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CORNELL 
 
 UNIVERSITY 
 
 LIBRARY 
 
Cornell University Library 
 BS480 .S21 1905 
 
 Oracles of God: nine lectures on the nat 
 
 olin 
 
 3 1924 029 273 757 
 
The original of this book is in 
 the Cornell University Library. 
 
 There are no known copyright restrictions in 
 the United States on the use of the text. 
 
 http://www.archive.org/details/cu31924029273757 
 
THE ORACLES OF GOD 
 
The Oracles of God 
 
 NINE LECTURES 
 
 ON THE 
 
 NATURE AND EXTENT OF BIBLICAL INSPIRATION 
 
 AND OH THB 
 
 SPECIAL SIGNIFICANCE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 SCRIPTURES AT THE PRESENT TIME 
 
 ^t(5 ^wo dElj5j}4nbtee0 
 
 BY 
 
 W. SANDAY, M.A., D.D., LL.D. 
 
 DEAN IRELAND'S PROFESSOR OF EXEGESIS ; 
 FELLOW OF EXETER COLLEGE ; OXFORD PREACHER AT WHITEHALL 
 
 NEW IMPRESSION 
 
 LONGMANS, GREEN, AND CO. 
 
 39 PATERNOSTER ROW, LONDON 
 NEW YORK AND BOMBAY 
 
 1905 
 
 [All rights reservtd'] 
 
TO 
 
 MY FRIENDS AND COLLEAGUES 
 
 Samiiel IRolles ©river XLbomas iKeUB Cbegne 
 DaviD Samuel ^argolfoutb 
 
 THIS LITTLE BOOK IS AFFECTIONATELY DEDICATED 
 
 IN GRATEFUL REMEMBRANCE 
 
 OF ALL THAT I OWE TO THEM IN THE PAST 
 
 AND IN CONFIDENT HOPE OF MORE 
 
 WHICH NOT ONLY I BUT MANY OTHERS WILL OWE TO THEM 
 
 IN THE FUTURE 
 
Hoc erit factum, quod feriam cum domo Israel 
 post dies illos, dicit Dominus : Dabo legem meam in 
 viscej'ibus eormn, et in corde eorum scribam earn : 
 ei ero eis in Denm, et ipsi erunt mihi in poprduni. 
 
PREFACE. 
 
 The duty of the Theological Professor appears 
 to be twofold : on the one hand to advance by all 
 the means in his power the detailed study of the 
 subject committed to him, and on the other to do 
 what he can to help the public mind to clear itself 
 in times of difficulty and perplexity. It is with some 
 reluctance and self-distrust that the writer of these 
 pages has turned away for the moment from the first 
 of these functions to take up the second. He does 
 hot know how far the thoughts which have been 
 helpful to himself may be helpful also to others, and 
 he does not know how far he may be able to state 
 them acceptably. Still the call has seemed to come 
 to him, and he has obeyed it to the best of his 
 ability. 
 
 Of the lectures which follow, the first six were 
 preached as a course at Whitehall on the mornings 
 and afternoons of three successive Sundays (July 27, 
 August 3 and 10), which, if report speaks true, 
 inay prove to be the last on which the Chapel was 
 open. If that should be the case they would also 
 thark the close of a line of University preachers 
 
viii PREFACE. 
 
 which has included many illustrious names. The 
 lectures were shortly afterwards repeated in Oxford 
 to some of the students who came up in con- 
 nexion with the movement for University Extension : 
 a few alterations were made to adapt them to 
 this second purpose, and it was then that the notes 
 were added. The subject of Lecture VII had been 
 originally dealt with in one of these notes, but it 
 was felt that it required a fuller treatment. This, 
 therefore, with Lecture VIII, may be taken as sup- 
 plementary to the original series. Lecture IX was 
 delivered to a different audience from the University 
 pulpit at St. Mary's. It should be said perhaps that 
 in the case of all the earlier discourses the audience 
 was of a very changing character : this involved a 
 certain amount of repetition which it was attempted 
 to reduce to as narrow limits as possible. 
 
 The lectures contain partly what the author wished 
 to say and partly what he was compelled to say as 
 the necessary set-off on the other side. Our age 
 needs above all something positive — not exactly, as 
 it is sometimes urged, positive teaching, or dogma, 
 for which it does not see the reasons, but positive 
 reasons, few, simple, and fundamental, which it can 
 apprehend for itself and on which it can take its 
 stand. Such reasons, or some of them, it has been 
 the author's earnest desire to supply; and if in the 
 course of stating them he has had to put forward 
 the- negative side of the question, it is only because 
 he was bound in candour not to give the one without 
 
PREFACE. ix 
 
 the other. It will be very much in accordance with 
 his wishes if those to whom this is superfluous will 
 pass on at once to Lectures III or IV where the 
 positive argument begins. 
 
 The question was often asked at the Extension 
 Lectures what books could be recommended as 
 giving expression to the changed views of things here 
 contemplated. As a simple and popular survey of 
 the ground it did not seem easy to name a better 
 book than one which came into the author's hands 
 just as the lectures were being delivered, The Nature 
 and Method of Revelation, by Dr. G. P. Fisher, 
 Professor of Ecclesiastical History in the University 
 of Yale (New York, Scribners ; London, Fisher 
 Unwin). Rather less popular and more limited in its 
 range, but full of weighty thought, is The Chief End 
 of Revelation, by Dr. A. B. Bruce (London, Hodder). 
 On a larger scale, going fully into the criticism of 
 the Old Testament, it was not possible to mention 
 anything in English, but two companion volumes 
 had recently appeared by a writer of singular sobriety 
 of judgment who in the truth-loving pursuit of 
 science never lost sight of the interests of religion, 
 the posthumously published Einleitung in das Alie 
 Testament and Alttestamentliche Theologie of Dr. 
 Eduard Riehm, sometime Professor at Halle. It 
 is hoped, however, that the English reader may soon 
 be more immediately provided for by the promised 
 Introduction to the Literature of the Old Testament 
 from the pen of Dr. Driver. A very comprehensive 
 
PREFACE, 
 
 and constructive little work, written in an admirable 
 spirit, by another Halle Professor, recently deceased, 
 Schlottmann's Kompendium der BiblischeH Theologie 
 des Alien und Neuen Testaments, is being translated 
 by the ReV. A. Robertson, Principal of Bishop 
 Hatfield's Hall, Durham". Happily, although English 
 books written from a standpoint similar to this are 
 rare, for the central point of all we have an almost 
 ideal treatment in Dr. Driver's Isaiah (Nisbet), 
 backed as it is by Professor Cheyne's commentary. 
 
 It only remains to add that the author's old and 
 tried friend, Dr. Plummer, has done him the kind- 
 ness to look over the proofs and help him with his 
 advice. 
 
 Marchfield, Oxford. 
 October JO, 1890. 
 
PREFACE 
 TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 In sending out a second edition of his little book 
 the author cannot refrain from expressing his sense 
 of the pains which have been taken by many, if not 
 quite by all, of those who differed from him as well 
 as of those who agreed with him, to deal justly and 
 more than justly with what he has written. He 
 could not have wished for a better or more faithful 
 reproduction of the leading features of his book 
 than has been accorded to it in more quarters than 
 he could have hoped for. 
 
 The one feature which he was himself most anxious 
 to succeed in bringing out was the appeal to the 
 consciousness of those who were chosen to be the 
 bearers of Revelation (Lecture IV). The best evi- 
 dence for the reality of that Revelation seemed to 
 him to be the clear and strong conviction on the 
 part of those who gave expression to it, that it was no 
 invention of their own, but that it was put into their 
 thoughts directly by God. This view is in fact ex- 
 actly that which is stated by Luther in one of his 
 most striking aphorisms. 
 
 'Melanchthon discoursing with Luther touchingthe prophets, 
 who continually boast thus, " Thus saith the Lord," asked 
 Whether God, in person, spoke with them or nO. Luther 
 
xii PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 replied : They were very holy,, spiritual people, who seriously 
 contemplated upon holy and divine things ; therefore God 
 spake with them in their consciences, which the prophets 
 held as sure and certain revelations.' — {Table Talk, dxlix). 
 
 The great Reformer was a man of unguarded speech, 
 and laid himself open to criticisms which have been 
 meted out to him somewhat unsparingly of late; it 
 may be well therefore to note in passing, what quiet 
 thought, what genuine religious apprehension lay be- 
 hind his vehement utterance. We are however rather 
 concerned with the substance of this particular saying, 
 which sums up better than the writer himself could 
 the gist of what he wished to say. He is the more 
 glad to have such an authority at his back, because it 
 is just this part of his argument which is taken up 
 and directly challenged by an able critic in the 
 Inquirer for Feb. a8, 1891. 
 
 ' In the midst of this manifold imperfectness, it is difBcult 
 to see where the alleged "inspiration" can come in, or what 
 has been the good of it. This divine quality does, however, 
 we are told, abundantly manifest and vindicate itself. It is 
 seen, first, in the fact that Moses, Isaiah, and other eminent 
 Biblical characters were pressed into their legislative or pro- 
 phetic office against their own will, and therefore the impulse 
 which moved them came to them from without — or in other 
 words, was the product of the divine afflatus which we term 
 Inspiration. But then the passages relied upon to prove this 
 (in Exodus iii., Isaiah vi., Jerem. i., and others) may surely 
 be referred simply to the sacred writer's style, his vivid and 
 earnest manner of expressing the resolves of his own mind, 
 as suggested to him by the. circumstances around him. As 
 for example, when Isaiah (xx.) says that the Lord told him 
 to walk naked and barefoat three years for a sign and a 
 wonder upon Egypt, or when Ezekiel (iii.) says that the Lord 
 commanded him to eat the roll of the book, and in another 
 
PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION, xiii 
 
 place (iv.) to take a tile and portray upon it a siege of 
 Jerusalem — are we to think that in such narratives as these 
 (which are pretty numerous in the prophets) actual occur- 
 rences are recorded? Are they not simply the prophet's way of 
 describing, pictorially and figuratively, his own thoughts and 
 purposes ? Clearly the latter is the only rational explanation.' 
 
 It will hardly be denied that if some of these sym- 
 bolical acts are regarded as taking place in trance or 
 vision (Isa. vi. 6 L, Ezek. iii. i f.) others are as clearly 
 regarded as literally put into execution (Isa. xx. a f., 
 Ezek. iv. i ff. ; cf. i Kings xi. 29 ff., xx. 35 fif.,, xxii. 
 II, &c.). But the question is whether the prompting 
 Was really external to the prophet and really came 
 from God as he supposed it to come. It need not be 
 disputed that the particular form which the sym- 
 bolism took was as much the product of the pro- 
 phet's own mind as the words which he wrote came 
 to him by natural processes ; but unless we would- 
 explain away the language of the Bible altogether, we 
 must needs believe that there was an impulse from above 
 working through and guidingthose processes. Certainly 
 the biblical writers imagined themselves to be doing 
 something more than using metaphors. We may think 
 that they were mistaken, and to a materialist this is the 
 only explanation possible, but if we once believe that 
 there is a spiritual Being who does hold any sort of 
 converse with the soul of man, then it becomes far more 
 reasonable to take the prophets at their word. The 
 alternative is to explain away not only these but a 
 myriad other facts of human consciousness in like 
 manner. And if that were done we might as well 
 close the book of human thought altogether, and 
 content ourselves with inscribing Vanitas vanitatum 
 outside. 
 
xiv PREFACE TO THE SECOND EDITION. 
 
 On one other crucial point a word should be added. 
 In speaking of the condescension of the Son of God 
 (p. Ill), it is right that full stress should be laid on the 
 voluntary nature of that condescension. Justice must 
 be done to the strongly reflexive form of the Greek 
 text in the passage on which it mainly turns : eKtvoiaev 
 favTov, He emptied Himself — by no external compul- 
 sion but by that same free and gracious act by which 
 He took our nature upon Him. One of the author's most 
 scholarly correspondents reminds him of a passage 
 with which he was not unfamiliar, though he had not 
 thought of using it in this connexion. As far back as 
 Irenaeus the necessity was seen for taking account of 
 this side of the Incarnation. The phrase which he 
 used was the quiescence of the Word (ro i\<Tvya^av roS 
 Koyov, Adv. Haer. iii. 19. 3). It was by means of this 
 conception that Irenaeus explained the possibility that 
 the Son of Man could undergo temptation ; and His 
 self-renunciation in matters of literary knowledge 
 may well be placed in the same category. 
 
 In the present edition some errors of the press 
 have been corrected, and a few verbal changes have 
 been made chiefly in the Biblical quotations in cases 
 where greater accuracy seemed desirable. The only 
 addition is the valuable Note to Appendix I, for the 
 substance of which the author is indebted to the 
 kindness of Dr. Driver. 
 
 Easter, 1891. 
 
CONTENTS. 
 
 CHAP. PAGE 
 
 I. The Present Disquietude ...... i 
 
 II. The Human Element in the Bible .... 15 
 
 III. The Divine Element generally considered . . 34 
 
 IV. The Divine Element in its Special Manifestations 47 
 
 V. The Blending of Human and Divine . . ,61 
 
 VI. Loss AND Gain 76 
 
 VII. True and False Inspiration ..... S9 
 
 VIII. Christ and the Scriptures loa 
 
 IX. The Special Valub of the Old Testament at the 
 
 Present Time 113 
 
 Appendix I. The Date of the Psalter . . . .129 
 
 Appendix II. Some Extracts from Recent Criticism on 
 THE Defective Apprehension of the Old Testament 
 IN the Early Church ....... 150 
 
I. 
 
 THE PRESENT DISQUIETUDE. 
 CWMtehall, July 27, 1890.) 
 
 Hebrews i. i, 2. 
 
 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. 
 
 There is concentrated in these words a whole 
 philosophy of revelation. They contain a summary 
 view of the more special dealings of God with man. 
 They embrace the age of patriarchs, prophets, and 
 cipostles, and they trace the course which the several 
 fevelations of God followed till they finally cul- 
 minated in His Son. 
 
 Before we go more fully into the passage just a 
 word should be said as to its exact meaning. This is 
 apt to be obscured by the rendering with which 
 we are most familiar. The free and beautiful rhythm 
 of our old Bibles is gained at some cost of minute 
 accuracy of expression, which is preserved in the 
 stiffer and less living version adopted by the Revisers : 
 God having of old time spoken unto the fathers in 
 the prophets by divers portions and in divers manners, 
 
a THE PRESENT DISQUIETUDE. 
 
 ■*f 
 
 hath at the end of these days spoken tmto us in His 
 Son (more strictly still in One who is Son) . 
 
 By many portions and in many manners is the 
 characteristic phrase which is chosen to describe the 
 methods of God's Spirit up to that final epoch 
 inaugurated by the coming of the Son. It would 
 probably be true to say that the fitness of these 
 words has never been appreciated so fully as it is 
 now. Let us ask ourselves what they mean. 
 
 They mean, first, that the revelation of God to man 
 has not been made all at once. It has been a long 
 process and a gradual process ; a process broken up 
 into parts and those parts all fitting into each other, 
 so as to form not merely a continuous chain but an 
 articulated whole. Mahometanism has but a single 
 prophet. Its sacred book is the work of one man. 
 Its doctrines were all proclaimed at one time. Its 
 Theology was built up from beginning to end in thq 
 course of a single life. It had no period of prepara- 
 tion. It came into the world as an adult system ; at 
 least its maturity was reached so rapidly that it might 
 be described as adult. I am not of course speaking of 
 Mahometanism as a historical phenomenon. His- 
 tor-ically it has its antecedents, and those antecedents 
 can be explained and traced ; but as a prophet 
 Mahomet had no precursors. He brought his own 
 credentials ; he delivered his own message ; he left 
 
 ' The preposition cannot rightly be explained as merely instrumental; 
 cf.' Rom. i. 19, Gal. i. 16. 
 
THE PRESENT DISQUIETUDE. 3 
 
 that message in a form which he intended to be final, 
 and to need no supplementing by others. 
 
 In all these respects the faith of Christ and that 
 of Mahomet stand in marked contrast. Mahomet 
 indeed had Christianity and Judaism to build upon, 
 or he would never have reached the height that he 
 did. He himself to some extent recognised his 
 obligations. But when we think of Mahometanism, 
 we think of a religion promulgated once for all as a 
 whole. And the difference when we turn to our own 
 Bibles helps us to realize what is meant by divers 
 portions. 
 
 Then again, secondly, Christianity, has also been 
 revealed in divers manners. There may be unity 
 beneath the diversity, but still the result is diverse. 
 All these worketh the self -same Spirit, dividing to 
 every man severally as He will. Our Christian revela- 
 tion is expressed through the medium of many indi- 
 vidualities. Paul is one ; ApoUos is another ; Cephas 
 is distinct from both, and yet more James. The New 
 Testament is full of different types and shades of 
 teaching. And if the New Testament, quite as much 
 the Old. There we have lawgiver, historian, psalmist, 
 prophet ; and not only ' prophet ' but ' prophets,' not 
 only ' psalmist ' but ' psalmists,' not only ' historian ' 
 but ' historians.' How clearly here again do some of 
 the types stand before us ! How different is Jeremiah 
 from Isaiah, Amos from Hosea, Micah from Ezekiel ! 
 B a 
 
THE PRESENT DISQUIETUDE. 
 
 And if these distinctions and idiosyncrasies appear in 
 the authors whom we know, may we not expect to. 
 find them equally in the authors whom we do not 
 Jcnow, in the anonymous composers of psalms or 
 narratives ? As a matter of fact we do find thefii ; 
 and the labours of successive gerierations of scholars, 
 have succeeded in discriminating some of them with 
 great nicety. 
 
 Much might be said about this, and something 
 may perhaps be said at some future time, but I do 
 not wish at present to raise any difference of opinion. 
 So far I believe that I shall have carried all my 
 hearers with me. I have in fact merely paraphrased 
 — and that in the most general terms — the words of 
 my text. It is when we leave general terms that 
 divergence begins. God spake of old time to the 
 fathers in the prophets, by divers portions and in 
 divers manners. In other words, God revealed Him- 
 self through that long period of time which preceded 
 the coming of Christ, through His prophets in ways 
 which were partial and differing in individuals though 
 coalescing together so as, to form a whole. 
 
 Still I do not think that there will be any dis- 
 agreement with this. It is only when we come to 
 close quarters and ask, in what sense ' God spake,' 
 in what sense He revealed Himself, to what precise 
 extent the revelations given by Him were partial, 
 to what precise extent the individuality of the 
 
THE PRESENT DISQUIETUDE. 
 
 messenger entered into his message, that differences 
 of opinion will arise. 
 
 And "here I know that I am beginning to tread 
 upon dangerousj because sacred, ground. I am be- 
 ginning to touch on matters in which deep feelings 
 are involved.. And I must beware, or do my best to 
 beware, of making sad the heart of the righteous 
 whom the Lord hath not made sad. 
 
 It cannot be denied that there is not a little dis- 
 quietude and anxiety in the air, and that especially 
 amongst good people. They are concerned at 
 opinions which have been expressed upon a point 
 which I am now approaching. They have recently 
 become aware — more fully aware than they were 
 before — of a considerable change of front among 
 scholars and thoughtful men in regard primarily to 
 the Old Testament, but we might add also to the 
 New. And the form which this has taken is such as 
 to excite uneasiness and apprehension. 
 
 This uneasy feeling is not lessened by the fact that 
 the expressions of opinion by which it has been 
 excited have not had anything of the nature of an 
 attack. They have not come from the Extreme 
 Left or from the destructive party in ecclesiastical 
 politics and theology, but they have come from men 
 of known weight and sobriety of judgment, from men 
 of strong. Christian convictions, who it is felt would 
 not lightly disturb the same convictions in others, 
 
THE PRESENT DISQUIETUDE. 
 
 men, too, of learning, who do riot speak without 
 knowing what they say. 
 
 It is not mine to interpose with authority iii these 
 matters. In these days it is necessary for every one 
 who would do sound and permanent work to choose 
 some definite line. And the line which I have choseri 
 stretches forwards from the New Testament rather 
 than backwards. In regard to the Old Testament I 
 can only look on from outside. But at the same time 
 one who holds a responsible position must do his best 
 to ascertain which" way' things are tending : he must 
 not let any considerable change in theology come 
 upon him unprepared : he must consider beforehand 
 how it is likely to affect himself and to affect others, 
 especially those who come under his charge. And it 
 is from that point of view that the remarks which I 
 am about to rnake in this and in succeeding sermons 
 will be offered. 
 
 I shall abstain from expressing any opinion as to 
 the extent to which the conclusions involved have 
 been proved. In regard to this there may be not a 
 few here who will be as well able to form a judgment 
 as I am. I, like them, must be content to take a 
 great deal upon trust. The only advantage"! can 
 claim is perhaps a rather fuller acquaintance with 
 foreign work as well as with English, and with the 
 general balance of opinion abroad as well as at home. 
 I have also the advantage that some of those engaged 
 
tHS: PRESENT DISQUIETUDE. 7 
 
 in these studies are personal friends of my own, and 
 to their singleness of mind and earnest religious pur- 
 pose, as well as to their thorough competence to deal 
 with questions of so much importance, I must needs 
 bear testimony. 
 
 The question as to which I said that there was ' a 
 change of front is as to the nature of God's revelation 
 of Himself in the Bible, and especially in the Old 
 Testament, or more accurately as to the nature of 
 the methods by which that revelation has been con- 
 veyed. There is no change at all in respect to the 
 Divine attributes revealed in the Old Testament ; 
 thpre is no change as to the lessons of human duty 
 to be derived from it; no change as to the general 
 .conclusion that the Old Testament points forward 
 prophetically to Christ, though there may be some 
 change in the interpretation of particular prophecies : 
 but there is a change in regard to the conception of 
 the Old Testament itself as the vehicle of revelation. 
 
 I will endeavour the next time we meet to state 
 more precisely in what this change consists. For the 
 present I will content myself with attempting to 
 answer the preliminary question, why there should 
 be any such change. All, no doubt, will not admit 
 the reasons. The student of the subject jnust form 
 his own opinion as to how far they are adequate. I 
 .simply state the fact that they exist. 
 
 The reasons are partly external and partly internal. 
 
THE PRESENT DISQUIETUDE. 
 
 Partly they turn upon the discovery or extended use 
 of new rnaterial, and partly they depend upon the 
 closer analysis of the sacred texts. 
 
 The Old Testament has not been unafTected by the 
 explorations which have been going on so actively 
 in the East for the last half century. In Egypt, 
 Palestine, Assyria, and Babylonia much has been 
 done. The enterprise of English societies has sur- 
 veyed and mapped a great part of the Holy Land, 
 and . has unearthed the buried monuments of the 
 ancient Egyptian civilization. In both these tasks 
 French and German savants have also been busy. 
 Many of the sculptures which adorned the Assyrian 
 palaces had before this found their way through 
 private energy to the British Museum or the Louvre. 
 Whole libraries of the baked brick tablets which 
 served for books have been disinterred from the 
 mounds in which they lay, and are being deciphered 
 and published. A whole people, the Hittites, have 
 been, as it were, resuscitated from their grave, though 
 as yet our knowledge of them is but slight. 
 
 In many respects the result of these discoveries has 
 been to confirm the truth of the Old Testament 
 history — in many, but not quite in all. 
 
 An instructive example is supplied by the chro- 
 nology. Both the Assyrian and the Babylonian 
 chronologies rest on a very secure basis. They can 
 be traced up to authorities which are either con- 
 
THE PRESENT DISQUIETUDE. 9 
 
 temporary or nearly contemporary. And they are 
 further confirmed by the mention of astronomical 
 phenomena^ such as ech'pses, which have been verified 
 by modern calculations. Now although these chro- 
 nologies present a great deal of approximate agree- 
 ment with the Books of Kings there are some 
 not unimportant differences \ 
 
 ^ The state of the case is this. For the Assyrian chronology we have 
 what are called the ' Eponymous lists,' that is lists of certain officials 
 after whom the years were reckoned, just as at Rome they were reckoned 
 after the consuls. These lists eidst in two forms, a shorter which gives 
 the names only, and a longer which adds brief notes of contemporary 
 events. The first extends from 893-666 B.C., the second only from 
 817-728 B.C. or a little further. In addition to the lists there are also 
 inscriptions of the different kings. For the later Babylonian history we 
 have the so-called Ptolemaean Canon. Ptolemy is the celebrated geo- 
 grapher and astronomer who lived at Alexandria in the second century 
 A.D. He has preserved for us a. list, originally carried from Babylonia 
 to Egypt, of the Babylonian kings from Nabonassar in 747 downwards. 
 The accuracy of this list is doubly vouched for, by coincidences with the 
 Assyrian records and also by the mention of eclipses. 
 
 The Assyrian and the Biblical data agree exactly in assigning the Fall 
 of Samaria to the year 722 B.C., but some correction is required of the 
 statement in 2 Kings xviii. 10 that this event took place in the sixth 
 year of King Hezekiah. Sennacherib's invasion, which three verses 
 lower is assigned to the fourteenth year of the same king, did not really 
 take place imtil after the year 702. This point I believe is well made 
 out ; and it appears to be also necessary to shorten the reigns of Uzziah, 
 which has fifty-two years assigned to it in 2 Kings xv. 2, and of Manasseh, 
 which is reckoned fifty-five years in 2 Kings xxi. i. I take these points 
 of chronology as Involving a clear and definite issue, and because a 
 strong case can be made out for the non-Biblical authorities in regard 
 ^to them. (See Riehm, Einleitung, i. 464 ff. ; Rosch in Herzog, xvii. 
 474 ff. ed. 2 ; Schrader, Keilinschiften, Sec. p. 292 ff.) Another instance 
 
lO THE PRESENT DISQUIETUDE. 
 
 Of another kind was the discovery of the tablets 
 Vvhich contain Babylonian versions of the Creation 
 and of the Flood. With all their inferiority, the 
 resemblance of these to the corresponding Biblical 
 stories was striking and needed to be accounted for^. 
 
 of the same kind, in whicli the Bible is at variance with a contemporary 
 monument, is in regard to the revolt of Moab from Israel which, accord- 
 ing to 2 Kings i. i, iii. 5, took place a/ter,but according to the Moabite 
 stone ie/ore the death of Ahab (see Driver, JVoies on Heb. Text of the 
 Books of Samuel, p. Ixxxviii f.). 
 
 ' The most searching examination of the Babylonian versions will 
 probably be found in Jensen, Die Kosmologie der Babylonier, Strassburgj 
 1890. The English reader should consult especially an article by Dr. 
 Driver in the Expositor for January, 1886. It would seem that traditions 
 -in respect to the Creation and the Flood were originally the common 
 property of the Semitic races, developed by each in accordance with 
 the genius of its religion. We shall see later (Lecture V.) that they 
 were not of a kind to be referred directly to Revelation ; at the same 
 time in the Hebrew version the influence of the Spirit of Revelation is 
 clearly visible, not on the side which belongs of right to science, but in 
 all that concerns the nature and relations of God and man. Even from 
 the point of view of science, when allowance is made for the simple 
 mode of presentation which alone was possible when the early chapters 
 of Genesis were written, we may see an approximation to the truth which 
 the believer in Providence will easily refer to its origin : but we must 
 be careful not to exaggerate the extent of this approximation. .The 
 history of science reveals plainly that God has permitted the evolution 
 •of true ideas on scientific subjects to be entangled in a mass of fantastic 
 error. In the Biblical account this appears to be reduced to something 
 like a minimum. More than this we cannot safely say. [I am glad to 
 be able to refer to an article by the Dean of Peterborough in the 
 Expositor for October, 1890. He quotes an authority no less un- 
 prejudiced than Haeckel as affirming that ' from Moses, who died about 
 1480 B.C., down to Linnaeus, who was born 1707 a.d., there has beea 
 no history of creation to be compared to the Biblical' (p. 243).] 
 
THE PRESENT DISQUIETUDE. [i 
 
 > By the side of this and of more far-reaching signi- 
 ficance are the results obtained — of at least thought 
 to be obtained — from the critical investigation of the 
 Bible itself. The last hundred years have been a 
 time of great activity, in which literary problems of 
 all kinds have had much attention paid to them. 
 The Bible also is a literature, and it was inevitable 
 that the same methods which had been applied to 
 other literatures should be applied also to it ^ It 
 
 • In regard to the analytic criticism of the Old Testament I may 
 remark that there is for the most part in England a very imperfect idea 
 of the immense mass of literature and of close detailed study dealing 
 with it. ■ The most prominent problem relates to the composition of 
 the Pentateuch. The systematic treatment of this may be said to date 
 from the French Court-physician Astruc, whose work, under the title 
 Conjectures sur les Mimoires originaux, dont il paroit, que Moyse s^est 
 servi four composer le livre de Geiiise, appeared at Brussels in 1753. 
 ■From that time onwards, but especially in the last fifty years, an almost 
 incessant stream of publications upon the subject has come out, most 
 of them dealing with the subject at first hand and with great minute- 
 ness and care. A very significant fact was the conversion of the veteran 
 Delitzsch, who died on March 4th of this year at the age of nearly 
 seventy-seven, substantially to the new views. A man of extraordinary 
 learning and of deep piety, he had all his life long contended for the 
 Mosaic authorship of the Pentateuch, until first, in two preliminary essays 
 published in 1880 and 1882, and then in the fifth edition of bis Com- 
 mentary on Genesis, published in 1887, he threw over this, and without 
 admitting any change in his religious convictions he practically went 
 over to the other side. We must not lose sight either of the enormous 
 amount of labour expended on this subject, or of the very considerable 
 extent of agreement which has been reached upon it on the Continent. 
 It is agreed on all hands that the Pentateuch is formed by the dovetail- 
 ing together of different documents ; it is agreed by the great mass of 
 
I a THE PRESENT DISQUIETUDE. 
 
 has ■ been approached by friends and approached by 
 enemies, approached by religious minds and ap- 
 proached by others the primary interest of which 
 was not reHgious. What then? Is not the Bible 
 capable of satisfying all this manifold curiosity? 
 The landowner who holds his property by long and 
 lineal descent does not mind having his title deeds 
 examined. And we with eighteen centuries of Chris- 
 tian history behind us — with eighteen centuries, nayj 
 with more than twice eighteen centuries in which the 
 finger of God has been visibly manifest ordering and 
 guiding the course of events down to this present — 
 why should we take alarm ? why should we expect 
 that anything but good should issue from the process, 
 in the future more than in the past ? 
 
 enquirers that nearly all of these documents in their present shape are 
 not earlier than the time of the Kings. The points most debated are 
 (i) how far the traditions embodied in these documents go back ulti- 
 mately to Moses, and (2) whether a particular document, the so-called 
 Priestly Code, is earlier or later than the ExiLe. An average view of 
 the results obtained for the Book of Genesis is conveniently presented 
 in a work by two Tiibingen Professors, Kautzsch and Socin, who have 
 printed the text in different types correspondmg to the different docu- 
 ments {Die Genesis mit ausserer Unterscheidung der Qttellenschriften, 
 Freiburg i. B., 1888). Similar problems arise in respect to the historical 
 books. The other most prominent questions are the assignment of large 
 parts of the Book of Isaiah and of the last six chapters of Zechariah to 
 writers other than the authors of the main body of the book — in the 
 case of Isaiah later, and in the case of Zechariah earlier ; and the dates 
 of the composition of many parts of the Psalter and the Books of Joel, 
 Jonah, Job, Ecclesiastes and Daniel. 
 
