is entirely groundless.

186 As to Nebuchadnezzar mustering his armies, and Jeremiah knowing it, the great body of his prophecies refer, not to mustering armies, but to the war being carried on before his eyes. What was important was not that, it required no prophet, but one to put a distinct limit to the captivity of seventy years, and predict the final glory of Israel, as the prophets universally announce it, but with even more precision. That prophecy of the seventy years was distinctly fulfilled; and if Jeremiah prophesied at the mustering of the armies, and saw Jerusalem taken and burnt, his prophecy of her restoration is fulfilled prophecy.

But, as to dates, Dr. Williams is wrong. Jeremiah prophesies in the 14th year of Josiah; that was the first year of Nabopolassar. It was not till after this that Nebuchadnezzar comes upon the scene. Marcus Niebuhr makes the 14th year of Josiah some twenty years before Nebuchadnezzar's Syrian campaigns.

A Third Dialogue on the Essays and Reviews, section c.

Modern Philosophy and Modern Theology, both compared with Scripture.

J. N. Darby.

<09003E> file section c.

186 We have still Isaiah, though briefly touched on, to notice, Psalm 2 and Psalm 22, and Daniel. The fact is, the only real ground alleged against the authenticity of the prophets is the foregone conclusion that there can be no such thing. Dr. Williams and Bunsen only repeat what the Geseniuses, and De Wettes, and Rosenmullers — Koppe being the first — have said before them. Isaiah 13, Isa. 14, Isa. 24-27, Isa. 35-37, and Isa. 40 to the end, cannot be Isaiah's, because the captivity of Babylon is spoken of as a present thing, and the Jews' deliverance proclaimed! Consequently it must have been written at that time; that is, there can be no prophecy, therefore this is not one. But that is begging the question.

"It is clear to demonstration that the later chapters are upon the stooping of Nebo and the bowing down of Babylon, when the Lord took out of the hand of Jerusalem the cup of trembling, for the glad tidings of the decree of return were heard upon the mountains." Clear to demonstration? demonstration of what? There is no need of demonstration at all. One has only to read the chapters to see they are upon the stooping of Nebo, etc. But that the decree was heard upon the mountains intimates, it is alleged, that it was gone forth, and the people went forth not with haste. Now, all this is Dr. Williams's loose manner. If it was on the mountains, it was not in Babylon, for there are none there; and Judah was not on their mountains to hear it or have it proclaimed. Further, the going out is a promise, not a fact. But the whole point of the passage is, that, as it speaks of Nebo's stooping, Nebo must have already stooped, because no one could foretell a thing. So De Wette: The events "are supposed to have actually taken place, which shews the author wrote in the time of the Babylonish captivity." So of the earlier chapters: "The passage which treats of the destruction of Babel and the Babylonian empire, etc., must be spurious . . . because the writer takes his standpoint in the exile." So Gesenius: "The oracle supposes a prophetic poet being in Babylon; and the point of time of the composition can hardly be any other . . . than when the hostility of the Medes against Babel, and their brilliant progress under Cyrus, gave to the Jews the sure hope that the seat of their persecutors would fall through them." "This situation is portrayed as present, not future, and in such a way that the ruin (of Babylon) should immediately follow. That this does not suit in the least the time of Isaiah needs no further proof." This applies specially to the last part after the history of Hezekiah, and the previous parts which speak of Babylon, and Isaiah 24-35. It is needless to quote more of the same kind from other rationalists.

187 Now, it is evident, that this pretends to no proof that it is not a prophecy. It assumes it, and uses the assumption to prove Isaiah could not be the author. There is no thought of proving that it is not a prophecy: as there can be none, the reference to Babylon is a proof of the time it is composed in! The allegation that it is spoken of as present, not future, is utterly without force. It speaks of things as present, which, by the supposition, were future, the destruction of Nebo and Babylon, which were only a sure hope. It pretends, that is, to be a prophecy, and of the glorious restoration of Jerusalem, when they were in exile. If, then, it be not a prophecy, it is an imposture. Indeed the notion of a person making a prophetic book of events to encourage the people when they were present is an absurdity on the face of it. They do not want it. That an impostor may arouse hopes from his use of coming events, which throw their shadows before, is very possible; but this does not suit the argument that they relate events when they are present. But more of this when we come to Daniel, who enters into details.

Only here I remark that the theory is an absurdity. A prophet may use present interventions of God as a ground of confidence for future ones of which he prophesies; but a prophet of present events is nonsense. But this is the rationalist theory. And see how little reality there is in all this reasoning. They say Isaiah's saying that Jerusalem lay desolate is a proof that the Jews were already exiles and Jerusalem destroyed. Yet of Nineveh it is said, she is empty, and void, and waste! But here they do not think of saying it was past. It is evident enough it is the prophetic Spirit rendering it present in vision in both.

188 W. But why should they insist on it in Isaiah and not in Nahum?

H. In Nahum there is no direct Messianic prophecy; and therefore they have no particular object: they are content to leave it in the shade. Isaiah is too plain. If it be a prophecy, it is a prophecy of Christ. We have seen, indeed, that their whole statement as to Nahum is false in fact. It is equally so here; for the greater part (indeed all the prophecy) speaks of future events, as the neologists admit. Nebo had not bowed down, and Babylon had not yet fallen. The Jews were in exile then, and a very large part indeed has nothing to do with Babylon, but speaks of the coming of the Lord to judge all flesh, the future glory of Jerusalem, and the like.

My part here is, not to shew Isaiah true, but the neologists false. There is, in fact, no ground at all for their statements. Prophets may take an immediately imminent fact and speak of it. Thus, when the people were besieged and hoped to escape, Jeremiah declares they should go to Babylon, and so they did. So Ezekiel; only he declares Zedekiah should come to Babylon, and die there, but not see it; as it happened, for they put his eyes out. But this is not the case in Isaiah. Besides, the stopping at Isaiah 14: 23 is perfectly arbitrary. The prophecy is the same, at any rate, to the end of Isaiah 27. But the reason is obvious: we get then the Assyrian destroyed after Babylon, and this does not suit present things in Babylon. It is avowedly future in the text. And the destruction of the Assyrian in the future, when Israel was in Babylon, will not do if it is a prophecy. What has the founding of Zion to do with the destruction of the Philistines, if we go to the end of the chapter? No, Isaiah prophesies Babylon will be destroyed: an immense event, because it was the great seat of idolatry — the empire God had first formally given to the Gentiles (the four monarchies) — that which stands as the type of man's idolatrous power in the earth oppressing God's people. Hence its judgment was in moral import all-important; and the prophet looks out from it to the great closing deliverance of the earth, and adds the destruction of the Assyrian, the great external enemy that attacked God's people (not where they were captive, and never substituted for Jerusalem, as Babylon was); and then the inward enemies in their own territory, the Philistines; and Zion would be really founded of God. Hence as to Babylon, though he does prophesy its present judgment, as he had the captivity there to Hezekiah, when he was in prosperity, yet he goes on far beyond — to the day of the Lord.

189 The principle then is an assumption of the question which we have to prove, in order to conclude as to who the author of the book is, and has no pretension to be an argument as to anything else. And the alleged facts on which it is founded are no facts at all. Its being Isaiah or not is all one to those who believe it is inspired, although I doubt not the least it was Isaiah. Why should any one have shoved in parcels of prophecy into his? It is not merely the last twenty-five chapters, but parcels in the midst of the prophecies which are absolutely needed to make a whole of it; for, if we leave out Babylon and the then history of the nations which Isaiah prophetically gives, they are altogether incomplete. The main element, without which the rest have not their sense, is wanting. It is the main part of a whole, as any one reading it may see. And the only reason for taking it out is that it must be a prophecy if it is left in; and this avowedly. But the rest is prophecy, too, of Moab, Egypt, etc., so that nothing is gained.

I am aware that the style is alleged. But this is merely a help; and it is not denied that there are peculiarities which prove its similarity, while the general flow of the last half is naturally different from short burdens. I say, it is not denied. The explanation of these is, "But these peculiarities prove nothing." "Their agreement in this respect cannot have been accidental, and must be explained as an imitation of the genuine, or in some other way." One who can reason thus, De Wette, has not much title to claim attention.

W. Clearly not. It is well in these days to know what these neologists have to say. That I find difficulties in scripture does not surprise me. I wait, and profit by the overflowing mass of evidently divine instruction. But when learned men, or men who give themselves out for such and have credit for great research, present it as a settled thing in Hebrew and Chaldee (and I know not what, where most people cannot follow them) that the scriptural books are not inspired and cannot be, it is a relief to know what ground they go on. Thus, when I find that it is simply assuming there cannot be a prophecy, and no more; and that half Isaiah is cut off solely because the chapters speak of future events, and therefore must have been then written, their whole statement crumbles to nothing. It is simply making impostors or fanatics of all the inspired writers, because inspiration is impossible, that is, simply direct unbelief without any motive but the will of unbelief. And I through grace can judge for myself; I have tasted, and am assured that they are inspired. Besides, what you say is true, that the pretension that they were prophecies written at the time of the events, or after, is false as to the fact in the prophecies, and absurd upon the face of it.

190 H. As regards the alleged later words, the statement as to sagan is an absurdity. It is used in Isaiah when he is speaking of the conqueror (Cyrus) treading down the Babylonish power; and speaks of the half governors, half kings, or deputies, satraps or pachas, who had that title in the East: and Isaiah gives them their title. It is used by Jeremiah and Ezekiel, as well as by Daniel. It would be just as much sense to say that I was not an Englishman because I spoke of the French Chambers, because in England they were called Houses.

As regards the alleged words of later Hebraism and Chaldaism, I have no pretension to be learned in Hebrew certainly, but I have examined them — at least many of them; some are (as the use of zaba alleged by De Wette, is, I am quite sure) a blunder. Of another, which is an Aramaism, Gesenius says, an Aramaic form for the Hebrew one in a word much more common in Aramaean is less surprising. Others (as the use of then for if) I judge to be simply false interpretation. It has, I am satisfied, its usual Hebrew sense as the English gives it. Another, in which he follows Gesenius, alleging a Chaldaism, is entirely rejected by Rosenmuller, who gives the word as in the English as good Hebrew; and the LXX and Jerome so translate it: so Jarchi, one of the learned Rabbin. Hence I conclude, with Stuart of Andover, that the discrepancy has no solid basis of proof. The objections are wholly groundless.

The best Hebraists, nay, the objector, admit that the style is not that of the later Hebrew. De Wette will have it an imitation; Rosenmuller admits that the writer, who lived near the close of the Babylonish exile, personated some ancient prophet. He admits too, that all the latter part points to some glorious future restoration which the then restoration of Jerusalem in no way fulfilled. Only when Cyrus's decree came out he encouraged his compatriots by it. How little all this enters into the spirit of the prophet I need not say.

191 I will enter now into some examination of the last part, and shew their estimate of it to be as superficial as all the rest. I may mention that Gesenius treats it as an epistle to the Jews in exile. How then written in Babylon? They allege that the last chapters are a whole, and that the servant must be one throughout; and Isaiah 53 speaks of him. Bunsen alleges it is Jeremiah; Gesenius a personification of all the prophets.

W. But this is a deliberate denial of the authority of the apostles and New Testament, who quote the passage and apply it to Christ.

H. Do you fancy they trouble themselves about that? Not only the apostles, but the Lord, according to the evangelist, quotes their pseudo-Isaiah as a prophet (John 6: 45); Paul, Peter, John, all quote Isaiah 53, and that, too, as referring to Christ. But what are apostles to Neologists? They spoke according to their natural prejudices — you would not suppose the new school to have any.

W. But why do they call themselves Christians?

H. It is, I judge, in some respect a mercy. Habit, convenience, and, I trust, in many an instance, the restraint of conscience, where only the mind is led astray; but the Jewish journalist has, while exulting in their denial of Christianity, reproached them with their want of honesty.

But to proceed with Isaiah: — I shall shew you that the servant is not the same; that the portion is not one, though the parts compose a whole; and, though Christ be seen throughout, yet that (as I said before) Israel is first presented in one part, then in the next Christ takes Israel's place, and then He is the word of God to those that have ears to hear; and then the remnant in the last days take this place of servant.

The first part ends in Isaiah 48 with "There is no peace, saith Jehovah, to the wicked." In this, though Christ be named, Israel is distinctly brought forward as the servant, and the question of idolatry raised, which Babylon represents, and Israel is held guilty in respect of graven images, and not heeding God's word; but in the end full deliverance and blessing is promised after full chastisement, only distinguishing the wicked and the remnant.

192 In Isaiah 49 the second part begins; it ends in Isaiah 57, and again with, "There is no peace, saith my God, to the wicked."

Now, in Isaiah 40, Isaiah 48, though in the first comforts and promises Christ be named as the servant of Jehovah after the glory of Jehovah has been insisted on, yet when the prophet speaks of restoring Israel, and turns to their moral condition before it, they are looked at as the responsible servant of Jehovah, and His witnesses as the one only true God. "Ye are my witnesses, saith Jehovah, and my servants whom I have chosen." But Israel had been weary of Him, yet He would restore and bless them, and idolatry and Babylon would be judged.

Then Israel stands forth in Isaiah 49 as the chosen witness and servant before the Gentiles. Then, in verse 4, comes the charge, not of disobedience and idolatry, but of the rejection of Christ. He is the true servant, but has laboured in vain; the true vine, the true Son, but is rejected, and Israel guilty of that. But God would infallibly make good His promises; yet Israel would be divorced: "Wherefore when I came, was there no man? when I called, was there none to answer?" Then we have Christ's humiliation. And now Israel itself is called upon to hear the voice of Jehovah's servant, and the lot of each depends on this. (Isa. 50: 11.) Here they who were the witnesses and servant are called upon to hear the Servant. Such and such only might count on blessing; and then restoration is gone through in a beautiful progress from the distress of the humbled remnant to the full latter-day glory of Jerusalem. Then the Servant is exalted and extolled, and very high, sprinkles many nations: kings shall shut their mouths at Him; for that which they had not been told shall they see, and that which they had not heard they shall consider. Then comes the confession of the way they had received Him when He was there, and the declaration that, when they esteemed Him stricken and smitten of God and afflicted, it was really an expiation work, and with His stripes they were healed. The result is blessing, but through judgment, because of not only this but subsequent iniquity; but in the end healing: only no peace to the wicked. With this the second part closes. He then, in the third part, enters on a full controversy with Israel for their sins, and the extreme departure from God in the latter days, owned by the faithful in spirit; and then God interferes in judgment for His own name's sake, and the Redeemer comes to Zion — a passage quoted by Paul as yet to be fulfilled. This, in a certain sense, closes the part. The rest unfolds various subjects connected with the latter days. The glory and holiness of Jerusalem is depicted then in that day. Christ is introduced in a passage quoted by Himself, and passing from His first coming in humiliation to His second in judgment. We have the confession and intercession of the prophet in Israel's name in the last days; the answer of God, how He had had patience with Israel, and used their rejection to call the Gentiles, and He will judge the sins of Israel; but — and here we find the servants again — He will make a difference between His elect servants and the wicked nation. This is enlarged upon; the rejection of mere outward service in that day is shewn, and Jehovah, coming in judgment and vengeance to all flesh, is announced, but for the glory and blessing of these servants, the remnant of Israel. Thus we have Israel servant, faithless; and Christ servant. He is to be heard by the previous witnesses; now He is rejected. Then, at the close, those who hear His voice are in the place of servants, and inherit the promises to Israel, when Jehovah comes to judge all flesh. They tell us this must be one single servant! and, if we are to believe Baron Bunsen, and what Dr. Williams recommends as a masterly analysis, all this vast scope of prophecy, from a suffering Christ to a judged world, concerns Jeremiah.

193 W. It is difficult indeed to conceive anything so, I was going to say, imbecile. I really know not what word to use. That would not be a seemly one, I own.

H. Think of his sprinkling many nations, kings shutting their mouths at him, confounded, that is, at his being so extolled and so high — the poor man that was dragged down to Egypt and died there! For here it is the same servant: the chapters, as they insist to their own confusion, cannot be separated; Isaiah 52: 13 begins the strophe, so to speak. Gesenius is not quite so absurd; he takes the whole body of prophets personified, rejected as they were by the people; and adds, against De Wette and others, that whether we look at the language, or reflect on the universal expiatory sacrifices, and the habits of thought of Israel, and indeed all nations, we must see here reference to an expiatory work. But Christ and grace cannot be accepted, so perverse is the poor heart of man; the sufferings of the prophets are looked at by him as expiatory, and the means of Israel's deliverance — anything, provided it be not Christ. He adds that no man can doubt that the New Testament doctrine was founded on this. The poor unhappy apostles who did not know their own religion! And all this time has elapsed, deceived by the means of their teaching, and in the nineteenth century light has come in. Well might (not Tertullian alone but) John say, "That which was from the beginning;" and "Let that therefore abide in you which ye heard from the beginning: if that which ye have heard from the beginning abide in you, ye also shall abide in the Son and in the Father." 1 John 1. And Paul, that we should continue in what we have learned, knowing of whom we have learned it, and that the scriptures can make us wise unto salvation. 2 Tim. 3: 15. And again, John — "He that is of God heareth us; and he that is not of God heareth not us: hereby know we the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error." I have heard the apostles, I have heard them quoting this passage of Christ; and I know the SPIRIT OF ERROR in Dr. Williams.

194 There is another point I would notice here. The sufferings of Christ are no doubt spoken of in Isaiah 53. The prophets were animated by the Spirit of Christ, Himself the great and perfect Prophet; and for the testimony of the word they, as He, were rejected and suffered: their report was not more received than His as the Great Prophet. So far there is a very important and interesting analogy. But that is not the chief point here. The fact is recognized, as in Psalm 22 and Isaiah 50; but it is only the occasion here of the people's recognition of something else. "We hid our faces from him." But what was the secret of this? "Surely he hath borne our griefs and carried our sorrows," as faithful in the midst of their unfaithfulness. In a measure a prophet could say that, yea, or a Christian could say it too in a fuller way. "Therefore I endure all things," says the apostle, "for the elect's sake."

But now we come to another point. "Yet we did esteem him stricken, smitten of God, and afflicted. But he was wounded for our transgressions, he was bruised for our iniquities; the chastisement of our peace was upon him, and with his stripes we are healed. All we like sheep have gone astray, we have turned every one to his own way; and Jehovah hath laid on him the iniquity of us all . . . for the transgression of my people was he stricken . . . it pleased Jehovah to bruise him, he hath put him to grief: when thou shalt make his soul an offering for sin, he shall see his seed . . . and the pleasure of Jehovah shall prosper in his hand. He shall see of the travail of his soul and shall be satisfied; by his knowledge shall my righteous servant instruct many in righteousness [so I translate the hiphil here], and he shall bear their iniquities . . . because he poured out his soul unto death, and was numbered with the transgressors, and he bare the sin of many, and made intercession for the transgressors." Isa. 53. Now none can read the chapter without seeing that, as Gesenius admits, expiatory suffering is the point insisted on — a principle of interpretation evident, from the terms of the passage, as being the point. They thought Him rejected of God as well as man; but He was really bearing their iniquities. This is the special force of the chapter, confirmed by the general conviction of the Jews on the subject of expiation, and of every nation under heaven.

195 Now what I note this now for is, that this point is (as a Christian can easily conceive) wholly omitted in the "masterly analysis." Not one word of it has Dr. Williams to produce from Bunsen, naturally enough. The pious and devoted prophet, though really representing Christ as a prophet, was far enough from pretending to be a sacrifice. But the folly of this interpretation is yet more evident, because, if our Isaiah prophesied at the end of the exile, Jeremiah was dead and gone; and that which is clearly future at the end can have no application to him. To apply it to a series of prophets is absurd; with any application to Israel as a people, the common modern Jewish idea, it is in contradiction. They are confessing their having misconceived the position of the sufferer, and that he suffered for their sins. No, nothing can be clearer than the prophecy. The servant who was to be exalted, and extolled, and very high, so that kings should shut their mouths, and he sprinkle many nations, was to be rejected by the Jews and of men, but make his soul an offering for sin, and then be highly exalted. The terms of the passage, its place in the prophecy, all give it its true and evident character, and enable us to understand why the apostles (that is, the same Spirit that dictated it) use it (I do not exactly say found their doctrine on it, for both it and their doctrine are founded on the fact) to confirm and illustrate the doctrine of the sufferings of the blessed Saviour. (Compare Psalm 22.)

W. It is as clear as can possibly be. I bless God for it. And indeed the attacks of enemies — and able enemies, such as Gesenius and De Wette, and surely of Dr. Bunsen and Dr. Williams — only prove their impotency in attempting to assail this foundation doctrine of Christianity and basis of all holy peace, that Christ is a propitiation for our sins.

196 H. And see the sad perversions to which it leads. "Israel," Dr. Williams tells us, "would be acknowledged, as in some sense still a Messiah (for in spite of Baron Bunsen he prefers really the perversion of Jewish unbelief to Christianity), having borne centuries of reproach through the sin of the nations; but the Saviour . . . would be recognized as having eminently the unction of a prophet whose words die not, of a priest in a temple not made with hands, and of a king in the realm of thought delivering his people from a bondage of moral evil, worse than Egypt or Babylon." Israel, then, is the Messiah who suffered for I do not know what through the wickedness of the Gentiles; and Christ a king in the realm of thought to deliver us from moral evil. It might be rather said, if we are to take the new school, a Saviour from the bondage of apostolic Christianity, for this seems the greatest evil they see. "The vast majority of prophecies require some such rendering in order to christianize them," and "our Isaiah" too. " Isaiah 53, which had been thought exceptional, is shewn to harmonize with a general principle." What is meant by christianizing the prophecies I do not know, as the prophets, they say, were only persons warning or arousing Jews by pretended prophecies (denouncing their compeers), compiled when the circumstances were present; but I take note that it is recognized that the vast majority of prophecies require some such rendering to reduce them to the measure of the new school. I believe it. Chapter 53 is a specimen of this rendering. The Jews are Messiah in a sense, and Christ has not suffered for sins, the Just for the unjust. He is a Prophet, a Priest without a sacrifice, and a deliverer from moral evil as King. The apostolic view of Christianity, the Christianity of the founders of the religion, has all to be corrected. It requires it. There is no propitiation, no sacrifice. All its great traits, as we learn it from the New Testament, are a mistake. How happy that there are some who understand a religion better than those who founded it!

I turn to Psalm 2. "If he would follow our version in rendering Psalm 2 'kiss the Son;' he knows that Hebrew idiom convinced even Jerome the true meaning was worship purely." This statement is false. He admits nescu (I quote) means "kiss," and says, as kissing the hand had the sense, as in Job, of worshipping, he has given the sense, not the letter. As to "Bar," he acknowledges he had (in his "Commentariolis," which are now lost) translated it "kiss the Son," contrary to the old Italic, which had translated it "learn discipline" — probably an interpretation, and which is now found in the Vulgate, which has preserved the old Italic psalms after the LXX, as the English Prayer Book the old version.

197 Ruffinus attacked him for now giving this up, and saying, Adore purely. He replies: "Bar signifies different things — Son, as Bar-jesus, etc., wheat, a handful of ears of corn, elect, and purely. What, then, have I sinned if I have translated a doubtful word with differing interpretations, and, having said in my notes, where there was the liberty of explanation, 'adore the Son' — in the body itself, lest I might seem a violent interpreter, and give occasion to Jewish calumnies, should have said 'adore purely,' or 'in an elect way' (electe) as Aquila and Symmachus have translated? How does it hurt their ecclesiastical faith, if the reader should be taught in how many ways amongst the Jews one little verse can be explained?"

The reader will judge how far Hebrew idiom convinced even Jerome. He would not force it all one way to avoid Jewish calumnies, and so has given it several; in his own notes, when he was free, "kiss the Son;" in the text, "adore purely." Jerome alone gives, "kiss the Son," in Latin, as also "adore purely." The Vulgate "learn discipline," following the LXX (as did the Italic or old Latin), was used in the christian world, save in the Syriac translation, which, as a kindred language, followed the Hebrew closely, and reads, "kiss the Son." The Hebrew is no doubt obscure. But that the Hebrew idiom obliges to read, "adore purely," is anything but just. De Wette, a first-rate Hebraist and extreme rationalist (though it seems, thank God, drawing yearly closer to Christ as he grew older, yet the freest of the free as to doctrine), in his otherwise very beautiful though somewhat affected translation, gives, "kiss the Son." Rosenmuller declares that nashak is never used by itself for "adore" or "venerate." Hengstenberg, a Corypheus against rationalists, translates it, "kiss the Son," and quotes Gesenius, Winer, and Hitzig for the same; Venema the same, referring to the sense of elect in Bar, and giving "elect son." In the main, Rosenmüller approves, quoting many others. He translates "give the kiss of veneration to so great a King." Symmachus gives "purely." I am not aware of others (Aquila, I suppose, electe). The Septuagint translation, which is also the Chaldee, is a kind of interpretation like Rosenmüller's, and gives the sense. Jews avoided the term "Son," and so Neologists. "Bar" is more Aramaean; but Gesenius admits Hebrew tends to Aramaean in poetry. Vaihinger gives "kiss the Son." Hupfeld has it like Jerome, admitting that Gesenius, De Wette, Hengstenberg, that is, the ablest modern Hebraists, and most moderns, admit this — the Son — to be right. So much for the insinuation of Hebrew idiom convincing Jerome; and, if Hebrew idiom, it should, of course, convince others; whereas all the ablest Hebraists translate it, "kiss the Son." I repeat, never trust the facts of Neologians.

198 I now turn to Psalm 22: 17. He finds, in the most ancient Hebrew reading, "like a lion." Now that there are difficulties of interpretation or readings in Hebrew no one doubts. Christianity is in no way concerned in this phrase. It is not quoted in the New Testament. The reason for reading it as it is in the English translation is that the ancient Jews insist it is so in the old Hebrew. It is no question of rationalism. The most High Church orthodox writers take it as meaning "a lion." The form is peculiar. There is the same in Isaiah, where it is translated, "as a lion;" but the ancient Jewish writers insist that it is not to be read so here. The LXX (a century and a half, say, before our Lord) translates it, "they pierced my hands and my feet:" so the Vulgate, so the Syriac in Walton; Montanus, De Wette, Hengstenberg, and many, "as a lion." Of the ancients, the Chaldee Targum only has "as a lion," and (according to De Rossi, the best authority) is of small authority, and founded on bad manuscripts. He insists on the manuscripts of the very learned critic of the Jews, Ben Chaiim, and the Masora, that "they pierced" is right; Rosenmuller prefers "they bound."

It is a question of reading. Cahari is, "as a lion;" most probably, though not certainly, caharu is, "they pierced;" and the difference in Hebrew is very slight. (Caru is, "they bound." Now, as all the ancient translations give "they pierced," the Masora confirms, and one of the most critical Jewish doctors approves, pleading his own good Jewish manuscripts; and the use of the text by the fathers may have induced the Jews to tamper with the text by a change hardly perceptible; and as the pointing is uncertain, there is nothing so sure in the matter. I avow I am disposed to think "pierced" right. What is the meaning of "the assembly of the wicked surrounded me, as a lion my hands and my feet?" I do not see much sense in it. What is most against "pierced," though it proves nothing, is that it is never referred to in the New Testament, whereas other parts of the Psalms are. However, my own conviction is that "they pierced" is right.

199 The difficulties and labour of those who take "as a lion" as the true reading, in making any sense of it, shew that it is no natural reading. Its place in the Psalm makes it inappropriate. It is not "the strength of bulls and lions" that is here spoken of (that is an earlier stage of the speaker's sorrow), but the "shamelessness of dogs." It is an interpretation of what is ascribed to the dogs. They "compass" him — so the wicked: then to jump to a lion, who does not compass people at all, is out of place. Next, how "compass his hands and feet?" What does this mean? We have had the lion, but then it was only "gaping with the mouth," and in place; here he is going on with personal details. All tends, I think, to shew the ancient interpreters were right, had they cahari, or caharee, or caharu. Venema reads "as a lion," but connects "my hands and my feet" with "I can count" — an additional proof of the difficulties of those who reject the ancient versions. That it is the most ancient Hebrew reading is anything but proved; that it is the common modern one is true. The versions have so far more authority in the Old Testament, that no Hebrew manuscript is so old by many centuries as the oldest of the New.

In any case, though the apostles have quoted the Psalm as a prophecy of Christ, Dr. Williams is sure they are wrong. "The staring monsters are intended by whom Israel is surrounded and torn." Only read the psalm through — the declaring God's name to his brethren, and "in the midst of the church will I praise thee;" compare this with John 20, and you will see how impossible it is to apply it to Israel. But the greatness of the scope of divine thought, the moment Christ and redemption is the centre, these men seem incapable of.

I will give you a little sketch of the Psalms preceding 22, which will lead us to see how specially it applies to Messiah. That the whole book of Psalms is in methodical order I cannot doubt, though we cannot enter on it now. Psalm 1 gives the righteous Jew, the remnant contrasted with the wicked; Psalm 2, Christ as King in Zion, according to the decree of God, and owned Son; the nations and rulers raging against Him, but warned; then, Christ being rejected of men, the righteous are in trial, instead of the government of God securing their present blessing, as in Psalm 1. But in Psalm 8 Christ has a wider character than in Psalm 2. He is Son of man, not Son of David, and all things are put under Him, and Jehovah's name is excellent in all the earth. Thus the ways of God with earth are shewn. Psalm 9 and Psalm 10 enter into the details of Israel's condition in the land in the last days, and their deliverance. Psalms 11-15 go through this, and the feelings it produces, in various ways; hence they become a comfort in any trial. In Psalm 16, Christ first takes, in the most exquisite and deeply instructive way, His place among the excellent of the earth: it shews the path of life through death; and, as His trust was in Jehovah, Jehovah's presence was His joy as man. Psalm 17 treats the subject, not of confidence, but of righteousness; and here we get glory, and what I may call reward, more than joy. Psalm 18, I have no doubt, looks at the suffering of Christ as the centre of all God's ways from Egypt to Messiah's kingdom.

200 I now come to the Psalms I had immediately in mind. In Psalm 19 we have two testimonies of God — the creation (the heavens), and the law. In Psalm 20 the true faithful Witness is prophetically viewed as rejected by men, and in sorrows. In Psalm 21, which directly answers to it, having cried for life, He is exalted, as man, to everlasting glory, and His hands find out His enemies. This was outward government and dealing. He had suffered from man imagining devices against Him; and when they took the character of enemies, they were judged. But (Ps. 22) Christ did not suffer from man only: bulls did not close Him in. Heartless, shameless dogs then surrounded Him; and He looked, not only to man to have compassion on Him, and there was none — not one that could watch one hour; He looked to God, and was forsaken there. But suffering from God was avenging, not to be avenged; hence, when this is passed, all is grace, widening out in blessing. He declares His name to His brethren, as He did in John 20, there first distinctly calling them brethren, and leads the praises of the Church He has gathered; then brings in all Israel; then all the ends of the world remember themselves, and turn to Jehovah; and then the seed born in this time of blessing learn the great truth, to chant it with others, that He hath done this. It is evident to me there is progress in the bulls and the dogs; the first refers to mere violence, leading Him to the cross; the other to men's conduct when He was there. But the witness of creation, law, and Messiah, rejected of men, and He glorified and judging; and then His being forsaken of God, the result of which was not judgment (for He was bearing it), but grace, unmingled grace, makes the true import of the Psalm most clear.

Could we dwell upon it, and study the grace of Christ in it, the place He gives us in it — what the declaring the Father's name was (see John 20), and the full import of this consequent on redemption, and the place He then takes in our midst, when redemption is accomplished, to lead our praises as being in, and having placed us in, the same perfect joy — it would shew the extraordinary beauty of this psalm as applied to Christ. We may take the words of His lips upon the cross to shew us He was not a stranger to it. Now, I can only use the series as marking the place Christ has in it, when God after all did not despise nor abhor the affliction of the afflicted, and when atonement was made for sin.

201 I do not believe that "I have called my son out of Egypt" is a mere accommodation. It is an example of the universal principle of the substitution of Christ the true Vine, the Servant, for the old vine, the servant. He began all anew as the stock for Israel, as He did for man.

That Isaiah 9 may be translated "the father of the age to come" may be alleged. No Christian thinks of making Christ in the proper sense the Father. El Gibbor, it may be disputed, is "the strong and mighty one." Let us even suppose it is so, although it be undoubtedly contrary to the soundest criticism: one thing is certain — it is Christ then owned by the Jews after Jehovah has hid His face from them, and the law has been sealed among His disciples only, and Israel has gone through depths of misery, and, finally, the judgment by fire. Then Israel will own the child born as all this to them. It is a divinely given prophecy of Messiah. As to Isaiah 7: 16, Dr. Williams may "not listen," but his judgment will not now have much weight with a serious and critical mind. I fully believe it to be a prophecy of Christ, as Matthew has declared it. The prophecy goes on to the passage already referred to (Isa. 9: 7); and unequivocally gives all Israel's history till the time of rest and glory, including Christ's "first and second coming." The occasion of this germinant prophecy was the attack of Rezin and Pekah. But the children are symbolical children from their names — "the remnant shall return," and "making speed to the spoil, he hasteneth the prey." So the then circumstances, in which confederacy was sought with the Assyrian, are used as a peg to hang the exhortation to look to Jehovah, and so introduce Christ's first coming, and its effects on his rejection, and thereby Israel's. Jehovah would be a stone of stumbling, and have disciples and children, and wait in this character of the faithful one in Israel on Jehovah. The safety was in Immanuel.

202 Now the wickedness of the house of David was the ruin of the last prop of Israel responsible to God, and thereon, as a stay to the faith of the remnant and all the promises, the virgin's Seed is promised. This is said to be Hezekiah. Now the application of the whole to Hezekiah only shews the utmost narrowness of spirit. It is absurd to think that all God's counsels end in a Jewish king who, after all, though blessed, wrought no great deliverance. The end of the prophecy cannot apply to him; he had no disciples, he was not the father of an age. But, farther, a little critical enquiry shews it could not be Hezekiah at all. Hezekiah was twenty-five years old when he began to reign. Ahaz reigned sixteen years; consequently Hezekiah was born some eight or nine years before Ahaz began to reign; consequently there could not be a promise of his birth after Ahaz was reigning. So that the sign so solemnly given when the last hope of Israel failed in the apostasy of the house of David (for such it was in Ahaz) the sign that the Lord Himself interferes to give, calling him, "God with us," means that one (no one knows who), who till then had been a virgin, should bear a son. It certainly is not Hezekiah. Is it not evident that the Spirit of God is looking out to some greater deliverer, who should indeed be Immanuel? Even the learned Jewish Rabbin, Jarchi, &c., have given up the foolish attempt to apply it to Hezekiah. Since that they and other opposers of Christianity have been at their wits' end, seeking how to make a sign out of some younger wife of Ahaz's having a son at the epoch of the prophecy.

Now if you examine the prophecy (or pretended prophecy, for we are to assume nothing), you will find in symbolical and mysterious language the whole scene of Jewish history in connection with Messiah, and the state of the nation to the end when glory and deliverance comes to it. The main features are depicted in these children, one being already born, all bearing (as is usual in prophecy, and indeed in history) names indicative of the events they represent — Shear-Jashub, Immanuel, Maher-shalalhashbaz — the remnant of Israel and its restoration; God with the people, represented by this child; and the inroad of the Assyrian, the universal expression of the enemy of the latter day. The history of the people, as we have seen, is continued from Ahaz to the glorious time of Messiah. The occasion was this: — the people despised the promises to the house of David — despised the waters of Shiloah, and, trusting in human strength, cried out for a confederacy. The house of David itself, despising the promises, sought help by confederacy with the Assyrian, and removed the altar of Jehovah, putting a heathen altar in its place in the temple. In these circumstances, the prophet, or Isaiah giving himself for a prophet, unfolds the history of Israel. Already he owns a remnant only which shall be restored, for he sees all ruined. He goes with Shear-Jashub to the king. The king refuses the encouragement of an offered sign from Jehovah. He was too wise a politician and lover of arts to have faith in Jehovah. Then Immanuel is promised to Israel, born of the virgin; but the land was to be desolate. Next, the latter-day circumstances are entered on. The Assyrian comes up (prefigured by near approaching circumstances, which are almost always, perhaps always, the occasion of latter-day predictions); but the land is Immanuel's. The Assyrian overflows all up to the head, but cannot, so to say, drown altogether; for Immanuel — God is with them. Next, the detail of the history is brought out, the people's history. The prophet is warned not to trust in confederacies, but in Jehovah the refuge of the remnant; that Jehovah, the sanctuary of those that trust in Him, would be a stumbling-stone to the mass of the people, but the law and testimony would be sealed and made good among the remnant, who are styled His disciples and His children, and are tokens to both houses of Israel that Jehovah would hide His face from the house of Israel (all this we know has taken place), that the remnant taught by Christ would wait for Him. The result would be for the nation (and this is the second part of the inward history) a time of unparalleled distress and darkness partially fulfilled but not complete, a time of darkness and oppression, leading them to rage and blasphemy. But another element was in the midst of this. Light would be there when all was the shadow of death. This would be in Galilee, not in Jerusalem; the result of this would be multiplying the nation, increasing its joy, breaking men's yoke from its neck by judgment of fire (compare Isaiah 66); for the Mighty One, the Child born to them, the Immanuel, the establisher of peace, was now owned and known by them in a kingdom never to be subverted, on the throne of David, a kingdom of peace and blessing.

203 Hence, Matthew, citing this prophecy, brings Jesus into Galilee, and at the close, with the true remnant, His disciples. He meets them there after His resurrection, no reference being made to the ascension, linking His life and resurrection on to future Jewish hopes and despised Galilean remembrances. The ascension took place from Bethany, the secret home of Christ, when the nation rejected Him.

204 W. And what do the Neologists reply to this remarkable scheme or outline of divine history, more deeply and fully known by its mysterious and symbolic character? That it gives itself for a prophecy up to the last days is clear; and the two sons of the prophet being prophetical, the third would be naturally thought so too.

H. Surely: only the prophet is in the circumstances, and with the people, and they are connected with him; but the virgin's Son is the intervention of God, God with us, and therefore not the prophets. Yet when He is seen on earth as a prophet (for so He was) He takes the prophetic place, and says, personified by the prophet, "I and the children which God hath given me." You remember the Epistle to the Hebrews quotes this as a proof of Christ's taking human nature, most rightly, as we see here. The Jews own Him, too, as a child born to them in the end, but as Immanuel withal. Verse 13 — the stone of stumbling — is also quoted by Peter and by Paul, and directly referred to, as applying to Himself, by the Lord, in view of the then state of the Jews as a nation, and predicting yet more awful consequences when He should fall upon them; for the rejected stone was to be the head of the corner. The rationalists insist, in reply, on the Fathers quoting it as a proof of the prophetic virginity of Mary, and urge that, had it been so, the Hebrew would be bethula, not alma, which does not imply necessarily that state.

W. But are you serious? Surely there must be something more.

H. There is, of course, that absolutely conclusive argument — there cannot be a prophecy.

W. Yes; but that is nonsense, because it is assuming what is to be proved, and denying all revelation at once. If God can speak, He can reveal.

H. Well, I cannot help its being nonsense: it is all they have to say. Only you may remark how they labour in vain by seeking to shew what it can be. Gesenius holds it for the prophetess-wife. So Jarchi and Aben Ezra. But Gesenius admits the difficulty of calling her ha alma, because there was a son, Shearjashub. So it is another wife. But then Kimchi answers, But the land is Immanuel's land. How could Isaiah call the kingdom his second wife's baby's land? and, I may add, his second wife's baby — "God with us?" So he says it must be a new wife of Ahaz. But then we stumble upon Hezekiah again, because it was his land in this sense. He was a kind of figure of Christ, as son of David, before whom the Assyrian fell. But then he could not be the person alluded to here; he was born some eight or nine years before Ahaz was king, and was now some twelve or thirteen years old. Evidently the same child is the glorious one of Isaiah 9.

205 But, further, Rosenmüller has shewn that the argument as to alma is unfounded, and that the scripture use of it is a virgin, and nothing else. And would it not be singular, as he adds, to call Ahaz's wife thus, and ha alma, the virgin? Remark, too, that not only Christians, i.e., the New Testament, distinctly apply this passage to Christ, but the effect was universal. The Jews expected a Messiah in the house of David, who would so deliver them and have universal rule; the Gentiles, too, as Tacitus witnesses of the expectation of the whole of the East, and as Virgil has sung, where ever he found the materials of his extraordinary ode to Pollio: —

"Ultima Cumoei venit jam carminis aetas;

Magnus ab integro soeclorum nascitur ordo.

Jam redit et virgo; redeunt Saturnia regna;

Jam nova progenies coelo dimittitur alto.

Tu modo nascenti puero, quo ferrea primum,

Desinit ac toto surgit gens aurea mundo,

Casta, fave, Lucina."

Of course, in the last phrase we find the heathen, as in the whole eclogue, the courtly poet.

It is fair to add that Rosenmüller, though a rationalist, admits fully the usual sense of the passage; adding, like a rationalist, but which is confirmatory of the Hebrew truth of the passage in Isaiah: "The fact that the expectations held out by the prophet of speedy deliverance were not fulfilled should not make us deny that the prophet thought about that. He refers to the then universal expectations of a Messianic deliverer (referred to as a hope in every deep distress), confirmed by the language of Micah, a contemporary prophet." He admits, strange to say, that it predicted an incarnation (only as just coming), because one who was to be "God with them" was to be born of a virgin. He says it is evident from Matthew 1: 22, 23, that the Jews at the time of Christ so interpreted it. Not believing in inspiration they are forced to admit the facts. The statement that the word alma was not a virgin, but simply a young woman, comes from the Jews, after Christ, attempting to reject the facts of Christianity, as may be seen in Justin's dialogue with Trypho. I say after Christ, because the LXX give "the virgin," ἡ παρθένος λήψσται, and Aquila and Symmachus' translations made after Christianity, the first to meet the feeling of the Jews, and the effect of the argument drawn from the LXX, give νεᾶνις, a young woman.

206 W. I think what you have stated proves the flippancy of their objections. If Dr. Williams will not hear, what I have heard both shews to me the wide bearing of prophetic testimony, and how it hangs together as a whole — how it connects itself with present circumstances, was to be an encouragement to faith then, and a revelation to future ages — sometimes symbolical and mysterious, so as to comprise immense facts in a few words, and yet so place them in the whole scheme as to give them a plan of which Christianity is the sure, I may say necessary, interpreter. Thus Rosenmüller is so far right, that there was present encouragement; and faith met even its present reward in the ruin of Sennacherib; but, had he examined, he would have found at the same time, in the hortatory language and internal history of the nation from verse 12 to the end, to which you have referred, the evident ruin and rejection of Israel, in the rejection of Christ appearing as prophet, and having disciples, but not the nation from which Jehovah hides His face.

H. It is quite just, and you will find in this part of the prophet an unfolding of all the great principles of God's dealings. After four chapters of preface, in Isaiah 5 the prophet (for now I shall call him so) shews the judgment of Israel for its failure in respect of its first given blessings. In Isaiah 6 it is judged in respect of the coming glory of Messiah-Jehovah, but a remnant is preserved: a passage quoted in the Gospels and by Paul, as fulfilled in the blinding of the people as a people, which we know to be true (though these infidels would only make it the Gentiles' sin, not the Jews', and the Gentiles have sinned), but with an answer of peace, after judgment, to the inquiry of faith counting on Jehovah's faithfulness to promise, and saying, "How long?" Then the special prophecy as to the house of David and Christ, and the remnant, and the inroad of the latter days, and the delivering judgment and glory, which we have just considered. Then he takes up their history from Rezin and Pekah to the end, or Assyrian final invasion. But this is linked to the judgment of chapter 5 by the words, "For all this his anger is not turned away, but his hand is stretched out still;" repeated in Isaiah 9: 12, 21; Isaiah 10: 4. And as the Assyrian was the last enemy from without (from Babylon on they were captives, and the temple burnt, or under the Gentile monarchies), it is said, on the occasion of his destruction, "For yet a very little while and the indignation shall cease, and mine anger in their destruction" (Isa. 10: 25); for he was the rod of God's anger, and the staff in his hand was God's indignation. Then (Isa. 11, 12) we have Messiah, and the results of His coming, the rod of the stem of Jesse. The word "indignation" becomes technical in after prophecy for the later sorrows of the Jews, as in Daniel; and the expression in verse 22, "the consumption decreed," very definitely so, for the special dealings of God in the last days.

207 And, remark, this history of Israel, and the outward connection of Christ with the people, is never quoted in the New Testament; while the special dealings of God in connection with the revelation of Jehovah in Isaiah 6, Isaiah 7, and Isaiah 8, are largely and repeatedly quoted — a fresh confirmation how one divine mind runs through all scripture.

W. I enjoy your unfoldings of scripture more than your controversy; still I do not deny that this is useful and called for. Can you refer me to the texts where the expressions you call technical are used?

H. I am sure I enjoy them, at any rate, much more. I have hesitated as to whether any controversy was to be desired. But your own state of mind, though fully believing the truth of the divine record, and of many others, where unbelief lies floating, so to speak, has made me think it might be useful. I will refer to some of the texts; but if they did not refer to the same epoch, they would not have the same force they have, which you must note. As to "indignation," Daniel 8: 19; Daniel 11: 36: and as to "consumption decreed," Isaiah 28: 22, and Daniel 9: 27. I little doubt the Lord refers to this when He speaks of the shortening of these days in Matthew 24.

W. I thank you; I shall examine them. They not only connect the two prophets, but, if I understand their bearing, throw light on the whole nature of this last period, so often referred to in scripture. I think, by the by, this constant reference to the last days; to a special time, at the close of trial, judgments, and deliverance at the end, makes the rationalistic system of application to present events, or mere Bunsenian second-sight, utterly untenable. It was in all the prophecies, from the Pentateuch on, a distinct object held out — a system of divine government before all their minds — a system which (be it false prophecy, which would be, I think, incredible in itself, or true) at any rate proves the falseness of the rationalist view. But we have been led, I think, to Daniel.

208 H. I entirely agree with you. It is evidently a whole; the prophetic scheme connecting itself, of course, with present warning and circumstances, but in most various parts and divers manners, all bearing on one great delivering intervention, preceded by trials. We have the sorrows and joys of it in the Psalms, and the encouragement and warnings of it in prophets, Christ's connection with the remnant in rejection or in deliverance in both Psalms and prophets, but evidently one great moral scheme. And this is a proof of its truth, because it shews that it is not the fruit of individual mind, but of one divine mind; for it is not copying or carrying on a scheme one from another (there is only one such case of Micah and Isaiah), nor flattering the people. They fit into a whole, but do not apply to one another.

But we will turn to Daniel. The German critics in general have given him up, but we must enquire why. It is become an axiom, we are told. But German and rationalist axioms have not much hold on my mind. We will get rid of evidently false grounds of judgment to begin with. "The absence of any mention of it by the son of Sirach strikingly confirms their view of its origin" — that of a patriot bard using Daniel's name in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. Now, according to the justest criticism, all the twelve minor prophets are omitted too, though even the fact of Daniel's being in the Hagiographa would account for its not being named there is only natural. But the connection of the phrase in Greek, as to the sense, proves, I think, the introduction of the twelve minor prophets to be an interpolation, and an unskilful one. Daniel's being by the Tigris, if it proves anything, proves the genuineness of the book, as a Jew would certainly have thought of the Euphrates, the great river, not of one all but unknown and unmentioned. But it really proves nothing, because it was in the third year of Cyrus, when Daniel had left Babylon, and was at Shushan and other places. The remark of Dr. Williams, "If the scene had been Babylon under Darius, the river must have been Euphrates," has no meaning. There is question neither of Darius nor of Babylon. He cannot have simply looked at the chapter. These and similar remarks we may leave as worthless.

209 The real objection to Daniel is, that prophecies and visions are impossible. Thus De Wette. It appears that Daniel is not the author of this book "from its legendary contents. It is full of improbabilities." "The events of a distant future . . . are related with great distinctness and accuracy, even with the addition of the dates. This was evidently done after the events." Now it is perfectly evident that this is no argument. It is simply saying, as we have seen before, there can be no prophet, no revelation; therefore Daniel is not one, and this is not a revelation, but composed after the event! This can have no force; it is a mere petitio principii, a begging the question. But a statement is made connected with it, and repeated by all the rationalists, that the alleged prophet stops at Antiochus Epiphanes. This is simply false. He continues (after a most important reference to the state of the Jews, and a most accurate one from the time of the Maccabees) a very detailed account of the state of Palestine in connection with the kings of north and south on to the end, where Daniel was to stand in his lot at the end of days. You have only to read Daniel 11: 30 to end, and Daniel 12 to convince you of it. If their theory be true, Daniel must write the book when he stands in his lot; and the details are quite as full at the end, if not more so, than in the previous part. This is all entirely unfounded.

Along with this, there is an effort to make the account of the empires suit the fact of Daniel living in Antiochus Epiphanes' time. If so, he could not speak of the Romans, and his four monarchies must end with the Grecian. Thus with Bunsen, the lion is Assyrian, the bear Babylonian, the leopard Persian, the fourth beast Alexander. Now this is too bad. Not a trace of Nineveh existed even when the true Daniel was in Babylon, and it was wholly inconsistent, if a patriot forgery, to place him there. Nineveh had not taken Judah captive; the thought is contrary to all probability; but he did see the wings of Babylon plucked, and a tame heart given it.

The attempt to make the last beast Alexander — that is, the beast with seven heads and ten horns — is arbitrary and without the smallest apparent ground. It is simply impossible that Daniel could so describe the Grecian empire, if he lived in the time of Antiochus. Alexander's empire had never seven heads and ten horns. It had four, as the leopard is spoken of here; and more precisely (as in the following chapter is expressly said of the Grecian kingdom) four notable horns, and out of one of them Antiochus Epiphanes, it is declared, was to come. The previous one to this is declared to be Media and Persia.

210 All these statements are unworthy, I must say, of honest men. The previous attempt was to make Media one empire and Persia another, and so end with Alexander. This broke down because the prophet declares he reckons them one. "The ram with two horns are the kings of Media and Persia." What was to be done? Baron Bunsen's imagination sets at work, and the Assyrian empire is dragged in before. But this is going farther and faring worse; because, besides the utter improbability already noticed, here are clearly only four great empires contemplated, and we have another figure of them — the statue, where the head of gold is Nebuchadnezzar; and we find the ten kings in another form in the ten toes. They are really to be pitied in their reasonings; their object cannot here be alleged to be truth, but at all cost to prove Daniel is no prophet — that there can be no revelation.