THE PRESENT DISQUIETUDE. 13 
 
 Whatever happens, the foundation of God stands 
 sure, and must stand sure. There is one assumption 
 from which we can start with confidence. All sound 
 knowledge the Christian faith can assimilate. If 
 there is anything which it cannot assimilate, that we 
 may firmly believe is not sound. Of course time is 
 needed before we can ascertain what will stand the 
 test and what will not — time and a calm unruffled 
 temper, not easily moved by the swayings to and fro 
 of the moment. 
 
 The best sign of which I am aware is the 
 gradual growth of this temper. Not many years 
 have passed since the cry was wont to be, He 
 that is not with us is against us. Everything which 
 did not at once fall in with preconceived ideas was 
 treated as an 'attack.' Hostility and bitterness on 
 one side were met by hostility and bitterness on the 
 other. Men were driven with or against their will 
 into two great opposing camps. It did not seem 
 possible to be critical and yet reverent, devout and 
 yet candid. Now, I trust, our faith is stronger. We 
 do not see an enemy in every bush. We do not 
 think it necessary to meet every question that arises 
 with a peremptory yes or no. We are able to wait 
 and look around and take our bearings without being 
 hurried or disturbed. Such at least seems to me to 
 be the attitude of that younger generation which is 
 now coming to the front in these matters. It is, to 
 
14 THE PRESENT DISQUIETUDE. 
 
 my mind, an attitude which is not only a hopeful 
 one, but the only attitude -which really becomes a 
 Christian. 
 
 I would fain, if I may, make some small contri-t 
 bution to the question of the hour. I propose this 
 afternoon and on succeeding Sundays to do what I 
 can to estimate the effect upon a Christian's faith 
 of the changes which seem to be in progress. There 
 must be in this an element of anticipation. I do not 
 say that all that I may regard as possible is as yet 
 completely proved. It may perhaps never be proved. 
 If that is so our course is plain. We only have to 
 remain where we are. But it is right for us to keep 
 in view contingencies which will seem to some at 
 least more or less probable. And I hope that I may 
 be able to show that if those contingencies should be 
 realized, there is -not only no reason for despair — 
 despair is a word which should not cross (I do not say 
 the lips but) even the thought of a Christian — but 
 that they may leave his faith stronger, richer, deeper 
 than it was before. There may be loss as well as 
 gain ; and yet I cannot but think that the gain will 
 be found to overbalance the loss, and that all things 
 — even the progress of criticism — still work together 
 for good to those who love the Lord Jesus Christ in 
 sincerity. 
 
II- 
 
 THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE. 
 (WhitehaU, July 27, 1890.) 
 
 2 Corinthians iv. 7. 
 We have this treasure in earthen vessels. 
 
 Let me take up the subject proposed this morning 
 by endeavouring to state, in as summary a form as 
 possible, the main points in that change of which I 
 spoke as coming over the conception which many 
 good and instructed Christian men hold of the Bible. 
 
 It has for a long time been distinctly recognised 
 that there is a human as well as a divine element 
 in the Book by which God has been pleased to 
 convey the revelation of Himself to us. However 
 much we may feel that the Holy Spirit itself is pre- 
 sent in that Book, and speaks to us through its pages, 
 there can be no question that it speaks through 
 human media. It was the hand of man which held 
 the pen. The words written down were human 
 weirds. They are governed by the ordinary laws of 
 language ; and the forms of expression which they 
 
1 6 THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE. 
 
 assume are not always perfect as men count per- 
 fection. 
 
 This we may start with, that there is a human 
 element even in the Bible ; and the tendency of the 
 last 50 or 100 years of investigation is to make it 
 appear that this human element is larger than had 
 been supposed. The freedom of the human agents 
 made use of in the Bible was less restricted than 
 those who argued from an antecedent view of what 
 was to be expected in a Divine revelation would have 
 imagined it to be. 
 
 That is the first point; but the second, which 
 seems to me to be equally clear, is that, in spite of 
 the enlarged scope which is thus given to human 
 thought and human action, the Divine element 
 which lies behind it is not less real and not less 
 Divine. 
 
 The third point is that we make a mistake in 
 attempting to draw a hard and fast line between the 
 two elements. The part which comes from man and 
 the part which comes from God run into and blend 
 with each other. We think of them best not as 
 acting separately but as acting together. And this 
 intimate or organic union only serves to bring home 
 the message which God has condescended to speak 
 to man with greater force and greater reality. 
 
 Lastly, I think it will be seen that the application 
 which we in turn make of that message may need to 
 
THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE. 17 
 
 be somewhat modified. We may find our view of 
 the motive forces in religion somewhat altered. I do 
 not think for a moment that we shall find them less 
 powerful or less effective than they have been. 
 
 Bear with me if I try now and next week to ex- 
 plain in more detail the nature of these conclusions — 
 not in any spirit of wanton innovation, but only to 
 help those who find themselves face to face with new 
 conditions which they do not feel able simply to put 
 aside and ignore. And permit me to ask that no 
 one will listen to the negative side of what I have 
 to say without also listening to the positive side. 
 The function of the teacher in these days is like the 
 function of the prophet of old : he is not called upon 
 only to break down and to overthrow, but to build 
 and to plant^. 
 
 This applies especially to my present duty this 
 afternoon. I must begin by seeming at least to con- 
 tend for an encroachment of the human element upon 
 the Divine. If I do so, let me beg of those who 
 are willing to pay any attention to this part of 
 what I have to say, also to give a hearing to what 
 seems to me to be the complementary or counter- 
 balancing truth, the affirmation which I shall have 
 to make next of the undiminished — nay, the height- 
 ened — reality of the Divine element which lies behind 
 and gives an impulse to the human. I cannot claim 
 
 ' Jeremiali i. 10. 
 C 
 
r8 THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE. 
 
 to be heard on either side of the argument, but 
 I may ask that one may not be taken without the 
 other. 
 
 To assume then this ungracious and unwelcome 
 but I fear necessary task, I must first point out how 
 it is probably true that the human element in the 
 Scriptures is larger than many good people now, and 
 ■nearly all good people not long ago, supposed it' 
 to be. 
 
 Let us take a glance at the history of the doctrine 
 of Inspiration. The writers and teachers of the early 
 Church doubtless held a high view of it, but it was 
 not by any means a mechanical view. They would 
 not have hesitated to admit what we might call slips 
 of the pen^. Origen went further in admitting positive 
 
 ^ Take for instance the patristic comments tipon Matt, xxvii. 9, where 
 a saying which really belongs to Zechariah is attributed to Jeremiah. 
 Origen thinks that there has either been some error in writing by which 
 Jeremiah is put for Zechariah, or else that the passage might be found" 
 among the apocryphal works of Jeremiah. St. Augustine mentions the,, 
 omission in some MSS. of the name Jeremiah, so that the sentence runs 
 through the prophet only, and not through Jeremiah the profhet. 
 He will not lay stress on this- because the word is found both in. the" 
 majority of Latin MSS. and also in the Greek text. He is rather in-, 
 clined to. think, that, the name Jeremiah occurred to St. Matthew 
 instead of Zechariah, and that he would have corrected it if he had not 
 remembered that the Spirit might have determined him to write thus 
 in order to bring out that all the prophets really said the same, thing. 
 St. Jerome says roundly that there is a mistake here as in Matt..xiii, 35 
 {■uidelis ergo quia et hie error fuit sicut ibi). See the passages quoted in 
 Tischendorf ad loc. 
 
THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE. 19 
 
 error in the literal statements if not in the deeper 
 sense of Scripture. If the language of St. Augustine as 
 to the composition of the Gospels were to be pressed,- 
 he, too; would be committed to views which implied 
 considerable freedoni of handling ^. 
 
 At the Reformation we know with what freedom 
 Luther spoke upon the subject. We know how he 
 singled out a particular branch of Christian doctrine 
 •^a Gospel within the Gospel — and how applying 
 this as a test to the different parts of the Bible he 
 put a high or a low value upon them according to 
 the degree in which it was embodied, venturing even 
 to call one Epistle an epistle of straw, because that 
 for which he looked was not to be found there. 
 
 In the latitude which he thus allowed himself, 
 Luther was not imitated by his followers. On the 
 contrary, it was really the Reformation which led to 
 the predominance of the stricter view. It was a lead- 
 ing principle of the Reformation to throw wholly upon 
 the Bible the weight of authority which had hitherto 
 been shared by it with tradition. The Bible, and the 
 
 • Speaking of the discrepancies in the Gospels, Origen says that 'if 
 one were to set them all forth then would he turn dizzy, and either 
 desist from trying to establish all the Gospels in very truth, and attach 
 himself to one, ... or, admitting the four, grant that the truth does not 
 lie in their corporeal forms ' (Ir roh aoijimiKoh xapo/cT^/xri : Comm. in 
 Joan. X. 2, quoted by Westcott, Introd. p. 419, ed. 3). St. Augustine 
 describes the Second Gospel as an ' epitome ' of the First, in which 
 case the Evangelist could not have kept to his text very closely. 
 
 c a 
 
20 THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE. 
 
 Bible only, became the watchword of the Reformed 
 Churches. Hence we cannot be surprised if its autho- 
 rity was most jealously safeguarded. The one broad 
 foundation on which the whole of Christianity seemed 
 to rest must needs be without flaw. 
 
 The rigid theory which thus came in led to some 
 palpable exaggerations. As the study of Hebrew 
 revived, the scholars of the sixteenth and seventeenth 
 centuries began to win back little by little the know- 
 ledge which had been lost. Now-a-days every one 
 knows that ancient Hebrew — the Hebrew of the Old 
 Testament — was written purely in consonants with- 
 out vowels. The vowels were added by a group of 
 diligent Jewish scribes and students of the Scriptures 
 in the sixth and seventh centuries after Christ; This 
 was first made out by a French professor, Louis 
 Cappel or Cappellus, in the Calvinistic Academy of 
 Saumur^ The book was quietly received, until in 
 1648 a sharp attack was made upon it by one of the ' 
 most learned Hebraists of his day, the younger Bux- 
 torf; and a controversy arose in which the set of 
 opinion throughout the Reformed Churches was so 
 strong that a later work by Cappellus ^ could only be 
 
 • Arcanum fiinctationis revelatiim, published at Leyden anonymously, 
 under the care of Erpenius, in 1624. 
 
 ' This was the Critica Sacra published at Paris in 1650. Riehm 
 {Einleitung, p. 21) does not appear to be strictly correct in saying that 
 the son, Jean Cappel, ' found himself compelled, after his father's death, 
 to become a Roman Catholic in order to publish the book.' He had 
 joined the Roman Church some time previously in spite of his father's 
 
THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE. 21 
 
 published by the help of his son, who had joined the 
 Church of Rome. It was in that Church that the 
 view which is now universally held to be the right 
 one found its ablest advocates. The writer indeed 
 who laid the foundation of Old and New Testa- 
 ment criticism was a member of that Church — the 
 Oratorian Richard Simon'. So far did opinion go 
 upon the other side that in one of the Swiss for- 
 mularies, dated 1675, it is expressly laid down that 
 not only the consonants but the vowel-points of the 
 Hebrew text were divinely inspired ^. 
 
 The question could not rest here. It soon came 
 to be understood that more was involved than the 
 vowel-points. The less-instructed sort of Protestants 
 pinned their faith to the versions which every man 
 was now able to read in his own tongue. But 
 they could not help admitting that an appeal lay 
 beyond them to the originals ^ It could not be 
 
 remonstrances'; and the father did not die until 1658, 30 that he must 
 have been aware of the steps his son was taking. 
 
 ' Histoire Critique du Vieux Testament, 1685; Histoire Critique du 
 Text du N. T. (1689), des Versions (1690), des priiui^aux Commenta- 
 teurs (1693). 
 
 ' Consensus Ecclesiarum Helveticanim Can. II. : Heiraicus Vet. 
 Test, codex . . . turn quoad consonas turn quoad vocalia sive puncta ipsa 
 sive punctorum saltern potestatem . . . BeoTTyevaros, Sec. Quoted by 
 Riehm, Einl. p. 22. 
 
 ' In the Westminster Assembly of Divines, in which as a member of 
 Parliament he had a right to sit and debate, 'Mr. Selden spake admirably 
 and confuted divers of them in their own learning. And sometimes. 
 
22 ,THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE. 
 
 maintained that all these versions, .the origin of 
 which was known and which often differed widely 
 from each other, enjoyed any special inspiration. 
 But if so, where was it that inspiration really resided? 
 What guarantee was there that the Greek and 
 Hebrew texts from which those versions were made 
 truly and accurately represented that which Jiad 
 really proceeded from the sacred writers ? When men 
 began to think and to enquire they would have no 
 difficulty in tracing the origin of these Greek and 
 Hebrew texts. They too were made by certain 
 •known scholars from certain known MSS., but when 
 these MSS. came to be compared with others which 
 lay upon the shelves of the European libraries, there 
 was found to be a great diversity among them. 
 Further, it was found in regard to the Greek of the 
 New Testament that, to speak roughly, the older a 
 MS. was the more widely it .differed from the 
 common printed copies. But there was a presump- 
 tion at least that these older copies, as they were 
 nearer to the originals, so also would represent them 
 more faithfully. So arose by degrees the science 
 of Textual Criticism, which attempts by comparing 
 together the different MSS. and other authorities 
 
 when they had cited a text of Scripture to prove their assertion, he would 
 tell them ferhafs in your little Pocket Bibles with gilt leaves (which 
 they would often pull out and read) the Translation may be ihtis, but 
 the Greek or the Hebrew signifies thus and thus ; and so would totally 
 silence them.' Whitelocke, Memorials, p. 71, ed. 173a, 
 
THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE. 23 
 
 •to get at the truth of what was originally .written. 
 .The method by which this is done has become much 
 more elaborate and systematic, but even yet a com- 
 plete consent has not been reached ; and although 
 the limits -of possible error are not really very wide, 
 and although the great mass of the Greek text is not 
 open to question, still a residue even yet remains 
 about which we cannot be absolutely certain that 
 we have the actual words of the Apostolic writers 
 -before us. 
 
 The question as to the Hebrew text of the Old 
 Testament seems easier, but is in reality more diffi- 
 cult than -that as to the Greek text of the New ^. 
 There is not indeed the same amount of difference 
 between the MSS., though the oldest of these is 
 younger by several centuries than the oldest MSS. 
 of the New Testament. In other ways it is possible 
 to trace back the Hebrew text up to and even 
 beyond the time at which the -vowel-points came 
 to be attached to it. From the end of the fourtli 
 century of the Christian era onwards we may say 
 that the care bestowed upon the copying of the 
 Old Testament was so great that no important 
 
 * ' The majority of Hebrew MSS. are of the twelfth to the sixteenth 
 centuries. Very few are earlier ; the earliest of which the date is known 
 with certainty being the MS. of the later Prophets, now at St. Petersburg, 
 which bears a date = A.D. 916 ' (Driver's Notes on Hib. Text of the 
 Books of Samuel, p. xxxvi). The oldest MSS. of N. T. are assigned to 
 the fourth century. 
 
24 THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE. 
 
 variation was possible. It is further back still that 
 the real problem begins. We possess, as it happens, 
 versions of the Old Testament made some before 
 and some not very long after the Christian era. 
 These versions make it clear that at that earlier date 
 there was a much larger amount of diversity. And it 
 is behind this that the critic has to penetrate ; so that 
 his task is even more difficult than that which lies 
 before the critic of the New Testament, and at the 
 present stage the results obtained are even less certain. 
 
 Such is the state of the case on one line of in- 
 vestigation, the investigation of the text. On other 
 lines the course which events have taken has been 
 very similar. At one time it was held, in pursuance 
 of the same view of doctrine which we have beeii 
 hitherto considering, that the language of the New 
 Testament writers must needs be perfect, and their 
 grammar faultless ^. Now it is distinctly recognised 
 that this is far from the fact ; that the language 
 of the New Testament writers, though an excellent 
 instrument in its way, contains not only many 
 Hebraisms, but many an idiom which belongs to 
 popular speech and by no means conforms to the 
 standards of literary correctness. 
 
 Again, on more important ground it is well known 
 
 ' The most extreme of the Purists were Pfochen (1629), Musaens 
 (1641, 1642), Georgi (1732, 1733), and Schwarz (1736). See Winer's 
 Grammar, pp. 13-15 (i. 1. § i) E. T. 
 
THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE. 1$ 
 
 what a conflict has long been maintained between 
 the Bible and Natural Science. The names of 
 Galileo, Newton, Darwin recall to us conspicuous 
 instances in which the Bible has been invoked to 
 check the course of free enquiry, and, as we can 
 now see, wrongly invoked. It is coming to be agreed 
 among thinking men that the Bible was never meant 
 to teach science, and that the Biblical writers simply 
 shared the scientific beliefs of their own day and 
 expressed themselves in the language which was 
 currently used all around them. 
 
 What I have been describing so far is a state of 
 opinion which has been very generally reached, and 
 in regard to which there is little room left for sharp 
 antagonism. To some extent, as regards at least 
 the uncertainty of Greek and Hebrew readings, it 
 has found expression in a public document like the 
 Revised Version. But having reached this point the 
 question will, of necessity, force itself upon some 
 minds : having gone so far, is there not room to go 
 still further? The Bible has not been exempted 
 from the fate of other books : it has been copied, 
 and in the process of copying its text has been 
 corrupted : it has been transmitted across centuries 
 of declining knowledge : it has passed through the 
 hands of scribes who were both ignorant and careless, 
 and whose ignorance and carelessness have hardly 
 done so much mischief as well-intentioned but un- 
 
a6 THE HUMAN ELEMENT 'IN THE BIBLE. 
 
 fortunate attempts at correction^. Neither again 
 were the Biblical writers exempted from some at 
 least of the general ^characteristics of their con- 
 temporaries: they shared the literary peculiarities 
 of men of their own nationality and station : they 
 were not supernaturally raised above the level of 
 knowledge to which their contemporaries had attained 
 in matters of. science. Even in the things of religion 
 it is becoming every day clearer that there is a 
 growth and progression running through the New 
 Testament as well as the Old. No one generation 
 reached the limits of truth all at once: there was 
 a gradual withdrawing of the veil at different times 
 and in different portions. 
 
 It may be asked then, independently of any critical 
 enquiries, where can we draw the line and say 
 Hitherto and no further ? We admit that the Bible 
 has shared the fate of other books in its subsequent 
 history. May it not also have shared the fate of 
 other books in the circumstances of its origin ? We 
 .admit that the writers spoke and wrote in the 
 language of their contemporaries, with many at least 
 of the same faults of style and diction, with some 
 
 ' 'The Syrian text' (i.e. tHe text substantially current in the later 
 MSS. and in the older printed editions, the original of the so-called 
 Textus Receptus) ' must in fact be the result of a recension in the 
 proper sense of the word, a work of attempted criticism, performed 
 deliberately by editors and not merely by scribes ' (Westcott and Hort, 
 Introduction, p. 133). 
 
THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE. 27 
 
 at least of the same defects of knowledge. But if 
 with some, why not also with others? They were 
 not perfectly acquainted with the facts of science : 
 is it certain that they would be more perfectly 
 acquainted with the facts of history ? In the secular 
 writings of antiquity there are many phenomena 
 which are not in exact accordance with the literary 
 practice of our own day. A later writer will incor- 
 porate the work of an older writer often with but 
 slight alteration. The annals that are transmitted 
 from age to age receive gradual accretions in their 
 course, and there is often no external mark to show 
 where the older matter ends and the new begins. 
 Institutions which are well established in one age 
 are assumed to go back to an earlier date than can 
 really be claimed for them. Certain great names 
 stand out in the history round which stray documents 
 and stray incidents appear to crystallize. When a 
 group of writings is collected together the name 
 which stands at the head of the group is held to 
 cover every member of it. And in like manner 
 laws and customs which grow up by slow degrees 
 are referred to some one great lawgiver who was 
 the first to formulate the leading provisions of the 
 code with which they are associated. There is no 
 deception about it. It is the same sort of process 
 that we see going on every day where oral tradition 
 is at work. Wherever some notable character has 
 
28 THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE. 
 
 passed over the stage, in aftertime things come to 
 be set down to him with which he has no real con- 
 nexion. We must throw ourselves back into an age 
 when writing is the exception and hearsay the rule. 
 There comes a time when regular histories are 
 written, but before that tradition has been at work 
 moulding and combining the facts which history 
 records. 
 
 Processes like these have gone on in all the ancient 
 literatures which have been preserved to us. Can 
 we say that the literature of Israel is an exception ? 
 Is there reason to think that that alone has had 
 an immunity from conditions which are elsewhere 
 universal ? Some of the best and most competent 
 judges tell us that it is not so. They tell us that 
 in the Old Testament — yes, and in the New Testa- 
 ment too — there are books which are composite in 
 their origin, which were not written as we have them 
 all at once, but which were put together at sundry 
 times and in divers manners, one document here and 
 another document there, welded together into a 
 single whole, but not so welded that all traces of 
 the combination are obliterated. They tell us that 
 there are aggregates of writings which pass under 
 names which of right belong only to a part of them. 
 They tell us that laws and customs of a later date 
 are sometimes attributed to an earlier; that not all 
 the historical statements rest upon contemporary 
 
THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE. 39 
 
 record, but that some of them have passed through 
 a stage — longer or shorter — of tradition, before they 
 were committed to writing. 
 
 This we are told, and that not lightly or con- 
 jecturally, but as a result of close examination. The 
 body of proof is weighty and cannot easily be 
 rejected. Why should it be rejected ? The grounds, 
 when we come to think of it, are mainly those of 
 our own imagination. We do not think it likely 
 that God would allow the revelation of Himself to 
 be mixed up with such imperfect materials. But 
 we are no good judges of what God would or would 
 not do. His ways are not as our ways. Out of the 
 imperfect He brings forth the perfect. It is so in 
 the world of nature, and it is so in the world of 
 grace. We have otir treasure in earthen vessels. 
 The vessels may be earthen, but the treasure which 
 they contain is Divine. It is best for us not to 
 trouble our minds with vain speculations as to what 
 ought to be, but to take with thankfulness that which 
 is. After all there are, as I hope to be able to show, 
 two sides to the question. We can imagine the Bible 
 in some of its accessories more perfect than it is — 
 what we at least might think more perfect. But if 
 it had been so it could never have been in such close 
 contact with human nature. Its message could never 
 have come home to us so fresh and warm as it does. 
 As it is, it speaks to the heart, and it does so because, 
 
30 THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE. 
 
 according to a fine saying in the Talmud, it speaks 
 in the tongue of the children of men. 
 
 I hope to show, as I proceed, that none of the 
 qualifications to which it is subject really touch the 
 root of the matter. I hope to show that, in spite 
 of all that is human about it, there is more that is 
 Divine. The body, the outward form, may be of 
 the earth earthy, but the spirit by which it is per- 
 vaded and animated is from heaven. This too, 
 believe me, is no mere matter of assumption or 
 speculation. It is proved in the same way as that 
 by which we prove the presence of a human element. 
 And if I fail in conveying that proof in all' its 
 cogency, the fault will be mine. 
 
 NOTE. 
 
 The gradual nature of the steps which lead up from ques- 
 tions of what is called the Lower Criticism (which deals with 
 the texi) to questions of the Higher Criticism (which deals 
 with authorship, &c.), and the difficulty of drawing a hard 
 and fast line between them will be understood from the 
 following examples. 
 
 (a) I St. John V. 7. The three Heavenly Witnesses {comvia 
 fohanneuni). 
 Now almost universally given up on grounds of 
 External Evidence (immense preponderance of testi- 
 mony against the words which are only found in 
 
THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE. 31 
 
 two Greek MSS., one of the fifteenth and one of the 
 sixteenth century, though going back as far as the 
 fourth century in Latin) + Internal Evidence (break 
 in the continuity of the passage). 
 
 The words were originally a gloss, or comment, sug- 
 gested by the text and written in the margin, but 
 afterwards mistaken for part of the text and inserted 
 with it. 
 (3) St. John vii. 53 — viii. 1 1. The section of the Woman 
 taken in Adultery i^pericope aduUerai). 
 
 Rejected by nearly all critical authorities' on the 
 ground of 
 
 External ' Evidence (all Greek MSS. older than the 
 eighth century, except one which has Latin affinities, 
 and many express statements) + Internal Evidence 
 (inappropriate break, iu the context). 
 
 Originally a narrative derived from some other early 
 sburcej transcribed in the margin to illustrate the 
 s,2Lymg, I judge no man (St. John viii, 1 5) ; thence 
 transferred to the text at the nearest place where an 
 insertion could be made. 
 (y) St. Mark xvi. 9-20. The Last Twelve Verses of St. 
 Mark. 
 
 Rejected by many critical authorities on the ground 
 of 
 
 External Evidence (absence not from many MSS., but 
 from the two best, some express patristic statements, 
 and the presence of an alternative ending to the 
 Gospel in a few MSS.) + Internal Evidence (es- 
 pecially the abrupt beginning, which has been antici- 
 pated in ver. i). 
 
 If the verses are not genuine, we must suppose that 
 
32 THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE: 
 
 the original ending to the Gospel had been torn 
 away or become illegible, and that they were added 
 to supply its place. 
 (8) Romans xv, xvi. and especially xvi. 1-16 (or 3-16). 
 
 Supposed by some critics not to have been originally 
 part of the Epistle to the Romans on the ground of 
 
 Slight External Evidence (the position of the closing 
 doxology, xvi. 25-27, in a few MSB. at the end of 
 ch. xiv. or at both places) + Internal Evidence (the 
 difficulty of accounting for the number of greetings 
 which St. Paul is sending to a Church which he had 
 not yet visited). 
 
 Several explanations are proposed for the section as it 
 stands if not original : some believe it to belong to 
 a letter written at a later date to Rome; others 
 believe it to be part of a letter addressed by St. Paul 
 to Ephesus. 
 
 (e) 2 Corinthians vi. 14 — vii. i. Supposed by two or three 
 
 critics not to belong to this Epistle on the ground 
 
 of 
 Purely Internal Evidence (break in the continuity of 
 
 the argument). 
 Some of those who hold this view believe the verses to 
 
 be a fragment of the lost letter alluded to in i Cor. 
 
 V. 9, with which they would agree in subject. A 
 
 discussion of this theory has been recently carried 
 
 on in the pages of the Classical Eeview. 
 
 (f) I Samuel xvii. i — xviii. 5. Large portions of this 
 
 passage are omitted in the best MS. of the Septua- 
 gint, Cod. Vaticanus (B.), and there are some marks 
 of omission in other MSS. 
 It is probable, oq the whole, that the verses are 
 
THE HUMAN ELEMENT IN THE BIBLE. 33 
 
 genuine, and that they were omitted in some very 
 early Greek or Hebrew MSS. in order to escape a 
 difficulty in harmonizing the contents of this section 
 with I Sam. xvi. 14-23. 
 (ij) Passages like this last lead us up to questions such as 
 that as to the authorship of Isa. xl-lxvi. or Zech. 
 ix-xiv, which turn entirely upon Ihternal Evidence 
 (difference of style and difference in the historical 
 situation from the rest of the book). 
 
 As soon as books began to be written in vellum volumes, 
 or codices, shaped like our present books, it is easy enough to 
 understand how writings came to be attributed to wrong 
 authors. These books were of considerable size, and would 
 hold several treatises. Three or four by some well-known 
 author would be written first : then would come an anony- 
 mous treatise : the original scribe would know it to be 
 anonymous, but the next-comer would suppose it to be by 
 the author whose name stood at the head of the volume, and 
 would quote it as such. This would hold good from the 
 fourth century onwards. The process would not be quite so 
 easy in the earlier period, when the usual form for books was 
 that of the roll, which was smaller in size. Still, the same 
 sort of thing no doubt took place. Two writings would be 
 supposed to have the same author, simply because they lay 
 side by side in the same case or were otherwise brought into 
 juxtaposition. It was a mistake, but an accidental mistake, 
 and involves no suspicion of bad faith. 
 
Ill, 
 
 THE DIVINE ELEMENT GENERALLY 
 CONSIDERED, 
 
 (WtiteliaU, August 3, 1890.) 
 
 3 Corinthians iv. 7, R. V, 
 
 We hcive this treasure in earthen vessels, that the exceeding 
 greatness of the power may be of God, and not from ourselves. 
 
 The fundamental mistake that. is too often made 
 is to form the idea of what Inspiration is from what 
 we should antecedently expect it to be and not from 
 the evidence to what as a matter of fact it is. It is 
 hardly a century and a half since Bishop Butler 
 showed in his masterly way the precariousness of 
 arguments of this kind. We are not competent 
 judges before the fact of the method of God's deal- 
 ings with men. In the world of nature there are a; 
 thousand things which are different from what we 
 should have expected. We see but a little corner, 
 but an infinitesimal part of the universal frame of 
 things. We know not what lies behind and beyond. 
 There are doubtless hidden harmonies of which we 
 have no cognisance, far-off goals which lie beyond 
 our ken. If we had but fuller glimpses into these, 
 
THE DIVINE -ELEMENT- CONSIDERED. 9^'^ 
 
 many of the perplexities which now surround us 
 might well be explained. If we believe ia God, as 
 we needs must believe in Him, there are many of 
 His ways which we must simply take upon trust, 
 confident that all things really Ivork together fon 
 good, however much we see or fail to see by what 
 processes the end is attained. The point is soon 
 reached where we can only bow our heads in silent 
 acceptance of the Divine Will. 
 
 ■ But if this is true of the works of God it holds 
 good equally of His word. History is strewn with 
 warnings as to the mistakes in which we are involved 
 the moment we begin to lay down what an Inspired 
 Book ought to be and what it ought not to be. I 
 spoke of some of these mistakes last time. They 
 are all so many applications of the assumption that 
 an Inspired Book must be infallible, not merely as a 
 Revelation but as a Book. Is there any better- 
 reason for this than there was for those other assump-, 
 tions which Bishop Butler showed to be so untenable 
 — that a revelation from God must be universal, that 
 "it could not be confined to an obscure and insigni- 
 ficant people ; that a revelatiori from God must b0 
 clear — that it could not be wrapt up in difficulties of 
 interpretation ; that its evidence must be certain 
 and such as should leave no room for doubt ^ } AU 
 these criteria had been actually put forward ; the 
 
 ' See especially Analogy of Religion, Fart II. Chap, iii. 
 
§6 THE DIVINE ELEMENT " "■ 
 
 Christian revelation had been tried by them and 
 found wanting. No one .would think of putting 
 forward any such criteria now. Yet there is. no 
 essential difference between the claim which was 
 then made for the Revelation' itself, and the claim 
 which is still made for the Book in which that Reve- 
 lation is embodied". Such a Book, it is urged, must 
 at the least be infallible. If that were so, we' should 
 find it hard to contend with the facts ; for the sphere 
 of its infallibility has been steadily harrowed. Its 
 text is not infallible ; its grammar is not infallible ; its 
 science is not infallible ; and there is grave question 
 whether its history is altogether infallible. But to 
 argue thus is to take up a false position from the 
 outset. It is far better not to ask at all what an In- 
 spired Book ought to be, but to content ourselves with 
 the enquiry what tl;iis Book, which comes to us as in- 
 spired, in fact and reality is. It will not refuse to 
 answer our questions. 
 
 Let us look at the matter in the first instance broadly, 
 and then examine it in somewhat closer detail ^. 
 
 When the first Christians went about with their 
 little cases packed with rolls, some more and some 
 fewer, and when they placed these precious writings 
 
 '■ An argument similar to that which follows will be found, stated 
 with great force and ability, in the early lectures of a volume, which has 
 appeared since this was written, by Dr. R. W. Dale, The Living Christ 
 and the Four Gospels (London, jSga). 
 
GENERALLY CONSIDERED. 37 
 
 in the hands of the pagans with whom they came in 
 contact, and begged them to read and study them", 
 what sort of impression do we suppose that the read:- 
 ing made upon . a candid mind ? When our own 
 missionaries distribute Bibles and Testaments, and 
 those to whom they are given take them into some 
 quiet corner and scrutinize their pages, what is it 
 for which they look and what is it that they find? 
 Or without letting our Imagination travel so far, 
 without going beyond our own English homes, there 
 is one volume which occupies an honoured place in 
 them, which lies beside the sick-bed or the armchair, 
 and ministers solace to the, aged and suffering, or in- 
 struction to the young. If we were to ask any of 
 these what it was that came home to them in the 
 Bible, we should not find them troubling their heads 
 as to details of chronology or archaeology, we should 
 not find them speculating as to the exact wording of 
 a text or as to the process by which some of the Books 
 had assumed their present form, neither should we 
 find them attacking the question in strictly logical- 
 order and beginning with the enquiry what ground 
 there was for the authority which the Bible claimed ; 
 but they would tell us that there was a great deal 
 perhaps which they could not understand, but yet 
 that there were sayings on every page, not few or 
 far between, but constantly occurring, which spoke 
 to their hearts with power. 
 
38 . THE DlVmS- ELEMENT 
 
 Now of course it is true that every one who is given 
 to reading books at all knows of many which have 
 exercised a very considerable effect upon him. There 
 are collections of ' wit and wisdom ', to which; he may 
 turn if he will — ^^oi* he will have his own Collections 
 stored away in the chamlDers of his brain. . There 
 will be included arriong these a number of sayings 
 which at one time or another,, as Sir Philip Sidney 
 saidj have stirred his blood 'as with the sound of a 
 trumpet.' The Bible contains k vast number of such 
 sayingSj full of ripe insight and wisdom, such as this : 
 The heart htoweth its own bitterness, and a stranger 
 doth not intermeddle with iisjoy^; or this : It is better 
 to go to the house of mourning than to go to the house 
 of feasting . . . Sorrow is better than laughter : for by 
 the sadness of the countenance the heart is made 
 better'^. 
 
 Sayings like this are thickly scattered over books, 
 for instance, like Proverbs, which do not hold at all 
 the highest place in the volume. And then again in 
 tTie histories there are narratives full of chivalrous 
 courage like the meeting of David and Goliath, or 
 wonderfully tender and touching, like the discovery 
 of Joseph to his brethren, the parting of Ruth and 
 Naomi, the friendship of David and Jonathan. 
 
 It may be doubted whether on this level of common 
 human interest there is any other book which on the 
 ' Prov. xiv. lb, ' Eccl. vii. 2-3. 
 
GENERALLY CONSWERED. 3 9 
 
 whole IS so rich as the Bible. But if that were all 
 it still would not have a unique place among books. 
 The Bible and Shakespeare might be on the same 
 Tooting as part of ah Englishman's library. 
 
 But then there'is another class of sayings different 
 in kind from these, and with no such direct parallels. 
 Blessed is he whose unrighteousness is forgiven and 
 whose sin is covered. Blessed is the man tcnto whom 
 the Lord imputeth no sin^. Like as a father pitieth 
 his children:, so the Lord pitieth them that fear Him^. 
 The Son of Man is come to seek and to save that 
 •which was lost^. And He said to me, My grace is 
 sufficient for thee, for My strength is made perfect in 
 weakness *. 
 
 ' These are thoughts that move in a new region. 
 They are something more than the formulated teach- 
 ing of experience, ' the harvest of a quiet eye ' brood- 
 ing over the lessons which life has brought. They 
 tell of an experience indeed, but experience of a 
 different kind — an experience not easily reached, nay, 
 such, as could not be reached at all except by ways 
 of which the world knows nothing. The sense of 
 forgiveness, the consciousness of Divine Love, the 
 assurance that there is a deliverance for the lost and 
 erring, self-surrender to a Power outside self which 
 supplements and supports the infirmities of human 
 
 ^ Ps. xxxii. 1, 2. ' Ps. ciii. 13. 
 
 ' St. Luke xix. 10, * a Cor. xii. 9. 
 
40 THE DIVINE ELEMENT' 
 
 nature — not only are these experiences which belong 
 not to the ordinary every-day intercourse of meii 
 with men, but to the higher Life of the Spirit : more 
 than this, they imply a system of things, a series of 
 Divine interpositions, in which man is passive and not 
 active, a recipient rather than an originator. We are 
 reminded of the teaching of St. John's Gospel : He 
 came unto His own {land) and His own [people) re- 
 ceived Him not. But as many as received Him to them 
 gave He the right to become children of God, even to 
 those that believe on His Name ; which were born not 
 of blood, nor of the will of the flesh, nor of the will of 
 man, btit of God'^- And again of the High-Priestly 
 prayer : O righteous Father, the world knew Thee not, 
 but I knew Thee : and these know that Thou didst send 
 Me-". 
 
 There are two spheres. There is the sphere of 
 what St. John calls the world, and what St. Paul 
 calls the natural man, the sphere of eating and drink- 
 ing, of marrying and giving in marriage, the sphere 
 of trade, of pleasure, of science, of politics ; and there 
 is the other sphere intersecting this, though distinct 
 from it, the sphere of a higher, finer spiritual life in 
 which they sow not, neither do they spin. 
 
 The Bible, every one who reads it must feel, is 
 charged with affirmations about this supersensual 
 sphere. Those affirmations do not hang in the air. 
 ' St. John i. 11-13. - a St. John xvii. 23. 
 
GENERALLY CONSIDERED. 41 
 
 They are not merely such ' stuff as dreams are made 
 of.' They rest upon a foundation of fact. 
 
 The facts in question are not isolated or discon- 
 nected. They form a chain, a continuous history 
 stretching back far into the past, culminating in the 
 events of a few short years of which there has come 
 down to us what we have reason to believe is a vera- 
 cious record ; again, descending from that culmination 
 downwards, still in continuous sequence, to our own 
 day and generation. We have this guarantee that, 
 though spiritual, though ideal, the phenomena of which 
 we speak are not unreal. They could not have played 
 the part they have in the lives of so many millions 
 of men and women if they were. They rest on facts — 
 the facts of the divinely-ordered history of a divinely- 
 chosen nation ; the facts of the Life and Death of 
 Christ, and of the founding and subsequent history of 
 the Christian Church : they run into facts, facts of 
 living experience, such as, for all their delicacy, the 
 eye may see and the ear may hear. 
 
 Here is a fabric standing over against the other, a 
 ' new creation ' within the old. In a book like Shake- 
 speare's Plays we have the interpretation of the one : 
 in the Bible we have the interpretation of the other. 
 This it is which has made the Bible so precious to 
 the thousands and tens of thousands who have used 
 it. The question of interest to them has not been 
 what sort of external attestation it brought with it, 
 
43 THE DIVINE ELEMENT' 
 
 t)ut what was its inner verisimilitude. As an inter- 
 pretation of the spiritual life, was it true, was it 
 adequate? Again we appeal to the testimony of 
 the millions of men and women living or whb once 
 lived, who have found it both true and adequate. It 
 has been at least to them, 
 
 ' The ibuntain-light of all their day, 
 , The master-light of all their- seeing.' - 
 
 Science may demand something more : it may demand 
 credentials formally proved ; it may demand investiga- 
 tions rigorously conducted ; it may have its questions of 
 canonicity and authenticity ; it may insist on compari- 
 sons with other sacred books and other religions. The 
 demand is a legitimate one, and must not be rejected 
 or ignored. It is to be hoped that our Christian 
 'Faith will always have its philosophy for the 
 philosophers, its logic for the logicians, its learning 
 •for the learned. But plain men and women will take 
 their own short cut for determining whether or no 
 the Bible is divine. Does it prove itself to be divine 
 to me? Has it proved itself to be divine to others 
 like me? The answer to this half at least of the 
 challenge cannot be uncertain. Already in the 
 Apostolic age there was a writer who appealed to a 
 .cloud of witnesses. How many generations have 
 passed since then, and how has that cloud of wit- 
 nesses spread and expanded! Comparing what it 
 is now with what it was then is like comparing the 
 
GENERALLY CONSIDERED. ^5 
 
 -speck no bigger than a man's hand with the whole 
 sky overcast arid the sound of abundance of rain. 
 
 Strictly speaking, in the logical order of things, in 
 that order, which we are apt to assume but which 
 as a matter of fact few really follow, all this would 
 «ome in betterLas a confirmation or verification of 
 truths otherwise arrived at. In the present course it 
 might from some points of view come in more 
 appropriately after rather than before what I hope 
 to say next Sunday. It is an argument which 
 at first sight appears popular rather than scientific. 
 And yet it has, I cannot but think, a justification iii 
 ■philosophy as well as in practice. Truth, when we 
 coirte to think of it, is ' really nothing more than 
 propositions framed in accordance with the ascer- 
 tained laws of the human mind. The inner truth of 
 "things in themselves we cannot know, or at least can 
 only infer remotely. What we are concerned with 
 primarily, if not entirely, is the impressions made 
 upon our own minds. But, if that is so, surely the 
 experimental test is of the very greatest importance, 
 especially where the question is of a theory which is 
 to cover the whole of life. It is natural to ask in 
 regard to such a theory before anything else. Does it 
 work ? Does it really harmonize with the conditions 
 of human nature? Does it really result in a type of 
 life and character which gives satisfaction to those 
 who attain to it and commands the respect of those 
 
4+ 'THE DIVINE ELEMENT 
 
 who do not ? If this mode, of arguing appears unphilo* 
 sophical the fault is really in the philosophies, which 
 isolate a very small part of human nature and treat it 
 as if it could lay down laws for the whole. The 
 reason why people cling to old beliefs, as it sometimes 
 seems irrationally, is because in mental processes 
 of this kind there is much that enters in tmcon- 
 sciously' besides the elements of which we are 
 conscious. A sound philosophy ought to widen itself 
 out so as to give some account of this. But when 
 that comes to be done with Christianity, and with the 
 Bible as the foundation of Christianity, all this 
 experimental testing supplied by the lives of so many 
 myriads of human beings is an enormous wdight in 
 the scale. If it is instinct — rcven as we say a ' blind,' 
 that is, an 'unconscious' instinct which makes it 
 possess such an attraction for them, that instinct must 
 have its causes and cannot rest on mere delusion. ^ 
 The questions which at present are agitating 
 men's minds only touch the fringe of this immense 
 mass of testimony. They are really questions of 
 detail. They may mean perhaps a little more 
 here, a little less there. They do, I admit, take 
 away something of the definiteness and certainty 
 with which men were wont to appeal to their Bibles ; 
 but I shall endeavour to show that there are com- 
 pensations for the loss. Definiteness is not always 
 a gain : the certainty which springs from the absence 
 
GENERALLY CONSIDERED. 45 
 
 of questioning and of search is a different thing from 
 the certainty which comes after search and enquiry. 
 And the latter kind, of certainty is, we may be sure, 
 the higher and better of the two. 
 
 I will make -bold to use a comparison, which, if it 
 is rightly applied, will leave no doubt on which side 
 the advantage lies. When our Lord condescended 
 to become Incarnate upon earth, He found the Jews 
 in the possession of an elaborate code of law by 
 which they were in the habit of directing their lives. 
 When they wished to know what to do in any case 
 they turned its pages till they found a precept cor- 
 responding to that ease. His coming was the end 
 of the Law ; it abolished all that code and did away 
 with the precepts on which the Scribes and Pharisees 
 had been wont to lean. And yet, in the very act of 
 abolishing the Law, Jesus said, /«»« not come to destroy 
 but to fulfil. How so? He fulfilled the Law, while 
 He abolished it, hy &v!o%'i\'Oi'ixa% principles for precepts. 
 He fulfilled it when He said, Thou shalt love the Lord 
 thy God with all thy heart and thy neighbour as 
 thyself, and when He set in motion forces which gave 
 men the capacity for loving God and their neighbour. 
 
 Now it seems to me that if what the critics say 
 is true, the change in the use of the Bible will be 
 only of the same kind. It will substitute principles 
 for precepts. It will no longer be so easy to find 
 proof-texts for this or that ; but the principles which 
 
46 THE DIVINE EIEMENT CONSIDERED, 
 
 run through the Bible will be better understood 
 and more vigorously realized ; they will be held with: 
 a stronger and. a firmer faith. The mechanical and. 
 verbal inspiration of the Bible inay be questioned^: 
 but its real and vital inspiration will shine out .as 
 it has never don§^, 
 
 ^ No doubt there is % relative justification, similar in kind to that 
 which has just been urged in this lecture for other religions besides 
 Christianity; Mahometanism we need not count, because its best 
 elements are common to Christianity and derived either from it or from 
 Judaism. But Buddhism may allege with good reason the number o£ 
 its votaries. It is impossible to read the life and teaching of Gautama 
 without feeling that he too had an impulse from the Holy One. . It 
 would be little in accordance with Christian doctrine to maintain tha^ 
 the divine influences which were vouchsafed in so large a measure to 
 select spirits in Palestine were wholly wanting in India or Greece. 
 
 But the highest of faiths must be tested by the hold which they take' 
 on the most widely cultured nations. Christianity succeeded to the; 
 spiritual inheritance of Greece and Rome ; and the experiments which 
 have been made, not only by Christian missionaries, but by native move- 
 ments like the Brahmo Somaj, all go to encourage the hope that it is 
 capable of succeeding, and will one day succeed, to the spiritual in- 
 heritance of the Oriental peoples. For a fuller discussion of the relation 
 of Biblical Inspiration to the phenomena which resemble it in non- 
 Christian religions, see Lecture VII, 
 
IV. 
 
 THE DIVINE ELEMENT IN ITS SPECIAL 
 MANIFEST A TIONS. 
 
 (Whitehall, August 3, 1890.) 
 
 ? St. Peter j. 21. 
 
 No prophecy ever came by the will of man, but men spake 
 from God, being moved by the Holy Ghosts 
 
 If what has been hitherto urged is true, we may 
 lay it down as a fundamental principle that a true 
 conception of what the Bible is must be obtained 
 from the Bible itself. There is no reason to be afraid 
 of going straight to the Bible ; and there, is, I think, 
 no reason to be afraid of putting to it a direct ques-.- 
 tion, even though- it may involve something that 
 nlight be called ' criticism.' Provided that we go to it 
 with complete singleness of purpose, with a perfectly 
 clear and open mind, not seeking merely to establish a 
 case either on the one side or on the other, but simply 
 to learn the truth, we shall be guilty of no irre- 
 verence, and it would be a want of faith to say that 
 we were endangering anything sacred. Truth is not 
 such a brittle thing that it must break in pieces as 
 
48 THE DIVINE ELEMENT 
 
 soon as it begins to be handled. Nor can we think 
 that He who has given to us the Bible will have left 
 His own image and superscription upon it so faint 
 that the observant eye cannot see it. 
 
 Certainly He has not done this. A more welcome 
 duty awaits me now than that in which I have been 
 engaged hitherto. I may now put the question, 
 What proof have we that the Bible is really the Word 
 of God, and that His voice has really spoken to us 
 in its pages ? It seems to me that the clearest and 
 simplest and most direct proof— apart from the .veri- 
 fication supplied to it by history — is to be found in 
 the account which the sacred writers give us of them- 
 selves. The central phenomenon of the Old Testa- 
 ment is Prophecy. And the prophets have left us 
 very clear statements of the relation in which they 
 stood to the Almighty Power whose will they claimed 
 to interpret. The leading Prophets all tell us under 
 what circumstances they came to assume their office, 
 and how they came to regard themselves as ex- 
 ponents of the Divine WilL The first on the line is 
 Moses, that typical figure on which — as you will 
 remember from Deut. xviii. 1 8 — not only the whole 
 succeeding revelation of the Old Testament, but even 
 the culmination of Prophecy in the New Testament, 
 was. to be modelled. • The Call of Moses is a familiar 
 story. He wa,s feeding his flock on the scanty 
 herbage found here and there among the mountains 
 
IN ITS SPECIAL MANIFESTATIONS. 49 
 
 jn the heart of the.Sinaitic peninsula when a re- 
 markable sight arretted his attention. The organ of 
 vision may have been the eye of the spirit and not 
 the bodily eye. To the men whose writing has come 
 down to us the Bible, the things of the spirit, were 
 so near and so intensely realized, and their way of 
 expressing themselves is so simple — suited to the 
 primitive age in which they lived and to which their 
 message was addressed — that they were not careful 
 to distinguish between the two as we, with our more 
 precise definition of the human faculties, should be 
 bound to do. An awful voice — again as we may 
 well think heard by the spirit and not by any bodily 
 sense — comes to him and delivers to him at once a 
 feyelation and a commission ^ To appreciate the 
 full depth of the revelation would require a long en- 
 quiry into which I cannot now stay to enter. It was the 
 custom in those early days to compress any weighty 
 truth as to the being and attributes of God into a 
 Name. And so the delivery of this Name I Am 
 THAT I Am marked an epoch in the history of Israel, 
 a new step in the process by which divine things 
 were disclosed to them. But the point which I de- 
 sire more especially to notice is the reluctance of 
 Moses to accept the commission that is offered to 
 him. And Moses said unto God, Who am I that I 
 should go unto Pharaoh, and that I should bring forth 
 » On this see Driver in Studia Biblica, I. p. i, esp. pp. 17-18. 
 
50 THE DIVINE ELEMENT 
 
 'the children of Israel out of Egypf^? And then 
 follows a long expostulation in which one difficultj>' 
 after another is raised. Moses ends by pleading his 
 incapacity of speech, Oh Lord, I am not eloqtient, 
 ■neither heretofore, nor since Thou hast spoken unto Tny 
 servant: for I am slow of speech and of a slow tongue. 
 And the Lord Said unto him. Who hath made mani 
 mouth ? or who maketh a man dumb or deaf or seeing 
 or blind ? is it not I the Lord f Now therefore go atid 
 I will be with thy mouth and teach thee what thou 
 shall speak, A last desperate effort to evade the 
 responsibility— yi«^ he said. Oh Lord, send, T pray 
 Thee, by the hand of him whom Thou wilt send. And 
 we read that 7/^^ anger of the I^ordwas kindled against 
 Moses, and He said. Is there not Aaron thy brother, 
 the Levite ? , . , He shall be thy spokesman unto the 
 people ^. ' 
 
 The impression conveyed by the narrative clearly 
 is that the whole r6le of a prophet is forced upon' 
 Moses very much against his will. It precludes, as 
 strongly as anything could preclude, the supposition 
 that the weighty message which Moses delivered tQ 
 his contemporaries and the revolution which he 
 wrought by it was purely a product of his own 
 imagination. Nothing can be clearer than that the 
 opposite of this was the case. Moses was really an 
 instrument in the hand of God, and the words which 
 ^ £xodus ill, II.. ' Exodusiv. 10-16. 
 
IN ITS SPECIAL MANIFESTATIONS. $1 
 
 were put in his mouth to speak were put there by* 
 the Divine Spirit. - 
 
 It might be said perhaps, if any one were disposed 
 to play' the part of an objector, that, according to the 
 newer .views of criticism, the narrative was not set 
 down in writing by Moses laiqiself, but only after a 
 considerable interval of time, and that we have no 
 guarantee that it is an exact representation of the 
 facts. However this may be, I think we sha:ll admit 
 that there is a remarkable "verisimilitude about it, 
 that it corresponds in a striking manner to the ana-; 
 logics of other great religious crises of the kind, and 
 that whatever intermediate steps may separate the 
 narrative, as we have it, from Moses himself, it must 
 be taken as a history which is in essence and sub- 
 stance true, and that it does not err in ascribing the 
 origin of the movement of which Moses was the 
 visible human centre to direct Divine intervention *. 
 
 The next witness to which I shall appeal is not 
 open to any such exception. There is no doubt that 
 the 6th chapter of Isaiah was actually written by the 
 prophet, and it describes his call just as the narrative 
 in the Book of Exodus describes the call of Moses. 
 The two narratives are so wholly different in the 
 range of their symbolism and in their outward setting 
 that no one would think of suggesting the literary 
 dependence of the one upon the other ; and yet when 
 » See the authorities qtioted by Fisher, Nature, Sec. p. 35 f. 
 E ■2, 
 
52 ' THE DIVINE ELEMENT ' " 
 
 they come to be. examined, the fundamental lines of 
 the two passages, the nature of the relation between' 
 the prophet and the source of his inspiration, are 
 the same. It is made equally clear that the inspira-^' 
 tion comes from without and riot from within. The 
 prophet himself is equally reluctant; he is equally 
 conscious of -inability and. unworthiness; ' but this 
 eohsciousriess of his , is overcome by what we are 
 obliged" to regard as supeirnatural means. When he 
 is' prostrate befdrethe .vision of the Divine Glory he 
 cries oiit. Woe is me! for I am undone; because I 
 km d man of unclean lips, and I dwell in the midst of 
 a people of unclean lips : for mine eyes have seen the 
 King, the Lord of Hosts. But in the midst of this 
 self-abasement he sees a seraph, as it were, flying 
 towards him with a live coal froni off the altar. With 
 this his lips are touched, and he is told that his 
 iniquity is taken away and his sin purged. Then he 
 receives his message. 
 
 . It is extraordinary ' how, one after another, the 
 same features are reproduced in the prophetic books; 
 The process is always extremely different from what 
 it would be if the prophet arrived at his insight into 
 spiritual things by the tentative efforts of his own 
 genius. There is something sharp and sudden about 
 it. He can lay his finger, so to speak, upon the 
 moment when it came. And it always comes in the 
 form, of an overpowering force from without, against 
 
IN ITS SPECIAL MANIFESTATIONS. 53 
 
 ■which Ke struggles but jp vain. Listen to this, fo^ 
 instance, from the opening of the Book of Jeremiahs 
 N'ow the word of the Lor d~ came unto me, saying. Be- 
 fore I formed thee in the belly I knew thee, and before 
 thou earnest forth out of the womb T sanctified ihee : 
 I have appointed thee a prophet unto the nations. Then 
 said I, Ah, Lord God! behold I cannot speak: for I 
 am a child. But the Lord said unto me. Say not, I am 
 a child: for to whomsoever I shall send thee thou shall 
 go, and whatsoever I shall command thee thou shall 
 speak. The tender, humble spirit of Jeremiah de^ 
 precates the high :commission which is. being pressed 
 upon him, but he cannot refuse it. He must needs 
 testify at the peril of his life before kings and princes 
 and people. But the words put in his mouth are not 
 his own. Behold, I have put My words in thy mouth :i 
 see, I have this day set thee over the nations and 
 over the kingdoms,' to pluck tip and to break down, 
 and to destroy and to overthrow ; to build and id 
 plant^. 
 
 ' Read through in like manner the first two chapters 
 ,of the prophecy of Ezekiel. Here perhaps the main- 
 ideal is suggested by Isaiah, though an individual 
 stamp is put upon it. The dating is even more pre^ 
 cise ; it was in, the fifth day of the fourth month of 
 the fifth.year of Jehoia,chim's captivity that the great 
 vision with which his book opens was vouchsafed to 
 
 1 Jeremiah i. 5-10. 
 
54 THE DIVINE ELEMENT- 
 
 the prophet and the roll given to him which con- 
 tained his message. 
 
 It is not, however, only at. the beginning of his 
 career that the prophet passes through a crisis which; 
 is clearly not self-caused. Scattered all through the 
 prophetic writings are expressions . which speak of 
 Some strong and . irresistible impulse coming down 
 upon the prophet, determining his attitude to the 
 events of his time, constraining his utterance, making 
 his words the vehicle of a higher , meaning than their 
 own. For instance this of Isaiah's : The Lord spake 
 thus to me with d strong hand — an emphatic phrase 
 which denotes the over-mastering nature of the im- 
 pulse — The Lord spake thus to me with a strong hand^ 
 and instructed me that I should not walk in the way. 
 of this people ^. Or, again, take this of Jeremiah's :, 
 / sat not in the assembly . of them , that make merry 
 nor rejoiced; I sat alone because of Thy hand; for 
 Thou hast filled me with indignation ^. Or passages 
 like these from Ezekiel : So the Spirit lifted me up, 
 and took me away ; and I went in bitterness, in the 
 heat of my spirit, and the hand of the Lord was, 
 itrong upon me\ And if came to pass — on a given 
 day— as I sat in mine house, and the elders of Judah. 
 sat before me, that the hand of the Lord God fell there 
 upon me^. The one standing characteristic of the 
 
 ' Isaiah viii. Ii. ' Jeremiah xv. 17. 
 
 5 Ezekiel iii. 14. * Ezekiel viii. i. (Riehra, p. 211.Y, 
 
IN ITS SPECIAL MANIFESTATIONS. 55 
 
 prophet is that he speaks with the authority of 
 Jehovah Himself. This, is part of the promise made 
 to Moses : / will raise them up a prophet from among 
 their brethren, like imto thee; and I will put My words 
 in his moiith, and he shall speak unto them all that 
 I shall command him. And it shall come to pass, 
 that whosoever will not hearken to My words which 
 he shall speak in My name, I will reqtiire it of him. 
 But the prophet which, shall speak a zvord pre- 
 sumptuously in My name, which I have not com- 
 manded him to speak, or that shall speak in the 
 name of other gods, that same prophet shall die'^. 
 '. Hence it is that the prophets one and all preface 
 their addresses so confidently, The Word of the Lord, 
 oi Thus saith the Lord. They have even the au- 
 dacity to speak in the first person, as if Jehovah 
 Himself were speaking. As id IsaXah, Hearke?i unto 
 Me, O Jacob, and Israel my called ; I am He, I am 
 the first, I also am the last'^, and so on. The per- 
 sonality of the prophet sinks entirely into the back- 
 ground ; he feels himself for the time being the 
 mouthpiece of the Almighty. Imagine any one doing 
 this in the present day. When we quote the Bible 
 indeed we may say Thus saith the Lord. But if any 
 one presumed to use such language, not quoting the 
 Bible; we should say that he was either an impostor 
 Or mad. The prophets were certainly not impostors, 
 
 ' Deut. xviii. 18-20, ^ Isaiah xlviii. 12 
 
56 '■' THE DIVINE ELEMENT 
 
 and they were certainly not mad. They were riot 
 impostors, because their words often brought them, 
 only mockery, abuse, imprisonment, and even death. 
 And they were not mad. Nothing could be more 
 simple or more sincere — more sane we might say — * 
 than the language which they use ; there is not the 
 slightest trace of a morbid consciousness about . It, 
 The effort, so far as there is an effort, is not to claiih 
 a revelation but to escape it. And we, looking^ back 
 at this distance of time, can see more, clearly than 
 it was possible for their contemporaries to see that 
 they spoke the words of truth and soberness. Words 
 more sublime or more really illuminative never fell 
 from the lips of man. 
 