W. Well, it is pitiable and pitiful, because there is no honest nobleness of truth in it. No one can read Daniel, be he true or false, and not see that the Babylonish empire is the starting point in his mind. The rest follows necessarily. Have they no other grounds?

H. The first chapter clearly shews where the starting-point of all his prophecies is, the basis of the scheme which the book carries out to the final deliverance of the Jews. But then, if this be so, he is a prophet, and all their system is false. Their anxiety betrays them.

Besides, Daniel 9 ("Messiah is to be cut off and to have nothing," for this is the force of it) is clearly a prophecy. How they make this apply to the time of Antiochus Epiphanes I am at a loss to understand. It was poor patriotic encouragement to tell them that their Messiah, their Prince, would be there in a year and three months, be cut off, and get nothing, and then war and desolations. And the date is the decree to restore and rebuild Jerusalem. De Wette says Daniel extends Jeremiah's seventy years to seventy weeks of years, so as to include Antiochus Epiphanes. But he admits the golden head and first beast are the Babylonian empire. Now, "include Antiochus Epiphanes" is rather vague. If we take the decree of Cyrus, which is very unlikely, it runs on to one hundred and twenty years beyond Antiochus Epiphanes, and, remark, beyond the existence of the Syrian monarchy. Cyrus took Babylon in 538 (Fynes Clinton). The Seleucidae ceased to reign in 65. But the 490 years end 48 years before Christ, so that they reach on to 17 years after the close of the Syrian monarchy. This is the most favourable case to De Wette. Yet it runs into the Roman power. If we take other decrees to be referred to, as surely they are, the prophecy runs on to the full-blown Roman empire. Why, then, "to include Antiochus Epiphanes?" But you will never find details fairly examined and compared. De Wette settles it in a much more suggestive way. It was a patriot bard; like many of our own, says Dr. Williams, who borrowed Daniel's name for himself, and then, being naturally afraid to speak of Antiochus Epiphanes, openly borrowed the names of Nebuchadnezzar and Belshazzar to depict him; and, as Antiochus Epiphanes, from his conduct, was called Antiochus Epimanes, or madman, bethought himself of putting Nebuchadnezzar to eat grass for seven years!

211 W. Dear! on what principle do they apply the kingdoms? Must not the image harmonize?

H. That is not it at all. Daniel 7 cannot go lower than Antiochus Epiphanes; for you know the bard lived then, and hence you must make the others harmonize with that.

W. But do they really settle it in that sort of way?

H. That is the exact conclusion of De Wette. Because, till the new idea of Nineveh of Baron Bunsen, all begin with Babylon, as Daniel does; but then, to make four empires down to Antiochus Epiphanes is a torture.

W. But the other proofs of the epoch of Daniel's prophesying?

H. There are Greek words used for instruments of music. As to this, De Wette himself admits that it is possible that Greek instruments with these names may have been known to the Babylonians at this time. But a fuller enquiry into and deeper knowledge of languages, of which recent study has made almost a new science, has shewn that, not only does this attempt to impeach the genuineness of Daniel, from the use of Greek words, wholly fail, but the facts go to prove the genuineness. At the utmost, two names of instruments (which, if they came from Greece, would naturally keep their names) can be traced to Greek words. The others belong to that class of languages from which Greek proceeds — the Aryan, or Indo-European, known now through Sanscrit and Zend. These words belonged to the East, and, save one, are not found where Greek and Aramaean were thrown together in the time of Antiochus Epiphanes. The foreign words are, many of them, inexplicable from Greek, but are explicable from the sacred language of the Aryans, who were the priestly caste in Babylon, and under Cyrus. As I have said, when Aramaean was Hellenized, these words disappeared. The force of this is evident.

212 It is alleged, too, that the Chaldee and Hebrew are corrupt — so say De Wette and Dr. Williams. I consult other authorities, and find the character of the Hebrew bears the closest affinity to that of Ezekiel and Habakkuk, who lived near his time; but it is less marked by peculiar corruptions than that of Ezra. The Aramaean also, like that of Ezra, is also of an earlier form than exists in any other Chaldaic document. Michaelis declares that the language proves it was no late compilation. Other words betray a source which renders it inexplicable how it could have been composed in Palestine. And the peculiarities urged as proofs of the late composition of Daniel are, by Havernick, on very strong grounds, shewn to be Babylonish peculiarities. Thus, like the alleged Greek, they too prove the genuineness of Daniel, which they were produced to impeach.

But this is not all. It was clearly received into the canon when the LXX translation was made; so that it was then a known book. Now, the whole of this was known as complete, at the latest supposition, in 130 before Christ, as it is mentioned by Sirach — how long before cannot be said; but it was a well-known generally received version at that time. That is, Daniel certainly existed, was received, had been translated, not thirty years after Antiochus Epiphanes' death — not in Palestine, but in Egypt. Within thirty years after his death it had been translated, and circulated, and added to, in Egypt. Esther was translated certainly — some think only apocryphal additions and the book long before — in the reign of Antiochus Epiphanes. The Pentateuch is supposed to have been translated 285 or 286 years before Christ, 100 years before Antiochus, and we have a known public translation of Daniel noticed 30 years after him. Now, it is not, after all, very likely that they took 150 years to translate all; and when I say 30 years, I speak only of when the translation is first spoken of as a whole well-known. There is historical proof that the Old Testament began to be translated 1110 years before Antiochus began to reign; so that Daniel was translated probably long before the time he is made to live — certainly at latest at-the time they say he lived — as a part of scripture. Josephus treats him as the greatest of prophets.

W. The objections are evidently devoid of all weight; and the LXX version makes it in the last degree improbable that it can be brought down to Antiochus, even upon rationalist ground. But what do they make of the Lord's quoting it?

213 H. They make nothing of it; they do not trouble their heads about it. It is curious, if sorrowful, to see the spirit of these men. It is impossible that God can reveal anything; and when it is inquired if it be divine, that is out of the question. But "it suggests in the godless invader, no slight forecast of Caligula again invading the temple with like abomination, as well as whatever exalts itself against faith and conscience to the end of the world." Thus an impostor, pretending to be a prophet of olden time, can forecast a future tyrant — make a germinant prophecy; but a true one there cannot be. This is the new school theology.

W. It is as low as it is trifling.

H. A short sketch of Daniel will facilitate our judgment of their partial interpretations. We have, first, the captive remnant, faithful and trusting Jehovah, but giving Him the name which suits Him when Jerusalem was laid low. He is the God of heaven. For the moment, His earthly place of habitation was laid low, but faith looked beyond. He was above all. Hence, in the returning intervention of God's power, the witnesses in the Apocalypse stand before the God of the earth. Next we have the Gentile powers, under which Judah was captive, presented as a whole (the man of the earth), beginning with Nebuchadnezzar. God entrusted supreme power into the hands of man. Next we find that man, thus entrusted with power, sets up an idolatrous centre, and persecutes the faithful remnant. Next it is shewn that the Gentile power loses its true sense, its dependent relationship to God (it is not exactly here idolatry, but great Babylon which I have built), and, during the whole time of the Gentiles, becomes a beast unintelligent. Next there is the contempt of Jehovah, the God of Israel; lastly, the setting up to be God. Thus we get a full picture of the Gentile world — not alas! the finite realization of the spirit of goodness. This closes the outward history; what remains is made up of the visions of Daniel, in which the condition of the remnant, and the events of the last days are more clearly brought out. It is the inside, more than the outside, as was natural — more relationships and conduct.

First we have the four great empires, but especially the last or western one, and its connection with the saints; and, when the explanation comes, the final persecuting power, and the triumph of saints by the judgment and coming of the Lord, are clearly brought out. Then we get the eastern part of these empires of the beasts, and that carried down to the end, passing over from the relationship of the Syro-Grecian monarchy with the faithful Jews to the last days, thus omitting the previously given western monarchy, but expressly and with detail recounting what was to happen in the last end of the indignation. Daniel 9 gives the promise of the Jews' return from Babylon, and of Messiah, in answer to Daniel's supplication; but reveals that Messiah will be cut off, and not take the kingdom, and then desolations be determined on the people. Daniel 10-12 give the history of the eastern part of the kingdom of the beasts in detail, from Cyrus and Xerxes to Antiochus Epiphanes; the coming of the Romans, describing the desolation of the Jews for many days, but then introducing the kings of north and south; but, besides them, the wilful and apostate king, and thereon the destruction of the king of the north, and the deliverance and gathering but judgment and cleansing of Israel for final blessing. We can see how complete a picture of the whole history of the world, in connection with the Jews, the book gives; there is nothing which has any pretence to be like it in what is uninspired. You may find pretentious details, and passions flattered, and solemn warning as to some cherished religions being neglected, but anything like the connected scope of Daniel does not exist.

214 W. It certainly is above all the puny and futile criticisms which the dislike of revelation has made men heap upon it.

H. In truth it is; and my only reply to Dr. Williams, when he says, "It is time for divines to recognize these things," is this: It is time for these servile followers of German rationalism to learn that a little attention is sufficient, for those even who are not learned, to detect their superficial flippancy, and despise — not them, God forbid! but — their dishonest dealing with serious subjects and with truth. Those who have the name of orthodox in Germany are too much afraid of them; the Tholucks and Neanders, and such like, men to be valued and respected in many points of view, have too much yielded to the current of popular professional pretensions to superiority, and have not held fast the groundwork of revelation. All earnest criticism to ascertain what God has said, to interpret it aright with every aid learning can bring, though a far less important thing than piety and the aid of God's Spirit, yet as to the outward text no one can object to; but no tampering with what God has said, if we recognize that He has said it. It is of the last importance morally for man that he have something to which he bows as God's word; the whole condition of my soul is different then, and when I judge, I am before God, and not a boys' professor. For the speaking of the inspiration of Shakespeare or Milton I have the most sovereign contempt. Can I feel my soul before God when I read them? Did Dr. Williams ever do that when he read the word?

215 W. It is an immense thing to have a revelation — communications from God in this dark world. And, as you say, the whole moral condition of the soul is different when I place myself before the word as a direct communication from God. Besides, if competent to receive and enter into it, it is the highest privilege and enjoyment — communion with God; not merely similarity of thought, but direct intercourse with Himself.

H. Surely it is. For one taught of God, the moral side of the question leaves no trace of doubt that these rationalists are without God in the matter. The scriptures are like the cloud at the Red Sea, a cloud and darkness to them; to the simple-hearted believer it is a light all the night. I do not know that we have much more to search into in this Essay before we close our long interview. I feel how little one can bring out the deep and rich stores of scripture in such a conversation. It is more to shew the worthlessness of the pretensions of these men. The great principles of what remains we have already reviewed. The rest is merely commonplace infidelity under the cover of indiscriminate and fulsome praise of Baron Bunsen. It is excessively badly written, turgid abstractions without a clear idea, "windows that exclude the light, and passages that lead to nothing." Dr. Williams tells us that the great result of making allowance for the distinction between poetry and prose, and not overlooking the possibility of imagination's allying itself with affection — of holding that the Bible is an expression of devout reason, and therefore to be read with reason in freedom — the holding that those who pretend to be inspired prophets are patriot bards using their name, and that these books contain no predictions, except by analogy and type — can hardly be gainsaid; that the Almighty God has been pleased to educate men and nations by employing imagination, no less than conscience, and suffering His lessons to play freely within the limits of humanity and its shortcomings. "The great result is to vindicate the work of the Eternal Spirit; that abiding influence which, as our church teaches us in- our Ordination Service, underlies all others, and in which converge all images of old time, and means of grace now, temple, scripture, finger and hand of God; and, again, preaching, sacraments, waters which comfort, and flame which burns." What does that mean?

216 W. Well, I really do not know. Images converging in an influence may be very fine, as well as flame which burns; but it is a strange medley of a sentence.

H. Yet the object is plain enough. All that God has given of old, all revelation, all the expressions of divine power, are no more than the ordinary influence which the spirit of a man, as part of the Deity, possesses. It issues in this as the true result, be it great or small: "The Bible is, before all things, the written voice of the congregation" — not of God to it. Let any one take and read it, and see if that be true. It is simply saying that when Isaiah says, "Thus saith the Lord," he had not the Spirit more than some other man. It was man's — the congregation's — voice, not God's; — that when the magi said, "This is the finger of God," they made a blunder, and need not have been so amazed: it was only the underlying influence; — that when Christ said, "If I, by the finger of God, cast out devils, no doubt the kingdom of God is come among you," it is still only what Dr. Williams or you may pretend to. This, he tells us, was the earliest creed of the Church. The sacred writers acknowledge themselves men of like passions with ourselves, and we are promised illumination from the Spirit which dwelt in them. Dr. Williams, if he set about it, according to this promise, could write a bible as well as they.

Now the illumination of the Spirit is promised and needed; but to confound the reception of divine truth, by the illumination of the Spirit, with the revelation of it, is as unintelligent as it is preposterous. Paul distinguishes them carefully, so that there is no excuse for so serious a mistake. "We should define inspiration consistently with the facts of scripture and of human nature; these would neither exclude the idea of fallibility among Israelites of old, nor teach us to quench the Spirit in true hearts for ever. But if any one prefer thinking the sacred writers passionless machines, and calling Luther and Milton uninspired, let him co-operate in researches by which his theory, if true, will be triumphantly confirmed." Then he tells us what it is he wishes, which, as far as I can see, has nothing to do with the matter, save of diligent criticism to have a pure text and translation.

I should like to see Dr. Williams write a bible; it would bring these lofty pretensions to a test. We should see what kind of a bible one of these true hearts would give us. He gives us fully to understand that he is one of them. He would avoid, of course, the awkward expressions of "Thus saith the Lord." He would use the theories of Lyell or Murchison, instead of giving an account of creation as from God. He would avoid the dangerous possibility of imagination allying itself with affection in giving accounts of the blessed Lord. He would profit by "the pathway streaming with light from Eichhorn to Ewald," aided "by the poetical penetration of Herder, and the philological researches of Gesenius." We will allow him to avoid the directly predictive, and even the forecast of coming tyrannies. It is dangerous ground to tread on if you do not really know what is coming.

217 Dr. Williams, it seems, has even the pretension to be a bard, as well as, of course, a patriot; but he may write in prose: let us see what kind of bible he will produce. He may be freely allowed all the collaborators he wishes. I think it might be fair they should be shut up in cells, like Ptolemy's translators; but we need not insist on this. They may write, not like these Essays, in entire independence of each other, but with concert and comparison, or without, as they like. Let us have their bible free from all traditional methods, and see what it will be. Do they shrink from this? Why so? The influence is abiding; they should not quench it: so their church teaches them. Their God cannot be, they assure us, as of the priests of Baal, talking, or pursuing a journey, or peradventure asleep and must be awaked. They assure us they have the fire from heaven. Let us see its fruits — let us have their inspired communications. If not, in spite of all the water they may cast on it, we will own the true and blessed revelation from heaven, the true given fire; through a man we glory in it, but not of men, — the true heavenly fire, the proof that our God cares for us, and that He is the true and only God, as He has revealed Himself. We can be as calm as Elijah, because we are sure, and only desire that all the people who may be misled may have their hearts turned back again; and may we fall on our faces because God has given us from Himself the true and perfect revelation of His love!

Only a few isolated passages remain, which I notice because they refer to scripture. "The verse, 'And no man hath ascended up to heaven, save he that came down,' John 3: 13, is intelligible as a free comment near the end of the first century, but has no meaning in our Lord's mouth at a time when the ascension had not been heard of." Now he has quoted only half the verse — it goes on, "from heaven, the Son of man who is in heaven; and as Moses lifted up the serpent in the wilderness." That is, it is clearly presented as applicable before His death, not after His ascension. What precedes makes it still more evident: — "We speak that we do know and testify that we have seen, and ye receive not our witness. If I have told you of earthly things and ye believe not, how shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things?" This He could do because He had come down from heaven and was divinely in it, though no man else had come down to bring word. Christ was then speaking to Nicodemus, and so speaks in the passage; it is no comment, free or unfree. The Evangelist might have added: — and no one has gone up to do it like Him save He who came down, the Son of man who is now there, being gone back. This would have been very intelligible as his remark, without being free at all. But it is not so. They are the Lord's words at the time, only half of which are given by the reviewer; and their meaning is very simple and very evident. How shall ye believe if I tell you of heavenly things, when you cannot believe the earthly things of your own prophecies, which as a master in Israel you ought to have understood? And if you do not believe them, you must remain entirely ignorant of heavenly things, for nobody has gone up there to bring word back: but I can tell them; I came from heaven, and not only so, but I can, even in all their divine freshness, for I am in my divine nature always there, and it flows in my human nature to tell it according to my perfect knowledge of it.

218 As to faith being differently used in the Hebrews, it is a common stalking-horse of rationalists. It is not, they say, Paul's Epistle: faith is used differently. No Christian is held to believe it Paul's as it is not said so in the Epistle. I believe it is, but I am no way anxious or inclined to be dogmatic about it. I should be content to say with Origen, "Whose it is God knows," only assured that it is divine. Every one knows that very early, not two hundred years after Christ, it was doubted if it was Paul's (when fully received as scripture), because of the difference of style, and avowedly for this reason. But as to faith. It is differently applied, but does not mean a different thing. It is here looked at as an active principle of endurance and conduct, not as the ground on which we are justified. Both are true: that is all. A different subject is treated, and faith is shewn to be the principle of blessing in both; but in both it is the reliance through grace on God's word, and so on God, which is the ground of blessing. One is for peace, the other for practice.

219 As to 2 Peter, the epistle most contested and latest known in the Church, I am thoroughly satisfied it is genuine. External evidence is not "against," but there is not so early evidence of quotation for it: that internal is, I formally deny. That mere critics who look at the surface have thought so I know. The similarity to Jude is dwelt on. There is an exactly suited difference. Jude speaks of apostasy; Peter of wickedness, because Peter speaks in both epistles of God's government, and gives the link between the glorious grace of the heaven-revealing gospel, and that government on earth as revealed already in the Old Testament: in the first epistle, viewed as exercised in favour of the just; in the second, against the wicked. Hence, he goes on to the end of all things. It professes to be the second epistle, and written by Simon Peter, saying, that he had been with Jesus in the transfiguration (and if thus an imposture, it is an audacious one; yet one which is most solemn in its denunciation of evil, and holy in its character). It properly and exactly completes the first. The question of the canon I need not go into with you, nor general councils. They do not in themselves command much respect when we read their history. There was what the rationalists, however, ought to delight in — abundance of the human element. But I do not feel much more respect for the "first freedom of the gospel." What we have of the fathers here alluded to was mere Alexandrian speculation — after the school whose views are presented to us by Philo — Neoplatonism! But we can bless God, that (in spite of shameful human violence and intrigue, and the emperor's authority to keep the peace amongst the bishops of the holy councils — for this is the real truth of the case) God, who promised that the gates of hell should not prevail against the Church, has maintained substantial foundation truth for saints to live by, through the means of, or in spite of, human aberrations. The early contentions of the Church, and the deplorable scenes of the first councils, are full of instruction in this respect.

As regards the explanation of Christian doctrines by Baron Bunsen, we have seen enough to judge of them. Dr. Williams sums them up in saying, "he may be charged with using evangelical language in a philosophical sense." I only note one point as substantially important: "Salvation would be our deliverance, not from the life-giving God, but from evil and darkness, which are His finite opposites." Now this misrepresents atonement, and misrepresents the truth; it betrays the writer. Who ever heard of salvation delivering from a life-giving God? But there is a true character of God as a moral Governor, if we are to use philosophical or "Iapetic" language, which, if it were shaken, would shake the universe; which God maintains, of which judgment is the witness; and God hates sin in His people, as everywhere else, and if He comes in judgment, knows no man. He judges right. When the judgment of God went through Egypt, Israel was guilty, and righteousness could not have spared. Hence the blood was put upon the lintel and the two doorposts, and there was righteous deliverance (in a figure) from a God executing righteousness. Can Dr. Williams understand this? God in judgment, where sin is, is a condemning God, not a life-giving God. Does Dr. Williams believe that? If he does not, let him not misrepresent what scripture does state. Now, at the Red Sea God said, "Stand still, and see the salvation of God;" and Israel was delivered from all his enemies, and from bondage. But in virtue of what had been wrought (here all is figure, but a figure applied by Christ to Himself, and by Paul to Him) it was a righteous deliverance. The Fathers did discuss what redemption was, and made utter confusion of it; but the scripture is clear enough. Love gives the victim. The Lamb is God's Lamb; but it is a victim God gives because sin must be put away. And thus we are delivered from all we were bound by, and which kept us from God, and brought to Him in the light according to His holiness.

220 Here is his doctrine of the Trinity, which I notice only to remark that its main points are wholly borrowed from Philo; for all this philosophy is only bringing us down to the reveries of the unbelieving Jew, who mixed the law with Neoplatonism. "The profoundest analysis of our world leaves the law of thought as its ultimate basis and bond of coherence." This is pure Philonism. "This thought is consubstantial with the being of the eternal I AM. Being, becoming, and animating — or substance, thinking, and conscious life — are the expressions of a triad which may be represented as will, wisdom, and love; light, radiance, and warmth, etc." Dr. Williams is very confused in what follows, or rather lower in doctrine than Bunsen; he makes wisdom the word, consciousness the spirit; but then, in order to have Christ, he says, "Consciousness or wisdom becoming personal in the Son of man;" it is the spirit or the word, and becomes personal. He adds, no wonder, "If all this has a Sabellian, or almost a Brahmanical sound, its impugners are bound, even on patristic grounds, to shew how it differs from the doctrine of Justin Martyr, Tertullian, Hippolytus, Origen, and the historian Eusebius." Now Justin Martyr was deeply tinged with Platonism, and always wore his philosopher's cloak; Origen was plunged into every wildness Platonism and an extravagant imagination could plunge a person in. Eusebius was an Arian, not a Sabellian; whereas this doctrine is more Sabellian, or, as the writer justly says, almost Brahmanical — rather Buddhist, which Philo tended to. And this is what we are to get by leaving scripture!

221 The love of heathenism, formed into popery, of anythingism except a revelation, is curiously shewn in a passage in this part of the Review: — "The elasticity with which Christianity gathers into itself the elements of natural piety, and assimilates the relics of Gentile form and usage, can only be a ground of objection (objection to what?) with those who have reflected little on the nature of revelation." The fact is true. Mediaevalism is — historical proof of it is abundant — the assimilation of the relics of heathenism. Whether it is to be objected to is another question. I should, I confess, prefer Christianity as Christ and the apostles gave it. But the tendency of rationalism to accept popery, be assured, will daily be more evident. Pretending to be above it, it will leave it free to do all the mischief it likes. It is one of the ominous "forecasts" of the times of which I have no kind of moral doubt.

That I am not wrong in treating these rationalists as deniers of revelation — open deniers, I cannot say, but absolutely so, I can — while using Christian terms (a procedure I do not envy them their use of), some closing passages of the Review will shew.

"So, when he (Bunsen) asks, How long shall we bear this fiction of an external revelation? . . . or when he says, All this is delusion for those who believe it; but what is it in the mouths of those who teach it? . . . there will be some who think his language too vehement for good taste; others will think of burning words needed by the disease of our time." What are we to think of one who quotes this: — "What is it in the mouths of those who teach it?" It is a matter of taste, and there is no disputing about that.

I have done. I fear I have tired you. I feel lassitude creeping over me in long reasonings over men's ways; in scripture never. It is one thing that stamps its character. It renews, and feeds, and strengthens in every true exercise of mind upon it, because, though there be that exercise where the attention is fixed on it, we receive instead of judging.

222 W. But I am glad we have gone through it. This Review is the distinctively rationalist one of the volume; our sitting has been long, but I hope not without profit. What I am glad of is, that it leaves the Bible what it was in my mind, and in the simple reception of that is our blessing. What I dread in these inquiries is the loss of simplicity, the hindrance — even though I do believe it to be the revelation of God — to going to it as such, without any questions (even though answered) remaining in my mind.

H. The Lord grant that questions and answers may both disappear when you use the scriptures! We are in another element, in the use of another faculty, when faith receives the word. What? . . . another nature? An objection is presented to the mind; the answer is presented to it, and convinces. The word stands higher than ever in its authority to my mind. It is well. But when I use the word itself, my quickened soul receives it divinely by grace; I listen to God. My mind is not at work about it; I approach it, and listen to God. Of course one's intelligence is in play, but not my mind actively judging. Now our proofs and reasonings only go to leave the soul free in its true enjoyment of these blessed divine communications, when we are taught of God. May yours be free!

W. I confess it has had another happy effect, though it may be a sorrowful thought too — complete moral distrust of this whole class of reasoners; this is deeply engraved as the result in my mind. Have you seen the article in the "Edinburgh"?

H. I have. It is a most deplorable article; but I think we must close now. We have gone through most of the subjects of any importance, however rapidly. Perhaps Jowett's article may deserve our looking at it, it is on other ground, and somewhat more respectable than this: if we do, we can speak of the article in the "Edinburgh." Oh, how I bless God, in conclusion, that we have a revelation from God! — a revelation from Himself, and of Himself, where love has made all easy when we are humble; where divine depths are found, but clear, because they are divine.

W. How true it is. I am sure I join with you in thankfulness for the word of God, however poor all our thankfulness is.

A Fourth Dialogue on the Essays and Reviews, section a.

Inspiration and Interpretation.

J. N. Darby.

<09004E> 223 file section a.

W. Well, what do you say to Jowett? It has a different character from the other Essays. I cannot get so fast hold of it. The others rest on alleged facts or discoveries, which may alarm you if they can be maintained, and the deductions are just; but here there is nothing to lay hold of, and yet it leaves a painful impression on the mind that, if this be so, one has lost the word of God. It makes me not doubt of this or that, but doubtful of everything. I think it does me more harm than the others, if I am to have faith in God's word. I may say to myself, in reading the others, Well, this is all very well, but it rests on science or chronology, and people differ about that, and perhaps their statements will not stand examination; and there one leaves it. But here there are some sensible rules for interpretation; and yet, in interpreting, I have at the end lost the thing to be interpreted.

H. I quite agree with you. There is greater sobriety of manner, a more moderate tone: Christ seems at least to be treated with more reverence. There are many principles which I should not deny, provided other principles which are not here were associated with them. He circles round the outside of the word, may make some just and more plausible remarks to remove traditional apprehensions. These approve themselves to the mind; but when he touches the core, the substance of the word, it is simply that God is not there for him. It is infidelity as to any possessed revelation of God, and the same taking for granted that all rationalist objections are gospel, if the evangelists were not, and the same entire ignorance really of the heart and substance of scripture. You must always remember that with this class of persons the love of truth does not mean that there is any truth they love, or any to be loved, but simple pyrrhonism — the keeping the mind always open to receive anything, and therefore always sure of nothing. Now this is not the love of truth. It is the love of making people doubt, and think there is no truth. Can you tell me one truth they have brought forward in their writings? Isaiah is not Isaiah, David is not David, the inspired word is not inspired. What is it? Mere expressions of men's feelings and minds. Why, if that is all, I may get Dr. Temple's renewal of inspiration, and have or give just as good now; perhaps, as the world is got so much wiser now, better still.

224 But we shall see that, as regards the word of God, Mr. Jowett is just as distinctly infidel as the rest. The others are as a stone rolled upon the mountain path I have to walk on, which bars my way. I look under, see it has no foundation at all, give it a tilt, and it is down in the valley, and the path clear. Mr. Jowett is like a green morass all across. It does not look such a hindrance, but there is no safe footing anywhere. If you had been in the bogs of Ireland, you would know that a green grassy spot is sure to be unsafe. It has no bottom, and if you tread on it, you are plunged in black mud: there are springs. There are springs of infidelity in Mr. Jowett. We must lay them bare, and the danger is over; they run in their own channel as infidelity, but the ground is dry.

I have looked at Mr. Jowett's commentaries too. I confess I was surprised at their emptiness, and, I must say, their perverseness: notes to take away the apostles' meaning, as received by faith in the word — not merely false interpretations, or wrong construction of Greek, or traditional notions, but all divine points and truth gone, and that is all.

They suggest to you probable or possible human circumstances which may have occasioned what is said, but deny, or, more truly, ignore all springs of eternal divine truth as the true source of the writings. It is — though the comparison is weak — as if one should point out circumstances in the life of a man of uncommon nobility and energy and truth and generosity of character — circumstances in which his character had been developed, some of them possibly having as occasions done so, and attribute all to these circumstances, as if the character were caused by them. In such a case I should say of one who did so, That man does not know what the springs of truth and nobility and generosity are. Circumstances may develop: he may think he is wise; but the spring is wanting in him which would enable him to understand the other, even supposing he was owned to be superior. The similarity of moral sentiment is wanting. So, when scripture is interpreted by these men, some of their remarks as to occasions, or the effect of circumstances, may be just; but, in thinking they have explained the matter, they shew they have nothing of the contents at all. As if a man should eat the hard skin of a pomegranate, and think he had tasted one, telling me that it was through that the pomegranate was ripened. Well, so it was in a sense; but he has not tasted the pomegranate for all that, nor does he know what the sun is either.

225 Such is the effect produced in me by Mr. Jowett's writings, though in some respects far less offensive than others of the Essays, and containing expressions as to Christ which would give hope that the love of His excellency was not wholly wanting. But there is in all who follow this method, in point of fact, a profound ignorance of scripture, of the text, and of its bearing and connection, and of the mind of God as stated in it. You will ever find that what is evidently divine and experimental is difficult or unintelligible for them. They will satiate you with external motives and circumstances, but never study divine truth. They turn Semitism into Japetism with Baron Bunsen: that is not believing the scripture to have a divine source; they do not study it to know what God says and thinks, but merge it into the vague notions of their own mind, and get nothing beyond what they have without it. They reduce scripture to their minds, decently calling it their conscience, and, of course, have nothing beyond their minds, save by the irresistible and inescapable power of the word. And the plainest statements of scripture are neglected by them, so that they cannot be trusted as to its views in a single statement they make. In virtue of their system the knowledge of the mind of God — I do not say as a whole, for no man knows that ("we know in part"), but in the connection of its parts — is wholly and necessarily absent; for they do not believe there is one. To one knowing simply the statements of scripture there is an ignorance of them, and consequent mis-statements as to particular passages, which is almost inconceivable.

And further, with much even seemliness of manner, Mr. Jowett has the same pretensions. All have been ignorant till now the wise age of the world is come. The rationalists possess the wisdom of it. Now there is a freedom from many of these prejudices which cause glosses on scripture; and hence — and it is the case with Mr. Jowett himself — the circumstances of scripture become more real to them. They are looked in the face. And many who would think they must defend Christianity carry the glosses with them to defend. These glosses are but prejudices. Over such defenders of truth, as far as reasoning goes, the rationalists have an easy victory. This, however, for myself, and I suppose for you, has lost its power. Traditions and glosses have never had much influence over me since I thought of scripture, because it came to me as the word of God. All the rest was man — might profit me surely — but was man as to authority. I saw that tradition in all its shapes was man; I can give it all up, and think it gain to have done so — have, in purpose and principle, these thirty years and more, and am delighted when any remaining influence of it is shewn to me, that I may get rid of it. But I gave up traditions and glosses by and because of the power of the word of God, and this only, and have a profound and ever-deepening conviction that it is the word of God. I have given up glosses for that, trusting to learn humbly from that. They have given up the word because they have found the glosses are glosses; or rather, having only the glosses, and having detected them to be such, having nothing but some old books. But the word of God is quick and powerful, and, as they have confidence in themselves, and talk a great deal about it, they come athwart that power; and their ignorance of it, the folly of their views, becomes evident for every intelligent believer, yea, for every intelligent mind where there is not a will to disbelieve. The one difficulty is, that the full unclouded truth and glory of the word, as revealing God's mind, is known to so few (because they do live on glosses and prejudices of education), that it is difficult to make it apparent — to say nothing of one's own weakness.

226 I must recall to your mind, my dear W., another thing, not to be misled by words. These men use traditional words when they deny the things meant by them. I cannot say I think it an honourable system; but it is sufficient here to say we must keep it in mind. An upright mind suspects no guile, trusts the green grass, being used to see the green grass on solid ground, and finds itself, by its confidence, in the black mud.

To give an instance of what I mean, we have a treatise on the interpretation of scripture: it begins, "All Christians receive the Old and New Testament as sacred writings." Of course the unsuspecting reader supposes Mr. Jowett to present himself as a Christian with the rest, and consequently to esteem the Old and New Testament as sacred writings. We all suppose sacred writings to be such because they are inspired — the teaching of prophets, of Christ, and inspired apostles, or prophets, with no defined view of inspiration perhaps, but so as to receive them as having the authority of God, as God's word.

W. Of course. Mr. Jowett's paper is on interpretation; and I do not know what sacred writings mean for a Christian, except inspired ones.

H. My poor friend, as I told you once already, you are in the childhood of the world. Here is Mr. Jowett's dictum: "Nor for any of the higher or supernatural views of inspiration is there any foundation in the gospels or epistles."

227 W. But surely that is not true, though each book may not come and say, I am inspired. I see that infidelity is their common object.

H. We will come to the question itself. Of course I only notice it now, that you may never, with these rationalists, take common words to mean what is commonly meant by them. They deny nothing hardly. They shew that men have had all sorts of opinions; that the commonest subjects on which Christians are agreed have been spoken of under the influence of views prevalent at the time they lived; that men were under the influence of their times (all except themselves, of course); and hence, all is uncertain, everything that has been said doubtful. The Fathers were under the impressions of their age, the Reformers of theirs, Romanists of their system. Hence the truth itself is uncertain, because men are. Hence, doubting of every form of truth, truth itself is lost, because, everything being different, each is an opinion, a view of man. Now men do feel the influence of their age; they are poor weak creatures. But the argument from this to the uncertainty of truth is only a proof that they who use it have opinions, but no truth; the argument supposes God has never revealed any truth: otherwise we should say, there is a fund of absolute and sure truth. Men have varied, even those who have held it fundamentally; but, thank God, the truth remains the same. There would be an appeal from man's uncertainty to God's certainty; but they having only opinions — only man's mind — nothing from God: the effect is, that apostles and prophets, all the inspired writers, fall into the same class as these various interpreters: they underwent the influence of their day, and there is no truth at all. The only difference is, that they were at the childhood, Mr. Jowett and his friends are at the mature age of the world and human race, and the representatives of it, so that they, in the freedom it gives, judge it all. The whole matter is this, they see only the circumstances and opinions, never the truth. They have no revelation from God at all, for, if we have a revelation from God, it must be truth, the truth; and, when the revelation is fully made, must express His mind, though this may be partially revealed or fully, a light shining in a dark place, or the dawn of eternal day.

W. I see plainly the working of their reasonings. If there is nothing supernatural in inspiration, of course I have no truth. I may come to conclusions, but never get truth — get nothing that is a revelation of it from God, nothing that is beyond the scope of the human mind. Hence, if various opinions are shewn to exist, all are doubted; all are the fruits of influence of one kind or another. I judge them all coldly, but have no opinion except the denial of inspired truth.

228 H. The whole system is simply this. There is the coolness which can judge what has exercised influence on others, so as to cast all they have said into doubt, all the shapes in which even real truth has been received into doubt, but no truth held at all. It is quite true that in a human mind truth is modified by circumstances in its form, for we are feeble and hold the truth partially and mixed with error. The Christian says, Yes; and what a comfort, therefore, to have the truth itself, which, though taking a human form that it may apply to the human heart, and have a witness of originating where it professes to have originated, by leaving the stamp of the time and circumstances as to its form, is yet the truth of God Himself; and the channels of its communications so guarded, that I should have it pure and exactly as God meant me to have it! What a rest for my soul to have truth from God! I can rely upon it. It is pure light in the confusion of this world. It is love too which has given it to our souls, wandering in the wilderness. Then comes in Mr. Jowett, and, seeing nothing of this in it at all, proves that Fathers and Reformers, and theologians, with systematic and conventional doctrine, are all under the influence of their age and its manner of judging, but declares that he and his friends are exempt from it; at any rate, so far exempt, that they can shew in each case the influences which acted on the doctors of the various ages, and gave a form to their views. You may be allowed to doubt whether they have got the truth themselves, provided you doubt of all the rest. And when I ask, Well, but about the apostles and writers of scripture to whom these different prejudiced persons refer their doctrine? Oh! says Mr. Jowett, you must throw them all in in the lump. They are, like all the rest, formed by their age, and you must judge them like any other book. This is Mr. Jowett's Essay. He will tell you how Fathers erred by prejudice, how Reformers took the colour of their time, how modern interpreters are yet inferior, how the New Testament was formed from the influences of its day.

Natural conscience will judge of all this; but of truth, divine truth, inside of all this, revealed truth which is thus clothed or departed from, not an atom save what nature has. He, Mr. Jowett, and his friends, have made all this clear. But, I ask, where then is the truth? You are, he tells me, to walk in the love of it. I ask, where is it, to love? Oh, that is not what I mean, says Mr. Jowett. Love of truth is not truth being loved. It is not love of the truth: the truth has disappeared in the process. Love of truth merely means a readiness to reject what is not honestly what it pretends to be. It is really a pretension to be able to judge by my own competency of everything, submit everything to this test, and never to be convinced, but always ready to doubt, consequently never know that anything is truth; so that I cannot love it because it is truth. The moment I am assured anything is the truth, I can receive nothing contrary to it; if I do, I do not love the truth. But with them the love of truth means, never to do this, but readiness to doubt, because we never have the truth. This doubting God had taken away by His word. "Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free," John 8: 31, 32, says Christ, "if ye continue in my word." "He that is of God heareth us," says John. 1 John 4: 6. To the total absence of this truth we are brought back again by the rationalists. That was all the childhood of the world; we are now in the manhood of the world — at least sufficiently to cast off all this, and trust ourselves.

229 W. And believe what?

H. Well, I do not know — ourselves, and, if we please, Mr. Jowett.

W. But do you seriously mean that Mr. Jowett's Essay throws scripture thus into the lump, as you say, with other prejudiced writers, so that we have no divine revelation, and so no standard of truth; and that they have the singular pretension that they only are enlightened to judge of it?

H. You shall judge of this yourself; we will go through his Essay. The only modification is, that perhaps they are only enlightened enough to learn that all before themselves have been wrong.

W. But what motive can they have?

H. I am satisfied it is a direct work of Satan, as I said; but it works thus: — They are enlightened intelligent persons — at least, think themselves so; they believe nothing, and have given up all that is divine and supernatural in Christianity, but, as yet like to retain the credit of being Christians; they think that every other intelligent person must give up the faith as they have, and they seek to lower Christianity to a point in which nothing properly divine remains, so that their intelligent friends may thus accept it. Men's eyes do not like the light, and they want to dim or destroy its character, that men may look at and receive it: only, unfortunately, it is not the light they have received, and they remain content with the state that hinders their receiving it. When any truth is in question which requires divine faith, do not be so foolish as to peril religion on that, says Mr. Jowett; intelligent people soon will not receive it. Another truth comes up: Do not lead people to reject Christianity by defending that, he tells us.

230 W. But that is the love of intelligent people more than of the truth — the love of respectability. How dares he to speak of love of truth, and use such an argument?

H. It is a threat to induce people to degrade Christianity to his level of it; the poorest simplest saint fears no such threats; one word of Christ's is more to him than a bookful of such reasoning. It proves that the writer has not or does not love the truth — does not know its value — has not the moral courage that belongs, through grace, to a divine acquaintance with it. The humblest believers pity such intelligent people, and with true charity. But what is divine is just what is precious to such souls. They know God hides these things from the wise and prudent, and reveals them unto babes; they can therefore well understand that those who call themselves intelligent and think highly of themselves will stumble — those who say, We see, "we are rich, and increased in goods, and have need of nothing." Rev. 3: 17. Some intelligent ones (not many), the apostle tells us, may, by grace, be poor enough in spirit to receive the kingdom of God as little children. They have been warned by their Master of such pretensions to wisdom; but God's words have been found by them, and they have eaten them, and they have been to them the joy and rejoicing of their hearts. They know they are divine; they have received them, as they are in truth, as the word of God, which works effectually in them that believe; they have not the most distant thought of being frightened out of their known treasure by the questionings of those who use human intellect to judge of divine things. They do not think this very intelligent, because they know God.

No, my dear W., threats of the intelligent not receiving divine truth may make us mourn, but not doubt. It was always so. They must become fools that they may be wise. It was Celsus' reproach in his day; it is practically Mr. Jowett's in this. But we will verify what we have spoken of. That men have sought to pull scripture their own way, as Mr. Jowett alleges, is most true; that we need not discuss. After describing how this is supposed or expected — i.e., by the cool observer — which is also true, we soon find who this observer is. "Philosophical differences are in the background, into which the difficulties about scripture resolve themselves. They seem to run up, at last, into a difference of opinion respecting revelation itself — whether given beside the human faculties or through them; whether an interruption of the laws of nature, or their perfection and fulfilment."

231 Now this is rather early in the Essay (the first paragraph) for infidelity to ooze out; but "out of the abundance of the heart the mouth speaketh." The Essay is on the interpretation of scripture, but it turns at last (at first, he should say) into a difference as to revelation — i.e., whether there is any. The question here is, though garbled in, "philosophical differences in the background." "Is there inspiration, and are there miracles?" He could not keep it in. There is no truth in the statement whatever.

With the "Ultramontane and Anglican, the Protestant and Roman Catholic, the Bible-alone men of the Reformation school, or the Bible-and-Prayerbook advocates," there is no question as to the scriptures being truly inspired, or miracles being true. They disagree on many points — on important points; but the points they do not disagree on are, the inspiration and authority of the word, and the truth of miracles. On this they all agree; their differences do not ever run up into them.

The only meaning of the sentence is, that Mr. Jowett's paper is not an interpretation, but infidelity as to the thing to be interpreted; and, as I said, he makes the doubts and differences as to interpretation fall on the truth of scripture itself. It is poorly and dishonestly done. Others differ — he does too — from them. It is all one thing. Now this is false. All the others, unless "the Germans," own God's word and its divine character; Mr. Jowett does not. Their differences do not run up at last into this; it is not in "the background" nor in the foreground for them. They own the authority of scripture, whatever use they make of it. It is the whole ground for Mr. Jowett; his heart was too full of it to keep it in. An honest man, unless blinded by prejudice, could not say that differences as to doctrine to be drawn from scripture, because all held it to be divine, run up into the denial of its authority, its inspiration, and miracles. If all is opinion, and there is no faith, then Mr. Jowett's opinion is as good, it may be, as another. But the fact is exactly the contrary of what he says. They contended fiercely, because they declared they had divine authority for what they professed to be from scripture, and therefore insisted that that was from God. Had it run up into doubting the word, their conflicts would instantly have ceased. Mr. Jowett doubts of all, and hence of scripture.

232 W. It is clear he must have been in a great hurry to get out his infidelity; but what he says is evidently without the smallest ground of truth in it. It is, as you said, doubting of all forms of truth, to make it doubtful whether there is anything but form. But his doubt is not a consequence of, it is exactly the opposite in principle from, the discussions of the others. They did not doubt at all. All is avowedly a "difference of opinion," even to whether there is a revelation. Truth, and the certainty of it, are gone — do not appear as a possibility.

H. The third paragraph contains the pretension to be the sole possessors of wisdom — at least, wisdom enough to doubt. "It has not been readily, or at once, that mankind have learned to realize the character of sacred writings . . . . It is the old age of the world only that has at length understood its childhood (or rather, perhaps, is beginning to understand it, and make allowance for its own deficiency of knowledge)." I told you he would let you doubt even of his world's old-age wisdom, provided you doubt of all the rest.

W. Well, it is tolerable self-sufficiency; and how opposite to the assertions of scripture! I do not see, after all, that there is less open infidelity here than in the other papers we have examined. He seems in a hurry to get at it. Scripture speaks of perilous days at the end; it pretends everywhere to miracles, and gives itself everywhere for inspired. I cannot see the consistency of pretending to be anxious to interpret rightly a book which, if their way of setting about it be true, is a universal lie.

H. The truth of that is, that the word, and Christianity which is revealed in it, have a power men must undergo while they seek to deny it. It has changed the world — has made the proudest hearts bow to its truth. Their pride may comment on it, but they are forced to own its power.

W. However, I see plainly that, under cover of speaking of principles of interpretation, Jowett, by looking at all interpretation of scripture as opinions formed by the day, brings in his own denial of Christianity, viewed as a miraculous revelation of God, as one of the opinions. It is not, in my opinion, brilliant in its honesty; but, perhaps, having only opinions, and no truth, he does not see any farther. But then that shews that the idea of truth is lost; all is "opinionum commenta" which "delet dies."

233 H. I apprehend that is what is likely.

W. But there is excessive pretension in it. It reminds me of the bitter sarcasm you quoted from Job in a former conversation: "No doubt but ye are the people, and wisdom shall die with you." Job 12: 2.

H. Many principles of interpretation — such as not taking scholastic divinity or the definitions of creeds to interpret scripture by — I entirely agree with. God may providentially have preserved the truth more or less in the visible church by them, when spirituality was gone. But scripture does not make creeds, but livingly reveals the truth of God: all this you and I have long recognized; though, where error and Alexandrianism, or Neoplatonism, and its kindred Gnosticism, invaded the Church, creeds. may have had their use. All conventional interpretations we can let go without a regret; we will take up the principles of interpretation which touch on the "philosophical differences in the background." The difference of opinion we come to at last — that is, whether there is divinely given truth. A great deal that is said on confounding application and interpretation, and using scripture to make out sermons, is very just, and no doubt, with the preachers Mr. Jowett has to say to, necessary; but it is common-place, and needs no remark. There is an abuse of scripture, in this respect, among ministers, in and out of the Establishment, which is a proof of a low state of mind as to scripture and apprehension of divine truth, which God, in His goodness, bears with, but is both painful to a mind which has studied scripture and injurious to all. But, at least, the authority of scripture — that is, God's word — is owned; it is better than Mr. Jowett's "interpretation." Imagination works too.

Let all these remarks have their effect in the proper quarters; no sensible person will regret it. Let those who have these habits see the effect in Mr. Jowett's treatise — that is, the charging the New Testament writers with doing the same, still being good men and apostles; so that all the authority of scripture is gone. Mutato nomine de te fabula narratur. "What preachers do," urges Mr. Jowett, "the apostles and inspired writers did — accommodated scripture to their own ideas." But we may come to principles of interpretation which affect scripture itself directly, as denying inspiration, or as evidently leading to the same conclusion. It is better to take up the statements in the essay than follow any order of our own on the subject. I will only, to break fairly into the subject, draw your attention to Mr. Jowett's statement, which I have already quoted, that we may know what we are about.

234 Mr. Jowett says, "Nor for any of the higher or supernatural views of inspiration is there any foundation in the Gospels or Epistles;" that is the "background." His other principle to which I have alluded I may quote only to set it aside. It is a base one. If inspiration be true, it is true; if not, let us give it up. If it be, let Christianity and philosophy take care of themselves: the day of judgment will settle who is right in principle. I do not expect — it would prove a book not inspired — a treatise on chemistry or geology, or an inspired instructor to speak any but the common language of men on this subject. An inspired man would say the sun rises, like another. It is the grossest and flattest stupidity to object to it — to think that the Holy Ghost, speaking to immortal souls, would stop to explain astronomy, or not use current expressions: the whole effect of what He said would be destroyed. It is, morally speaking, impossible. He would not sanction popular errors, though He might appeal to men's belief of them as an argument of the unreasonableness of their unbelief, because then He only accepts the state of their minds, which is the truth as to their state; but He would not use the phoenix, as Clement does, as a proof of the resurrection. That men should insist on the language of scripture as scientific is absurd, and that is what the clergy did with Galileo, with his "E pur si muove."

But Mr. Jowett's principle is a hollow and base one. Speaking of chemistry and physiology, he says, "It is a false policy to set up inspiration or revelation in opposition to them — a principle which can have no influence on them, and should be rather kept out of their way." I say, if God has spoken, let God be true, and every man a Liar. I make no objection to chemical and physiological enquiry; but I do not trust man's certainty, and I do God's. And see how far Mr. Jowett's principles go: "The sciences of geology and comparative philology are steadily gaining ground; many of the guesses of twenty years ago have become certainties, and the guesses of to-day may hereafter become so. Shall we peril religion on the possibility of their untruth? On such a cast to stake the life of man implies not only a recklessness of facts, but a misunderstanding of the nature of the Gospel. It is fortunate for science, it is perhaps more fortunate for Christian truth, that the admission of Galileo's discovery has for ever settled the principle of the relations between them." Now the cool yet stupid audacity of this is somewhat singular. It amounts simply to this: the bigoted persecution of popish priests, and the judgment of the Inquisition, have exactly the same authority as the word of God; and if the movements of Jupiter's satellites have proved the folly of popish persecution and applying their dogmas to science, the Bible must retire and hide itself before the guesses of geology, and get out of its way, as they may prove true. What think you of such a principle — of such love of truth? Is there a trace of the noble bearing of truth in it?

235 W. Not one.

H. There is not. I may be mistaken of course; I may misinterpret scripture: humility as to one's own thoughts is always right. But I have what I believe to be the truth; I shall hold and own it as such, till I am convinced of the contrary; if I find it is not the truth, I shall give it up. If what professed to be inspired, or men supposed such (for I do not think a true revelation would occupy itself with such a subject), said Jupiter's planets do not move, and it was proved they did, I might see if I had not misinterpreted, if it was not a traditional view supposed to be based on this writing; if definitively it said, as a revelation, they do not, and I found they did, or had when the writing spoke of them, I would say, I have been deceived: this, at any rate, is not inspired; it is not from God. Yet, even in this case, if the direct proofs of inspiration were absolute for other parts, it would only prove this spurious. If all the writing was identified with it on the same ground, I would say, I give up holding that I have an inspired book. A book with good things in it, I may have, perhaps, from spiritual people, but no book from God with a revelation of His. I would not call them sacred writings. No man that talks of false policy in this way has a right to speak of love of truth again. I repeat, I look for no science in scripture; I should at once be disposed to reject it as scripture if I found it; but this I avow boldly, I have no need to use policy about it. I may avoid bringing those weak in the faith to the deciding of doubtful questions. But I am not afraid of the question of inspiration, nor afraid of science. I do not apply scripture to the latter, but I am not going to deny inspiration — that is, the direct communications of my God in grace — for the untruthful and dishonest warnings of policy from those who want to keep their religious positions and give up their religion. However, so frightened is Mr. Jowett that his recommendation is to give up the inspiration of scripture before a guess even of science. This guess may be true; that scripture is, or may be, no mortal knows — certainly not Mr. Jowett, or he, from "love of truth," would keep fast hold and stand up for it. But scripture, yea, even "Christian truth" itself, is all the same as the tenets of the Inquisition! Such is the man, such the doctrine, which is pretending to interpret scripture. But, as an argument, the reasoning has no ground whatever, because it assumes these Jesuitical tenets to be the absolute equivalent of what Mr. Jowett himself calls Christian truth.