 I have taken the prophets as the typical example 
 of Old Testament religion, because in them we can 
 see the process that we call 'Inspiration' most 
 distinctly; but the imperatives of the Law, Thou skali, 
 and Thou shalt not, are essentially of the same kind. 
 Of the same kind it is too, for instance, in the Book 
 of Proverbs when Wisdom is introduced as speaking : 
 Doth not wisdom, cry, and understanding put forth her 
 voice? In the top of high places by the zvay, where the 
 paths meet she standeth . . . Unto you, Omen, I call; 
 and thy voice is to the sons of men ^. And yet more 
 distinctly does the spirit of prophecy breathe in the 
 Psalter, for it is a Psalm of David (recorded in 
 . . * Proverbs viii. i, 2, 4. 
 
IN ITS SPECIAL MANIFESTATIONS. 3; 
 
 a Sam. xxiii) which begins, The Spirit of the Lord 
 spake by me, and His word was upon my tongue. 
 Compare again this from the Book of Job describing 
 one of the more agitating modes of revelation : Now 
 a thing was secretly brought to me and mine ear 
 received a whisper thereof. In thoughts from the 
 vision of the night, when deep sleep falleth on men, 
 fear came upon me, and trembling, which made all my 
 bones to shake. Then a spirit (or a breath) passed before 
 my face ; 'the hair of my flesh stood up. It stood stilly 
 but I coidd not discern the appearance, thereof : a form 
 IV as before mine eyes ; I heard a still voice saying, 
 Shall a mortal man be more just than Godf Shall 
 a man be more pure than his Maker^f It is true that 
 this is an imaginative description, and that it is put 
 in the mouth of Eliphaz and not of Job, but it shows 
 how deeply rooted was the conviction that all pro* 
 phetic revelations had an external source, and the 
 exalted teaching which follows is well worthy of such 
 an origin. The prophecies of Balaam are another 
 striking testimony to the same conviction. 
 
 We are apt to think of the New Testament as if 
 it were diJETerent from the Old. We think of it too 
 as authoritative ; but we invest it with a different kind 
 of authority. We forget, however, that the Spirit 
 of I'rophecy was just as active in the New Testament 
 times as under the older dispensation. The pheno* 
 
 • * Job iv. 12-17. 
 
58 THE DIVINE ELEMENT 
 
 mena may have been a little more varied, but the 
 source of the phenomena was the same^ The apostles 
 themselves regarded the out-pouring of the Spirit, 
 of which they themselves were partakers, as a direct 
 fulfilment of the prophecy of Joel, / will pour forth 
 vf. My Spirit upon all flesh : and your sons and your 
 daughters shall propJiesy, and your young men shall 
 see visions, and your old men shall dream, dreams: 
 Yea, and on My servants and on My handmaidens 
 in those days will I pour forth of My Spirit ; and they 
 shall prophesy ^. It would be easy to show by 
 detailed examples how God made Icnown His will 
 by precisely the same methods as those which were 
 in. use among the Old Testament prophets ; by sym- 
 bolical acts, as in the case of Agabus binding himself 
 with St, Paul's girdle, in visions as to St. Peter and 
 repeatedly to St. Paul, by sudden irresistible impulse; 
 as in the case of the girl with the spirit of divination, 
 sometimes even by the rhouth. of unconscious and 
 hostile witnesses, as in the memorable words of 
 Caiaphas, who spoke not knowing what he said. 
 And not only so, but the main drift of New Testa- 
 ment revelation was really an expression of prophecy* 
 The testimony of Jesus is the Spirit of prophecy, said 
 the seer of the Apocalypse ^. We know that St. Paul 
 was richly endowed with this gift, and when we look 
 into his Epistles we see that they were really pror 
 ' Acts ii. 17, l8, " Rev. xix. lo. 
 
IN ITS SPECIAL MANIFESTATIONS. 50 
 
 phetic writings just as much as the works of the 
 elder prophets. Let us read his own account of his 
 own callj and conipare if, for instance, with that of 
 Jeremiah. . We have it in the first chapter of the 
 Epistle t6 the Galatians : / make known to you, 
 brethren, as. touching the gospel which was preached 
 by me, that it is not after man. For neither did I 
 Veceive it from man, nor was I taught it, but it came 
 ta m.e through revelation of Jesus Christ. For ye 
 have heard of my manner of life in time past in the 
 yews religion, how that beyond measure I persecuted 
 the Church of God . . . but when it was the good 
 pleasure of God, Who separated me from my mother's 
 womb, and called me through His grace — you will 
 remember Jeremiah's Before I formed thee in the belly 
 t knew thee, and before thou earnest forth from the 
 womb I sanctified thee — when it pleased God to 
 reveal His Son in me that I might preach Him among 
 the Gentiles ; immediately I conferred not with flesh 
 and blood''-, and so on. Clearly the revelation, or 
 series of revelations, by which there was brought 
 home to the mind of St. Paul the full significance 
 of his Master's mission, was the same in kind as that of 
 the I Am that I Am of Moses, or the Wonderful, 
 Counsellor of Isaiah. It was not merely a product 
 of his own brain. Of him too it might be said, as it 
 was said to St. Peter after his confession, Flesh and 
 » Gal. i. 11-13, I5i 16. 
 
6o THE DIVINE ELEMENT^- ETC. 
 
 blood hath not revealed it unto thee, but My Father 
 Which is in Heaven ^. 
 
 When we think of it, this continuity of the Bible 
 from first to last is exceedingly impressive. It forces, 
 in upon the mind a conviction, which canfiot easily be 
 shaken, that there has been at work in it something 
 'more than natural,' the influence — the sustained 
 and vitalizing influence — of a Higher. Power,, J said 
 a moment ago that the prophets of the Old, Testae 
 ment were not impostors and were not mad. We. 
 may say the same of the writers of the New Testa- 
 ment. They too were not drunk with new wine, but 
 the wine with which they were really filled and^ 
 intoxicated was the wine of the Spirit. They assure 
 us that they spoke as the Spirit gave them titter ancei. 
 And all that we do is to take them at their word. 
 When we say that they were 'moved by the Holy 
 Ghost,' we mean by it what they meant, neither less: 
 nor more* 
 
 ' Matt. xvi. 17. 
 
V. 
 
 . THE BLENDING OF HUMAN AND DIVINE. -. 
 (WiitehaU, August 10, 1890.) 
 
 2 Peter i. 19, R. V. 
 
 And we have the word of prophecy made more sure; "where- 
 untoye do well that ye take heed, as unto a lamp shining in a. 
 dark place. 
 
 My purpose so far, and especially in the last of 
 these discourses, has been to speak a word of re- 
 assurance to those who look with concern at the 
 direction which Biblical, enquiry is taking. The idea 
 is too prevalent that if once free criticism is admitted 
 a process is begun which will end in the destruction 
 of all religious belief whatsoever. The process is apt 
 to look too much like an inclined plane, of which we 
 see the top but do not. see the bottom. There are 
 many anxious minds who fear that when once belief 
 begins to slide it will find itself before it knows 
 precipitated into the abyss. This is the apprehension 
 which I have tried to show to be unfounded ; I have 
 tried to show that we do see what lies at the bottom 
 of the incline, that there is a point where Criticism of 
 
6a THE BLENDING OF HUMAN AND DIVINE. 
 
 its own accord must come to a standstill. That point 
 I found last time in the consciousness of the sacred 
 writers themselves. It seems to me that this is the 
 true starting-point for a really critical enquiry into 
 the nature of Biblical inspiration. The advantage of 
 it is that it assumes nothing. It takes the documents 
 just as they stand. It is quite willing to make any 
 necessary allowance for dates and manner of com- 
 position. But practically, as we saw, these literary 
 considerations make no difference. The great bulk 
 of the evidence is unimpeachable on this score, and 
 its tenor is too clear to be mistaken. The Biblical 
 writers themselves were convinced that the words 
 which they spoke were put into their mouths by God. 
 They speak in accents of perfect confidence and 
 perfect sincerity. There is none of the straining of 
 personal assumption about them. They take no 
 credit for it. In the most conspicuous instances 
 there is not only no eagerness to claim inspiration, 
 but a positive shrinking from it. This reluctance is 
 in each case overborne by a Power which the writer 
 feels to be outside himself. The Spirit of the Lord 
 took hold of them and made them for the time being 
 its organs. This was their own belief. And looking 
 back upon their words in the light thrown upon them 
 by history we cannot think that they were wrong. 
 
 Here it seems to me that we have a clear standing 
 ground. There is no n?ed to have recourse to any 
 
THE BLENDING OF HUMAN AND DIVINE. 6-^ 
 
 doubtful theories of external authority. We appeal 
 to the Bible ; and the Bible bears witness, and satis--' 
 factory witness, to itself. 
 
 But having gone so far as this our attention must 
 now be turned to another side of the problem. If we 
 come back to the Bible again, and again interrogate 
 it to see what answer it makes to our enquiries, shall 
 we find that room is left for the phenomena which 
 recent criticism believes itself to have discovered in 
 it? Is there anything which the Bible lays down 
 in point of doctrine which would conflict with these 
 phenomena in point of fact ? In other words, do they 
 imply an extension of the human element in Scrips 
 ture inconsistent with that Divine element which 
 asserts its presence so unmistakeably ? 
 
 I have said that the typical expression of this 
 Divine element in the Bible is Prophecy. Other 
 forms of Biblical literature partake of it by virtue of 
 their share in the prophetic spirit. Now prophecy 
 certainly has its own limitations. The gift of 
 prophecy was a special gift in reference to particular 
 circumstances. It was called forth by those circum- 
 stances; and if it looked beyond them it did so as 
 giving expression to principles which were capable of 
 a wider application than the particular issue ; but it 
 was very far from implying universal knowledge. The 
 fundamental point in the activity of the Prophet was 
 his insight into the principles which lay behind thq 
 
64 THE BLENDING OF HUMAN AND DIVINE'. 
 
 Divine ordering of events. His knowledge of these 
 principles was borne in upon his mind in a way 
 that he felt to be due to an influence from without. 
 He knew that all that he said in reference to them 
 was put into his mouth by God. There was also 
 perhaps something more than this. The prophet was 
 in part the conscious organ of the Divine Will ; and 
 it would seem that he was also in part an unconscious 
 organ of the same Will. If he was gifted with a 
 peculiar insight into the workings of God's Provi-: 
 dence, so also is it open to us to believe that he was 
 himself included in the sphere of those workings, so 
 that utterances which from his point of view and from 
 the point of view of the immediate circumstances 
 might have been described as accidental were not 
 really accidental but bore relation to some more 
 distant part of the Divine plan. I mean that, for 
 instance, when the Psalmist says. They pierced my 
 hands and my feet, or They parted my garments aniong 
 them, he may not have been himself thinking of the 
 Death of the Messiah, and yet his words and the 
 facts corresponding to them may have been over- 
 ruled so as to be rightly applied to features in the 
 Death of the Messiah ^- But to say this is a very 
 different thing froni saying that a prophet possessed 
 ' all mysteries and all knowledge ' besides those of 
 
 ' See especially Essay iii. on ' The Christian Element ia the Book of 
 Isaiah ' in Cheyne's Isaiah, vol. iu 
 
THE BLENDING OF HUMAN AND DIVINE. 65 
 
 which the Spirit of God made him the special vehicle. 
 He spoke the words that were put into his mouth, 
 but outside those words and outside the range of 
 facts which came under the same general principles 
 as those to which he was giving utterance, his 
 knowledge did not differ from that possessed by the 
 rest of his contemporaries. We must dismiss from 
 our minds the idea that the prophet possessed a 
 knowledge of all truth, even of all religious truth, 
 much less of all truth unconnected with religion. He 
 was the organ of a particular revelation which God 
 vouchsafed to make at a particular place and time, 
 but it is only the sum of such revelations that makes 
 up the whole body of religious truth as we have it in 
 the Bible. It was not given all at once, but at sundry- 
 times and in divers manners. 
 
 Only One there was to Whom the Spirit of God 
 was given without measure. Only One there was 
 upon Whom the spiritual eye might have seen the 
 angels ascending and descending and keeping up a 
 constant communication with the Father all through 
 His earthly career. What Jacob saw in a certain 
 memorable vision at a turning-point in his life, that 
 was given to the Prophet of Nazareth all through.. 
 But in this He was unique, and we must not- argue 
 from Him even to the greatest of His servants. The 
 very frequency of that expression. The word of the 
 Lord came to this or that among the prophets shows 
 
66 THE BLENDING OF HUMAN AND DIVINE. 
 
 what wide spaces of time there must have been when 
 no word came, when there was neither voice, nor any 
 to answer, nor any that regarded. Jeremiah tells us 
 that . on one occasion when he was consulted upon a 
 point directly connected with the main subject of his 
 mission, he had to wait ten days before any revelation 
 came to him ^. 
 
 There are some significant places in the New 
 Testament from which a light is reflected back upon 
 the Old. For instance in the Epistle to the Romans, 
 where St. Paul bids his converts /^^/^^jy according to 
 the measure of \their\ faith; or again where he speaks 
 of himself and the Apostles as preaching each as the 
 Lord gave to him"^ ;. or where he says, unto each one of 
 us "Was the grace given according to the measure of the 
 gift of Christ ^- There were various grades and pro- 
 portions in, the prophetic gifts; and it is in contrast 
 to these that. Christ is said to possess the gift without 
 measure. 
 
 Not only is there a difference of degree in the 
 insight which prophecy implied, but there is also an 
 evolution of its several parts, a progressive succession 
 in order of time. Some things which belong to the 
 sphere of prophecy, such as the praise of the act of 
 Jael, the command for the extermination of the 
 Canaanites, what are called the ' imprecatory Psalms,' 
 were in place at one stage of the history of Revela- 
 ' Jer. xlii. 7i '.I Cor iii. 7. ' Eph. iv. 7. 
 
THE BLENDING OF HUMAN AND DIVINE. 6"] 
 
 tion, whereas they would not have been in place at 
 a later stage. It was in reference to such things as 
 these that our Lord rebuked the disciples by telling 
 them that they knew not what spirit they were of^- 
 The disclosure of the Divine Will is gradual : it is 
 line upon line and precept upon precept ; one truth here 
 and another truth there, not all truth at once. The 
 description at the beginning of the Epistle to the 
 Hebrews emphatically holds good : Revelation was 
 given at sundry times and in divers manners, in many 
 portions and in many different forms. 
 
 When we turn from prophecy to the other great 
 elements in the Bible, to law and to history, to a cer- 
 tain extent the same phenomena meet us. It is the 
 prophetic spirit which is the proper vehicle of Revela- 
 tion. And so far as both law and history contain a 
 revelation they too are prophetic. Moses is the first, 
 and in some ways perhaps the greatest, of the long 
 line of prophets. The historians were either prophets 
 themselves or wrote largely under the influence of 
 prophecy. It is this characteristic which has gained 
 them their place in the Bible. And so far as it is 
 embodied in them they would come under the same 
 laws, and the same principles would hold good in 
 
 ^ St. Lnke ix. 55. Probably these words were really spoken by our 
 Lord, though they are wanting in so many of the best MSS. that they 
 can hardly have been part of the original Gospel : they seem to have 
 been added to it at a later but still early date from oral tradition. 
 
 Fa 
 
68 THE BLENDING OF HUMAN AND DIVINE. 
 
 respect to them as in respect to prophecy strictly so 
 called. 
 
 But in law and in history there was another ele- 
 ment, which we may describe in a single word as 
 commemorative or historical. In regard to this 
 element different principles come into play. If we 
 take the historical Books and look at them no 
 longer as revelation but simply as history, then we 
 find ourselves on different ground. With the sacred 
 historians the record of fact as fact, and apart from 
 its significance in the unfolding of the Divine purpose, 
 is something very secondary and subordinate. Every- 
 thing that bears on the Divine purpose, the religious 
 lessons to be drawn from the history, are pointed out 
 with great care and from a standpoint that is dis- 
 tinctly prophetic. But when once this prophetic 
 element is subtracted, the bare record of events which 
 remains does Hot seem to differ from any other 
 history. The writers tell us from what sources their 
 facts are derived just like any ordinary historian. 
 Even in the Pentateuch some ancient documents are 
 quoted like the ' Book of the Wars of the Lord^' or 
 the ' proverb ' about Heshbon ^, and critical analysis 
 can detect the composite origin of the Books. When 
 we come to the Books of Samuel, Kings, and 
 Chronicles, the number of previous documents quoted 
 is greatly multiplied. The ' Book of Jashar,' or ' the 
 ' JsTum. xjfi. 14. ' Num. iv. 27-30. 
 
THE BLENDING OF HUMAN AND DIVINE. 69 
 
 Upright,' a collection of odes relating to the heroes 
 of Israel, the histories of Samuel, Gad, and Nathan^ 
 perhaps, as it is thought, hot three distinct works but 
 successive sections of a continuous single work — the 
 'acts' of Solomon, the ' chronicles' of the kings of Israel 
 and of the kings of Judah both separately and com- 
 bined, 'commentaries' like those of Iddo the prophet^, 
 the 'acts' of Uzziah which had no less an author than 
 Isaiah^, and another work by the same prophet deal- 
 ing with the reign of Hezekiah ^ — all these and more 
 are enumerated as authorities, just as any profane 
 historian might refer to the sources from which he 
 was drawing. These various documents vary also in 
 value ; some are very near and even contemporary 
 with the events, some are separated by a greater or 
 less interval from them. A large proportion of the 
 narratives, especially in the earlier books, must rest 
 ultimately upon oral tradition, committed to writing 
 after a considerable lapse of time. I know of nothing 
 which would mark off these merely as narratives 
 from others of the same kind outside the Bible. 
 I know- of nothing which should isolate them, and 
 prevent us from judging . them as we should other 
 similar narratives. Their authority must needs rise 
 or fall according to the relation of the writer to the 
 events : some will rank higher, some lower : some will 
 
 * 2 Chron. xiii. 22. ' 2 Chron. xxvi. 22. 
 
 ' 2 Chron. xxxii. 32. 
 
70 THE BLENDING OF HUMAN AND DIVINE. 
 
 carry with them better attestation than others. But 
 so far as the Bible itself instructs us on the point, I do 
 not see how we can claim for them a strict immunity 
 from error. There is indeed a gradual shading off. 
 Some parts of the Old Testament stand out as unique 
 and distinct from all other books ; others, so far as we 
 can judge, are on much the same level with them. 
 
 We turn to the New Testament and we find there 
 phenomena of much the same kind. St. Paul lets 
 us see plainly what his inspiration is, and how far it 
 extends. The passage quoted on the last occasion 
 is decisive as to the central features at least in his 
 teaching: he did not receive it from man, neither 
 was he taught it, but it came to' him through reve- 
 lation of Jesus Christ. The person of St. Paul is 
 surrounded by the supernatural. Through all the 
 modes in which the Spirit of God held communion 
 with the elder prophets, the same Divine influences 
 were communicated to him. He too prophesied ; he 
 spake with tongues; he received intimations of the 
 Divine Will in dreams, in visions, in other ways not 
 more particularly specified. But yet he too not only 
 drew the distinctions, to which reference has been 
 already made, between the different degrees of in- 
 spiration vouchsafed to different individuals, but he 
 was also conscious of degrees in his own inspiration 
 and in the authority with which he spoke oa different 
 occasions. 
 
THE BLENDING OF HUMAN AND DIVINE. 7 1 
 
 This comes out clearly in the chapter which con- 
 tains so much wise counsel on the subject of mar- 
 riage \ For one of his precepts he claims an authority 
 higher than his own : unto the married I give charge, 
 yet not I but the Lord^. For another he will not 
 claim so much as this : to the rest say I, not the 
 Lord^- Other precepts he places rather upon the 
 footing of advice than of command. Concerning 
 virgins, he says, / have no commandment of the Lord: 
 but I give my judgment, as one that hath obtained mercy 
 of the Lord to be faithful^; where the word 'judg- 
 ment' means rather the decision to which he has 
 come in his own mind, than anything which he 
 regarded as binding upon others ; it is only a little 
 stronger than ' opinion.' Again, at the end of the 
 chapter, speaking of a widow, he says : she is happier 
 if she abide as she is, after m.y judgment : and I think 
 that T also have the Spirit of God^. The Apostle 
 modestly claims for himself some enlightenment from 
 above, but still he will not press his opinion with too 
 much emphasis. He does not regard it as an ab- 
 solute law for all Christians. It happens that the 
 Apostle does not elsewhere graduate his precepts in 
 the same explicit manner, but we can well believe 
 that he did so tacitly. 
 
 In the New Testament as in the Old there is the 
 
 ' I Cor. vii. " Ibid. 10. " Ibid. 12. 
 
 * Ibid. 25. = Ibid. 40. 
 
7 3 THE BLENDING OF HUMAN AND DIVINE. 
 
 same sort of difference between doctrine and history. 
 Where the history contains doctrine, there we have 
 every reason to suppose that the doctrine rests upon 
 the same supernatural basis, that it is as intimately 
 connected with the great Messianic outpouring of the 
 Spirit as it is elsewhere. But the history as history, 
 as a narrative of events, appears to proceed upon 
 ordinary methods. The classical passage for this 
 is the preface to the Gospel of St. Luke. Here the 
 Evangelist writes just like any other historian. He 
 claims that his narrative is based upon the report 
 of eye-witnesses, and the attendants and helpers of 
 eye-witnesses : he claims to have used all possible 
 care and research : but he nowhere assumes super- 
 natural direction : he apparently wishes to have his 
 work taken upon its merits. We are quite prepared 
 to find that he has made use of pre-existing materials. 
 And, as a matter of fact, when the Gospel and the 
 Acts come to be closely examined, there is strong 
 reason to believe that both works have incorporated 
 in them the contents of older documents. We are 
 reminded that there is a criticism of the New 
 Testament as well as of the Old. And this criti- 
 cism has made considerable progress, though a final 
 result has not yet been arrived at. One of the chief 
 subjects of debate is the composition of the first 
 three Gospels. These can no longer be treated as 
 so many independent witnesses to the same events. 
 
THE BLENDING OF HUMAN AND DIVINE. 73 
 
 It is far more probable that the common element 
 in them is all derived from a single source, whether 
 that source were in writing, or whether it represents 
 a common body of oral tradition. I would only- 
 remark in passing that if we lose in thus having 
 only one ultimate witness instead of three, we gain 
 in that this one witness is thrown back to a date 
 anterior to the three which have come down to us, 
 and is so brought stijl nearer to the events, with 
 a corresponding increase in its value as history. 
 
 In the Book of Acts in like manner older sources 
 of information appear to have been used. But other- 
 wise, except that the Epistle to the Hebrews is now 
 usually assigned to some other writer than St. Paul, 
 and that the evidence for 3 St. Peter ^ is acknow- 
 ledged to be inferior to that for the other books, 
 
 ' Doing my best to weigh impartially the arguments for and against 
 2 St. Peter, I do not find myself able to get beyond a non liquet : if the 
 arguments in its favour are unconvincing, so also are those on the other 
 side. The defective external attestation ; the (probable) use of St. 
 Jude ; the strangeness of diction and alleged coincidences with Josephus ; 
 the reference to the delay of the Second Coming — are not incompatible 
 with the genuineness of the Epistle. One of the strongest points is 
 perhaps the designation of St. Paul's Epistles as ypatpai. But it is cer- 
 tain that in the first century this term was not confined to the Books of 
 the Hebrew Canon : and I am not clear that it might not be applied at 
 an early date to works possessing such high prophetic authority as the 
 Epistles of St. Paul. Already, m the year 57, we see what an im- 
 pression these Epistles had made from 2 Cor. x. 10. We hesitate, too, 
 to treat quite so freely as if it were anonymous an Epistle which bears 
 the narne of St. Peter distinctly upon its front, and at the same time 
 
74 THE BLENDING OF HUMAN AND DIVINE. 
 
 there is less clear reason for revising the traditional 
 verdicts upon the Books of the New Testament than 
 on those of the Old. The Books most impugned are 
 St. John's Gospel (and Epistles) arid the Pastoral 
 Epistles. Others of the Epistles are criticized, and 
 a new theory has recently been put forward about 
 the Apocalypse. But in none of these cases has the 
 innovating theory been proved at air conclusively ^. 
 
 I must not go further into these details, but must 
 attempt to sum up briefly the results at which we 
 seem to arrive. What is the relation of the natural 
 tO) the supernatural, of the human to the Divine, 
 in the Bible? They shade off into each other by 
 almost insensible degrees ; but at the two ends of the 
 scale they are wide enough apart to stand out quite 
 clearly. In all that relates to the Revelation of God 
 and of His Will, the writers assert for themselves 
 
 gives no sign of disingenuous motive. On the whole question I am 
 much inclined to adopt the able summing-up given by Dr. Salmon 
 ilntrod. pp. 629-559- ed- 4)- 
 
 ^ To say this is not to deny that there are some points in these 
 writings which are imperfectly explained with our present knowledge. 
 Our German friends, as a rule, seem to me to allow too small a margm 
 for possibilities due simply to our ignorance. Bearing these in mind 
 the balance of argument seems to me in the main clear on the side of 
 tradition. The freaks of criticism of which something has been heard 
 of late in Holland and Switzerland are mere extravagances, which only 
 serve to put us on our guard against the kind of arguments relied upon. 
 Tlie most decisive reply is probably that by Gloel, Die jiingste Kritik 
 des Galaieririefes , Erlangeu and Leipzig, 1890. Dr. Gloel is a writer 
 with whom I find myself in much agreement. 
 
THE BLENDING OF HUMAN AND DIVINE. 75 
 
 a definite inspiration ; they claim to speak with an 
 authority higher than their own. But in regard to 
 the narrative of events, and to processes of literary 
 composition, there is nothing so exceptional about 
 them as to exempt them from the conditions to which 
 other works would be exposed at the same place and 
 time. 
 
 St. Peter compares the light of prophecy to that 
 of a lamp shining in a dark place ; our Lord com- 
 pared the Kingdom of Heaven in all its many 
 aspects to leaven hid in three measures of meal. The 
 light of a lamp has a vivid centre with a corona 
 which melts by degrees into the darkness by which 
 it is surrounded. The leaven in the lump of dough 
 ferments at first most actively at the point at which 
 it is inserted. In both cases there is an active force 
 introduced into material which offers some resistance 
 to it. So is it with Revelation : the heavenly and the 
 Earthly mix and blend. Human instruments are 
 made use of for Divine ends. The humanity is not 
 lost : it is not even altogether transfigured : but it 
 perforins its office none the less. It is the medium 
 through which the knowledge of God is imparted 
 to' ever- widening circles among the sons of men. 
 
VI. 
 
 LOSS AND GAIN. 
 
 (Whitehall, August 10, 1890.) 
 
 Isaiah xi. 9. 
 
 TTie earth shall he full of the knowledge of the Lord, as the 
 •waters cover the sea. 
 
 We are now perhaps in a position to estimate 
 rather more closely the effect which the changes of 
 which we have been speaking are likely to have upon 
 the faith of Christians. It must be admitted frankly 
 that they involve a loss. They make the intellectual 
 side of the connexion between Christian belief and 
 Christian practice a matter of greater difficulty than 
 it has hitherto seemed to be. In old days it was 
 very much as with the Jews in the time of our Lord. 
 When any question arose of doctrine or practice, all 
 that was needed was to turn the pages of Scripture 
 until one came to a place which bore upon the point 
 at issue. This was at once applied just as it stood, 
 without hesitation and without misgiving. It becomes 
 a different matter when the enquirer feels bound not 
 only to take the passage along with its context, but 
 
• LOSS AND GAIN. 77 
 
 also to ask who was the author, when did he write, 
 and with what stage in the history of Revelation is 
 the particular utterance connected ? Really the dif- 
 ference is not in principle at least so great as it seems, 
 because in all ages it has been recognised that there 
 were some things in the Bible, and especially in the 
 Old Testament, which could not be transferred just as 
 they stood to a later day. For instance, no one in 
 Christian times would have thought of justifying the 
 practice of polygamy by the examples of the 
 Patriarchs and Kings of Israel. And for more than 
 one generation past, in this country at least, no one 
 would have thought of finding a similar justification 
 for the institution of Slavery. In principle, therefore, 
 the two points of view are the same, and what appears 
 to be a change is only the extension to other and 
 less obvious places of a rule which had been already 
 recognised implicitly, if not explicitly, in regard to a 
 few that were more obvious. Increased knowledge, 
 in this as in other things, brings with it increased 
 responsibilities ; and if more is required of the present 
 generation than was required of our fathers, the 
 facilities put in their hands are also far greater. The 
 general level of education has been raised ; books are 
 multiplied, and in the next few years may be ex- 
 pected to multiply still more, and to improve in 
 quality — at least so far as quality means the diffusion 
 of special knowledge hitherto in the hands of a few— 
 
7.8 LOSS AND GAIN. 
 
 even more than in quantity. There is besides this 
 consolation. The main outHnes of Christian faith 
 and Christian duty are well understood independently 
 of the interpretation of particular passages. They 
 have entered into the life of the Church as a whole, 
 and are handed on from age to age. The plain man 
 who studies his Bible within the limits imposed by 
 these cannot very well go wrong. And there is the 
 incidental but great advantage that in proportion as 
 the average of Biblical knowledge rises it will become 
 more and more impossible to split up the Church into 
 the multitude of small and eccentric sects which have 
 hitherto been so disastrous to it. A few broad lines 
 of division will no doubt remain, but many of the 
 minor varieties will probably be absorbed, while it is 
 hardly possible that their number can be increased. 
 Perverse and sectional interpretations of the Scrip- 
 tures will not be able to live in the future as they 
 have done in the past in the face of an instructed 
 public opinion. As knowledge widens, all classes of 
 society will move together more than they have done. 
 We may look to have a larger consenstis of opinion, 
 and along with it a greater readiness to join in con- 
 certed action. 
 