236 We may set aside all that part of the reasoning which refers to the fears of meddling with the text. The thought lasted for perhaps a century at the utmost after the so-called textus receptus. Since Mills' or even Bengel's time, the question has really ceased to exist. Save a rare timid spirit every one seeks a text critically exact. All this is throwing dust in people's eyes. Persons who have the profoundest conviction of the divine origin of scripture seek, for that very reason, to have it as pure as possible. The shewing that people have had to give way in prejudices as to the effect of changes has nothing to do with a denial of inspiration. In the supernatural sense Mr. Jowett denies inspiration. It is not the way of securing our having the thing, but whether there is anything to be had which is now in question. He uses fallen prejudices to produce universal uncertainty. Having got rid of all these artifices, for such they are, I meet Mr. Jowett's statements in face on the point really in question, the inspiration of scripture.

No one denies that the structure of a sentence is to be sought, though it be not classical Greek, in the principles of the language, modified by its then state of decay, and the changes which entirely new ideas and subjects introduce necessarily into every language. But, I affirm, that the principle of Mr. Jowett, that it must be interpreted, when we come to the matter contained in it, by the plain use of words as other books, is a false and absurd notion. I interpret men's words so, because men's ideas have formed them, and therefore they can express those ideas which gave them birth. But if there be a revelation, however much God may condescend to men and speak through men amongst them, and even in His Son as a man, the ideas of men not having given rise to the words and thoughts, but God, it is impossible that language formed by man's ideas can be an adequate expression of God's, if we take that language, as Mr. Jowett would, in its simple use according to men's ideas. Upon the shewing of the case, by the strictest scientific principles, the whole statement is wrong.

237 W. I see it plainly. Every one who has the least enquired into the subject, or even thought of it, knows that language is formed by, and expresses, the thoughts, habits, and mental objects of a people. It is their picture. It forms itself on their habits. But if this be so, a revelation from God cannot find its adequate expression in the language taken according to its human force, because, according to its human force, it expresses human ideas, not divine. But then this difficulty arises: we must have an inadequate revelation.

H. Inadequate, if we seek what is infinite in its completeness all at once. "We know in part and prophesy in part," says the apostle. Intuitive knowledge of all at once is not come. But there are analogies of relationship, and the Lord Himself lays down expressly that the thought (the λόγος) must be known before the speech (the ῥῆμα) is. This is not the way with man's language. I explain the terms, and use them then to learn all relating to them, and unfold the relationships in which the things stand to one another. In divine things we must know the thing to understand the word. To take a familiar example, "We must be born again:" if I take this in the "simple universal meaning" of being born, I shall stumble with Nicodemus on nonsense. Take the word Son applied to Godhead: has it the simple universal sense it has elsewhere? "The Word was with God, and was God." John 1: 1. What does Word, or λόγος mean? I affirm that in everything important referring to God, or even spiritual subjects, the words must have a meaning only to be known by those who have the divine key to it, whatever that is; because as human words they only express human ideas, and they are now used to express what is not the fruit of human thought but of divine. If I say, "Reckon yourselves to be dead unto sin" — "ye are dead, and your life is hid with Christ in God," Col. 3: 3, can I take the simple meaning of the words as they apply to the human order of thought by which they have been formed? It is absurd, and contradicts itself.

W. This seems to me perfectly clear.

H. It is not that the language is not ordinary human language; it is because it is ordinary human language (though modified, as is ever the case with new ideas), and to be construed so, that interpreting it when used for divine things, as if the ordinary human meaning were the limit of the thought (and this is what Mr. Jowett wants), is unintelligent, yea, the grossest absurdity. And indeed Mr. Jowett cannot and does not deny it. He says, 'There are difficulties of another kind in many parts of scripture, the depth and inwardness of which require a measure of the same qualities in the interpreter himself" — that is, everything that is of chief value does. And consequently he contradicts himself within a page or two expressly. "First," he says, "it may be laid down that scripture has one meaning — the meaning which it had to the mind of the prophet or evangelist who first uttered or wrote, to the hearers or readers who first received it." (p. 378.) Exactly two pages farther on he says, "All that the prophet meant may not have been consciously present to his mind: there were depths which to himself also were but half revealed." (p. 380.) Yet I am told (p. 378), "scripture has one meaning, the meaning which it had to the mind of the prophet."

238 W. It is impossible, where a man is not a hardened infidel, who will not see any force in the word of God, to escape the conviction of special depth and power in it.

H. Another passage in which Mr. Jowett most happily contradicts himself in this respect, shews the truth of what you say. "There are germs of truth which after thousands of years have never yet taken root in the world." That is, really, that the ideas being not from a human source, but from a divine one, human language cannot express it as a human idea, to be received according to a human measure. "There are lessons in the prophets which, however simple, mankind have not yet learned even in theory, and which the complexion of society rather tends to hide; aspects of human life in Job and Ecclesiastes, which have a truth of desolation about them which we faintly realize in ordinary circumstances." All this is saying (and makes one think Mr. Jowett above the heartless system he is propagating) that the forms into which the human mind is moulded, the state in which it naturally is, cannot seize the bearing and truth of aspect of the divine mind, however simply it is expressed. And what follows expresses it yet more distinctly: "It is perhaps the greatest difficulty of all to enter into the meaning of the words of Christ, so gentle, so human, so divine, neither adding to them nor marring their simplicity." Now I rejoice in such phrases. I repeat, it gives one a bright hope that Mr. Jowett is above his system, that, in emancipating himself from traditional nullities, he has stumbled into the mud of the system next him, and that he will get out, confessing and knowing by experience that it is dirty mud and nothing else, and that the depth of the divine mind and grace will be his abiding portion.

W. One would trust so indeed from these words, and they are quite the truth; but it does most entirely contradict his statement that the scripture "has one meaning, the meaning which it had . . . to the hearers or readers who first received it."

239 H. Yes; but we will rejoice in so happy an inconsistency — rejoice because the good side seems to be more truly Mr. Jowett himself. We must however, having gladly admitted this, follow the system to which his name is attached in this paper. Now with this depth in the mind of Christ or even the prophets, what may be called (though unjustly) many meanings becomes perfectly intelligible, and the necessary result. I do not take up Cocceius' notion, though I understand it, I think, that the scripture had all the meanings it could have. It was merely awkwardly expressing in human feeling this — that the divine mind was so large that human expressions of it partially had no end. If I draw water from the well, I do not say at each bucket, This is different water. I say, No, there is a continually springing well. It is all water of the well, but my bucket can only bring a small part of it at a time. It is, as Mr. Jowett says, hard in doing this, "not to add or mar the simplicity. The interpreter needs nothing short of fashioning in himself the image of the mind of Christ: he has to be born again into a new spiritual or intellectual world, from which the thoughts of this world are shut out." Now this is excellent, but the proof (not that the words of scripture are not simple, but) that, from the natural mind being formed in another train of thought, it cannot enter into what is divine. It says what scripture says: "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit." 1 Cor. 2: 14. But it denies at once the theory that scripture can be interpreted as having the meaning it had to the hearers or readers who first received it. Scripture, divine truth, never is really received but in the measure in which the mind is formed into the spiritual state capable of apprehending it. Not that the words are not simple, or that the statements are not — they are; but that the mind is not morally open to them: they are foolishness to it. So of the use of a passage of scripture. As my water from the well, I may use it to drink and quench my thirst, to wash, to quench the fire, to make the plants of my garden grow. It is not changing anything in the water: God so formed it as to be properly applicable to all these things.

And so His divine word. Man's limited nature makes limited things (we spoil the instrument in applying it to something else) and limited words. God's infinite and creative nature has, in His revelation, given what is according to His nature, though suited to man's. The source is infinite; the application is to what is finite. Hence what is simple in itself is various in application. Hence, even in the language which expresses it, we have a finite instrument used to express an infinite mind. This must be different from a finite instrument used to express a finite mind. Even in the last case it is imperfect, as the comparison of the different languages shews; but, in respect of God's thoughts, though He who uses it is God (and hence it is perfectly used for thoughts not learned but only to be expressed), that which is used must have a fulness and elasticity and power, which it had not with man. He who would reduce the force of language used for inspired communications — as the rationalists, and alas! inconsistent Mr. Jowett — to the measure of the mind of the speaker or hearer, denies the inspired communication altogether. Hence, too, the language of scripture is eminently figurative. It uses physical facts and terms to express moral ideas; but the consequence is, we must have the moral ideas themselves to understand the words, as Jowett admits. But then the force of the words is measured by the ideas I have, not by the simple theory expressed by the words at all. All language is figurative when any moral subject is spoken of. I talk of a lovely picture of virtue, and so on. Our life is spent in such figures the moment I leave materialism. But man cannot speak of divine things truly, because he does not know them; his language cannot in itself be formed directly on them, save in falsehood. When God speaks of them (and this is revelation), He does for our sakes condescend to use human language, but fills it with that which is divine. And the intelligence of the language is in the measure of the intelligence of the truth conveyed. He who would reduce the meaning to the human meaning of the words denies the thing altogether, makes nonsense of it besides, by making divine things human in their conception. He is simply an infidel in fact that denies the communication of the divine mind. That God should communicate His thoughts to man, to sinful, corrupt, narrow-minded man, and all be understood according to the human limit of human expressions, is an absurdity upon the face of it. It denies what it professes to admit, and this is Mr. Jowett.

240 W. But does not this leave room for very wild imaginations?

H. To be sure it does. But this is a moral question under God's hand and government, like all others. Man's mind runs wild without scripture, and it runs wild with scripture if it trusts itself. And the mightier the instrument, the more the wildness appears. If I run about with a perambulator, I may perpetrate some mischievous folly; but if with a steam-engine, I may jeopard a multitude of lives. But that is the fault of the person who does so. That this danger should not exist, we must give up materially and morally all that has power. And it is God's will that man should be thus tested.

241 The humble mind learns according to the power of God's truth. The self-conceited wields a weapon to his own, perhaps to others' hurt; but he has not, morally speaking, scripture as God's word, but as so many thoughts, and, when wielded by man's mind, always false, because man cannot wield God. He is subject to Him, and the power He gives is subject to the moral guidance of the Spirit working in man. This is what the apostle means by "the spirits of the prophets are subject to the prophets." God may use man as an instrument, but he must first be emptied of self. Hence the humble soul prospers, has God's own word, feeds in these green pastures, and, as the expression of what is become himself, may become a blessing to others. The self-confident mind has never approached God in His word at all; for, had he, he would have ceased to be self-confident. Whenever I see a man confident in himself (and we are all of course liable to it, at any rate in detail), I have no confidence in him. The truth is, all divine things are a riddle, because (man having departed from God) the introduction of God again is necessarily the destruction, the setting aside, of man, viewed in his present state, but thereupon it is the filling the man who receives it with grace, and so with divine confidence, and a delight in holiness that he would never have had otherwise. And he is strong in virtue of being nothing, and in the measure in which he is; as Paul says, "When I am weak, then am I strong." 2 Cor. 12: 10. But this is in principle the total putting down of man as he is, and this man will not bear, and will meddle to his hurt with what is given to the new man. And God will deal morally; He will not give His power (unless as some particular exceptional exhibition to shew it is Himself) otherwise than morally, certainly not at all the knowledge of Himself, and it is of this we are speaking now.

And it is right it should be so: "Blessed are the pure in heart, for they shall see God." Matt. 5: 8, "If any man will do His will, he shall know of the doctrine whether it be of God or whether I speak of myself." John 7: 17. And is it not right that God should thus deal morally with man? Is He to give intelligence of His mind to mere human will and self-sufficiency? He presents it in the word as adapted to man, to every one. But the understanding of its contents does depend on moral condition of soul; and ought, though it may work by grace, to produce that condition. But this the rationalist denies as well as the other.

242 I affirm then that, as Mr. Jowett is perfectly right, his system is intellectually a contradiction and an absurdity; because it supposes a revelation of divine thoughts of which language confessedly formed on other thoughts is the expression, and says it is to be understood according to the simple apprehension of the hearers. It is immoral, because it supposes the moral condition of men to exercise no influence in the intelligence of divine things.

W. But yet the Lord surely made things plain, or rather presented things plainly to men

H. Undoubtedly. If He had not, it would not have tested man; being plain, it condemns him, by shewing that his will and moral condition are in question — are the real hindrance. Light was surely in the world: nothing so simple as light. But men loved darkness rather than light. The Lord therefore came not to judge, but in judgment — not only is light, but gives eyes to one born blind; that they which see not might see, and they which see might be made blind. And so it is now. "How can ye believe who receive honour one of another?" He sowed the seed in the heart. Often it was by the wayside, hard as the nether millstone — the highway of this world's folly and self-will; part was choked by cares, riches, and lusts; part lost by self-deception.

Hence, too, we have what stupid, most stupid, rationalists would call contradiction. He spoke to them in parables as they were able to bear it. Yet He spoke to them in parables, that hearing they might hear and not perceive. It was perfectly suited to them in grace, but to a nation which would not the truth so communicated, that, where the prejudice of will was, all should be dark. Those who had judged themselves, who had repented, believed and glorified Him. The Pharisees rejected the counsel of God against themselves, being not baptized of John.

I will now cite the positive testimony of the Lord to this principle of having the divine thought in order to understand the divine words. "Why do ye not understand my speech? Even because ye cannot hear my word." John 8: 43. So in Proverbs: "It is all simple to them that understand, and plain to them that keep knowledge." How the Lord shows in John 4 that conscience is the inlet to intelligence in divine things! and thus the heart becomes engaged. Rejected and driven out from Judaea, He sat weary on the well of Sychar. A woman, lonely (it was not the hour when women go forth to draw water) and weary with sin, evidently a strong and ardent nature that had sought happiness with eager pursuit, and sank through it into sin, and not found rest to her spirit (how many such are there in the world!) dragged on a life of toil, and, in the midst of it, thought sometimes on Gerizim and Jerusalem, and knew there was a Messiah to come. There might be happiness and rest somewhere; she had none. Toil and weariness she had, and the last evidently in spirit as well as body. Jesus had toil and weariness too, but through love, not through sin, save the sin of others, and this could not weary love, and He knew where rest was — He was it. The Son of God, the Judge of all, had, humanly speaking, put Himself in a position where He was debtor to this woman for a drink of cold water. But He soon draws her out; He speaks of the gift of God, of a well of water springing up unto everlasting life. All was dark in the Samaritan woman's mind. She moved in the circle of her own weariness; this she felt, the fruit of her sin and toil after happiness. And (with all the movings within that predominated and filled her mind, for, in fact, what had she else?) what does the Lord do? "Go, call thy husband, and come hither." "I have no husband." "Thou hast well said," replied the Lord, "I have no husband: thou hast had five husbands; and he whom thou now hast is not thy husband: in that speakest thou truly."

243 Now a ray of light breaks in. "Sir, I perceive that thou art a prophet." The word of God by the Lord has divine authority in her heart, because it has reached her conscience. She has found a man who has told her all that ever she did. Who knew that? The prophet's word has divine authority. Yet she does not yet get to wells of water. The divine communications made to her were quite unintelligible; but much was done. He who knew all her life, all her sin, had been sitting in grace by her, willing to be helped by her. Grace was there as well as truth. She had found the Christ, and leaves her water-pot and her care with it, and becomes a messenger of that which is good news for all. Gerizim and Jerusalem are all alike, and alike nothing. The Father is seeking worshippers in spirit and in truth.

Now here we find a picture of the opening of a soul to understanding and the reception of divine things. The presenting of divine things of the highest character in grace does not do it. The natural heart remains closed. Even when there are moral wants and cravings, divine things are not understood at all. God makes His way through the conscience. Then the word is received. At the moment the heart does not get farther than its present capacity. Still what has been spoken of has been spoken of for it; and grace makes all its own. Jesus in grace has been with it. Oh, what a difference — man's speculations, and God seeing the field white for harvest! The Lord refreshing His spirit when rejected by the pride of man, not with the water of the well, but with love finding its bliss in hearts filled with wretchedness, drinking of the one refreshing well-spring that has visited this world! He had meat to eat His disciples knew not of. What a place for this poor Samaritan, what a place for us; to refresh, stupid creatures that we are — the heart of Jesus, because He is love! Nothing brighter, nothing more genuine, than the effect of her new-found joy, which makes this poor woman the messenger of God's visiting this world to the self-satisfied inhabitants of Sychar. She was just the one that suited the Lord.

244 W. It is a lovely picture, and I think the moral elements you have touched justly given; but on this men may differ. Thereby we see evidently how the estimate of the force of passages depends on the individual spiritual state.

H. Of course, and there is nothing like the picture itself here. What Mr. Jowett says is true. All explanations mar. They are only the expression of our feelings and moral perceptions of that which in itself is complete and perfect.

But remark another thing here, shewing how absurd it is to speak of just the simple meaning to the hearer — that is, man's measure according to the words used: we have here the full power of eternal life as in one who drinks of the water Christ gives; the whole of His person in humiliation; "who it is that saith to thee Give me to drink;" His relationship to sinners; how the divine word reaches the conscience; the passing of grace out of ceremonial Judaism, where it was according to promise, to bring mercy to the vilest; the place Jesus takes thus as rejected; His human estate as weary with us, not having where to lay His head, yet giving as God; the substitution of worship in spirit and truth for Jerusalem and Gerizim, yet salvation of the Jews; the revelation of the Father acting in grace, seeking to have such worshippers; the total change in the soul, when once it is taken possession of by Christ, however ignorant. These, which I recall only from memory, are all directly before the soul in this short but touching interview. How much more, who can say?

The mere literal facts, read as any other history, cannot bring the mind at all into the apprehension of what is here spoken of. If I take the commonest words — as Son, the Son of God, the Son of the Father — a mere literal apprehension affords me nothing, or error; or the Word made flesh. I shall be told, these are mysteries; but the language is simple, and what I am showing is that, with the simplest language, there must be divine apprehensions in the soul to understand scripture; and that understanding it as Thucydides or Sophocles is just simple nonsense. They have human ideas, and are understood humanly. If there are divine ideas, they must be understood divinely. Yet I have only human language, and hence my way of understanding it must be different; and, I must add, the way of writing it, because the way of thinking it must be different. Whether it be by inspiration is the question we have to come to: only I say here that to give divine ideas with certainty, or to be the truth, they must have a divine source, a divine author. Man's ideas about God were utterly false and degraded without it. His power of thought, as such, cannot be adequate to form the idea, or clothe it in language so as to be a communication of truth, an authentic revelation of God's mind.

245 I conclude that, as to the general principle of interpretation proposed by Mr. Jowett, he contradicts himself in the first place, and happily so; next, the system is intellectually an absurdity; thirdly, it is contradictory to the facts of the case; and fourthly, the Lord Himself assures us, as do His apostles, that it is not true. The ideas and subjects of scripture being divine, and language human, formed by human ideas, to understand it simply as it is expressed by a human interpretation of the words, is a manifest contradiction and absurdity. Let us get the best text to have what is to be interpreted, and be relieved from traditional glosses; let us have the most accurate knowledge of Hebrew and Greek at our command: all this is every way to be desired. But, when you have all, in the nature of things the text cannot be interpreted as the words would strike the hearer who stood as a natural man with human thoughts, I may boldly say, in any case whatever. For what is wrong in principle is wrong always. When God is in the world, His ways and actions have, and must have, a meaning which a mere man's cannot have, because He is God. If a Jew had ridden into Jerusalem on an ass, what would it have been? Nothing. If the Lord did, in one sense the history of the world turned on it as a last public-testimony. It was a moment which made the Lord weep, and God perfect praise out of the mouths of babes and sucklings to still the enemy and the avenger. Had these held their peace, the stones would have immediately cried out.

246 I cannot conceive anything more absurd than the thought that the works or the words of the Lord in the earth are to be taken just as another's words, and so understood. They cannot, for He says things none else could say, and does what none else could do; but were they the same, the bearing would be quite different. Does Mr. Jowett believe that the Lord was in the world, or that the word of God is a revelation at all? or, if he does, have they no more weight or bearing than another's, supposing he has the text and grammar all clear? He has told us he does, and told us he does not. If his heart is cleft in twain, may he throw away the worst part of it!

W. I do feel what a solemn question it all is. Your reference to John 4, though so brief, again led the heart back to these fresh springs which make one taste that one is in a region that nothing else is like. It is a folly, a horror, a senselessness no term can reach, to compare the movings and speakings of a God walking in love in this world with the writings and actings of other men. If they were such, He was not that at all; and I thoroughly agree with you, that no human language, taken in its ordinary terms as expressing ordinary things, can express that. The statement contradicts itself. It is still a question, Is there a revelation? Has God revealed Himself or not? Let the language be made grammatically clear, of course: it is the vehicle God has been pleased to use, and as a vehicle I employ it. But when you come to the meaning, the interpretation, we enter on a divine order of thought, and must be in it ourselves to understand. Here we are dependent on God, as in everything else.

H. Surely; and hence it is that — though they may be bad commentators, of course, as to the text — the poor and unlearned, who are really exercised in conscience and in divine truth, understand the truth better, as to the substance of it, than the learned man "who leans to his own understanding;" because they have personally learnt where the connection between an exercised soul and God is formed — they have learnt it by their spiritual wants; and Christ is that connection, and the mind of Christ is in the scripture, and thus they have the key to it. If they pretend to interpret texts, they may very likely go astray; but as to the doctrine of scripture, their faith is clear and sure. No exercise of human understanding can give this; no chemist, even if his analysis be right, knows what water is, like to a man who is ready to die of thirst.

247 I conclude therefore, as to the general principle of Mr. Jowett (and especially as to the first part), that he is fundamentally wrong. "The true glory and note of divinity in these latter," he says [Jewish and Christian scriptures], "being, not that they have hidden, mysterious, or double meanings, but a simple and universal one." Now I look for neither mysticism nor logic; I reject them, as such, both. When Mr. Jowett speaks of double meanings, if he means that two distinct meanings of the words are to be taken — "good meanings," as theologians used to say — it is at once to be rejected; but if he confines the meaning of the scriptures to the narrowness of human wording and thought, his principle is false. In the communication of divine thoughts in human language, the bearing of the sentences, from the richness of the truths in them, is various. If I say "God is a Spirit; and they that worship him must worship him in spirit and in truth, for the Father seeketh such to worship him," I may justly take up the contrast with Jerusalem and Gerizim, and the whole question of God's dispensations; or I may justly take up God's being a Spirit, which in the nature of things requires a spiritual worship — it must be such. I may also press the difference between God in His nature requiring such, and the Father (as a name of grace and relationship) seeking such; and how now, in this double name, He gave His character to all approach to Him; as the Lord said "I go to my Father and your Father, and my God and your God;" and in the Ephesians, "The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ who hath blessed us with all spiritual blessings in heavenly places in Christ." Eph. 1: 3.

I add, as Mr. Jowett complains of connecting passages by some hidden connection, that when I find, "Come out from among them, and be ye separate, and touch not the unclean thing, and I will receive you, and ye shall be my sons and daughters, saith the Lord Almighty," 2 Cor. 6: 17, 18. I may insist on the need of separation from an ungodly world and evil, in order to be in relationship with God; or I may note that there are three scriptural relationships with God (two expressly noted and distinguished in the Old Testament — Almighty, and Lord or Jehovah; the first to Abraham, the second to Israel and Moses), and that He who bore them both takes here that of the Father. Now all these are not double senses, but divine truths coming from an everlasting source, and being the expression of it, and of Him who, in infinite richness of being and character, must be in relationship with all things — above all, through all, and in all believers — the statement of these truths must carry all that God is as spoken of in the statement, or displayed in the acts contained in the passage. Of course, all passages are not alike full. It is not logical conclusions which are not in the passage, which I find or seek; nor mystic inventions which are not there either; but the mind of God found in it, that I look for.

248 To say that this is not mysterious is, as to many passages, begging Mr. Jowett's pardon, absurd. A religion which depends on the Word being made flesh, and the Son of man sitting at the right hand of God, and sending down the Holy Ghost to make our bodies temples; which tells us that we are members of Christ's body, of His flesh and of His bones; which shews God become a man, and obedient as such, and dying as such, and other truths I need not enlarge upon, must be mysterious in the true sense of the word, and, indeed, in every sense. I do not know if Mr. Jowett denies all these things. What angels desire to look into can well be supposed to be so. Christ made sin; our dwelling in God and God in us; our being, in this world, as Christ is, so as to have boldness in the day of judgment; the miraculous birth of Christ; — all speak with one voice. He who excludes mysteries from the word excludes sense from it, instead of making it intelligible. I do not mean by mysterious that it cannot be understood. The scripture meaning of mystery is that known only by revelation, not by human knowledge. The initiated know mysteries, the uninitiated not — that is the meaning of the word; but the true initiated are those taught of God. If God reveals, there must be mysteries; and, from the nature of what He reveals, true initiation must exist to understand it. Its expression cannot be at the level of human ideas.

All the deepest expressions of good and evil are brought together. God and sin meet in the cross. Christ is God, and is forsaken of God. Christ is the power and Prince of Life, and He dies, but through this destroys the power of death. You cannot have such things brought together in the same act without mysterious truth. When all that is perfectly good in God and evil in man meet, and are centred indeed in one person, or the condition he takes, the human mind must be taught of God to know it; and God alone, who knows all things perfectly, can reveal it simply, because He does know perfectly; but He reveals all in man, all in Himself, and all in Christ in it. I know, as one may see in Mr. Jowett's Commentary, a person may rest on the surface, and seek to destroy all depth in them, and bend them to the standard of the human mind and scope of human thought. But I do not see any great sense in this that such a fact as God becoming a man should not suppose immense depths of thought, purpose, and moral truth, and reveal them. If Mr. Jowett denies all this, then I get simple infidelity. I know what I have to deal with. If not, I have a Christianity in which the depth of my moral nature, old and new, and in the exercises and conflicts of both, meet God where He and sin have met, and Christ in the consummation of ages is come to put it away. And perfect love and divine righteousness find their manifestations and ground.

249 The simplest expressions of scripture awake profound depths in our moral nature. What does putting away sin mean? What Christ the Son of God appearing to do it? What does the Lamb of God mean? It is easy for philosophers to avoid all these expressions, and make a Christianiy of their own. Only it is in no part the Christianiy that is revealed or known in the word. But interpreting the Christianiy that was revealed in scripture, and has possessed men's minds for ages, by saying that the true divine in it is not having mysteries, is false in fact, and absurd in idea. Mr. Jowett gives pages on conversion and change of character to excuse and suppose it possible, at least in uneducated persons! And — what I trust shews that he may have tasted it, but shews how ashamed he is of owning it before educated persons — excuses it thus: "It was the quiet fancy of a sentimentalist to ask whether any one who remembers the first sight of a beloved person could doubt the existence of magic." We may ask another question: "Can any one who has ever known the love of Christ doubt the existence of a spiritual power?" I hope from this it is true in the writer's case; but it is very low ground to take in speaking of the dying and living love of the Son of God. It may suit an Oxford theologian seeking to emancipate himself from the trammels of conventional doctrines and creeds. A serious Christian hopes for the writer, and passes over an expression of the truth so unworthy of one who has felt it.

I would add a few words on the contrast between double meanings of prophecy in general, and the application of the simple meaning of the words as a hearer would understand them with one meaning. The idea is entirely false. Mr. Jowett admits, "They must speak as from one with whom a thousand years is as one day, and one day as a thousand years; but," he says, "not so as to connect distinct and distant objects." Now I think this also unphilosophical, contradicted by the facts and statements of scripture, and untrue. If the prophecies are to be interpreted as the words of One with whom "a thousand years are as one day," as Mr. Jowett says, it is impossible not to see that the bearing of these words must be something of larger wider import than the circumstances of the moment, and must reach on to epochs where the thoughts and words of such a one will be fulfilled. In this day of a thousand years, all in man's hand changes, shifts, is subverted; new things are set up, new interests created. If the word of one divine day can reach over to the end of it, it must be occupied with a plan that runs through it all, through all these human changes, which are but the risings and fallings of a tumultuous sea, where the equal tide below the surface pursues its constant course. There is a divine plan above and beyond all the local circumstances.

250 As Peter says, "No prophecy of scripture is of any private interpretation" 2 Peter 1: 20 — does not solve itself in the individual circumstances which occasion it, but enters into the great plan of God. Yet, in the love of God, we may say they must connect themselves with those to whom they are addressed. I doubt not, therefore, that the prophecies were often occasioned by present circumstances, and comfort given to saints at the time by them; but to say they did not look out to a future of blessing to Israel, of the final setting aside of the power of evil, of the coming in of a great promised deliverer, is to fail in recognizing the most obvious fact in all prophecy. Jews, and rationalist infidels who think that the prophets were national poets, apply it, no doubt, to Israel; and if we are to listen to the dull rhapsodies of Drs. Bunsen and Williams, Jeremiah is the sufferer; but Mr. Jowett is not yet there. He owns God has something to do with scripture, and we will not return to these foolish and stupid imaginations.

Take Joel. There it is not to be doubted that a famine through locusts and insect ravages is the occasion referred to. But do you or I believe, or any reasonable person, to say no more, that He whose words are to be interpreted as the words of One with whom a thousand years are as one day has written a book for all ages to determine the result at that time of an inroad of caterpillars, the effect of whose ravages, however trying, would disappear in a few years? Could any one read the book and not see that God's present judgments and mercies are made the occasion of drawing the attention of Israel to their state, and lead the awakened conscience to God's judgment of evil, and full deliverance for those who repented and called upon the name of the Lord, when the people should never be ashamed, the Spirit poured out on all flesh, and Judah dwell for ever, and every temporal blessing be theirs; and, finally, the harvest and vintage of the whole earth be reaped and trodden — God dwelling there in Zion? The famine connected the present circumstances with this promise of plenty and blessing, but no one can but see that the prophet is rapt into future times. Now if this is meant by a double meaning, it is true. That is, that the Lord does give what is a present comfort, yet clothes it in language which leads on to His ultimate plans, so as to keep the godly hope of His people up, and often passes entirely into that with which the present is not linked at all. The point of transition may be sometimes obscure. But the general principle is undeniable, and such a character of prophecy worthy of God, and indeed alone worthy of Him. In Jeremiah and in Isaiah it is in vain to deny that, with encouragement suited to the occasion, the prophet refers to the coming of Messiah, and a time of unparalleled and continued blessing. It is incredible to suppose that God had not His own plans in view, and the great result of His government of the world when man had been fully tried on the ground of responsibility.

251 W. I must say I think principle and fact concur to prove this. I mean that God held out the hope of a great coming deliverance and blessing, whatever momentary encouragement He might give; and that this time in which His plans would be accomplished must be mainly in view, though present circumstances would draw the prophet's attention, and give rise to exhortation and warning. And we must not forget that in fact Israel was waiting for this time, and that in all the East, as Tacitus tells us, the expectation prevailed.

H. Nor is this all. Almost the earliest prophecy (Balaam's, which reaches to the Star of Jacob, was earlier) declares that the order of the world was all arranged in respect of Israel. (Deut. 32: 8.) And, further, that Israel would be given up into the hands of their enemies, and afterwards restored, and the Gentiles associated with them, through overwhelming judgments, when "God shall arise to judgment, and to help all the meek of the earth."

Isaiah (6) shews us Israel given up too, and for a long period, and yet preserved in a remnant; and the rejection of Him (chap. 1) who found none to answer when He came and called, as the cause of their being laid aside, yet this followed by the fullest promise of restoration and glory. So Hosea declares they shall remain many days desolate, without true God or false, but seek Jehovah their God and David their king at the end. So Micah declares they will insult and reject the Judge of Israel born at Bethlehem, and therefore be given up; but that this same man will be their peace. And again, the largest and fullest blessing is promised to a remnant through Him, while judgment will be executed on the nations, who yet will be blessed as by the dew from heaven which tarries not for men.

252 Now my object is not, of course, to explain here all prophecy, but to note that there was a reference to a great scheme or plan, such as must be in God's mind, though He may encourage and comfort at the time; and not only so, but that there was something more specific — a giving up Israel, the beloved people, for a time (during which God would be found of them that sought Him not); that that, whatever other sins they had, was caused by their rejection of Jehovah coming as a man in mercy; that this caused their divorce from Him; and that then a long undefined interval would elapse, and blessing afterward arrive, but introduced by judgments — the Lord pleading with all flesh. This gives a uniform plan, declared in statements verified before our eyes in the state of the Jews consequent on Christ's coming. This necessarily threw on the application of scripture prophecy to the end, when alone the plans of God would have their decided and full result, evil be set aside, and the earth blessed under Messiah. This principle the New Testament confirms (Matt. 23: 39; Rom. 11: 25, 26; and other passages).

We find the Old testifying, in one entire passage, of One coming in grace and gentleness, and then judgment. The New quotes what relates to the grace, and stops short of the judgment. Thus, Luke 4: 19, from Isaiah 61: 1. So Matthew 21: 5, from Zechariah 9: 9. The New Testament leads us itself to the same point. Thus, Matthew 10: "Ye shall not have gone over the cities of Israel till the Son of man be come." Now, He was there; but there was a presenting of Him to human responsibility, and bringing Him in in power. So the Lord personally tells them they should not see Him till they said, Blessed be He that cometh. Till then their house should be desolate. I refer to these to shew that scripture constantly refers to a divine accomplishment of a plan to be fulfilled, which seemed at first to fail — a failure which was the occasion of bringing in the Church on quite different principles, the mystery hidden from ages and generations, Israel being set aside. Even the Epistles follow the same order. The quotation of Psalm 68 in Ephesians 4 goes only so far as it does not apply distinctly to Israel.

253 Finally, I take up Daniel, and I find a declaration of a period appointed to Jerusalem for God to bring in righteousness and blessing — the famous period of seventy weeks; but when this is entered on in detail, we have seven weeks of trial to build the city, then sixty-two weeks to Messiah the Prince, who is cut off and takes nothing (for that is the true sense of the words; not, "and not for Himself"). Then comes a long undated period of war and desolation. And when is the promise of the preceding verses supposed by the prophecy to be fulfilled? It must come after the end of the war: till then there are desolations — the city and sanctuary being destroyed already. It is put off for an unknown length of time, and the unfinished period of seventy weeks gets its conclusion at the end. This is the unequivocal structure of the prophecy. (Daniel never goes on to the blessing beyond the times of the Gentiles.) That is, the prophets suppose a rejection of Israel for a long period, the cutting off of Messiah, and afterwards the bringing in of full blessing through Him. I am not now saying they are real prophecies to be fulfilled; nor, as to this point, does it alter the case, absurd as the theory is, if Daniel wrote in the days of Antiochus Epiphanes.

My assertion is, that the prophets have a scheme of this kind — an appearing of grace, as Christianity expresses it, teaching us to wait for the appearing of the glory — a putting off to a remote period of earthly blessing, introduced by Messiah and judgments, the accomplishment of these prophecies, and of the blessing of Israel; Messiah being rejected meanwhile by Israel, and Israel therefore given up. But, whatever particular warnings and consolations there may have been, this shews that, while addressed to these generations, and often occasioned by their circumstances, prophecy always looked out farther in its true scope. I am speaking of its plan, not of its accomplishment. He who would interpret it with that kind of simplicity which would leave this out, leaves all the clearly demonstrable intention of its author out, and this is a bad way of interpreting.

W. I seize clearly the purport of what you say, and it binds the whole together, from the Pentateuch to Revelation, and brings in the New Testament into its place in the organisation of the whole. I feel that if God gives a revelation, and that, as entering into the wants of His people as scripture professes to do, He must enter into local circumstances, and present events so as to meet these wants; and yet God must have a plan and a purpose. And scripture clearly points out that He has. But the Church seems to stand on peculiar ground.

254 H. Doubtless it does. The testimony of Paul takes up man as wholly ruined in nature, and reveals a heavenly man and a new creation; and associates those called, during the rejection of the true heavenly man, with Him in heaven, so that they are heavenly. He was the Lord from heaven. They, as new created, have a part with Him, and, having the Spirit, are united to Him, and become His bride and His body, are joint-heirs with Him the first-born among many brethren. But the current of promise runs on too in connection with the original promise to Abraham. The Jewish branches were broken off, and we grafted in; but the chain of promise was unbroken, though there are blessings above promise in the mystery of union with Christ. Thus the Church is associated with Him for ever.

W. And when the blessing comes in?

H. She will joy and minister in it as thus united to Him and joint-heir with Him, and blessedly so, though her highest joy be Himself.

W. Where is this at all drawn out of scripture?

H. The bringing as children into the inheritance, and the tree of promise, in Romans 8, 11; the relationship with our God and Father, and all His counsels in Christ, in Ephesians, specially Ephesians 1. Our having personally all with Christ is still more brought out in the last chapters of John's gospel. It is this testimony of a second Adam, a last man, which alone gives its true divinely moral character to the New Testament, and gives the just sense of the real bearing of Christianity for us, animating with a heavenly energy, and imprinting a heavenly character on our whole position.

W. Then comes in the gospel, in its full character, in a suspension of the regular course of prophetic promise?

H. Exactly. And the Jews are obliged to come in as a Gentile, in mere mercy; yet all promise will be fulfilled to them. This it is that makes the apostle adore the depths of the riches of God's wisdom. The promises meanwhile run on; yet a heavenly people is formed. All in heaven and earth is to be gathered up into one head in Christ. Besides individual salvation and blessing, there are two great topics in scripture — God's government of the world, and the Church. In Christ both find their Head. He will rule over all, Israel being the earthly centre, while the Church is united to Him. Meanwhile, as He has perfectly revealed God and the Father, we are brought into full personal relationship with what God is in Himself, and as children, or sons with a Father, a relationship of which He Himself is the pattern as man, His redemption work being the basis of all, in the power of which He fills all things.

255 W. It does give a divine completeness to the revelation of the mind of God, which is full of interest though we see but corners of it, yet corners of a whole worthy of God. The time will come when we shall know as we are known, and, better still, enjoy God Himself fully.

H. This is indeed our one chief joy, though we shall admire Him in all His plans and ways. The place of Christ is lovely too in this. The glory of God enlightens the heavenly city. But such a bright blaze of glory, though needed to know Him, has nothing personal in it; it dazzles more than it concentrates the affections: but the Lamb is the light thereof. Here the heart finds its home and centre: One known, One who has loved us, One who is divinely at home there, and the very light of that glory, but has never lost the character in which He has served us in the depths of love. For where love is active, it serves.

But I turn to another point of the prophetic revelation of God before we leave this part of our enquiry. We have accepted interpreting prophecy as the words of One with whom a thousand years are as one day. But, if this be so, then there is one Author really of the whole, though divers instruments; and, though surely adapting His words in grace by those instruments to various circumstances that arise (as grace would do), yet, I must find one mind as to the substance and purpose of the whole. And, though interpreting each part simply and just as I find it as to the direct meaning of the passages (which I think very important myself), taking what a prophecy says as it says it, yet the one mind from which all flows and which runs through all I shall surely find and do find; and consequently (not a similarity or a copying, but) a fitting of each part into the whole, and into its own place in the whole, each part being suited for that very reason to its own object and part in that whole; and thus secondly a connection, not immediate but through the whole, of each with every other part; as the members of the body different entirely in service, yet serve the whole, and serve each other.

256 I get Jews, Gentiles, Israel, Messiah, their history developed in multifarious ways; but all treated by one mind to whom all belong, history bringing out the thoughts of that one mind by each one in the sphere they belong to, and by a revealed bearing one upon another — law, the opening up of wider thoughts by prophets, obedient royalty, punishment of evil, absolute Gentile dominion, Messiah, sacrifice, endless principles brought out in germ, death, resurrection, promises, and all running into one another in one great scheme. For it is a remarkable fact that Judaism has given rise (whatever people think of it) to a more enlarged unfolding of every question as to good and evil, and man's relationship with God — has more touched all the springs of human nature, than anything that ever claimed the attention of the heart of man. A being separate from good, that is, from God, yet capable (by grace) of it; one who had a will of his own, but was responsible; who had acquired the knowledge of good and evil, conscience — yet was under the power of evil: who had been made in the likeness of God, but had set up to be independent and do without Him — such a being must be exercised in this way to know himself and be restored to God.

W. When you say Judaism, do you not think Christianity does so?

H. Every restored soul must in principle be so exercised; but I look at Christianity itself rather as the answer — the divine and blessed answer to all the questions that have been raised. Thus far then, W., of the general principles raised by Mr. Jowett, as far as a conversation of the kind can meet them. I conclude with him that we must interpret prophecy, the Old Testament, as the words of One with whom a thousand years are as one day. But I do not think he has wisely weighed what the import of such a statement is. We may next follow him into details as far as they affect the principle.

W. But, before you go on to these, I should like to ask you a question.

H. Well?

W. You do not, I am sure, receive all the spiritualisation, as it is called, and endless applications of scripture made by men's minds. I thought you took prophetic scriptures in their direct and plain meaning.

H. Surely I do. I reject entirely this mystifying of the Old Testament. There are great spiritual principles and truths which are found, and must be found, in all that divinely unfolds God's relationships with men: God's faithfulness, His mercy, His patient goodness; man's trust and integrity of heart, his humbleness, the fear of God. But when I seek the meaning of a passage, I seek simply what God meant, where it is His testimony; or in what light He seeks to put man's conduct, if it is a history of this, or what is His purpose, as a whole, in the narration. I have already spoken of the difference of encouragement or warning afforded at the time, and its passing on to give the subject its place in the general purpose of God to be accomplished in a future day. What I object to is the unintelligent and, if you please, unphilosophical irrational way of looking for the plain meaning. "The office of the interpreter is not to add another (interpretation), but to recover the original one." Now here we are entirely agreed, but then, it is added, "The meaning, that is, of the words as they struck on the ears, or flashed before the eyes of those who first heard and read them." I affirm this to be in every case false, if the fine language means any thing. I have already referred to the soberer expression, "the meaning which it had to the mind of the prophets . . . or to the hearer or reader." Now, if I am reading or hearing a statement, I do not in any way look to the effect on the hearers. This may be a casual help, but no more. If I seek the meaning, I must seek, not the effect on others, but the intention of the speaker or writer — this as simply as you please, and nothing else. I have nothing to do with the impressions produced on hearers. There may have been none, or a false one, according to previous prejudices, or an imperfect impression; or even a right one as regards themselves, yet not taking in the full scope of what was said. If I am to believe scripture, the prophets themselves, so far from receiving a first impression and abiding by it, enquired into the sense of their own prophecies, and were taught of God that they referred, in the great topics connected with the purpose of God and deliverance, to after times. See 1 Peter 1: 11, 12

257 But it is surely useless to reason to prove that if I am interpreting a writing or words, I must seek simply the purpose and meaning of the speaker and nothing else. Now, this only one right thing Mr. Jowett leaves wholly out; it never occurs to him to think of it. I say, therefore, that his whole system is irrational and false. He is so full of the borrowed idea that they were temporary themes, referring in oriental language simply to the national hearers of the day, that he takes this as the measure of the meaning, and thus lays down a Principle which is as false as can be. But that is all borrowed. This is German Mr. Jowett; but the other Mr. Jowett, I trust the true one, tells us we are to listen to them as the words of One with whom a thousand years are as one day; One of abiding unfailing counsels, which everything tends to bring about, who is not slack concerning His promise.

258 The effect of the great fact that it is God who speaks, I have already spoken of. Let me add another example from Ezekiel. He refers to the last days in the most explicit manner, and with developed details. Yet, in the final scene he declares that the mighty one Gog who comes up, had been often spoken of. Ezek. 38: 17. Hence, if I take the prophets as they present themselves, and as Ezekiel speaking in God's name declares, they were certainly (under the name of a then existing power) speaking of a mighty one at the end of the world's course when Jehovah would make Himself known in His government.

It is remarkable, that, when the prophecy goes out of the geographical name by which it is identified, it uses language intelligible at the time, as far as shewing it was beyond the limits of their geographical designation (Isaiah 18), a land beyond the rivers of Cush (that is, the Euphrates and Nile). The prophet connects it with Israelitish ideas, but goes far away beyond, as he must, to fill up the picture of the last days. But I should go too much into detail if I pursued this farther.

Only remark that the prophets (we shall come to the New Testament) were simple impostors if they were not inspired, for they give their burdens as oracles, as directly the words of God: "thus saith Jehovah;" or, "the word of Jehovah came to me," or a vision was given. If then Mr. Jowett rejects the prophets as inspired, he must hold them for impostors. If not, then there is direct inspiration, a communication of the mind of God through a man, as he was, moved by the Holy Ghost, in words which entitled the prophet to say, Thus saith the Lord; and the apostles certainly did not hold them for impostors, but refer to them as true prophets who had prophesied about Jesus. I suppose Mr. Jowett would hardly hold that to be the direct and only meaning as received by the first readers or hearers. But if this be so, the question takes a new form. Is the New Testament entirely deprived of those divine communications which abounded before, and form the Old Testament? And is that which is given us by apostles and evangelists to reveal the perfect religion of God less from Himself than the communications which were given to Israel in their imperfect and preparatory state? This is hard to believe.

A Fourth Dialogue on the Essays and Reviews, section b.

Inspiration and Interpretation.

J. N. Darby.

<09004E> file section b.

259 But all this leads us to the second point, in these days an all important one: is there inspiration, and what is it?

W. It is an important question, and is even more embarrassing as to the New than as to the Old; because the New pronounces on the Old. But I see plainly, as to the question of the inspiration of the Old Testament — of the prophets at least (and, indeed, the Lord cites the whole volume), they must be inspired, or impostors giving as the Lord's words what were not so. But then the Lord's statements are insurmountable. "The scriptures cannot be broken," John 10: 35, for instance; for He must have known it if they were impostors, yet cites them as true prophets, and declares they must be fulfilled, that they spoke of Him. But if the prophets were inspired, we have direct inspiration, and the mind of God as far as given to them. And this, and this only, is what we have to seek, and the only question is, as you say: Is Christianity founded on a less explicit revelation from God than Judaism? You cannot say it was founded on Christ, and this is sufficient; for He wrote nothing, and I do not know what He was, with any divine faith, if the writings of the New Testament were not inspired. I see the question is a most grave one; while it is of the utmost weight to see that the Old Testament is certainly inspired, because the fundamental question is settled, and the casting the New Testament out of the limits of inspired communications is a poor idea altogether then. To say that an imperfect revelation is inspired, a perfect one not, is somewhat hard to believe: still we must see from scripture itself.

H. Surely that is the way as to enquiry; for it really proves itself its divine power in the conscience. And this last is the only true knowledge of inspiration. I know rationalists try and put off with an air of superiority, as rejected by enlightened people (that is, themselves), what they have not got, and therefore cannot feel the force of; but I am not afraid of avowing, in the fullest extent, the doctrine of the Reformation, which is necessarily the doctrine of every believer, that scripture proves itself by its own power. I go further — it never proves itself, never can prove itself, if it be true, in any other way. And so, moreover, it declares: "faith cometh by hearing, and hearing by the word of God." Rom. 10: 17, "He that believeth on the Son of God hath the witness in himself." 1 John 5: 10, "The law of Jehovah is perfect, converting the soul. The entrance of thy word giveth light, it giveth understanding to the simple." Ps. 19: 7. If what is called light requires something to shew it, it is a proof that it is not really light. In the nature of things light shews itself and all else. It is not what we mean by light, what a man who has eyes knows it to be by having eyes, if it has to be shewn. It does require eyes to see it. If a man has not eyes, he cannot of course see it or know what it is at all. Nor can any one tell him what it is, or make himself understood in speaking of it. He wants the faculty of what is to be proved. If a man does not see the word of God to be such, it is a proof that he has no moral eyes, no faith. A man asks me how I can prove honey to be sweet. I say, if you cannot taste it, you must remain ignorant. And note, if there be a word of God, it must be moral light and perfect light, divine light — cannot be otherwise. If what is presented to me be not such, I say at once, then it is not God's word. It may be dawn, or shine through clouds, or be noon-day, but it is in its nature light, or it is not God's word. Hence, in the nature of things it must reveal itself. If it do not, it is not God's word. Whether a man has eyes to see is another question: but one who has knows he sees the light.

260 Hence I am not afraid of the language of another of our Essays. "Calvin did not shrink from saying that scripture shone sufficiently by its own light. As long as this could be kept to, the Protestant theory of belief was whole and sound — at least it was as sound as the Catholic. In both, reason, aided by spiritual illumination, performs the subordinate function of recognizing the supreme authority of the Church and of the Bible respectively. But learned controversy and abatement of zeal drove the Protestants generally from the hardy but irrational assertion of Calvin." I dare say they did. That is, as men lost faith, they lost conviction of the divine authority of the word. How could they do otherwise? It is stating the same thing in other terms. But Calvin, as every believer, could not say otherwise, because it had shone thus in his own soul and in no other way. The Church was against it, nature was against it, interest was against it. God's word was too mighty. But I say more: if the scriptures be not thus received, they are never received at all. It professes to be the word and testimony of God. If a witness has to be accredited, and proved to be true, the witness is not believed at all on his own testimony. Hence, as long as scripture has to be proved by reason, or accredited by the Church, God is not believed because He has spoken, that is, there is no real faith. Such reasoning or accrediting may lead me to believe it afterwards, so far as leading me to examine the testimony, which thus may acquire force over my soul as true. But, as long as reasoning or accrediting is the reason why I believe it, I do not receive it as the word of God. I do not believe God in it. I do not receive it as His word. If I believe Thomas because James has said that what he has said is true, I do not believe Thomas at all.

261 W. Yes; but if James has said that Thomas was truthful, not that what he said was true?

H. I do not want any one to tell me God is truthful. What is wanting is to know that it is His testimony. And, mark, if I cannot without James's testimony know that Thomas's word is to be trusted, it is a proof that I do not know Thomas, and that I am incapable of myself of discovering the truthfulness of his statements. He is true, but I cannot find it out. So with the rationalist. He cannot find it out if it be God's word, if the testimony is truthful. It is his incapacity. He may be an open infidel. But, if not, all his state means is, that he is incapable of discerning the word of God. He has the will to make difficulties, because he does not like to have a word directly from God; but he cannot say it is not — he cannot help me in judging if it be. And, indeed, if I believe Thomas only because James says he is truthful, I still do not know Thomas myself; and if this be true in the case we are speaking of, I do not know God still, and my believing His word is of no real use whatever; for the knowledge of God is its true value. But more than this — if God has spoken, either He has not so spoken as to bind my conscience, that is, He has spoken to no purpose at all, and badly, or He has spoken so as to bind my conscience, and it is not according to the rationalist bound. I therefore am guilty and blind; for I do not receive and bow to what ought to bind my conscience. If revelation be not therefore wholly denied, either God has spoken incompetently and badly, or I am bound to receive and bow to it.

W. That is true; and it is easy to decide which is the case. But do you mean sound reasonings cannot be a means of convincing the mind that the scriptures are the word of God?

H. They cannot give faith in it. They may lead to it in this way, namely, in that they prove the absurdity of what is said to deny it, and prove thus the absurdity of denying it, so that the mind bows to it, and the word is left to its own force; but there is never faith till it has exercised this force.

W. I see, it may open all the way to the Bible, but the Bible must do its own work.

262 H. Exactly.

W. Well, it is true if you did not believe me till what I said was accredited by another, it would not be believing me.

H. And note, in passing, how this applies to the Romanist ground. The word or testimony of God may of course act on souls there as elsewhere by its own power; but as to faith — real divine faith — in the soul, as long as I believe on the Church's warrant, I do not believe God at all; that is, I do not believe anything divine. I believe in the Church, but not yet on God or His word. The Roman Catholic ground of faith is total unbelief. They say I cannot believe the word of God till the Church accredits it. Now I hold it a great mercy to be brought up to receive the Bible to be the word of God, because I go to it as a little child, and it is free to exercise its power over me. But I have not faith till it does.

We will now turn to Mr. Jowett's statements as to inspiration. The greater part is utter fallacy, or fancies of men which are only to be left to their own worthlessness. He gives various views of inspiration as contradictory, in order to shew the uncertainty of men on the subject, when, in fact, all are compatible and true, so that there is no dilemma at all, unless what is said of the kind of inspiration of particular books. All this is throwing dust in people's eyes. What the upright soul wants to know when it takes up a Bible, is, I can trust this; I will sit down to know what God will say to me, what He has said, what His mind is. As to the manner of inspiration, he knows nothing about it. What he reads must be the word of God for him. He must trust it, bow to it as such, and looks for the aid of the Spirit which indited it. And the doctors in theology know no more about it than he does, nor can they; because they are not inspired, and can have no consciousness of the manner of the Spirit's action. The apostle could not explain it. Mr. Jowett says it is held by some that there is an inspiration of superintendence, and by others an inspiration of suggestion. Now I believe both fully. If the evangelists, as eye-witnesses, had facts to record which they remembered, the Spirit had only to take care they were rightly used, Himself so to use the memory, and not permit the narrator to narrate them otherwise than according to His mind. There is an inspiration of suggestion, as the history of creation or prophecy. And Christ expressly promises both: "The Spirit of truth will guide you into all truth; for he shall not speak of himself, but what he shall hear that shall he speak, and he will shew you things to come." John 16: 13. And again: "He shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance." John 14: 26. Of course the Essayists know better about it than the scriptures. But Mr. Jowett tells us we are to take scripture's account of itself.

263 Next we have opposed an inspiration in which the inspired person is passive, and an inspiration which acts through the character of the sacred writer. But here there is no opposition. If God has formed the character as a vessel, He can use it so that the will should be in no exercise, and what sets the character in activity should be simply the Holy Ghost moving it, and it remaining as an instrument what it was, as I have no doubt was usually the case. There are different kinds of inspiration as to form recognized in scripture, closely connected with this remark. I may speak the words willed by God, and not understand them, or I may understand and speak them. This last, though a less apparently inspired and glorious form, the apostle prefers. But both were inspired. An example of one was tongues, or Old Testament prophecy; the other was prophecy under the New. So when the communication of the facts and ordinary knowledge of facts are contrasted, the contrast has no ground. The Spirit brought to their remembrance. It was the memory of things known when they had taken place, but recalled in the perfection proper to the mind of God to the memory of the inspired person, or, if needed, revealed if unknown. What I look for in inspiration is, that the words should be so ordered by the Spirit as to convey perfectly what it was the intention of the Spirit to communicate.

Again, when an apostle spoke he was as inspired, when it was the intention of God he should be so, in speaking as in writing. When not, he was like another man speaking or writing — perhaps more spiritual — not necessarily so; but his words had no inspired authority. The writing was different in this — it was to abide, and hence had a permanent character of inspiration. Although, as to this also, Paul might have written uninspired, though spiritual letters, or not inspired for permanent use. But I shall shew that the apostles do pretend to inspiration, and affirm it of all scriptures; that they distinguish between personal spirituality and inspired communications having the authority of the Lord.

After making all kinds of false logical divisions and confusions, so as to puzzle the reader, Mr. Jowett comes plainly to the point, and asserts — "Nor for any of the higher or supernatural views of inspiration is there any foundation in the gospels and epistles." Now this is simply, totally, and entirely false — an incredible statement, and slurs over the question of inspiration in a way I must call disingenuous; because, by saying gospels and epistles, the Old Testament is passed over in silence. And does it mean the gospels and epistles do not pretend to it themselves, or do not affirm it of scripture? But it is false in any case. We read thus, "No prophecy of the scripture is of any private interpretation; for prophecy came not in old time by the will of man, but holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." 2 Peter 1: 20. Paul says, "Now the Spirit speaketh expressly [here we are in the New Testament] that in the last times some shall depart from the faith." 1 Tim. 4: 1. He declares that "all scripture is given by inspiration of God;" it is proper to make the man of God perfect. The Old Testament writers are positive — "Thus saith Jehovah," they say. And David, "The Spirit of Jehovah spake by me, and his word was in my tongue;" and Christ, in spite of rationalists, declares they testify of Him, and that all must be fulfilled. He appeals to scripture as an irrefragable and divine testimony, and declares, in Luke 16, that it bound the consciences of its readers as much as His own resurrection did. But St. Paul is more precise. He ascribes, in New Testament communication, first the revelation. next the communication, thirdly the reception of divine truth, exclusively and absolutely to the direct operation of the Spirit: thus only can it be, he says. "What man knoweth the things of a man, save the spirit of a man that is in him? Even so knoweth no one the things of God, but the Spirit of God." Next, "Which things also we speak, not in words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth, communicating [such is the force] spiritual things by a spiritual medium." 1 Cor. 2: 13, 14. Then they are only so received. "But the natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit . . . for they are spiritually discerned."

264 He distinguishes between his experience, in which he had the Spirit acting in himself, and the revelation which made his communications the commandments of the Lord. "But I speak this by permission, not of commandment. Unto the married I command; yet not I, but the Lord . . . . But to the rest speak I, not the Lord. Now concerning virgins, I have no commandment of the Lord; I give my judgment as one that has obtained mercy of the Lord to be faithful. But she is happier if she so abide, after my judgment: and I think also that I have the Spirit of the Lord." 1 Cor. 7: 40. Here then he distinguishes between his judgment, as to which he could yet appeal to them as having the Spirit to form and guide his experience, and a revelation from the Lord which constituted a commandment. Hence he says as to the body of his epistle not thus formally excepted, "If any man think himself to be a prophet or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord." 1 Cor. 14: 37. Some would allege, from his saying "I have no commandment," that all is not inspired. Yes, he was inspired; and modern attempts prove the immense importance of the precision of the God of grace pointing out the difference between the expression of his experience by the Spirit, and a revelation by the Spirit which had the direct force of a commandment.

265 But as to the gospels, Mr. Jowett pleads that their declaring the record to be true, inasmuch as the writer saw that of which he spoke, is a proof that there is no inspiration. This is a mistake; the Lord had said the Spirit should bear witness of what they could not see — the heavenly glory of Christ; the disciples of His life, as they had been with Him; but for this last, that all might be according to the perfection of the Holy Spirit, He would bring to their remembrance what Christ had said. That is, the Holy Ghost reveals the heavenly glory of Christ and doctrine flowing from it, and calls to remembrance the earthly teaching of Christ, which they had already heard. The fitting the vessel in every way is no proof of the Lord's not using it Himself. When the Lord is tempted by Satan, He quotes the scriptures as absolute authority against him, and Satan can make no reply to it at all.

There cannot be a more unfounded or false assertion than that the gospels or epistles do not present the Old Testament and themselves as inspired. They formally claim inspiration both for Old and New. Πᾶσα γραφὴ θεόπνευστος does not simply apply to the Old Testament. It is the assertion of the character of πᾶσα γραφὴ And in Romans 16: 26 prophetic writings (for this is the true force) are said to be means used for propagating the truth; and Peter, in his second epistle, refers to Paul's epistles as scriptures. Scripture is not an essay on inspiration. Nor does it in every epistle or book set about to say "I am inspired." It would be a proof that it was not, and feared people should say so; but there are the most distinct testimonies, when the occasion occurs, that it is so. What can be stronger than saying — "The scripture foreseeing that God would justify the heathen by faith?" It is treating the scripture as if it were God Himself, because it is God's own expression of His mind which scripture gives. The Lord Himself gives testimony to inspiration, and to the inspiration of scripture, which is what rationalists deny. The referring merely to the New Testament is a subterfuge; and the New Testament gives the plainest declaration of the inspiration of the testimony by which Christianity was founded, and that the New Testament, as other scriptures, is inspired.

266 W. I do not think it possible for any one reading the New Testament to call in question its inspiration.

H. Impossible. Where it does not speak of inspiration it gives its contents as definite revelation. I refer now to the epistles. They speak of mysteries, that is, things known only to the initiated by revelation; and speak of them avowedly as so given. Where Paul gives only his experience by the Holy Ghost, he states it to be different, as we have seen. A large part of it is avowedly prophecy. And the Apocalypse is revealed or an imposture. Some is said to be by the "word of the Lord," where it is a then given revelation; and the most ordinary directions are said to be "the Lord's commandments." The Apostle Paul consequently took the greatest care, adding a salutation as a testimony that all was right. However our present object is to consider Mr. Jowett's Essay, not to give a treatise on inspiration.

W. But how do you account for the details of human life, and difference of style, and special occasions of writing the epistles?

H. It is just the perfection of the New Testament. The very essence of Christianity is God manifest in flesh; what is divine clothed in all the details and entering into all the circumstances of human life. Of course the revelation partakes, and must partake, if it be a true one, of the nature and character of what it reveals. And this is what we find: first the connection of man with what is heavenly in Christ, which could be only known by revelation; and thus the introduction of divine principles into every part of human life. Under the old covenant God was hidden behind the veil, and sent out messages with "Thus saith the Lord:" there could not be the familiarity there is under the new.

But though Christianity is infinitely higher, yet God is revealed. It has introduced God into this world in man, and man into heaven in Christ. This is unfolded in doctrine; the former specially by John, the latter by Paul; and while the latter makes the believer capable of drawing his principles from above, the former stamps its character on all his ways, and is given as the model of all our walk. Thus, in Philippians 2, also you get Christ coming down, a pattern of our subjective state — our mind; in Philippians 3, of our activity and giving up all, through the objective power of the glory seen in Him. For the former no circumstance is too minute, for Christ was perfect in all, from childhood to the cross; the latter makes every sacrifice light. All is dross and dung compared to it. The supposition of a promise given to the apostles of guidance by the Holy Ghost in every respect for their service, and that what they most deliberately gave to the churches was without it, is in itself a moral absurdity. Impossible that they should do so; impossible that God should allow it. This promise of the Comforter as their guide, and as managing all, is the characteristic feature of what Christ told them on going away. His last injunction was, they should not stir in their work till He was come and they were endued with power from on high. Yet we are told that what was to guide the Church in all ages, and to be its sure safeguard in perilous times, was not given under this power!

267 W. It is utterly incredible. And while direct testimonies from scripture prove the assertion of Mr. Jowett to be utterly false, it is well to see that it is as unnatural as it is untrue, and contrary to the whole method of scripture.

H. Paul too, remember, positively declares, in speaking of the mystery, that it was made known to him by revelation. We have seen he communicated it by words taught of the Holy Ghost.

We will pass to other points of objection. Mr. Jowett declares that Paul was corrected by the course of events in his expectation of the coming of Christ. For this there is not the smallest possible ground. At the extreme close of his career, he urges Timothy to keep the commandment unrebukably till Christ's appearing, which the only Potentate was to shew in its own time; that is, he uses exactly the same language then as in his earliest epistle. (1 Thess.) It was a time the Father had put in His own power. Of that day knew no one; but they were commanded to be always expecting the return of the Master. Paul never knew — for it was not revealed; he always expected, for Christ had told men to do so, and made it the difference of the faithful and unfaithful servant; and the Spirit kept it alive in his soul. Christ had marked the Church's unfaithfulness, by the servants saying, "My lord delayeth his coming." Into this Paul did not fall. The Lord at the same time prophetically declared that, while the bridegroom tarried (no man knew how long), the virgins would slumber and sleep. He has tarried, and the early expectation of the Church has been lost. It went to sleep. Its worldliness and corruption and the loss of this expectation went on together. The midnight cry which awakes her is recalling her to this expectation. Mr. Jowett has not the expectation which brightened and animated the labours of Paul, and the course of events has more power over his mind than the words of Christ. The Second Epistle of Peter tells us the blessed motive of the delay: God is not slack concerning His promise, but is long-suffering, not willing that any should perish. His long-suffering is salvation.

268 W. I see no ground at all for this assertion. It is a mere human comment imposed on scripture, and evidently not drawn in any way from its contents. It has always seemed to me (for I have heard it elsewhere) mere ignorance of the word and its principles, be those principles true or false. And it is quite evident that this expectation stamped its character on Paul's labours, and gave them an unworldliness wholly lost now, but which was no loss to him. The virgins got in somewhere to rest, and had to be called out again when the bridegroom was really coming.

H. Another objection to inspiration is drawn from the introduction to Luke. The statement of the fact, though not peculiar to Mr. Jowett, as little advanced by these Essayists is, is entirely unfounded. Luke does not say a word of setting forth in order a declaration of what eye-witnesses delivered. Others (Luke states) had done this according to what eye-witnesses had delivered. As they had done this, he says that he who had παρηχολουθηχότι ἄνωθεν πᾶσιν ἀχριβῶς, had followed up accurately — had an intimate knowledge of — everything from the very beginning, thought good to write to Theophilus that he might have certainty about them. That is, because the others were insufficient, he did it so as to give certainty. This remark, simple as it is, is as old as Origen, who refers to "taken in hand" as a mere human undertaking in contrast with Luke. This is not a question in itself of inspiration, but of a suited instrument. But the statements made on this subject are the exact opposite of the truth.

How Mr. Jowett can say that Matthew supposes Bethlehem to have been the dwelling-place of Joseph and Mary, I cannot tell. It is a pure fable. There is not a word of their dwelling-place, good or bad, nor allusion to it, nor a supposition of it.

As regards other objections. In Luke we have a full account of the state of the godly remnant in Israel, a most perfect and lovely picture, the dominion of the Gentiles over Israel, but God's providential ordering of their political movements to bring about His own designs announced in prophecy — the movement being arrested as soon as ever the design was accomplished. The genealogies are in perfect accordance with the design of each gospel. Luke, after the first two chapters, unfolds the character of Christ as Son of man, and grace towards men, Matthew, the presentation of the Messiah Emmanuel to Israel, and His rejection, and the substitution of the Church and the kingdom for that people in their then standing before God. Hence Luke traces the genealogy to Adam; Matthew, from David and Abraham. That men cannot explain them is very true. This may prove man's ignorance, but nothing as to the genealogies. They were available to those of that day directly; for us they rest on the authority of His word. Matthew does mention, in the most general way, the thieves blaspheming, because he is giving the extent of Christ's sufferings. The very thieves insulted Him, as I might say a mob attacked the queen and outraged her, though only two used insulting language: Luke, as is constantly the case with him, gives a full moral detail on a particular point (so he does as to the two at Emmaus; so as to Legion); it is possible that both thieves did; but not the least necessary to the account in Matthew. As to the narration of the woman's anointing the Lord's feet, it is a mistake. Mary's anointing at Bethany was evidently a wholly different occurrence.

269 Mr. Jowett speaks of a cycle of traditions, beyond which the tradition of the early fathers never travels, "though the world could not contain the books if all were written." And in these short narratives we ought to estimate the "accumulative weight" of the discrepancies. So of prophecy how far "the details were minutely fulfilled."

Now the fact that the early fathers never travelled beyond these narratives proves this, that beyond a written revelation they knew nothing about the matter; that all knowledge of the life of Jesus was confined to a written revelation — a very important point in its nature, as proving, at the least, that the positive revelation about it was from the first so absolutely owned, to the exclusion of all else, that every other tradition dropped into oblivion at once. A pretended oral tradition really falls to the ground. This alone was owned and trusted from the beginning. These alleged traditions had no place at all in what was known; and I think we may fairly say that this could not have been the case without the divine will and power. A divine account was to, and did, supersede all human accounts. There must have been such; and Papias tells us there were, and that his delight was to listen to eye-witnesses telling of them; yet none appear. The apocryphal gospels are not worth referring to. The gospels were written apart from one another, probably at different epochs, yet with much of the same matter, and there is nothing at all outside them.

270 W. This is a striking fact, and, alleged as it is by Mr. Jowett, of weight in the enquiry as to discrepancies; but I should be glad that you would say a little more on this point. The objections seem to me to have very little weight, and to prove, by their futility, rather the will to attack than the difficulty of defence. But I should like a little more on this point in principle.

H. The details as to the gospels we will speak of in a moment. I will speak now of general principles. If a man write a book, he must have some design in doing it; and if a consistent man, he follows out that design. If God inspires one, He must have a design, and He must follow it out perfectly: and this is stamped on every page of scripture. In this perfectness all details will come in; not that every detail has the same importance.

If God is shewing the whole relationship of God with man, and His dealings with man, I must get man as he is; and I may get special dealings, not in the measure, or on the ground, of eternal truth, while I shall get the true light too. All this, as I have previously remarked, we have. It is only the stupidity of the objectors to suppose that all the things related or said are inspired. The wickedness and unbelief of man is largely set forth; this was not inspired by God. But the writers were inspired to give it, as it really was in truth, that I might have a true divinely given account of this state for my own heart and conscience. God may deal and has dealt specially with man in all patience. To know the real state of things I must have these dealings, or I shall know most superficially the human heart, and God's ways, and His love, and how the heart has been tested, and what it is under these tests. My moral knowledge will else be shallow. Now I have all this in scripture, and the full light in the New Testament on them. Mr. Jowett is ignorant enough of the purport of scripture thus to describe all this. "It [inspiration] is reconcilable with the mixed good and evil of the characters of the Old Testament, which nevertheless does not exclude them from the favour of God, with attribution to the divine Being of actions at variance with that higher revelation which. He has given of Himself in the gospel."

W. But I do not exactly see what that has to do with inspiration. Those of whom an inspired account speaks may be good or evil.

H. Of course they might. It has no more to do with it than the man in the moon. Nay, prophecy would, as to the greater part of it (we may indeed say all), have had no opportunity for its exercise if evil had not been there. It was the sustaining witness of God when evil was there. And just see the "nevertheless does not exclude them from the favour of God." What has that to do with inspiration? Supposing God sends an inspired message to one on whom His favour rests, but who is at the moment going astray: — it shews patient grace, and no allowance of evil. But what is there in that which has to do with inspiration? It is utter blundering, and nothing more. The path which led to it is evident. It is this: he would shew that, if evil be there, there cannot be inspiration. It is an attempt to discredit scripture by the fact of evil being there. But that is confounding the inspired word given about the evil, which rebukes it even, with the evil itself. What shews the animus of the passage is that the evil does not, according to the inspired book, exclude from God's favour. But if a mixed state of good and evil is to exclude from God's favour, every man in the world must be excluded from it. But the whole argument is a mere blunder, and a very stupid one. Inspired history is true history, and gives the evil as well as the good. A mere panegyric history would prove itself not inspired, like the legends of the saints, or a human biography. As to prophecy, I may say, it is constant invective against evil. That the patience of God went on rising up early and sending them, till there was no remedy, Mr. Jowett, I regret to say, casts in God's teeth; I adore Him for it, as for all His goodness.

271 W. I really begin to think Mr. Jowett has one of the most inexact and illogical minds I ever saw.

H. I thoroughly agree with you; I can hardly say I begin to think so. But this is a very excusable infirmity. But it seems more specious to say actions are attributed to God "at variance with that higher revelation which He has given of Himself in the gospel."

First, note the way christian language is used; God has given a higher revelation of Himself in the gospel. Is there a revelation without any inspiration? Don't let us dispute about the word. I prefer revelation — it is plainer. Is there a revelation without direct or inspired communications from God? If so, what is a revelation? Now God, in patient grace, did deal with men on lower grounds than the gospel — put them under the schoolmaster up to Christ. But there was no contradiction in it. It took the ground of man's responsibility to God; and God dealt in partial temporal judgments, and even in cutting off the people, as shewing the true result of being on this ground, which the gospel fully confirms; though this way of dealing be not the gospel. The former history was promise or law; the gospel is neither, but perfectly consistent with and illustrating the excellency of both, while putting man on another ground (and that is redemption), where the true light can fully shine, grace and heavenly blessing reign through righteousness. God's way of meeting man under promise, and, still more, His way of meeting man under law, must be different from His relationship with them under redemption; but promise told the redemption would come, and law made the need of the redemption felt, by putting man on the ground of responsibility to God, so as to make redemption a far clearer and more felt thing, and God's goodness far more distinct and intelligible. But Mr. Jowett, who judges of all as one system by his own thoughts and views, insists on the variance as if it were a contradiction, and hence all could not be divine. It is about as much sense as if I should insist on the contradiction of a man's bringing seed, and putting it into a field, and then reaping it, and taking it all out.

272 The truth is, I think I never met with a person who had bewildered himself in attempting to deal with divine questions as Mr. Jowett has, and proved his entire ignorance of all God's ways by the judgment which, in his own strength, he has passed upon them. Think of a man writing an elaborate commentary or essay on the Romans (I say essay, for even in the notes it is the expression of his own thoughts, explaining how the apostle was governed in his expressions by local prejudices and habits of thought of his day; from which, of course, Mr. Jowett is quite free); but think of his coming to this result — "Sin is not simply evil, but intermediate between evil and good, implying always the presence of God within."

W. What!

H. Ay, that is it totidem verbis.

W. Well, but what can he mean?

H. Well, it is the result of a man's reasoning from his own ideas to St. Paul's epistles (of course, believing that this higher revelation is not inspired), instead of learning from it, or even expounding it. He continues, "If we are surprised at St. Paul regarding the law — holy, just, and good as it was — as almost sin, we must remember that sin itself, if the expression may be excused, as a spiritual state, has an element of good in it." You know how indignantly the apostle rejects the thought of law being so. But what shall we say of one coming to such a conclusion presenting himself as an interpreter of Paul, and an instructor of men how to interpret scripture? "It was the nature of the law," he tells us, "to be good and evil at once."

273 W. But there must be some peculiar explanation of this.

H. He takes sin to mean the consciousness of sin (without this there can be no sin), and sin as the transgression of the law. But all this is blunder on blunder. He takes sin as guilt: hence sin is the consciousness of sin, i.e., sense of guilt. But sin is a very different thing from the sense of guilt; were it not, a perfectly hardened sinner could have no sin at all. But, besides, when he says sin is intermediate between good and evil, he is making the faculty which judges the sin the same thing as the sin it judges; that is, conscience, and not merely the actual consciousness of sin, but the sin we are conscious of, to be the same thing! In the next place, he confounds παράβασις νόμου and ἀνομία as equivalent, a mere acceptance of traditional mistake about which he is so loud. Sin is the principle of self-will or lawlessness, which does not own God, and leads a man to gratify his own lusts without acknowledging any rein upon them.

Mr. Jowett too makes all these blunders, referring specially to a chapter in which the apostle speaks entirely otherwise of sin, namely, that it took occasion by the commandment to work lusts and become exceeding sinful. It was an active principle, as elsewhere a law of our nature. And again, having made the blunder of saying that sin is transgression of law, he makes the apostle correct himself, as if he had said it was, and then contradict himself by saying that sin was in the world without law, by declaring (softening it down) that he meant it was not imputed. There can be no transgression when there is no law. What is there to transgress? But self-will and lust, lawlessness, there may be. It is the state of fallen man: only the law makes sin exceeding sinful.

Every word in all he says is a blunder, not only as to Paul's meaning, but as to intellectual apprehension of moral truths. He has no idea of any such thing as truth. Hence Anselm has one set of ideas, the Schoolmen another, the Fathers another, Paul another, arising from his age, from which ours is different; so that our views of truth, i.e., what is truth for us must be different from what was truth for Paul, and Mr. Jowett clears it all up thus: "We acknowledge that there is a difference between the meaning of justification by faith to St. Paul and to ourselves. Eighteen hundred years cannot have passed away, leaving the world and the mind of man, or the use of language, the same it was." And the truth of God — the truth of this matter itself, if you please? It does not even occur to him there is or can be such a thing. The ideas of the day are really, for Mr. Jowett, the Christianity of the day. They are all that he can see. Not that he does not admit that other ages have clothed it in their own garb, but that he holds he is entitled to think Paul, in every respect, did so too. And this age? and these philosophical men, are capable of divesting it of mediaeval and scholastic forms, and Pauline forms arising from his habits of thinking and apostolic conflicts with Judaism, and give It to us purified by modern philosophy.

274 Such he declares is the task of modern interpretation. I cannot, of course, now pursue a critique of Mr. Jowett's volume on the Romans; but so entire a misconception of Paul's meaning and all moral truth, and all justness of thought, I could hardly have supposed possible in an intelligent person, as Mr. Jowett surely is. There is just activity of mind enough to make him blunder largely and livelily. "Who would speak," he asks, "of the unregenerate heart of Caesar and Achilles?" . . . "Those who never heard the name of Christ, who never admit the thought of Christ, cannot be brought within the circle of Christian feelings and associations. Now, I do not touch on the doctrinal force of unregenerate, which is true of every one till he is regenerate. It is the excessive blundering of Mr. Jowett's mind. What have Christian feelings and associations to do with unregenerate? Cannot Christianity pronounce on the state of men outside its pale? Does it not do so? Is not a salvation sent into the world because of that state, to the consciousness of which, where effectual, it brings them? Is not the Epistle to the Romans an elaborate discussion of the state of the heathen and of the Jew, leading to the conclusion of the need of Christianity, of justification by faith, because of that state? Does it not declare that they that have sinned without law shall perish without law, and they that have sinned under law shall be judged by the law? Regeneration is not the aspect of Paul's doctrine as much as justification. But "except a man be born again" applies to Caesar as it does to others. But the notion of Caesar not being in the circle of christian feelings, and hence not to be called unregenerate, involving as it does a denial of Christianity's pronouncing on his state, whatever it is, according to its feelings, is, especially in a Commentary on the Romans, as great a blunder as can well be conceived. It has no sense, because if he speaks of a heathen's not having Christian feeling, it is an absurdity; if he means that Christianity does not pronounce on the heathen state according to its feelings, it is, in commenting on the Romans, a greater absurdity Still. It is founded on the proposition of Mr. Jowett's, that "the guilt of sin is inseparable from the knowledge of sin." But what even has that to do with holding a heathen to be unregenerate? All are un-regenerate that are not regenerate. The question of guilt follows. I must say, he is the most inaccurate writer, morally and logically, I ever met with. That he should be ignorant of the communication of divine life, so as to assert the impossibility of such contrasts, is too evident in the whole book to cause any surprise here.

275 W. It is a singular absence of all we moral apprehensions, and forces itself on one's notice in a commentary on a book which goes into all the depths of these apprehensions in the conscience.

H. You have a specimen of his way of judging of truth in the following on Romans 5: 12: "[ἁμαρτία] Neither original sin, nor actual, nor the guilt of sin as distinguished from sin itself (for such differences had no existence in the apostle's age), nor like ἁμάρτημα confined to the act of sin." Think of a revelation being given of God in order to give us the notions of the apostle's age, obscured by receiving the colour of each successive age for the last 1800 years, and then only brought to light by what is the task of philosophy! I will add the explanation this philosophy gives: "ἁμαρτία describes sin rather as a mental state or in relation to the mind." [Do you understand?] "It is often the power of sin, or sin collectively; sometimes, as here, a personification." That gives the meaning of "sin entered into the world."

W. He is a singular person to write an essay on the interpretation of scripture.

H. Yet it seems the bent of his mind. We will return to the Essays.

Of scripture testimony to its own inspiration, and of the force of prophecy, we have spoken, and of imperfect presentations of truth. Presentations of moral relationship with God according to the responsibility of man, and the actual results of the fall, or the search after happiness "under the sun," and of discipline when grace is not fully known, nor redemption revealed as accomplished, we do find in scripture. But this is most gracious of God, and full of the deepest instruction. As to any opposition between that and Christianity, such a thought is only a confusion between man's standing on his own responsibility, man in flesh as scripture speaks, and grace meeting the consequences of all this by redemption, and so man in Christ. As to reconciling science and scripture, Mr. Jowett's next topic, I have spoken of it already. Let God be true and every man a liar. I deny the contradiction and abhor the principle of policy. Let us have the truth at all events.

276 As to infidel theologians' facts, admitted facts, I have learned to distrust them all. Of the long existence of the earth I have little doubt; of man upon it, I most certainly have. Mr. Jowett would give all up in fear, before it is proved, to have his own ideas of inspiration; I am not afraid. I see infidels repeating the notions and hypotheses of enemies of the truth as certain; and because they all take it for granted, declaring it is an admitted fact. They are the most unhistorical class I know, searching the least of all into facts. Strauss himself has declared that their objections to the gospels are utterly untenable, and therefore made a myth of it all (about as absurd as the other system, if once it is examined: indeed, it has died out). One proves that the second of Luke, if by the same author as the first, must have also had lyric poems in it, as the disciples praised God; the first therefore is certainly a poetical morsel tacked on, being written by another. And this is by no means to be counted an extreme example.

W. This habit of making their assumption that prophecies, miracles? etc., cannot be true, and judging of all according to their own notions to prove they are not true, is too constant and of too gross a character to need your saying much more about it. None can have read any of these statements without noticing this. Daniel's prophesying of Antiochus Epiphanes is the proof, as we have seen, that his prophecy is spurious; because there cannot be a prophecy, and the writer must have lived then. Then he becomes in their language the Maccabean Daniel, and all is settled. And the English come, and (credulous as our nation is, and apt to think others wiser than itself) all passes for gospel with them.

277 H. But Mr. Jowett, inconsistent as he is, adopts this petitio principii, which, starting from the assumption that prophecy is impossible, proves thereby that those that pretend to be prophets are not. He complains that Isaiah's mentioning Cyrus is not taken, as it would be in another book, as a proof that it must have been written after his time, which is simply the à priori argument that there cannot be a prophecy. We must continue a little with some further details, as they harass the mind when passed over.

Mr. Jowett quietly takes for granted — leaves it to be supposed — that if Schleiermacher has spoken of discrepancies in the narrative of the infancy, it is all true, and we must turn to what is called setting free by the truth to escape it, but let inspiration down to a nullity. And this is what is done, but nothing said about it. Now I deny altogether these discrepancies. If I admit traditions as to the infancy as told by Matthew, there may be. But in the gospels there are none — only the account in Matthew is so brief, or rather, there being no account of Jesus's birth at all, the circumstances narrated by Luke have no chronological place in Matthew.

Mr. Jowett refers to the natural meaning of "Why are they then baptized for the dead?" 1 Cor. 15: 29. Now, the natural way of knowing what a person means is to pay attention to what he says. You may remark that verses 20-28 form (what Paul is singularly fond of, and what Mr. Jowett more singularly objects to in his commentary — one would say really with the object of making all obscure — that is) a parenthesis, and 29 refers to 18, and 30, etc., to 19. Baptizing is, in the nature of Christianity, baptizing unto death; and the case of those filling up the ranks, as has been said, when some were actually dead, is referred to as shewing the folly of the whole Christian course, if there was no resurrection. The dead had perished; the living were the most miserable of all men. What ever should men become Christians for, or jeopard their lives, if it were thus? At any rate, Mr. Jowett leaves us to divine what true interpretation would afford us. If he refer to a subsequent superstition of baptizing over dead bodies, it is a gross anachronism, and unworthy of Christianity; but that is no matter for a rationalist. It is an objection, and that is everything, though they are as much in the dark as others.

The difficulty as to "this generation shall not pass away" Luke 21: 32, is a prejudice flowing from the English use of the word "generation. It is quite as much used for a moral class in scripture, as for the period marked by human life; and if Deuteronomy 32: 5, 20 (where this very subject is treated of) be referred to, the sense is plain. And here we have a minute and most striking fulfilment: — the generation is not passed away; the Jews remain a perpetual witness that there are other thoughts in scripture than those of rationalists — an objective fact witnessing to God's government of the world according to the words of the prophet and of the Lord.

278 As to "Upon this rock I will build my church," Matt. 16: 18, you will ever find rationalists favouring popery, because they are indifferent to truth and dislike scripture. Christ does not declare He will build His Church on Peter, but gives that name to him, "a stone" — for so it is; because in his confession he had a part in the power of that truth on which He would build it — not that He was only the Messiah, nor Son of God, King of Israel, but what Simon had confessed, and the Father had revealed to him, that Jesus was the Son of the living God. This, proved in resurrection, was the basis of the Church of God. All this side of Christ's grave was, save Christ Himself, in death's power; and He willingly put Himself there; but, as Son of the living God, He could not be holden of it. And he who had his seat in the gates of Hades had no power over what was passed beyond his realm and dominion. Resurrection of Christ's person, in whom the power of it (and righteousness of it too) was, was the overthrow of and beyond the power of Satan, and laid the foundation of the Church — Christ's person as Son of the living God. That could not be held by death. Hence Peter clings to this word in his epistle: "He hath begotten us again to a living hope. Christ is the living stone to whom we come, and come as living stones.

As to Philippians 2: 6, I believe it to be a contrast with the first Adam, and a magnificent one. I do not desire to rest the argument on "thinking it no robbery." The word is a very difficult one indeed — never used, I believe, elsewhere; its form may be active, and not the object or thing done. The force I believe to be, He did not do as Adam (who, when in the form of man, sought as a robbery, a booty to be acquired, to be equal with God), but, being in the form of God, emptied Himself of the glory He had. It does suppose Christ to be in the state of Godhead, as Adam in the state of a man; but the special force of the proof does not rest in the word "robbery," as contrasted with "booty," or object of robbery — for that is the only question in the passage, because it is ἁρπαγμὸν, not ἃρπαγμα.

As to Romans 3: 25, Mr. Jowett rests on his statement in his own commentary, in which he follows De Wette and Meyer, and still more Winzer, and translates "through faith by his blood." I do not see what he gains by it. He grounds the translation on "faith in" not being used, which is a simple mistake, which a concordance would have rectified. If a man is justified by faith, by His blood, I suppose the blood of Christ must be efficacious to justify him — as, indeed, is expressly said — and his faith in it is right. But faith "in" is used. The words "faith in his blood" are not found elsewhere; but "justified by his blood," "redemption through his blood," so as to present its efficacy as the subject-matter of faith, is often found. His gloss on Galatians 3: 26, seems to me an utterly false interpretation. His allegation is, that "faith, like all other Christian states, is often spoken of as existing in Christ." I am not quite sure what this lucid phrase means — whether it is that Christ had faith, or whether Mr. Jowett refers to the general expression "in Christ" as a position in which anything was realized. At all events Galatians 3: 26 cannot be interpreted in either way. "We are all the children of God through faith in Christ Jesus" seems to me as plain as possible. 2 Timothy 1: 13 may be taken as characteristic as a position: "Faith and love which are in Christ Jesus." Chapter 3: 15 is clearly faith in Christ Jesus; so is, beyond all question, Ephesians 1: 15, and Colossians 1: 4; and, if Tischendorf is to be believed, John 1: 15, which however may be doubted. Fritzsche, whose commentary has been called a Greek grammar, insists that, on grammatical grounds, there is no foundation for the assertion. Doctrinally I could have no objection; the words "his own" would incline me to connect ἐν τῶ αὐτοῦ ἁἵματι with ἱλαστήριον. Αὐτοῦ is emphatic, and a propitiation in [the power of] His own blood, [and that] through faith, is perhaps clearer than faith in His own blood. Were αὐτοῦ after αἴματι I should be disposed to take it as in our English translation. But the ground Mr. Jowett takes is untenable, and the use of it here, as any perversion, quite unfounded. There is nothing to struggle for; nor in Romans 15: 6. The God and Father of our Lord Jesus Christ is the well-known expression of scripture, as putting us so blessedly in the same place with Himself in John 20, and Ephesians 1, where the blessings to be referred to each name are distinguished in verses 4 and 5. And the prayer of Ephesians 1 is founded on one name; of Ephesians 3 on the other. I do not think these complaints quite free from being disingenuous.

279 As to 1 John 5: 7, it needs no remark; and as to 1 Timothy 3: 16, it is a question of criticism, which orthodox and rationalists have alike discussed, perhaps both with prejudices.

280 As to Romans 9: 5, it is certain all the Fathers took it as said of Christ, all the Reformers, and the vast majority of moderns; and, as far as I am aware, Erasmus first proposed the change. The moderns, who wish it otherwise, do so on doctrinal grounds. So Meyer, Fritzsche, Tischendorf, Wetstein, and others. De Wette declares nothing satisfactory. Holding the deity of the Lord Jesus as the foundation of all my faith, the usual punctuation of a full stop after κατὰ σάρχα seems to me to have no sense. And if all do not refer to Christ, I should set the stop after "over all," "Of whom as concerning the flesh Christ came, He who is over all things, God [be] blessed for ever. Amen." I rather think Erasmus spoke of this too, but cannot exactly say. This stopping leaves the question undecided. It depends on the insertion of [be]. All these attempts to throw discredit on ordinary interpretation have an evident animus. And Mr. Jowett and his companions have not left it to nice criticism on passages admitted to be difficult to have their orthodoxy called in question. This part of Mr. Jowett's argument I leave. No one wishes to hinder sound critical enquiry into the reading or interpretation of the text.

W. He who believes it to be inspired would be the first to desire it.

H. Clearly so. I turn briefly to another point. These interpreters have created an immense difficulty for themselves, partly incident to their position, but more connected still with their doctrine. Denying the distinction of the regenerate, of the Church, of what scripture calls saints, this being for them only a forced and unnatural position of Christianity, and then all the world being, by an effort of imagination, christianized, they seek to apply the precepts of Christianity to civil society. Hence I read "the frame of civilization, that is to say, institutions and laws, the usages of business, the customs of society; these are for the most part mechanical, capable only in a certain degree of a higher and spiritual life. Christian motives have never existed in such strength as to make it possible to entrust them with the preservation of social order." Moral light Christianity has, I admit, brought in; it has, I admit, acted beneficially on society. Men do not do in the light what they do in the dark. But what the "spiritual life," "of usages of business" is would be hard to tell.

But what is the result? Christianity is taken as a kind of essence, an infusion, which is to influence men; and followers of Christ disappear. "Are its maxims to be modified by experience, or acted on in defiance of experience? Are the accidental circumstances of the first believers to become a rule for us? . . . That can hardly be, consistently with the changes of human things." Now that you cannot frame politics on Christianity I do not deny. It is felt to be impossible; but Mr. Jowett concludes, not that the Christian is to abide by what is properly christian, but "our Lord Himself has left behind Him words which contain a principle large enough to admit all the forms of society or life. My kingdom is not of this world" — a singular proof of it, that because it is not of it at all, it admits them all. What means "admit them?" Does it mean, has common principles with them all? This cannot be. Is exclusively one? That it is not. It directs obedience to human authorities as of God. Or is it, that it has its own directions for its true followers, not the letter perhaps, but its own guidance for those who follow Christ as pilgrims and strangers, gives a divine path through the world, guiding in all real common duties, but giving a heavenly path through them? "If ye live in the Spirit, walk in the Spirit." Gal. 5: 25, "If any man serve me, let him follow me; and where I am, there shall also my servant be." John 12: 26, "Whatsoever ye do, in word or deed, do all in the name of the Lord Jesus." Col. 3: 17. Is it spiritual direction for those who are strangers and pilgrims, declaring plainly that they seek a country; or an arrangement to have an inward life, and do at Rome as they do at Rome?

281 W. I cannot doubt for a moment that Christ has left us an example that we should follow His steps, and that the precepts of the New Testament form and guide our path — that he who loves God keeps His commandments, and that they are not grievous, for he that is born of God overcometh the world; and all that is in the world is not of the Father. Alas! I feel I come very short; but I cannot doubt an instant that the principles you refer to, if I have rightly understood them (and in reading the Essays this part struck me as giving a keynote to much, I mean the mingling Christianity with the world, swamping it in it), are destructive of all that is heavenly, of all that is Christian, of all that lifts the whole spirit of a man out of the wretched motives of self and the world into Christ's motives. I am persuaded that it is that which has destroyed the testimony of Christianity in the world. Men, alas! thinking of self too, have put out almost the light under the pretext of winning men to look at it. But we have lost our own joys and dimmed the witness to Christ by it.

H. I am glad to hear you say so. We are, alas! short, very short; but it is well in such a matter to have a fixed principle of conduct. Mr. Jowett, having shewn the impossibility of framing society on Christian principles (Christ's kingdom being not of this world), then lets down individual Christianity in this way — "It is a counsel of perfection, and has its dwelling-place in the heart of man . . ." "That is the answer to a doubt which is also raised respecting the obligation of the letter of the gospel on individual Christians. But this inwardness of the words of Christ is what few are able to receive." So, in result, you have the words of Christ inward in the heart, and all forms of society and of life admitted, because Christ's kingdom is not of this world, so we are not to bring it into it. It is a comfortable mysticism which, by professing to have the words inwardly, can have any form of life and worldliness outwardly. Now I admit the letter kills. We have the spirit of power, of love, and of a sound mind. But this is merely the denial of the authority of scripture in the largest sense — "be not conformed to this world." Rom. 12: 2.

282 I would arrest your attention a moment on another passage here, as very deeply characteristic of the low ground on which all these reasonings rest. Mr. Jowett complains of the "extraordinary and unreasonable importance attached to single words . . . divorce, marriage with a wife's sister, inspiration, the personality of the Holy Spirit, infant baptism, episcopacy, divine right of kings, original sin. Now really a person must have been in a very singular school to give such a list. Lightness in divorce is an abomination in the sight of God; and in my judgment marriage with a wife's sister is the destruction of the free happiness of families. Episcopacy and infant baptism have their importance through their connection with more general truths. Kings have a divine right as long as God keeps them on the throne; that is, they have, however they get there, their power from God. But to mix up these subjects with inspiration, the personality of the Holy Ghost, and original sin, shews an absence of the spiritual element truly remarkable. If there be no inspiration, I have no communication from God — the greatest privilege I can have on earth — the only thing that puts me, in a sure and divine way, in relationship and intercourse with God. The personality of the Spirit is perhaps the most practically important truth, the most characteristic of Christianity, not as foundation, but, as to state and power, of all in scripture; and original sin, whatever view we may have of it, the foundation question of all man's relationship with God. And these Mr. Jowett casts in with episcopacy, and questions, serious no doubt in detail, but some of mere forms of thought. Instead of rising above his age, he is immersed, and, as to his mind, the divinest truths with him, in the comparatively petty questions which absorb the attention of the narrow circle in which he moves. I do not charge him with design in it, but singular narrowness. If he had said, See what they have reduced Christianity to — questions of forms of church government, and divorce, and ordinances, I should have understood him, though he would have found assailants; but he reduces Christianity to this level, for he puts that on which as a present thing Christianity rests (for redemption is the foundation), questions as to our alienation in nature from God, the reality of blessed communications from God Himself, and His living personal presence with us, on the same footing, in the same category of importance, as episcopacy and the marriage of a wife's sister.

283 W. It is surprising. But I think it shews he does not believe himself in any of these things; he could not class them thus if he did.

H. Surely, he does not. We have already heard what he says as to inspiration, and we will look at what he says as to the others. But let us note for ourselves: if there be no inspiration, there is no communication from God which is from Himself which is the communication of God's mind from and by God, which gives to man's intelligence divine thoughts — to his heart the witness that God delights to give them to him; all that has enlarged the intelligence, fed the heart, sustained the faith of all that have trusted God in all ages, and in all forms of church government; what has marked the spiritual tone of every divinely taught and spiritually elevated mind is gone. And they know, the poorest and most ignorant believer (I do not say Mr. Jowett) knows, what he means by inspiration. He could not define it perhaps, does not know what "define" means, but he knows that he has communications from God in which his soul drinks of living water, a word of God, sharper than any two-edged sword, discerning the thoughts and intents of the heart; he eats the words of God, as Jeremiah says, and they are the joy and rejoicing of his heart. They have an authority over him which he delights to obey; reproofs, if needed, his heart bows to; promises his faith leans on; a Saviour revealed whom his soul loves; and all this because he receives it with a divine faith as inspired, as God's word, as God's having condescended (taken pains, shall I say?) to speak to him for every want here, and the brightness of heavenly hopes hereafter. He has seen his Saviour quoting them as authority, using them to repel Satan — the apostles proving the truth by them, or declaring that their own words were God's commands. He takes them as all this, and there is constant intercourse between God and his soul.

284 Mr. Jowett will quibble on θεόπνευστος, and quibble wrongly. I deny that 2 Timothy 3: 16 is spoken of the Old Testament. It is carefully worded so as to leave no pretence for such a statement — πᾶσα γραφὴ Θεόπνευστος. Whatever comes under the title γραφὴ it applies to, is meant to apply to. The scriptures were held then to be a character of writing which had irrefragable authority, could not be broken. Holy men had spoken as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. They had not come of the will of man. Whatever was that, had divine authority. Before Christ there was only the Old Testament, of course. Mr. Jowett, at least, has owned the New Testament to have this character, has owned that the Lord has caused all holy scripture to be written for our learning. St. Paul speaks of the comfort of the scriptures. Our enquiry here is, not what books belong to it, but, whether prophetic scriptures are a blessed communication from God Himself to men. Does Christ treat them so Himself, use them so, declaring from them, and for Himself, that men live of every word that comes out of the mouth of God? Does He obey them, fulfil them, declare that they must be fulfilled, all that is written in them concerning Him? Was it what man had invented or God had revealed that was to be fulfilled? Have words proceeding out of the mouth of God no hold on Mr. Jowett's heart? Does he mean to say that the New Testament is not holy scripture, which God has caused to be written for our learning? If it be πᾶσα γραφὴ Θεόπνευστος, it is inspired. He has declared, more than once I believe, that the New Testament is holy scripture. I know in the estimation of Essayists subscriptions are elastic things, and conscience as to them still more so. However this may be, those who have found words out of the mouth of God full of grace and truth to their souls cling to them as the tokens, and precious and profitable tokens, of God's love.

They have seen the apostle carefully distinguishing his own spiritual experience and his authoritative communication of the divine mind. And they believe, as Mr. Jowett professes to believe, that the New Testament is scripture, and hence, that it is θεόπνευστος, divinely inspired, and they have no doubt what that really means for them. They have the words that came out of the mouth of God. They believe St. Paul when they hear him saying, that what he had been taught by the Holy Ghost he has communicated "not by words which man's wisdom teacheth, but which the Holy Ghost teacheth," and they bless God for so infinite a treasure. If Mr. Jowett has it not — does not believe it, they pity him. He has lost what is the greatest treasure — communications of God Himself to their souls.

285 W. Oh! how I agree with you. One feels one has to do with God; and whether it be for comfort, the strength flowing from feeling such a One's mind guiding you when weak and beset, or the joy it gives when the mind is free; the way it suits our weakest, aye, our worst moments, and yet in our most elevated reaches out beyond all our thoughts with divine fulness; one learns daily more it is the word of God. It makes me think of the words of the apostle as the revelation of what he is there speaking of the fulness of, "That being rooted and grounded in love, we may be able to comprehend with all saints, the breadth and length, and depth and height, and to know the love of Christ, which passeth knowledge, that we may be filled with all the fulness of God." Eph. 3: 17. A largeness which he cannot go out into, a nearness of that love, known, and yet which passes knowledge, leading the heart, rooted and grounded in love, into all the fulness of God. Surely he is speaking of the things themselves; but what reveals it but the word? Can man do it?

H. Well, we will leave this, to use it through grace as our own resource in daily life; and turn to the second point, which Mr. Jowett seeks to sink as far as possible.

W. The personality of the Spirit?

H. Yes. Here, as wherever there is spirituality, our Essayists are utterly at a loss. Surely we are all most poor in these things, without any false modesty in saying it. But I do not mean that. They have not the thing to be poor in. "In the fourth example the words are mysterious (John 14: 26; John 16: 15), and seem to come out of the depth of a divine consciousness." Now what does this mean?

W. Well, I really do not know. All Christ's words came out of the depths of a divine consciousness.

H. Surely they did; but, coupled with "mysterious," it intimates, I apprehend, that they are unintelligible. It is added, remark, "They have sometimes, however, received a more exact meaning than they could truly bear. What is spoken in a figure is construed with the severity of a logical statement." It is thus "mysterious," not of the supposed "exact" meaning, cannot "bear" it, and "spoken in a figure." Thus the immense and all-important fact of the presence of a divine person, who is sent, wills, distributes, comes, guides, teaches, is God, who is lied against — is all a figure. And this is the more pointed, because in the quoted passage He was another Paraclete, who was to take the place of the Son of God personally with them on earth. Now that, if a divine person dwell in us, so that our bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost, He should work in a power and influence difficult to express in a single form of words; that He will be a source of thoughts and feelings which are ours and yet His, so that expressions necessarily vary to get the whole of the truth, I fully admit. It must be so. That this effect will be spoken of as the Spirit, and the divine person who produces it as the Spirit apart from the effect, is the natural consequence of His working in us when present. And scripture so speaks; but it unfolds, develops, and does not weaken the truth of the divine presence. It makes power, but not a figure of it. Thus I find, "He who searcheth the hearts [that is, me] knows what is the mind of the Spirit;" Rom. 8: 27, there it is the effect that is wrought by it; "for he maketh intercession for the saints according to God;" there it is the Spirit personally. This scripture largely teaches, but it does not make a figure of so great a truth. These, for Mr. Jowett, are passages "of an opposite tenor."