 When we have said that the use which good men 
 
 . will make of the Bible may be expected to become 
 
 less simple and less definite in its details, that it will 
 
 involve more research and more trouble, and that less 
 
LOSS AND GAIN. 79 
 
 educated Christians will perhaps pay more deference 
 to the opinion of the more educated and to the 
 advancing consciousness of the Church at large, we 
 shall, I think, have said all that need be said as to 
 the loss — surely not all loss— for which we must be 
 prepared. But if we assign the utmost weight to 
 this, it will, I think, be far more than counterbalanced 
 by the gain. 
 
 The first gain is a gain in truth. I do not wish to 
 assume the' ultimate establishment of any particular 
 set of propositions. All that I mean is that those 
 which are ultimately established — those which obtain 
 a large amount of general acceptance — will do so 
 because they are true. There is great force in the 
 old adage, Securus judicat orbis terrarum, ' The 
 whole world can't go wrong.' Only we should of 
 course take this in its literal sense, and not confine it 
 to a particular section of the world which happens to 
 assume to itself a special infallibility. For practical 
 purposes, a Christian means by the world in this con- 
 nexion the great mass of Christian opinion. Happily 
 this is now becoming a much more real thing than it 
 was. Theology is becoming far more international 
 and interconfessional. England and France are joining 
 hands with Germany, and America ^ is joining hands 
 
 ^ The rise of theological scholarship (as distinct from dogmatic 
 or philosophical theology) in America may be said to date from Pro- 
 fessors Andrews Norton, of Harvard (died 1853), and Moses Stuart, of 
 
8o LOSS AND GAIN. 
 
 with England. Lutheran scholars and Reformed 
 Anglican and Presbyterian are all making common 
 cause. And even Roman Catholics do not hold 
 aloof^. Men are comparing notes the whole world 
 over, and extravagances and aberrations are being 
 struck off on this side and on that. Before this great 
 tribunal, eccentricities cannot stand. Some public 
 man, I forget who, is reported to have said that ' all 
 sensible men were of one religion.' The saying was a 
 bold one at the time when it was uttered : it would 
 still be bold, and an anticipation of a perhaps distant 
 future. But this at least we may say : that an agree- 
 ment upon the critical bases of religion is far more 
 within sight than it was even a short time ago. There 
 is a more reasonable temper all round. Men are 
 beginning to ask in what they can agree with as 
 
 Andover (died 1852). Professor Norton left a distinguished follower 
 in Dr. Ezra Abbot (died 1884). Biblical and theological studies 
 flourish at the present moment under Dr. Thayer at Harvard, Dr. 
 Dwight and Dr. Fislier of Yale ; Dr. Schaff, Dr. Briggs, and Dr. 
 Isaac Hall at New York j Dr. Green and Dr. Warfield at Princeton ; 
 and Professor Rendel Harris (who is English by birth and training) at 
 Haverford College, Pennsylvania. 
 
 ^ Besides the Old Catholics like Dr. Dbllinger, so lately taken away, 
 Bishop Reinkens and Professors Reusch and Friedrich, there is an 
 admirable school at Paris at the head of which ia the Abbe Duchesne — 
 one of the first theological scholars in Europe, — M. Le Blant, M. 
 Tixeront, and the Abbe Batiffol: in Germany, Bishop Hefele, Pro- 
 fessors Kraus, Funk, and Schanz; in Rome, Cardinal Hergenrbther 
 and the veteran De Rossi, who in 1885 lost the companionship of 
 another distinguished Christian archaeologist, Garrucci. 
 
LOSS AND. GAIN. 8 1 
 
 much willingness as to fight the points on which they 
 differ. This is a good augury, and one which is 
 every day pronouncing itself more clearly. 
 
 The next gain is a gain in security. Belief which 
 rests on grounds such as I have been describing 
 touches the bottom ; it feels the solid rock. Belief 
 which rests upon authority has always a certain 
 amount of scaiifolding between it and the base on 
 which it stands ; and the mind cannot help being 
 haunted by the doubt whether that scaffolding is 
 strong and firm enough to bear the weight thrown 
 upon it. Will the authority itself bear the solvents 
 of criticism ? But belief which has been itself tested 
 by criticism — which comes out as the result of a 
 critical process -^ cannot have any further solvent 
 applied to it. Its anchor cannot drag. Its roots go 
 down into the very constitution of the human mind. 
 And the faith which springs from it has all that 
 buoyancy and sense of freedom which comes from 
 having no reserve — no weak place which one shrinks 
 from putting to the proof The confidence which 
 comes from the rigorous exclusion of opposing forces 
 is one thing : that which comes from having met and 
 fought and conquered them is another. The last 
 alone is a healthy confidence ; it alone carries with it 
 the true assurance and elation of victory. 
 
 A third gain is the gain in reality. The old way 
 of looking at the Bible was mainly as a collection of 
 
 G 
 
82 LOSS AND GAIN. 
 
 doctrines — a number of abstract propositions which 
 might indeed be applied to hfe, but which were not 
 themselves in any full sense living. The new way- 
 makes' them live and breathe so intensely that their 
 life cannot help being communicated even across the 
 gulf of ages. It is like the story of Elisha, who we 
 are told went up and lay upon the dead child, and put 
 his mouth upon his mouth and his eyes upon his eyes 
 and his hands upon his hands ; and he stretched himself 
 tipon the child, and the flesh of the child waxed warm \ 
 Such is the contact into which our modern im- 
 poverished existence is brought with the ancient and 
 perennial spring of life contained in the Bible. By 
 treating the Bible history as a human history like 
 any other, by investing each period and stage in 
 it with all the surroundings proper to that period, 
 by observing the close and intimate relation which 
 doctrine always bears to' the times and circumstances 
 out of which it arises, the doctrine itself acquires a 
 new vitality. An ideal, however high, when severed 
 from life, has always something thin and pale and in- 
 effective about it. Take the same ideal and find a 
 body for it-; infuse into it a touch of genuine realism ; 
 let it be seen how it glows through its veil of flesh, 
 how it courses like pure blood through the arteries, 
 how it puts its own fine lines upon the features and 
 kindles them with its own enthusiasm, and it becomes 
 ' 2 Kings iv. 34. 
 
LOSS AND GAIN. 83 
 
 tenfold more winning and attractive— not only in- 
 spired itself but a source of real inspiration in others. 
 St. Paul speaks of Christians reflecting as in a mirror 
 the glory of the Lord, being transformed into the same 
 image from glory toglory"^, and that should be the case 
 with all who are brought into vital and vitalizing 
 contact with the Bible. 
 
 Truth, security, reality are three things closely 
 allied to each other. They.are only different aspects 
 of the result of a more profound study, a more 
 thorough apprehension .of the Bible as it is and not 
 as we imagine it to be. The gain which they re- 
 present is one for which it would not be easy to pay 
 too dear. Of course I do not mean that we shall 
 grasp the whole amount of this gain all at once. 
 This too, like all other processes, must be gradual. 
 But it is a process on which, as it seems to me, we 
 are well launched. The Continent is ahead of us 
 just at present : in Germany especially the results of 
 criticism have been more fully assimilated : but I 
 believe that we shall soon do more than make up 
 for lost time, as the scholars of our own, in whose 
 hands the working out of these problems lies, are 
 distinguished by a peculiarly happy balance between 
 the interests of religion and of science : we may be 
 sure that: the one will not be, sacrificed to the other. 
 
 There is, however, another point which I think 
 
 ' 2 Cor. iii. 18. 
 G 2 
 
84 LOSS AND GAIN. 
 
 that we need not, hesitate to set down under the head 
 of ' gain,' in the change involved in the manner of 
 using the Bible. Hitherto the use which has been 
 niade of it has been mainly of two kinds. On the 
 one hand it has been taken as the basis of formulated 
 doctrine, such as constitutes the substance of Creeds 
 and Articles. On the other hand single texts have 
 been constantly applied as sources of stimulus or of 
 comfort.. The last is the use which has been most 
 common with plain, everyday Christians ; the first is 
 that which has exercised the leaders pf Christian 
 thought and the deliberations of the great Church 
 assemblies. Both these uses are legitimate, and ought 
 not to be disparaged. Only it is not wrong to bear in 
 mind that, while the decisions of Councils, represent- 
 ing as they do the deliberate judgment of the great 
 majority of the Church at moments when a clear 
 issue has been set before it, are not likely to be 
 reversed, — so that, for instance, it. is extremely im- 
 probable that • anything at all corresponding to the 
 Arianism which was rejected in the fourth century 
 should establish itself in the nineteenth or twentieth, — 
 these , decisions are . nevertheless historical in their 
 character, having relation to particular phases of 
 thought prevailing at particular periods, and there- 
 fore are apt to lose, if not their,. essential truth, yet 
 to some extent their interest and appositeness to 
 the present. With this qualification the two older 
 
LOSS AND GAIN. 85 
 
 Vises of the Bible will doubtless continue, and need 
 not be called in question. But there is yet a third 
 use which it seems to me is likely to become more 
 and more prominent in the future : I mean, the use 
 of the Bible not merely as a basis for abstract 
 doctrine, more or less metaphysical, and not merely 
 in the form of isolated single texts directly applied 
 to the life of individuals, but in a form which might 
 be described as standing midway between these, and 
 moi'e in accordance with the circumstances under 
 which' the Biblical revelations were originally commu- 
 nicated. What, when we come to think of it, was the 
 method; of those. revelations ? They were not primarily 
 metaphysics or pure abstractions, neither were they a 
 collection of detailed maxims or aphorisms, but they 
 consisted of certain great ruling principles or ideas, 
 always enunciated in connexion with some pressing 
 problem of actual practical life, and usually on a 
 somewhat large scale. Let me enumerate some of 
 these ruling ideas or principles, so that I may be better 
 understood. The Fatherhood of God is one of therii, 
 an idea realized — ^or that ought to be realized — by 
 Jew and Christian with a force and in a degree un- 
 imagined, I believe I am right in saying, by any 
 people outside the sphere of our own special Revela- 
 tion ; the Holiness, and yet more, the Loving-kind- 
 ness of God, an idea which, again, has nowhere 
 reached anything like "the intensity of expression 
 
86 LOSS AND GAIN. 
 
 which it has attained in the Jewish Prophets and in 
 Christianity; the Kingdomy or I would say rather 
 the Reign, of God, not merely iii the form of an 
 earthly society, but more searching and pervasive in 
 its action ; the Divine Choice, both of individuals and 
 of nations, to be the instruments of God's mighty pur- 
 poses, with the corresponding idea so prominent, first 
 in Isaiah and then in St. Paul, of the preservation of 
 a faithful Remnant in times of trial and apostasy j 
 the great and dominant idea which runs through 
 both Old and New Testament, from the beginning 
 to the end of the Divinely-wrought Deliverance or 
 Deliverances culminating in the Redemption- of 
 Christ ; and along with this another leading ideaj 
 which again passes in a deeper and more penetrating 
 sense from the Old Testament to the New, of the 
 Indwelling of God among His people ; and yet once 
 more the idea on which this last is based, of the 
 relation as of Covenant into which God enters with 
 His Chosen, in its twofold aspect as implying at once 
 privileges and obligations. 
 
 . All these it will be felt are something more than 
 ideas ; they are moving ideas or forces ; they appeal, 
 when rightly presented, not only to the intellect but 
 to the- emotions; they do not only guide and direct, 
 but they add elevation, strength, buoyancy to life. 
 They are that Divine element . which is capable 
 of counteracting the wear and tear, the- troubles, 
 
LOSS AND GAIN. 87 
 
 anxieties, and sorrows, the weaknesses and tempta- 
 tions of this earthly existence. 
 
 It would of course be an absurd exaggeration to 
 say that the ideas or principles or forces, of which 
 I have been speaking, have not hitherto played their 
 part in Christianity. Every one who reads his Bible 
 at, all must recognise their presence. At particular 
 periods in history first one and then another has 
 been brought into special prominence. But the way 
 in which this has been done has not been quite 
 happy. There has been too much of a tendency to 
 erect therri into abstract dogmas. That was not the 
 form in which they were first promulgated, but as 
 living, -pulsating, moving truths, which came from 
 the lips of Prophets and Apostles with genuine in- 
 spiration, and which carried their inspiring power 
 with them wherever they penetrated. I cannot help 
 thinking that the critical and historical way of look- 
 ing at. the Bible is calculated to win back some of 
 this inspiring power. It takes them out of the 
 region of abstractions and puts them again into 
 relation with life. But life is the true generator of 
 life. Let us see the fabric of Divine Revelation 
 rising up around us as it really rose ; let us see its 
 different parts one after , another in contact with the 
 actual crises of history ; let us observe them working 
 like leaven in some of the strongest, grandest, richest 
 of human personalities— an Isaiah or a St. Paulj let 
 
88 LOSS AND GAIN. 
 
 us observe them swaying the fortunes. of nations and 
 masses of men ; let us mark how the light first dawns 
 and then broadens; how the formative force which 
 God has implanted in His Revelation draws into its 
 vortex, absorbs and assimilates first this and then 
 that element of extraneous or secular culture ;■' let 
 us trace the mighty purpose which runs through 
 the ages down even to our own time; and it seems 
 to me that both our hearts and our imaginations 
 must be kindled and inflamed to the very utmost 
 of their capacity. It is not for me to find fault with 
 the work of men who as preachers and teachers 
 have far greater gifts than my own, but I cannot help 
 thinking that there has been something rather half- 
 hearted in the presentation of what I believe to be 
 the real fundamentals of Christianity, and all for 
 want of that vital apprehension of them which should 
 be the proper fruit of criticism and history. We 
 have played too long upon the surface of things : but 
 the time is coming I believe — thanks to that move- 
 ment which has filled some with a natural but mis- 
 taken alarm — when we shall be so possessed with 
 these great truths ourselves, that we shall be able 
 to convey more of their greatness to others. The 
 Christian who studies the signs of the times will not 
 despond, but he will rather look up and lift up his 
 head, for, in spite of the clouds which drift fitfully 
 across his vision, the sky is really bright above him. 
 
VII. 
 
 TRUE AND FALSE INSPIRATION. 
 (Exeter College Chapel, Oct. 26, 1890.) 
 
 Jeremiah v. 30, 31. 
 
 A wonderful and horrible thing is come to pass in the land; 
 the prophets prophesy falsely, and the priests hear rule by their 
 means J and my people love to have it so : and what will ye do 
 in the end thereof? 
 
 The Christian^ who rests his belief in the Bible 
 primarily upon the Bible itself — who finds that 
 nothing impresses him so strongly as the conviction 
 which the Biblical writers themselves evidently had 
 that their words were an announcement of the Divine 
 Will and were put in their hearts by the Holy Spirit 
 — will find himself confronted with two questions : 
 (r) How is he to tell where this Divine prompting 
 begins and where it ends, in other words, what is 
 inspired and what is not ? and (2) How is he to dis- 
 tinguish true inspiration from false ? 
 
 The first question will not trouble him very greatly. 
 All he has to do is to pursue the same method 
 with which he began — to look closely at the language 
 which the Biblical writers use, and to see where they 
 
90 TRUE AND FALSE INSPIRATION. 
 
 claim inspiration and where they do not, where they 
 profess to speak the words of God, and where they 
 write after the manner of other men. This is a Hne 
 of thought which any one can work out for himself. 
 I have spoken about it elsewhere^, and I do not 
 intend to return to it now. But the other question 
 needs, I think, to be more directly dealt with. I 
 am not sure that it is not the last fundamental 
 question on this side which a theology which seeks 
 to build itself up without assumptions has to ask. 
 
 Again we have not to look outside the Bible for 
 a hint of its own limitations. I have pointed out 
 on other occasions that the essence of the Bible 
 lies in prophecy. The prophetic spirit is the proper 
 vehicle of revelation. This holds good for the New 
 Testament equally with the Old, for St. Paul and 
 St. John are as liiuch prophets as Isaiah and Hoseai' 
 But if this is so — and I may perhaps for the present 
 assume Avithout staying to prove if — then it is dis- 
 tinctly recognised all through the Bible that there 
 are false prophets and false prophecy side by side 
 with the true. We need to remember that prophecy 
 was a profession, and that the prophets formed a 
 professional class. There were schools of the prophets 
 in which the gift was regularly cultivated. A group 
 of young men would gather round some commanding 
 figure — a Samuel or an Elisha — and would not only 
 ' See Lecture V. 
 
TRUE AND FALSE INSPIRAT^.... 91 
 
 record or spread the knowledge of his sayings and 
 doings, but" seek to catch themselves something of 
 his inspiration. It seems that music played its part 
 in their exercises'^. It was not, however, necessary 
 to belong to one of these schools in order to be a 
 prophet. The prophet Amos tells us expressly that 
 he was no prophet, neither was he a prophet's son % 
 where prophet's son means practically the same thing 
 as ' member of a society,' like that certain man of 
 the sons of the prophets ^ who gave a sign to Ahab 
 condemning him for sparing the life of Ben-hadad; 
 And on the other hand it is perfectly clear that by 
 no means all of these sons of the prophets ever 
 succeeded in acquiring more than a very small share 
 in the gift which they sought. It was clearly pos- 
 sible to ' counterfeit ' prophecy. Sometimes that 
 was done deliberately, as in the case of the deception 
 practised upon the man of God who was sent to 
 speak against the altar of Jeroboam at Bethel '. 
 But it by no means follows that in all cases where 
 a false message was given the giver of it was alto- 
 gether conscious of what he was doing. Every one 
 will remember that striking scene at the end of the 
 First Book of Kings' where Ahab and Jehoshaphat 
 gather together the prophets, about 400 in number, 
 to enquire whether or not they are to go up against 
 
 * I Samuel X. 5. ' Amos vii. 14. ' i Kings xx. 35. 
 
 * I Kings xiii, 18. ■■ i Kings xxii. 
 
92 TRUE AND FALSE INSPIRATION. 
 
 the Syrians at Ramoth-Gilead, and how, when 
 the king of Israel puts to them the question, 
 with one voice they encourage him to go, one of 
 the prophets in the approved prophetic fashion 
 making himself horns of iron to symbolize the defeat 
 which would be inflicted on the Syrians. Jehoshaphat 
 is not perfectly satisfied, and he asks if there is not 
 besides a prophet of Jehovah. With soriie reluctance 
 Micaiah is produced, though Ahab confesses that he 
 hates him. Micaiah prophesies the death of the 
 king, and Israel scattered like sheep that have no 
 shepherd. He goes on to explain by a parable the 
 unanimity of his opponents. He had seen the Lord 
 sitting on His throne with the host of heaven on the 
 right hand and on the left. The question was pro- 
 posed how Ahab was to be persuaded to go up 
 and fall at Ramoth-Gilead, and at last one of the 
 spirits offers to go forth and be a lying spirit in 
 the mouth of all his prophets. The offer is accepted 
 and the mission succeeds ^- We can see from the 
 context how there are mixed motives at work. The 
 400 prophets truckle to the powerful monarch, who 
 is impatient of anything which does not run in the 
 direction of his own wishes. But on the other hand 
 there is a spirit of delusion abroad as well. We 
 are not to suppose that these men really knew that 
 Ahab would fall : their minds were warped by self- 
 ' 1 Kings xxii. 17-23. 
 
TRUE AND FALSE INSPIRATION: 93 
 
 interest, and they deceived themselves before they 
 deceived others. 
 
 Ill every age of the Church a very broad distinc- 
 tion must be drawn between the machinery of reve- 
 lation or of spiritual influence and the revelation 
 or spiritual influence itself. Nothing can be more 
 decisive on this head than the verses from the Book 
 of Jeremiah which I took as my text. The prophet 
 looks out upon the theocracy as it was in his day, , 
 and he sees that every part of it is corrupt : the 
 whole organization is out of gear ; the prophets 
 prophesy falsely ; the priests are set on their own 
 power and advancement ; the people know that 
 things are wrong and yet they will not insist on 
 amendment ; they would rather have smooth things 
 and peace and comfort than brace themselves for 
 any strenuous effort at reform. So the whole head is 
 sick\and the whole heart faint. Religion itself is 
 poisoned at its source. 
 
 _A passage like this is an emphatic warning to 
 all times. It is no doubt an extreme state of things. 
 Jeremiah . himself is conscious that it is. He calls 
 it a wonderful and horrible thing. But tendencies 
 are best seen by extremes. It does not follow that, 
 because there are prophets all is truth, or because 
 there are. priests all, is righteousness and holiness. 
 
 This then is one part of the problem before us. 
 How are we to distinguish true from false inspiration 
 
94 TRUE AND- FALSE INSPIRATION. 
 
 — how are we to distinguish it within the sphere of 
 Revelation itself? And another part of it is, How 
 are we to distinguish one professing revelation from 
 another? I cannot bring ; myself-^and there is really 
 nothing in the history of Christianity to compel me 
 to bring myself — to divide religions absolutely into 
 true and false. From the first days of Christian 
 teaching down to our own there has been not wanting 
 a succession of men who have seen and rejoiced 
 in the elements of good in Creeds which we have 
 not subscribed. Take a phenomenon like the oracle 
 at Delphi; take that most touching account which 
 Plato gives of the han>.6viov of Socrates ; take the 
 teaching of Gautama (Buddha) ; analyse the character 
 of Mahomet ;^shall we .say that there is no 'spark 
 from heaven ' in these ? Assuredly there are ' sparks 
 , from heaven ' — assuredly there are ' seeds of the 
 Divine Word ' (o-Trepjuara roO Aoyou) — assuredly there 
 were (as Justin Martyr recognised) ' Christians before 
 Christ ' — assuredly even now there are ' heathen who 
 are not heathen' — not My people Mrho shall be called 
 My people, and not beloved who shall be called 
 Beloved ^- We may be asked then what account we 
 give of these. What test should we apply? What 
 is the bearing of the existence of false prophecy in 
 Israel upon the religion of the Bible ? How are we to 
 correlate that religion with the ethnic religions? 
 
 ' Romans ix. 35 ; Hosea ii. 23. 
 
TRUE AND FALSE INSPIRAT. 95 
 
 In the first place let us weigh this simple fact. 
 The Bible speaks of false prophets even in Israel. 
 But no one would say that the Bible itself contained 
 false prophecy — for false prophecy and unfulfilled 
 prophecy are not the same thing. False prophecy 
 might have its place in Israel ; but it had no rightful 
 place in the religion of Israel. The words of the 
 Law are most emphatic: The prophet which shall 
 speak a word presumptuotisly in my name, which I 
 have not commanded him to speak, or that shall speak in 
 the name of other gods, that same prophet shall die''-. 
 The safeguard against false prophecy has been the 
 Canon of Scripture. A process of sifting has taken 
 place. If we look at it from one point of view we 
 may call the efficient cause the Providence of God ; 
 if we look at it from another point of view we may 
 call it the consciousness of the Church. It has been 
 agreed to mark off certain books from others as con- 
 taining in a special sense the Word of God. I will 
 not take upon myself to say that the verdict of the 
 past may not conceivably undergo revision. It has 
 already been to a certain extent revised — at the 
 Reformation : and two different estimates are current 
 in the Roman and in the Reformed Churches. It is 
 possible that the future may have in store for us 
 another such revision. No doubt points are present 
 to people's minds now which were not equally present 
 ' Deut. xviii. 20. 
 
95 , TRUE..AND, FALSE INSPIRATION. 
 
 in the early ages. These points might perhaps be 
 taken into fuller consideration. But at present there 
 does, not seem to be any inclination even among those 
 who question the dates and authorship of some of the 
 books to displace them as Scripture.. The most 
 would seem to be that some of the books (e.g. 
 2 St. Peter) are appealed to as authorities with rather 
 rnore hesitation than others. Taken as a whole it 
 may be said that the verdict of the later Church has 
 ratified the verdict of the earlier. Christendom still 
 holds that the truths for which Prophets and Apostles 
 contended are really truths — and truths which are not 
 unworthy to have been revealed from above. In this 
 we may. well see a Divine guidance. But indeed the 
 process by which the Canon was formed gave the 
 best guarantee of permanence. It is based upon an 
 instinct which went deeper than argument. The 
 ' usage of the Churches ' was better than any 
 theoretical criteria. Those books -were, adopted which 
 possessed the same credentials as the Apostles 
 possessed, and which, proved themselves to be divine 
 by the demonstration of the Spirit and of power. 
 
 That is our answer to those who ask what means 
 we have of discriminating pretended revelation from 
 true. , And our answer is not dissimilar to those who 
 ask how we weigh the claims! of prophetic manifesta- 
 tions in Greece, or Arabia, or India, as compared with 
 those in Israel or that wider ' spiritual Israel ' which 
 
True and false inspirat^^^ . 97 
 
 we call Christianity. In the perspective of history, 
 truth and falsehood, lower truth and higher truth, 
 disentangle themselves, and stand out with quite 
 sufficient clearness. Vicisti Galilaee are the dying 
 words attributed to the last imperial champion of 
 Paganism, and the Muse of history does but take 
 them up and echo them. Let us deny nothing, let - 
 us depreciate and minimize nothing of all that there 
 is of high and unworldly aspiration, of all that there 
 is of deep and penetrating insight in the religions 
 external to Christianity. The facts are there, and it is 
 our duty to accept and rejoice over them. They are 
 tjie outskirts of the working of that Divine Spirit 
 which fills the universe. But because we fecognise 
 this we do not therefore touch the prerogative of our 
 own religion. Let us take two examples out of those 
 which have been mentioned. One of the most 
 striking things about Socrates is what he calls his 
 ' Daemon,' that voice which has attended him from 
 his youth up and whispers in his ear when he or those 
 in whom he is interested are about to do anything 
 that they should not. It is a pathetic touch, when, 
 in the Epilogue to his Apology, he consoles those 
 who voted for his acquittal by telling them that this 
 Warning Voice of his, which in all the rest of his life 
 had been ready enough to stop him when he was 
 doing anything wrong or unpropitious, placed no. 
 obstacle before him when he went out to his arrest, 
 
 H 
 
98 TRUE AND FALSE- INSPIRATION. 
 
 or when he was on his way to trial, or at any part of 
 his speech in his own defence. ' At other times it wa3 
 in the habit of interrupting him while he was spealcT 
 ing, but it had not done so tlien. He argued from 
 this that it was a mistake to suppose that death was 
 an evil. Otherwise his mentor would not have let 
 him go to certain death \ 
 
 Again, if we take the case of Mahomet, a just 
 criticism rriust see in him an element — and even a 
 large element — of sincerity. He really felt himself 
 called to be the prophet of God, to preach that God 
 was one; that idols were noug'ht, that absolute sub- 
 mission to God's will was the first duty of man. 
 These were real truths; descended in fact from 
 Judaism, and to be conscious of a commission to 
 proclaim them was no imposture. But unfortunately 
 this is not the only element in Mahometanism. There 
 is too much in that religion — too much in the Koran — 
 which W3ts dictated, not by any genuine inspiration, 
 but by the prophet's own strong passions ^ 
 
 Neither Socrates nor Mahomet afford more than 
 a very rudimentary and imperfect analogy to the 
 Bible. Delightful as is the simplicity with which the 
 
 ' Plato, Apol. Socr. c. 31 (p. 40). 
 
 " It is a' pleasure to refer once more to Dr. Dale's, book, where 
 the case of .Mahometanism is also considered in connexion with an- 
 argument similar to that of Lecture III, and treated as it seems 
 to me "very directly and satisfactorily. See The Living Christ, &c' 
 p|), jr)4^68.- 
 
TRUE AND FALSE INSPIRAJ 99 
 
 Platonic Socrates speaks of his familiar spirit, so free 
 from strain and assumption, and with just a touch of 
 playfulness which softens but does not conceal the 
 seriousness of character in which the conception has 
 its rise, the Daemon is after all only a negative 
 thing. It checks and dissuades, but it does no more', 
 The beautiful argument about death is only sug- 
 gested by its prompting^. And when we compare 
 the Koran with the Bible, the disinterestedness, the 
 richness and fulness of the latter stand out more than 
 ever. What is best in the Koran is only reflected 
 from the Bible. And how much is there in the 
 Bible to which the Koran affords no parallel 1 How 
 powerful is that stream of enlightenment and truth 
 which grows broader and deeper, and gains at every 
 stage in volume and force, as prophet succeeds 
 prophet, and the Law makes way for the Gospel ! 
 
 In putting the religion of the Bible at the head 
 of all religions, in claiming for its exponents a real 
 Divine inspiration, we do not take it out of all natural 
 conditions. Inspiration works through human facul- 
 ties : it does not supersede them. The analogies 
 which connect Biblical religion with other religions 
 are not all illusory. Healthy phenomena pass into 
 
 ' This is the description which Socrates is made to give of it : imi 
 yap T( 0€ia l^oipa Trap^nopevov kfJLol Ik iraiSbs dp^aficvov Zaifx6vLov, 6ffTt Si 
 TovTO tpaivrj, ^ oToy yevrjrai, det fiot tJrjfiaivei, & hv fi4K\(u vp&Trnv, 
 TovTOV anorpoTTTjVj npoTpeirei 5k ovSinore. Plato, Theages^ u. II (p. 128). 
 
 * Apol. Socr. c. 31 (p. 40). 
 