286 Now John 14, 15, 16 are specially occupied with the truth of the Comforter's coming when Christ went away. It is after unfolding what Christ was in the world, to the end of John 7, and the rejection of His word in John 8, and of His work in John 9; the witness given to His being Son of God, Son of David, Son of man, in John 11, John 12, and the washer of His people's feet whom He had cleansed, that they might have a part with Him on high, in John 13 (the great subject which follows on His going away). After declaring, in the beginning of John 14, that there was place for them on high, and He would come again and fetch them there; that they knew where He was going — for He was going to the Father; and they had seen the Father in Him, and they knew the way, for in coming to Him they came to the Father; He proceeds to tell them the great blessing of their position while He was away — and this was His obtaining another Comforter, the Holy Ghost, whom His Father would send on His going away, and who would bring to their remembrance what He had said when living; and then, in John 15, whom He would send from the Father, so that He would bear witness as well as themselves; and thus His heavenly glory, which they did not know, would be known. In John 16 He unfolds all the Comforter would do when He came; first, as to the world, and then as to them.

287 Now in this we have the plain, however momentous, declaration, that as He, the Son, had been with them bodily, so another Comforter, the Holy Ghost, would be with them when He went they would not be left alone. And the difference is distinctly put as to how He could be known in the world. The world did not see Him or know Him, and hence could not receive Him. The world ought at least to have received Christ; but there was no question of its receiving the Holy Ghost. He was given to them that believe (John ever speaks individually, not of the assembly); with the disciples He could abide (which Christ as He then was could not), and would dwell in them (Christ had only dwelt with them). And thus they would know Him. Now this does confine the true knowledge of the Holy Ghost to those in whom He dwells. That He wrought in special service, to render the disciples competent witnesses, is most precious but no figure. It makes us know what inspiration is, and how, while eyewitnesses, they were divinely competent to be so. They were human witnesses, but their record divine, and witnesses by the Holy Ghost. This is what a person, who denies anything supernatural in inspiration, of course must make "a figure" of, "not take exactly!" All that we understand — understand it well; but it is because it is too plain that, by those who deny inspiration, it is said to be mysterious and a figure (just as Strauss, because he saw the folly of rationalism, but would not believe, made the whole history of the gospels a myth) — not because it is not plain. Of course one verse does not exhaust the subject; but we are speaking of the verse referred to by Mr. Jowett.

Can anything be plainer, however solemn and blessed, than this — "But the Comforter, the Holy Ghost, whom the Father will send in my name, he shall teach you all things, and bring all things to your remembrance whatsoever I have said unto you;" John 14: 26, that is, all divine truth and needed remembrance of Christ's living words? I have only to believe it, and all is plain. I do believe it. I believe, when Christ went up on high, the Father did send the Holy Ghost in Christ's name, that He did teach the apostles, and bring what Christ had said to their remembrance, and that they acted and taught and witnessed of Christ by this power. What means a figure here? Did not Christianity spread by this means? Is not, in the Acts, the presence of this Comforter the salient fact which stamps its character on all their proceedings? That the Spirit wrought in a new life, was a Spirit of adoption, made men to abound in hope, shed the love of God abroad in believers' hearts, and ministered a thousand other blessings, is most true. A Christian's career is designated by walking in the Spirit. But the passage we are considering is plain enough to those that understand, to those that believe.

288 In John 16: 15, it is another side of the Holy Ghost's work, but the same truth. The Holy Ghost reveals to believers (His work in the world had been spoken of) the glory and riches of Christ — not merely recalling what He had said on earth, or leading unto truth. All things the Father has are Christ's (it was not as if Christ, or the Father, had some independent things); hence the Holy Ghost takes of what is His, and shews it. And, as the Father was known in the Son on earth, so the fulness of all that belongs to the Father is known as the Son's, now He is in heaven, by the Holy Ghost's teaching. Depth surely there is; but the passage is plain enough. You may remark how the blessed Persons in the Trinity are associated in both cases — i.e., of Christ on earth and Christ in heaven. The Holy Ghost comes, and "My Father and I will come and make our abode with him." John 14: 23. When Christ, as Son, was working miracles on earth, the Father that was in Him did the works, and He cast out devils by the Spirit of God. They are distinct, yet cannot be separated. Now that on such subjects we are in divine depths is most true; but the passages we are referring to are most simple and plain. They affirm the coming of the Comforter, and what He was to do; and He came and did it, and He abides in true Christians who thus know Him, and with the true assembly for ever.

W. It is simple. What we want is to believe it more. There is very little faith in the presence of the Holy Ghost.

H. Alas! there is not: yet it is appealed to so distinctly as a known thing in scripture, as to make us ashamed. The apostle, in speaking of such a thing as fornication, says, Know ye not that your bodies are the temples of the Holy Ghost, which ye have of God? So to the Galatians, who were in a sad state, he asks, "How did you get the Holy Ghost?" Gal. 3: 2. On that there was no obscurity. So as a motive to avoid evil and the measure of it, "Grieve not that Holy Spirit of promise with which ye are sealed for the day of redemption." Eph. 4: 30. So "Hereby know we that we dwell in him (God) and he in us, because he hath given us of his Spirit." 1 John 4: 13. It ought to be an elementary point of faith, that the Holy Ghost dwells in the assembly and in the true Christian. These two truths, on which Mr. Jowett casts all the slur and dimness he can, are the hinges of the whole condition of the assembly and of the individual saint the word of God and the Spirit of God. In the first alone we have the mind of God; in the second alone spiritual understanding and power; and so, as John tells us, fellowship — wondrous word! — with the Father and the Son, the living objects of daily faith. May we be found here simple and dependent, "as newborn babes!"

289 W. It is very hard to be simple.

H. It is in itself perfection; true simplicity is forgetfulness of self. And there is only one way to arrive at it, for it is, as all spiritual life, a matter of overcoming; and that way is, being much with God, and God known in grace, because then self, which is the opposite of simplicity, dies down, so to speak.

W. I am sure it is the way. Nothing replaces that communion; and then there is a perception of divine power and enlargement which is not found anywhere else. Our eyes see, as Peter (negatively) expresses it, afar off. We are not μυωπάζοντες. But pursue your subject.

A Fourth Dialogue on the Essays and Reviews, section c.

Inspiration and Interpretation.

J. N. Darby.

<09004E> file section c.

289 H. The next point is, original sin. Now I have no love for scholastic terms: I prefer scripture ones infinitely. But I do not want to lose things in getting rid of words: mine may be no better. We are all by nature the children of wrath. Mr. Jowett speaks thus of it: "The justice of God who rewardeth every man according to his works, and the christian scheme of redemption, has (have) been staked on two figurative expressions of St. Paul, to which there is no parallel in any other part of scripture." (1 Cor. 15: 22; Rom. 5: 12.) The first has really nothing, or only in an indirect way, to do with it. The second is an elaborate statement on the subject. But to say that there is no parallel in scripture, if the doctrine and not the form be referred to, is to ignore all vital truth in it. The history of the Bible is the history of original sin; the doctrine of the Bible is the doctrine of God's putting it away for ever.

W. You must explain yourself a little.

H. I will. Does not the history of our race (I do not say our creation) begin with the declaration that Adam, fallen and driven out from God, begat a son in his image after his likeness, the fruit being shewn in sin against his brother, as Adam's sin had been against God, and so death being actually brought into the world, but the death of the pious marking the predominance of evil?

290 W. It does.

H. That is the early history of original sin — sin attached to our origin and so in our nature. Further, when the Flood had swept away the insupportable violence and corruption of the world, and the world began again in Noah, in whom rest was given concerning the work of men's hands, and the curse taken so far off the ground, did he not turn the blessing into drunkenness — he to whom government had been entrusted, and shame and a son's wickedness inaugurate the new career of man?

W. Yes.

H. This is the history of original sin. Did not man then sink — what there is no appearance of his doing before — into idolatry, having built a tower to establish his own will?

W. True.

H. This too is. The form of the world in nations and peoples is founded on it. God then called out Abraham from the midst of this idolatry, and after a lapse of some 400 years, so that a people should be formed, brings them out of Egypt with a high hand, leads them to Sinai to give them His law — the rule of life for a child of Adam. What did they do before they had time to get it graven on stone, though they had heard the voice of God out of the midst of the fire?

W. They made the golden calf.

H. Such then is man according to the history of the Bible; and so you will find it throughout. Before the consecration of Aaron and his sons was over, Nadab and Abihu had offered strange fire and were slain; and Israel, responsible under the priesthood, closed its history by the ark's being taken, and judgment coming on the priesthood itself in Eli: so that the whole system was closed, for without the ark there was no regular association with God at all. God interfered by a prophet; but this was sovereign grace. When the royalty was established, Solomon fell into idolatry. And at last Lo-ammi, Not my people, was written on the chosen people of God; where He had set His name that it might be owned in the midst of the universal corruption and idolatry of the world, and where grace and warning had dealt "till there was no remedy." When God set up a head of Gentile power in Nebuchadnezzar, he sets up an idol and persecutes the saints, and the whole series of these monarchies takes the character of unintelligent ravenous beasts. But, chief and last of all (save special mercy on His intercession), when God declared — "I have yet one Son, it may be they will reverence my Son when they see him;" when they saw Him, what did they do? Matt. 21: 37.

291 W. They said, "This is the heir; come, let us kill him, and the inheritance shall be ours."

H. They had then "no cloak for their sin." John 15: 22, "They had both seen and hated both him and his Father." There was a reprieve through His intercession on the cross, and the Holy Ghost (that figure of Mr. Jowett's) announced a glorified Christ, and the open door of repentance, but they would not go in. They closed the history of man with this word of judgment — "Ye do always resist the Holy Ghost: as your fathers did, so do ye." Acts 7: 51. A judged world, a broken law, persecuted prophets, the slain Just One, a resisted Spirit, sum up the history of man, the history of original sin. Man "must be born again."

W. It is a sad and solemn picture.

H. It is, and ought to be brought home to one's own heart, in which it is all morally true. But it brings this comfort with it, that it shews the new blessing brought in by the second Adam to be itself entirely apart from the corrupt first Adam, though moral intelligence be brought out by their conflict, and the need of God's grace be surely found in it. But Christianity has its basis in resurrection after the work of redemption; that is, a passage into a wholly new state, after God's perfect goodness, and His righteousness too, had been proved as to the old.

W. It is a glorious thing, Christianity: one sees it is divine when once we know it. It is deplorable, this effort to shut us down into the first Adam.

H. In truth it is. And that is what one feels in reading the works of all these rationalists when one has the new man. One finds also one's dependence on God in their reasonings; for the vast and divine largeness of scripture, full of thoughts which can be only divine, is not their field of view at all, nor the richness and fulness which a divine person and a new creature give to it. You might as well talk of a beautiful view to a blind man. The blending of all the richness of lights and shadows, the striking features, and soft distances, and enlivened details, do not exist for their faculties at all, nor faculties to apprehend them. So speaks the Lord Himself, "Why do ye not understand my speech? because ye cannot hear my word." John 8: 43. And so the apostle — "The natural man receiveth not the things of the Spirit; they are foolishness to him." 1 Cor. 2: 14. One cannot but answer their statements as the Lord — "If he called them gods to whom the word of God came;" John 10: 35, he shews them their injustice on their own ground, still by the word.

292 In what we have been searching into, I have deeply felt the absolute impossibility of meeting unbelieving objections by this depth and riches of scripture, which to a believer carries the absolute evidence of their divinity. Paul sums up the great truth in saying "we are [were] all the children of wrath;" Eph. 2: 3, 4, and then, "but God who is rich in mercy, for his great love wherewith he loved us, when we were dead in sins, has quickened us together with Christ;" "we are risen together," "created again in Christ Jesus:" and this makes death and resurrection the great topic of the epistles. "Reckon yourselves to be dead indeed unto sin, and alive to God through Jesus Christ." Rom. 6: 11. So Peter, though less fully and elaborately, "We are begotten again to a living hope by the resurrection of Jesus Christ from the dead;" 1 Peter 1: 3, and "as Christ hath suffered in the flesh, arm yourselves likewise with the same mind." 1 Peter 4: 1.

Am I not right in saying that the history of the Bible is the history of original sin — of one who had to confess, if he knew himself, "Behold, I was shapen in wickedness, and in sin did my mother conceive me?" Ps. 51: 5.

Accompanied by marvellous longsuffering and gracious dealings, but which only brought out the sin, till, the tree having been digged about and dunged, it was proved no care could make a bad tree bring forth good fruit; and the Lord says, "Now is the judgment of this world" John 12: 31, . . . . "The world seeth me no more;" John 14: 19, but this only to bring in redemption, and set man on a wholly new footing beyond evil and in the glory of God; so that it should be said, "When we were in the flesh," "but ye are not in the flesh." And this true and divine dealing with our nature, according to the revelation of God, is what is fully brought out in the Romans, and hence deserved condemnation, atonement, death, and resurrection. Indeed, in doctrine it goes no farther, not on to the ascension, because it is laying the great moral ground of sin and putting it away, in guilt and power alike; and man's acceptance with God on a new footing. It only once just states the result of ascension as a final fact in the chain. The passages referred to by Mr. Jowett are merely summing up the great universal truth in scripture in the two heads of the respective races, so to speak, of carnal and spiritual life.

But the same truth is insisted on once and again, as in the passages I have quoted. So in experience: "I know that in me, that is in my flesh, dwelleth no good thing." Rom. 7: 18, "The flesh is not subject to the law of God, neither indeed can be." Rom. 8: 7, "It lusteth against the Spirit." Gal. 5: 17, "They that are in the flesh cannot please God." Rom. 8: 8, "I am crucified with Christ, nevertheless I live, yet not I, but Christ liveth in me." Gal. 2: 20. I suppose this is "Oriental" for Mr. Jowett. But if so, his heart is following its own imaginings, and he does not know it. God has not said in vain, "All the imaginations of his heart are only evil, and that continually;" Gen. 6: 5, and this said too in grace, "I will no more curse the ground for man's sake, for the imaginations," etc. It was not merely the previous wickedness of the antediluvians. They were gone. It was His motive for dealing with the race no more in that way. So the Lord, "Out of the heart of man proceed evil thoughts, adulteries," etc Mark 7: 21. Did you ever see it stated in scripture that good things came out of his heart naturally? God has tried it in every way. It was lawless, broke law, killed His Son, resisted His Spirit.

293 W. I see what you mean by scripture being the history of original sin; and in truth it is so. The dealings of God in patient mercy, which we find there, in truth only brought this out, so that we might have a scriptural delineation, a history which proved that sin; which, after all, is the history (however far that sin may be developed in them) of our own hearts. For self-will, lawbreaking, slighting Christ, resisting the appeals of God, was not confined to antediluvians or Jews.

H. No; it is the picture of my heart brought carefully out. The scripture hath concluded all under sin, that all might come on the ground of pure mercy. And you will see that, developed only in promise in Adam's time, then by prophecy, in figures under the law (in spite of senseless rationalist judgment as to them), in accomplishment in Christ, in testimony to His glory by the Holy Ghost sent down from heaven, the putting of it away is the great doctrine of scripture. "Behold the Lamb of God that taketh away the sin [not the "sins," as often falsely cited] of the world." John 1: 29. It is changing the whole principle on which the world, as such, stood, as we saw before. So again, "But now once in the consummation of ages" — these times of testing responsible man from Adam to Christ — "he hath appeared to put away sin by the sacrifice of himself." Heb. 9: 26 This is morally founded, as to the glory of God, on the death of Christ; and man after Him is introduced by resurrection into the new condition, beyond sin, consequent on that glorifying of God. At the same time there is the bearing of sins for the redeemed; but that is not our subject now.

294 W. I conceive you clearly now, and I think it brings the heart into a most healthy moral atmosphere, because it is not merely feeling safe, but one sees that God is glorified; that all — speaking reverentially — His moral nature is fully displayed, and glorified in that wonderful sacrifice. It gives a depth to Christ's sacrifice which mere salvation, precious as it is to us, could not do, though we come into it so. But I understand better, "Now is the Son of man glorified, and God is glorified in him; and if God be glorified in him, God shall also glorify him in himself, and shall straightway glorify him." John 13: 31. And note this wondrous word: it is "The Son of man."

H. Most just. And hence, while, as you say, we must come in as sinners by the cross, or there is no truth in the inward parts, and sin is not judged in ourselves, without which there is no moral deliverance, and by which, if I may so speak, we morally side with God against ourselves as sinners, and against sin; yet, when we have entered in by this new and living way, it is not a standing without, in the hope that by the blessed One's bearing our sins on the cross we may be safe; but that though this has, and where it has, been fully realized in us as the needed and only way (and it is morally necessary it should be), we have now passed within, by the new and living way, and contemplate the cross in peace, so to speak, from the divine side, and see all the absolute beauty of it. And there is nothing like it — nothing in which God is thus morally glorified. "Therefore doth my Father love me, because I lay down my life that I might take it again." John 10: 17. He does not even say "for the sheep;" it is the thing itself which is so excellent And this makes me so often feel mere evangelical teaching so poor even where true, as I thankfully say it is, as far as it goes. It leaves the Christian outside, hoping and thinking only of himself, instead of on the deep conviction that there is no good thing in himself at all, bringing him in by an accomplished work; and then looking that, as within, he should display the character suited to it.

W. But they dread Antinomianism.

H. They are right to dread every inconsistency, and to distrust themselves. But I suspect that the true secret of putting Christians under the law (which Christianity does not, and that these rationalists see, because their consciences are untroubled by it, clear enough) is, that, having nothing of the discipline of the primitive assembly, they are obliged to modify the gospel, and make the law a schoolmaster after Christ to keep men in order. Then all fall naturally into it. Because man has the keeping of it, it flatters man; if he has a tender conscience, it tortures him, as we often see; if not, he thinks of himself, takes for granted some failure is to be there, judges it perhaps pretty easily — will really sorrow over it, if the new nature be there; but, in any case, he can think of himself, and this the heart likes. A man likes thinking badly of himself, ay, and saying so, better than not thinking of himself at all, and simply displaying Christ's gracious life by thinking on Him only. We have to judge ourselves; but our right state is thinking of the Lord alone.

295 W. You are severe on men.

H. Is it not true? Is not having done with self the really difficult thing? Is it not the aim of Christianity, settling first in a divine way the question of sin righteously with God by atonement? And is not power there to deliver from self or flesh, and give us the victory, though we may fail?

W. I do not deny it. But it is a humbling thought that we are such.

H. It is so. But it is better to know ourselves; and the largest supplies of grace, and divine objects, are there to take us out of ourselves. In the Philippians we have the pattern of it in one of like passions with ourselves. There, in the picture of the Christian normal state, the flesh (save having no confidence in it) and sin are not mentioned. Yet the writer had a thorn in the flesh to keep it down. If we were perfectly humble, we should not need humbling; but we do, all of us, even Paul, as we see in this case. Christ, then, has been manifested to put away sin out of God's sight, out of man's heart, and out of the world. The great work which does it is accomplished, the results not all accomplished in power. He who has not judged original sin has not that estimate of the new nature animated by the Spirit of God which is on God's side against sin. I judge the individual in no way. He may hate what he sees in himself of actual sin. I speak of abstract moral truth. He who does not see the principle and nature and guilt of sin, as it stands in man's self-will, has not the estimate which the knowledge of a holy nature in reconciliation to God gives. We have made a long excursion, but we will return to our Essay. But the subjects lie at the root of the matter.

W. Clearly they do. I was struck, as by a kind of providence, how, in this strange list of subjects in the Essay, these three great vital points which are at the root of the question — inspiration, the Holy Spirit, original sin — are dragged in. And it is of them we have been speaking, and scripture is quite clear as to them.

296 H. We will continue, then, our enquiry into the principles of the Essay. I feel how tedious entering into these details is, but it is impossible to meet the system without doing so in a measure.

W. Do not fear to do so. It is better to meet it fully, because the difficulties are raised, and the doubt thrown on the whole truth and its sources by them, on the spirit in which we are to read scripture, can only be met by taking up the details. One returns to simplicity by it, and the word to its full and simple authority in the soul.

H. Well, we will proceed, then. It is the character of what follows, as in general of the Essay, to mingle a mass of conventional ideas and scriptural precepts or doctrines together, and, by proving the groundlessness of men's comments, to throw like doubt on scriptural statements; and hence the need of some detail.

But there is a deadly principle running through all — making men's present habit of thinking the measure of the fitness of the word of God; and thus gradually leading to the belief that it was the product of the age and country it was written in. True, it may be said it is only its form and expression. But, as we have biblical truth only in that expression, if I change it for what suits the west and the nineteenth century, I shall soon change it for what suits myself, who live there at that epoch, and we might as well not have it at all. It is pretended to save it by great principles; for I cannot but think that the word has power in Mr. Jowett's soul. Yet such is the result of his system. I call your attention with pleasure to such expressions as "But, at any rate, they (the precepts of Christ) are not to be explained away; the standard of Christ is not to be lowered to ordinary Christian life, because ordinary Christian life cannot rise even in good men to the standard of Christ."

W. That is excellent, surely.

H. Undoubtedly. It is the same happy inconsistency with what I quoted before, which we have already noticed; and even here, in the same page, speaking of our Lord's remarks on the danger of riches, and recommendation to sell all, he says, "Precepts like these do not appeal to our own experience of life." "Religious sects or orders who have seized this aspect of Christianity have come to no good." And then it is all melted down in the following words, while lauding some rare stars, to a truth of feeling: "Let not the refinement of society make us forget that it is not the refined only who are received into the kingdom of God," etc. Now, I find scripture owning the rich as such when the gospel had spread: "Charge them that are rich in this world." 1 Tim. 6: 17. But that does not weaken in the smallest degree the contrast between Lazarus and Dives, or the extreme danger to true heavenly-mindedness of treasure in this world.

297 At no time, as Peter says to Ananias, was it claimed from any one that they should give their goods to the assembly, nor mentioned to them. It was the free power of the Holy Ghost working in love to others. There was no community of people or goods established at all, but a voluntary giving up of one's own where it could be made available; and most blessed it was, and acting in the spirit of it will be always blessed, though there be no apostles at whose feet I may lay what I have to dispose of. Riches are as dangerous now as then, devotedness as acceptable now as then. There is in principle no great difference in these respects, though in forms of life there may be. All this however is a mere question of worldliness or its degrees. "The friendship of the world is enmity with God, and whosoever will be the friend of the world is the enemy of God." James 4: 4.

Mr. Jowett refers to "Swear not at all." Matt. 5: 34. As this question comes often into public, I will just refer to this too. The same principle which hinders my swearing of myself, makes me take an oath, as it is called, before a magistrate. I bring in God lightly in one case; I own Him in the magistrate, as I am bound to do, in the other. The Lord and James speak only of voluntary oaths — what comes from self. Whatsoever is more than this comes of evil (i.e., more than yea, yea, and nay, nay, in our conversation). So the Lord speaks of vows, i.e., voluntary swearing to the Lord. But in Leviticus 5 we find adjuring and a man bound to utter it; and, consequently, the Lord answers before the high priest. The oath imposed by a magistrate is adjuring, and I judge a man to be wholly in fault who does not take the oath; he disowns God's authority in the magistrate.

Other details I pass by, only remarking that the instruction contained in the parable of the good Samaritan is grace contrasted with law. In answer to the question, Who is my neighbour whom I am bound to love? we find love acting as a neighbour to need, and this is God's principle. But in all these cases, important no doubt in practice, we have more a pastor's or an expositor's work.

298 But then Mr. Jowett — men's minds being thus thrown into uncertainty — suddenly plunges us into doubts on the fundamental truths of Christianity, such as the divinity of Christ, justification by faith, the state of condemnation in which sinners are lying — the doubt being always applied to the truth. Now this seems to me somewhat disingenuous. He compares the Athanasian Creed, which he must be supposed to have signed and uses, with the words, "Neither the Son," in Mark 13: 32. He says we do not readily recall the verse when maintaining the Athanasian Creed. Now as to doctrine (what may seem strange) I like the Athanasian Creed the best of all, though it be far too scholastic in form. But I maintain no creed, but I do maintain the proper divinity of the Lord Jesus. That He was in a personal relationship as Son to Father, every one who believes in His divinity, unless a Sabellian, owns. But it is to me as clear as the sun at noonday, that Christ was the Jehovah of the Old Testament, who could say, "Before Me there was no God: I know not any." All the fulness of the Godhead dwelt in Him, and dwells, of course, bodily. He was Immanuel — His name called Jesus (Jah, the Saviour), for He shall save His people from their sins. When Isaiah, in Isaiah 6, saw the thrice holy Jehovah of Hosts, he saw, says John, Christ's glory, and spake of Him. If the Son of man was brought to the Ancient of days, the Ancient of days came (Dan. 7). If the blessed and only Potentate, King of kings, and Lord of lords, showed the appearing of Christ in Timothy, Christ when He appears is King of kings and Lord of lords.

It is to me as evident as possible historically, that the Arian doctrine came direct from Philo, at least from the Alexandrian school of philosophers, or Platonist Jews, who held that the supreme God could not be directly connected with the material creation; and spoke of the λόγος, the Word, as between the supreme God and the creation, begotten perhaps rather than made; yet after all existing as a creature by the will of the Creator, the supreme God. Now, save the dear good old Irenaeus, and a word or two from Polycarp and Ignatius, all the earlier Greek Fathers were of this school. Justin Martyr, a Platonist, taught this doctrine; so Clemens, so Origen. It was Platonism, not Scripture, and deeply infected the assembly. These Fathers are no way to be trusted; they shew it, and this spread west too, in the existence of the words ἐνδιάθετος and προφοριχός: all that is directly and verbally from the Philo school. I accept none of this. I find it met in face by John and Paul, carefully and fully met. I read, "In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God." John 1: 1. Wherever my mind can go back to as a beginning as to time, there He was. And that there may be no plea of ἐνδιάθετος that is His inherence as reason without being a person, he adds, "He was in the beginning with God" — always a distinct person. And lest any inferiority should be alleged, Paul tells us, "All the fulness was pleased to dwell in him," for this is the true force of the passage. And so the fact is declared to have been, "For in him dwelleth all the fulness of the Godhead bodily." Col. 2: 9. As a person He emptied Himself, ἑαυτὸν ἐχένωσεν. He could not have done so save as God. A creature who leaves his first estate sins therein. The sovereign Lord can descend in grace. In Him it is love. Then, as in that position, He receives all. All the words He has are given to Him. He is, though unchangeable in nature as God, yet in His path a dependent man. He lives by every word that proceeds out of the mouth of God — is sealed by the Father; the glory He had before the world is now given Him of the Father. Now in this state of obedient servant, with a revelation which God gave to Him, the day and hour of His judicial action was not revealed. "It is not for you," He says to His disciples, "to know the times or the seasons which the Father hath put in his own power." Acts 1: 7. And to this exactly Psalm 110 answers (as has been observed by another), "Sit on my right hand till I make thine enemies thy footstool." When? Sit there in this place of divine glory till; no more is said. Now, I do not pretend to explain — God forbid I should! — how this is.

299 I see in scripture in the full (not θειότης merely, but) θεότης of Christ maintained by the truth — that none can know the Son but the Father; the Father we do: He is simply the adorable God. "No man knoweth the Son but the Father, and no man knoweth the Father but the Son, and he to whom the Son shall reveal him." The Son's divine nature seemed, so to speak, exposed to danger by His blessed humiliation; not so the Father. It is secured (I mean, of course, as to thought) by His being thereby absolutely unfathomable. Such I believe He is. I know He is the Son; I know He is a true proper man. I know He is "I AM," "the true God." How to put this together I do not know, though I see and know they are together — am glad I do not as a creature. Did I know, I should have lost that divine fulness, which, if capable of being fathomed when in manhood, was not truly then divine. God, through grace, I know; man too, I know, in a certain sense; but God become a man is beyond all — even my spiritual thoughts. Be it so; it is infinite grace, and I can adore. I am sure for my soul's blessing He is both; and the Son of the Father too — for the persons are as distinct as the nature is clear. Say to a Christian, The Son sent the Father, he would instinctively revolt at once. That the Father sent the Son is the deepest joy of his soul. All heresies are met by scripture — Sabellian, Arian, or others: but the Son is not known but of the Father. The Father He declares. I accept no creeds, but I do bow to the perfect divinity of the Lord Jesus Christ; the fulness of the θεότητος is in Him.

300 It is painful to see Mr. Jowett (not say what he believes, but in the midst of questions of practice) throw a doubt, and more than a doubt, on the Lord's divinity — hold his mind in a Pyrrhonic balance as to everything.

Into the Calvinistic controversy it is hardly necessary to enter here. I believe scripture precise, and should shock partisans, I suppose, on either side. I believe Christ died for all. I believe in an elect people.

Article XVII gives a very nice statement of the doctrine. It is equally painful but common with this class to see a lift given to Popery over the stile. I believe the assembly is founded on the Rock — the Rock, Christ, as Augustine even says, and that the gates of hell will never prevail against it. I believe Peter had the keys, not of heaven, nor of the assembly — men do not build with keys, there are no keys of the assembly at all thought of in scripture — but the keys of the kingdom. I believe Peter used them. It was a common expression for administrative power, and he had and exercised it, as we see in the Acts. I believe moreover, according to Matthew 18: 18, that what the apostles bound on earth in the exercise of their ministry was sanctioned by heaven; and, further, that what is told to the assembly, and in which the assembly so acts, will be sanctioned; and that wherever two or three are gathered in Christ's name, Christ is; but what the pope has to do with two or three gathered thus, I know not. This may suffice here.

There is not a tittle of ground for the corruptest system that ever was on earth to stand upon. The word "Church" may deceive; but say first, Go yourself, then two or three, then tell it to the assembly (which is what is said), and all popish reasonings and rationalists' objections dissolve in air. This is not freedom from, but bondage to, conventional teaching in Mr. Jowett.

301 I know not to what he refers in 1 Corinthians 3: 15, unless it be purgatory, a notoriously modern doctrine. The early Fathers' doctrine of a middle state had nothing whatever to do with purgatory. Augustine vaguely hints at it; but his doctrine is as loose as can be. He speaks of the judgment-day being a purgatorial fire. Gregory the Great first propounds it as possible for any very little sins. That is, it was invented some 600 years after Christ; and the plainest historical proofs exist of its modern character. Tertullian is treated as unsound by Romanists themselves on it. But the doctrine of 1 Corinthians 3 applies to labourers, not simply to Christians; their work is tried and burnt. And, further, it is admitted by present writers among them, that this cannot be applied to purgatory (though they do so where men are ignorant), because here all are to go through it, and this is not their doctrine; for the saints do not in their system.

The prayers for the dead, on which dishonest Roman Catholics found their doctrine, included, in the earlier ages, even the Virgin Mary, as Epiphanius says, "to distinguish all from Christ."

But what is the result of all these doubts? "Nor is it, indeed, easy to say what is the meaning of proving a doctrine from scripture." It is easy enough. It is finding it there, learning it there, and shewing where you have learned it. Those who have creeds, and dogmas, and articles to prove at all costs, are naturally embarrassed. They have to adapt scripture to the formularies of men — to what scholasticism, or partial knowledge, has laid down. But what I have really learned from scripture I can, with God's help, easily prove from it. And that is the secret of their embarrassment. They have not learnt their doctrine from scripture, and they do not know how to prove anything by it. And then see where you are landed. "Nay, more, it is a book written in the east, which is in some degree liable to be misunderstood" [I read, "Then opened he their understanding to understand the scriptures" Luke 24: 45], "because it speaks the language and has the feeling of eastern lands. Nor can we readily determine, in speaking the words of our Lord or St. Paul, how much even of the passages just quoted is to be attributed to oriental style."

I will just quote you another passage from Mr. Jowett's commentaries, which will lead us somewhat farther in this path, only to Africa instead of Asia. After speaking of the tendencies of the Jewish mind, he says, "We cannot doubt that the entrance of Christianity into the world was not sudden or abrupt; that is an illusion which arises in the mind from our slender acquaintance with contemporary opinions. Better, and higher, and holier as it was, it was not absolutely distinct from the teaching of the doctors of the law, either in form or substance; it was not unconnected with, but gave life and truth to, the mystic fancies of Alexandrian philosophy. Even in the counsels of perfection of the sermon on the mount, there is probably nothing which might not be found, either in letter or spirit, in Philo or some other Jewish or eastern writer. The peculiarity of the gospel is, not that it teaches what is wholly new, but that it draws out of the treasure-house of the human heart things new and old, gathering together in one dispersed fragments of truth." I wish I could quote what follows, but it would lead me too far.

302 Mr. Jowett turns round and says there remains what eludes criticism — processes of life, about which we know nothing; the figure which St. Paul applies to the resurrection of the body (except it die), "is true, also, of the renewal of the soul, especially in the first ages, of which we know so little, and in which the gospel seems to have acted with far greater power than among ourselves."

W. How singular! Mr. Jowett puts me in mind of a person who, having lived blind and among blind people all his life, has just got his eyes open, and is telling us astonishing news — the first impressions he receives — as if never before discovered, yet reckons all distances wrong, and judges about all objects falsely; yet is no longer blind, but refers all things to his state of blindness, as he naturally must. It is so new that the poor man judges rightly of nothing. All is inconsistent, his head full of his old ideas mingled with new conceptions. Men are trees walking. What he would have known by touch, he does not yet by sight: as a dead orthodoxy may be truth, and is gone when the heart wants truth for itself.

H. I believe it is really the truth of his state. But it is a pity, in such a state, a man should set up to teach. Deeper wants in his own heart would have kept him from it. He would have wanted to have learned — I do not mean from man, but of Christ. He had the habit of teaching, I suppose. And then there is another thing: he got into the hands of others, inferior in this respect to himself — men still blind. He has got into this wretched system where there is no truth, and the most offensive pretensions and copying from one another. And thus his Essay is a treatise of contradictions. I pursue his system only, for others are injured by it. For himself, I would hope the best.

303 But see what his system comes to — his eastern rhetoric. The revelation of God is composed of Alexandrian philosophy and the scattered fragments of truth in the human heart. All is doubt. What is rhetoric in it, what truth? What comes from Philo? How can the human heart, in which masses of error are mixed with scraps of truth; while the scraps of truth only make the error more powerful, judge of the elements of truth gathered up here? Can error judge of truth? All is confusion. Now, I admit that there were dregs of traditional truth worked up by Satan (who can use truth in man's mind, but not the truth as it is in God's) into idolatry on the one hand, and philosophy on the other. I admit that the cravings of the human mind after God, and the knowledge of good and evil acquired at the fall, produced some apprehensions of partial truths. It was like the Achamoth of Sophia's cravings after Bythos, in the Valentinian system, which probably was an effort of "eastern lands" to describe these atoms of truth in the sea of confusion, and was most poetical — a world formed of the sighs and tears, and I forget what else, of Achamoth, outside the Pleroma.

In the Alexandrian system, as we have it in Philo, and perhaps the Book of Wisdom, much had been borrowed from scripture, much from Plato, who, I cannot doubt, had got his notions from the Feroohers of Zoroaster, and which, except the Feroohers, is reproduced in Hegel and Schelling. Gentiles had traditions; Alexandrian philosophy had shreds of Judaism; but God was lost. Now God, who had compassion on man, took up every link where He could connect Himself in grace with man, while positively confirming His own revelation given in the Old Testament. He could take up the unknown God in Athens, the λόγος in Alexandria, the Paraclete itself as a term. But what does He do? The unknown God is fully revealed with positive facts and divine truth. The λόγος was introduced by Platonic Jews in Alexandria, because God could have nothing to say to the mere creature; and the λόγος might form others, but remained alone in His own nature. For John the λόγος is God, who Himself becomes flesh. The cravings which philosophy had made a false system out of, not knowing God, are met (not a system made out of them) by the revelation of God Himself, the truth of all they sought, and the perfect grace they needed. It put down the philosophy, while it met all the seekings of man in it. It took up the old thoughts thus far; but to say it did not so much bring in what was new is utterly false. All it brought in was new (save as the Old Testament revelation had spoken of it). But it did meet the hungerings of the human soul, which philosophy was wasting by ideas, and told the truth about the traditions which had been perverted into monstrous, idolatrous, and absurd legends.

304 It is impossible to go through the discussion of some childish and some useful, though perhaps imaginative, adaptations of scripture. But some points claim our attention. "It is admitted scripture has only one meaning." We have partly spoken of this; but there are new points connected with it here. We are not now to decide whether scripture is wise in having one or more, but whether it has. Now, in the use made of it here, the proposition — that it has only one meaning — is wholly false. Mystical and allegorical interpretations of the Fathers I throw overboard at once. Scripture is not answerable for them; but our friend Philo and the Alexandrians mainly. But prophecy and symbolism of the gospel in the law are referred to. Prophecy we have spoken of; but symbolism means types of the Old Testament applicable to things in the New. Now I affirm that Old and New Testament concur in stating this to be so. Moses was commanded to make the tabernacle according to the pattern he had seen in the mount; nay, if God made such a system, we ought to expect some meaning in it more than gowns, and dresses, and curtains. When I read through the scripture, I find the whole form of language framed on such a symbolical use, and the great facts of the New the plain counterpart to the symbols of the Old. You must crush the whole structure of scripture in its most vital essences, tear the warp out of it so that it ceases to be a texture, before you undo this. Altars, tabernacles, the dwelling-place of God, sacrifices, priesthood, the rock, the water, the anointing, the holy place, the mercy-seat, the blood-shedding — I should go through every element of what constitutes its whole texture of thought, before I had closed the list of symbolical facts and objects presented in the Old Testament and taken up in the New, and which have entered, and that according to scripture, into the whole conception and framework of our religious thought. It is not a way of interpreting scripture, it is scripture itself. Christ is the Lamb of God. He is a great High Priest entered into the holiest. And Paul goes farther; he tells us as to the history itself, "All these things happened unto them for types, and they are written for our admonition, on whom the ends of the world are come." 1 Cor. 10: 11. One, and only one, true meaning therefore is not the fact in this case.

305 Say Moses was foolish, and Paul foolish; but if you so interpret scripture, you interpret it contrary to its nature and positive directions. That is, you do not interpret it, you correct it. I have the facts — important, very important, in the history of the people — important as a history of God's dealings with the people; and I get them avowedly pattern facts. Keep the imagination in check — all quite right. Look for doctrines in doctrinal passages, and here for details and illustrations — all right. But do not pretend you are teaching us to interpret scripture rightly when you are directly contradicting it, and saying to it, You are wrong. It is not the Fathers who have said that Sarah and Hagar were an allegory. We do not follow them in such a point as saying, Does God take care for oxen?

W. On this point I do not think you need go farther. If I use scripture at all, and on the weightiest subjects, Mr. Jowett's principle becomes impossible. It breaks down, as you say, the whole structure of scripture itself. And I see that he does not merely check the indulgence of imagination in it, which is quite right, but rejects the idea of more or less. He declares, that "in whatever degree it is practised, it is equally incapable of being reduced to any rule." I do not know whether he rejects the Epistle to the Hebrews; but evidently that book is gone wholly if his principle be true, and countless passages throughout the whole New Testament.

H. Temporal and spiritual Israel, as commonly used, I give him freely up. It is a mere abuse of words. I say, as commonly used; because in the common adaptation of prophecies, prophecies explicitly referring to Israel are applied to the assembly, where the subject-matter and principles are completely opposed. Ordained forms, and facts of history, may have a symbolical application, but moral addresses refer to the objects and moral state of those addressed, and do not give us objects to interpret, but persons addressed. Zion means Zion when she is prophesied about. The prophecy concerns her because it speaks to her on the moral ground she is on, and the arbitrary application to the assembly is entirely false, because the principle of relationship with God is different. A general principle, as that God is faithful or good, may be of course applied, with just care to see how it is used; but the people addressed are not symbolical objects, but moral persons, and the facts to happen real. If we are to speak of the Lord's prophecy as to Jerusalem, I apply the same principle, but I deny wholly that in Matthew, Titus, &c., are spoken of at all. There may have been something analogous; but its only direct application is to dealings yet to come, immediately after which the Lord will appear. I believe this because it says so. In Luke I have the siege of Jerusalem, and the language is carefully altered. I believe what is said in both passages. In Luke, whose gospel always looks out to Gentiles, the times of the Gentiles after the siege are distinctly spoken of before the signs that are to come.

306 Remark here how doubt is thrown on all. It is asked, Is the application of types "to be regarded as the meaning of the original text, or an accommodation of it to the thoughts of later times?" Now, note that the Lord instituted the Last Supper as taking the place of the Passover. The apostles apply in every passage these figures, so that the question is not if we are interpreting right; it extends to this — if the Lord and the apostles are merely accommodating these figures or not? What does Mr. Jowett think? He says, "Our object is, not to attempt here the determination of these questions, but to point out that they must be determined before any real progress can be made." The answer is, for every Christian the matter is determined. They believe in the Lord's and the apostles' use of them — man's uses now they judge by scripture to see if they are just.

W. I see no difficulty in the question. The use of any given type now is, of course, to be judged of when it is used. I find them most instructive, and, fitting in with positive doctrines which warrant what is drawn from them, they become living pictures and illustrations of what otherwise would escape you. They may not, in our hands, serve to found a doctrine as a first revelation of it; but as a vivid illustration and suggestion of truth they are invaluable.

H. Mr. Jowett insists on this because "The Old Testament will receive a different meaning accordingly as it is explained from itself or from the New. In the first case, a careful and conscientious study of each one for itself is all that is required; in the second case, the types and ceremonies of the law, perhaps the very facts and persons of the history, will be assumed to be predestined or made after a pattern corresponding to the things that were to be in the latter days." Now, all this is confusion from beginning to end. It ignores the positive statements of the volume pretended to be interpreted. And further, if the book be inspired, one Mind has formed it from beginning to end, and we must look for a co-ordinated system. If it be not, we find there is an end of predestinating facts or even statements. But we have seen that, if it is a true history, the whole system of the tabernacle was made after a pattern, which the Epistle to the Hebrews largely and specifically declares to be a heavenly one, and the tabernacle a pattern of things in the heavens. But we have this even more specifically defined. The law was a shadow of good things to come, and not the very image. There were sacrifices: so Jesus was a sacrifice. But the Jewish were repeated, proving that sin was not for ever put away for him who came by them; Jesus' was not repeated, because it was. There were many priests, because they died; for us but one, because He ever lives. There was a veil, and no one could go into the holiest; now the veil is rent, and we have boldness to enter. The high priest stood, because his work was never finished; Jesus is set down at the right hand of God, because His work is finished for ever, and so on. These were the outlines of this vast exhibition of God's ways to be a key, so to speak, near the eye. But neither Testament is simply to be explained by the other. In some points there is contrast, as law and gospel; in others analogies; in others common principles; in others prophetic announcements. The only point we learn to have been hidden was the assembly. This could not be revealed because it was based on the casting down of the middle wall of partition, and the Jewish system on its being strictly kept up.

307 But if God be the Author of the sacred volume, it is monstrous to suppose there was not a preparatory leading on to the full revelation of God Himself, or that He revealed something which was wholly unconnected with and no way introductory to what followed. It was necessary to make distinct the difference between man's standing on the ground of his own responsibility, and grace — between requiring, however justly, and giving. And this, though prophets point to the giving, there is. But promises came before law; and even under law (a ministration of condemnation and death) there were ordinances which prefigured the way of grace, while the exacting of righteousness, which man had not, led him to the sense of the need which grace met. The understanding of all this rests on this: "They shall be all taught of God." John 6: 45. Each part, as to its statements, is to be understood in itself; but, when simply understood, the correspondences and differences will appear, and rich instruction for man's soul be acquired out of them.

All this division of Mr. Jowett's, and its consequences, is in the air, and written without any kind of reference to the facts of the case. We do not assume anything about it. We take what is said in the book itself about itself, and find it verified in the richest and most instructive manner. One would think Mr. Jowett had never read St. Paul's Epistles, or the Hebrews, or indeed any part of the New Testament; for, as I said, he does not reason on its interpretation here, but against its contents. And man's fancies, and scriptural (that is, divine) expositions, are thrown together as of equal weight.

308 There is another interesting question which he touches on — the origin of the first three gospels; but his conclusions — for he is one of the most illogical persons I ever met with — are in no way the consequence of his premises. He is constantly making a false division, and the true conclusion is outside all he says. There is a difficulty as to the forms of recital of the first three or synoptical gospels. Marsh, who was educated in Germany, introduced into this country a modification of Eichhorn's German theories. Eichhorn afterwards changed his somewhat in consequence, if I remember right. The singular fact is, that tantamount statements are found in these gospels, often verbally the same, and yet sometimes different, and the facts placed in different connection. The only difficulty, and that which all are really entirely ignorant of, is, how to account for it. It affords no difficulty in reading, but great help. The difficulty is, for critics, simply how it should have happened. Mr. Jowett supposes the main facts were preserved orally.

Now, till the gospels were written, that seems to me a matter of fact, not "a probable solution," whatever use we may make of the fact. Only we have to remember that Christ told the apostles they should be witnesses, because they had been with Him from the beginning. That they were kept, according to the promise, to bring all things to their remembrance, as Jesus had said, I believe; and that they were graciously secured in their memory and use of facts; still they spoke of what they had seen. But this, while very simple, does not at all account for the phenomena, because one evangelist, even an apostle, recounts facts where he was not present, and another who was present does not recount them — as Matthew and John as to what passed in the garden of Gethsemane. The motive of the histories, and these had had their source in some motive, is not in the casualty of memory, nor in the documents possessed. The theory is, the writers had the same tradition to use. Now if there were no governing motive, which gave a form to the gospels, writers would have put the facts together according to the document men have imagined, or the current tradition. But they do not. The order is distinct. The allegation that they are not distinct witnesses is unfounded. They may, in particular parts, have used what all knew; but they are wholly in their accounts independent of one another. But I attach no importance to independent witnesses, because I believe all was inspired. But I find clear proof of distinct objects in the gospels, objects pursued in each, from one end to the other; which rationalists, who always rest. on the surface, have never found a trace of, and which gives the clearest proof of the absurdity of their theories of the structure of the gospels.

309 But as to the question raised, the facts of the case prove the contrary to what is pretended. If all the evangelists simply used a common tradition, how comes it that the connection, order, and development of facts are so different, if there was not in each (as inspired, I believe) independent design? Men have a common tradition (it is only true of a part), and yet produce very different books. They are not memoranda thrown together unconnected, but a set of facts used in a definite, but diverse connection, so as to produce a different picture altogether of the Saviour's life, and large portions wholly omitted, and large portions introduced, all in connection with this design. Yet, all together, they make up the full character of the Saviour seen on earth. It is declared, moreover, that there was a mass of other facts which they do not record, because these suit the purposes.

Again, whole scenes of labour and miracles are told in a few verses, where it met the point sought for; large details are given of single ones, when it revealed some trait of Christ's life or principle of God's dealings.

Let me, before I enter on this, a little notice Mr. Jowett's conclusions from the statement I have quoted above: — (1.) There is no necessity to reconcile inconsistent narratives — the harmony of the gospels only means the parallelism of words. Now I object totally to all harmonies, as such; but the remark is unfounded. A certain number of passages are parallel in words; but, as to a vast quantity of the materials, it is not the case. A harmony is merely an attempt at chronological order.

W. But why do you object to harmonies?

H. Because they are the confusion of accounts which are each written with a distinct divine object. The facts are put together by the Holy Ghost, for I may speak as a believer with you, with an evident purpose, each gospel presenting both Christ and the ways of God in a different light. To throw them all together is to destroy this purpose, and obscure the intelligence of the gospels.

310 W. I understand: if there be such purpose in each, it must, of course, do so. Proceed.

H. The second conclusion of Mr. Jowett is, "There is no necessity to enforce anywhere the connection of successive verses, for the same words will be found in different connections in different gospels." Now, the true conclusion is exactly the contrary. The Evangelists had some leading facts in common, containing, for they do so, important principles, and many other facts each to himself. They do not combine them alike, but form a picture different one from another, though combining into a whole; for no one who has examined the gospels carefully can deny this. Now, the difference of connection is one great mark of this design. And the different connections in which the statements occur are one great clue to the design, though by no means its only evidence.

Supposing I had this phrase: The Jews crucified the Son of God, the Lord of glory, at Jerusalem. And one writer went on" — Think of the wickedness of this people, this was their crowning sin. There, in the beloved city, whose children He would so often have gathered under His wings, these very children put their Messiah and Lord to death." As far as this goes, I should conclude this writer is bringing out the guilt of this people in Christ's death. And if I saw him going on afterwards to relate discoveries as to something else coming in, instead of Israel — as the assembly or kingdom — the bearing of his narrative would gradually open clearly to me. Supposing another gave the same words, and said — "See the Son of God Himself crucified; how deep is His love, how sad the guilt of man! and of those, too, who were nearest to Him, who had the best opportunity of seeing that He was indeed the Lord of glory, whom none of the princes of this world have known." I should gather that this writer is bringing out man's guilt in general, and that no evidence will correct the evil of the heart. If I found afterwards the most touching doctrinal and parabolic illustration of man's evil and God's love, and not the assembly or the kingdom, but heaven and another world, I should get hold (of course by study and divine help, and gradually) of the bearing and design of this writing also. Patient investigation and waiting on divine help, of course, are called for; but the difference of the connection in which the same words are found is so far a special guiding trace to the discovery of the spirit and aim of the particular gospel.

311 W. It is as evident as evident can be.

H. And what shall we say to Mr. Jowett's conclusion — that there is no need to notice the connections because they are different?

W. We had better leave it.

H. Be it so. But you cannot be surprised if rationalists' reasonings have no great weight with me.

He adds, (3.) "Nor can the designs attributed to their authors be regarded as the free handling of the same subject on different plans; the difference consisting chiefly in the occurrence or absence of local or verbal explanations, or the addition or omission of certain passages." After what we have already seen, we cannot be surprised at this remark. I have only added just now to my example certain passages. But what can possibly be more absurd than this? It depends wholly on what is added or omitted, or what the local explanation is. I do not see how an explanation in this case can be anything but local (for we are talking of connection of passages), or than verbal (for we are talking of words, and additions or omissions complete the list). So it is only saying no connection can explain the design, which is simply absurd; for the addition or verbal explanation might be even a statement of the design, so that the conclusion is utterly foolish. But it is not the fact. The order of the facts is constantly different, so as to give a totally different colour to them. Save in a brief early part, when this is the main point, the choice of facts is totally distinct, though you see the same scenes.