 II 2 
 
JOO TRUE AND FALSE INSPIRATION. 
 
 morbid, lower into higher, natural into supernatural, 
 by the most gradual transitions. It is a mistake to 
 set the natural and the supernatural in too sharp 
 antithesis. Whether we look at the individual who 
 is endowed with the prophetic gift and study the 
 process by which that gift receives expression, or 
 whether we look at the whole complex product of 
 prophetic religion, they touch each other air along 
 the line, and it is equally difficult to say where the 
 one ends and the other begins. Perhaps it is well 
 that we should be reminded in this way that both are 
 really parts of the same great Divine economy. They 
 proceed from the same Author ; they co-operate for" 
 the same ends ; they are included in the same vast 
 chain of causation. The only difference is that we 
 know a little more about the one than we do about 
 the other, and that the Power which presides over 
 both alike lays — or seems to lay — a little more stress 
 here than He does there. When the organist sits at 
 the key-board of his instrument he plays some 
 passages soft and some loud ; sometimes the notes 
 that he gives forth are muffled, sometimes they are 
 loud and clear. But the different parts of his playing 
 are all upon the same instrument, and they all 
 harmonize together. The very same note is alter- 
 nately subdued and emphasized ; and there are 
 crescendoes and diminuendoes to connect the soft with 
 the loud. So with Him who sits at the key-board of 
 
TRUE AND FALSE INSPIRATl^.,. lOl 
 
 the universe, and touches now with lighter and now 
 with more constraining force the chords of the human 
 spirit : the music which results is not broken and 
 discordant, but it all bknds into a subtle harmony 
 and the rising and the falling cadences alike con- 
 tribute to the whole. 
 
VIII. 
 
 CHRIST AND THE SCRIPTURES. 
 
 (Exeter College Chapel, TSav. 9, 1890.) 
 
 Hebrews ii. 7. 
 Thou madest Him a little lower than the angels. 
 
 The controversy respecting the criticism of the Old 
 Testament has taken what I cannot but think a very 
 unfortunate turn. The true method in this and in 
 all cognate questions seems to me to be first, at all 
 costs of time and labour, to ascertain what are the 
 exact facts. When that has been done the explana- 
 tion of the facts will come almost of itself We shall 
 see them in their true proportions, and they will fall 
 into their proper place and relation to each other. 
 It is the reverse of this to take a single text, to draw 
 from it at once far-reaching dogmatic consequences 
 and so to foreclose by an appeal to authority the 
 whole line of detailed investigations. It is needless 
 to say that even the effect which is sought will not 
 be attained. The investi_gations will go on all the 
 same. And meanwhile they will be conducted under 
 prejudice on both sides, and when they have reached 
 
CHRIST AND THE SCRIPTUR 103 
 
 their conclusion the shock of collision between the 
 opposed opinions will be all the greater. 
 
 It does not however follow because I would dcr 
 precate this that I would have lis shrink from facing 
 any question that may be legitimately proposed to us. 
 In this particular instance it is not so much the 
 raising of the question that I deprecate as the time 
 and place, the logical order, in which it is raised, and 
 the use that is made of it in controversy. Sooner or 
 later we must no doubt be clear in our own minds 
 as to the bearing of certain quotations from the Old 
 Testament in the Gospels. The qiiestion involved 
 is nothing less than the authority of our Lord Him- 
 self His authority is thought to sanction the tra- 
 ditional views as to the origin and authorship of the 
 Books of the Old Testament, and to preclude from 
 the outset the adoption of any other. 
 
 There is therefore a distinct issue placed before us 
 which we must not decline because we would rather 
 lake it in a different order or because we hesitate to 
 touch a point on which misunderstanding is so easy!. 
 Happily this last danger is greatly 1 lightened for 
 those who are committed to the cause of criticism 
 by the wise and thoughtful utterances of leaders in 
 the Church who are not so committed ^. Never, as it 
 
 ' I have in my mind not only the publicly expressed opinions of the 
 Archbishop of Canterbury and the Bishops of Carlisle, Durham, and 
 Oxford, but even more,(those of the Bishop of Lincoln and Dr. Gregory, 
 
164 CHRIST AND THE SCRIPTURES. 
 
 r 
 
 seems to me, has a great and really, momentous ques- 
 tion been approached from all sides in so. excellent a 
 teinjier. 
 
 1 venture then, with a prayer for chastened And 
 careful speech, to address myself to it this evening. 
 
 In some positions he who woiild climb a perilous 
 ascent seeks to plant his feet iarm before he makes 
 another forward motion. Let us do this by first re- 
 calling to our minds why it is that we invest every 
 word spoken by our Lord with such supreme autho- 
 rity. We regard His words as the words of One who 
 was God as well as Man. And we so fegard them, 
 I think it maybe said, for three reasons : (i) because 
 of the way in which He spoke about Himself ; (a) 
 because of the impression which He made upon His 
 companions a,nd contemporaries, notably sUch men 
 as St. Paul and St. Peter and St. John ; (3) because 
 cf the prolonged and tried experience of the Church 
 at large. 
 
 (i) In orderto have unimpeachable standing-groundj 
 I reserve expressions, such as those in the Fourth 
 Gospel, which might be thought to bear witness 
 rather to the intense conviction of the disciple than 
 to the certain affirmation of the Master, and I con- 
 fine myself to the Synoptic Gospels. There we have 
 
 Smith. Where men of such delicate and sensitive, loyalty have gone 
 before it is far easier for others to follow: the edge is taken from 
 criticism when its course is guided by such hands.. 
 
CHRIST AND THE SCRIPTUR lo'^ 
 
 a number of mysterious claims which are all the 
 more impressive because they are put forward so 
 indirectly. Stronger evidence there: could hardly be 
 to the strictly historical character of the narrative > 
 than the peculiar and consistent reticence which is 
 observed on this head ; first one and then another 
 of those who are healed from various maladies being 
 expressly forbidden to proclaim their Healer, and 
 the crowds avoided which would have taken Him by 
 force to make Him King ; and yet all the time un- 
 mistakeable if not explicit hints thrown out. He is 
 greater than Jonah, greater than Solomon ; He alone 
 knows the Father; none but the Father knows the 
 Son ; He alone gives rest and peace ; the yoke 
 which the disciples bear is His yoke ; He is the 
 great Judge who is to separate between the sheepi 
 and the goats ; in that day the good deeds which 
 have been done to the poor are as if they had 
 been done to Him ; on the other hand, His claim 
 takes precedence of that even of the poor ; so exn 
 alted is His claim that to receive one of His 
 disciples is to receive Him, and to receive Him 
 is to receive the Father. Nowhere is the truth 
 to which St. Peter confessed distinctly expressed, 
 though everywhere it is implied. Thou art the Christ, 
 the Son of the living God; and then at last 
 comes that warm and emphatic ratification, Blessed- 
 art thott, Simon Bar-jonah, for flesh and blood hath 
 
io6 CHRIST AND THE SCRIPTURES. 
 
 not revealed it to thee, but my Father which is in 
 heaven. 
 
 This is our first ground. That which Jesus claimed 
 for Himself cannot be wrong. We say with the cen- 
 turion, as we look back over the history, Truly this 
 was the Son of God. :. " 
 
 (3) And then next there comes the strong con- 
 sensus of the Apostolic age. In all tanks and schools 
 and parties among Christians it is agreed that Christ 
 died for our sins and rose again and sat down on the 
 right hand of God. This is not the doctrine of St. 
 Paul alone or of Apollos, but of St. Peter and 
 St. Jude and St. John — we may add of St. James and 
 of the nameless author of the work which is known 
 as the' Epistle to the Hebrews as well.. Nothing can 
 be more emphatic than the testimony which is borne 
 by all but one of these writers. [The only exception 
 is St. James, who has not occasion to bring out this 
 particular doctrine, though we cannot doubt that he 
 held it, for he names the Father and the Son to- 
 gether, and calls himself a servant of the Lord Jesus 
 Christ ^ \ and we know also that Christ appeared to 
 him ^.] The image of the , invisible God, in whom it 
 pleased the Father that all the fidness (of the divine 
 attributes) should dwell, writes St. Paul. The bright- 
 ness of His glory, and the express image of His 
 substance, writes the author of the Epistle to the 
 
 ' St. James i. I. " t Cor. xv. 7. 
 
CHRIST AND THE SCRIPTUR^ . i07 
 
 Hebrews. In the beginning was the Word, and the 
 Word was with God, and the Word was God, writes 
 St. John; Arid there are a hundred other passages if 
 we needed them. On other points there were contro- 
 versies among Christians, — whether converts were to 
 be circumcised or not ; whether prophecy was greater, 
 or speaking with tongues ; whether it was right to be 
 ascetic and to avoid certain kinds of meat ; what was 
 the part played by angels in the work of creation and 
 redemption ; when was to be the Second Coming, and 
 what were its signs ; how Christians ought to behave 
 in view of its near approach. All these were points 
 that were really disputed. But there was no dispute 
 that Christ was Lord, no dispute that He had risen, 
 no dispute that He, and none but He, should judge 
 the quick and the dead. 
 
 This is our second ground, the overpowering 
 weight of consent in all quarters of the Christian 
 world, of which we have abundant evidence little 
 more than twenty years after the Ascension — the 
 consent not of weaklings but of men of such strength 
 of intellect and character as St. Paul and St. John. 
 
 (3) Then, lastly, we have the confirmation of this 
 primitive belief by the deliberate verdict, long pon- 
 dered and decisively given, of the later Church. An- 
 other hypothesis was tried on a large scale in the 
 fourth and fifth centuries and found wanting. It was 
 tried with all the advantages of imperial support. 
 
log CHRIST AND THE SCklPTVRES. 
 
 with all the weight behind it of young and vigorous 
 and warlike peoples. And yet not only was it 
 solemnly and repeatedly condemned in the assem- 
 blies of Christendom, but the peoples who adopted it, 
 one by one, gave it up until it vanished from the 
 face of the earth. The verdict of history seems final 
 against Arianism. Its champions were beaten in 
 argument ; they were beaten in the field ; they were 
 beaten in the hold which their tenets had upon the 
 affections of their followers. It could not be said that 
 Arianism had not a fair trial; it had more than at 
 fair trial ; but the result was a defeat so crushing as 
 to leave no hope that it would ever successfully raise 
 its head again. 
 
 We may however look beyond the horizon of 
 Arianism, and we may say that the experience of more 
 than eighteen centuries affords the very strongest pre- 
 sumption that nothing short of the Catholic doctrine 
 will ever permanently satisfy the wants of Christian; 
 women and Christian men. 
 
 On these grounds we hold fast to the belief of the 
 Church that Our Lord Jesus Christ the Son of God is 
 God and Man ; God of the Substance of the Father, be" 
 gotten before the worlds ; and Man of the Substance of 
 His Mother, born in the world ; perfect God, and 
 perfect Man : of a reasonable soul and human flesh 
 subsisting ; equal to the Father, as touching His God- 
 Jiead, and inferior to the Father, as touching His Man' 
 
CHRIST AND THE SCRIPTURl 09 
 
 hood. Such is the clearly formulated Creed, which 
 we hold with the whole Christian Church dispersed 
 throughout the world. What then is the bearing of 
 that Creed upon those passages in the Gospels in 
 which He who is perfect God and perfect Man 
 refers by name to the currently received authors of 
 books of the Old Testament? Does it stamp and 
 stereotype those names upon them absolutely and for 
 ever^ 
 
 Here will be apparent the reason why I think 
 that it is a far sounder method not to ask this 
 question until we know first what is the truth about 
 the books in question, whether they were really the 
 works of their reputed authors or not. It is not 
 beyond the power of scholarly enquiry to determine; 
 this. Some think that it is determined already, I 
 will not go so far as this, though I may have an 
 opinion myself on which side the truth lies. Such an 
 opinion, I admit, is different from certainty. It is 
 different from the deliberate, sustained and tested 
 assent of competent judges. That assent has not yet 
 been obtained to such an extent as to pass from the 
 region of the subjective to that of the objective, from 
 opinion to ascertained fact. 
 
 We can, therefore, at present only speak provision- 
 ally and hypothetically. If it should be proved that 
 the Law, as we have it, was not written by Moses, or 
 that the iioth Psalm was not written by David, what 
 
no CHRIST AND THE SCRIPTURES. 
 
 in that case should we say to the affirmations of the 
 Athanasian Creed? The question I think, for the 
 reasons I have given, is premature : but if we are 
 forced to answer it, thus much at least seems obvious, 
 that the explanation must lie in the fact that He of 
 whom we are speaking is not only God but Man. 
 The error of statement would belong in some way to 
 the Humanity and not to the Divinity. But here some 
 theologians tell us that no such mistake is possible 
 even to the Humanity. When they are confronted 
 with our Lord's own assertion that there was one 
 thing which He did not know — the hour of His own 
 Second Coming, they argue that the two things are 
 different, that imperfect knowledge is one thing, 
 erroneous teaching (though it is hardly teaching — 
 only a presupposition in what is taught) is another. 
 Again, when such an expression as He maketh His 
 sun to rise is referred in like manner to imperfect 
 scieftce, that they admit, but maintain that questions 
 relating to the authorship of the Old Testament 
 touch more nearly the subject-matter of Revelation. 
 Are these distinctions valid? Are they valid enough 
 to be insisted upon so strongly as they must be if the 
 arguments based upon them are to hold good ? I 
 greatly doubt it. They belong to a class of reason- 
 ing upon which I confess that I always look with 
 suspicion. They are «/r/i?r? in their character : they 
 are not a definition of what is, but a laying down of 
 
CHRIST AND THE SCRIPTURJ II 
 
 what must be: and that in a matter as to which I 
 question whether we are competent judges. The mere 
 phrase ' God-Man ' is to me enough to make us 
 silent; it is enough at least to make our words be 
 'wary and few.' How shall we touch that mystery- 
 just at its tenderest part, and speak of it as we might 
 speak of that which is well within our ken ? To me 
 it seems that our wisdom is to abstain from theorizing 
 altogether until we are better assured as to the facts 
 about which we have to theorize. 
 
 One hypothesis, however, I think we may reject 
 beforehand. I should be loth to believe that our 
 Lord accommodated His language to current notions, 
 knowing them to be false. I prefer to think, as it has 
 been happily worded, that He ^condescended not to 
 know^' It is part of that process oi kenosis or ex- 
 inanition described at least in two places of St. Paul's 
 Epistles : Though He was rich, yet for our sakes He 
 became poor''', and Though He was in the form of God, 
 and counted it not a thing to grasp at that He should 
 be on an equality with God, He nevertheless emptied 
 Himself, taking the form of a servant^. Though rich 
 in knowledge. He divested Himself at least of such 
 parts of that knowledge as enabled Him to take a real 
 humanity on the same footing with that of His fellow- 
 men. He was made, as the text has it, adopting the 
 
 1 The phrase is Dr. Gregory Smith's in a letter to the Guardian. 
 " 2 Cor. viii. 9. ' Phil. ii. 6, 7. 
 
iia CliRIST AND THE SCRIPTURES. 
 
 words of the Psalm, a little lower than the angels^ 
 Some humiliation, some circumscription. His Advent 
 upon earth did involve. Before the fact I do not 
 think that we can say precisely how much humiliation 
 or circumscription. To do so is to take upon us too 
 much ' the mystery of things.' 
 
 Man is a curious being ; and he has many legitimate 
 objects for his curiosity. I doubt if this is one. 
 The data are too precarious ; they involve too great a 
 leap of the mind into the unknown. In regard to, 
 these questions, I think we shall do better to ponder 
 the words of the Psalm : Lord, I am not high-minded: 
 T have no proud looks. I do not exercise myself in 
 great matters, which are too high for me. But I 
 refrain my soul and keep it low, like as a child that is 
 weaned from his mother : yea, my soul is evin as a 
 weaned child. 
 
 That infinite ocean on the shores of which we play 
 may invite us to enter its fringe, but our footing is 
 soon lost as the bottom shelves away into depths- 
 that for us are unfathomable. It is far better for us to 
 retire and do our allotted tasks upon the margin with 
 ah outlook that sobers but does not affright us, 
 and with a heart not lifted up but chastened and 
 solemnized. 
 
IX. 
 
 THE SPECIAL VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 4T THE PRESENT TIME. 
 
 (St. Mary's, Oct. 19, 1890.) 
 
 Psalm cxix. i8. 
 
 open Thou mine eyes, that I may behold wondrous things 
 out of Thy Law. 
 
 In Christianity as a formulated system there are 
 three main elements ; (i) the common foundation 
 of Hebrew religion as contained in the Old and 
 New Testaments, but primarily in the Old ; (%) a 
 specially Christian element which is due to the life 
 and work of Christ ; (3) certain peculiar forjns of 
 expression, gradually determined upon after six 
 centuries of keen controversy, which are to a larg^ 
 extent of Greek origin. Compared with these, the 
 part really contributed by modern times is very small 
 indeed. I do not say that modern thought is not 
 very largely affecting our conception of Christianity ; 
 but so far it has done so only in a vague and inr- 
 definite way. The influence derived from this pourcft 
 has not succeeded in impressing itself upon Creeds 
 and Articles. The really formative elements in these 
 
 I 
 
114 SPECIAL VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 will, I think, be found to be those which I have 
 just enumerated. 
 
 At the present moment attention is being turned 
 in full stream upon the first. It is likely also, if 
 I am not mistaken, to be directed shortly to the 
 third. The question of the Old Testament comes 
 home to so many that it may be described as a 
 popular question. The question of Greek thought 
 can hardly reach these dimensions, but it cannot 
 fail to attract to itself the careful study of thinking 
 and far-seeing men. It is fraught with issues of 
 considerable importance, which will perhaps occasion 
 some anxiety at first, but which, I believe, will be 
 found to bode good and not harm in the end. 
 
 I am led to make these remarks by the approach- 
 ing publication of Dr. Hatch's Hibbert Lectures, in 
 which, with the boldness and originality characteristic 
 of him, he grappled with this problem, so far as my 
 knowledge extends, for the first time on English 
 ground. I do not doubt that these Lectures will 
 be found greatly stimulating to thought, though 
 another series of enquiries may be necessary in order 
 to complete them. What Dr. Hatch has done has 
 been to trace broadly the transition or transplanta- 
 tion of certain ideas and usages from the sphere 
 of Hellenism to that of Christianity. What remains 
 to be done is to apply a close analysis, one by one, 
 to the works of the early Christian writers, so as to 
 
AT THE PRESENT TIME. 115 
 
 ascertain in what proportions the different elements 
 of which we have spoken, and particularly the Greek 
 element, were present in them. 
 
 A beginning has been made already in this direc- 
 tion in Germany, but not, I think, at all in England. 
 It may perhaps be instructive to take a brief survey of 
 the history of the subject and of the place at which 
 the problem now stands. To Dr. Hatch, I rather think, 
 the problem presented itself mainly as an abstract 
 one. He had studied Philo and the Neo-platonists ; 
 he had studied the Stoics ; and he observed in the 
 Christian writers and in Christian controversies the 
 recurrence of terms and conceptions which he had 
 met with outside Christianity. To the Germans 
 the problem came as in the first instance historical. 
 It goes back, I suppose, to Baur. He definitely asked 
 himself the question. How are we to account for that 
 conception of Christianity which we find in posses- 
 sion of the field at the end of the second century, 
 and increasingly so as time went on ? Any one who 
 looks at once with candour and with penetration 
 at the Christianity of Irena^us at one end of the 
 Christian world, and of Clement of Alexandria 
 at the other, will see that there is a considerable 
 interval between it and the Christianity of Christ 
 and the Apostles. How was this interval to be 
 accounted for ? What shifting of elements had taken 
 place ? What was there in the one which there was 
 
 I'2 
 
Il6 SPECIAL VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 not in the other? Baur, with his keen insight into 
 the turning-points of history, took hold of this ques- 
 tion and set himself to solve it. The solution which 
 lie proposed is well known, It proceeded on the 
 lines of a Hegelian antinomy: and jt was to the 
 effect that in the Apostolic age there were two great 
 opposing forces, Jewish Christianity or Ebionism on 
 the one hand and Pauline or Gentile Christianity on 
 the other; by degrees these two opposites became 
 reconciled by dropping their distinctive features, and 
 Catholicism or the average creed of the Christian 
 world at the year aoo was the result. Since the 
 time of Baur a number of attempts have been made 
 to improve upon his view. In the most successful 
 of these attempts two negative factors were recog-* 
 nised and one positive. The negative factors were 
 that the writers who immediately succeeded the 
 Apostles failed really to grasp the deeper side of the 
 teaching of St. Paul and that they also failed to 
 understand the Old Testament ^, The positive factor 
 was that they imported into Christian speculation 
 the principles which they had learned in the schools 
 of Greek philosophy. The insight into the weakened 
 apprehension of St. Paul's teaching has been rather 
 widely shared. It is found in writers like Neander, 
 who made the great mistake pf supposing that this 
 defective apprehension was caused by a return to 
 ' On this point see "the extracts in Appendix IL 
 
AT THE PRESENT TIME. .I'j 
 
 Judaism, It was not a peculiarity of the Judaizing 
 side of the Church, but was common in greater or 
 less degree to all parties. The bringing out of the 
 significance of the Old Testament was due to the 
 strongest of all the disciples of Baur, who went back 
 upon and corrected the conclusions of his master, in 
 a work which has done more than any other with 
 which I am acquainted to lay the foundations of a 
 really sound conception of the course of events in 
 the second century — Albrecht Ritschl. Since Ritschl 
 published, in 1 857) the second improved and developed 
 edition of his work on the Origin of the Old Catholic 
 Chtcrck, an excellent monograph, constructed upon 
 his lines, came out in 1878 on the Christianity of 
 Justin Martyr by Dr. Moritz von Engelhardt. Von 
 Engelhardt was Professor at Dorpat, where I believe 
 that he had for pupil Adolph Harnack, and I suspect 
 that that fertile and able writer owes not a few of 
 his best and soundest ideas to his old teacher. 
 Quite recently a similar monograph by Werner on the: 
 Paulinism of Irenaeus has appeared under his auspices, 
 which is, however, not perhaps free from exaggeration. 
 By all these writers alike the element which took 
 the place of the missing constituents of Apostolic 
 Christianity is sought in the current Greek philo- 
 sophies, either apprehended immediately or filtering 
 downwards into popular thought. We might sum 
 up their construction of the history of doctrine very 
 
Ii8 SPECIAL VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 briefly thus. Through defective understanding first of 
 St. Paul and then of the Old Testament, and through 
 the influence of Greek ideas, there arose the older 
 Catholicism of the early Christian centuries which 
 has had a continuous development down to modern 
 times. St. Augustine (partially) and the Reformers 
 (again partially) rediscovered St. Paul ; and I will 
 make bold to add that the full rediscovering and 
 full appropriating of the Old Testament are the 
 special problem of our own day. 
 
 Many will think no doubt that this is an arrogant 
 claim. I hope it is not made in any spirit of 
 arrogance, but simply in deference to what seem 
 to be the actual facts. I am anxious not to go a 
 step beyond these. Of course it is true that a large 
 and substantial part of the spirit of Christianity was 
 perpetuated by Irenseus and his contemporaries. In 
 particular one primary doctrine — the doctrine of the 
 Logos, which fell in with the prevalent tendencies of 
 thought, was seized hold of by them with great 
 tenacity, and developed in great wealth and fulness of 
 detail. But when we turn to another side of the 
 New Testament Scriptures — to St. Paul's deep and 
 inward conception of Faith, to the mingled attraction 
 and awe with which he looked on the ' scandal of the 
 Cross,' to that long series of oppositions between 
 works and grace, law and promise, law and Gospel — 
 in place of which we find Christianity regarded as 
 
AT THE PRESENT TIME. II9 
 
 itself merely a second revised system of law — we feel 
 how much has been lost in the process of transmis- 
 sion. Even if we take a great fundamental idea like 
 that of the Kingdom of God, which dominates alike 
 the Old Testament and the New, we have to wait 
 until we come to St. Augustine before it is worked 
 out at all on an adequate scale ; and even then it is 
 not worked out exactly on the lines of the original 
 conception. When we think of these things and of 
 many more— the growth of the Messianic Idea, sub- 
 lime personifications like the Servant of Jehovah, the 
 use which Jeremiah makes of his doctrine of the 
 twofold Covenant, all those wonderfully tender per- 
 sonal relations between God and His people implied 
 in the Psalms and the Prophets which shrink into the 
 cold ovTUis ov of the philosophys — when we think of 
 all this, we cannot help being conscious that we do 
 indeed see them more in their true proportions than 
 the early Fathers did. 
 
 And yet let us be just to these founders of 
 the Church and of Christian Theology to whom 
 our debt is so large. Let us try to put in its 
 right light the relation in which we stand to them. 
 We think that we understand the Bible better than 
 they did. There can be little doubt that we really 
 do understand it better. But that is not because we 
 are great men and they are small, but because the 
 Bible is great af d it has taken many centuries hitherto 
 
i;iO SPECIAL VALUE OF THi: OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 and will take a considerable time longer still before 
 we understand it thoroughly. If the Jews so mis- 
 interpreted their own Bible as they certainly did in 
 the time of our Lord, can we wonder if those who 
 were not Jews by birth but brought up under very 
 different conditions failed to understand it ? I will 
 not deny absolutely the truth that there is in 
 allegory; but few of us would be willing to apply it 
 as the universal key to the unlocking of the Old 
 Testament, as some of the best and greatest minds of 
 antiquity were ready to apply it. The fashioning of 
 the methods by which the secret of the Old Testa- 
 ment is to be approached and elicited has taken 
 many centuries. We are not yet agreed about it ; 
 but I do not think that it is being too sanguine to 
 feel that we are drawing nearer to it. We are be^ 
 ginning to feel the warmth and the life and the reality 
 come back to those pale and shadowy figures. Isaiah 
 and Hosea and Jeremiah no longer walk in a limbus 
 Patrum, but we see them as they were among the 
 forces by which they were actually surrounded. We 
 see what they were as men ; we see what they were 
 as exponents of a message from God; we see the 
 grand and glorious ideas which stirred within them in 
 all their richness and fulness^ conditioned, yet not 
 wholly conditioned, by the wcrld of thought and 
 action in which they moved. We see these ideas 
 linking themselves together, stretching hands as it 
 
AT THE PRESENT TIME. s%I 
 
 were across the ages, the root-principles of the Old 
 Testament running on into the New, and there 
 attaining developments which may have been present 
 to the Divine Mind — though they cannot have been 
 present to the human instruments whose words 
 went and came at its prompting. The famous 
 saying of St. Augustine had a deeper sense than even 
 he imagined for it. The New Testament was latent 
 in the Old, not merely in the sense in which the type 
 might be said to embrace the thing typified ; the Old 
 Testament is patent in the New, not merely in the 
 sense in which one series of events may be said to 
 reflect another, but by a more vital and organic 
 connexion. The further enquiry goes, the more 
 impressively does it appear how much the lead- 
 ing ideas of the New Testament had their way 
 prepared for them, and by what strict continuity of 
 growth they spring out of the leading ideas of the Old. 
 There is a field here which I cannot help thinking 
 will be ploughed and worked in the near future more 
 effectively than it has been. But this idea of the 
 organic connexion of thought with thought is com- 
 paratively a recent one ; and to expect it to determine 
 the work of the older commentators as it ought to 
 determine ours would be as absurd as to expect that 
 primeval man should be equipped with the encyclo- 
 paedia of science. 
 
 But if there is such a valid excuse for the great 
 
laa SPECIAL VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 men of old as Exegetes, they hardly need an excuse 
 at all in their other capacity as Dogmatists. If 
 they are only judged fairly as they ought to be 
 judged, that is with reference to their own time and 
 circumstances, we shall be so far from scoffing at 
 them that we shall be rather lost in wonder at the 
 edifice which they reared. Certainly as much brain 
 power went to the building up of this as to any of the- 
 best of our modern systems. Note the closeness and 
 precision of thought ; note the accuracy with which 
 one detail is fitted into another; note the multitude 
 of speculations, sometimes, it is true, resting upon 
 mistaken premisses, but often really profound and 
 striking, by which they are surrounded ; note the 
 symmetry and harmony of the total result as it is 
 summed up for instance in the Athanasian Creed — 
 and any one who is capable of appreciating an in- 
 tellectual construction, and can divest himself of his 
 modern notions, will I think be most powerfully 
 affected by it. One would like as an experiment to 
 set down some well-trained modern scholar, with no 
 appliances but his own unaided thinking, before the 
 problems with which the ancients wrestled, and then 
 to compare the result, say with a page of St. Cyril 
 of Alexandria, and I do not think that we should find 
 the comparison very flattering to our vanity. To say 
 that the ancients worked with the tools which lay to 
 their hands, that they operated with ideas which were 
 
AT THE PRESENT TIME. 123 
 
 the Staple of the schools and lecture-rooms about them, 
 is so much a matter of course that but for the extent 
 to which it has been forgotten, it would hardly need 
 to be insisted on. With our modern machinery we 
 can produce circles and angles more exact than many 
 an old-world craftsman, without possessing a tenth 
 part of his skill of hand and eye. 
 