And then the different order and the whole structure of each gospel mark clearly its object. The parables afford the strongest proof of the design of the gospels, and vary largely and abundantly; and in the last solemn scenes, while certain facts must be the same, the special adaptation to the character and design of the gospels is as evident as possible. But I go further. Certain leading facts are common to all, at least to the three; but even these prove design, not a tradition gathered up, as it might be, from memory. They are significant facts, characteristic facts, connected with the immense change that was taking place by the rejection of Christ, and leading to this change. We are assured that they had an immense mass of other facts; yet he who had them does not recount them, but declares what his design is in what he does recount. But the facts were there, remembered but not recounted; and those that are characteristic and common to all, differently connected with one another. I see then evidently design, I have no doubt divine design, but certainly design; a selection of facts for all. By whom? Yet (and here we see independency) these facts so differently used, and in such different connections, that they could not have joined in arranging them, nor could there have been collusion. They would have avoided the differences reproached to them. We have a vast number of facts known, not used — a choice of facts, to a certain degree common to all, hence brought together by some one; but not by the different writers together, for they use them all differently, and to different purposes, though all to present the Lord to us. And they have besides such a large number of other facts and discourses, which they introduce in the midst of the former, or all together — for both are true — completing evidently the specific design of each. Now I get here distinct instruments, distinct objects, each instrument following his own, but, at the same time, a common Mind which has guided and overruled it all.

312 As regards the traditions of the Fathers as to Mark and Luke, they may be true; between Luke and Paul there is certainly spiritual and historical connection; but they are of no sort of consequence. As they stand, they are vague and contradictory, and founded on an utterly false principle — namely, to trace each gospel to an apostle. At the very best they are curiosities of history, which, if a person believes the book divine, are of an entirely secondary interest.

W. But you must go through the gospels in this view a little.

H. It is a long task, but, to my mind at least, full of interest — an inlet into the mind and grace of our God, and not merely dry antagonism with rationalism.

W. Quite so. I desire it the rather for that reason; for though we may be called upon to occupy ourselves with these Essays, still, by going effectually into scripture, we get, with the arguments against them by the positive proof of what is good, food, divine food, for our own souls, which brings a conviction of a higher order.

H. Well, I will run through, then, as most strongly characteristic, the Gospels of John and Matthew, so as to mark their character; just referring to Luke — and Mark too, which, as you know, is a shorter one, and rapid in its course as to facts — to confirm the general principle.

313 I will begin with John, because it is perhaps the most easy to seize. John's great doctrine is the Son of God on earth, and eternal life in Him, and the revelation of God in and by Him. In his epistle he goes on to the manifestation of this same life in the disciple. He is the eternal life which was with the Father, and has been manifested unto us. Then, "He that hath the Son hath life," 1 John 5: 12, and so "which thing is true in him and in you." 1 John 2: 8. The details are the traits of this life, the knowledge of the love of God in it through the Spirit, and fellowship with the Father and the Son. In the gospel, to which I will now confine myself, it is His person and the gift of the Comforter when He is gone.

I will run through the chapters of this Gospel, to see if there be not a leading idea running all through, to which the peculiar facts recorded are subservient. That idea is the Son of God, outside of and above all dispensational dealings, in the blessedness of His own person, though, as a man, and taking fully a man's place. But it is, as I think I have remarked, not man taken up to heaven, but a divine person come down to earth.

In John 1 there are three parts: John 1: 1-18, John 1: 19-34, and thence to the end; but this continued in John 2: 1-22. The first is the abstract glory of His nature. He is God, but a distinct person with God, and that in eternity, life, light: John was His witness. There was this singular phenomenon — light shining in darkness, and the darkness remaining what it was; and then the Word made flesh and dwelling among us — the only begotten Son in the bosom of the Father — who makes God known. Next we have what Christ does, His work, the Lamb of God who takes away the sin of the world, and the baptism with the Holy Ghost. We then find Christ the centre and gatherer of the remnant of Israel. In the first of the two days, John the Baptist's work to this end is spoken of; in the second, Christ's. This last, I doubt not (like Matthew 10), goes down, in principle, to His return.

I would note, in passing, that we have here Christ as a divine centre, for none can be such truly but God; next the one only path through a world in which there is none for man, for there can be none for children who have wilfully abandoned their Father's house till they turn back to it; and then the heaven open, and man (in Christ) the object of divine favour, and the mighty ones, the most exalted of creatures, His servants. Nathanael owned Him, according to Psalm 2. He takes His place according to Psalm 8. Here note, that the Jews and world, as such, are wholly outside, verses 10, 11 (the Jews are always treated as reprobates in this gospel), and those born of God alone owned, verses 12, 13. In a word, we have, not dispensational dealings, but the deep realities of the divine nature in relationship to men and the world, though it is fully owned that the Jews were God's people.

314 John 2, called the third day, I have no doubt intimates the double aspect of Christ's reunion with His earthly people — the marriage and the judgment. I can quite accept that such a figure (though to me, from the connection, undoubted) may not be admitted. I do not complain of this, but, as I am saying what I think, I would not omit it.

In John 2: 23 — John 3: 21 we have the great foundations of the new state of things — born of God, and the cross; the latter in the double aspect of the Son of man must be lifted up; the love of God has given His Son. The condemnation is, the coming in of light. (Ver. 22-36.) In the full aspect of the new state of things, and the absolutely heavenly character of the witness, are gone into.

After this introduction, for such it is (John was not yet cast into prison, and Christ had not yet presented himself), He leaves Judea (John 4), practically driven out by the Jews, and in Samaria, where no promise was (salvation, He declares in the chapter, was of the Jews), unfolds the living power of the Holy Ghost, which He could give as God — for God was giving, not requiring — and which He was humbled, so as to be the weary One craving a drink of water, that man might have; and then finds the way to man's unintelligent heart, as it ever must be, by the conscience. Nothing more lovely than this whole picture — the rejected and weary One finding His meat in shewing grace to this wearied but guilty heart; but I must not dwell on it here. It opened to His view the fields white for harvest at the moment He was cast out.

In John 5 we have the Son of God giving life to whom He will. The general picture is man's incompetency to get healed by strength in himself; and Christ, in contrast, bringing life, and that eternal life, so as to escape judgment. The end of the chapter shews life in Him, with every evidence; and man would not come to have it. This is man's responsibility as to Christ.

In John 5 He is the life-giving Son of God. In John 6 He is the Son of man, the object of faith come into the world, and dying, so that faith feeds on Him. The general picture is Christ satisfying the poor with bread, according to Psalm 132; owned Prophet, refusing then to be King, going up on high alone, while His disciples were tossed and toiling in His absence; He rejoins them, and they are at land: a Christ, the true manna (vv. 2-9), incarnate, and dying (understood in spirit), their true food.

315 In John 7, He cannot shew Himself at the feast of Tabernacles. The feast of Passover is fulfilled in Him; the Pentecost, on the day so called. But the Tabernacles, where Israel celebrated their rest after the harvest and vintage (known figures of judgment), are not even yet. He promises the Spirit meanwhile, as Israel had the water out of the rock in the desert; only now it should be in him who came to Him to drink, and flow forth as rivers in this desert world. Thus we have the triple fruition of the Holy Ghost giving life as born of Him, the spiritual power of life in us rising up to its full blessing as eternal life, and flowing forth in blessing from us as a river. This closed the direct communication of Christ as to His position on earth.

In John 8 His word is rejected; there He is light.

In John 9 His works; here He gives eyes to see. He gives eyes to a poor sheep cast out, who, having owned Him as a prophet, finds He is the Son of God. Then comes all He is for His sheep, from His entering in Himself by the door as a subject man, then laying down His life for them (of infinite value in itself also), to His being one with the Father.

In John 11 and John 12, being thus rejected, He receives just testimony, in spite of men, to His being Son of God (resurrection and life), in Lazarus' resurrection; to His being Son of David, in riding on the ass; to His being Son of man, by the Greeks coming up. But He declares that, to take this place, He must die or abide alone. He must be lifted up to draw (not Israel as a living Messiah, but) all men. The evangelist then unfolds how it stood with Israel, and Christ how it stood with the world at large in respect of Himself.

He is now owned, so to speak, as crucified — i.e., His teaching takes up what is beyond it. He was come from God and went to God. The Father had delivered all into His hand. And now, if He could not abide with His disciples as a companion upon earth, He would make them fit to be with Him in heaven — to have a part with Him. They were washed, as completely regenerated by the word; but, as priests connected with the sanctuary and holy service, they must have their feet washed as to daily conversation: this He was their servant still to do. He then refers to His betrayal and Peter's denial of Him — the perfect wickedness of flesh and its weakness; He declares the value Godward of the death of the Son of man and its fruit in His then entering into divine glory, and being no more (bodily) for any in the world.

316 In John 14 He unfolds His disciples' position in consequence. He was not going to be alone on high, He was going to prepare a place for them; but, having revealed the Father in Himself, they knew where He was going, for He was going to the Father, and they had seen Him in Him; and they knew the way, for they had come to the Father in coming to Him. That was as already there; but on going away He would obtain another Comforter for them. In spirit He would come to them, manifest Himself to them, and the Father and Himself make Their abode with them. The path of obedience and responsibility on Christian (not on Adam) ground is in this and the following chapter fully set out. He left what He could only give in leaving — for He made it by the cross — peace; He gave them His own peace; but He was truly a man, cared for their love; if they loved Elim, they would be glad He was going to His Father, to rest and glory.

But there was a difficulty. What about the vine that God brought out of Egypt and planted? This He meets in the following chapter, John 15. Israel was not the vine, though as a people it were so. He Himself was the true Vine, they were the branches. He was not, as they thought of Messiah, the best branch of the old vine; He was the Vine, and they the branches. He then enlarges upon the way of bearing due fruit, dependence and obedience, and, if His words abode in them, asking what they would; most important instructions, which I regret passing over so rapidly, only that I must confine myself to my present object — the general idea. As He has returned to this rejection of the old provisional vine, so to speak, He shews that to be without excuse, and as really having seen and hated (not Messiah, though He was such, but) Him and His Father. It is laid on its intrinsic moral grounds. Hence, when the Comforter was come before, He had spoken of the Father's sending Him, now of His sending Him from the Father to testify of Him glorified (as before, to bring to remembrance what He had said upon earth), they also having to bear testimony as with Him from the beginning.

In John 16, when the Comforter was come, He would bear witness in the world of sin, righteousness, and judgment, in connection with His rejection and going away to His Father; and guide the disciples into all truth, shew them things to come, and glorify Christ (all that the Father had being His); and then places them in immediate confident relationship with the Father. For the moment they were to be in sorrow, and scattered.

317 In John 17, addressing His Father (wonderful thought that we should be admitted to hear!) He looks to taking His own place as Son on high, to glorify Him in virtue of His work which He had finished; the one our place, the other our title to it. He puts them in it, having manifested His Father's name to them, and gives to them all the communications made to Him in it on earth, and prays for them, on the ground of their being the Father's, and on the ground of His being glorified in them. He prays they may be kept in the name of the Holy Father; and divine names are the power of the thing named. Holiness, His holiness, and children; these are our place. This, that Christ's own joy might be fulfilled in them. Then He gives, not the words, but the word, the testimony, and the world hates them. They are completely put in Christ's place on earth in every respect, sanctified by the truth, and He Himself set apart, away from men, on high, to be the source of this their setting apart, by the revelation of what He was to their hearts. Next, He gives them the glory the Father had given Him, but, beyond all, will have them with Himself where He is; and, as partaking of His glory hereafter, He will prove to the world they were loved as He was; so that He manifests the Father's name now, that the Father's love to Him may be in them on earth, and He in them.

Having thus completed His disciples' place in His absence, and even to their heavenly rest — of which John speaks little, barely in the beginning of John 14 and at the end of John 17, and this only in the full result — in John 18. He enters on the final history of the Lord's days on earth. But this, even more than any other part, shews the divine person who is above all circumstances. John was one of the three present — as near as any could be — in the agony in Gethsemane. He gives not a word of it; while Matthew, who was present at what John recounts, tells nothing of that, but does of the agony.

Now if these contrasted circumstances were not characteristic they might not prove much, but they are most strikingly characteristic. I will briefly recall to you those mentioned by St. John. All point out the Son of God wholly above circumstances; the free offering up of Himself. Judas comes; the Lord advances and names Himself. They all go backward and fall to the ground. Had He sought escape, He had only to go away; but He asks again, and then says, "If ye seek me, let these go their way" — the blessed sign, as the apostle witnesses, how He stood in the gap, and, however poor and weak, the disciples escaped untouched. With this love we have perfect love to His Father, and perfect obedience. "The cup which my Father hath given me, shall I not drink it?" John 18: 11 — and no more. The miracle of healing, even, is not noticed by John, though he can give the servant's name. So all His answers to the chief priest are in the calm superiority of one above all that surrounded Him, while the full guilt and madness of the Jews are fully brought out, as they are seen in all the gospel; and in rejecting Him they deny their own place: "We have no king but Caesar." John 19: 15. Christ's answers before Pilate bear the same stamp as one above all. As we had no agony in the garden, so no "My God, my God, why hast thou forsaken me?" on the cross. Finally, Jesus, knowing now all was finished a single passage remaining to be fulfilled, says, "I thirst," and having drunk the vinegar says, "It is finished." John 19: 30. He then bows His head, and gives up His own spirit. Meanwhile, in perfect calmness, He committed His mother to John, and charged John with the care of her. No bone is broken, but Joseph and Nicodemus make Him to be with the rich in His death. Now, in all this — and John, mark, was with Him, as near as any could be in His agony, and standing by at the cross; all that marked the anguished Man is omitted, and all that presents the Son of God is introduced — I find design; that is, a blessed and beautiful appearing, as a true, lowly, and obedient man, no doubt, but an appearing of the Son of God as such, for faith on earth; revealing His Father all His life, and even in the circumstances of His death, Son of God still.

318 W. Though the whole synoptic analysis of the gospel is important to our purpose, yet the character of the last facts referred to, in connection with the blessed Lord's death, is to me even more striking still. I do not see how it is possible to avoid seeing a divine design in connection with the purpose of the whole gospel, and the aspect in which the Lord is viewed throughout it; His person as the new foundation of all when He had been offered up in sacrifice, the Jews being wholly rejected. It is striking, too, that he does not mention what he alone of the evangelists might have been, in some measure, an eyewitness

H. Two chapters remain to consider, relating His history after the resurrection. They are throughout, I do not doubt, significative as to the dispensational dealings consequent on the truths already brought out. Such applications are not like doctrines: we must leave them to the judgments of others. But I will state them to you. Their orderly completeness, I have no doubt, proves the truth of the view I suggest. The fact of Christ's resurrection known only by sight, without the testimony of God in the word that He must rise, produces no effect. They go home. But Mary, out of whom seven devils had been cast, wants Jesus Himself — in ignorance, no doubt, but in true affection. When this had been fully and most beautifully brought out — the world had nothing for her but Him — Jesus reveals Himself to her, and makes her the messenger of the witness of the believers' position. He was not come back to be corporeally present for the kingdom, and reign over Israel. He could, through redemption, call His disciples brethren, and they were in the same relationship to His God and Father as He was. This gathers them, and He is in their midst, and pronounces peace — for He had now made it: then sends them forth, breathing into them the living power of the Holy Ghost. Afterwards Thomas believes on seeing; but full blessing arose from believing now without seeing. Now, I have no doubt, while this put the disciples historically in their true place and relationship to God, yet we have a picture of the whole period from Christ's resurrection to the time of His return: first, the remnant who had known Him before; then the assembly formed without seeing Him, and in possession of peace with God, and His presence, as assembled, then sent forth in the power of the Holy Ghost with remission of sins for others; then the remnant of Israel in the latter days, who will believe by seeing. This introduces the millennium. The last chapter has avowedly in it that which is mysterious, and evidently intentionally so. I have no doubt myself that it follows on consecutively after the Lord's return. Seen on earth, seen in resurrection, seen now the third time, i.e., when He returns. He puts Himself on the original ground of His associations with Israel only in power. The nets do not break, the ships do not sink. He has already gathered fish, but the great haul is then taken, and without the ensuing failure as it was in previous service.

319 Remark, too, we are in Galilee, and there is no ascension. This suits John; it is divine manifestation on earth, not man's going to heaven; hence, it links on to the future display of power, not to Christ's coming to receive the assembly which is united to Him while in heaven. Peter follows Christ, and is to be cut off, and, I believe, the whole Jewish church system with him. John is left in testimony to connect it with that which is to come, so that the disciples thought he was not to die, but this was not said. Now these last points I leave to the Christian perception of every one who examines the gospel with care; but the facts prove the co-ordinated character of the history, from one end of the Gospel to the other, completing one distinct and clear exhibition of Christ outside legal Judaism, in every chapter up to His taking His sheep, which closed all recognition of the fold, being Christ in contrast with that Judaism, and presenting the setting up of a new thing in Him. Peter's ministry, who served in the circumcision, like Jesus, would end like His. But John's, who represented ministry outside it, but not heavenly though leading individuals there, would go on till Christ came.

320 W. All this requires study to verify the consistency of details, and the general character you give to it, where it is mysterious, which it evidently purposely is; but the fact of a definite character and design in the Gospel is evident.

H. There is another point I would note here on occasion of John 15. The notion of the application of the words in Hosea, "I have called my Son out of Egypt" Hosea 11: 1, to Christ, is ridiculed by rationalists. Now, I affirm distinctly that it is according to the tenor of scripture testimony and perfectly rightly applied. It is a great leading truth. If you look at Isaiah 49, you will see Messiah distinctly presented as taking the place of Israel. I think we have spoken, when on the pseudo-Isaiah of infidels, of the elect servant of Israel — Christ the elect servant, and the remnant the elect servant of the last days. But this chapter 49 is more definite. Israel is first presented as Jehovah's witness in the earth, as the polished shaft in His quiver. "Thou art my servant, O Israel, in whom I will be glorified. Then I said," says Messiah, "I have laboured in vain, and spent my strength for nought and in vain." And so it was with Christ on earth. "But now, saith Jehovah, who formed me from the womb to be his servant, to bring Jacob again to him, Though Israel be not gathered, yet shall I be glorious in the eyes of Jehovah, and my God shall be my strength. And he said, It is a light thing that thou shouldest be my servant to raise up the tribes of Jacob, and to restore the preserved of Israel: I will also give thee for a light to the Gentiles, and to be my salvation to the end of the earth." That is, Israel is presented as the servant of the Lord; but when Christ comes, if it were so, His labour was in vain, and then Christ, though to restore the remnant in due time, is Himself God's servant, and light goes forth to the Gentiles. This is the passage Paul so strikingly quotes as justifying his turning from the Jews to the Gentiles, when the former rejected his message. Christ takes the place of Israel under the law, Israel after the flesh. This He does all through John, though in a higher way, as revealed Son of God. Hence, in John 15, He proclaims Himself as the true vine. Israel was the well-known vine, and, as remarked before, Messiah was to be the best branch, the topmost bough. But Israel is set aside. The true vine, as the true servant, is Christ. Israel was Jehovah's son, His first born; but Christ was the Son, the true first born of every creature. Hence, as rejected by Israel, He begins Israel's whole history afresh, and, as not deriving His position from the people, He is called out of Egypt to begin their history according to God.

321 Now, remark here, dear W., I am not saying whether scripture be wise or foolish; I believe it divinely wise; but that is not my question now. What I say is, it is the system of scripture to substitute Christ for Israel, the second Adam for the first, and, that what wholly failed as founded on the responsibility of man was taken up afresh in the perfect and unfailing Son of God. Indeed, this is true, as we have seen, as to every principle of God's dealings with men, but I now speak only of Israel. And hence Matthew and the New Testament, using the Old Testament scripture, use it rightly according to the intended use of scripture. People may quarrel with scripture, but they cannot say that Matthew quotes, "Out of Egypt have I called my son," in a way not according to the intention of scripture. It is the system and plan of scripture, of the Old Testament itself, to transfer passages from Israel the provisional son to Christ the true Son thus.

W. Well, this is a new view of the matter. It is taking the bull by the horns.

H. I believe it to be the simple matter of fact. I think the real weakness of the defenders of scripture is, that they do not really believe in its perfection: they yield something to their adversaries. If it be divine, I cannot yield what is divine; if it be not divine, I have lost all scripture. If I believe it divine, I seek the divine meaning, and I shall be helped to discover it, and wait till I do. The moment you compromise, you are off the ground on which the Bible is of any value; or that contending for it is of any consequence whatever.

W. There I agree with you, and I think that, for Christians, these attacks will be of great value in this respect. For even orthodox persons were very loose in their estimate of God's word, and of inspiration. The divine authority of God's word, and the present action of the Holy Ghost were not really believed in.

322 H. An unconverted man cannot spiritually recognize either. He may be brought up with respect for the word of God, and it is a very great mercy. But his own thoughts, when he thinks, must be human as to it when he comes to the point, and he has none else. When he "has set to his seal that God is true," John 3: 33, all this is changed.

But we will now take up Matthew.

W. If you please. What is the aspect in which Christ is presented in this Gospel, as you suppose? What the ways and dealings of God as presented in it?

H. The Emmanuel, Jehovah-Messiah, promised and prophesied of, presented to Israel but rejected, and thus rejected Israel making way for the assembly and the kingdom; but all in earthly or Jewish connection, from that point of view. Hence, as in John, the final scene is in Galilee, and there is no ascension.

Let us now go through its general structure as the evidence of special design — of a design which has divine largeness of view and object. It begins with the roots of promise to come to the promised Seed, — Abraham, David, Christ. There are none of the lovely details of the state of the poor and godly remnant in Israel which we find in Luke, but simply the accomplishment of prophecy in the miraculous birth of Jesus, whose name was to be the expression of the coming of Jehovah to save His people.

Next we have the false king seeking to thrust Him out, the Gentiles having come to own Him, God's wondrous testimony according to prophecy, and God providing, when once Jesus was thus owned, for the non-fulfilment of the blessing in legal Israel then, but a recommencing their history in His Son called out of Egypt. All this in Bethlehem, according to prophecy. The result is, that He is cast out into Galilee among the poor of the flock, to be brought up as the separated one from among His people.

Next comes the voice foretold in the wilderness to announce the coming of Jehovah calling for repentance to meet Him, disowning right by birth from Abraham as sufficient. They must meet God. The fan was there to cleanse His floor (Israel), the axe already at the root of the trees. John recognizes the glory of the person of Jesus, but Jesus takes His place according to Psalm 16 among the poor in spirit, and godly ones among the people, the excellent of the earth. There He is owned as Son of God, and anointed and sealed with the Holy Ghost for His service in the earth. Then He is tempted and put to the test, and answers by passages from Deuteronomy, the book which contemplated Israel, not in legal order but under a divine claim of obedience. John is cast into prison, and Jesus begins His ministry and carries it on on the same footing among the people as John, and begins to gather disciples to Himself. The last three verses give a general account of all His service in Galilee, preaching the glad tidings of the kingdom, and, by a display of power in goodness, drawing the attention of the whole country.

323 Thereupon, that there might be no mistake, He sits down and declares to His disciples, but in the audience of the crowd, who they were that would enter into the kingdom, and on what principles. This is the sermon on the mount. Israel was in the way with Jehovah to judgment. If he did not come to agreement, he would as to earthly government be cast into prison and remain till all was paid. Note, that rejection is supposed for the disciples. (Matt. 5: 10, 11) It is "the kingdom of heaven," an expression peculiar to Matthew: that is, the rule of the kingdom is not on earth but in heaven, enlarged, when the full result is seen (Matt. 13), into the Father's kingdom and the kingdom of the Son of man, a name which Christ takes on His rejection as the Christ, and always gives Himself, and which is the passage from the prophecy of Him in Psalm 2, in which character He was rejected and the kingdom not now set up, to His character in Psalm 8, in which He is Head over all things.

The special characteristics of the sermon on the mount are what is called the spirituality of the law, the claim of a sanctifying view and obedience, and the revelation of the Father's name. In a certain sense this part of the gospel gives His whole position in Israel. After the sermon on the mount we have details fully bringing out the display of Emmanuel, and the effect on Israel, and the opening the door to Gentiles. These we will go briefly through. We shall see that it passes withal directly on to dealing with the people in the last days in connection with what was then going on.

In cleansing the leper He shews Himself as exercising Jehovah's power in Israel, and yet subject to the law of Moses. In healing the centurion's servant with a word we find Him owned as the divine disposer of all things; and He takes occasion by this faith, not found in Israel, to declare the bringing in of Gentiles to sit down with Abraham, Isaac, and Jacob, the children of the kingdom of Israel after the flesh being shut out.

324 These great principles being established, we have His present condition the blessed fulfiller of Isaiah 53, and an outcast in Israel — the Son of man, but one for whom all must be given up.

Next, a picture of the result of being with Him — to man's eye, a storm which left no hope, at any rate they were in the same ship with Jesus; but He who seemed asleep (and was undisturbed by all), with a word commands all the elements, thus graciously rebuking their want of faith.

In the country of the Gergesenes His word dispels all the power of Satan; but occasion is given to display this power in the unclean, the swine (a figure, I have no doubt, of Israel's subsequent history). At any rate those who have seen this power in Him, when fully informed, got rid of Him. Thus all His power, and Israel's and the Gentiles' history in connection with it, have been displayed.

Note herein the beautiful perfect display of the truth in the first case — Jehovah alone cleansed the leprosy. The leper saw His power, but doubted at least His goodness — could not reckon on it. Jesus, in words which God alone has a right to use, declares His grace, "I will." Now if one touched a leper, he was unclean. But His holiness and nature were such that He could exercise His love to the uttermost in the midst of evil, undefiled and undefilable. And He touches him and says, "I will" — Jehovah (whom none could defile) — a man, to bring perfect love in power to the vilest.

W. How a few words, a single act, in these divine records carry a volume of truth! How they prove their divine character by it! It has, we cannot doubt an instant, a divine Author and a divine subject. Much as your explanation interests me, the simple fact in the history you speak of says more than volumes of any explanation.

H. In truth it does. The soul taught of God is in contact with divine power in the word. We may, by God's grace, serve as finger posts to it. He makes us, and it is gracious, helpful to one another; but all must be learnt with God. We will proceed.

A Fourth Dialogue on the Essays and Reviews, section d.

Inspiration and Interpretation.

J. N. Darby.

<09004E> file section d.

324 In Matthew 9, Christ is the Jehovah of Psalm 103. He forgives and heals at the same time. Next, He abounds in grace and calls the vilest; He comes as a physician to call sinners, not the righteous; nor can He put this new power of grace into the old bottles of Judaism. In the rest of the chapter — a picture I do not doubt for a moment, of God's ways in Israel — He comes to intercept death. When there was individual faith in the crowd of Israel, power went out to heal; but really the object of His compassion was dead before He came. Resurrection must restore Israel. And so it will be with them. Owned as Son of David, He opens the blind eyes and the dumb mouth to praise God.

325 Such was His work in Israel; but the Pharisees, the nation in its legal pride, committed itself fatally, and ascribed the divine power to Satan. Awful word! But patient compassion was not exhausted, and Jesus-Jehovah went healing everywhere, had compassion on the shepherdless multitudes, saw the harvest plenteous and the labourers few, directing His disciples to pray the Lord of the harvest He would send out labourers. This He does in the next chapter, but exclusively in Israel.

The twelve are sent out, but the terms of their mission extend, without taking the assembly into account at all, to the time of Christ's coming again. They are sent out in the midst of a hostile people, seeking the remnant, the worthy in Israel, and forbidden to go to Gentiles or Samaritans. But if rejected, judgment would come. He goes on to the time when the Spirit would be come, and till the time when the Son of man would be come. They had called the Master of the house Beelzebub (shewing His estimate of the character Israel thus took), how much more His servants. But He encourages them by every promise, and especially the Spirit's help, and declares that all done to them would be considered as done to Him. This remarkable chapter shews the Lord, as we have seen the prophets before, passing over here from His first coming unbrokenly to the last days, leaving out wholly the present period — for He forbids any gospel to Gentiles.

The patience of Christ continued to deal with Israel; but, in a certain sense, this was a closing testimony, I mean as to its character and nature. This is supposed to continue, as we have said, or rather not to be completed, till He came.

What follows in the gospel discusses the moral character of His rejection, shewing where rest was to be found, and afterwards what would come in on His rejection. Thus, in Matthew 11, on the enquiry by John, the character of His mission, and their reception of it, and of His own and their reception of that is unfolded, reproaching the cities with their unbelief, but shewing rest in Himself for the weary; and that the truth was, all was given to Him the Son; He alone knew the Father, and could reveal Him; and He was the Son: none at all could know Him but the Father Himself. But He did reveal the Father to those who came to Him.

326 He then shews the triumph of mercy over sacrifice — that a rejected David had eaten the shewbread, and that the priests profaned the Sabbath in the temple; and a greater than the temple was there. The seal of Israel's covenant must give place to the Son of man. The same point is again insisted on with the Jews, and their whole system is judged. This was an all-important point. It was setting the whole system aside for grace. (Matt. 12.)

His silent and unobtrusive character is declared, but when the people own Him Son of David, the Pharisees repeat their blasphemy, and this leads to the formal judgment of the nation, and a prophecy of their last estate: that as the unclean spirit (of idolatry) had gone out, it would come back with seven worse ones to Israel. Then, on His mother and brethren (the links with Israel according to the flesh) coming, He will not own them, but only what is the fruit of His own word. This is fully unfolded in Matthew 13.

There the Lord takes the character of a Sower, one who does not seek fruit from what is already planted, but brings with Him what is to produce fruit. Then, in the six following parables, He propounds the character and forms the kingdom of heaven would take while the King was hidden, and had not taken to Him His great power and reigned: in three its outer aspect to the multitude; in three its inner to the disciples. Its character as kingdom of the Father and of the Son of man is given at the close. They are things new and old, the new unlooked-for character of what had been told of in prophecy, which a scribe would already know.

In what follows we have the signs of the closing scene — John Baptist is beheaded, and the Lord retires. But, followed by the multitude, His compassions still continue. He acts as the Jehovah of promise, and satisfies the poor with bread; but then retires even from His disciples, and, returning to them, shews that He walks as on dry ground where they are tossed about, and can give power to faith to do it. All here depends on keeping the eye fixed on Jesus. Peter could have walked on a smooth sea no better than on a rough one. When they were in the ship the wind ceased. Who with any sense can doubt this was significant? Israel dismissed; Christ alone on high; His disciples tossed about, yet taught to walk on the water to come to Him. When in the ship all is peace, and, come to land (Gennesaret) — that world out of which He had been once expelled, they worship Him there. (Matt. 14)

327 In Matthew 15 we have the principles of the kingdom — truth in the inward parts contrasted with ordinances; man's heart evil, but grace going out to the vilest of an accursed race, where there was faith. The Lord again feeds the multitude, the fact having a distinct character, which for the present I pass by.

In Matthew 16, leaving the adulterous generation, the assembly is revealed, founded on His being the Son of the living God — as such He had never before been owned, it was proved in resurrection; and also the kingdom of heaven, whose administration was entrusted to Peter. This leads to the clear announcement to His disciples that He must be rejected and die. At this moment, consequently, He charges them to say no more that He is the Christ, the character in which He is presented to Israel.

In Matthew 17 the glory of the kingdom is revealed. But the disciples even could not profit by the blessing and power then present, and He was soon to leave that generation. He owns His disciples as with Him sons of the Great King, but, not to offend, submits as yet to the temple's demands.

In Matthew 18 we have the spirit and flesh-judging principles of the kingdom. The meek and lowly, and little children, are on His heart; for now it was, not Christ to Israel, but the Son of man come to save that which was lost: and the assembly, not the synagogue, became the place of which within and without could be said. Forgiveness characterized the kingdom, but judgment when grace was not owned; and so it happened to Israel.

We then get spiritual power, judging and holding flesh as dead, while the relations formed of God are fully maintained — the law, the way of life to the Jew, supposing it to be kept; but the state of the heart spiritually judged and Christ to be followed. (Matt. 19.) All this is shewing the effect of bringing in new power, applied to what the law treated of. In relationships, flesh not being judged, the law had gone below the original order of God, which was restored, but new power brought in to live wholly to God. The truth of life by law, on the other hand, abstractedly owned, but the state of the heart judged in respect of it (not merely outward conduct), and Christ the true test of this. All this is of vast importance at this moment of transition. Riches, instead of being a reward of righteousness in God's earthly government, were a snare to the heart as to its entrance into the kingdom of heaven; while giving up everything for Christ would surely not lose its reward: only man might judge amiss.

328 It was a new thing where (Matt. 20) all was grace, and fleshly claim of reward for so much ran athwart the ways of one giving in grace. The Lord then renews His announcement of His immediate rejection; and, James and John looking for a good place in Messiah's kingdom, the Lord shews them the Son of man was to suffer, giving His life a ransom, and they must take up the cross too: this was all He could give them, save as all was ordained of the Father. He that was least among them would be greatest This closes the instruction.

The closing history commences here with the blind man at Jericho, as in all three gospels — an additional evidence of a common plan, yet unquestionably not formed by the human authors — and Christ in the presence of Israel takes the character of Son of David. He then rides in on the ass, according to prophecy, and is celebrated as Son of David coming in the name of the Lord. (Matt. 21.) The fig-tree, the figure of Israel, is judged. And then, in succession, He judges virtually (each class coming up in succession to tempt Him) the chiefs of the nation, the whole nation being God's vineyard, who were at last rejecting the Son sent for fruit according to the old system. Here the kingdom of heaven according to grace is set forth (Matt. 22), on which He gathers the Gentiles, but judges when they are come in; then the Pharisees and Herodians as to their connection with the Gentile monarchies; then the Sadducees. Then He takes out of the law its divine and eternal essence, and by one question confounds the Pharisees as to how the Son of David could be David's Lord, and be taken up to God's right hand, which was just about to happen. This closes His intercourse with the nation. They had all passed in review before Him.

In Matthew 23 however He recognizes the seat of Moses still, and His disciples' connection with it, owning still existing Judaism; but then judges in the severest way its state, declaring that their last hypocritical excuse would be taken away from them; that prophets and scribes (so He calls the gospel witnesses here, as in connection with the people) would be sent to them, and thus the measure of their guilt be filled up, and their house be left desolate till the last days, when the nation would own Him that came in the name of Jehovah.

In Matthew 24 the disciples are told of the destruction of the temple, and then their ministry on to the last days is spoken of to verse 14; then the last half week of Daniel's seventy weeks is referred to, at the close of which the Son of man would come. The whole history of the Jews in Judea, and the scattered remnant, is given to verse 31; thence to Matthew 25: 31, we have practical warnings and parables as to the duty of the Church and saints while He is away; thence to the end of chapter 25 the judgment of the nations in the earth when He shall be returned.

329 The historical close now comes — the attachment of Mary, the treachery of Judas, the closing of Christ's association with them (shewn in not drinking of the wine then with them), till in a new way He drank it in His Father's kingdom, the millennial world to come. Kingdom of heaven and kingdom of my Father (the latter its character when He takes it in heavenly glory) are peculiar to this gospel. Then we have fully the sorrows and sufferings of Gethsemane, but not what we found in John — only He could pray and ask His Father; but the scriptures must be fulfilled. He is in communion with the Father, but the suffering obedient man. So He answers when the high priest adjures Him, according to Leviticus 5, but even here refers to His being, from this out, only known as Son of man sitting at the right hand of power as He is now, or coming again in that character. The people give up Christ, and desire a murderer, and say, His blood be on us and on our children — their true judgment to this day.

We have the details of His humiliation on the cross too, though not stupefying Himself with the offered potion, but obedience to the end. It is marked that it is not by weakness He expires, but crying with a loud voice. But His death closed the whole system publicly; the veil was rent, the very characteristic of the Jewish state, where man had no access to God; and the bodies of saints (Jews) arose. At the close it is only His connection with His disciples in Galilee, where He had connected Himself with the poor of the flock, that is noticed, and there is no ascension. Thus it fits into the renewal of a place with Israel on earth when the time comes. The mission supposes this, and sends the gospel out only to the nations: all power being His in heaven and in earth, they were to make disciples of them.

Now no one can doubt that the whole course of this gospel is marked by a character wholly its own, the revelation of Christ to the Jews as theirs, but rejected by them; and thus the dispensational substitution of other things, the assembly and kingdom; while the connection of His disciples with Jewish things, only on a new footing, is distinctly marked and pursued to the last days, the assembly being overlooked in this part.

330 W. Your review of it makes it very plain, and gives an entireness to it which greatly facilitates the seizing the sense of the different passages.

H. You will see, too, if you examine the passages, that the historical order is neglected to put the events into a just succession with a view to God's dealing with Israel. Where we have the same events in Mark and Luke, these, so far as Luke is chronological, follow the same historical order; but Matthew leaves it, to give a distinct character to Christ's ministry; while in Luke, in the temptation, and from Luke 9 exclusive to the end of Luke 18, we have no chronological order at all, but events morally connected.

I will touch now on the Gospel of Luke. The first two chapters are wholly Jewish (except the heavenly song of the angels, more so than any part of the gospels). We have a most perfect picture of the state of the pious remnant, who knew and spake one to another; the priestly service, and God yet, in patience, blessing in connection with it, and the relationship Israel, or at least Judah, bore to the then Gentile monarchy. John's ministry is brought in in connection with it, and Israel's rejection of Him; but then, after this, Christ is genealogically traced as Son of man to Adam. Hence grace, and His associations with man, with sinners, and the principles on which those associations rested, characterize henceforth all the gospel. He is in the power of the Spirit, the moral temptation coming last in the wilderness. He begins His ministry by shewing sovereign grace and blessing sent outside Israel. (Luke 4.) We find Him often praying. He was so when He received the Holy Spirit like a dove — was so all night before choosing His apostles — was so when He was transfigured. What he gives of the sermon on the mount speaks not of how people could enter, but of His disciples as separated actually to Him. We have not the dispensational change of Matthew 11, but only wisdom is justified of her children; and then (what is not found elsewhere) the touching account, in contrast with the Pharisee, of one of these children of wisdom, the woman in the city that was a sinner.

In the country of the Gadarenes the details of one of the cured men are given, a soul restored desiring to leave the world and be with Jesus, but sent back to tell of Him where He had been rejected; fuller details of the associations of Moses and Elias with Christ in glory, searching judgment of self in all its shapes when He came down; in the mission of the twelve, none of the directions which confined it to Jews, nor those which continued it to the coming of the Son of man. The different, and here historical order, I have alluded to.

331 From hence to Luke 18 there is no chronology, but great moral principles; among the rest the lost sheep, the piece of money, and the prodigal son; the use of riches, and the insight into a moral world unfolding grace and heaven, and a total change, not of dispensation, but of moral system — from earthly government to grace and heavenly hope. The parable of the good Samaritan, to the same purpose — answering to Matthew 13. Before this we have only the sower and the different soils; none of the parables of the kingdom of heaven, nothing dispensational, but a moral closing warning as to how they heard. The prophetic warning as to the revelation of the Son of man is given as a general warning to disciples, not in connection with Antichrist and Jerusalem. The parable of pounds (not of so many talents) rests on individual responsibility, and reward is proportionate: in Matthew, only "enter into the joy of the Lord," for all alike. In the answer to the Pharisees He introduces the life of the souls of all after death.

In the prophecy answering partly to Matthew 24 we have definitely the then coming siege of Jerusalem, consequently no abomination of desolation, but the desolation of Jerusalem, till the end of the times of the Gentiles, and then the coming of the Son of man.

Christ's personal feelings are more brought out as a man in the passover. There is a strife for greatness even then. In Gethsemane there appeared an angel from heaven strengthening Him. The Lord turns and looks on Peter when the cock crows, a touching and deeply interesting circumstance, not elsewhere. Pilate and Herod are made friends, another deep moral trait. Only here the conflict (agony) in Gethsemane is noticed, and His sweating as it were great drops of blood, presenting Him so deeply as the suffering man, more than the rejected Christ.

The remarkable history of the thief's conversion, in which the happiness of a soul before the setting up of the kingdom, which last alone the thief expected, is revealed, and his being with Christ in paradise: the absoluteness of grace and the efficacy of the cross.

Then, while all the history of the women is thrown together in a few words, the history of Emmaus is very largely recounted, and He is known in the sign of death. Lastly, He assures their hearts that it is Himself. Repentance and remission is their gospel, and they were to wait for the power of the Holy Ghost promised; and the gospel, being from heaven, was to begin at Jerusalem — the Jew first, and also the Gentile. Here we find lastly the ascension, where Christ as from heaven blesses them with outstretched hands, and praise became the portion of His saints. Now, though I have gone very rapidly through this gospel, the character and design is as clear as that of Matthew.

332 W. My feeling is, that from its nature it is clear, because, while Matthew is dispensational, the moral character of this is so very evident, Christ's connection with man, grace, the interest of the soul, the prodigal son or Gentile sinner, the praying of Christ, and the touching circumstances found in this gospel alone, give it a character not to be mistaken. But the comparison of them all leaves no cloud upon the fact, and I feel what you say now. What a feeble idea a harmony is, and how utterly senseless the remark of Mr. Jowett is, that the connection of the same facts with others could not be of importance, because they were differently connected in different gospels! Why it is the whole pith of the matter, and one chief thing which prints a special character on them. But what of Mark?

H. I have not much to say of Mark. It presents to us the prophetic service of Christ. Hence we have not His birth, but it begins with the testimony of John, then of Christ. Its order, the historical one, in spite of patristic statement, is, as remarked, the same as St. Luke, where the latter follows any historical order. In the passage answering to Matthew 13, we have only the sower, and no parables of the kingdom, save one in which he shews that Christ took personally part at the commencement, His prophetic service, and, after leaving it seemingly to itself, takes a personal part in the end at the harvest or judgment; and a second, in which the outward form of the kingdom during His absence is shewn. We have the call of the apostles, I do not doubt, coincident with the sermon on the mount, which is not found in Mark, being the principles of the kingdom whose character and dispensations are opened in Matthew. In Matthew we have the twelve only introduced afterwards, in exclusive connection with their mission to Israel, and reaching forward to the time when the kingdom will be set up in power.

I need not go farther into the details of this gospel, which is more rapid in its character, more of testimony than the unfolding of dispensations and dealings of God. But it seems to me that a special design is evident in each gospel, not perhaps of the writer, but of the Spirit which indited them, because all concur to one common end, but each is independent and treats the same subject differently — each pursuing its own object; but inasmuch just as the same facts are differently connected, shewing that each has a different one, yet all, by each pursuing a different one, completing a whole. The Prophet, the Son of David, the Son of man in grace, the Son of God, are respectively brought out, and in a great measure brought out wholly by the same facts.

333 W. It seems to me most striking, and to have a very divine character. For the design proves a designer; yet each independent document has a separate design of its own, and the general design is not from their writers, even if that of each particular document was, which I do not believe. There is a simplicity of relation which forbids me to think of a plan of composition, though I do not doubt the habits of thinking of the vessel were fitted to its task. It makes the gospels a very important part of scripture as to knowledge; though, I confess, the details of the Lord's life are the most attractive and blessed aspect of them.

H. May it ever be so! I have found that, led to occupy myself with the epistles as divine reasonings on Christ's work and place now, to get peace for my soul; when I had it, my heart turned back to the gospels to learn and feed on Him whose every footstep was light and grace. They are our constant food in this respect. I find I read scripture two ways: as study, and as a child to learn in heart and conscience, as God speaking to me that I may be comforted, searched out, and taught, and listen to God. And the last is the most important and every one's; the former is more in the way of gift. Here we are studying it. Mark, too, that it is not each gospel choosing its facts, marking thus the writer's design. Mr. Jowett's own theory, as of others, is that they had a common testimony, and hence the proof that the design came from a higher source is very strong indeed.

W. It requires to study the gospels to have the proof of this, and happily souls enjoy and profit by them who never think of the difficulties presented or the answers to them. But when they are studied, I do not think we can hesitate a moment in seeing the justice of what you say. It brings to my mind your old charge of superficiality. One finds that, when anything is studied, the rationalists have remained wholly on the surface of things, and their crude difficulties disappear.

H. It is the beauty and blessedness of scripture as the word of God to work by its own power, and convey, through grace, its divine contents to the heart. Hence it does work, is blessed to the poor and ignorant, and to every simple mind which has received what is divinely given and found in it a certain proof of its divine nature, without ever perceiving the difficulties. All we do, who look into them, is to discover that they are trashy, and the fruit of minds who do not see beyond the surface. But the enquiry serves to shew that we are looking into depths which prove that all of us are, comparatively speaking, at the surface of that which is of infinite depth, its waters always pure, and all and always ours.

334 But we will return to our Essays. Mr. Jowett, after speaking of the gospels, says, "If words have more than one meaning, they may have any meaning." This may sound wise, but it is most perfect trash. I take an example. When Christ died, it is said the veil of the temple was rent in twain from the top to the bottom; and then the resurrection of the saints after His resurrection and their appearing in the city is noted. Now this rending of the veil has one meaning. It is the history of the fact, and means only that. Now, I say, such an assertion is as senseless and foolish as it can possibly be. The rending is ascribed to Christ's death, followed by resurrection of dead saints. The veil was the sign that God was hidden and could not be approached; now by Christ's death He could be. The whole mighty change of dispensation was marked in it, and the full power of redemption in Christ's death. These senses are indeed ascribed to it in the Epistle to the Hebrews, Hebrews 9 and Hebrews 10. But they are evident. The talking of one meaning is simple folly, and if I speak of the uncertainty of interpretation, which of course is not infallible, am I to choose the judgment of an interpreter who has proved himself incapable of interpreting anything by embracing an evidently false and inapplicable principle, or of one who has a right one, though of course I must watch his use of it?

W. You may proceed, for the absurdity of their principle here is too evident to need a moment's hesitation. We are too returning to an old ground, that they are attacking scripture, not interpreting

H. I do not think we have much more to examine, as much of the latter part of Mr. Jowett's Essay speaks of general principles which we have discussed already. However we will run through it.

335 The beginning of his Part III is merely that dread of rationalists and their power which makes him anxious to reduce Christianity to the level at which they will not object to it, which is no level at all, and which would make it not Christianity, but a most pitiable and despicable imposture, which every one, but one sufficiently low intellectually and morally to be a rationalist, would repel with scorn. Their incessant occupation to prove it such, and then explain it, only proves their degradedly low moral state, which would accept such a system, and that the fang of divine truth is in their conscience, from which they cannot get themselves free. If Mr. Jowett rejects mere conventional Christianity and traditional interpretation, I have nothing against it. I can use criticism to get a pure text and real Christianity; but to get an imposture, and continue to use it, this I must leave to him. Nor will I use a double tongue to deceive myself, for I really do not suspect him of desiring to deceive others; such language I mean as this: — "They wish to preserve the historical use of scripture as the continuous witness in all ages of the higher things in the heart of man, as the inspired source of truth, and the way to the better life."

Now whence did the higher things in the heart of man come? What does "inspired" mean here — "an inspired source of truth?" Any one would think it meant it had not come of the will of man, but that the Spirit of God had moved holy men of old to speak as they were moved by Him, and hence that it was a source of truth. And note, we cannot take up Old and New Testament inspiration here as distinct. It is a "witness in all ages." Remember, then, we have been told that "not for any of the higher or supernatural views of inspiration is there any foundation in the Gospels or Epistles." If he meant to shirk the Old Testament there, he cannot here. He speaks of the whole of scripture, and we soon find what this ambiguous language means.

I cannot here acquit Mr. Jowett of disingenuousness, though quite ready to admit that it is the influence of a lying system over his mind. We begin with an "inspired source of truth." Here you would think that an inspired source of truth must have its own proper and divine authority. But we find a kind of halfway house of uncertain tones in the following words: "The purer the light in the human heart, the more it will have an expression of itself in the mind of Christ;" the explanation of which, though still in ambiguous language, really reduces the word simply to the higher things in the heart of man. "The individual soul" finds a "sympathy with its own imperfect feelings in the broken utterance of the psalmist, or the prophet, as well as in the fulness of Christ." Now, if it had said that the Psalms provide a divine utterance for feelings imperfect man knew not how, or dared not, to express when redemption was not fully known, I should have accepted it. For the unspeakable grace of God is shewn in this. But for Mr. Jowett it is a pious person, not inspired himself and imperfect, finding broken utterance of his own feelings in the higher things in the heart of man, i.e., in the utterance of others like himself. Sympathy there may be, but the scriptures are worth nothing more than any Christian neighbour; only really that I, when on Christian ground, am to go back to Jewish, and lose wholly "the increasing purpose" of revelation; for I live in the light, and am to go back for the utterance of my feelings to those who had not got it.

336 But we reach the home of this thought a little farther on, what even the fulness of Christ is. "No one can form any notion of the power which Christianity might have, if it were at one with the conscience of man, and not at variance with his intellectual convictions." Here we have the truth. My state of mind is to be the measure of revealed truth. The "inspired source of truth" is to be tampered with till it be brought into harmony with it — nay, Christianity itself is. What the use of having a source of truth or Christianity is, in that case, to me perfectly unintelligible. I should have thought that an inspired source of truth must, by its statements, have judged the state of the conscience; that Christianity was something positive, which could only be itself, and was a divine light, and divine facts for the conscience, and if not that, an imposture and false; that if I am going to make it one with the conscience, it ceases to be it at all. I cannot adapt a revelation to a faculty, because it is not then a revelation at all. It becomes a "gallus in campanili," "ceases to have any meaning at all;" and to whose conscience is it to be conformed? It won't do to talk of conscience (i.e., a faculty of judging of good and evil); because, in fact, I judge it by something, some judgment has been formed, conscience has its measure, unless, it may be, in crimes, and even in that. One had thought the fulness of Christ was a perfect light and measure which judged all in man, and formed the conscience — that it was the rule of it. It appears this is all a mistake. There is a Christianity, but man's conscience, God knows whose (the majority rejected Christ), is to be made the measure, and Christianity is to be adapted to it. A pretty Christianity we should have; but, as I said, the statement is simple nonsense, because, when adapted, or if adaptable, then there is no such thing at all. But we have the system of the Essays. Christianity is no divine or divinely revealed religion.

337 Talk of the fulness of Christ if you will: the hind let loose will give you goodly words. It is the result in the year one of the, till then, higher things of the human heart, which is to be adapted to the conscience of Mr. Jowett and his friends. We may condescend to allow God to give an inspired source of truth: only He must bend and make Himself and His religion one with Mr. Jowett's intellectual convictions. Why his next-door neighbour should not say the same I cannot tell, or an American Indian from a scalping party, or the Chinese (who are very particular in paying their debts the first of January, but have no scruple in robbing to do it, or throwing inconvenient daughters into the river); why not the chief priests, who would not put the price of blood into the treasury, but had no scruple in buying it?

Conscience of man — convenient word! what has it made of the world? If I may give it, thus used, Iapetic interpretation, after Baron Bunsen, it is man's justifying his own thoughts, to please his own will, and subject divine to it.

W. But I can hardly conceive how any one can make such a statement as Jowett's. It is so outrageous, not merely because man's conscience has been so corrupted and hardened, which is, though true, the weaker side of the argument; but that it makes Christianity a mere paste to be suited to intellectual convictions; that is, makes it nothing at all — not a revelation, not divine, not truth (and yet calling it the fulness of Christ). It is a pure and simple absurdity.

H. It is; but we get exactly here what the system is. All previous adaptations of Christianity to other ages, that is corruptions, these writers hold for forms produced by the age, but their intellectual convictions, Christianity is to be made one with. They only deserve the name of man — their conscience is man — their intellectual convictions man. We see plainly too the road that has led them to this modest theory — "No one can form any notion from what we see around us of the power which Christianity might have if it were at one," etc. Now people who feel that "what they see around them" is anything but what Christianity ought to be, which is not very difficult, and complaining and finding fault very easily, jump at this, and, having still faith in Christianity, they say, That is true; oh, if we had it in its purity!

338 I agree largely and heartily with this feeling, and have this thirty years, and more. So when he talks of the Bible's beauty being "freshly seen, as of a picture which is restored after many ages to its original state," it is delightful. But when I hear that it is to be by making Christianity one with the conscience of man, I say, But this is not its original state, it is the state of your conscience, your present intellectual convictions as you call them. That is no rule by which I judge of Christianity; it is denying it and its use altogether. They have by conscience, when the ways of those professing Christianity have sunk below natural conscience, judged that state, and then not gone back to correct their own state by the original revelation, but have assumed their conscience and present intellectual convictions to be competent to judge of revealed Christianity, and the inspired word itself. The reasoning is this: natural conscience has judged the corruption of Christianity around one; therefore it is the right judge of the divine revelation which has been misused. But this is poor logic, and worse morality, in the highest sense of morality.

There is a conscience which is disgusted at the hypocrisy of what bears the name of Christianity, but that does not make man's intellectual convictions the measure of what revelation means. Speaking of a Christianity which can so be made one with the conscience of man is saying there never was any Christianity at all; if Christianity means a revelation from God, ay, a final revelation. If it be not, it is an imposition, and there is nothing to be adapted. But I am only shewing the total fallacy of the ground Mr. Jowett stands on, and how in fact he got on it. We should only go over the ground we have trodden, if I should remark how he urges, that from the fathers till now — till the German rationalists and the seven Essayists — "they read the scriptures in connection with the ideas which were kindling in the mind of their age."

It is singular to say of Luther and the like, "The words of scripture suggest to them their own thoughts and feelings." I thought, "the purer the light in the human heart, the more it will have an expression of itself in the mind of Christ;" so that I should have thought Luther and Calvin must have been perfect, if the words of scripture thus suggest to them their own thoughts and feelings. But then that was their age, this is Mr. Jowett's; so that Christianity must be one with his intellectual convictions. A pretty thing Christianity must be, by way of "the inspired source of truth, and the way to the better life." I certainly never read more incomparable nonsense; and yet flowing from a conscience greatly offended with the inconsistencies of Christendom, but continuing in false self-confidence, and in connection with the lowest and most contemptible system that ever a man drudged through, to find a crambe repetita of infidel stupidity and pretensions, and that is, German rationalists' comments on scripture.

339 W. But is there not research in these German writers?

H. There is. If I seek mere verbal criticism, they are very useful; not to be trusted, because "they read the scriptures in connection with the ideas kindling in the mind of their age," but still, as compiling materials most useful. But if I took a man who bought and hewed my wood to explain the nature of heat, or the tissues even of the wood, I should not get far on: only that the rationalist pretends to do it, as my woodman would not. But I speak of their comments and deductions, not of their research.

We have spoken of the principles of interpretation, and I only remark that, when Mr. Jowett speaks of design, what he says is utterly false — "There is no more design than in Plato or Homer" — "no proof of any artificial design." Now only remark how God is wholly left out here. There is, I am satisfied, unless it be perhaps in the form of the Book of Job, not so much design as in Plato, as regards the writer; artificial, none at all, unless Job. But, supposing there is not more than in Plato, but God be the designer, what an immense fact that would be; how deep and divine the design must be! Now, with the usual superficiality of these writers, Mr. Jowett does not even take this into consideration. I could understand his denying it; but to leave it out is stupidity. As to human design extending beyond a book, or even an epistle, it is out of the question. The authors were mostly different, and of widely different ages; and where one, as, for example, Paul, his writings are chiefly occasional, and a general design equally out of the question. Hence the only real question is, Is there a design in it? Mr. Jowett has not even found out the question. That there is, I do not think any intelligent person who has read the scriptures carefully could doubt an instant. I believe every book of scripture finds its place, like the parts of a dissected map, and gives a whole which proves its own completeness.

His next rule is itself just as superficial and false, and assumes that there is no inspiration. "Each writer, each successive age, has characteristics of its own." That I fully admit, as does every one who has read them. In deigning to use instruments, God did not mean to destroy them. He gave them talents according to their ability. "These differences are not to be lost in the idea of a Spirit from whom they proceed, or by which they were overruled." Even this I do not quarrel with, though its animus be evil. Its effect is to swamp inspiration in the differences of style, but I admit its terms — "The differences are not to be lost." Be it so. But now the conclusion — Mr. Jowett is, I think, the most illogical writer I ever came across" And, therefore, illustration of one part of scripture by another should be confined to writings of the same age and the same authors, except where the writings of different ages or persons offer obvious similarities."

340 Now every one, except Mr. Jowett, knows that the later writers were thoroughly imbued with, their minds wholly formed by, what preceded; the prophets by the law, and the New Testament by the Old — that the New Testament, far the most dissimilar, is yet built in every thought on the basis of the Old; though the truths and state be wholly new, and in a certain sense set aside the whole system of the Old, yet nine-tenths of its language is unintelligible, unless we are versed in the Old. This is the more remarkable indication of the one divine Mind, because it was, as a system, the total setting aside of the Old. The cross made an impassable gulf between the Old and New, yet confirmed and adopted the Old; and the Old predicted and prepared the way of the New, which yet set it aside. As Paul says, "Now the righteousness of God, apart from law [χωρὶς υόμου], being witnessed by the law and the prophets." Now this remarkable phenomenon stands alone. Not that one system cannot borrow from another, but no two systems on earth stand in the same relation as these do to one another.

The principle of Mr. Jowett is the most futile of thoughts, contradictory of all the facts of the case. But his logic is no better. Because the differences, which we admit, are not to be lost in the idea of a Spirit from whom they proceed, or by which they are overruled, therefore they are not to be illustrated from one another. Now, if they proceed from one Spirit, I should, admitting the differences, expect them to throw necessarily light on one another; or even if one Spirit overruled them. Can the Spirit of God — that is, God — make an opening series of divine thoughts, which, communicated by different persons, are to issue in one great culminating fact — the revelation of Himself in Christ? Can there be "increasing purpose of revelation" brought out by these divinely accredited persons, overruled by one Spirit, without one part clearing up another? Be it that I first take each part by itself in its own context, an excellent and important rule which cannot be too strongly enforced; but is not so much as an illustration (I do not like the term), a clearing up of one part by another in the increasing purpose of revelation, to be found, if all proceed from one Spirit?

341 If Mr. Jowett means that it does not so proceed, let him say so honestly, and deny the scriptures as "an inspired source of truth." But to speak of a Spirit from which they proceed, or by which they are overruled, and that with an increasing purpose, and that therefore we are not to illustrate one part by another, because each writer has characteristics of his own, is to say the characteristic is not overruled, and that I am not to look at the one divine power from which all proceeds, but only at the particular forms in which this one mind is conveyed. And this is just the system, and a more illogical and absurd one, upon the face of it, cannot be conceived.

I admit again, that I believe this inconsistency flows from Mr. Jowett's feeling it does come from one Spirit. But a double-minded man is unstable in all his ways, and hence his exception as to obvious similarities. For, if this be of style, the exception hardly exists. After the captivity, the prophets went back to purer Hebrew, and there are a few resemblances of no importance; but if this saving have any meaning, it is as much as to say, Do not say that there is any light during the day, except when the sun is up. This inconsistency of Mr. Jowett is regularly shewn in a subsequent paragraph, "They have also a sort of continuity . . . and at length the idea arises in our minds of a common literature, a pervading life, an everlasting law" — no God, no Spirit, of course, in it.

But to proceed. "It may be compared to the effect of some natural scene, in which we suddenly (!) perceive a harmony, or picture, or to the imperfect appearance of design which suggests itself in looking at the surface of the globe. That is to say, there is nothing miraculous or artificial in the arrangement of the books of scripture; it is the result, not the design, which appears in them when bound in the same volume; or, if we like so to say, there is design, but a natural design which is revealed to after ages." Did you ever in your life read anything like this extraordinary sentence? Were not God shut out so carefully, I should go round and round it, like the suddenly perceived beautiful picture, to admire — I hardly know what, except Professor Jowett's naiveté. You cannot accuse such a man of any dishonesty. You do not like to accuse him of anything; bonum virum facile crederes, magnum libenter. And who knows what he would make if he believed God had something to do with scripture!

342 Here you have him suddenly perceiving what every one else has believed these thousand years, a thought sanctioned by the Lord and His apostles, but combatted by Mr. Jowett till now; but, thank God, felt. And what is the effect it is hard to tell, in the pêle mêle of the phrase. This continuity, this harmony, appears in them when bound in the same volume. That is profound. But then the idea — what is to be done? — arises in our mind (i.e., you cannot help seeing it) of a common literature, a pervading life, an overruling law. I suppose that did not come from being bound in the same volume. Next, "it is the result," I suppose, of something (that Mr. Jowett is silent upon): only it is the result, not the design, which appears in them when bound in the same volume. But the result of what? But, if we like to say so, it is the design; but a natural design which is revealed to after ages. Now, I grant the revelation to after ages, because, between you and me, the design of this harmonious whole could not be seen till the harmonious whole was there. But though revealed to after ages, the design, I suppose, was before it began —  ἀρχὴ τῆς θεωρίας τέλος τῆς πράξεως. But then I would suggest, if there is a design, there must be a Designer of the whole; for the design is found in the whole before any of it was there. It proceeded from one Spirit, and was overruled by one. Who was the Designer of this which suggests one overruling law, the harmony of our picture? Ah! here is silence; nay, worse than silence, it was "a natural design." What does that mean?

W. Well, I really don't know. A natural design! I do not see the connection of the ideas.

H. In one sense no human being can. It is a design which has no designer, but has grown up naturally — a mere contradiction of terms, a fortuitous concurrence of atoms to make a tree. It means that, if anything grows naturally, God is to be shut out as the cause. And he would have scripture so considered, lest God should be believed to be in it. He will, (the Lord deliver him from it!) at the cost of nonsense, shut out God. For if "natural" means springing up without a cause, it is a contradiction in terms to say a "natural design;" and it is Atheism. But you have a clue to it: "There is nothing miraculous or artificial," he tells us, "in the arrangement of the books of scripture." Now arrangement of the books is of his usual looseness. Is it of the contents or of the books themselves? But, take it in any way, there is nothing miraculous or artificial — i.e., neither of God or man — in it; it grew up naturally, yet was a design, not of God's, not of man's; of whose? a result which appears when bound in a volume!

343 Did you ever see a man labouring and toiling under a weight upon his spirit, in a labyrinth of his own mind, like this? And let me add, if I see a lovely and harmonious picture in nature, do I say it is a result? Was there no Designer, no Creator, no one who formed and made the lilies of the field, which the blessed One admired? Did God clothe the grass, which today is in the field, and tomorrow is cast into the oven, and not order, and arrange, and form His word, which abideth for ever, and by which, as by the sword out of Christ's mouth, men will be judged in the last day? I see a creation around me, a harmony, ay, "the imperfect appearance of design," in looking at the surface of the globe, perhaps at the starry heavens. I read the apostle telling me that His eternal power and Godhead who has ordained them are clearly seen [νοούμενα χαθορᾶταυ] by the things that are made, so that men are without excuse. To Mr. Jowett it is a result, and he uses the comparison to make out a natural design which grows up where God and man are not. Yet he cannot deny design in a harmonious whole, and, to shut out God from scripture, uses an expression, "a natural design," which is simple nonsense; while the object of it is simple and clear, from the exclusion of "miraculous and artificial," that is, God and man. "Design" means, I cannot help perceiving God. "Natural" means, I will not at any rate have Him.

And see the foolishness of even that comparison. What is the analogy between a picture in nature and thoughts of men, and more, the thoughts of men as to Christ, and all that God has told us in scripture? Do they grow up like a tree whose seed is in itself after its kind? Is there nothing moral in them, nothing but natural consequences, no communications from God at all more than to a tree? Is that Mr. Jowett's idea of "natural?" If not, am I to be guided, as the way to life, by mere human thoughts in dark ages? Who was Christ? Or, if God has revealed His thoughts, am I to have them spoiled, perhaps perverted, by human agency, and only so? Is He to give His Son to work redemption to deliver me, and I only to know it in such an oriental garb, and so mixed up with the ideas of the age, that I cannot tell what this Son or this redemption is? To say even that man, with religious thoughts, conflicting thoughts, divine thoughts, human thoughts, grows up like a tree, which has one unchangeable nature, is rank nonsense. And to call these thoughts a revelation, or the inspired source of truth, if it be not God's own account of this, is trifling with words and things, and with the things of God too. The very breaks Mr. Jowett speaks of prove the folly of his thoughts. The harmony of a picture is a whole. But, as he says, we have centuries of Judaism without a word — nigh 2000 years of Christianity in their turn. If scripture be a harmonious whole, it is then something else than natural growth and development. For the development was interrupted for centuries in Judaism, and has ceased for near 2000 years, so that the harmonious whole must belong to the book in itself. But a design, which harmony denotes, means that there is a designer, and if a designer, a designer of the whole. And this says all. For, let it grow like nature, which is nonsense as to a revelation, or let each word be dictated to a machine, if the design be accomplished, the perfect expression of the mind of the designer is there. Did God (every word being according to His design, or there is not harmony if I look far enough) mean to teach me exactly the truth by His design, or not? Has He formed the scripture so as to do so, supposing I am willing to learn? If so, all this reasoning is the pretension of a candle in sunshine to shew us the sun, and clear up by it what light is.

344 W. But if you look at the details in a picture you lose the harmony.

H. To be sure I do, but I learn what makes it. But only think of the language of this sentence. There is a harmony, an overruling law, but a result, not a design, which appears when bound in one volume, yet a design, but a natural design. Did you ever see such a rocking of the mind, as the hull of a ship with no sail filled, no rudder to guide; every contradictory thought brought together, following each other like the waves; the beating about of the mind sensible of the force of what it is in, but without God, and unwilling to let Him in?

W. Well, I never did.

H. That there is progress in revelation, and in man under revelation, no christian child denies, or is ignorant of. But what has this to do with the authority and source of the revelation so given, and the account it affords of man under it all? Of the true present result in a church, they are wholly ignorant, and choose to ignore the facts. Mr. Jowett says, "But of all mankind, whom He restores to His Father and their Father, to His God and their God." Now that it is for all the world is true, but Christ says this to His disciples only. "Not to all the people, but to witnesses chosen before." Of course those that believed came into it; but disciples are there, not mankind. The vagueness of all these men's thoughts is singular. And it is a moral vagueness; for it supposes men to be in a divine position without one divine quality.

345 W. The whole series of the Essays gives me the idea of very unformed minds. Like half-fledged birds got out of their nest, they attempt the air — but it is not flying; neither the safety of the quiet goose, nor the liberty of the fledged wing; they tumble instead of flying, because they attempt to fly.

H. I leave you to your simile, but that is the necessary effect of man's mind pretending to occupy itself with divine things in its own strength.

I will turn now to some passages, in which we have specimens of Mr. Jowett's interpretation, to shew how in every respect, as to the connection of the passages, the force of the statements, and the moral judgment of good and evil, his system has made him utterly incapable and incompetent as an interpreter. First, Romans 3: 19, he attacks Paul as false in logic, as arguing from a particular to the universal. The blunder is simply Mr. Jowett's. The apostle had already proved the Gentiles wholly reprobate morally. But he could not deny that, however evil, as he had shewn, the Jews had special privileges, and particularly the oracles of God. They boasted that the law was theirs, and theirs only. All right, says the apostle: what the law says it says to them who are under the law; but it says that there is none righteous, that those it spoke to were together become abominable, but it spoke to Jews, therefore they were such by their own confession, and every mouth was stopped, and all the world become guilty. He had fully proved the Gentile so, and the Jew did not question it — only sought to justify himself and rest on his privileges. You have them, I admit, says the apostle, particularly the oracles of God; they are yours — speak to you: let us hear them, hear what they say to you. You are abominable. There is every mouth stopped. Nothing could be more conclusive with a Jew pleading privilege. Mr. Jowett, not having understood one atom of the argument, which is evident to a child, sees only the apostle applying to all the world what is said avowedly to the few.

Next, he takes Romans 1: 16-18, and says, they ("the series of inferences which follow one another,") are for the most part different aspects or statements of the same truth. Now γὰρ with Paul is very frequently no inference from what precedes, but from a principle he has laid down, or which is the ground on which his mind is going in argument. Thus "because" (Rom. 1: 19), and "because" (v. 21), are two reasons for the same thing, namely, that the wrath of God was revealed: first, the rejection of the witness of creation; secondly, the abandoning the knowledge of God when they had it. So continually in Paul's writings, though what the "for" refers to is not always so on the surface. But, further, saying that verses 16-18 are different aspects or statements of the same truth has no sense. He is ready to preach the gospel at Rome; for, however proud and great the city and people may be, etc., or whatever it may be, he is not ashamed of the gospel, for it is the power of God to salvation. This is verse 16, and tells why he is not ashamed. Next follows why it is the power of God to salvation; because God's righteousness was revealed in it when man had none; and thus it became available to faith, whether it was of Jew or Gentile, being on the principle of faith.

346 But what made all this necessary? How came it that it was by faith to any, Jew or Gentile, and so to all? There was another great truth that had to be remembered. It was not now a government of God in earthly judgments on the one family God had known, but God's wrath from heaven morally, He being fully revealed, against all inconsistent with His nature, be the guilty ones where they may; and particularly, as in the case of the Jew (and now of the Christian), those who hold the truth, but in unrighteousness. "For the wrath" is not a direct inference from what precedes, but from the whole state of the case. All this, he says, is brought out, and my service and object; for, etc. To say that his not being ashamed of the gospel, the revelation of the righteousness of God, and the revelation of the wrath of God, is a statement of the same truth, could be found, I suppose, in a rationalist alone, and from the enlarged light he alone possesses.

Having referred to these three first instances of proofs of fitness for directing how to interpret, I leave all this part, in which are some just remarks, with evidence of utter immaturity as a whole, but nothing that requires particular notice.

But one statement I would advert to, simply because Mr. Jowett is advancing human experience to overthrow the essential point of all Paul's teaching, which he advances distinctly as divine truth, against the false conclusion which Mr. Jowett draws. Logical "opposition is one of ideas only, which is not realized in fact. Experience shews us, not that there are two classes of men animated by two opposing principles, but an infinite number of classes or individuals, from the lowest depth of misery and sin to the highest perfection of which human nature is capable, the last not wholly good, the worst not entirely evil. But the figure or mode of representation changes these differences of degree into differences of kind." Nor does Mr. Jowett fear to include in this logical opposition even the setting the sheep on His right hand and the goats on His left; so that not even judgment is to separate the evil and the good. Here it is resting on man's judgment of good from outward conduct, in defiance of His who searches the heart. It is defying the sentence of God. It is perfectly clear that the foundation truth of scripture is that man is a sinner; not that men are criminals, but that "or even as this publican" is the proof of a hard heart, not of a good man — that he who thanks God he is not as other men is a Pharisee. It was (Christ's reproach that He was the friend of publicans and sinners; He avowed it — He did not come to call the righteous. The apostle's whole doctrine is, in the most striking way, not as logical opposition, but as laboriously proved doctrine, that there is no difference, that men by nature are children of wrath; that all are gone out of the way, and need redemption and to be justified by blood. The Lord declares that the publicans and harlots were nearer the kingdom of God than those who take the ground Mr. Jowett does. The apostle insists that they that are in the flesh cannot please God. He knew that in him, that is in his flesh, dwelt no good thing. God would not curse the ground any more for man's sake, for all the imaginations of the thoughts of his heart were only evil, and that continually. The true gardener knows a thistle with two leaves over ground, as well as with mischievous ripened seed.

347 There is many and many a person in the depths of misery and sin that has more just thoughts of God and of the truth than Mr. Jowett; many a judge upon the bench with a harder heart than the passionate criminal he is judging; many a Pharisee ready to cast a stone (ay, at Christ Himself morally), till he meets Christ's eye, that goes away to save his character (not his conscience) from His eye, and leaves one undoubtedly guilty to the Lord of mercy. There is no good in sin, that is certain, but less in covering it. But, besides, Mr. Jowett's paragraph destroys all the moral doctrine of scripture. A man, all men, must be converted, must repent, must be born again; he has not life, if he has not the Son of God. All is lost on Mr. Jowett. It is not his experience. And even this is moral blindness. His experience, and nobody else's, in looking at this world, tells the secrets of hearts, the temptations, conflicts of the one in misery, or the cold heartless selfishness of the other decent and respectable moralist. The history of Christianity, the doctrine of Christianity, the path of the Christ of God, are all the formal, express, and careful denial of Mr. Jowett's doctrine; the denial of it, because that doctrine was the ruinous self-deception of men's souls. Mr. Jowett seeks to make words also uncertain; and, in order to avoid admitting that religion shifts with shifting modes of thought and speech (for the existence of truth does not seem to cross his mind, or enter as a possibility into his conception), he makes any fixity of thought immaterial to Christianity.

348 What is Christianity then? The statement that it is life, and not doctrine, while true, rightly used, is of no force — that is a doctrine — nor to say it is a revelation of God, because the revelation when stated is what is meant by a doctrine. To justify this looseness, he refers to a commentator, who appears willing to peril religion on the literal truth of such an expression as, "We shall be caught up to meet the Lord in the air;" and asks, Would he be equally ready to stake Christianity on the literal meaning of the words, "Where their worm dieth not, and the fire is not quenched?" On the truth, certainly; on the literal meaning not; because not being as careless and loose as Mr. Jowett, he would know that one was a positive distinct revelation by the word of the Lord how certain things should happen, when some confusion had arisen in the minds of the saints, and the other is an avowed figure, taken from the end of Isaiah.

But rationalists soar above all the necessities of careful enquiry They doubt of what God says, and pronounce by their own thoughts, and all is settled. They know how to quote and apply the Old Testament better than the Lord and the apostles. "Hardly any" (quotation), "probably none," which they have made, "is based on the original sense or context." It is one who has found out that sin is an intermediate between good and evil, and that sheep on the right hand and goats on the left is only a logical opposition, who can alone quote properly.

But what is the proof that the apostles and the Lord are wrong, and Mr. Jowett right? It is, that the way of quoting is in agreement with the ideas of the age or country in which it was written. That is, if it were so, those formed by the Old Testament and the teaching of the prophets; and here, mark, all superintendence, all care of the Holy Spirit is denied. And what is the conclusion? First, it is a reason for not insisting on the applications which the New Testament makes of passages in the Old, as their original meaning: and, secondly, it gives authority and precedent for the use of "similar applications in our own day," which have thus as much authority and truth. Nor does he deny this last use to be sanctioned by the Lord and His apostles; so that the Lord Himself has sanctioned, according to Mr. Jowett, the total perversion of the Old Testament, though declaring it to be the word of God, and that it must be fulfilled. But how fulfilled, if it was applied wrong? Which was fulfilled — the sense it had, or the sense the Lord (may He forgive me for saying such a thing!) took wrongly out of it? These scriptures witnessed of Him. But, if they were all wrongly quoted and misapplied when cited as witnessing of Him, how could this be?

349 The confidence of these men in their own stupid opinions, in presence of the declarations of the Lord, borders on blasphemy; save that their looseness and carelessness, and the absence of all enquiry and research in what they say, make their emptiness an excuse for what would be otherwise wicked. Where they have lived, I know not; one would think among the traditions of the darkest corners of their land; for their efforts at looseness are only occasioned by traditional applications, exploded by every one who has carefully studied scripture — only that they have given up God and scripture with these traditions, as I have often seen poor Roman Catholics do, who, when they gave up taking a bit of bread for God, for a time had no God at all, believed nothing at all.

And, note, we make this very same use of scripture, and shew it is no perversion at all! And while insisting that scripture has only one meaning, it is curious to see how he would let it loose on his side the country. "Where, for our example, our Saviour says, 'Ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall set you free,' it is not likely that these words would have conveyed, to the minds of the Jews who heard Him, any of the perplexities of doubt or enquiry." Nor to anybody else in their senses, I should think; because the context is, "If ye continue in my word, then shall ye be my disciples indeed, and ye shall know," John 8: 31 etc. "Yet we cannot suppose that our Saviour, were He to come again on earth, would refuse thus to extend them."

Now the blessed Lord's words seem to me very simple, for His time and every time. Divine truth sets a man, when really received, morally free. He is not a slave as he is when he is a sinner — lost. I suppose I am unfortunate; I avow I do not understand what Mr. Jowett means by "conveying . . . any of the perplexities of doubt or enquiry." Does that mean, that setting free is giving doubt and enquiry, or delivering them from it who are doubting or enquiring?

350 W. Well, I really do not know; I do not understand them either. How knowing the truth can give doubt and enquiry, I do not understand; nor how the words should convey notions of doubt or enquiry: I am as much at sea as you.

H. I suppose he must mean, by what follows, freed from doubt. Of course, knowing the truth does free from doubt; but continuing in Christ's word is not exactly what he speaks of. He says, "The Apostle Paul, when describing the gospel, which is to the Greek foolishness, speaks also of a higher wisdom, which is known to them who are perfect. Neither is it unfair for us to apply this passage to that reconcilement of faith and knowledge which may be termed Christian philosophy as the nearest equivalent to its [what?] language in our own day." Now the Lord's declaration is, "If ye continue in my word, ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free." This means, after doubt and perplexity, that reconcilement of faith and knowledge which may be termed Christian philosophy; that is, not continuing in Christ's word, but adding modern science, and so getting free. Again, in the passage referred to, the Apostle Paul declares of the wisdom in question, "Yet not the wisdom of this world, nor of the princes of this world, that come to nought; but we speak the wisdom of God in a mystery, even the hidden wisdom which God ordained before the world to our glory." This means geology, modern German criticism, and Bunsen's wild Hegelianism. The apostle describes it thus: "Eye hath not seen, nor ear heard, neither have entered into the heart of man, the things that God hath prepared for them that love him, but God hath revealed them to us by his Spirit;" 1 Cor. 2: 9, and then the apostle proceeds to shew how he taught them. This means now the removing doubt and enquiry, and the reconcilement of faith and knowledge termed Christian philosophy.

W. But this is really puerile, as an interpretation of scripture; they cannot have read the passages.

H. Just puerile; but they had the texts running in their minds, and it is what we find everywhere, letting their own minds reason without research. But I do not exactly know where we have got to here, save happily nearly to the end of the Essay. Our master taught us, at the beginning of it, there could be but one meaning to a passage of scripture. Now, though it is inadmissible to accept the apostle's use, because that gives the ideas of their age, passages are become so expansive, so india-rubber like, that "we have [now] only to enlarge the meaning of scripture to apply it even to the novelties and peculiarities of our own times;" "and we cannot suppose" — I almost regret quoting it from its want of reverence — "that our Saviour, were He to come again upon earth, would refuse thus to extend them." And, further, the only meaning was that which would have presented itself to the minds of those who first heard it. Here it is not likely that their words would have conveyed to the minds of the Jews who heard Him any notion of the perplexities, etc.; but "it is not unfair" to apply it now to Jowett's interpretation and modern knowledge termed Christian philosophy.

351 W. I suppose it is to give a full illustration of what I read in p. 372: "If words have more than one meaning, they may have any meaning. Instead of being a rule of life and faith, scripture becomes the expression of the ever-changing aspects of religions. The unchangeable word of God, in the name of which we repose, is changed by each age and each generation, in accordance with its passing fancy. The book in which we believe all religious truth to be contained is the most uncertain of all books, because interpreted by arbitrary and uncertain methods." It is a singular description for a man to give of himself; but I suppose it is like Mahomet. His religion forbad any good Mussulman to have more than four wives, but, as he was the prophet of it, he took eighteen. It is a singular exhibition of the human mind, and of the pretensions and carelessness of these rationalists.

H. Well, dear W., we are happily drawing to a close, and though having had to wade through tedious details, the system is pretty well judged, I think; at any rate, it is for me, and the pretensions too.

W. They have not a feather's weight in my mind, and their weakness only makes the divine word stand out in its simple strength.

H. A few more observations and I have done. We have looked at most of the observations which remain. I will just notice distinctly one or two.

"The original meaning of scripture is beginning to be clearly understood. But the apprehension of the original meaning is inconsistent with the reception of a typical or conventional one." I have gone through the cases alleged to prove this. A conventional one I give him up; but that a typical one is not to be received is simple folly, when half the book is typical, both as to ordinances and facts; and the whole New Testament and Christianity in its foundation based upon its being so. The man who asserts it must be out of his senses, or deny Christianity and the Lord's whole history and place in it; and he refers expressly to these types. "We shall find it impossible to maintain it partially, e.g., in the types of the Mosaic law."

352 Now, I say, either this or all scripture is simple nonsense; for Christ is the Lamb of God, our Passover, and it is impossible that the blood of bulls and of goats could take away sin. But there is an object, a bent of purpose in all this, which I would notice; perhaps I should say an effect rather than an object, for I would not exaggerate, but which is certainly Satan's object. It is this. Having no truth at all they are indifferent to it, and like to be free; and, having nothing which they value as truth, they are content to leave others free too. It looks liberal, but is really caring for nothing as the truth. This you may have seen in their interpretation of the remarkable passage of the blessed Lord, "If ye continue in my word, ye shall know the truth, and the truth shall make you free" John 8: 32 — an immense announcement of the love of God giving the promise of deliverance by certain known truth — and, it is added, by the Son — from all immoral influences, all that was not the truth.

This for them means now doubt and enquiry, and a mixture of philosophy and knowledge with faith, that is, with Christ's word, which is the truth. Hence, as they have liberty for themselves, they must have it for others, that is, indifference. Hence, they say, a change is observable in the manner in which doctrines are stated and defended; it is no longer held sufficient to rest them on texts of scripture, one, two, or more, which contain or appear to contain similar words or ideas. That is, this divine standard of truth, "the inspired source of truth," to use their own words, has lost its authority. "They are connected more closely with our moral nature," i.e., we judge for ourselves of their truth and fitness — "extreme consequences are shunned, large allowances are made for the ignorance of mankind." They are wise, they suffer fools gladly.

"It is held there is truth on both sides; about many questions there is a kind of union of opposites." So "is it a mere chimera, that the different questions of Christendom may meet on the common ground of the New Testament" — each believing what he likes, of course, and meeting in -- what? A kind of union of opposites. They will agree in receiving the New Testament; but, like inspiration, "it is one of those theological terms which may be regarded as great peacemakers, but which are also sources of distrust and misunderstanding. For, while we are ready to shake hands with any one who uses the same language as ourselves, a doubt is apt to insinuate itself whether he takes the language in the same sense." (p. 344.) It is a kind of hope, or advice, which, he told us there, came from a bad quarter. "It is placed by Goëthe in the mouth of Mephistopheles. Pascal severely charges the Jesuits with acting in a similar manner."

353 "But this is not the way to heal the wounds of the Church of Christ." To be sure it is not, but it serves for something else, to make men indifferent as to the truth. It is one of the great questions of the day — Is the unity of Christians to be founded on what scripture speaks of — Love for the truth's sake, or indifference to it? And mark the fruit of it here: "Examples of this sturdy orthodoxy in our own generation rather provoke a smile than any serious disapproval."

Again, "But that (the uselessness of a formal scheme of union) is no reason for doubting that the divisions of the Christian world are beginning to pass away. The progress of politics, acquaintance with other countries, the growth of knowledge and material greatness, changes of opinion in the Church of England, the present position of the Roman communion; all these phenomena shew that the ecclesiastical state of the world is not destined to be perpetual."

Again, "The recognition of the fact, that many aspects and stages in religion are found in scripture; that different or even opposite parties existed in the Apostolic Church; that the first teachers of Christianity had a separate and individual mode of regarding the gospel of Christ; that any existing communion is necessarily much more unlike the brotherhood of love in the New Testament than we are willing to suppose — Protestants, in some respects, as much as Catholics; that rival sects in our own day — Calvinists and Arminians; those who maintain and those who deny the final restoration of man — may equally find texts which seem to favour their respective tenets (Mark 9: 44-48; Rom. 11: 32); the recognition of these and similar facts will make us unwilling to impose any narrow rule of religious opinion on the ever varying conditions of the human mind and Christian society."

354 Now the incontrovertible departure from early devotedness and brotherly love, if we take the display of it in the Church as a whole as a standard, the New Testament has prophetically and even historically made known to us, assuring us that in the last days perilous times should come. That the Holy Ghost employed Peter and Paul, and John, and even James and Jude, and, indeed, the gospels themselves, to give us different aspects of Christ and Christianity, that we who know in part might have a complete and perfect apprehension of both, is full of the deepest interest to the intelligent study of scripture.

Of the extreme ignorance of scripture interpretation shewn in the quotation of Romans 11: 32 I say nothing. I notice purely the result of all that Mr. Jowett has observed, the effect of modern thinking and searching. It is simply to arrive at Pilate's question, with the Truth, the eternal Son of God, before Him — What is truth? And when he had said this, he went out, and, though he found no fault in Him, it all ended in, "not this man, but Barabbas." John 18: 40.

If we turn to Christian missions, the truth is equally given up. "You may take the purer light or element of religion, of which Christianity is the expression, and make it shine on some principle in human nature, which is the fallen image of it. You cannot give a people, who have no history of their own, a sense of the importance of Christianity as an historical fact." The fact of the incarnation of the eternal Son of God coming into the world is to be dropped. "We want to awaken in them the sense that God is their Father, and they His children; and that is of more importance than anything about the inspiration of scripture. But to teach in this spirit, the missionary should himself be able to separate the accidents from the essence of religion; he should be conscious that the power of the gospel resides, not in the particulars of theology, but in the Christian life." So it was all a mistake to say the truth shall make you free.

Now, you will remark, all this is an effort to make truth immaterial. I am no stickler for conventional or traditional denominations, and, if anything is far from my thoughts, it is that the miserable things called denominations are one or another of them the ἁρος of the πλήρωμα of salvation. Mr. Jowett might take me rather, I suppose, for an Achamoth in the world composed of my sighs and tears, etc., for the state of things. But what I remark is, that having neither Christ nor allegiance to Him, nor the truth — and He is the truth — mentioned nor thought of, "the progress of politics, changes of opinion in the establishment," are the real agents in dissolving "the Christian world."

355 Now I do not dispute this. But for him therefore, as "opposite parties existed in the apostolic Church," Protestants are no better than Roman Catholics; Calvinists, and Arminians, holders of eternal punishments and deniers of it, may equally find texts which seem to favour their respective tenets; truth is all a fancy, and no one "will impose any narrow rule of religious opinion on the ever varying rule of the human mind and Christian society." Now that this is going on no one with his eyes open can deny. But a more absolute negation of truth, indifference to it, or rather unconsciousness that there is a Christ in Christianity, or truth in scripture or anywhere else, it is impossible to believe. It is not indeed astonishing in one who holds that the use of scripture in the New Testament, sanctioned by our Lord and the apostles, is in probably no instance based on the original sense or context, and liable to error and perversion; so that, as to them it is true, that, "if we are permitted to apply scripture under the pretence of interpreting it, the language of scripture becomes only a mode of expressing the public feeling or opinion of our own day;" so that what Christ and the apostles taught is only such a public opinion of their day, for they, Mr. Jowett declares, did so apply scripture; yet declaring that "we have only to enlarge the meaning of scripture to apply it to the novelties and peculiarities of our own times," and that our Saviour would not refuse, if He were to come again now, thus to extend them, and that it is not unfair to use St. Paul's statements thus, and sanction the views of our day — it is not astonishing, I say, that one who blames the Lord and His apostles, so as to make their use of scripture no kind of guide to its meaning or purpose, but assumes full right to get at the truth by giving his own application, and to get freedom promised by Christ through it, that he should put Christ and all truth out of sight in a Christian world, look to politics governing it, and take indifference and no truth as his standard and his hope.

But it is all a delusion. Those who buy the truth and sell it not will hold to it, and take Christ's word as the revelation and standard of it for their hearts, owning the apostles as ministers of it by the Spirit. Many will take refuge in it too from sorrow and passion's rage on the other side, when the dissolution looked for takes place. But the present working will be this: the philosophical indifference of rationalists will palsy sturdy Protestant orthodoxy, which till now held its ground against Popery. Popery (which does not rest on truth a bit more, but on authority, and in its nature is essentially infidel) does not know what it wants and what it wills, and will pursue it constantly, cleverly, and energetically, and all hold of truth will be gone in the country. This state of things the Dissenters will help on, and then find how weak they are. The main effect of this rationalism will be giving power for a time to what knows its own mind, that is, to Popery. Rationalism itself has no future at all. Of what would it be the future? Of enquiring and waiting till the pope and infidels take the New Testament for a common ground? They can destroy perhaps faith in the truth (where it is not in the heart), but produce nothing.

356 W. You are somewhat a sombre prophet, though I see the truth of what you say in principle.

H. No; I believe the word of God abides for ever. I believe Christ, our blessed Lord, has all power in heaven and in earth; and for the soul who loves the truth, I believe it is a very bright and blessed time. I admit that what old associations may attach men to is disappearing. Every one sees it, though how much we have to thank God that in this country it is peacefully; though I doubt that Christian or religious liberty will last very long as it is now the revival will help to destroy it: but as outward props tumble and disappear, for those who have Christ in their hearts, and to whom the truth is precious, He will be more and more all, and the truth have infinitely more power and price. They will live more in Christianity, and less in the Christian world formed by phases of the αἰῶνος τούτου. I feel thoroughly that they are times most simple for those who love the truth, and blessed ones; soon I trust to be replaced by heavenly and better ones still. Only Christ and the truth must be of course all.

W. But it requires faith thus to see things.

H. Of course it does. Did you ever find the Lord propose our being happy without it? Can anything live above sight and sense, and its influences, but faith? No doubt we are all imperfect in this heavenly temperament that associates us livingly with what is divine and unseen; and therefore in being separated from earth in spirit, we may have trials and discipline where the flesh clings; even, it may be, what the Lord calls cutting off a right hand or plucking out a right eye. But for faith I read, "In the world ye shall have tribulation; but be of good cheer, I have overcome the world." John 16: 33.

357 It is a remarkable thing that the two things which the Lord refers to as setting us free, are both of them wholly out of sight, unmentioned, and unthought of by Mr. Jowett: "The truth shall make you free," John 8: 32, and "the Son shall make you free;" John 8: 36, though he quotes this passage to make Christian philosophy of it. But they do make us free, much as we may have to seek to know their power better. But it is a touchstone of their whole system, the total leaving out of the two things which the Lord Himself says make us free. But it could not be otherwise. Their system is doubt and enquiry (love of truth they call it), but never the truth loved or known.

I think we have pretty thoroughly gone through the system. The narrower fields of tendencies of religious thought in England and national churches, (which they say the heathen had too: such is their exclusion of Christ and the truth) I do not feel there is much need that we should enter upon.

I would only remark how singular the darkness as to the power of Christianity was a century or more ago, and thereby note the limit of proofs of Christianity. Butler's "Analogy," a standard book known to all, and not only first-rate for its age, but (to use the new word of the Germanizers) on its standpoint incomparable, when the author shews negatively the folly of those who, believing in a God of nature, would question revealed religion, breaks down in the most singular manner when he enters on positive Christian ground. He shews that deists have no proof of anything; but he does venture a little on to positive ground. He reasons, however, from Aristotelian to Christian principles. For happiness we must have virtue, for virtue victory and a formed habit. Then he says that this supposes that these propensions (lusts) must exist in heaven; "and for my part," he adds, "I do not see how it could be otherwise."

W. Is it possible?

H. It is a fact. It only shews what a different thing faith and the proof of Christianity are. A child that had faith (in any age since Adam, to say nothing of a Christian) would have rejected such a thought. But what? Except the kingdom of God be received as a little child, we shall in no case enter therein. But you and I, through grace — and, thank God, thousands more — have been given to believe in the truth, to know the Lord, and, feeble as it may be in us, to love Christ. May His grace keep us stedfast in faith, and in its fruits! The question for a soul now is Christ, that blessed person who reveals the Father; the truth of a living acting Spirit, the Comforter, given; and the revealed written word of God, the only source and the standard of truth; and that that which we are called on to confess is the truth, known by the Spirit from that word, known in the heart with God; and, while acknowledging we may be mistaken in a hundred points, knowing that we have the truth for which martyrs have died, and that we had rather give up our lives than lose or deny it. The Lord Jesus is at the right hand of God the Father. He may suffer us to be tried, but He is above all and will prevail; He watches over us always as the good Shepherd, and will, in the Father's own time, come and receive us to Himself, that where He is we may be also.

358 W. I do heartily believe it, and thank God it is so; but I am sure Christians in these days ought to give a more distinct witness to whom they belong — I mean practically, as devoted to Him — by their profession, and the fruits which make it good. "Shew us thy faith" James 2: 18, has all its force now.

H. In truth it has. If I contend for the truth, because Christ is the truth, I had rather one did not profess it than deny it in works. We are in serious, most serious, times; and there must be reality. Only the Lord keep us from pretended love of the truth, which destroys the truth we love; which has nothing to keep, and hence has nothing to lose, and can be always seeking. When conventional systems are crumbling around, and evil raises up its head, may men be seen who can walk peacefully because they possess what can never crumble, till God makes all things new according to the truth He has revealed.

W. I am glad we met; it has done me good: holding fast the truth, and feeling one has it (oh, what grace it is!) from God, always does. We may now turn to seek directly, and with humble thankfulness, into the treasure we have in the truth — the unsearchable riches of Christ, which is made over to us. It is yet happier work.

H. Adieu, then, for the present; may we be only found at our watchtower, and, above all, humble and dependent.

I have not, after all, gone into the article in the Edinburgh. It is merely an attempt to justify infidelity, because it has prevailed for many years in Germany, so that even evangelical professors yield more or less to it; and an attempt to defend the Essayists, by proving the superior clergy to be as bad; and I do not really see how this affects the truth or falsehood of the principles themselves. I think many non-infidel professors in Germany have yielded, through want of faith, to the current; and I see the same tone prevalent in the clergy and dissenting ministers in England. They like the credit of being up in the progress of the age. And there is so very little faith in the intrinsic truth and power of scripture, in its being the word of God, that their estimate and defence of it necessarily fails on that side. The clergy must answer for themselves to the charges of the reviewer. They ought to be morally indignant at the article. But I do not see, if he proves the assailants of the Essayists dishonest, and to have been previously abettors of their views, what an upright mind will have gained or lost. It does not affect the question in the smallest degree, but merely the reputation of the clergy. I do not think much of an opponent who, when his friend is charged with being dishonest, declares he will prove the accuser as bad. The whole matter savours of want of principle and personality. Besides, many a mind may be led away from solid ground by new thoughts, which, when their ripe fruit is shewn, honestly discards them all. I think this Review a very poor thing — lowering eternal questions to personal ones, and not worthy therefore of any particular notice.

Inspiration of the Scriptures

*

J. N. Darby.

<06130> 359

{*Expressions in the introduction of Dean Alford's New Testament are here and there alluded to in the following paper; but as it is the whole system, and not anything peculiar to him, which is animadverted upon, no further particular notice is taken of it.}

One of the great efforts of the enemy in these days is against the written word of God. Ecclesiastical office and orthodoxy is in its nature no barrier against this inroad. In its most pretentious forms and highest claims it is injurious to true confidence in scripture, because the authority of the Church, not that of the word, lies at the root of these pretensions. Divinely given authority is its first principle; not divine truth from God.

If its true principle be scrutinised beneath conventional habits and fears, it will be found that the authority of the word is founded, according to this system, on the authority of the Church — that is, the word has none properly divine in itself. I say this, not with a view to controversy with that system, but as a warning that, in the struggle which is going on, such a barrier against unbelief is not to be trusted to.

The confidence in man and his intellectual powers and progress, which characterizes another considerable portion of the professing Church, is surely no security against man's assuming to judge what does and will surely judge him. The word has its authority from God; and God will make good and prove that authority in judgment, as He blesses us with it now in grace. The word, if it be the word of God at all, calls for submission. It forms, as a means, the link of renewed connection with God, granted to us by sovereign mercy when sin and flesh had separated us from God. It is sent out from Him, as was the living and eternal Word, as a point of contact in mercy and power for man with God; which comes to him where he is, deals with man exactly in the state man is in, and reveals God — and as He is pleased to reveal Himself — to man in that state. But for this God must be its author — none but God can rightly reveal Himself. Otherwise that word cannot bear witness of the love, the purpose of love, which is in God.

It cannot have the wise adaptation to the end which that love proposes to itself, and the gracious consideration for all the infirmities, all the varied circumstances, of those to whom it is addressed, so as to reveal divine love and truth, divine love and plans, to and in spite of those infirmities, if the purpose of doing so be not there —  ἁρχὴ τῆς θεωρίας τέλος τῆς πράξεως. Now I meet a great deal which takes the form of condescension to believers in divine inspiration, while it really assumes human intellectual powers to be on superior ground on this question, and adapts its reasonings, with great deference to their claims, to the theory of inspiration, so as to save something for the more feeble-minded. Help is allowed on God's part, the aiding the memory according to the Lord's promise. It is thought much to rescue such points as these from the invading grasp of rationalism. Now I do not doubt that the Holy Ghost did help — did recall to the memory of the New Testament writers what our Lord had said. But who was the author of the New Testament? How came it to be written? Is there no purpose in the history and other writings of the New Testament? and if so, whose purpose was it? Whence do the writings flow? Is the existence of the New Testament an accident, which has its origin in the will or circumstances of four men (I speak particularly now of the Gospels, though the principles apply to the whole New Testament, and with increasing force when it is looked at as a whole) who were afterwards, when they thought fit to undertake the work, graciously assisted? Or is the scripture New Testament history the consequence of a purpose of God, a fruit of a divine intention and plan, of whose execution the Holy Ghost is the author?

360 We read in Peter, Holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost. 2 Peter 1: 21 Here we have the source — the motive power in this work. The word of the Lord came to them. I have no theory as to the manner in which the New Testament writers were inspired. I recognize, in the fullest way, the diversities of style and the stamp of individuality in the different writers. The Lord was pleased to use men. But when I say that, it implies that He used them. I see the Lord declaring that He would use their memories. I see the apostle preferring an inspired communication in which his understanding had a part. But it is evident that if God recalled, by the Holy Ghost, certain events to the memory of a writer, He could recall them in such a way and form as He pleased; or as it had particularly struck the writer at the time the event happened; or while the facts were presented anew to his memory, with such additional apprehensions as the spiritual state of the writer made him capable of at the time of writing, and according to that peculiar form of apprehension wrought by His power and presence in the writer. He might recall these events to the writer's mind in the succession He thought fit, so as to produce a given order in the narration. But all this supposes the action and purpose — the will — of a divine Author, who acts with a plan and wisdom suited to its accomplishment. The wisdom of such an author might (by the combination of the events in a given order, and the selection of such as He recalled) produce a result from them, as a whole, which had a bearing and gave a witness to Christ entirely beyond the thoughts of the writer, though he might in every part be used according to the state of his own mind under the influence of the Spirit of God.

361 Now you will find that many discussions on inspiration, or statements on the subject, leave the thought of any purpose or motive power of the Spirit of God wholly aside, or deliberately deny it. The fact of distinct order in the recital of events in two Gospels is assumed to be a proof of the writers being left to themselves in these points; and such like, as I judge, short-sighted arguments are used.

Now either the Holy Ghost moved the inspired writers to compose their accounts, or He did not. If not, then the existence of the written accounts of the life of Jesus are a providential accident, and flow from no intention of God towards His Church and even a ruined world. If He did, then it was with a plan and purpose, flowing from and suited to the object to be attained and to the divine wisdom which so moved them. If this be so God has thought it right to give to us an account of the wonderful facts of incarnation and redemption and all that accompanied these great events. And if He has done so, He has done so with a purpose and plan. For the carrying of this out He used fitted instruments; but the plan was His. He worked in and by them — but to produce what? The uncertain fruit of their own researches, or that which would not answer to His intentions and the glory of Christ and the truth as it is in Him? It is the height of absurdity, a contradiction of the nature and working of God, to think so for a moment. It is in vain to talk of helping them. Whose will was it that it should be done? whose purpose to be carried into effect? whose work was it which was done? Was it God's will to have it done? Did the work flow from the action of the Holy Ghost? and was it, in carrying it out, left to go wrong and be executed contrary to the divine will and wisdom? I press the question — Whose action and purpose was it? The moment I believe it to be God's, I get a divine work. I look for divine wisdom, divine purpose displayed in carrying it out. One tells me that the various arrangements of contents prove human agency in their selection and disposition. Why so? If Christ be presented in various characters, why may not the Holy Ghost present facts which display those characters in a way calculated to do so, employing diverse human agency to do it? The whole argument assumes that there is no purpose or plan of the Holy Ghost in the New Testament narrative. The moment I believe there is, I must expect the materials to be selected and arranged according to that purpose and plan. And nothing can be more absurd and contradictory than the contrary supposition. It is admitted by such authors that the Holy Ghost recalled facts to the memory of the evangelists. Did He do it at haphazard — out of place, time, and order, and differently to the different evangelists, so that they have put them in different and, as to some or perhaps all, in incorrect order?