 And yetj on the other hand, I should be quite 
 prepared to lay stress upon the fact that the formu- 
 laries which were the product of all this intellectual 
 subtlety and vigour have a value which is primarily 
 historical and relative. They stand in living relation 
 to the past rather than to the present. The problems of 
 to-day have drifted away from them ; and if we go to 
 thein for a solution of these problems the answer we 
 shall get must needs be imperfect and partial. May 
 we not say that the simile which would best describe 
 them would be that of the stations along our old 
 coach-roads from which the traffic has been turned 
 into other channels? They stand as landmarks 
 which are speaking witnesses to a bygone time, but 
 which no longer serve for the practical uses of the 
 present, or which serve them so far only as the present 
 is a direct outcome of the past. A great mass of 
 wisdom is embodied in them — the wisdom not of an 
 individual working in his study or his cell, but the 
 wisdom of a Church or family of Churches all bring- 
 ing their contributions to the common stock, and 
 
124 SPECIAL VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 testing each clause by the fire of an active and search- 
 ing criticism. Given the premisses, and I think we 
 tnay say still that a better result could not have beeii 
 obtained ; and that result has been verified by the 
 assumption and practice of ages. To this day I doubt 
 if arly different conclusion could justify itself, ap- 
 proached along the same lines. So far as our problems 
 are identical I doubt if we shall have any need, or, 
 if we had the need, I doubt if we should have the; 
 power, to reopen the decisions of united Christendom. 
 But the problems which press upon us most urgently 
 are not identical : the premisses which we have to 
 assume in dealing with them are a different set of 
 premisses, and it seems to me wrong to invoke laws 
 to decide cases which ^hen they were framed were 
 never or but imperfectly contemplated. 
 
 The practical moral which I would venture to draW 
 from the whole situation is this, that we should not 
 spend our time in the cheap and easy but demoral-^ 
 izing employment of undervaluing the wisdom of our 
 forefathers and congratulating ourselves upon our 
 own, but that we should rather face and grapple with 
 the positive tasks which lie before us. We say that 
 the ancients had a defective understanding of the 
 Old Testament and a defective understanding of 
 St. Paul. There are doubtless some who will need 
 to have this proved to them : for them let us prove: 
 it. And, having proved it, let us go on to the next 
 
AT THE PRESENT TIME. 13^ 
 
 step and see that we get an understanding pf both 
 these prime constituents of Christianity which is not 
 ^defective. Supposing it to be made out that there 
 has been in the formulating of Christian doctrine a 
 certain encroachment of Hellenism, the true way to 
 redress the balance is — not to disparage Hellenism, 
 which surely had a work to do in the providence of 
 God as well as Hebraism, but to go back to the old 
 Hebraic foundations of our religion and lay them 
 again more deeply and more firmly — or rather see 
 how they have been laid by an Architect wiser and 
 mightier than we. To do this as it ought to be done 
 would alone be the work of any ordinary generation. 
 How from all sides does the call come to us to be up 
 and doing ! To us indolent dwellers in Zion who 
 have taken our ease by our rivers that flow softly, 
 thinking to enjoy our cakes of fine meal and Qur 
 wine, though we have left it to others to cut the corn 
 and to gather in the vintage and to bear all the 
 burden and heat of the day. I speak not to those 
 whose study is Theology alone. The universitas 
 literarum includes all the sciences : they form a 
 single body; and if one member suffers, all the others 
 suffer with it. Let us march altogether ; let us take 
 our exercise altogether in the same palaestra — not 
 in dilettante fashion like half-hearted competitors, 
 but like men who are determined to run for the 
 prize and who are prepared to undergo the requisite 
 
12,6 SPECIAL VALUE OF THE OLD TESTAMENT 
 
 training before they enter for it. Then let the scholar 
 help the theologian and the theologian the scholar ; 
 and let the historian lend a hand to and receive a^ 
 hand from both. Sometimes it is said that the sub- 
 jects of study are being exhausted. And perhaps it 
 may be so with some subjects ; but the date when 
 anything of the kind will be true is far distant, in 
 ours. I have said enough to show what fruitful 
 openings lie close to us. And the special beauty of 
 theological study is that knowledge does not lie wide 
 apart from practice^ but that in proportion as we 
 acquire the one we ought to be building up a body 
 of principles to apply to the other. When we go for 
 these to the Bible we are in no danger of being dis- 
 appointed. . And we shall find, or I am much mis- 
 taken, that each' fresh discovery gilds with some new 
 light or invests with some new reality, truths which 
 had seemed to be trite and hackneyed. I do not say 
 that every discovery will be what is called, on a 
 superficial view, a ' confirmation.' It may be of that 
 sort which sends us back and back again for further 
 enquiry. But the ultimate result must be to strengthen 
 the stakes and lengthen the cords, to deepen our appre- 
 hension and to extend its application. "It is no less 
 true now than ever it has been that the surest means 
 of religious advance is to be sought in renewed study 
 of the Bible. What we need especially at this 
 moment is freshness, a real getting at the heart of 
 
AT THE PRESENT TIME. 
 
 the matter instead of dallying with the outside. And 
 I question if we shall get this in any better way 
 than by approaching our task under the guidance 
 of Criticism and Histoiy — of Criticism and History 
 not, as too often, dissevered from, but united with. 
 Religion ^. 
 
 * It would be an important branch of the enquiry sketched above to 
 determine precisely how far Greek thought enters into and is conse- 
 crated in the New Testament itself. The discussion would turn mainly 
 round two points which cannot be regarded as settled, the origin of the 
 Logos-doctrine in St. John and the theological affinities of the Epistle 
 to the Hebrews. The purely Palestinian element in both may be 
 larger than is sometimes supposed. Still it is probably true at the 
 same time that Palestinian thought was putting out feelers in the 
 direction of Hellenism. And I do not think it will be denied that the 
 subsequent developments of the Logos-doctrine were developments in a 
 straight line. 
 
Note to page 114. 
 
 I BELIEVE it is literally true to say that Dr. Hatch was the 
 first to raise the question discussed in his Hibbert Lectures 
 'on English ground'; but I ought not to have overlooked 
 a course of lectures delivered about the same time (March 
 1888) at Princeton, U.S.A., by Dr. G. T, Purves, and published 
 under the title The Testimony of Justin Martyr to Early 
 Christianity (Nev? York, Randolph). This is an independent 
 counterpart to Von Engelhardt's work mentioned above, and 
 is satisfactorily done. 
 
APPENDIX I. 
 
 ON THE DATE OF THE PSALTER. 
 
 While I am anxious not to step outside my proper pro- 
 vince by offering opinions upon a subject on which I am 
 conscious of possessing very partial knowledge, there is just 
 One of the problems of Old Testament criticism in regard 
 to which I should like to set down a few points which have 
 occurred to me, and submit them to the consideration of 
 rriore competent judges. The problem to which I refer is 
 one which is exciting a good deal of interest at the present 
 time, viz. the date of the Psalter. I approach it from the 
 side of the history of the formation of the O. T. Canon, 
 and the history of the Text and of certain accessories with 
 which this is intimately connected. 
 
 (i) The well-known passage in the prologue to Ecclesi- 
 asticus must no doubt be used with much caution. The 
 latest date that we can possibly assign to this' is a little 
 aftet the year 132 b. c. This is assuming that the 38th 
 year mentioned in it is that of Euergetes II — a view to 
 which I think that I incline myself, though not with complete 
 confidence. If that were so, we must allow some further 
 interval (a-vyxpovla-as) for the actual composition of the pro- 
 logue. But as evidence it would still go back some way 
 before rather than after 132 b. c, for the frequency with 
 which the writer repeats his phrase, in so short a compass 
 (' dy the law and the prophets, and by others that have followed 
 
130 APPENDIX I. 
 
 their steps' 'the reading of the law and the prophets and other 
 looks of our fathers', 'the law itself and the prophets and the 
 rest of the books '), seems to show that it was no novelty 
 picked up by him in Egypt, but part of the mental stock 
 which he brought with him. And I should greatly hesitate 
 to adopt Dr. Edersheim's view {Speaker's Comm. on Apocr. 
 ii. 5), that the writer himself gave rise to this tripartite 
 division. He seems to me to refer to it in a way which 
 would assume that it was already established. 
 
 In any case his language appears to imply a rather ad- 
 vanced stage in the history of the O. T. Canon. The con- 
 ception of such a Canon is distinctly formed : certain books 
 are set aside and marked off from the rest of literature : two 
 of the three groups into which they are divided appear to 
 be already defined, and the third is in process of definition. 
 The stage arrived at is so distinctly that of collecting and 
 arranging older materials that it is difficult to think of 
 writings newly composed, as at once placed upon the same 
 level with them. We must remember, also, that the writer 
 of the prologue was not himself an Egyptian Jew ; but came 
 to Egypt — we may presume from Palestine or even from 
 Jerusalem, the home of his grandfather (Ecclus. 1. 27); so 
 that the view represented would be that of the stricter 
 Palestinian Jews, and it was within this stricter circle 
 that the Psalter received its present circumscription. Al- 
 though, therefore, the ' Wisdom of the Son of Sirach ' was 
 itself admitted into the Alexandrian Bible, we must not press 
 this fact too far. Neither must we treat a book like the 
 Psalter as if it were necessarily already closed. There is a 
 laxity of outline around the other books which there is not 
 in tlie law and the prophets. The Psalms of Solomon show 
 us that psalms were still being written ; and that at a much 
 
APPRNDIX I. 13] 
 
 later date than this they could still gain admission into the 
 larger Bibles. For instance, they were originally included in the 
 collection of Cod. Alexandrinus, and still stand in the list of 
 contents of that MS. On the whole, though I should not con- 
 tend, on this ground at least, for the complete closing of the 
 Psalter by the year 132 B.C., I should confess to an uneasy 
 feeling if I admitted into it a Psalm headed a Psalm of David ^ 
 but not really composed till the time of Hyrcanus. 
 
 (2) The next point has reference to the 'Psalms of 
 Solomon' just mentioned. Does not a collection which 
 goes by this name imply the existence, in a well-defined 
 and substantive shape, of a previous collection of 'Psalms 
 of David'? The Psalms of Solomon cover the years 63-^ 
 48 B.C., and must have been composed or finished not 
 long after the latter date. It would, however, of course, 
 be too much to suppose that the title which they now bear 
 was attached to them at once. Still, it cannot have been 
 very long in coming. By the middle of the third century 
 the collection has been augmented by five ' Odes of 
 Solomon,' which, as the Psalms appear to have been reckoned 
 at XVII, made up the total number to XXII, corresponding 
 to the letters of the Hebrew alphabet ■■. The fondness of 
 Jews and Hellenists for literary artifices of this kind is well 
 known. Not only is the title thus firmly attached to them, 
 but the collection has also a considerable history behind it 
 (implying possibly translation, not only into Greek, but 
 into Coptic, because the Psalms and Odes are both quoted 
 in a Coptic work) by the year 250. 
 
 ' The Gnostic treatise Pistis Sophia, dating from the middle of the 
 third century, quotes the Second Ode as no. xix thus : Tua vis htminis 
 tTTpo(pr]TevtTey de his verbis per Salomonem in eius decima nona ode et 
 dixit, Dominus super meiim caput sintt corona, etc. (ed. Petermann- 
 a|hwartze, p. 118 [76]). 
 
13? APPENDIX I, 
 
 (3) Some further light is thrown on the history of the 
 Psalms as z, collection by the New Testament, By the 
 time that the Acts of the Apostles was written (if we may not 
 say rather by the time of St. Paul's first missionary journey); 
 not only is the collection complete, but it has received a 
 fixed numbering. Ps. ii. 7 is quoted in Acts xiii. 33 expressly 
 as The Second Psalm. And this quotation has an interesting 
 history. There are traces of an extremely, early reading 
 known to Origen, and adopted by Hilary, by which prst 
 is substituted for second. And this variant numbering of 
 the first two Psalms goes back beyond Origen to Justin, 
 g,nd beyond Hilary to Tertullian and Cyprian. Origen 
 had seen the two Psalms combined in one of two Hebrew 
 copies to which he had had access'. It seems, therefore, 
 that the variation began in the Hebrew before it was trans- 
 ferred to the Greek ; and we should thus have four distinct 
 stages (the original Hebrew collection and numbering, the 
 Hebrew variant, the Greek translation, and the Greek 
 -variant), all to be got through before the time of Justin ; 
 if the reading upata were original, we should have to say 
 before the time of St. Luke, or even of St. Paul. As a 
 matter of fact, the reading is adopted by Lachmann, Tischen- 
 dorf, and Tregelles; but it is not endorsed by Westcott 
 and Hort, and being so clearly what is technically called 
 a ' Western ' reading, cannot be pressed ^^ 
 
 We cannot here be sure that we have an original wrong 
 reading, implying a fourfold process of corruption, actually 
 
 ' See Westcott and Hort, ad loc. 
 
 ' I see that Pr. Cheyne connects the uniting of Pss. i. ii. with the 
 reckoning of the whole number as 147, • according to the number 
 of the years of Jacob {T/te Book of Psalms, p. xiv). It is certainly 
 surprising to find such an advanced stage of reflexion in the second 
 century. 
 
Appendix i. 133- 
 
 in New Testament times. But there ar6 other examples 
 in the New Testament itself better attested and not less 
 significant. I will quote a, few which have come to my 
 hands after no very long search : there are probably others 
 quite as important. 
 
 Rom, XV. II Kai TtaKaf Alveire navra to. edvrj tou Kvpiov^ icai 
 
 eiratveo'dTaa'av airhv Travres oi Xaot, 
 
 inaivea&Taaav NABCDE ; Chrys. cod, Jo.-Damasc. ; Edd. 
 i-naiviaaTi FGLP al. pier. ; Chrys. codd, Theodrt. al. 
 
 Ps. CXvi (cxvii). I Aiveirc TOD Kvpiuv, navTa to. e6vq, alvfcrdToxrav 
 
 avTov Trdvres oi \aoi, 
 
 alvKXaToidav N (de/. B). 
 k-irevatveffaTOiffav A {sic). 
 kiraiviffare RT ( = liraii/effarai N"**). 
 
 Here the right reading in Romans is undoubtedly eiraivecrd- 
 Tcocrav. It is not SO clear that the same word is right in 
 the Psalm : the simple form alveaaTaa-av would compete 
 with it, if not also iiraiviaaTe. The text of the Epistle is 
 thrown decidedly into the scale of A, and stands or falls 
 with it» 
 
 Rom. iii, 4 Ka^cos yiypa-KTaC ^Oi^tas &v BiKaicoSrjs iv Tols \6yois. 
 
 q-ov Koi vtKrjaeis iv ra KptveaSal (re. 
 
 riKTiaeis NADE, mintisc. aliq.; La', Ti. Tr", WH. 
 riidiaris BGKL, al, pier. ; Lc^, Tr^. 
 
 Ps. 1 (li)i 6 'Ontof hv SiKaia>6rjs iv Tois Xo'yoiy <Tov Kai viK^ajit 
 
 ev rffl Kpive&6ai ere. 
 
 viK-fiairis SBRT {ex sil, Swete ; def. A). 
 niii[aus minusc. aliq. ap. Holmes. 
 
 Here viKrja-eis is probably right in Romans (B has a weak 
 place in the Epistles at which the alternative reading seems; 
 to come in), and wk^o-j/s in the Psalm.. 
 
134 APPENDIX I. 
 
 Eph. iv. 8 Ati Xtytf 'AvajBas tls v^jfot rixjioikJiTfviTiV aipyxaXo)- 
 
 (Tiav KOI 'dbtoKfv hofiara toTj avBpanois. 
 
 ^'ximMrrevffev NBCDEFGKP etc ; £M 
 TjXM'i^'^f"''''" AL, tninusc. aliq. al. 
 ins. xal N'>BC*D'^KLP cU.pler.; Tr. WHK 
 om. Kol N*AC2D*FG c/. ; La. Ti. WH\ 
 iv avBpiiiitois Fs'G, J>a/r. aliq. 
 
 Ps. Ixvii (Ixviii). 19 dvafias cts uiffor j/p^/iaXirevcrar alxixoKa- 
 
 dvaeas B*R*. 
 
 avf^Tis N<»B'"'R''. 
 
 avipi^ a* {fief. A), Lat.-Vet 
 
 j)X/ia\(OTEUffas N^'BR. 
 
 5X/«I^^uTe«o'e>' N*, Lat.-Vet. 
 
 mepiiirqi B* «' i". 
 
 dvBpdmoLS NB°R*. 
 
 Here the true reading is undoubtedly ai-a^as jjxv^^'^^'"'''^' 
 in Ephesians, and probably ava^ht nx^aXd)TEvo-as in the 
 Psalm, though avi^q dvePtjs and ax/iaXcoTtuo-fv are all early 
 readings. 
 
 There is then, perhaps, some doubt as to the first of these 
 passages : the New Testament reading may, perhaps (though 
 not certainly), be right. In the other two passages it is 
 pretty certainly wrong. But the error is something more 
 than a mere isolated lapse : it involves in each case the 
 endorsement in the New Testament, not only of a wrong 
 reading, but of a wrong type of text : already in New 
 Testament times the leading texts of the LXX have begun 
 to diverge, and corrupt texts have gained currency. The 
 evidence so far has been confined to the Psalms; but the 
 same conclusion would hold good of the other books : e. g. 
 in Rom. xi. 34, and i Cor. ii. 16, two distinctively A-readings 
 (erv/jjSovXoj avTov and o-u/i^i^aaei) are adopted from Isa. xl, 1 3. 
 
APPENDIX I. 135 
 
 The text in which these phenomena are found clearly is not 
 a young one. 
 
 (4) The conclusion just arrived at is confirmed by refer- 
 ence to Philo. Of the readings quoted by Dr. Hatch (Ess. 
 in Bill. Greek, p. 173) the following may be taken. 
 
 Ps. xlv (xlvi). 5 '■0'' ^orafiov ra op/ififiaTa ei<ppaivov(ri T^v woXiv 
 roS Qeov, 
 
 rh opinjiia iixppaiva, one cursive, Lat.-Vet.: and so Philo. 
 
 Ps. xciii (xciv), 9 6 irXaaas 6(p6a\poit, oi KaTavoft^ 
 .iip$a\px)vs NB : and Philo, 
 Toils dcp&aXpovs R. 
 rdv d(p6a\fi6v A. 
 i<pedKp.6v Nf*. 
 
 [The other variants of Philo's text in this passage 
 are not to our purpose.] 
 
 Here it is, perhaps, probable that Philo is right, in which 
 case this reading would be of no significance. The Hebrew, 
 however, has the singular, and antecedently it would have 
 seemed rather more likely that the plural would be sub- 
 stituted when the scribe no longer had the Hebrew before 
 him, i. e. in some copy of the LXX after the first. But 
 the decision must turn ultimately on the value of the com- 
 bination NB, which is not as yet quite a fixed quantity. 
 In the first passage Philo has against him NABRT; still 
 there can be no doubt that his reading, though hardly right, 
 is a very early one. We are again on the trace of a 
 divergent family — represented by Lat.-Vet. Philo would 
 thus testify to the existence of this family quite at the begin- 
 ning of the first century. 
 
 (5) It were much to be wished that some competent 
 scholar would set himself to work out systematically the 
 
136 APPENDIX /. 
 
 history of the Titles to the Psalms. An excellent beginning has 
 recently been made by Dr. Neubauer {Studia Biblica, ii. p. i ff.) 
 for the later history as it may be traced especially through the 
 Jewish interpreters. This alone is valuable ; but we want a 
 searching examination of the earlier history — backwards, let 
 us say, from the Hexapla. We need to have more exactly 
 defined the stages which the titles have passed through up to 
 that date. Dr. Neubauer has brought out quite clearly that 
 the later Jewish commentators had no tradition on the 
 subject. Some of the best of theiii make shrewd guesses; 
 but their guesses are not different in kind from those 
 which are made in our own day. We go back to the 
 Targum, an Aramaic paraphrase, made probably by a Jew 
 who had some knowledge of Greek, in the fourth century, 
 and still we find the same thing. From the Targum we 
 turn to the Hexapla \ and from that we find that even our 
 earliest authorities, the Greek Versions, are equally at fault. 
 Let us take one or two of the first that occur. I give a 
 literal rendering of the Greek in each case. 
 
 PSALM IV. 
 
 LXX. As tA Tikos iv ^oKfiois mSrj Tffl AaveiB, 
 
 ipa\fibs ipSijs R. 
 >pa\iids A. 
 
 ' For the end ; in psalms ; a song of David : ' i, e., 
 as explained by Eusebius and Theodoret, ' a psalm 
 relating to things which are to happen at the end [of 
 the World].' It seems that the Hebrew taken in 
 this way might possibly = 'for performance' (Delitzsch, 
 ad loc. ed. 3). 
 
 ,A9UILA. Tw viKoiroim cV yjfokixols ^fXraSi/^ia rm Aavci'S. 
 
 'For the victor; in psalms; a jnelody of David,. 
 
Appendix i. 13^ 
 
 Gregory of Nyssa combines the two renderings ' vic- 
 tory and ' end : ' els to teXos ott? p eanv J) li'iKq, And 
 Chrysostom remarks that in Hebrew the same word 
 means 'pnd' and 'victory,' — a statement which appears 
 to be really true of different periods in the language 
 (Delitzsch). 
 
 SymmACHUS. imvlKioi hia ^dKvtJpiaiv cSSfj ra A. 
 
 ' Of victory, on psalteries, a song of David.' 
 
 TliEODOTION. fls TO viKos iv vjivois l^iiX/iOS t& A. 
 
 ' For victory, in hymns, a psalm of David.* 
 
 R. v. (=Heb.) 'For the chief inusician; op stringed 
 instruments ; a psalm of David.' 
 
 This appears to be the true meaning : the psalm is to be 
 handed to the choirmaster for performance on stringed 
 instruments. 
 
 PSALM VIII. [There are the same variants for the word 
 meaning ' choirmaster.'] 
 
 LXX. and SymMACHUS. hrep tS>v Xj/j-Sv. 
 
 ' For the wine-presses ' (i. e. vintage). 
 
 AqUILA and TheODOTION. vn-cp Trjs yerBiTiSog. 
 
 'For the Gittite' (fern.). 
 
 TARGtJM. ' On the harp which came froirl Gath.' 
 
 A. V. ' tfpon Gittith ' (i.e. a kind of harp). 
 
 R. V. ' Set to the Gittith ' (i.e. a jubilant tune, ' March 
 of the men of Gath,' Hitzig). 
 
 PSALM IX. 
 
 LXX. els TO riXos xmep tS>v Kpv<f)taV tov vlov. 
 cm. To5 vtoS R. 
 
 'For the end concerning the secrets of the son.' 
 Fro occultis filii, Vulg. 
 
138 APPENDIX I. 
 
 AqUILA. r& viKOiroim veaviorrjTOS Tov vlov. 
 
 ' For the victor of the youth of the son.' 
 
 SymMACHUS. inivUiov ■ntpi tov Bavarov toO vlov. 
 
 ' A victor's ode concerning the death of the son.' 
 
 TheODOTION and QuiNTA. tS viKOwoim vnip OKiirjs TOU vlov, 
 
 ' For the victor on the coming of age of the son.' 
 SkxTA. oy TO Tc\os veaviK6Tr]s tov vlov, 
 
 ' For the end, youth of the son.* 
 
 Targum. To praise, on the occasion of the death of the 
 man who came out from the camp (Goliath). 
 
 R. V. ' For the chief musician ; set to Muth-labben ; a 
 psalm of David.' 
 
 Of these, Aquila and Sexta are sheer nonsense, and 
 Theodotion and Quinta little better. It is very doubtful 
 whether anything can be made of LXX. There is, however, a 
 consistent sense in Symmachus, whose rendering points to 
 some such event as the death of Goliath (Targ., David ben 
 Abraham, and others), Absalom, the son of Bathsheba, etc. 
 No doubt the reference is really to a tune, the name of 
 which R. V. discreetly veils. 
 
 These examples might be multiplied to any extent; but 
 enough will have been given to show how helpless the Greek 
 versions are from the earliest to the latest. There is clearly 
 no tradition in the strict sense, but each of the translators 
 makes the best conjecture that he can. It is important to 
 observe that the second-century versions are no better off 
 than the Septuagint. Otherwise we might have supposed 
 that the knowledge of what the titles originally meant, 
 though lost at Alexandria, had been preserved in Palestine. 
 This appears to be the explanation suggested by Hupfeld 
 {^Die Psalmen, p. 46). Even so, we could hardly have 
 
APPENDIX I. 135 
 
 accepted it without hesitation, because there was so much 
 intercourse between the Jews of Egypt and those of Palestine 
 as to make it difficult to believe that a whole section of 
 knowledge could thus have been possessed by the one and 
 not possessed by the other. We remember at once that, 
 according to the Pseudo-Aristeas, the seventy translators 
 themselves came from Palestine : we think at once of Onias, 
 of the grandson of Jesus, the son of Sirach, of the letters at 
 the opening of 2 Maccabees, of Agrippa I at Alexandria, and 
 of the constant stream of Jewish immigrants into Egypt, and 
 of pilgrims from Egypt to Jerusalem. If the Alexandrian 
 Jews had forgotten what the titles meant, it would have been 
 easy enough for them to get to know. But then we find 
 that in the second century of our own era the Jews of Pales- 
 tine were just as ignorant; and not only in the second 
 century, but quite early in the century, in circles so well 
 informed as that of Aquila, and with hardly a generation 
 intervening since the fall of the Herodian temple. It is diffi- 
 cult to think of the break in the tradition on such a point as 
 occurring between Hillel and Akiba. 
 
 On one point I have not ventured to touch, the possibility 
 that some of the varieties of rendering might be explained 
 by differences of reading in the Hebrew text. The 
 Hebraists must tell us what opening there is for this. 
 In any case there will be at least the following stages : 
 (i) the Hebrew psalm composed; (2) a title attached to it — 
 often a title which implies that the true circumstances of its 
 composition are forgotten ; (3) then further the meaning of 
 the title itself lapses from memory ; (4) the great current 
 version is made into Greek with titles already misunderstood ; 
 (5) a secondary group of versions arises under different 
 geographical and historical conditions and in connexion with 
 
I40 APPENDIX I. 
 
 several distinct schools or parties, yet the sattie ignorance 
 prevails in all. Not only are these distinct stages, but they 
 must each be of considerable length. If we jhust allow for 
 Variants in the Hebrew, one of them would be still further 
 prolonged, 
 
 I t;annot attempt to put a definite estirrlate upon these 
 data j for that a more special knowledge is required. I 
 would only venture to commend them to the attention of 
 those who have that knowledge. At the same time I confess 
 that, on z. prima facie view, it appears to me that four out of 
 the five stages mentioned above will hav§ to be got through 
 at the latest by the time of Hillel. But even Hillel was not 
 the first of the Scribes : and, working back from him, we are 
 soon brought to the age pf the Maccabees. It seems to me 
 that this age is the latest which can be assigned for the com- 
 pletion of the Psalter. I am strongly tempted to go further,, 
 and to add, that in spite of the indications which are often 
 thought to point to Maccabean Psalms, the doubt is still 
 present to my mind whether even this is not descending 
 too low. 
 
 ISlOTE. 
 
 I HOPE that the object of this Appendix will not be misun- 
 derstood, it was intended to be wholly tentative. So far as it 
 might seem to express opinion on the date of the Psalter, it was 
 opinion not formed but forming, I imagine that there must; 
 be many others in the same state of mind as myself, feeling 
 their way gradually on the subject, and resting for the moment 
 in temporary hypotheses and half-way positions, prepared to 
 go either forwards or backwards as the case may be, but 
 
APPENDIX I. 141 
 
 wishing not to commit themselves to definite affirmations until 
 they feel more sure of their ground. I took the opportunity 
 of the issue of this volume to set down in print some of these 
 tentative hypotheses, partly for my own sake, as a help in the 
 process of thinking, and partly for the sake of others at a simi- 
 lar stage to myself, to whom they might render a like service. 
 The points chosen for discussion of course cover only a small 
 extent of ground ; they were chosen not so much for their 
 intrinsic importance as for certain links of connexion with my 
 own more special studies. Any hypothesis to be finally ac- 
 fcepted as true must needs embrace all parts of a question ; 
 and to break up that question into some of its smaller subdivi- 
 sions may be a real step towards obtaining their solution. 
 
 To attempt more than this would have been presumption 
 on my part ; and it would have been particularly ill-timed 
 in view of the near publication of Dr. Cheyne's Bampion 
 Lectures. I join most cordially in the interest with which 
 those lectures are expected, and I promise myself much 
 instruction from them. It will have appeared from the body 
 of this work that it will be no serious or insuperable shock tq 
 me if some of the Psalms, more or fewer, should ultimately 
 be referred to Maccabean times. In this, as in all else, we 
 must be guided simply by the evidence. Still I seem to see 
 difficulties in the way ; and I was not sorry to have an oppor- 
 tunity of stating some of these difl5culties in a shape which I 
 hope is free from controversy. 
 
 My purpose in doing so has been answered to an extent 
 beyond what I could have anticipated through the kind 
 permission which has been given me to print portions of a 
 letter from Dr. Driver which form a running comment on 
 the questions raised in the Appendix, especially the - last 
 on which I was most anxiou? to have his opinion. On 
 
142 APPENDIX I. 
 
 this in particular I think it will be felt that great light is 
 thrown; but apart from that a lesson may be learnt from 
 the combined open-mindedness and caution which are cha- 
 racteristic of a scholar. Dr. Driver writes as follows : — 
 
 ' On (i) I have little to say. The passage is generally admitted to pre^ 
 suppose the threefold division of the Canon recognised by the Jews, though 
 it could not be taken as proving that the third comprised all the books 
 which it now contains. Certainly, some very late Psalms — though it is 
 difficult to say positively how late — have David's name attached to them 
 (ciii, cxxiv, cxxxiii, cxxxix, cxliv, cxlv, — late, from the language). The 
 distribution of Davidic Psalms, especially in Books III-V, is difficult 
 to understand ; if ex. for instance be his, or date from his time, why does 
 it stand where it does, in a late collection, and after two which are cer- 
 tainly much later than David's time (cviii. a composite Psalra=part5 of 
 Ivii. and Ix.)? One opinion is that there was a collection (or collections) 
 gradually added to, the nucleus of which was ancient and was probably 
 really Davidic ; in this case the collection might be known as "David's," 
 and a Psalm taken from it, though really much later, may have been 
 inscribed " David's." This certainly seems to be the explanation of the 
 Asaph-Psalms. That a Psalm composed in the second century should 
 be inscribed "David's" is no doubt singular; but is it more so than 
 that Psalms composed in the fifth or fourth century should be so 
 inscribed? The Chronicler (i Chron. xvi. 7 ff.) attributes to David a 
 composite Psalm, composed of three post-exilic Psalms. Indeed, he 
 consistently treats David as the founder of the Temple-services, as they 
 were organized in his own day, representing in this, no doubt, the current 
 opinion of his age (300 B.C.). Has not this something to do with the 
 (incorrect) ascription of Psalms to David ! I own that I sympathize with 
 your 'uneasy feeling'; but I am not sure whether, in order for it to 
 be decisive, we ought not to be clearer than we are as to the precise 
 motives and grounds on which Psalms were said to be "David's."' 
 