362 Where inspiration is wholly denied, then it is easy to understand that men hold that each evangelist did the best he could; and put the things out of due order because he did not know any better. If, on the other hand, God would glorify His Son Jesus, and give to us an adequate account of His life and sufferings — an object so perfectly suited to His grace and our need — we can easily understand the Spirit of God so ordering various accounts, as to present (for those who know in part and prophesy in part) the various aspects of His path on earth, its bearings and results, on Jews, on men at large, or on the hearts of sinners, or as unfolding before men the divine nature; and thus we should have the same true facts, but variously arranged, and with diversity of details. But of all theories, that which makes the Gospels the result of no purpose, or will, or plan of God at all, but that when men took the thought up, the Holy Ghost helped them, and recalled things to their memories, but so as to have all in disorder and confusion without a purpose; and that He did thus with several independent writers, so as to have inconsistency as well as disorder, is of all theories — for theory it is — the most unworthy of God, and absurd for man.

No man can doubt for a moment that the four Gospels present Christ each in a different way. Did this flow from the purpose and intention of God, or is it an accident? If from divine purpose, I must look for an ordering of the materials according to that purpose. It is in vain to say that this is an à priori theory. It is an à priori theory to say that the putting the history of the deliverance of the demoniac in Galilee before or after Matthew's call is a proof of human arrangement. Why not of divine? If chronological order had been alleged to have been preserved, or were it the object, then I should see that men had been left to their own weakness. But who says that chronological order is the object, say, in Matthew? I am satisfied it is not. This is not the place to prove that he had another. But the assumption that the Gospels are a compilation of memoirs in chronological order, as far as the writer was competent (which is not true even in many a well arranged human history), is the sole ground on which arrangement can be attributed to human agency. But the assumption is a very foolish one.

363 That the selection of facts depended on human agency is still more absurd. It is held that the Holy Ghost recalled to the remembrance of the writers what Jesus said. Where, then, is the writers' selection? Did the Holy Ghost come in aid when the evangelist remembered something imperfectly, and left we know not what — perhaps something much more important — wholly unremembered? Such an operation of the Holy Ghost as is here pretended is as irreverent an idea as it is absurd. But if He did move, the writer did not select, and could hardly be said to arrange. God may have led the writers to use all sources, all they had in their memoirs, or directly recalled or revealed what they had not. I make no limit as to the divine use of means: all are at the disposal of God. The question I urge is, Who is the author and mover in the history we have of the blessed Lord? If it be the Holy Ghost, then is He the source of this history; and He had a purpose in giving it. He has carried it out according to that purpose. To suppose that the Holy Ghost wrought to leave us an imperfect, wrongly arranged, inconsistent account of the Lord Jesus, and of the unspeakable intervention of God in redemption, is the most irreverent — I do not say intentionally so; I do not the least think so: but in fact the most irreverent and absurd of all theories as to inspiration.

I have not a doubt the New Testament history bears the stamp and contains the proof of the most perfect divine arrangement, and that harmonies are wrong in principle. But into so large a subject as this I could not here enter. This would, of course, be a matter of spiritual intelligence and instruction, from the contents and order in which they are formed, and, if extended to the whole New Testament, from the scope of the whole book and the combination of its parts. My object in this flying communication is merely to draw attention to the question which is often in so strange a way silently dropped — Who is the author of the New Testament history? From whose will or purpose does it flow? Whose plan is this history of the Lord Jesus? Is it a divine or a human one? a thing flowing from human will in aid of which the Holy Ghost has wrought, or the fruit of God's counsels and the agency of the Holy Ghost accomplishing the purpose of God? If it be from the purpose and moving of the Holy Ghost, I must look for His carrying that purpose out.

364 I add one word as to the preface of Luke's Gospel. I say nothing as to the extent to which the writers were conscious of the Holy Ghost's purpose and action; but I wholly deny the construction put upon the words of Luke as a matter of fact. It is constantly stated both by rationalists and by others who hold loose views of inspiration, that he declares he gave his own account from what he heard and from his enquiries. He does no such thing. He says, Forasmuch as many have taken in hand to compose an account of what is most surely believed among us, as it has been delivered to us by those who were eye-witnesses and ministers of the word, it seemed good to me also, having accurate knowledge of all things from the origin, to write to thee with method, etc. Now the evangelist contrasts here the ground on which he wrote with that on which others had gone. I do not allege, as some of the fathers have, that he blames those others, as having "taken in hand" themselves in contrast with inspiration; but it shews that many having done it in that way was a motive for his doing it on more trustworthy ground. He does it because he has thorough personal knowledge of all from the outset. Paul says of Timothy (2 Tim. 3: 10), "Thou hast fully known my doctrine, manner of life," etc. The same word is here used. The others had known what was delivered. Now it is not said Luke knew them himself, but παρηχολουθνχότι ἄνωθεν πᾶσιν ἀχριβῶς. It would be hard to express personal accurate knowledge more strongly. It has nothing to do with the question of inspiration. It is the fitness of the instrument which appears. Whether the Holy Ghost made use of it is not touched upon; but the conclusion which is drawn from it, that Luke denied it and derived his materials from other accounts, is wholly unfounded.

The Human Element in Inspiration

J. N. Darby.

<06131E> 365

My dear brother,

As the question of inspiration has been so much before the minds of Christians, and indeed of all men, in countries where Christianity is professed, and is a vital question for every soul, I would desire to notice one point in connection with it, because on it even those who are accounted orthodox have used very equivocal language. It is what is called the "human element" in it. That there is a human element is evident, for it is men who are inspired, men whose language and whose minds have been used. I say, whose minds have been used; for the apostle tells of speaking with his understanding; but the expression is used to signify also the defect and errors to which man's mind is liable. Now this last means man's mind left to itself, that is, not inspired: a very different thing from inspiring man's mind.

The reason I notice it is, that the human element is of infinite price to us, the very character of the grace shewn to us and conferred on us. God's favour is not only shewn to man, but in man. In the blessed Lord — the centre and effectuator of all grace to us — this is evident, though this is much more than inspiration, for He is a Person, the Word made flesh, yet it characterizes all God's ways with us. It is what is divine in man. It has a human element — birth, hunger, thirst, sorrow, suffering, His compassion moved by what He saw, growth in wisdom and stature, dependence in prayer, obedience, temptation (sin apart), and, when He had given Himself up to it, death (for which indeed He had expressly become a man); and though now in glory, yet the human element is there also. The Son of man is at the right hand of God, and when we are in that blessed place, He will gird Himself and make us to sit down to meat, and come forth and serve us. And this last, though surely a figure, yet is a figure of that blessed love in which He took upon Him the form of a servant and became a man, and continues to exercise now, as man who can be touched with the feeling of our infirmities; and which He will then exercise as man to minister in perfect and devoted tenderness — fit to win and fix man's heart — divine love, where we can fully know its value in the service of that love; for love delights to serve, and He has become a man so to exercise it. It is His glory surely; what shews the infiniteness of divine love where angels desire to look into it; but it is, blessed be God, and therein infinite and blessed in a human element. God shews in the ages to come the exceeding riches of His grace, in His kindness towards us by Christ Jesus. The very character given to this grace is φιλανθρωπία.  So, when He was born, the unenvious angels celebrate glory to God in the highest, in (εὐδοχία ἐν ἀνθρώποις) good pleasure in men. It is for us a blessed, as it is a glorious theme. Now, though this was different from all else (for it is the Incarnate Word), yet it characterizes all God's ways with men. Inspiration (that is, the Spirit of Christ acting in the limited manifestation of God's mind in whatever degree in a man) has this character, and it is its peculiar value. It was given in various ways, as well as at divers times, dealing with man and unfolding the things of man historically in relation to God, and in moral testimony, so that we might have God's mind about them, either according to the, light which man possessed, so as to be thereby responsible, or revelations of God's own mind and judgment, so as to teach, which last was only fully revealed in Christ, who spoke what He was in His own perfection, and was what He spoke — God manifest in flesh, the Word made flesh and dwelling among us.

366 The revelation of the New Testament is different in character, because it has taken man out of the earth and up to heaven; and hence its proper revelations (I mean after Christ's death) are the bringing in of present heavenly relations and character into earthly things. Hence, save prophecies, which are not proper to it, it is the man in heaven in all the details of life on earth — more intimate, more familiar, more present and practical. The Christian is the epistle of Christ — hence has to be formed by the word of revelation into His image, and then guided in the manifestation of it. It is evident how fully there is a human element here, not only in our realization of Christianity, but in the revelation of it; but it is the human element taken possession of by God. Divine power, and what, if the use of the word were not liable to be abused, might fairly be called inspiration, works in everyone who is blessed in the use of a gift, and in all spiritual wisdom; that is, God acts and forms the judgment, and the agent is only so far blessed as this is the case. But this scripture carefully distinguishes from inspiration in the sense we now use it in, viz., communications having a divine authority over the soul, because given by God Himself. An inspired man may say, "I have received mercy of the Lord to be found faithful;" "I think also that I have the Spirit of God;" and add, "The married I command, not I, but the Lord;" "to the rest speak I, not the Lord." Thus the apostle carefully distinguishes the sound and godly wisdom which he had experimentally by the Spirit — the action of the Holy Ghost in his own mind morally — from what he had from the Lord Himself, so as to give it as His command. This has been stupidly alleged as shewing all was not inspired, since part was distinguished as spiritual experience. But this is a mistake as to the whole nature of inspiration, and leads me to some notice of this.

367 The truth of inspiration is not that all that is stated or recorded as done or spoken was inspired. We have the devil's words, and wicked men's words, and holy, but failing, men's words; but in such cases the writer was inspired to give us these things as he has given them. So God, knowing our liability to be misled as to inspiration, has inspired Paul to record the difference between the highest spiritual wisdom and apprehension, and inspiration. There cannot be on this point a more important inspired testimony. It decides the question recently raised, and judges the error into which presumptuous men have fallen. The operation of the Spirit forming and leading men's minds is not inspiration in the proper sense of the word. Now the forms and bearings of inspiration are various, though the source and the authority be one, because there is a human element. God's works have to be revealed, and they are so by a simple and blessed statement of them, such as nothing but inspiration could give. Man's failure and sin has to be traced and brought to light in its origin and its development. For this latter God's ways had to be revealed; but this had a double character, the history of the facts in connection with which these ways were manifested, and the dealings of God in which they were expressed.

Thus we have the history of Abraham; but, to get his place, I must have the judgment of man at Babel after the flood, and the formation of nations and languages, out of which he is called by God's glory. Then promise, calling, separation from the world, come out to view as a root principle. But was Abraham to be only a pillar to hang these principles on? No; he was a living man, who acted by faith as called out, and trusted in God as to the promises. God reveals Himself in both these ways. He is the Almighty (Shaddai) for the present path of faith, but the revealer of the promises, so as to open the wide history of His purposes as to Israel, and His grace for all nations. Man, let me say, would have been perfectly incapable of connecting these things in one history of a man, yet so as they bear in principle of walk and purpose on the whole present history of the world, Jew and Gentile, and how those who look to God are blessed with believing Abraham. But in all this there is a human element, because the thing to be taught is God's relationship with man: how they subsist on His part, how they subsist on man's part. Promise is God's, but it is not for man connected with man, with human state and hopes, even if these go on to heaven, still more clearly if they are on earth. Faith, though of and in God, yet is in man, may be exercised and shine brightly and perfectly, or may fail, so that man is shewn. Now all this is the revelation. It traces an ordinary, or it may be an extraordinary, history, in which all this (and far more than this) is brought out. But who could do this so as to instruct us in all these ways of God, whose full import is only brought to light in the New Testament, where the true light shines (save God, who knows what He meant to teach us, and what to teach us by)?

368 Could Moses or (as these besotted rationalists would tell us) some fraudulent impostors in Josiah's reign, have known all that would serve as a principle for all ages, and a root and foreshadowing of purpose not even yet all fully brought out? Yet Moses must give the history as a series of facts that then happened (useful to Israel at the time, needful to their understanding their place before God, and a ground of confidence in Him), clothing it in apprehensions and feelings which should do this, and as entering in heart into it, and using it this way himself. That is, the human element is found in the revelation, is essential to it, if it is to act in, on, and by, the heart of man; but it is God's taking possession of it, and using it for the purposes of His own grace (and these cannot be greater, save the perfection of it all in Christ). Must not faith have a human element in it?

Now all communications of the word are not faith, though implicitly in them; but in a very large part, the historical part, it is in many things the exercise and expression of faith, or it would have no value. It is impossible to separate it from the revelation. When we read (Ex. 32), "Remember Abraham, Isaac, and Israel, thy servants," is it not a revelation? It is the turning-point of the whole matter, casting God, so to speak, on promise, and not on judgment, by the blessed faith and trueheartedness of His servant (a principle on which all human hope hangs, on which Galatians is founded, yea, on which our hope of heaven itself is founded); yet is there not a human element? Is it not Moses' faith and grace, and blessed self-denying devotedness to God's glory and His people's blessing? Am not I divinely taught by it how grace works in a man withal? Yet if I have it not from God, of what account is it? Nay, the very fact of all this being a history, the part where man seems to enter most specially requires that it should be inspired of God, that it may have the elements which will divinely instruct me. The very value of it is, that I have divinely given instruction in the scene and sphere of man.

369 And, take the other side: if I am to learn what man is truly, and what God's ways of dealing with him are, is it to be only in dogmas settled in a council, as dry and inoperative as the great Sahara? Or am I to get them where all passes among living men with the living God? God has in His wisdom chosen the latter; but then I must get it-truly, the faults, failures, shortcomings, sins, mixed actions and motives — in short, what man is as he is before God and with God to learn by. I must have the facts really, but according to the mind of God, or I shall not learn that mind by them at all — the evil as it came, as it was pardoned, was judged, bore fruit of sorrow afterwards, and the like.

I may be told, You are confounding what we just distinguished, the record, and the thing recorded. No: here the record (though not always, for we have God's words in the thing recorded) is the revelation in a large part of it; the word is perfect, and must be to be of any use; but there is more than that. The things pass according to and make a part of man's then relationship with God; praise, for example, say at the Red Sea. Had Moses and Israel praised then according to our heavenly notions now, all would have been out of place; they praise according to their then state. All this is revealed as history in the same spirit. It is not a commentary on it, but a history of it. There is the human element; yet that is the very means of my getting the divine instruction, both as to principles and as a foreshadowed future (for they happened to them for types, and are written for our instruction on whom the ends of the world are come), and as to God's patient gracious dealing with man, on from the beginning, when he had fallen. If I find promise precede law, yet law came in to raise the question of righteousness; and then, man being fully convinced of sin, He who was the object of promise became our righteousness in a divine way. I get a taking up the history in a divine way for eternal principles of truth; but I get besides, in the history, an instruction as to what man is under God's dealings, acting on my heart and conscience as it never could have done, had the human element not been there. It is the whole value of the history and its revelation. But take away the divine use of the human element and all is lost, and worse; for I have a history to teach me erroneously.

370 Let us remember the simple principle, that God's entering into man and using the human element for His service is just the opposite to His leaving a man to his own thoughts and mental appreciations, which is what is meant by the human element when unbelief talks of it; and the history is not only man's history, but a man's history of it. But it is man's history so as to bring out fully what he is with God and under God's dealings, so as to teach all men by it and in all ages, and foreshadow things to come; and hence a divinely given history of it all, yet with the historian entering into it all as a living history in which the people and himself were interested, or it would not have been reality then nor now. I speak of facts; I read it, see Moses in a large part of it acting, feeling, thinking, speaking, praising; nor can I separate, nor do I desire to separate, the account given from the reality of the thoughts and feelings of him who recounts it. Nor, if it be Abraham and other history, is there any real difference, though the proof be less apparent; for in both it is the Holy Ghost recounting by man what passed in and with man. Only, when of other persons, the interest of Moses or the sacred historian in them is less evident; but I believe Moses' heart and interest went with Abraham's history as much as with his own, as much as when he said, "Ye have been rebellious against the Lord since the day that I knew you."

Hence we have, in the history by various persons, the distinct succession of all the ways and dealings of God from one mind, ascertained from a history in which the individual writers had (for the most part could have) no knowledge of the whole scheme itself. Innocence, man without law and lawless, promise coming in as a thing apart, man under law, under priesthood, obedient royalty with law, sovereign unlimited royalty over the world, prophets to recall to law and to foretell the coming One and judgments, and at last the Seed of promise, grace in the world — this is history, history as it appears in fact in scripture, yet principles of dealing with man which test him morally in every way, and bring out the whole state in which he is, in which I am, before God; yet the connection of one part with another no one of the writers could have had in his mind, or does not refer to. All is man; but all is man brought out by God's dealings, and the record given of it by man, as interested in it as the history of his own people, or what led to it from the creation onward, but as the people beloved of God in whom God displayed His ways, and as a whole of which no one man was author — a divine exhibition of what man was, and God's ways with him.

371 This leads me to another remark: that to understand such a revelation the purpose of God must be known. The Holy Ghost must act in us to enable us to understand these things. Here He works in connection with the moral state of man, and we have degrees of spiritual apprehension. Where scripture was given or used by scriptural writers, there I get the divine account I have to understand. Nor should I trouble myself with it as divine instruction if it be not so; perfectly given to be an object adequate to afford God's mind and ways, prophetic declarations, and christian absolute truth furnishing a key to it all. The holy scriptures are given by inspiration of God, and are able to make us wise unto salvation, through faith which is in Christ Jesus. Divine light is needed, as every Christian knows, in us, in order to understand them. (See Luke 24: 45 and 1 Cor. 2: 14  - passages on which I might insist, were I speaking generally on inspiration: my object is now the human element.)

This purpose is constantly overlooked — we are liable to mistake in it; for this is a question of spiritual understanding, and depends directly on our moral state. Such as are meek, them shall He guide in judgment. God hides these things from wise and prudent, and reveals them to babes. Thus, in a celebrated infidel attack on scripture, the question raised was as to the historical character of the Pentateuch. Now Genesis is historical; that is, it so far takes the facts of history as are sufficient to establish all the great principles of God's government of the world, and His purposes concerning it, taking Abraham's seed as a centre.

So the beginning of Exodus is historical, but to give us the great principle of a divine redemption with its effects (unknown till then), of God's dwelling with men, and of holiness to God. After that the great body of it is not historical at all. We gather elsewhere that the ordinances of God were neglected. No child was circumcised. They took up the tabernacle of Moloch, and the star of their god Remphan. No doubt some pious ones may have kept them, but neither is this recorded. It was not the object. After their reaching Sinai, what is given is the pattern of things shewn on the mount — just as true and important if not a sacrifice had ever been offered. Even if we take the history, only such facts are taken as happened to them for types, and are written for instruction. That is, the object was, not to give a detailed history of Israel, but to give significant facts for our instruction. I say facts, but in no adequate account of them to bind them historically together, but perfect for the purpose they were meant for — to teach us God's ways with His people; their ways with Him, their difficulties and dangers; His patience and His goodness. I do not doubt, I need not say, that Israel passed through the Red Sea, that God gave them the manna, that the ark of the covenant was made. But what is the importance of these facts to me?

372 The consequence is that we have not facts out of which a whole connected history can be made; though all needed for the then connection of the people with God, and their responsibility in after ages, is clearly and fully given. But we have a perfect store of divine instruction in every respect to which the history can be scripturally applied.

Deuteronomy is a quite distinct revelation — declared to be so — a covenant made in the plains of Moab besides the covenant made in Horeb, Deut. 28: 63. It is not a history save some small portions of it laying a ground for others, but exhortations and directions for the future, for the time of judges and priests, when Israel had already departed from God, going on to the case of asking for a king. This distinct covenant was founded, no doubt, on the relationship with God formed under the Sinaitic covenant, but formally supposes the people to have been unfaithful, and provides, in mercy, practical directions for the state, and predicts the issue in judgment and sovereign grace.

I dwell less on prophecy proper than on history, because the human element is less apparent when it is "thus saith the Lord," or "the word of the Lord came;" it is a formal utterance. Yet even here it cannot be doubted that He who spake by the prophets formed the vessel also; only He possessed it. Holy men of old spake as they were moved (φερόμενοι) by the Holy Ghost. 2 Peter 1:21 When Isaiah says, "Oh that thou wouldest rend the heavens and come down, that the mountains might flow down at thy presence," Isa. 64: 1 who doubts that the heart of Isaiah was engaged, and that that heart in its feelings was the elevated earnest one which sought God's glory, and identified it with the people which God had formed for the service to which He called him? But God working in the prophet wrought the testimony of earnest desire, as proper to move as warnings or prophetic announcements were to awaken conscience or sustain faith. So when Jeremiah, in the midst of overwhelming sorrows and hopeless wickedness, cries, "Woe is me that my mother has borne me, a man of strife and a man of contention to the whole earth" Jer. 15: 10: or uses several other such expressions, who doubts there is a human element — a broken and sorrowful heart? When he expresses the difficulty between his righteous judgment of evil and love to the people because they were God's people, and has the answer of God as to the exactly right feeling and path, a true heart finds more perfect divine instruction in it for his own heart, wrought in by analogous feelings, than if it was a mere dry declaration of truth; and much more God's divine interest in the feelings wrought in his heart, and his own association with God's interest and glory in His people in the earth. But this is by the human element, but by God's drawing it fully out in its place, and expressing it in a divine way, with His own reply. Thus far, for the prophets, we have distinctly the divine use of the human element. I turn to the New Testament.

373 Here we have it, partly less, partly a great deal more, and this in a way exceedingly beautiful. In the Gospels we have the Word made flesh, and, as has been often noticed, the diverse characters of Christ — Messiah, Immanuel, the Servant, Prophet, the Son of man, Second Adam in grace, after a lovely scene of the remnant in Israel; and lastly, not Jesus in Galilee with the poor of the flock, or his heart reaching out in grace to Gentiles, but the love of God in Judea in the midst of a rejected and reprobate race, bringing in a new and divine thing into the earth, personally or by a given Comforter. Here the subject is, God manifest in flesh; and, of course, the human element is, so to speak, everything where His divinity is known. But the subject is absorbing — doubts, ignorance, enmity, in those surrounding Him we have, but the subject absorbs everything; and, unless at the utmost one or two expressions in John, I am not aware of a trace of the human element in the recital. The subject was everything, no epithet, no "blessed Jesus" — "beloved Jesus." The subject was too high, too holy, for the Holy Ghost in recording it by man's pen, to bring in man's feelings. He was the model and perfection of what was divine in man in the circumstances where we are; and there needed no other human expressions to know how God met man in them. He was it. There is to me great perfection and loveliness in this. It sets a halo round the person of Jesus which no expression could have reached. Such would have spoiled it — been an intrusion on the heart. We want only that which moves it, not the movings of others about it. Besides as I have said, it could not be; because the whole perfection of God meeting man was in His person.

374 Now in the Acts we find the human element again, and it is in its place, but calls for no particular notice; but in the Epistles it overflows. It is the expression of that particular character of privilege and grace in which the love and Spirit of God works in us towards others; the unfolding and description of God's work in us, brought out by the gifts operating in the body Christ had received gifts in man and for him. It was introducing man into heavenly places where Christ had gone, and conformity to this wrought in him by the Holy Ghost, and unfolded by them in whom it had been first wrought that they might communicate; as the Lord Himself expresses it, "He that is athirst, let him come unto me and drink." This is the man's own soul. But then "out of his belly" — his inmost affections — "shall flow rivers of living water." John 7: 37-38 Now this He spake of the Holy Ghost, the Comforter to be given after His ascension, ye. in one who had drunk of Christ, and out of whose inmost affection the divine testimony flowed forth.

Yet there were cases where the human element was wholly inoperative. A man spoke with a tongue and spoke mysteries (which others could enjoy if they knew the tongue), and did not know what he said himself, though he knew the Spirit was working in him, connecting his soul with divine things in God; but his understanding was unfruitful, and if he spoke with his understanding, it was also a revelation to himself; and then, if an inspired instrument of communication to others, he spoke in words which the Holy Ghost taught, communicating things given by the Spirit, by words given by the Spirit too (πνευματιχοῖς πνευματιχά).

What characterizes then the Epistles especially is the human element. The privilege of loving with divine love, enduring all things for the elect's sake that they might obtain the salvation which is in Christ Jesus, with eternal glory; and, as Christ's life was to pervade and be expressed in all the circumstances of human life, that love and life in the inspired ones entered with the perfect wisdom of the Holy Ghost into them all, but expressed Christ's mind as to it as the Holy Ghost led them to express it, that it might be divine wisdom, and directly from God, though in and by a man.

375 It was in this sense different from Old Testament inspiration, in that the Man, the Lord, the Head of all, was gone on high, and had received gifts for men, members of His body. Of old, men might say, Who hath known the mind of the Lord? — but, inspired by Him, give such an utterance of a part of His counsels as He was pleased to communicate, or write a history as perfectly led of Him, the bearing of which, or its part in completing the whole, they were ignorant of, only when we see what is in the whole, thereby proving it divine; and prophets might search out their own prophecies to understand them; but the apostle may say, "But we have the mind of Christ." 1 Cor. 2: 16

No doubt they could only give what was given, but they gave it as what they had as His mind who was the wisdom of God. Inferior utterances, without fruit to the speaker's understanding, there might be, proving all was of God; but the proper inspiration of the New Testament to the apostles in their service was the perfect communication of the mind of Christ to them, and the perfect communication of it by them in the words given by the Holy Ghost who had revealed it. It was received intelligently by the same Spirit. But this mind of Christ took up man into all the glory and all the counsels of which He is the centre before the Father; but it descended, because He had become our life, into the conduct of a slave to his master, and a master to his slave, and to the babes who were not counted unworthy of the grace and guidance of Him whose arms had once embraced them. Nothing is too small for a person to be a Christian in — nothing, consequently, for the Spirit of Christ to guide us in. Nothing (blessed be God!) too high for them who are united to Christ, and are one day to be like Him, though lowliness alone can embrace them. "The Spirit searcheth all things, yea, the deep things of God." 1 Cor. 2: 10

I am aware how imperfect a sketch I have given of even the part of this subject which was before my mind. My object was not to prove inspiration. I sought only to speak of what is called the human element in inspiration; that we might fully give its precious place to that, and the simple not be deceived by even learned or orthodox unbelief; as if God's using man — his lips, or his understanding, his mind in every way — meant the same as leaving him to himself, and me to his folly, so that what God did give should be uncertain, as inseparably mixed up with what is man's. Every scripture (and the New Testament comes under that title) is given by inspiration of God; every prophecy of scripture, for holy men of old spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost; the New too, for what the Holy Ghost revealed was communicated in words which the Holy Ghost taught. It is to scripture we are referred by the apostle in the dangers of the last days.

376 As regards the human element in inspiration, of which I have written, especially in the New Testament, we have one or two passages which express it clearly. The Old Testament gave a testimony to Christ besides the historical bases of the whole matter in the history of man and God's people. He was the subject and object of their testimony; but Christ's, and, through grace, our proper testimony, is different. The testimony was the expression of the thing in Himself; so ours, though imperfect, the life of Jesus manifested in our mortal bodies, the epistle of Christ written by the Spirit of the living God on the fleshy tables of the heart. Now the New Testament inspiration partook of this (though there was also, in tongues and prophecy, dictated utterances); that is, the full blessing of the thing was conveyed to the heart and understanding. How was St. Paul made an apostle and even minister of the Church? By the revelation of Christ in glory to him for his own conversion through grace. So He speaks: "When it pleased God, who separated me from my mother's womb, and called me by his grace, to reveal his Son in me, that I might preach him among the heathen, immediately I conferred not with flesh and blood." So in 2 Corinthians 4, "God, who commanded the light to shine out of darkness, hath shined in our hearts to give [out] the light of the knowledge of the glory of God in the face of Jesus Christ." So indeed in 1 Corinthians 2: 12-14, they had received the Spirit to know. Only, when it was to be for divine communication also, they spoke it in words taught of the Holy Ghost. And this is the instruction of the Lord Himself on the subject: "If any man thirst, let him come unto me and drink; and, as the scripture hath said, out of his belly shall flow rivers of living water. But this spake he of the Spirit, which they that believe on him should receive." The streams which flowed forth for others were the fruit of what had been drunk for self. This is true of all so ministering; only, as we have seen, for what is properly called inspiration, the words were given by the Holy Ghost also.

377 The very nature of Christianity is, God manifest in the flesh, entering personally into all our sorrows, temptations, and trials; manifesting God's perfect goodness in them; and then, through redemption, raising man to the elevation of which Christ's person and work were worthy in glorifying God; the divine glory; likeness to Christ as He is, gone in, in virtue of it, to heaven. And such is the character of inspiration, or work of the Holy Ghost as to the revelation of it; and indeed necessarily must be. That is, it enters into the whole place and circumstances of man, reveals the glory into which he is to be brought, God glorified perfectly in Christ being the holy and eternal ground, and the Lord's sympathy with him in all his circumstances. Hence nothing is too great for man — still man — for he is brought into the glory of God, like Christ the Son, and in righteousness, and partaker of the divine nature: nothing too little for God, because He is entered into the sympathy of love with all that man is, and introduces divine life itself into every detail — words — what? the tone of a man's voice, counts the hairs of his head. It will enter into the case of a runaway slave and his master, of the health of the children of an elect lady. It will take up everything in which divine life can exercise itself and give a tone to our ways, children and parents, masters and slaves. And there is nothing in which divine life does not shew itself. It is the blessed truth that, first in person, then in inspired doctrine and the life of Christ in us, God is entered into everything in which the heart of man is engaged. I find God and God in grace, where the unhappy rationalist only finds a cloak.

Remarks on Rationalist Views

J. N. Darby.

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I send you a few remarks on modern rationalist views and their bearing on Christianity (just as I penned them down for myself), that Christians may not lightly suffer the taint of such views to approach them; whatever may be their patience with those who may be deceived.

"Do not think that I will accuse you to the Father: there is one that accuseth you, even Moses, in whom ye trust. For had ye believed Moses, ye would have believed me: for he wrote of me. But if ye believe not his writings, how shall ye believe my words?" (John 5: 45-47.)

Here we have more than one point. First, Moses' writings are attributed to him; next, it is declared that he wrote of Christ, of Jesus; thirdly, his writings are spoken of, and, because they are writings, as of authority superior, as far as form goes, to Christ's words. If, therefore, we do not receive his writings, Christ's words have no authority — Christ made a mistake as to his writing of Him — His whole interpretation of scripture is unfounded — His estimate of Himself is false as the object of this testimony. Who can guarantee its being well-founded on any other ground? He supposed God's mind was in the written word; the modern doctrine makes this a mistake — He was not the object of Moses' writings — nor did Moses write them!

Who can tell then that there was a Christ to come? or if Jesus was not the subject of this testimony, He was, if there was any such testimony, deceived as to Himself. The whole authority of Christ and His words is gone — as to God's mind and as to Himself. Christianity and Christ Himself are without foundation. For if Christ's own testimony is unfounded and Moses' too as to Him — or rather, if there is none such, as Christ supposed there was — what foundation have I for anything in Christianity as a revelation of the mind of God and of His Son as the truth?

Again He says, on the most solemn occasion as to the repentance or ruin of the Jews: "They have Moses and the prophets, let them hear them." Luke 16: 29. All this was misleading — they were not authentic. But further, if they are not heard, Christ declared His resurrection has no force to persuade. If they hear not Moses and the prophets, neither will they be persuaded if one rose from the dead. But all this was a blunder. There was no real power in Moses and the prophets. Christ made a mistake. Whatever His resurrection might do, Moses' writings were a forgery and had no authority whatever; so that there was no adequate ground to be persuaded by the resurrection itself. This was all Christ's solemn attestation was worth. Yet here the Lord was taking them out of the whole system of Jewish legalism. The event proved the truth of His words. They did not believe, though one rose from the dead; but then, it was a mistake of the Lord from that to blame them for not receiving the testimony of Moses and the prophets, for they were of no value at all. It was not Moses at all.

361 So, when He said, "Search [or, ye search] the scriptures . . . they are they which testify of me" John 5: 39 — the business, He declares, of the scripture was to testify of Him, Jesus, as the Christ. On whose part? Was it God's testimony, or the wild notions, previsions or interpretations of fanatics that Christ appealed to? What was the person testified to, or who appealed to their worth if they were? But if of God, "the scriptures" are so. We all know what that meant in a Jew's mouth.

Again in Luke 24, "and beginning at Moses and all the prophets, he expounded unto them in all the scriptures the things concerning himself," Luke 24: 27. What was He doing? And here no stupid blasphemous pretext about His having the prejudices of the Jews is of any avail. He was risen: I suppose He was freed from prejudices by that time. But what shall we say? It was not Moses; and the testimony of scripture was no really inspired prophetic testimony; consequently, not about Himself. The risen Lord misled, as much as when walking, before His death, on the earth. And Christians are to believe this! But He goes a step farther. He uses divine power over their minds as to it. "Then opened he their understandings, that they might understand the scriptures; and said unto them, Thus it is written, and thus it behoved Christ to suffer" Luke 24: 46, opened divinely their understanding to understand forgeries, or even, if you please, the rhapsodies of patriotic bards and pious compositions from old legends. Is not that singular? We have no truth as to Christ and what He did, if this be so; for what is ascribed to Him as risen and divinely operating on men's minds was never pressed in respect of an imposture. The utmost foundation was an obscure legend, patched up into a false story, and He not only mistook, when risen, all about it, but opened divinely their understandings to understand it!

362 Further, the Lord Himself quotes, as His reply to Satan, the scriptures with the emphatic declaration: "It is written." And when even Satan sets about, consequently, to use scripture, He does not leave this ground, but says "it is written again." Matt. 4: 7. Impossible to give a more striking testimony to where truth and power were to be found to baffle the enemy. He was led of the Spirit to this solemn conflict, that He might bind the strong man, and deliver men, spoiling his goods. But His victory was founded on a forged imposture, something that Jeremiah's fanaticism and Huldah and the chief priest's deceit got up to try and work a reformation: but in vain. So they tell us. I suppose the devil must have been a prejudiced Jew too, to let himself be silenced in this way! He was more blind and easily cheated than we are led to suppose.

Poor John the Baptist too! He was misleading the people, for he quotes the scriptures as testifying of himself. But that was all a mistake. How many am I to cite of them? In Matthew half the things which he recites are fulfilments of prophecies — some expressly so in purpose. But this was all a delusion.

When Jonas and Solomon are cited by the Lord, God knows what the cases are worth. When the Lord contrasted one of the ten commandments as the commandment of God with man's tradition — He made a gross mistake in condemning the scribes thus. It was no more such than the tradition. It may have been a more respectable tradition; but the ground which the Lord laid it on was all a blunder. The very point He insists upon, and which He declares was of such weight as to make all their worship vain, was a grave mistake. It was not to be believed, that they were really spoken or given of God at all. The appeal to Esaias was a mistake, and His own judgment equally so.

The appeals of the Lord to the scripture are, I need not say, incessant. "Did ye never read in the scriptures, The stone which the builders rejected," etc., Matt. 21: 42.

This was a prophecy just going to be fulfilled through their conduct towards Him? Was His appeal just?

When David in spirit calls the Son of David his Lord, was it inspired or not? When the scribes and Pharisees, evil as they were, sat in Moses' seat, they were to be listened to. Why, if Moses had not authority as a divine testimony? Their fathers had killed the prophets — but they were no prophets at all, if we are to listen to our new masters. When the Lord appeals to Daniel as speaking of the abomination of desolation, and presses on them to give intelligent attention, all this was a mistake, or a wilful deception. Of all prophets, Daniel, they tell us, was the most false and unreal.

363 I do not go any farther. I have cited sufficient of this class of texts to shew that the authority of the Old Testament (Moses in particular, but Psalms and prophets too,) is so interwoven with the whole text and substance of the New Testament that if it goes the New goes with it; and the authority of Christ, His being really the Christ too (for then His testimony and judgment are not worthy of credit), and Christianity itself. And this applies to Him, quite as much when risen and operating by divine power, and supposing that He opened man's understanding divinely to understand forgeries and imposture. This may do for rationalists, but not for men in their senses. And I pray the reader to remark, that we have not the expression "the word of God," as to which men might cavil, but "the scriptures."

Moses and Elias appeared in glory. Can we believe that this was no sanction to the places they held in Old Testament scriptures?

The Lord declares that Moses gave the commandment as to divorce, but because of the hardness of their hearts. All a mistake! Nor had He any need to blame or excuse him. David himself, He tells us, said, by the Holy Ghost, that Christ was to sit on God's right hand. Was this inspired? or what is Christ's authority here? They might in the books of Moses have read of God's appearance in the bush, a proof of the resurrection — all a fable. The Son of man was to go as it was written. He could have prayed, and had twelve legions of angels; but how, then, should the scriptures be fulfilled that thus it must be? It governs the Lord's own mind in the most solemn moment on which all hang, if Christianity is true, as in His early conflicts with Satan. When Jerusalem was encompassed with armies, they were the days of vengeance, that all things that were written might be fulfilled. But these were only idle threats of zealous Jehovists: so they would have us believe. Zacharias, filled with the Holy Ghost, prophesied and declared that the raising up Christ was as had been spoken by the mouth of God's holy prophets since the world began. Here we get threefold delusion. In Luke, who says Zacharias spoke by the Holy Ghost; in Zacharias, who declared the coming of Christ was fulfilling the prophets; in the supposition that they were God's holy prophets. This was so far from being the Holy Ghost, that it was Jewish prejudice; and the prophets themselves were fanatics or guilty of pious frauds! This is a comfortable basis for a religion and laying down your life for the truth of it. Christ quotes Elias and Eliseus according to this history; but His quotations of them are constant, and as applied to Himself and owning the prophets, and the law as distinct as in a passage already referred to in another view: "These are the words which I spake unto you while I was yet with you, that all things must be fulfilled which were written in the law of Moses, and in the prophets, and in the psalms, concerning me." Here the well-known division of the Hebrew scriptures is given. The Lord (and remark He is risen here) puts His seal upon them, and treats them as to be fulfilled as having spoken of Himself. The risen Lord treats them as inspired, and as prophecies of Himself. And then, as we saw before, He opened their understandings to understand them.

364 The scripture, the Lord declares to us, cannot be broken. Here men would have him speak according to Jewish notions. Did He come then to sanction them and to deceive men? In John they (the Jews) are always treated as reprobate; and this is the chapter where He is taking His sheep out of their fold. So the evangelist treats Esaias as inspired in the judgment pronounced on Israel, and declares the glory seen in Isaiah 6 to be Christ's glory, and Isaiah 53 to apply to Christ. In the most solemn of all hours that Jesus passed on earth, Jesus, intelligently aware that all things written of Him as to His path here were accomplished, says, "that the scripture might be fulfilled, I thirst," John 19: 28, and then, the last word being fulfilled, gives up His own spirit. But all this, for our new teachers, is a mistake and a delusion! And what comes of Christianity and of Christ? That John should quote other scriptures then as fulfilled is of small moment comparatively, save that it takes away all foundation as to any divine authority in any Christian documents.

That the Bereans searched the scriptures to see if Paul was right, commended in the account we have of it, was all a mistake! It was no way of judging it at all. They ought to have judged of Paul by their own minds, and the scriptures themselves by the same measure. When Peter refers to Psalm 16 as a proof of Christ's resurrection, all such prophetic statement of facts or reliance on scripture is unfounded. That Pentecost was a fulfilment of Joel — this is all a mistake. Pentecost was a comparatively modern invention; faith in prophecies — a delusion of the Jews. I refer to these cases, to shew that the Lord and the apostles systematically, constantly, and as of divine obligation, refer to the scriptures as of authority, as inspired prophecy, and make Christianity a fulfilment of them. Its truth is inseparably involved in it; its character is a fulfilment of them, though there be more in it. Christ Himself is declared to be a minister of the circumcision for the truth of God to confirm the promises made to the fathers. But all this is a mistake. That is, the promulgation of Christianity as alone it was promulgated was all error. Christ, Peter assured them, was the prophet that Moses had spoken of. This was all a mistake — Moses never wrote it — it was a legend; and he never spoke of Christ at all. Peter was misleading the Jews, when he called them the children of the prophets and of the covenant which God made with Abraham. All was delusion. It was no true history at all — not authentic; and prophets were patriotic, but deceived themselves, persuaded themselves, like any modern fanatic, that they were inspired.

365 But this is the only promulgation of Christianity which we have; and what comes of it and of Christ Himself too, when it is the only testimony? So the second Psalm is quoted. To Him give all the prophets witness. All a mistake! Stephen's speech is a tissue of legendary and unauthentic inventions; resisting the Holy Ghost — the Jews never were guilty of at all. They had judged justly in not believing Moses and the prophets. The mistake was in Christ and His apostles. Peter and the dying Stephen were only deluding themselves and others. When Philip opened his mouth and taught the docile eunuch out of Isaiah and other scriptures, as prophecies about Jesus, this was a mistake. He was baptized, as a fiction. That the Spirit caught away Philip . . . who then is to believe? When Gentiles were admitted, Peter declares to "him gave all the prophets witness." All a mistake! Paul, in Antioch, recites briefly the history of Israel given by Moses, Judges, etc., and declares God's promise there referred to Jesus the Son of David, declares that the Jews' conduct in putting the Lord to death was by the Jews' not knowing the voice of the prophets, which yet they fulfilled, that they fulfilled all that was written of Him, and that now God had fulfilled to the Jews the promise made to the fathers, and quotes the Psalms as fulfilled in Christ's resurrection, and declares that this was accomplishing the sure mercies of David, of which the prophet had spoken. That is, he founds Christianity on the truth and inspiration of the scriptures. It was God's fulfilment of what God had said. So in Thessalonica he reasons out of the scriptures to prove its truth. So Apollos mightily convinced the Jews, and that publicly, shewing by the scriptures, that Jesus was the Christ. In all his testimony Paul declares before Agrippa, that he was saying none other things than those which the prophets and Moses did say. His appeal to Agrippa was — Believest thou the prophets? All this w as delusion or deceit. When he came to Rome, he persuaded them concerning Jesus out of the law of Moses, and out of the prophets, from morning to evening, and he declares that the Holy Ghost spoke by Esaias.

366 I have thus brought forward these repeated instances, as shewing that the whole structure of Christianity is based on the inspiration of the Old Testament scriptures, and on the truth that God's mind was intentionally expressed in them; and that Christ presented Himself, and the apostles presented Him, as the fulfilment on God's part of what God had said, that there might be a positive previous testimony. If this be not so, then the whole system falls. There was no such intention, no such prophecies, and no such fulfilment. Christ and His apostles mistook the whole matter — and what are they?

We shall find the epistles proceed upon the same foundation. It would be endless to quote from the Epistles to the Romans, the Hebrews and others — all the scriptures quoted as conclusive authority, as being God's statements; and hence leaving no room for argument. But some passages as to the place given to scripture in the New Testament, and to those in the New Testament itself, it is of importance to quote definitely.

In Romans 16: 26, the New Testament scriptures are thus referred to: "But now is made manifest and by prophetic scriptures [this is the literal and only literal translation], according to the commandment of the everlasting God, made known to all nations for the obedience of faith." I say the New Testament — for the mystery is declared to have been kept secret since the world began, but to be made manifest now. There were things revealed before, as we have seen; but the doctrine of the Church, the breaking down of the middle wall of partition, the Gentiles being fellow-heirs and of one body, was hid in God (see Eph. 3) and required a positive revelation, and a new one.

367 The revelation of Christ, Son of David, and other truths, God had promised afore by the prophets in the holy scriptures. God Himself is the author of them, and Christ the purposed fulfilment of scripture; but there was needed a new revelation for certain truths, and we have it in prophetic scriptures.

"As it is written" is sufficient with Paul to bring in the whole world guilty. The great privilege of Israel was, that the oracles of God were committed to them; they were "oracles of God" for the apostle. In Exodus 33 "God spake to Moses," he tells us: and "the scripture saith to Pharaoh;" so "the scripture saith" suffices to set aside the whole Jewish system. (Rom. 10.) Let the reader only take a concordance and see the use of "it is written," say in the single chapter of Romans 1 5; So in Galatians 3, "the scripture foreseeing that God would justify the heathen," thus giving the authority of God's own mind to scripture: and that to Moses's statements of God's revelations to Abraham.

And note, as the foundation and character of Christianity itself, scripture concludes men under sin. What authority has it here? The law was our schoolmaster; nay, Christ submits to its prescribed curse — and it is not authentic!

Here is the apostle's account of his revelations. He knew the things by the Spirit; he spake them by words which the Holy Ghost taught, and they were received by the grace of the Spirit. Now I recognize freely here that this applies to preaching. I quote it to shew the direct assertion of revelation by the Spirit to him, and that his communications were in the words taught by the Spirit. But he can add, "If any man think himself to be a prophet, or spiritual, let him acknowledge that the things that I write unto you are the commandments of the Lord."

The well-known passage in 2 Timothy 3 gives us the clearest instruction on this point. It has peculiar emphasis, because the Church had already separated from godliness and order, and perilous times were to come, and evil men and seducers wax worse and worse. The saints needed a sure ground to go upon; a resting-place for their hearts somewhere. Besides personal confidence in Paul, which we have only in his writings, the apostle continues, "and that from a child thou hast known the holy scriptures which are able to make thee wise unto salvation through faith that is in Christ Jesus. All (every) scripture is given by inspiration of God, and is profitable for doctrine, for reproof, for correction, for instruction in righteousness, that the man of God may be perfect, throughly furnished unto all good works." 2 Tim. 3: 15. Now here, when the resource of a soul in a dangerous and distracting time had to be furnished, what was it? The holy scriptures, the holy writings. Forgeries are not holy, they are very unholy, whatever pious frauds may be in them; and certainly they are not a resource in dangerous times. It is a knowledge of it as a child takes it, a known resource of authority over the mind; next, it is not partial. All (or more exactly, every) scripture is given by inspiration of God, is Θεόπνευστος.

368 It is said, it is the Old Testament here. Be it so. The part attacked as legends and frauds is inspired. But it is not so. It is an assertion of what the true character of all scripture is; whatever has a claim to that tide (the prophetic scriptures spoken of, Romans 16), they are given by inspiration of God, and sufficient to make the man of God perfect.

Now, remark here, that if I receive Christianity, I receive it as a revelation by divinely-inspired teachers. But these teachers (whatever credit they assume to themselves, both Christ and the apostles) refer me to the holy scriptures as divine authority, and quote them as absolutely conclusive, an authority by which they would be judged, and sufficient proof of their words; and refer to them as we have them, and in particular to Moses as the giver of the law.

The whole authority of Christianity as a revelation fails, if the inspiration and authority of scripture fails. There is nothing else certain in it. It professes to give it as a security always, and especially where men failed in practically acting up to it.

Other passages confirm this. In the Hebrews we read, "God, who at sundry times and in divers manners spake in time past unto the fathers by the prophets, hath in these last days spoken unto us by his Son." Heb. 1: 1.

The Epistle to the Hebrews is wholly founded on the authenticity of the law as given of God, and that, as a divine revelation, prospective of Christianity, a shadow only it is true, but purposely designed to be only such, and the, tabernacle and its furniture to be given of God as a pattern of things in the heavens; and, if there was then a veil and it was rent now, the Holy Ghost was signifying, it tells us, something by it. I repeat, the whole structure of the New Testament, and the religion it reveals, is interwoven into the inspiration of the Old, as of itself. Take it away, and it is a false system: both of them are. A man may tell me he believes in Christ in spite of it all. I can conceive a case where there may be living faith abiding, and a bewildered mind, in one who had learned it from divine sources; but he does not believe in revealed Christianity, nor in its authority as a revelation.

369 Note here, that the Epistle to the Hebrews never refers to the temple, which might be said to be then before them, but to the tabernacle, and the Mosaic account of it, and in Hebrews 11 quotes, I may say, the whole history of the Book of Genesis, and all the Pentateuch and Joshua, as the Lord used Deuteronomy against Satan.

And, remark, all the New Testament writers thus quote scripture. All the prophets, Job, the Kings, the Pentateuch, Joshua, are quoted by James as acknowledged; nor for him can the scriptures speak in vain.

Peter is equally clear. The Spirit of Christ was in the prophets, and testified beforehand. Because "it is written" is a sufficient authority — the natural appeal. Christianity is then for them to act on, because also it is contained in the scripture, "Behold I lay in Zion," etc. Again, the prophecies of Isaiah are interwoven with his own statements. What Isaiah was prophesying, he was preaching; both stand or fall together. (1 Peter 1: 23; 1 Peter 2: 8.) So as to Exodus and Hosea (1 Peter 2: 9, 10, 23); Genesis, the Psalms (in 1 Peter 3), and Isaiah. It is a complete working up of the Old Testament scriptures. In his second epistle we have the glory of Christ as seen on the mount of transfiguration; a confirmation of the Old Testament prophecies, which were a candle till the full light of the dawn of Christ's coming on earth should arise in their hearts.

But scripture was no isolated individual announcement; every prophecy of scripture was divine. Holy men — not patriotic bards, or concocters of pious frauds to act on the mind of a young king — had spoken. Prophecy did not come in old time by the will of man, exactly what is alleged as to it; but "holy men of God spake as they were moved by the Holy Ghost." 2 Peter 1: 21. He also calls the writings of Paul scriptures; putting them on a level with the rest. John is very bold, and says that listening to the apostles is a test whether a man is of God or not. "Hereby know we the Spirit of truth and the spirit of error." 1 John 4: 6. He that knoweth God heareth them, he tells us. How am I to listen to him now? He and Jude both refer to the Pentateuch as of unquestioned and unquestionable authority. We know what the Revelation threatens to them who mutilate or add to it. Such are the witnesses which the Lord and His apostles give to the authority, authenticity, and inspiration of scripture.

370 What is the Christian to do? Am I to believe, or throw up the authority of Christ and His apostles? What is the authority of Christianity itself if I do? Am I the disciple of impostors or deceived men, or of the blessed Son of God; and receiving divine truth from His inspired servants?