 I should be far from supposing that the argument of the 
 Appendix was in any way ' decisive ' : but the observation as 
 to the usage of the Chronicler seems to me important, and 
 such as might well furnish a starting-point in the investiga- 
 tion of these Davidic collections. Is it not remarkable that of 
 the three Psalms (cv, xcvi, cvi) which the Chronicler — whether 
 
APPENDIX I. 143 
 
 for the first time or, as I should prefer to think, following 
 some previous editor— combines together and ascribes to 
 David only one (Ps. xcvi=:xcv, LXX) has an extant title attri- 
 buting it to David, and that not in the Hebrew but only in 
 the LXX ? It would be natural to suppose that there would 
 be two stages in the history of these collections j the first, if 
 we may so call it, the fluid stage, during which the contents 
 of scattered and fragmentary MSS. would be painfully brought 
 together by scribes and editors; and the second, during 
 which the collections so formed would be publicly known and 
 circulated. In the first stage I can readily understand how — 
 often perhaps from mere accidental juxtaposition — Psalms 
 not really written by David might come to have his name 
 attached to them. But in the second period it seems to me 
 far less easy to realize to ourselves the process by which 
 Psalms newly composed would get incorporated into existing 
 and known collections. Is not the Chronicler's in fact a case 
 in point f Should we not have expected that his influence 
 alone would have been enough to bring the name of David 
 into the titles of the three Psalms, if not to gain a place for 
 the one composite Psalm in the Psalter ? Yet this has not 
 been done. The inference seems to be suggested — and I 
 should have thought that it was in keeping with the part 
 assigned by the Chronicler to David in connexion with the 
 Temple-music generally — that the second period had already 
 been reached, and that the Davidic collections would in the 
 natural course of things be closing, if not closed. There is 
 however another important point, to which my attention is 
 also caEed by Dr. Driver, that with very few exceptions the 
 Psalms ascribed to David are not liturgical or such as in the 
 first instance would have been composed for use in public 
 worship. 
 
144 APPENDIX I. 
 
 On the next point Dr. Driver briefly touches : — 
 '(2) No doubt "Davidtc" collections existed' prior to 63-48 B.C.. 
 The problem is, How did tbey arise S ' 
 
 My argument was (valeat quantum) that a Solomonic 
 Psalter implied a previous Davidic Psalter; but I admit that 
 the condition might be satisfied by the existence of smaller 
 collections under the name of David without supposing that 
 the larger collection went as a whole by his name, Any 
 argument of this sort would be superfluous if these Davidic 
 collections went back as far as the time of the Books of 
 Chronicles. Professor Kirkpatrick, in his excellent edition 
 just published of the First Book of the Psalms, p. xxxvii, 
 gives a new and more important turn to the argument by 
 pointing to the chasm in thought and tone which separates 
 the Psalms of Solomon from the Canonical Psalms. He 
 urges, after Schiirer, that the righteousness of- these later- 
 Psalms is already that of Pharisaic Judaism. 
 
 My remarks upon the bearing of the history of the text 
 
 t)f the Greek Psalter on the age of that version, and therefore 
 
 ultimately of the Hebrew original, were prompted by the 
 
 belief that this was a train of reasoning which had proved of 
 
 use in regard to the New Testament and had not yet been 
 
 opened up in reference to the Old, Dr. Driver's comments 
 
 ^re as follows : — 
 
 < (3) The point is an interesting one, and deserves further investigation.' 
 Is-not a -wider induction needed to sho-w whether the variations are acci- 
 dental (i.e. due to quotation from memory, &c.), or whether they tend to 
 agree systematically with A (or any other MS. or group of MSS.) ? 
 Another point arises in connexion with the fact that A (as is -well 
 known), as compared with B, exhibits a text that has constantly been 
 corrected so as to conform with the Hebrew (see e. g. i Sam. i. i, and 
 continually) : do the variants in the N. T. approximate also to the Heb.? 
 And }f so are they corrections which might have been made inde- 
 pendently or will they have been borrowed from texts of the LXX? 
 
APPENDIX I. 145 
 
 Variations resulting from intentional correction would not presuppose 
 such a long interval of time as those arising from the ordinary sources 
 of textual corruption.' 
 
 I am glad that Dr. Driver encourages the prosecution of 
 this line of inquiry. No doubt there are many possibilities 
 which will have to be duly considered on the right hand and 
 on the left. I do not think, however, that the two disturbing 
 elements which he mentions are likely to prove of great 
 importance. Variants in a quotation are seldom due to 
 mere accident where they coincide with MS. readings of the 
 original text. The chief point to be considered is whether 
 these MS. readings derive their origin from the quotation and 
 are not independent of it — a case which is more than usually 
 possible with quotations from the O. T. in the N. T. There 
 is no doubt frequently a reflex action from N. T. quotations 
 upon the text of O. T. MSS. But the prima facie tendency 
 of criticism wUl probably be to exaggerate the amount of 
 corruption due to this cause. Many O. T. variants can be 
 proved to have been in existence before it can well have 
 come into operation. In such cases the other alternative 
 must be chosen — that the N. T. writers were themselves 
 making use of a divergent text. The other cause, assimi- 
 lation to the Hebrew, is also one that can be allowed for 
 without much . difficulty. I have not specially tested the 
 O. T. quotations in the N. T. text of A. The archetype at 
 least of one very important line of N. T. text can be traced 
 to a scribe who possessed a knowledge of Hebrew; but this 
 is not the line of A. It should be remembered too that A 
 is not so distinctly the representative of a particular line 
 of text in the N. T. As a matter of fact the number of 
 authorities for the early history of the text of the N. T. is so 
 great that corruption from the Hebrew would soon reveal 
 
 L 
 
-146 APPENDIX I. 
 
 itself. The instances of readings given in the Appendix had 
 undergone a certain amount of preliminary sifting ,; and I 
 believe that they will be found to belong to varied types and 
 by no means only to that of A. 
 
 Points (3) and (4) practically go together, and on the 
 second of these Dr. Driver makes no separate remarks ; but 
 I had specially invited, his opinion on (5), and on this I will 
 give what he has been so good as to write to me in full. 
 
 ' I doubt greatly whether much weight is to be attached to the ignor- 
 ance of the LXX. The LXX , in all parts of their translation (which 
 of course, as its varying character shows, is the work of very different 
 hands, and in all probability was only completed gradually), are apt to 
 stand aloof from the Palestinian tradition ; they frequently show them- 
 selves to be unfamiliar not only with uncommon or exceptional words, 
 but even with those which one would have expected to be well known. 
 This may be illustrated, in particular, from the very word from which 
 the Hebrew term rendered "precentor"' is derived. The verb, ns:, pf 
 which ns:D, "precentor," is the participle, is never found in the pre- 
 exilic literature ; it occurs only in the Chronicles and Ezra ; i. c. it was 
 employed in Palestine, by an author writing c. 300 B.C., and, it may 
 reasonably be assumed, was understood there at the time. It is not 
 mostly used with reference to music; it denotes properly to be f re-eminent^, 
 then more generally to preside or superintend, the sense to lead (in 
 music) being merely a special application of this idea. It is hardly 
 possible that a word familiarly known in Palestine, c. 300 B.C., and 
 (in its musical connexion) retained in use in the Temple services, 
 should have had its meaning forgotten there during the period of 1-2 
 centuries which may have elapsed between 300 B.C. and the date at 
 which the LXX translation of the Chronicles a.nd Ezra was made ; yet 
 the translators of these books have evidently no idea of its meaning 
 when used in that connexion. The following is a synopsis of the passages 
 in which the verb occurs : — 
 I Ch. XV. 31 R.V. to lead, LXX toS tviayyaai^. 
 xxiii. 4 R.V. to oversee, LXX ipyoSiaicTai. 
 
 1 In Aramaic, to be distinguished, cf. Dan. 6, 3 [Aram. 4], often also 
 to prevail, triumph; the substantive mx\'S'^^ ,\xL ^ victory . This Aramaic 
 usage explains some of the renderings of the term to be noticed below. 
 
 " For the association of the idea of strength with what is (in reality 
 
APPENDIX T. I47 
 
 2 Ch. ii. 2 [Heb. l] ' R.V. to oversee, LXX im/TTarm. 
 
 18 [Heb. 17]! R.V. overseers, LXX ipyoSMitTat. 
 
 xxxiv. 12R.V. to set forward, R.V. marff. to preside (over it), 
 LXX iTTtffKOTretv. 
 
 13 R.V. set forward, LXX Im'. 
 Ezra iii. 8 R.V. to have the oversight, LXX omit (Itt! representing the 
 following b s) . 
 
 9 R.V. to have the oversight, LXX similarly omit. 
 In all these passages except the first the LXX render freely or make use 
 of some general equivalent ; in i Chron. xv. 21, in spite of the reference 
 being manifestly to music, they show themselves to be entirely unac- 
 quainted with the meaning of the verb. Their rendering, in the Psalms ^ 
 of the title ns:n'! (which they must have vocalized, not as a farticiph 
 nsjoS hv!i as, 3, substantive nsjp';) by cis to tcAos {with the article) is 
 plainly to be accounted for by their rendering of the common rtsji 
 "for ever" by (h rcAor {without the article); but in the light of 
 what has been said, it cannot be held to show that the sense of 
 the word was unlcnown at the time in Palestine ; it only shows that it 
 was unknown in /4&ji;a«(/n'3. The usage of the verb ns: appears to me to 
 constitute a presumption that the sense " precentor" for the participle 
 n^J)? originated in^orf-exilic times ; its use in Hab. iii. 19 is not opposed 
 to this view ; for it may well have been added afterwards, at >i time 
 when the ode of Habakkuk was used in the services of the Templet 
 
 or appearance) the same root, see Is. xxv. 8, Jer. xv. 18, LXX. The 
 LXX not unfrequently give to a Hebrew word a sense which the root 
 only bears in Aramaic ; and it is probable that they were led to this 
 rendering of ns3 by the sense to prevail which the root has in Aramaic. 
 
 ^ These two verses are plainly based upon i Ki. v. 14-15, with slight 
 modifications — amongst others, with the substitution of the late word 
 n23, for mi ' bear rule,' used in the book of Kings. 
 
 * In Hab. iii. 19, toC viKrjnai (i.e. n S : p '), vocalized as an injin., and 
 explained from the Aramaic : compare the preceding notes). 
 
 ^ I do not, however, desire by this to be supposed to hold that the 
 Temple-psalmody itself originated only after the exile. I have no doubt 
 that the beginnings of this were much earlier; the 'Singers,' who returned 
 in B.C. 536 (Ezra ii. 41), must have been the descendants of those 
 who had discharged similar functions in the pre-exilic Temple. And some 
 of the other technical terms, as Shiggaion, the Gittith, Sec, may also 
 well be of ancient origin ; but they hardly prove anythifig as to the 
 
 L 2 
 
148 APPENDIX I. 
 
 But whether this be the case or not, I Chron. xv. a I is evidence that 
 the word was understood in Palestine c. 300 B.C.* : either, therefore, 
 it gradually fell out of use, and its meaning thus gradually became 
 obscured in the centuries following ; or (as this seems hardly probable 
 during the continuance of the Temple-services) the break in the tradition 
 must have taken place in the great disperiion which overtook the nation 
 after the destruction of Jerusalem by Titus, A.D. 70. In either case 
 the revisers of the Greek translation of the O.T., who lived in the next 
 century, Aquila, Symmachus, and Theodotion, will have sought to 
 recover the lost meaning of the technical terms of Hebrew music, by 
 etymological combinations, in which they were much influenced by their 
 knowledge of the Aramaic dominant at the time. Hence their rendering 
 of nsjn by viKoiroibs or iinvLiaov. 
 
 'In the case of Aquila there is another point also to be borne in mind. 
 Aquila was essentially an innovator : he was a pupil of R. Akiba, who 
 introduced new and highly artificial methods of interpretation ^ : he 
 made it his aim, even at the cost of the sense, to reproduce particles ; 
 in particular, he cultivated etymological renderings. Because IIJI means 
 a diadem, he rendered in Ps. xxii. 13 the bulls ofBashan 'JITfis by 
 SiiStjfmTiffavTo /jc ; because nJ^lS signifies a raised flower-bed (Cant. v. 
 
 13), i.e. irpaffti, he rendered the verb ^3? io long or pant in Joel i. 20 by 
 fTrpaffiaerj ; the Hebrew word for oil he represented etymologically by 
 (TTiXjrytSrTjs. The root ns: expressed to him the idea of victory (cf. the 
 Aramaic usage referred to above ^) ; hence he used cfKor not only in 
 Isa. XXV. 8 (where, even though incorrect, it would yield a suitable sense*), 
 but even where it produces no sense at all, as Ps. Ixxiv. I "Wherefore, O 
 God, hast Thou cast us off «««fo victory")" (similarly in v. 10, andPs. Ixxix. 
 
 date of the Psalm to which they are attached ; for even after their true 
 meaning had been forgotten, they might still have been employed con- 
 ventionally to denote particular tunes, or kinds of melody, and attached 
 as such to Psalms of late origin. 
 
 ' The style of i Ch. xv. 1-24 (as of the other passages quoted, in 
 which r\^l occurs) shows that it was written by the Chronicler him- 
 self, and was not taken by him from earlier sources. 
 
 ^ For some account of R. Akiba's methods, see Dr. Pusey, ' What is 
 of faith as to everlasting punishment .?' p. 79 ff. 
 
 ^ And see also i Sam. xv. 29, RV. marg. ; Hab. i. 4, RV. marg. ; 
 Lam. iii. 18, LXX; 1 Ch. xxix. 11, LXX and RV. (rightly). 
 
 ' So also Theodotion, and in the quotation I Cor. xv. 54. 
 
APPENDIX I. 149 
 
 S')- Aqnila's renderings are essentially artificial'^ ; they prove nothing 
 as to either the presence or the absence of genuine traditional knowledge 
 possessed by well-informed circles in his time. 
 
 'The origin of the Targum of Ps. ijt title is manifest. Goliath is 
 called in l Sam. xvii. 4 "the man of the ^^waim, or of the space between 
 i^'Mn") the two armies (the \jiijaixtuov)" \.&. the champion ; here Hebrew 
 words occur which might apparently mean "on the death of the Un" 
 The similarity of bin in the title of Ps. ix to btnaim (which — looking 
 at the form alone — might be its dual) in i Sam. xvii. 4 is quite sufiRcient 
 ground for a Targumist to interpret the one passage by the other, and 
 to understand the " ben " here as denoting Goliath. The phrase used in the 
 Targum here, "On the death of the man who came forth from between 
 the camps," is nearly the same as that in the Targum of i Sam. xvii. 4 
 " And there came forth a man from between them, from the camps of 
 the Philistines." ' 
 
 This goes far to cut away the ground from the argument 
 I had used. It is clear that both in the LXX and Aquila 
 tradition played a very subordinate part. The only point on 
 which I have still a lingering doubt is whether the dispersion 
 which overtook the nation after the destruction of Jerusalem 
 by Titus in a.d. 70, is enough to constitute a real break in 
 tradition where such has to be postulated. The Rabbinical 
 schools soon found a rendezvous at Jamnia ; the succession 
 of Rabbis goes on without interruption, and there must have 
 been many priests dwelling in the country, like Zacharias 
 (Luke i. 39), who escaped the general massacre. At a time 
 when the Jews were so alive to the memories of their past, 
 it is less easy to suppose a breach of continuity which might 
 have been credible enough in an older generation. 
 
 ^ The same false rendering of n;?3 'for ever' by 'unto victory' is 
 found in some parts of the LXX : 2 Sam. ii. 26; Am. i. 11, viii. 7; Lam. 
 V. 20 ; Job xxxvi. 'j, — except in the last passage, to the entire ruination of 
 the sense. Aqnila's veaviSri/Tos in Ps. ix. title is a similar etymological 
 rendering of niB"')!', treated as one word nm'^?. 
 
 ' See this abundantly illustrated by Dr. Field, Hexapla, pp. xxi-iii. 
 
 L 3 
 
APPENDIX II. 
 
 SOME EXTRACTS FROM RECENT CRITICISM ON THE 
 DEFECTIVE APPREHENSION OF THE OLD TESTA- 
 MENT IN THE EARLY CHURCH. 
 
 The diversion of the stream of genuine Old Testament 
 influence from the Early Church, during the formative 
 period of its theology, is a fact of so much importance in 
 itself, and one which is so little appreciated generally in 
 England, that I will venture to give a few extracts frpm 
 recent German writers bearing upon it. When we read the 
 New Testament we see that, not only the Gospels, but the 
 whole teaching of St. Paul, St. Peter, and • St. John is in the 
 most vital contact with the Old Testament. One of the 
 greatest wonders of the New Testament is indeed the extent 
 to which what we should call a strictly historical conception 
 of the Older Dispensation is embodied in it, at a time when 
 anything deserving of the name was so rare in the secular 
 philosophers and historians. But when we turn to the 
 second century, all is changed. Think of the references to 
 Jewish history in the Epistles to the Galatians and Romans, 
 and then (e. g.) in the Epistle of Barnabas ; or observe the 
 treatment of fundamental Pauline ideas in writers like 
 Clement of Rome and Justin, and trace the defect in their 
 teaching to its cause. This is the way in which the problem 
 is worked out by Ritschl ' : — 
 
 ' I have not scrupled to use a slight amount of paraphrase, both in 
 this and the following extracts, so as to make the German read more 
 easily and naturally in English. 
 
APPENDIX II. 151. 
 
 ' Although Clement maintains in words the root-idea of the Apostle 
 that the believer is redeemed from his sins, and that God has thus 
 through Christ placed. the believer in a specific relation to Himself, he 
 has failed to understand the true significance of this thought, and 
 grounds the relation of the believer to God on his attitude of repentance 
 occasioned by the Death of Christ. The cause of this phenomenon is to 
 be sought, not in the greater stress laid upon the moral attitude of the 
 individual, which can only be regarded as a co-operating factor, but in 
 the inability of a Gentile to master the Old Testament background of 
 the leading features of the Apostle's teaching (die Uufahigkeit des 
 Heiden, der richtigen alttestamentlichen Voraussetzungen der aposto- 
 lischen Grundideen sich zu bemachtigen).' {Entstehung d. altkathol. 
 Kirche, 2nd ed., Bonn, 1857, p. 282.) 
 
 Again, it is remarked of Justin, that while he connects re- 
 demption with the Death of Christ, and does not omit to men- 
 tion the condition of faith, ' this faith is not conceived of as 
 faith in Christ ; and instead of meaning with him that central 
 function of the will which surrenders itself to the Person of 
 Christ it is resolved into repentance and active obedience 
 (Werkgehorsam), and the whole efficacy of the Death of Christ 
 shrinks into the condition by which this state of things is 
 realized (beschrankt die Wirkung des Opfers Christi auf die Be- 
 dingung dieses empirischen Verhaltens).' Here, too, as in the 
 case of Clement, Ritschl accounts for the confusion by saying 
 that Justin as a Gentile-Christian had not ' that true under- 
 standing of the Aposde's root-ideas which was to be derived 
 from the Old Testament rightly interpreted ' (ihid. p. 304). 
 
 What Ritschl has thus said of particular writers and cer- 
 tain particular doctrines, Overbeck takes up and applies to 
 the early Fathers generally : — 
 
 ' St. Paul, with his lines of thought striking their root deep into the 
 religious thinking of Judaism [Hebraism f], was a wholly closed book to 
 these Gentile-Christian interpreters. If it is true that the questions 
 which exercised the Apostle of the Gentiles had to a certain extent lost 
 their immediate practical significance (for only the Jewish-Christian 
 sects regarded the Mosaic law as still obligatory), at the same time 
 
i5^ APPENDIX //. 
 
 there was a complete drifting away from the connexion of St. Paul's 
 ideas with those of the Old Testament and the Judaism of his time. In 
 particular the purely moralizing view of things characteristic of these 
 Fathers, and the way in which they teach the freedom of the will, place 
 impassable barriers between them and the theology of St. Paul with its 
 purely religious premisses, of which they have indeed no conception. 
 Law and the freedom of the Gospel, righteousness, faith, and election of 
 grace, all these root-ideas of the Pauline Epistles are either reduced to 
 common-places (rerflacht) or filled with a wholly alien content. The 
 world of thought in which they moved was wholly different, and they 
 imported into primitive Christianity the conceptions of a wholly dif- 
 ferent civilization,' (Inaugural Lecture, delivered in 1871, and quoted by 
 Von Engelhardt, Christenthum Justins des Mdrtyrers, p. 59 f.) 
 
 In the concluding chapters of his work on the ChrisHanity 
 of Justin (pp. 434-490) Von Engelhardt himself works out 
 at length the points which have just been summarized. He 
 shows clearly how the ' degeneration ' in Justin's conception 
 of certain sides of Christian truth is due to his antecedents. 
 It was impossible that he should cast off the ideas in which 
 he had been brought up and which he had made his own 
 by earnest study, and that he should enter heart and soul 
 into modes of thought which had a wholly different history 
 and origin. All unconsciously a transfer took place : the 
 long list of terms and ideas which were handed on from 
 the Old Covenant to the New was retained, but their mean- 
 ing was altered into conformity with the training and asso- 
 ciations of a Greek philosopher. And in this Justin's case 
 was only typical of what went on with the other leading 
 spirits among his contemporaries. Von Engelhardt does 
 well to insist upon this : — 
 
 ' So in all directions Justin proves to be the key to the understanding ■ 
 of the course which the Church took in its evolution. From his 
 writings alone can it be ascertained what is the origin of that peculiar 
 form of Christianity which meets us in different degrees in the Apostolic 
 Fathers ; and only through the analysis of the modes of his Christian 
 thinking can we get at the beginning of the so-called Old-Catholicism 
 
APPENDIX II. 
 
 153 
 
 and of tlie later Greek theology. The legal turn (Gesetzlichkeit) -of 
 Old-Catholic Christianity, the fluctuations of Ante-Nicene Christology 
 and of the Logos-doctrine, and lastly the one-sided reference of atoTrjpia 
 or redemption to the imparting of eternal life in the sense of immortality, 
 find their explanations in the confusion which is demonstrable in Justin, 
 of doctrines and ideas which are either specifically Christian or the 
 products of Revelation generally with the religious and moral ideas of 
 Greek and Pagan culture (des griechisch gebildeten Heidenthums).' 
 {^Idid. p. 433 f.) 
 
 Harnack writes to the same general effect, only pointing 
 out in addition the importance of the part played by the 
 Jewish propaganda in preparing the way for this amalgama- 
 tion of Greek thought with Christianity : — 
 
 ' The conviction (that Christianity must possess all knowledge) soon 
 had to be tested by its application to the Old Testament ; that is to say, 
 the greater number of thinking Christians had the problem set before 
 them by the circumstances under which the Gospel had been preached 
 to them of putting an intelligible meaning upon the Old Testament ; 
 in other words, of using this Book as a Christian book, and of finding 
 the means by which at once the Jews' claims upon it might be repelled, 
 and their interpretation of it refuted. This problem would never have 
 been raised, and still less would it have been solved, if the Christian 
 communities in the Empire had not entered into the inheritance of the 
 Jewish propaganda in which an extensive spiritualizing of the Old- 
 Testament religion had already taken place. This spiritualizing was due 
 to looking at the religion from the point of view of philosophy, and the 
 tendency to look at it thus was the result of a prolonged action of Greek 
 philosophy and the Greek spirit generally upon Judaism. It followed 
 that all the facts and sayings of the Old Testament of which nothing 
 could be made were converted into allegories. " Nothing was what it 
 seemed, but it was only the symbol of something invisible. The narra- 
 tive of the Old Testament was in this way sublimated into a history of 
 the emancipation of Reason from Passion.'' It marks, however, the 
 beginning of the world-wide development of Christianity, that it had to 
 adopt the method of this fantastic syncretism as soon as it began to 
 reflect upon itself or to apply and use the Book-Revelation which went 
 with it. We have seen that the authors who made a diligent use of the 
 Old Testament invariably employed the allegorical method. They were 
 driven to this, not only by their inability to understand the literal sense 
 of the Old Testament, or in other words by divergences of religious and 
 
i^4- APPENDIX 11. 
 
 moral opinion, but above all by the conviction that every page of that 
 Book must speak of Christ and the Christian Churchy How could such 
 a conviction as this have seemed to be verified if the view of the Old 
 Testament adopted by the current Jewish philosophy had not first 
 effaced its definite concrete meaning?' {DogmengescMchte, i. 187, ed. 2.) 
 
 A little further on Dr. Harnack remarks upon the pregnant 
 significance of the fact that in order to hold its own at all 
 the Old Testament had to have recourse 'to the allegorical 
 method,' that is to a distinct section of Greek ideas, and that 
 on the other hand it set up the strongest barrier to the cora- 
 plete Hellenizing of Christianity {ihid. p. 191 f.). 
 
 My last two quotations shall be taken from writers repre- 
 senting a different branch of theological study, no longer 
 from historians of the Christian Church, but from students 
 specially of the Old Testament. The first shall be from 
 Ludwig Diestel, who wrote at an earlier date than any of 
 the writers excerpted above except Ritschl, and in whom we 
 shall therefore not be surprised at finding a less satisfactory 
 explanation of the facts which he sets himself to account for, 
 although he at least recognised clearly the receding of the 
 Old Testament in the Post-Apostolic as compared with the 
 Apostolic age, and the injury done to it by allegorical inter- 
 pretation. The point which he misses is that with most of 
 the Writers of that date he sets down to Jewish influence 
 what is due rather to Greek, 
 
 ' In the lively controversy with Judaism and Jewish Christians the 
 national and contemporary (zeitgeschichtliche) significance of the Old 
 Testament retired more into the background ; all that could not pass into 
 the Christian faith as eternal truth found its explanation in Israel's sin. 
 This controversy told disastrously on the conception of Christianity 
 itself. The Apologists borrowed aiU the more readily from their op- 
 ponents the identity of Covenant and Law, that the practical tendency of 
 the first communities gave a great impulse to the conception of 
 Christianity as a nova lex. Even in ' Pauline circles (Ep. Barn.) . . . 
 the foundations of the theological conception^jyere already laid when 
 
APPENDIX II. 155 
 
 the Canon of the Old Testament was more sharply defined, and side by 
 side with, pr in the end above, it was placed the Canon of the New 
 Covenant. The allegorical interpretation also for a long time con- 
 tributed to its support in such a degree that the need for a theory of 
 Hermenentics which gradually liiade itself felt could only be satisfied by 
 the better justification of this exegetical method. These poTverftil cur^ 
 rents of interest with the controversies to right and left determuie the 
 formation of theological theory and the direction of Biblical studies 
 in far higher ; degree than the recollections of the Apostolic age: the 
 germs of what was best in these either lay neglected or else developed in 
 a way that was extravagant ^nd one-sided : the limitations imposed by 
 the tendencies of the age which the Apostolic theory itself could not 
 help admitting, were not gradually thrown off, but were rather in many 
 respects accentuated, until- at the end of the period knowledge sought 
 new channels.' (GeschichU d. A. T. in d. Christl. Kirche, Jena^ 1869, 
 p. 17.) 
 
 The other passage is from a more recent writer, Dr. C. 
 Siegfried, who brings us nearer to the problems of our own 
 day. The expressive phrase in the first sentence has to be 
 toned down somewhat in English, 
 
 'When one looks back over the history of the interpretation of the 
 O. T., one gets the impression that the Church has been wholly in- 
 capable of assimilating it (als habe dasselbe der Kirche wie ein Stein 
 im Magen gelegen). The book is as it were sealed with seven seals. 
 One is reminded of Isa. xxix. 11. 12. Even^he who could otherwise 
 read well enough was hindered by the seals. The rest got no good from 
 the book, because they could not read. Who was it then who so closed 
 op the book? It was the Soferim and Pemshim, the Scribes and 
 Pharisees, when they made the end into the beginning, when they put 
 the Torah first and so created the illusion which was to last for centuries 
 that the Religion of Israel began with a Law. No one who starts from 
 this assumption will ever come to understand the Old Testament. He 
 who would really trace the development of the higher religion from the 
 older popular religion of Israel must start from the Elder Prophets.'— 
 {Die theologische und die historische Betrachtung d. A. T., Frankfurt 
 a. M., 1890, p. 26.) 
 
 From the Elder Prophets Dr. Siegfried recommends that 
 the student should pass on to the Jehovistic document; from 
 
APPENDIX II. 
 
 this to Deuteronomy, and then to Jeremiah and Deutero- 
 Isaiah. That -will bring him to the Exile, Ezekiel, and the 
 Priestly Code. When he has felt the heavy yoke of the Law 
 he will then be prepared to understand the light and easy 
 yoke of Christ. 
 
 Probably the order thus sketched is the best that the 
 student could adopt. By going first to Isaiah and the prophets 
 who are grouped round him, he will penetrate at once to 
 the very centre of the Religion of Israel : he will learn to 
 understand its distinctive features : and he will be in the best 
 position for tracing them both backwards in the order of 
 their genesis and forwards in their ulterior developments. 
 
 OXFOKD ; HORACE HART, PRINTER TO THE UNIVERSITY 
 
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